In the heart of a bustling paper mill, where the scent of fresh pulp intermingled with the hum of machinery, Bob Houghton kicked off his finance career. Fresh out of college and a number of states removed from his Minnesota roots, Houghton understood the intricate dance of departments working in unison to produce everyday essentials. It was here, in the domain of plus-size machines, that he began to embrace the value of stepping beyond comfort zones for growth.
Read MoreHis journey from starting within the paper mill’s diligent production ethic to becoming finance leader at Pivot Bio is a testament to the power of diverse experiences. At a later stint at General Mills, he navigated through nine roles in 15 years, each a stepping-stone that would hone his strategic vision and leadership skills. It was a role in investor relations, however, that would mark a turning point ultimately unlocking the path to the CFO office.
Today, as the CFO of Pivot Bio, Houghton is focused on driving the company toward profitability while maintaining a sustainable business model. He emphasizes the importance of having financial acumen across the organization, allocating capital strategically, and articulating a clear value proposition to stakeholders. Meanwhile, Pivot Bio’s CFO doesn’t hesitate to blend his finance leadership with the company’s greater mission.
Says Houghton: “We’re not just providing a product—we’re providing a more profitable, predictable, safer, and sustainable solution for growers.”
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CFOTL: Tell us about Pivot Bio … what does this company do, and what are its offerings today?
Houghton: To understand Pivot Bio, it’s important to go on a little journey to understand the role that nitrogen plays in feeding the world—because not everybody knows about it. For plants to grow and thrive, they really need three primary things: sunlight, water, and nitrogen—which is by far the largest component of the air in our atmosphere, making up about 80% of it. Unfortunately, about 99% of the nitrogen that occurs naturally in the air is not usable by the plants that we grow to feed the world.
About 100 years ago, a process called Haber-Bosch was invented. Basically, through a very fossil fuel– and energy-intensive process, this extracts nitrogen out of the atmosphere and converts it to ammonia that can then be fed plants as nitrogen. Over the past 100 or so years, about 50% of the world’s population has been fed by this process.
Read MoreSynthetic fertilizer enables the production of food for about 4 billion people on this planet. This has been one of the most significant technological breakthroughs during the past 100 years because it’s basically been because of this that we’ve been able to fertilize the crops grown around the world for the past century.
The challenge with synthetic fertilizer, however, is—first of all—that about 40% to 60% of it that’s applied never actually reaches the plant. It dissipates in one of two ways. One is that it volatilizes into the air; the second is that it leaches into the groundwater. Unfortunately, when it leaches into the groundwater, this increases the level of nitrates there. This, in turn, creates all kinds of health issues, including the introduction of more than 500 ecological dead zones in our oceans. So, this whole situation has been very, very damaging to the environment.
Pivot Bio has a solution to these challenges. In the soil, there are microbes that occur naturally; in fact, quite obviously, such microbes have existed in the soil for millions of years. What these microbes quite naturally do is to shut off when they detect nitrogen. They’re an efficient organism. Like anything else, when they determine that the energy that they would have to expend to absorb something—in this case, nitrogen—is already present, they don’t perform the process. What we have done is to edit the gene sequence of these microbes such that they continue to convert nitrogen to ammonia, even in the presence of nitrogen. Our microbes are always working, even if there’s nitrogen present. This is really our first calling card.
The second thing that we’ve done is to enhance the output of these microbes by enabling them to produce more ammonia than they would naturally produce just to self-sustain. This excess ammonia in the soil is absorbed by the root system of the plant.
We apply our product in two primary ways. The first is to apply it on seed—for example, a corn seed might be treated with a Pivot Bio product prior to being planted. The second is that we apply our product as a liquid through a furrow application. As the grower is planting their seed, our product is getting applied right at this time—and as soon as a seed germinates, our product adheres to the root system.
Our product provides numerous benefits to the grower. The first is that we’re 100% available to the plant—we don’t lose anything through volatilization. Similarly, we don’t lose anything through leaching—we’re 100% available to the plant. We spoon-feed the plant, consistently providing it with the amount of nutrients that it needs throughout the growing season. Just as important, we’re much, much less environmentally and energy-intensive to produce. Synthetic nitrogen contributes about 2.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions per year and is the third leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions globally. Our product is far, far more environmentally friendly. We are extremely sustainable because we don’t evaporate or leach off into the groundwater. jb
Pivot Bio | www.pivotbio.com | Berkeley, CA