Harry Briggs

Who they are

Harry Briggs is a Partner at Astanor Ventures — co-founded Firefly Tonics, a beverages company he later sold, and now backs agri-food tech from London.

Person

Harry read Psychology at Oxford with a First, then started his career at Hutchison 3G before moving into consulting at McKinsey. From there he shifted into venture — first as an investor at OMERS Ventures, then as a Partner at Balderton Capital, building a track record across early-stage European tech. He co-founded Firefly Tonics, a tonics and beverages brand that was subsequently acquired — a rare operator detour inside an otherwise investor-shaped career. He joined Astanor Ventures in January 2024, a Brussels-based fund focused on agri-food tech, which is where his public voice has become most defined. His LinkedIn output centres on agri-food systems, regenerative agriculture, biotech, and gut health — and he's been on the conference circuit in early 2026, speaking at AgriFutures evokeAG in Melbourne in February and at both the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit and Future Food Tech Summit in March. Outside investing he chairs the Create Streets Foundation and sits on the founding advisory board of Diversity.vc. The through-line is a move from generalist tech investing toward a specific thesis: better food systems as a response to planetary stress.

How they likely show up

  • Oxford Psychology with a First → likely strong pattern-recognition and comfort with behavioural and systems-level reasoning, not just financial modelling.
  • Career arc from McKinsey consulting → OMERS Ventures → Balderton → Astanor shows deliberate specialisation over time, narrowing from broad tech to a specific food-systems thesis — suggests a person who commits to conviction rather than spreading bets.
  • Co-founded and exited Firefly Tonics alongside an investor career → high agency; will have empathy for founder-side messiness that pure-finance VCs often lack.
  • Three speaking engagements across two continents in the first quarter of 2026 (Melbourne, San Francisco, World Agri-Tech) → comfortable being visible and is actively building a public profile around the agri-food thesis.
  • Chair of Create Streets Foundation and founding advisory board of Diversity.vc → takes governance and structural/systemic questions seriously beyond pure returns.
  • Possibly — the breadth of content themes (regenerative agriculture, gut health, longevity, impact investing) suggests he thinks across the full food-system stack rather than category by category.

Conversation tips

  • → Lead with a specific company, deal, or technology in the agri-food space — he is actively forming views here and will engage with specifics far more than with general market commentary.
  • → His founder experience with Firefly Tonics is worth referencing; asking what surprised him about being on the other side of the table tends to open up genuine conversation with investor-founders.
  • → He has been on panels about regenerative agriculture and food systems innovation — come with a point of view, not just questions; he's used to debating these ideas publicly.
  • → Reference one of his recent events (evokeAG, World Agri-Tech, Future Food Tech) to signal you've tracked his recent activity — it's a credible signal of genuine interest.

Toolbox

Openers

  • Open on Firefly Tonics — he co-founded a beverages company and took it to acquisition, which is an unusual credential for a VC and a natural way into a real conversation about what building taught him that investing hadn't.
  • Reference his February 2026 panel at AgriFutures evokeAG in Melbourne — he was there discussing food systems, and it's a recent, specific signal of where his thinking is live right now.
  • Mention his chairmanship of Create Streets Foundation — it signals you looked past the fund bio and shows curiosity about how he thinks about structural/place-based problems alongside tech bets.

Discovery questions

  1. You've been on multiple agri-food tech conference panels in early 2026 — where do you think the gap is between the capital flowing into the space and what's actually needed on the ground?
  2. Having founded and sold Firefly Tonics yourself, how does that experience shape the way you evaluate founder-market fit in the agri-food companies you back at Astanor?
  3. Your content themes span regenerative agriculture all the way to gut health and longevity — do you see those as one integrated thesis, or do you treat them as distinct bets?

Avoid

Don't pitch a deal or open with broad market statistics about agri-food tech — he's actively forming his own views across multiple conferences and will want a genuine exchange of perspectives, not a sales narrative.

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Sources

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Generated by briefthecall.com from public web sources on June 5, 2026. Each claim is linked to its source above.

Automatically generated by AI from public sources. May be inaccurate or out of date. Remove or correct this profile →