How TerraFerma (YC S22) freed their science team to focus on R&D

About TerraFerma

Precision fermentation meets government opportunity

TerraFerma Foods (YC S22) is building the next generation of food-grade protein production using precision fermentation and AI-enhanced strain engineering. Their platform designs bespoke yeast strains with improved yields and cost-effective fermentation characteristics, unlocking sustainable, animal-free proteins at industrial scale.

As a food and agriculture company, TerraFerma realized they have significant opportunity to work with the government. Beyond traditional venture funding, government grants and contracts offered a path to fund foundational R&D while maintaining equity.

The Challenge

Program officers flagged compliance issues

TerraFerma came to Forge because their program officers told them they needed to get compliance in order. This was the immediate trigger, but as we dug in, we found deeper problems.

The previous accounting firm they used, which marketed itself as an AI-powered solution, was miscategorizing a lot of spend. One example: they had recorded deferred revenue. Deferred revenue makes sense for a SaaS startup with annual contracts, but it does not work for TerraFerma. They sell cat food and ship it right away. There is no deferred element.

These kinds of errors were hiding throughout their books. The team needed clean financials, but they also needed to stop losing time to administrative work. The CTO and science team should be developing their precision fermentation platform, not chasing down accounting issues.

How Forge Helped

Freed the science team to focus on R&D

Forge gave TerraFerma the compliance infrastructure they needed without adding ops headcount. More importantly, it freed up the CTO and science team to get back to development.

Corrected miscategorized transactions. We cleaned up the issues left behind by their previous accounting firm, properly categorizing revenue and expenses so the books actually reflected the business.

Real-time spend visibility. Instead of waiting for monthly reports, leadership could see burn rate and budget status any time. This gave them the ability to make decisions based on current data.

Timesheets that fit the work. We adjusted the timesheet feature to allow logging up to 16 hours a day. TerraFerma's team sometimes runs long studies on weekends, and the system needed to support that reality rather than impose arbitrary limits.

Compliance ready for program officers. The issues flagged by program officers got resolved. Forge gave TerraFerma a clean foundation to build on as they pursue more government opportunities in the food and agriculture space.

R&D tax credits made easy. When TerraFerma applied for R&D tax credits, the data Forge gathered for project costs and timesheets was exactly what they needed. Traditional approaches like using Jira to calculate hours do not apply to precision fermentation work. Forge captured the actual time spent on qualifying R&D activities.

Why It Matters

Building the foundation for facility-scale growth

For an early-stage biotech company, every hour matters. The CTO should be optimizing yeast strains, not reconciling transactions. Forge gave TerraFerma the operational backbone to pursue government funding with confidence while keeping the science team focused on what they do best.

As TerraFerma grows, the next step is developing production facilities. That means working more closely with governments on permitting, grants, and infrastructure funding. The compliance foundation Forge helped them build now positions them well for that next phase.