Nicklaus: Longtime St. Louis-area biotech investor becomes startup CEO at Solis – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Bolten stepped down from BioGenerator, where he was managing director and then president, and last month became chief executive of Solis Agrosciences, a two-year-old agricultural technology company in Creve Coeur.

He’d had other offers to switch from investor to employee, Bolten said in an interview, but it was a matter of finding the right company at the right time.

First, his youngest child turned 18. As he neared the empty-nest stage, Bolten felt comfortable leaving the not-for-profit investment world behind and embracing the risk that comes with running a startup.

Second, Solis was built by people he knew and trusted, with a mission he strongly believed in.

Solis’ board chair, Martha Schlicher, had spun out the company in 2022 from another startup, Plastomics, which developed a new way of introducing desirable traits into plants. As Plastomics built up its gene-editing capabilities, it found that other companies were willing to pay it to perform that key function.

At BioGenerator, Bolten had backed Confluence Discovery Technologies, a successful research-as-a-service startup in the pharmaceutical industry. When Schlicher suggested doing something similar in agriculture, he immediately grasped the potential. BioGenerator provided seed funding for Solis, and Bolten was a founding board member.

Other St. Louis entities — including Hermann Cos., Jim McKelvey’s Saloniki Investments, the St. Louis Arch Angels and St. Louis County’s Helix Fund — joined BioGenerator as early investors.

Bolten knew them all, which increased his comfort level in deciding to become CEO. “If you have investors you can trust, that’s an important element,” he said.

He also sees the firm as an important piece of St. Louis’ ag-tech ecosystem. In both pharmaceuticals and agriculture, big companies are outsourcing much early-stage research to startups. Meanwhile, venture capitalists who back startups are demanding a lean approach. They’d rather not tie up money in expensive laboratory space.

Confluence and Solis cater to those lean startups. “Solis will be the lab of well-financed companies on the coasts that are largely virtual,” Bolten said. “They own the technology, but they have to get it into plants. We do all that work.”

Solis’ clients include Amfora and ZeaKal, two California companies that are developing more nutritious soybeans.

Solis also has several local customers. The region needs such a service provider, Schlicher argues, if it wants to remain a leader in agricultural technology.

“St. Louis has that kind of talent that, for good or bad reasons, has become available,” Schlicher said. “Let’s harness that talent into supporting more startups in St. Louis.”

Solis, with 20 employees, operates out of the county-owned Helix Center and uses greenhouse space at the Danforth Plant Science Center. It also operates a plant nursery in Wildwood.

The business, for now, is inserting beneficial traits into plants and then growing the plants to make sure the traits are expressed. Bolten sees an opportunity to grow not only by landing more clients, but also by expanding into services such as data analysis, field trials and regulatory expertise.

Those growth opportunities, Schlicher said, are why she needed a CEO with Bolten’s broad expertise and extensive industry connections. And, even as BioGenerator searches for his replacement, she believes he’ll remain a valuable resource for other St. Louis entrepreneurs.

The only difference is that instead of standing on the sidelines with his hands on the purse strings, he’ll be talking to them as a fellow player.

David Nicklaus is a retired Post-Dispatch columnist who continues to follow the St. Louis business scene. Contact him at dnickstl@gmail.com.