Investment Climate

Send a textFoodini: Dylan McDonnell shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 47: Foodini: Dylan McDonnell shares how to get funded in 2025This episode features Dylan McDonald, CEO of Foodini, a dietary-intelligence platform that powers truly personalized menus by mapping recipes down to ingredient level so diners know exactly what they can (and can’t) eat when dining out. Fresh off a $1.8M raise led by Untapped Ventures, Dylan explains why Foodini prioritized the B2B data layer first—standardizing opaque restaurant recipes and products—so consumer experiences can be accurate at scale. He shares case studies across SMBs, hotel groups, stadiums, and events showing personalized menus lift revenue and retention, cut staff questions by ~60%, and reduce costly mistakes, while Foodini’s disclaimers keep liability clear. We dig into defensibility (the recipe/ingredient data moat and AI tagging), how to answer “why won’t the majors just build it,” and what actually moved investors despite early low revenue: hard proof that personalization drives results. Dylan closes with what Foodini needs next—pilots and partnerships with online ordering platforms, multi-unit restaurant groups, stadiums, universities, and airlines.Key Facts Foodini:Goal: To empower individuals with food allergies, intolerances, and dietary preferences to dine safely and confidently, no matter where they are in the world.Recently raised $1.8M led by Untapped Ventures and joined by Sister Ventures, MVP Capital Partners, and Solvable Syndicate.Alex’s Top Findings:The Cold Form That Closed a Lead. Lead investor came not from a warm intro but via a cold website form—rare, but proof to keep all channels open. “ They say when it comes to meeting your lead investor, it's warm introductions. It goes without saying is by far the most success we've had, just even in terms of getting meetings top of funnel. But ironically, I met our lead investor via a form on their website. It was one of those that actually came off. I completed a form. Their team got back to me, had a meeting, and from there, the rest is history. So just goes to show, even though a lot of the time those things don't come off, every so often they do."AI + Health: Investor Fit Beyond Capital. The lead’s AI focus and partner’s passion for wellness made them a “perfect combo” for Foodini’s thesis. " They [lead investor] were a relatively new fund here in California with an AI focus, and AI is obviously very core and fundamental to what we do and our ability to scale our solution accurately. We did some research on them and their main partner there, who was also a guy who had a lot of interest in wellness, health, longevity, and lifestyle. So we quickly identified that the combination of that AI focus plus that vision in terms of health, wellness, longevity was the perfect combo for us.”ROI Case Studies Across Verticals. Enterprise, SMB, hotels, stadiums—all showed stronger retention, revenue lift, and fewer staff questions when Foodini was implemented. " Our data is showing that personalizing the menus and giving that experience to the cons

Send a textFungu'it: Cyrille Viossat shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 46: Fungu'it: Cyrille Viossat shares how to get funded in 2025This episode features Cyrille Viossat, COO and CTO of Fungu'it, a pioneering French startup dedicated to creating sustainable, natural aromatic ingredients through circular economy practices using filamentous fungi. Cyrille discusses their recent €1.5M seed funding, strategic focus on market validation with early paying customers, and the importance of aligning with impact-driven investors like Asterion Ventures. He shares insights into building a strong team, navigating the fundraising process over 12 months, leveraging government grants and debt, and exploring exit strategies, including potential acquisitions. Cyrille emphasizes the value of balancing personal life with entrepreneurial ambition and highlights how community support and market traction are now more critical than patents in this fast-moving space.Key Facts Fungu'it:Goal: To make meat that's better for the planet, animals, and public health.Recently raised €4 million led by Asterion Ventures, with participation from Evolem and UI Investissement via Oser BFC.Alex’s Top Findings:France Advantage: Non-dilutive funding, public infrastructure, and leverage. Significant grants, BPI debt, public hosting (equipment/expertise), plus a European grant with a Spanish partner. “France has government schemes, and we had won some scheme. It is a competitive application, and we came up with a research program that enabled us to fund our company. BPI… has provided some government debt… and grants. We got a European grant because we are going to launch a project with a Spanish company that engages in different kinds of solid, safe fermentation."Traction over Patents (for this stage). Patents are in process, but investors prioritized market validation and paying customers. " We have started the process of getting our first patents, but we haven’t yet. It did seem that from the feedback we were getting, they weren't that bothered with the patient, and we were clear that we don't have it yet. The fact that we had a paying customer at the time. We now have two, but we just had one at the time. By presenting an example of a product that was used, it made it so much more tangible.”Valuation Approach: Needs-based + market benchmarks; lead helped align syndicate. They triangulated from capital needed to hit milestones and peer benchmarks; lead investors advocated for their target valuation. " It was impossible for us to claim how much the company is worth. So we tried to come up with proxies, one of which, maybe the scariest, would be how much it would take a huge company or how much investment they would need in order to get to where we are. You can also look at a business plan, and you know how much money you're gonna make if you invest this, and you put a discount for the risk. The second is compared to what happens on the market, if you look at we are ahead or trailing companies that would raise that amount of money, that would be valued at this amount or that amount. The th

Send a textThe Better Meat Co.: Paul Shapiro shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 45: The Better Meat Co.: Paul Shapiro shares how to get funded in 2025This episode features Paul Shapiro, CEO of The Better Meat Co., who just closed a new funding round in one of the toughest markets alternative protein has ever seen. Paul shares how the company weathered years of IP litigation, kept advancing with patents and regulatory wins, and built long-term trust with investors like Steve Jurvetson (Future Ventures) and Rob Reid (Resilience Reserve) — relationships nurtured since 2021 that finally culminated in a Series A lead in 2025. He breaks down The Better Meat Co.’s pragmatic strategy: positioning as an ingredient supplier to the $1T meat industry rather than a branded CPG, focusing on hybrid meat products that reduce animal use at scale, and pioneering cost-competitive mycoprotein through continuous fermentation. The conversation dives into investor management, transparency in board meetings, the importance of educating backers on biotech realities, and the values-driven yet pragmatic mission of building a truly scalable sustainability solution.Key Facts The Better Meat Co.:Goal: To make meat that's better for the planet, animals, and public health.Recently raised $31 million in Series A, co-led by Future Ventures and Resilience Reserve.Alex’s Top Findings:Long-Term Investor Relationships Pay Off. The Better Meat Co. co-leads (Future Ventures & Resilience Reserve) were cultivated for years, with initial support via a convertible note. “Bruce Friedrich from The Good Food Institute, many years ago, probably around 2021, introduced me to Rob Reid … he then introduced me to Steve Jurvetson. They did do a convertible note, which was smaller than what we just did, but they did a convertible note at the end of 2021, and then they made their series A investment in 2025."Transparency and Education Are Critical in Board Meetings. The Better Meat Co. uses board time to expose challenges and teach investors technical fundamentals.. " We're highly transparent. We do not mask any bad things. We never wanted to be a board meeting where we're just merely informing the board of what we're doing, and that's it. It's not our duty merely to inform them. We want to solicit their ideas, like they are there not just to govern the company, they're there to help. Guide what we are doing."Balancing Mission and Pragmatism. As a long-time vegan, Paul faced criticism for pursuing hybrid meat but stresses pragmatic impact. " I had people criticizing me in podcasts and blogs, unfriending me on Facebook over this. I've been a vegan for about 32 years, and I'd be thrilled if more people wanted to eat that way. But I'm also a pragmatist, and I recognize again that meat demand is going up, not down. People like to live in a bubble and think that the world is going the way that they want it to. In reality, it is going in the opposite way. Meat demand is up; it's at an all-time high."

Send a textPrefer: Jake Berber shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 44: Prefer: Jake Berber shares how to get funded in 2025This episode of the Investor Climate Podcast features a return conversation with Jake Berber, co-founder and CEO of Prefer, who just closed an oversubscribed $4.2M pre-A round to future-proof climate-threatened crops starting with coffee and cocoa. Jake walks through the full fundraising playbook—from building a transparent non-NDA data room and leveraging warm intros, to overcoming MOU skepticism with conservative revenue modeling and positioning IP licensing as a capital-light growth driver. He shares candid lessons from six months of 20+ investor calls per week, a 1.5% conversion rate, and how the round came together with co-leads At One Ventures and Chancery Hill Capital. The discussion blends tactical fundraising insights with founder resilience, showing what it takes to raise in today’s tougher climate tech market.Key Facts Prefer:Goal: To future-proof food & beverage, starting with coffee and chocolate.Recently closed an oversubscribed $4.2M pre-A round co-led by At One Ventures and Chancery Hill Capital.Alex’s Top Findings:Funnel Management: Brutal Conversion Rates. Out of 500+ reachouts, only three checks closed (~1.5%). Jake emphasizes grit and volume. "We had 200 venture capital funds, CVCs, EVCS, government agencies, and family offices in our CRM that we had spoken with. So we had over 200 different entities that we spoke with that were interested in raising money and took a call with us. In terms of people who reached out, I'm guessing 500 plus. I would say 50% of them opted into a non NDA data room and 20 20% opted into the full NDA data room. "Warm Intros Are Non-Negotiable. Fundraising = sales. Investors judge founders by their ability to secure warm introductions. " I think that investors want to see that you are a good enough salesperson to get a warm introduction to them. I bring it back to sales because what we've learned in our industry, being a B2B food tech company, is that a warm introduction to a customer is infinitely more effective than a cold reach out to a customer. And so good investors know that if you're able to get a warm introduction to me, the investor, that means that you can get a warm introduction to the customer. If you can get warm introductions to customers, you are a better salesperson, and in turn, you have a chance of having better revenue as a company. So I bring it back to just showing a skillset of being able to get connected with people. I'm sure there's data around a higher rate of first call via warm introduction versus cold. I'm sure that's out there, but I don't have exact numbers on it."Data Room Strategy: Radical Transparency. Jake used a non-NDA data room with nearly everything except customer names and IP details to accelerate diligence. "The only difference in our NDA data room versus non-NDA data room is customer names and IP information. We keep our forward-looking financial model in there. We keep in MOU amounts, but we redact all contracts of names or anything. S

Send a textLoopworm: Ankit Bagaria shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 43: Loopworm: Ankit Bagaria shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I talk with Ankit Alok Bagaria, co-founder and CEO of Loopworm, a Bangalore-based biotech startup using insect-based systems to produce high-value proteins for nutrition, diagnostics, and biopharma. Ankit shares how Loopworm raised a $3.25M pre-Series A round led by WaterBridge Ventures and Japan’s Enrission India Capital, and how they built investor conviction around a new recombinant protein platform—while continuing to scale a profitable animal nutrition business. We dive into using silkworms as living bioreactors, building hyper-prepared data rooms, navigating biotech objections in India’s VC landscape, and why Loopworm is designed as a long-term insect biotech platform—not just an insect protein startup.Key Facts Loopworm:Goal: To redefine how industries approach nutrition, health, and wellness by maximising the value of insects across various applications.Recently raised $3.4M in seed funding led by WaterBridge Ventures and Enrission India Capital.Alex’s Top Findings:Existing Investors Can Be the Best Lead Investors. Loopworm’s pre-Series A was led by WaterBridge Ventures, an existing investor who doubled down because of strong business performance and a promising new vertical. ” So we already knew Water Bridge Ventures from before. We have been in touch with them for the last three years. They also participated and invested in our seed round. So they have doubled down in this round with us, which shows a lot of confidence from existing investors. Obviously, they were much more aware in terms of the progress at Loopworm in terms of what we were trying to achieve, the major breakthrough that we got with our recombinant protein platform. That is where I think that confidence came in, where they straightaway gave us a commitment like when we started raising our funds in this round, and then we got a hold of new investors coming in as well.”Cold Outreach Can Land Strategic Investors. Japanese investor was sourced via a short LinkedIn message emphasizing traction and capital already committed. "I saw news… fund is actively looking at investments in India… reached out on LinkedIn. Japan can be a great market for us, since we work with silkworms. I essentially reached out to them on LinkedIn, stating, ‘I am raising a $3 million round with $1.5 million in commitments. Happy to connect,’ they replied, ‘Glad to get connected. Let's get on a call. Looks interesting.’”Data Room & Preparedness Shortened Due Diligence. Ankit prepared questions, hyperlinked Q&A in Google Drive, plus factory and process videos, and accelerated the close. “ From our last seed round of investment, what I learned was that it's better to be prepared with all the data rooms, FAQs, etc. So I can essentially predict the hundred questions that an investor would ask me and create supporting documents for them. From a financial due diligence and a legal due diligence perspective, even from an ESG due diligence perspective, we h

Send a textKoppie: Daan Raemdonck shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 42: Koppie: Daan Raemdonck shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I speak with Daan Raemdonck, founder and CEO of Koppie, a Belgium-based startup developing fermented coffee alternatives to help safeguard the future of the coffee ritual. Daan shares how Koppie raised its pre-seed round led by Nucleus Capital, with follow-on investment from Mudcake, Rockstar, and angel investors—all through warm intros while in stealth. We unpack how Q-grader testing validated their product against market alternatives, why they pivoted their go-to-market during the raise, and how early grant funding in Belgium helped extend runway pre-fundraise. Daan also opens up about valuation benchmarking, handling objections around market history, and the mindset that helped him stay emotionally grounded through the fundraising journey.Key Facts Koppie:Goal: To help safeguard the future of the coffee ritual.Recently raised its pre-seed round led by Nucleus Capital, with follow-on investment from Mudcake, Rockstar, and angel investors.Alex’s Top Findings:Warm Intros Are Everything in Stealth. Koppie raised its pre-seed round entirely through warm introductions while still in stealth mode. ”Almost everything has been a warm introduction. So I think there have been very few, especially since we're pre-seed. So we were actually in stealth. It doesn't happen in stealth mode to have a non-war intro that leads to something. All of our investors, whether it was Mudcake or Rockstar, have all been warm introductions by someone else who then either invested as an angel or just wasn't part of the round in the end.Outperformed Competitors in Independent Taste Test. A blind test by certified Q-graders validated the product, helping build conviction internally and with investors. " We had an independent test done over the summer of 2024, and in that independent test, we outperformed all the alternatives we could source in Europe. That's for me the reason to stop all activities and to say, ‘okay, now I'm going all in on this,’ what used to be at that point, just a random idea.”Reverse Due Diligence on Investors. Daan assessed investor quality based on how well they challenged the team during early calls. “ The first call is where you're trying to pitch your startup, but you're also listening to the questions they ask. Unanimously with all the investors, we're now on board. We found the interview to be interesting as well. What is also interesting is that we felt that they asked the right questions, in-depth questions, and they understood what we were trying to do. They asked the right follow-up questions without being anal about it. But they challenged our thinking, and they pushed us forward during the interview. Those are the investors you want.”

Send a textAlba Health: Eleonora Cavani shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 40: Alba Health: Eleonora Cavani shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I speak with Eleonora Cavani, founder and CEO of Alba Health, a Sweden-based startup on a mission to prevent chronic disease by improving childhood gut health. Eleonora shares how Alba raised €5M — including a €2.5M round led by Unconventional Ventures — and how the company combines microbiome testing, nutritional coaching, and parent education to help families build long-term health foundations. We explore her scientific moat, regulatory strategy, and how she used LinkedIn and public speaking to build investor trust. Eleonora also reflects on the emotional side of fundraising and what it means to lead with purpose.Key Facts Alba Health:Goal: To prevent chronic disease by improving childhood gut healthRecently raised €5M, including a €2.5M round led by Unconventional Ventures.Alex’s Top Findings:From Cold Start to 600 Conversations. Nora’s pre-seed journey involved reaching out cold to 250 investors and speaking with 600 people in her first year—building trust one connection at a time. " Our first round was very different, very different. I went out to 250 investors, so that was a lot of work and very different. The second one was much easier. Completely different in the first round. I started out cold. Now looking back, it was a lot about developing the idea, developing the business model, and the plan, and also fundraising. The first year, I really spent it meeting so many people. I spoke to 600 people and I spoke to anybody, not only investors, anybody that had something around this topic, anybody that was interested in the topic, anyone that could help, anyone that resonated, that somehow liked what we're doing.”How to Win Intros: Be Someone Worth Introducing. Rather than asking directly, Eleonora focused on being authentic, valuable, and compelling—so others wanted to introduce her. "I saw many people giving me introductions and inviting me to more and more things over time. And I think that's what led to that one introduction, but it led to many other introductions as well. So my last round was very atypical, and our lead investor was our customer. We got introduced by a friend, and actually another investor who followed our journey over time. She has helped me a lot by making introductions. I didn't ask for it. I believe that they talked to the two of them, and it was a catch-up between two investors, talking about who is around and who is interesting, and I believe Unconventional Ventures is looking for companies that have big potential, have an impact, but also have unconventional founders in a sense. She pointed to me and she made the introduction without me asking. ”Valuation: Let the Market Decide. Rather than anchoring the conversation, Eleonora lets investor demand determine valuation—betting on interest over control. “ I never decide that [valuation]. If investors ask me about valuation, I say that they will be better equipped to decide that. I would say the way I see my job as a

Send a textTastewise: Alon Chen shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 40: Tastewise: Alon Chen shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I speak with Alon Chen, co-founder and CEO of Tastewise, a generative AI platform powering sales and marketing for the food and beverage industry. Alon shares how Tastewise raised a $50M Series B led by Telus, and breaks down their playbook for building deep investor relationships, bridging rounds with strategics, and maintaining valuation discipline. We talk about the difference between selling AI and selling food tech, the importance of multithreaded fundraising conversations, and why founder community matters more than any book when navigating hard decisions.Key Facts Tastewise:Goal: To help the food industry to digitize and automate their go-to market from accepting new products, to creating and generating more demand for their products, to enabling their sales team to be more successful in placing products on the shelf and the menu.Recently raised a $50M Series B led by Telus.Alex’s Top Findings:Bridge Round as Strategic Onboarding. Two external industry players joined a bridge round before the Series B—including Telus—allowing time for mutual diligence and relationship building. " So the thing with Telus was that they actually joined our bridge round before leading the round. So that allowed us to get to know one another better, see the dynamics, get to see how the businesses are performing, and build a more meaningful relationship. Sometimes you have to do the bridge just to bring your money in and to extend the runway. We actually brought two new external investors that we thought were extremely important for the future of the company, and one of them actually ended up leading the round."Protect Against Overvaluation Temptation. Alon cautions founders about inflated valuations in early rounds that lead to pain down the road for teams, customers, and investors. "I know the other way to grow with your valuation, not grow into your valuation. So raising money for that will get you into trouble because the evaluation is inflated. Will necessarily mean that you're gonna be disappointing your employees, your shareholders, and maybe your future investors are gonna be happy because you recapped yourself. The idea is to think about your business in the long term and not to get tempted. By the way, a lot of money in the early days corrupted a lot of companies 'cause you're not focused, you are trying to double and triple your team every year.”Good SaaS is Good SaaS—Even in Foodtech. Despite AgriFoodTech volatility, Tastewise stands out with traditional SaaS metrics: high NDR, low churn, strong growth, and margin. “ SaaS businesses are very easy to manage if you're focusing on the essentials, which is ‘Do I really generate revenue? Is my product sticky enough? Am I able to grow my portfolio?’ And I think we happen to be a software solution in the food industry. We're an enterprise software solution. We are attending agritech and food tech conferences, but essentially we're actually like a marketing cloud for

Send a textAgros: Max Nelen shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 39: Agros: Max Nelen shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I speak with Max Nelen, founder and CEO of Agros, a Southeast Asia-based startup bringing sustainable irrigation solutions to smallholder farmers. Max shares how Agros raised a $4.25M Series A led by Wavemaker and Schneider Electric, structured around strategic alignment and customer-led investment. We unpack how the team tackled affordability with a debt stacking approach, turned hardware into a subscription model, and built trust in low-tech communities. Max also offers honest reflections on founder resilience, navigating tough markets, and staying aligned with his co-founder and spouse.Key Facts Agros:Goal: To double farmers' income while making their farm climate-resilient for generations to come.Recently closed Series A of $4.25M co-led by Schneider Electric Energy Access Asia and Wavemaker Impact.Alex’s Top Findings:Warm Intros Over Cold Outreach. Every investor on Agros’ cap table came through a warm introduction, prior working relationship, or event—not cold outreach. " When I look at my cap table, none of my investors were cold outreach, really, either events, personal connection, even the others were a warm intro. I think it could be from an existing investor or another network. So I guess it reminds you, as a founder, you have to build a company, but you have to be out there and reach out to people."Debt Stacking to Reduce Dilution. Max leveraged non-dilutive debt in tandem with equity, aiming for long-term hardware financing efficiency while keeping investor confidence high. " Debt is non-dilutive capital. So if you wanna raise 6 million, you can raise 6 million in equity, but then you either bump up the valuation to make it work. Then, potentially, you'll suffer later because you have to make the growth numbers work, or you raise less, get at a lower valuation, have higher upside later down the line, and get extra debt to finance also the working capital, financing, working capital, which is in climate tech and also in us a big. We decided to go up to one. So, the debt-to-equity ratio can be higher if that's your appetite, depending on your cash flows as well. Pre-Alignment With Board on Downside Scenarios. Max proactively secured alignment with his board on fallback plans before going out to raise, ensuring room to maneuver if the market froze. “ So I went to the board and said, ’Look, I'm gonna go out and raise. Do I have a safety net? Is there a backup plan? 'cause the market is cold and it's gonna be hard.’ Some people say, no, but you don't worry, you have all the things there. I say, ‘yeah, but the market is irrational. I need a guarantee of how hard I can go.’ I need, therefore, a guarantee that if it doesn't work initially, we can always do a convertible.”

Send a textClearLeaf: Lawrence Pratt shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 38: ClearLeaf: Lawrence Pratt shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I speak with Lawrence Pratt, co-founder and president of Clear Leaf, a Costa Rica–based agtech startup developing non-toxic, broad-spectrum fungicides and bactericides. Lawrence walks us through the long and methodical journey to closing their seed round, led by Hawthorne Food Ventures, and shares why Clear Leaf focused exclusively on agtech VCs who understand the slower scaling realities of agriculture. We explore how accelerator competitions like MassChallenge and Grow-NY built investor trust, how a strategic licensing deal in Japan helped overcome objections about global traction, and why their product—effective, shelf-stable, and climate-friendly—offers a rare alternative to both synthetic chemicals and fragile biologicals.Key Facts ClearLeaf:Goal: To create sustainable crop protection strategies that manage the impacts of harmful pests while maintaining natural balances on the farm, protecting farmers and consumers.Recently closed a seed series round with lead investors, Hawthorne Food Ventures, a fund run by a family office out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Alex’s Top Findings:Fundraising Duration: 18 Months of Persistent Process. The fundraising round took 18 months from start to close. The team planned for 12 months but hit delays due to market cycles and fit. " We were definitely not planning for 18 months, but we were planning for 12, and we had realistic expectations. We were at the time a kind of interesting spot. Our market product was getting decent market acceptance in a couple of different markets. Still, our experience has been this strange, squishy middle when you're very early stage and you don't have any sales people who get all excited about your technology."Fundraising Methodology: Global Mapping + Relentless Follow-Up. The team built a broad investor universe across the US and Europe, tracked progress in spreadsheets, and stayed in touch even with non-deploying funds. " We got a lot of advice and a lot of input, and we were able to fine-tune how we were approaching some of these funds. It was just basically a lot of Excel spreadsheets, tracking who we had talked to and when we last spoke to them. Is it time to go back to them again? A year ago, they said they were bringing in a new $50 million group of LPs as a time to go back to them, and we just kept coming back. Everybody who didn't slam the door in our face would rather say, ‘Hey, you're interesting. Let's talk more when we're in a better position. We just kept following up and following up."Lead Investor Origin: Warmed-Up Cold Intro via Biz Dev. Hawthorne Food Ventures initially met Clear Leaf at World AgriTech in 2023. A London-based BD partner rekindled the connection via a referral from another fund. “ That was in 2023. We then re-met them in a more meaningful way, through a strategic connection that was brought to us by our business development arm, which is based in London. We work with a group in London on a variety o

Send a textBovotica: Andrew Leech shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 37: Bovotica: Andrew Leech shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I talk with Andrew Leech, co-founder and CEO of Bovotica, an Australian startup developing probiotic and prebiotic technologies that reduce methane and improve cattle productivity. Andrew walks us through the journey of closing a $3.4M seed round—highlighting the power of warm intros, the realities of raising over 14 months, and the personal sacrifices it took (including selling his house). We dive into valuation strategy using PitchBook, structuring university spinouts, equity-based advisory deals, and how team credibility can overcome early-stage scientific risk. It’s a raw, insightful look at what it truly takes to fund and lead a deep-tech ag startup.Key Facts Bovotica:Goal: To reduce methane emissions from cattle while simultaneously delivering production efficiency.Recently closed a $3.4 million seed round led by AgriZeroNZ.Alex’s Top Findings:Founder Sacrifices: Sold His House to Stay Afloat. Andrew quit his day job and funded himself through savings — ultimately selling his home to commit full-time and keep the company alive. " I made the decision to quit my day job and go in this full-time. You have to have at least one person in the company going full time. If you're trying to raise a seed round and hold down even a part-time job, it gets very tricky. It got tough towards the end for me. I had to sell and ended up selling my house to keep myself going while we raised the seed round. But look, in the end, that was a risk that was really worth taking for me."IP Deal with University: Exclusive License, Then Assignment. Bovotica initially licensed the IP from QUT with a clause for assignment post-raise — creating a win-win for both university and investors. " I think one of the reasons our seed round took a bit longer is there was a bit of back and forth between Bovotica and QUT to make sure we had the right structure to get that investment. We've got a really good relationship with QUT and our process was we wanted to license the IP initially and then once we'd completed the seed round, get the university to assign that IP into the company. So that de-risked it for the university that if we can't raise the money, then it's only an exclusive license. But it also gives something to the investor as well that if we close the seed round, the IP is assigned to Bovotica, and Bovotica actually physically owns all the IP that it needs to put the deal forward. So obviously in these sorts of situations. The university is looking to get a fair deal or what it believes the IP is worth."$9.4M Post-Money Valuation Grounded in PitchBook Comps. Bovotica used PitchBook data to benchmark valuations of comparable methane-reduction startups globally, arriving at a $6M pre-money valuation. “I was lucky enough to have access to a PitchBook subscription, so I did I pulled hundreds of reports out a PitchBook.The first thing the investors ask you, once they're interested is, okay, what's the premoney you pull this numb

Send a textCropMind: Damilare Odumosu and Rillwan Shokunbi share how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 36: CropMind: Damilare and Rillwan share how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I speak with Damilare and Rillwan, co-founders of CopMind, a startup using computer vision to help permanent crop growers—like apple and grape farmers—accurately estimate yield. Based in New Brunswick, Canada, the team raised $500K from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation and BKL Capital. They share how they built the company from a master’s thesis, cold-called dozens of farmers, and co-developed the product directly with end users. We explore their grassroots fundraising strategy, association-driven go-to-market playbook, and why their “farmer-first” approach—rooted in empathy, technical precision, and local ecosystem partnerships—is what sets them apart in agtech.Key Facts CropMind:Goal: To enable tree fruit farmers (e.g. apples, grapes) to better estimate yields using computer vision, improving supply forecasting and operational planning.Recently raised $500K from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation and BKL Capital.Alex’s Top Findings:Cold Outreach with High Empathy and Research. They contacted farmers through cold emails, calls, and in-person visits — always customized based on real research and communicated with humility. " We could lay our hands on email, quote, calling, and going to the orchard. First, do your research about that particular firm. Even though it's a cold email, try to say one or two things you know about their farm."Academic Origins: From Master’s Project to Real Business. The venture started as a master’s thesis in Technology Management at the University of New Brunswick and evolved into a commercial product. " So we did a technology management program at UMB. Our research was focused on agriculture, a tech innovation. We initially started working on this from the university, and we've done a bit of extensive research at that point. We've even built something for testing. So after university, we have now started to think of how to make it much more real, and we had to quit our jobs, start working on this."Valuation Grounded in Traction. While it was a SAFE/pre-seed round (not priced), they supported valuation with early product-market fit, LoIs, and real usage metrics. “ We had to do some estimates based on certain activities within the organization. For instance, we have a product that was raised. Also, in terms of the value of the product market potential, that has to be factored in when investors want to estimate and say you should like this because of this market potential barrier to entry in the industry. So these are like more qualitative and some quantitative information that we used to support the estimates.”

Send a textPlatter: Jack Clegg shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this pod/hcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 35: Platter: Jack Clegg shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I talk with Jack Clegg, founder and CEO of Platter, a UK-based startup digitizing wholesale food ordering. Jack shares how he raised £350,000 from 13 UK angels and the Startup Wise Guys accelerator—all while cycling groceries at night to pay rent and building Platter during the day. He walks us through his no-shortcuts approach to investor outreach, from scraping LinkedIn and targeting ex-CEOs in food to earning trust through grit, clarity, and relentless follow-up. Jack’s story is a powerful blueprint for resilience, humility, and startup execution without shortcuts or handouts.Key Facts Platter:Goal: To deliver the ultimate performance in aerial crop spraying.Recently raised £350,000 pre-seed round, joined by e.g. Startup Wise Guys and a group of angel investors.Alex’s Top Findings:Built from the Ground Up with Relentless Hustle. Jack built Platter while working nights delivering groceries and days building the company — sacrificing comfort to maintain momentum. " I delivered groceries five nights a week from 5:00 PM till 10, 11, sometimes a bit longer, and worked on platter during the day. I did that for 12 months. I loved it because, cycling around Hackney in East London delivering groceries gives you a lot of time to think you can think about your business. Take your ego hat off. Don't be embarrassed to what you have to do to get shit done."Skipped the ‘Friends and Family’ Round on Principle. Jack made a deliberate choice not to take easy capital from family, instead seeking validation from external angels who believed in the business, not just him. "I could have probably done the full lot from friends and family, but that’s too easy. I wanted people to back me because of the business, not because they were related."Tactical Prospecting: Target Industry Veterans, Not ‘Investors’. Instead of generic investor titles, Jack targeted ex-CEOs and operators from food companies who understood the space and had capital.“ 70% of people who have ‘angel investor’ in their LinkedIn title aren’t actual investors. I looked for ex-CEOs of food businesses who had sold in the last 10–15 years.”

Send a textHylio: Arthur Erickson shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 34: Hylio: Arthur Erickson shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I talk with Arthur Erickson, CEO and co-founder of Hylio, a Texas-based company developing precision drone systems for agriculture. Arthur shares why they chose equity crowdfunding on StartEngine over traditional venture capital, citing the importance of control and understanding the ag industry’s unique economics. We discuss how to craft a compelling video pitch, build early momentum, and navigate the platform’s algorithm-driven visibility. Arthur also reflects on building community-driven support and explains why the future of agriculture appears to be a robot revolution.Key Facts Hylio:Goal: To deliver the ultimate performance in aerial crop spraying.Recently raised about $2.5 million from the equity crowdfunding platform called StartEngine.Alex’s Top Findings:Choosing Equity Crowdfunding Over Traditional VC. Hylio chose StartEngine for its flexibility, independence, and better alignment with its hardware and agricultural focus — areas VCs often misunderstand or undervalue. " We started looking at other options, and equity crowdfunding was very attractive. It was important for us to maintain control because we don't think a lot of the VCs understand our industry, but we do. We have our finger on the pulse, and so we wanted capital to grow and expand, but we wanted to be able to call all the shots and not be restricted by a square peg in a round hole type of tracking system for our progress. Ag is cyclical. There are ups and downs, and you have to roll with the punches and really understand the farmer and the end market to be successful here. And none of the institutional investors we talked to really got it up, so that's why we did it."Preparation is Key: Financials and a Launch Plan. StartEngine requires two years of audited financials. A war chest (at least 10% of the raise) is needed for marketing. Building early investor momentum is critical. " You have to get audited financials, and this is an SEC requirement. StartEngine is the broker; they act as the middleman between you and retail investors, serving as the watchdog and enforcing SEC regulations. To maintain their certification as a broker, they require you to have at least two years of audited financials."Early Bird Discounts: Creating Urgency. Offering early investment perks is a strategic lever — sometimes offering up to 40% share price discounts for early investors.“ When the campaign first launches, there are a number of StartEngine early bird perks. StartEngine decides what perks you wanna offer, like percentages. In our case, you could stack perks as different percent categories and if you invested, reserved on our starter engine page before it launched, and invested within the first two weeks and over certain amounts, so there's different volume tiers as well, then you could get as much as 40% discount is what it was on the share price.”

Send a textRainbow Crops: Giacomo Bastianelli shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 33: Rainbow Crops: Giacomo Bastianelli shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I talked with Giacomo Bastianelli, CEO of Rainbow Crops, a VIB spinout focused on engineering complex traits in crops using AI-driven multiplex genome editing. Giacomo shares how Rainbow Crops emerged from a venture studio model at VIB, where deep science is matured before bringing in an entrepreneur-in-residence to shape the business. We explore building trust with investors, the nuances of cap table construction, and how he addressed investor concerns around long development timelines by securing LOIs with major seed companies. Giacomo’s perspective on transparency, empathy, and using net present value to set valuations offers a masterclass in deep-tech fundraising.Key Facts Rainbow Crops:Goal: To develop resilient crops that address climate and food security challenges powered by a comprehensive AI model trained on plant “omics” data.Recently received investment from PINC, the venture arm of Paulig.Alex’s Top Findings:Venture Studio Spin-Out: VIB’s Proven Approach. Rainbow Crops originated from VIB (Flemish Institute of Biotechnology) using a venture studio-style model — building on mature in-house technology and preparing the business case before raising external capital. "They [VIB] put money to mature the technology and keep it under wrap. Then they bring in someone like me as an entrepreneur-in-residence to build the business case and key milestones."Cap Table & Incentives: Founder, VIB, and Investors. VIB holds the majority stake initially (reflecting their tech development and cash investment). The entrepreneur-in-residence receives founding shares or stock options. Investors join after company creation. "The FIB is the founding shareholder, then shares go to the entrepreneur-in-residence, and then investors come in."Strategic Partnerships & Early LOIs. The team secured letters of intent from breeding companies to prove commercial traction and reassure investors about exit timelines. “ We had a letter of intents, several. We demonstrate that we were in advanced discussions with one player and a scientific plan already being carved. We had already a discussion on business terms . There are some others that would've required a little bit more negotiation. So it was very transparent into sharing that information, of course, under confidentiality agreement. That was, I think, what helped reassured that I was moving in the right direction.”

Send a textCatchfree: Severin Eder shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 32: Catchfree: Severin Eder shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I spoke with Severin Eder, co-founder of Catchfree, a Swiss startup developing plant-based seafood alternatives. Severin shares the story behind their recent 1.2M CHF seed round, why they’ve taken a B2B-first approach, and how they’re scaling without patents—using trade secrets, chef-led validation, and investor relationships rooted in regional support. We unpack startup lessons around cap table alignment, food-tech fundraising in today’s market, and how Catchfree built momentum by letting their product—and not just their pitch—do the talking.Key Facts Catchfree:Goal: To craft plant-only seafood without harming nature.Recently raised a 1.2M CHF seed round co-led by FortyOne Group and Stiftung Startfelt.Alex’s Top Findings:Smart Capital Through Regional Foundations and Strategic Angels. The seed round (CHF 1.2M) was raised through a regional foundation (Stiftung Startfeld) and private equity group (FortyOne Group), not traditional VCs. " There was an event that this foundation regularly holds where you could pitch your startup in front of investors. What was great for us was that we not only had the chance to describe our vision in a pitch, but also let the investors experience it. Catchfree products during a tasting afterwards. As they say, the way to the heart is through the stomach. This also applies to the success of selling food innovation. We met our lead investor during one of these events. "Avoiding IP Pitfalls: Trade Secrets Over Patents. The team opted for trade secrets instead of early patent filings to retain flexibility, reduce cost, and avoid public disclosures until commercialization. " We work a lot with trade secrets at the beginning, and we have changed our recipes a lot and considerably over the last three years. Our company was founded in mid-2024, and since then, our whole recipe approach has been. Even our product portfolio has all evolved and pivoted a little bit based on the market insights. I would say in food tech, in the sense that you work a lot with recipe development, you work a lot with trade secrets, and the recipe we have right now is completely different from what was done back at the time. Even the products we are working on right now, or the products that we are gonna launch now, were not even in the ideation back at the time."Objection Handling: Taste First, Tech Second. Skepticism about consumer adoption and scalability was overcome through relentless tastings (~70) and clear scale-up roadmaps. “When you have a physical product, people want to experience it — and it’s your greatest asset. We outlined a valid technological roadmap… and projections to reach price parity.”

Send a textIUNU: Adam Greenberg shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 31: IUNU: Adam Greenberg shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I sat down with Adam Greenberg, CEO of Iunu, who just raised $20M from top AI, agriculture, and ag land investors. Adam shares how a decade of building in the greenhouse space converged with today’s AI revolution—and how deep trust, contrarian leadership, and operational frugality helped him build investor confidence over time. From meeting S2G via Joe Montana and the ex-CEO of Whole Foods to the power of servant leadership and third-order fundraising strategy, this is a masterclass in building companies and raising capital with integrity, precision, and long-term vision.Key Facts IUNU:Goal: To drive efficiencies and optimization, allowing everybody access to fresh local produce year-round, using tools like AI and machine vision.Recently raised $20M with S2G Investment as lead investor.Alex’s Top Findings:Frugality and Integrity as Leadership Cornerstones. Adam believes that trust with investors and loyalty from employees stems from leading by example — personally absorbing costs and being one of the lowest paid on the team. " We're pretty frugal as a company. We're the best in the world of service. But when it comes to what we do internally, we try to be as frugal as possible, 'cause we have to make the money go as far as possible. In leadership, it's all about being able to show with actions. So every single day when you work with your team, you gotta put them first. For example, when I'm in town, at the headquarters in Seattle, I'll clean the toilets and wash the dishes. Why? Because if they see me doing that and know that I'm willing to do that, we're all willing to do whatever it takes to win."Investor Trust is Built on Logic, Not Hype. Adam doesn’t believe in “selling” to investors but focuses on clearly explaining his logic and decisions, even when imperfect. " I'm not very good at communicating with investors. I am good at always doing the right thing… and having a why for every decision. Too many people are so grounded that they don’t have big ideas. Too many people are so aspirational that they aren’t grounded. You have to do both."Proving Market-Making Potential in a “Small” Sector. Adam addressed investor objections that indoor agriculture is a small market by showing how his tech can unlock growth and transform the economics. “ I think most investors don't understand that or truly understand how to make a market. So we fundamentally shift the economics of greenhouse growing, and it's more profitable to be a greenhouse grower. Then you can not just take the market of greenhouse growing in produce, you can make a market and allow greenhouses to be around every urban area.”

Send a textSuperGut: Marc Washington shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 30: SuperGut: Marc Washington shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, we sat down with Marc Washington, founder and Executive Chairman of Supergut, to unpack how the brand became a breakout leader at the intersection of gut health and the GLP-1 wave. Alongside guest co-host Lance Lively of The Gut Punch, we explored the science and strategy behind Supergut’s rise—from investing in gold-standard clinical trials and securing key patents, to securing national retail launches and bringing on the former CEO of Vital Proteins to lead their next phase of growth. Marc shared the inside story behind their recent fundraise led by Full Frame Growth Partners, their bold clinical trial strategy, and how they’ve positioned Supergut to stand out in a noisy space of fast followers. From product formulation to rebranding to omnichannel expansion, this conversation offers a masterclass in building a truly differentiated CPG brand in the Ozempic era.Key Facts SuperGut:Goal: To make a sort of gut health, infinitely more accessible, truly functional foods that are both highly efficacious, but also making great tasting, convenient, accessible products.Recently secured a “significant growth equity investment” from Full Frame Growth Partners.Alex’s Top Findings:Clinical Research as a Brand Moat. While others slapped on health claims, Supergut invested in gold-standard science—earning credibility that 99% of wellness brands can’t touch. " It was over a million dollars that we spent on a clinical research for a study of that size and magnitude. Now we're incredibly happy that we went through a very expensive, time-consuming exercise of doing a gold standard clinical study. It's a real credible science behind it. Randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical study. Close to 200 participants did it. We saw significant impact on many different dimensions of health, inclusive of metabolic health, significantly better blood sugar, better weight, better appetite control as well."Be Always Fundraising. Relationships started a year before the check was written. The deal was built over time—not overnight. " We weren’t actively raising, but as an entrepreneur, you’re always fundraising in one form or another."Ask Investors for Their Take. Marc used investor meetings not just to pitch—but to test value props, weed out weak fits, and gather strategic insight. “ I would typically share at least a high-level overview of what we're doing right, and our unique value proposition. Instead of continuing to go down that pathway of revealing more about the business, I would turn the tables right and ask the investors, “So given what I've shared, what do you think is unique about what we're doing and how would you think about positioning this in the marketplace relative to what you're seeing?” So kind of turning the tables, almost like an interview of them to see if they got us.”

Send a textClearCOGS: Matt Wampler shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 29: ClearCOGS: Matt Wampler shares how to get funded in 2025 In this episode, Matt Wampler, co-founder and CEO of ClearCOGS, shares the gritty, real-world journey of building a predictive analytics platform that helps restaurants reduce food waste—and the uphill battle of raising capital in an industry most investors don’t want to touch. From reframing objections like “we don’t like restaurants” to securing strategic sustainability-focused backers, Matt opens up about the mistakes he made early in the fundraising process, how honest conversations (not pitch decks) moved the needle, and why founders need to stop chasing investor approval and start building undeniable value. Key Facts ClearCOGS:Goal: To help restaurants adapt to changing market conditions, optimize their operations, and ultimately achieve greater success and profitability. Recently raised $3.8M led by Closed Loop Partners, and joined by Myriad Venture Partners and Level Up Ventures.Alex’s Top Findings:Don’t Build for Investors—Build for Customers. ClearCOGS succeeded by focusing relentlessly on customer outcomes, not pitch decks. Ironically, this is what helped them eventually win over their lead investor. " I think one of the things that we really learned back then was that investors always said they wanted something, and then it always changed. We basically said, ‘Hey, we're gonna spend our time not trying to build for investors, but we're gonna focus on the business, focus on our clients with the full understanding that if we take care of our clients and grow the business.’ The fundraising will take care of itself. Luckily, this investor happened to be good at staying in touch with us."Strategic Investors Can Fill Your Blind Spots. The team sought partners who could complement their restaurant and tech expertise—especially in sustainability, which played a key role in the round. " A strategic investor in the sense that we were looking for somebody in the sustainability space. My background is all restaurants. My co-founder's background is all technology. We happened to be doing this activity, which really made a difference in the sustainability world. Something that we had very little knowledge of. So we looked at them as a great leg of the stool to help us move forward."You Don’t Need Everyone to Like You—Just the Right Ones. Matt embraced the idea that fundraising is not about being universally liked but about resonating deeply with the right investor. “Your job is to go get one in 10 to really like you and believe in you… The eights and nines out of tens don’t invest.”

Send a textVivici: Stephan van Sint Fiet shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 28: Vivici: Stephan van Sint Fiet shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I sat down with Stephan van Sint Fiet, CEO of Vivici, for a deep dive into what it takes to bring precision-fermented dairy proteins to market at scale. Stephan shares how Vivici navigated regulatory approval with a "no questions" GRAS letter from the FDA, tackled negative gross margins during early scale-up, and secured a €34M raise led by Dutch pension fund APG and InvestNL. We explore why they’re starting with whey protein, their strategic decision to stay B2B (not launch a brand), and how they structured commercial agreements to build long-term customer trust—all while laying the groundwork for price parity with conventional dairy.Key Facts Vivici:Goal: To make the promise of dairy protein from precision fermentation a commercial reality. Recently raised €34M led by a Dutch pension fund APG and InvestNL.Alex’s Top Findings:Market Entry Strategy: Focus on Premium Whey Protein Segment. Vivici is initially targeting the premium whey protein isolate market (not the commodity whey market). "We compete against the high-quality whey protein isolates that trade for 18 to $25 per kilogram."Initial Volumes at Suboptimal Gross Margins Are Part of the Plan. Vivici accepts that early batches will have negative gross margins until scaling improves unit economics. "At the beginning, there is a value of death that you have to cross...once you scale that to more interesting volumes, you immediately become gross margin positive."Fundraising Strategy: Focus on Experienced Partners and Scaling Proof. Vivici raised €34M led by a Dutch pension fund APG and InvestNL, after demonstrating successful scale-up to 75,000L. "We had fully scaled the process...10 liters, 1500 liters, 15,000 liters, 75,000 liters."

Send a textJay&Joy: César Augier shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 27: Jay&Joy: César Augier shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I sat down with Cesar, the CEO of Jay&Joy, a pioneer in organic plant-based cheese in Europe. We unpacked his remarkable journey of rescuing the company from bankruptcy, rebuilding trust after a product recall, and leading a high-stakes €2M fundraise over the holiday season to acquire a major competitor. From navigating food safety crises to executing rapid M&A under pressure, Cesar shares real, hard-won lessons on resilience, investor strategy, and what it takes to scale in the evolving alt-dairy space.Key Facts Jay&Joy:Goal: To produce cheese that's better for the environment, for health, and for animal welfare. Recently raised €2M.Alex’s Top Findings:Rescuing a Brand Can Be a Strategic Move. Cesar bought Jay&Joy out of receivership, seeing strong fundamentals despite a product recall. " I met the leader in France on plant-based meat, and we discussed what was happening to Jay&Joy. The products were amazing, and the fundamentals of the company were very good. So we decided to start a due diligence. We met the previous founders. We met the, the teams we discussed with clients, customers, etc. After a few days, we were convinced that there was an opportunity and that this company should continue to operate."Time Pressure Shaped Investor Strategy. The raise had to close in 40 days over the holidays, so Cesar pivoted from VCs to agile family offices and angels. "We spent a lot of time with VC funds... it was too short. So we pivoted to family offices and business angels."Use Strategic Channels for Angel Funding. Cesar tapped into French angel networks like Station F and Super Capital, raising €500K through tailored outreach. " We met people through that channels and we used other like networks of entrepreneurs and investors in France. The difficult thing I would say how do you get into those networks and how do you manage to post your message . We fine tune the message to make it fit with the actual audience. It worked. So I pre raised like, 500 k through those channels. "

Send a textArsenale BioYards: Massimo Portincaso shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 26: Arsenale BioYards: Massimo Portincaso shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I sat down with Massimo Portincaso, CEO and co-founder of Arsenale BioYards, who just raised a €10M seed round to tackle one of biotech’s toughest challenges: making biomanufacturing economically viable at scale. Massimo breaks down how his team is redesigning the scale-up process from the ground up—bringing industrial conditions into the lab, leveraging smart cap table construction, and tapping into project finance to build infrastructure without drowning in dilution. This conversation is a masterclass in turning big vision into executable industrial strategy, and a rare peek into how deeptech founders can blend science, storytelling, and stoic leadership to win over top-tier VCs.Key Facts Arsenale BioYards:Goal: To make biomanufacturing economically viable by reducing its cost by an order of magnitude.Recently raised a 10 million round co-led by Planet A and By Founders.Alex’s Top Findings:Solve for Scale Early — Biotech is Infrastructure-Heavy. Instead of classical scale-up, Arsenale uses scale-out: standardized 50,000L bioreactor modules for rapid deployment and learning curve economics. "What we're doing on the industrial side is that we're not doing the classical scale up as everybody else, but we're doing scale out. So we manage to do what we're doing by identifying one size, which will be around 50,000 liters, containerize it, and then if you need more capacity, we simply build more bioreactor."Convince VCs You’re More Than Hardware. The business is more than pipes and tanks. It’s a data platform for smarter biomanufacturing with guaranteed scale-up success. "Our desk makes you smarter. You develop your processes that belong to you." "We embed DSP from the get-go, because the cost of DSP is determined at the beginning."Strategic Cap Tables Are Built, Not Hoped For. Massimo curated a cap table of US and EU institutional VCs, vertical farming founders, industrial family offices, and bioindustry operators. "I wanted smart money—family offices, industrial know-how, and institutional money together."

Send a textActual Veggies: Jason Rosenbaum shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 25: Actual Veggies: Jason Rosenbaum shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I interviewed Jason Rosenbaum, co-founder and co-CEO of Actual Veggies, who recently closed a $7M Series A. Jason breaks down why his company took a bold contrarian path in the crowded plant-based market—eschewing meat analogs and ultra-processed ingredients in favor of clean-label, whole-food veggie burgers that actually taste like vegetables. We dive deep into what today’s investors really care about (spoiler: it’s not always the tech), how Actual Veggies is winning with data-backed growth and strong margins, and how transparency and strategic relationships—not hype—powered their raise.Key Facts Actual Veggies:Goal: To create delicious, chef-crafted, veggie burgers that celebrate vegetables instead of trying to mask them.Recently closed a $7M Series A.Alex’s Top Findings:Taste + Clean Label = Winning Combo. Actual Veggies products avoid pea protein (initially), gums, binders, and other ultra-processed ingredients to maintain flavor and simplicity. " So we have experimented with pea protein and have some new protein or higher protein burgers coming out later this year, where we have increased or added pea protein. But we're being very cautious with how much pea protein or other vegan protein sources we're putting in there. What happens is that when you use pea protein, the taste and texture start to alter. It also has a bad connotation. Some people say it doesn't sit.”Investor Updates: Radical Transparency is an Edge. Jason shares detailed quarterly updates with real sales numbers, financials, and asks—building trust and enthusiasm from the cap table. " For the investors, we aren't talking to them daily, weekly, or monthly; we are sending quarterly update emails. We send whatever is happening with the company, we have a whole format of what we like to show. We want to show things that we wouldn't usually show to the public, but because they're our investors, they're part of our family and inner circle. So we show them everything from our finances, including how much runway we have, how much cash we have in the bank, and how much revenue we've generated, even if we've missed our projections. We're very upfront and honest.”Strong Gross Margins Set You Apart. Actual Veggies operates with margins in the 50% range, allowing room for sustainable growth and marketing investment—unlike many plant-based startups. " Investors want to see 40%, 50%, 60% margins... starting negative is a bad idea. We start with strong gross margins in the 50s. That’s rare in frozen. That's something that investors are looking at, and that was something that our investors got excited about when they looked at our numbers."

Send a textGlenntex: Govin Induchoodan shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 24: Glenntex: Govin Induchoodan shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, we sit down with Govin, co-founder of Glenntex, a climate tech startup spun out of academic research at Chalmers University. Govin shares his journey from PhD researcher to entrepreneur, detailing how he built a deep-tech packaging company with sustainability at its core. He dives into how Sweden’s unique innovation ecosystem empowered him to retain ownership of his research, secured a SEK 7.2M pre-seed round led by corporate VC, and built early traction by partnering with customers to co-design the product. Packed with wisdom for researchers and founders alike, this conversation is a masterclass in turning science into startup success.Key Facts Glenntex:Goal: To help customers, companies, brands, and manufacturers make their packaging more sustainable.Recently raised SEK 7.2M pre-seed round led by Almi Invest and joined by PINC.Alex’s Top Findings:Deep Tech Founders Must Learn to Speak Commercial. One of Govin’s biggest challenges was translating scientific language into commercial value for both customers and investors. " I think the biggest objection for me, I would say, is do not sound too scientific yet. Learn how to translate and communicate in the simplest, effective way possible, and still sound mature and deep tech. That has been the biggest hurdle to cross.”Customers Can Help You Design Your Product. Before raising funding, Glenntex validated its tech by co-developing solutions with customers—treating them like design partners, not just buyers. "You don’t need to have a product. You need to have a customer design your product.”Build a 5-Year Table to Reverse-Engineer Your Fundraise. Govin mapped out five years of company growth across areas like market, team, product, and customer, which helped him align investment asks with future milestones. " I made this table: market, product, team, customer, and investors. It was kind of reverse engineering to understand it. I would definitely recommend anybody."

Send a textPlantBaby: Alex Abelin shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 23: PlantBaby: Alex Abelin shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, we sit down with Alex Abelin, co-founder and CEO of PlantBaby, the company behind Kiki Milk—the world’s first certified organic whole food plant milk designed for kids and loved by all. Alex opens up about raising a $4.5M priced seed round at a $20M valuation, the long game of building investor trust, and why nurturing relationships with transparency, consistency, and humility ultimately pays off. We explore the cost challenges of building a premium plant-based product, how to structure investor communications with honesty, and why treating startups as marathons—not sprints—is key to founder longevity.Key Facts PlantBaby:Goal: To make the world and its people healthier through organic whole foods. Recently raised $4.5M priced seed round at a $20M valuation.Alex’s Top Findings:The Power of a Warm Investor Relationship. A $25K “tracker check” turned into a lead investor through years of relationship-building. " A friend of mine introduced me to a wealthy individual investor who has run a very successful company as the chairman and CEO and has made dozens and dozens investments over his career. He put a $25,000 check into Plant Baby and said, “I prefer to write larger checks. This check is a tracker. I just wanna get to know you. I like you. I like the mission, I like the concept.” He planted a seed in me that said, nurture this relationship. We were very fortunate that we were able to come to a deal and a deeper partnership with him.” Alex shared.Build Trust with Transparent Communication. Quarterly investor updates include honest reflections on both wins and failures. " I send a quarterly shareholder email out to my whole cap table. I try to be as transparent in those emails as I can. I think that's another piece of building a successful relationship. Being transparent and being honest, and that ultimately builds trust as well, because it's not just sunshine and butterflies and rainbows in an early stage company.”Kiki Milk Was Built for Founder's Family First. The brand was born out of a personal need, not market research. " We built the most nutrient rich whole food, clean label, organic plant milk, that's ever been commercially produced. Inspired by kids, enjoyed by all with artwork that is inspirational and mystical. We did all this because my family needed it. My son needed it, my wife and I needed it, and we believe that other families needed it too. We didn't spend months and months and tens of thousands of dollars doing the market research and talking to a million families." Alex said.

Send a textOobli: Ali Wing shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 22: Oobli: Ali Wing shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I sat down with Ali Wing, CEO of Oobli, to explore how sweet proteins are revolutionizing the way we think about sugar reduction in food. Ali takes us through Oobli’s Series B1 fundraising journey, the importance of regulatory approvals, and how they are using a B2C2B model to educate consumers while de-risking adoption for major food brands. We dive into the economics of sweet proteins, why fermentation is the perfect scaling tool, and how strategic offtake agreements are key to securing corporate buy-in.Key Facts Oobli:Goal: To completely revolutionize the way we think about sweetness by bringing proteins to replace sugars in our foods.Recently raised €18 million led by Ingredient Ventures and joining the round were Coastal Ventures and PIVA.Alex’s Top Findings:Regulatory Approvals Create Investor Confidence. OoblI secured two "no questions" letters from regulatory agencies, which was a major factor in gaining investor trust and landing commercial agreements. Investors wanted proof that the product was not only novel but also scalable and legally approved for sale. "We were definitely the first movers and people were paying attention, but that doesn't necessarily mean somebody thinks you're ready to scale. So, and of course, no questions doesn't necessarily either. So one is you got to get there because then you're on the radar. I think the second is when you're going no questions, we weren't just getting our first, we were getting our second in a year. We've actually been pretty deep in this and they could start to see that momentum, which I think matters and also talks a lot about our commitment because we're scaling up quite a bit to support that number of regulatory approvals.” Ali said.B2C2B Model: Using a Consumer Product to De-Risk B2B Adoption. Oobli launched its own chocolate products as an educational tool to introduce consumers to sweet proteins while simultaneously building confidence among corporate partners. This de-risked adoption for CPG companies by proving consumer acceptance and product viability. " The whole idea that proteins don't just build muscle, but can sweeten is a pretty new concept. So we put a high sort of bar on the brand that we have to help CPG derisk their adoption of using sweet proteins by having consumers understand proteins can sweeten. We have retailers that sell it, but we don't do that on-demand if they ask. Otherwise, we're doing D2C because we can do a very cost-effective revenue generating with a great return that's much cheaper than if we just advertise to educate people on sweet proteins way.”Speak the Language of Your Customers & Investors. If you're in food tech, stop talking about fermentation yields—instead, show how your product makes financial sense for the companies that will buy it. " What we do really well is we don't spend a lot of time pitching our customer pipelines or investors. Our efficiency metric, what people call titers and fermentation, we

Send a textLe Fourgon: Charles Christory shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 21: Le Fourgon: Charles Christory shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I spoke with Charles Christory, Co-Founder of Le Fourgon, about the rollercoaster journey of raising capital for a mission-driven company tackling plastic waste. When a last-minute investor dropout forced them to rethink their €15M Series A, they pivoted, secured funding from existing investors, and turned to crowdfunding—raising €2.5M from over 1,500 supporters. We dive into how to handle investor crises, the secrets to running a successful crowdfunding campaign, and the discipline needed to balance fundraising with execution. If you're a founder looking to navigate high-stakes fundraising while keeping your business thriving, this one’s for you.Key Facts Le Fourgon:Goal: To reduce waste in daily consumption by offering doorstep delivery of groceries, beverages, and household and hygiene products in reusable packaging.Recently raised €8.2 million.Alex’s Top Findings:Resilience in Fundraising: Handling Last-Minute Investor Dropouts. When an investor dropped out at the last minute from Le Fourgon’s Series A, the team had to quickly adjust their strategy, securing $10M instead of $15M and extending the round later. They leaned on their existing lead investor’s confidence in the company. "Nothing was signed, but there was like a gentleman agreement on that point to say, 'Okay, we all know that we would have preferred not to face that situation, but we are really confident in the company, in the team to meet the figure in a year." So that's the reason why on that 8. 2 million, we had around 3. 5 million on our current investor," Charles revealed.Crowdfunding as a Strategic Fundraising Tool. Le Fourgon raised €2.5M from over 1,500 investors through a crowdfunding campaign. The decision was motivated by customer demand, as many loyal users wanted to invest in the company. "So many people are saying, 'We know that you are doing good, and we would like to be more around you and supporting you more, not just to be a client but also maybe to be an investor." So we had that in mind a year ago, and then we come back to that platform later that where we were speaking with, and we had that campaign, and they said, 'Okay, let's do it.'”Crisis Management: Communicating an Investor Dropout to Stakeholders. When a key investor backed out due to internal policy restrictions on alcohol-related businesses, Charles quickly devised a recovery plan, reassured existing investors, and secured alternative funding. "We told investors, ‘It's not linked to Le Fourgon—we are all good. This is our plan.’ Smart people told us in the same call, ‘Okay, we are fine.’" Charles shared.

Send a textKynda: Daniel MacGowan von Holstein shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 20: Kynda: Daniel MacGowan von Holstein shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I sat down with Dan, co-founder of Kynda, to explore how their fermentation technology is transforming food industry waste into high-value microprotein. We discuss Kynda’s journey from producing alternative meats to providing bioreactors for major food companies, how removing regulatory risk unlocked investor confidence, and why corporate partnerships were the key to securing their latest €3M round. Dan also shares insights on scaling a deep-tech B2B startup, securing recurring revenue, and pitching effectively to investors. A must-listen for anyone in food tech, alternative protein, or the circular economy!Key Facts Kynda:Goal: To turn agricultural by-products into mycoprotein for the food and pet-food industry.Recently raised €3 million.Alex’s Top Findings:Investors Are More Comfortable When Risks Are Reduced. By removing regulatory risk (switching to a non-novel food strain) and showing corporate validation (testing bioreactors on factory floors), Kynda de-risked the investment and attracted more confident investors. "Early on, we asked VCs to take on multiple risks—product risk, market risk, technology risk, and regulatory risk. But once we switched our strain to a non-novel food strain, we eliminated regulatory risk, making investment much more attractive." Dan shared.Corporate Partnerships Provide Investor Validation. Instead of vague Letters of Intent (LOIs), Kynda demonstrated real-world corporate adoption, allowing investors to call partners and hear positive feedback firsthand. "We placed a small bioreactor on a dairy company's factory floor, using their oat okara waste to produce microprotein. In just a day, it transformed into an edible product they could use. This hands-on demo was a huge aha moment.”B2B Success Comes From Solving a Financial Problem, Not Just a Sustainability One. While sustainability is a bonus, cost and efficiency drive corporate decisions. Kynda positioned its solution as cost-effective and scalable, making adoption easier. ”Sustainability alone doesn't convince corporates. We pitched it with better taste and better prices."

Send a textBeans: Ines Sánchez-Castillo Velge shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 19: Beans: Ines Sánchez-Castillo Velge shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I speak with Ines, founder of Beans, a startup tackling food waste by buying unsold inventory from FMCG giants like Nestlé and Unilever and reselling it at deep discounts—helping consumers save up to 50% on groceries while turning waste into profit. We dive into how venture studios helped de-risk their journey as first-time founders, how Beans navigated cash flow challenges in a capital-intensive business, and what it took to raise €1.4M after rejections. Plus, Ines shares insights on scaling a marketplace, building consumer trust, and staying resilient as a founder. A must-listen for anyone interested in food tech, fundraising, and startup execution.Key Facts Beans:Goal: To eliminate food waste by buying unsold inventory from major FMCG brands and reselling it at steep discounts—helping both companies and consumers save money.Recently raised €1.4M with Water Lemon VCE as lead investor.Alex’s Top Findings:Venture Studios Can De-Risk First-Time Founders. BEANS emerged from the Food Tech Founders venture studio, which provided funding, expertise, and operational support, making fundraising and execution easier despite the founders being first-timers. " We're incredibly grateful that we founded this with them because their experience made us not first time founders. My co-founder and I are first time founders, but the fact that we had them meant that we weren't regarded as first-time founders, and that in our execution was massive." Ines shared.Startup Fundraising is a Numbers Game. Persistence is key in fundraising. It took 179 rejections before BEANS secured investment, proving that resilience and conviction are crucial for success. "We spoke to about 180 VCs until we got our first yes. It's extremely discouraging when you have 179 funds that tell you what you're building is not worthwhile or maybe they don't say it in those terms. So try keeping on and hustling to get that traction.”Customer Trust is Built Through Transparency & Engagement. Direct communication, social proof (Trustpilot reviews), and a referral program helped overcome consumer skepticism about discounted groceries. " We wanted to be so extremely customer centric. For the first eight months, I had my personal cell phone on the website, so customers could call me directly." Ines revealed.

Send a textMoonrider: Anoop Srikantaswamy shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 18: Moonrider: Anoop Srikantaswamy shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I sit down with Anoop Shrikantaswamy, founder & CEO of Moonrider, to discuss how his team is electrifying agriculture with electric tractors designed for smallholder farmers. From a chance conversation that sparked the idea to bootstrapping their way to a working prototype, Anoop shares how they raised $2.2M without cold-pitching VCs, the power of shameless outreach, and why their "Uber for Tractors" model is solving one of the biggest challenges in farming. This is a must-listen for anyone building in hard-tech, EVs, or agtech.This podcast is packed with insights for founders, especially those in hard-tech and emerging markets.Key Facts Moonrider:Goal: To empower every farmer to produce more, earn more, and save more.Recently raised a seed round of $2.2M from AdvantEdge Founders and Micelio Technology Fund.Alex’s Top Findings:Bootstrap Until You Have Proof of Concept. The company delayed raising VC funding until they had a functional prototype, ensuring stronger leverage and validation before pitching to investors. "We didn’t want to go ahead and raise it from VCs from day one because we wanted to keep ourselves in stealth…we reached out to a few angels who are founders themselves." Anoop pointed out.You Are Only Two Calls Away From the Right People. "Fundamentally, I believe that you are just two calls away in terms of reaching out to get what you want." Anoop emphasizes the power of networking and warm introductions, illustrating how connections through mutual contacts played a key role in securing investors.Hands-on Investors Build Conviction Quickly. Investors who physically experience a product are more likely to invest. Demonstrating a working prototype in person helped build trust. "Kunal himself wants to visit…he drove the tractor and was blown away with the kind of within the timeframe we were able to put together a product. He immediately committed a million dollars." Anoop revealed.

Send a textFermtech: Andy Clayton shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 17: Fermtech: Andy Clayton shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, Alex sits down with Andy Clayton, CEO and founder of FermTech, a company turning brewing industry waste into valuable food ingredients. Andy shares his journey of raising funds through a mix of traditional investors and crowdfunding, using Crowdcube to complete their round.We dive into the psychology behind crowdfunding, the challenges of verifying claims, and how the platform helpedFermTech tap into their own networks for investment. Andy also offers key takeaways for startups considering this path, especially in the food tech space.If you're curious about alternative fundraising strategies, this one's for you! Key Facts Fermtech:Goal: To revolutionize food sustainability by creating delicious, cocoa-enhancing ingredients that save 98% CO2 emissions versus cocoa.Recently raised a £325k crowdfunding target on Crowdcube.Alex’s Top Findings:Crowdfunding Complements Traditional Investment. Crowdfunding helped finalize the investment round rather than starting from scratch. "The function that crowdfunding played for us was that it finished off a round. You can't just start from zero and expect to close a round on crowdfunding only. You have to come to the platform having already filled a large amount of your raise."Crowdfunding Encourages Existing Networks to Invest More. "Although we managed to just about close our round, in truth, a lot of it didn’t actually come from the crowdfunding platform. What the platform forced us to do was really shake the tree of the networks that we already had."Crowdfunding Platforms Rely on Psychology and Momentum. “The entire crowdfunding platform is built around the algorithms of human psychology as expressed through the crowd. You start your crowdfunding raise already close to fully funded.”

Send a textB'ZEOS: Guy Maurice shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 16: B'ZEOS: Guy Maurice shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, Guy shared the journey of B'ZEOS, a company redefining sustainability by replacing single-use plastics with a game-changing solution. We explore how B'zeos strategically leveraged public funding from Norway and the EU to develop its technology without early dilution—setting the stage for a successful €5M funding round led by impact-driven investors like Faber.From securing paid pilots to building strong investor relationships, this story is packed with insights on scaling a sustainable startup the smart way. Stay tuned to learn how innovation meets impact!Key Facts B'ZEOS:Goal: To address central challenges in the Blue Bioeconomy related to the sustainable utilization of marine biomass and developing competitive bio-based products for value creation.Recently raised €5M led by Faber.Alex’s Top Findings:Phased Fundraising Strategy. Bezios utilized non-dilutive public funding initially, followed by strategic venture capital when ready to scale. “ Before 2024, everything was either public money from different grants that we got or was from services, paid services. When you get public money, you need to tap, so you receive up to 70% of that amount, and you need to tap with 30% on the top.” Guy shared.Effective Outreach Requires Clear and Simplified Communication. "We needed to sell ourselves, which was not that simple initially. We worked together to make a deep dive deck. A model that we had not on the strategy, but on turning or on making numbers on our strategy or making investors understand our model basically."Due Diligence Requires Streamlining Processes and Transparency. "We thought we were clean, but it’s never clean enough. Cleaning up meant organizing IPs registered across different countries and structuring the company for investor confidence." Guy said.

Send a textInform Ag: Steven Lockyer shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 15: Inform Ag: Steven Lockyer shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, Steve Lockyer from Informag shared insights about their journey in helping the farming industry achieve sustainable opportunities to reduce costs and increase yields. Fresh off a successful $7 million capital raise in August, Steve highlighted how being profitable before the raise gave them a position of strength when engaging with investors. He also detailed the unique journey of securing their lead investor, Rural Funds Management, one of their largest clients, and the challenges and considerations of opening their business to a customer-turned-investor.Key Facts Inform Ag:Goal: Future-Proofing Farming through Innovation and Advanced Tech: Smart Irrigation, Farm Management, and Harvest Efficiency.Recently raised $7 million led by Rural Funds Management.Alex’s Top Findings:Bootstrap Beginnings. The business was initially bootstrapped using personal funds and side industrial projects. “ We bootstrapped it with their own cash for a period. So, my background being industrial automation, one way we funded the business was every 6 to 12 months. We'd take on a large industrial project. For example, the last one we did, we had a 500 ton crane puller. A 50 ton oven that made banana bread out of a factory and blocked a whole six lane highway, moving it into a new facility. So that's how we built up a war chest of cash that we could then use to be the basis of running projects and generate cash flow. So we avoided external investment really by doing that.” Steven shared.Full Round Taken by One Investor. Allowing a single investor to take the entire round simplified the process and strengthened the partnership. "They were keen to take the full round... it just worked. They were the right fit for us, you know we had common values, common kinds of aspirations for the industry goals for where we saw the technology going."Seeking Advice Led to Opportunity. Seeking guidance from trusted connections can lead to unexpected opportunities. " When I was in their office one day, I was actually looking for some advice and that turned into a subsequent meeting with their CEO, who then invited us to Canberra and asked us to present the opportunity to them." Steven revealed.

Send a textEndless Food Co: Maximillian Bogenmann shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 14: Endless Food Co: Maximillian Bogenmann shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, Alex talked to Maximillian, CEO & Co-Founder at endless food co., which safeguard the future of chocolate while tapping into the flavor and value potential of overlooked resources. In this conversation, Max shares insights into the journey of launching an alternative chocolate company. He talks about how they built relationships with investors through genuine outreach and advisory support, despite lacking experience in food scaling and B2B sales. Max also touches on leveraging the hospitality network to validate their product and the importance of having advocates and early partners to support their growth. The talk also dives into strategic decisions like B2B vs. B2C models and future partnerships with major retailers like 7-Eleven.Now, stay tuned as Max takes us through the full story of how Endless Food Co. is shaking up the chocolate world with sustainability at the core.Key Facts Endless Food Co:Goal: To future-proof the existing chocolate industry.Recently raised pre-seed of €1 million led by Nordic FoodTech.Alex’s Top Findings:Overcoming Objections through Self-awareness and Support. Address lack of experience by surrounding yourself with trusted advisors and demonstrating the ability to learn and adapt. "I was able to interact with some of these people who offer their expertise. It is a long, slow process of really developing and fostering relationships with people, because I think at the end of the day, what we realize is that if you're really genuine with people and you are seeking help, most people are generally willing to offer you their own experience or advice from their own philosophy." Max noted.Leveraging Genuine Interactions for Goodwill. Authenticity and kindness can help establish meaningful connections without significant monetary investment. As Emile shared, " I think we were able to get a lot of goodwill out of people because I think we were quite genuine in what we were trying to achieve, what we didn't know. I think that being hospitality professionals we were pretty good at sort of helping people with meals and a nice bottle of wine here and there."Partnership with 7-eleven. The partnership with 7-Eleven developed slowly, through a B2B approach, rather than a direct consumer-facing product. " I think we've always envisioned being a B2B product. ... we met the procurement manager ... and it took months before anything sort of happened. 7 Eleven has always, or at least in the recent time, been sort of pretty strong with their innovation front ... wanting to sort of push the boundary in certain areas and also be first in certain markets. 7 Eleven came down and said, “we'd really love to make these cookies.” with a one to one swap with THICC, which is our product."

Send a textZymofix: Emile Redant shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 13: Zymofix: Emile Redant shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, Alex talked to Emile Redant, co-founder and CEO of Zymofix, an agtech company developing a new way to produce microorganisms which are mainly being used in agriculture and other non food, non animal feed type of application. Emile shares how Zymofix raised $2 million in seed funding from High Tech Gründer Fund and two regenerative agriculture-focused family offices. The initial connection to the investors was through an accelerator program, Biotope, where Emile was mentored by Johan Boterman, a former Bayer executive.Key Facts Zymofix:Goal: Turning biomass residues into fit-for-purpose microbial fertilizers, biostimulants and biocontrols.Recently raised $2 million led by High Tech Gründer Fund.Alex’s Top Findings:Rejection of Product Development Objections. Many investors wanted Zymofix to focus on product development, but the founder resisted this in favor of a more sustainable, lower-risk approach. “ Everybody wanted us to do product development...I was very, very strongly against that. It is really a high risk type of investment. A lot of those companies never make it, never actually bring products to the market. I've worked at a couple of those companies and it's something I didn't want to do because it takes a tremendous amount of investment money to do that with a really low chance of success.” Emile said.Realistic Business Vision. Zymofix avoids high-risk product development, choosing instead to collaborate with corporates to manufacture their top-selling products using innovative methods. As Emile shared, "We are not developing a product by ourselves. We are doing joint development with these corporations to show we can make it with better quality at a way lower cost."Low-Cost Manufacturing Strategy. Zymofix’s strategy to keep CAPEX low while still developing a scalable manufacturing process differentiates them from other biotechs that require massive investments for large-scale plants." We’ve designed it in a way where we can be economical at a small scale of three to four million... and that gives us a lot more flexibility to just go ahead and do it."

Send a textVestland Pharma x Sarsia: Jan Rune Nordhagen and Jon Trygve Berg shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 12: Vestland Pharma x Sarsia: Jan Rune Nordhagen and Jon Trygve Ber shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talked to Jan, CEO of Vestland Pharma, and Jon Berg, Venture Partner of Sarsia. Vestland Pharma is a startup that is focusing and wants to make the first all natural medicine against sea lice- the biggest problem for fish farming in Norway. Jan highlighted the pivotal role of external partners in structuring the company and aligning it with market demands. The startup partnered with brokers who bridge the gap between farmers and international markets, ensuring better adoption of their solution. The discussion also emphasizes the importance of government grants, like those from Innovation Norway, in funding high-risk, environmentally friendly projects. On the other hand, Jon Berg opened the conversation that underscores how venture capitalists are now prioritizing solutions that integrate into current systems rather than completely replacing them.Key Facts Vestland Pharma:Goal: To make the first all natural medicine against sea lice- the biggest problem for fish farming in Norway.Recently raised NOK 12M from Sarsia and Coast Seafood.Alex’s Top Findings:Your initial target investors are often wrong. “ We tried to get investment from fish farmers in Norway and they have quite a lot of capital, but they did not know and did not grasp what we tried to do. When you are into fish farming, you usually invest in low risk projects and making medicine is highly risky. It is cost intensive and it has a high risk. I think we did try to reach out to the wrong investors, basically, the first time.” Jan shared.Strategic Government Grants Accelerate High-Risk Projects. Government support, such as grants, plays a pivotal role in funding innovative but risky projects, helping mitigate financial risks for investors. As per Jan, “It was Innovation Norway. They give grants to good ideas that are helping the industry, and you need to show it’s helpful and does not harm the environment. These are grants, not equity, and they’re very useful for slightly higher-risk projects.”Evolving VC Trends: From Replacement to Sustainability. The focus of venture capital has shifted from disrupting supply chains to improving sustainability and efficiency within existing frameworks. As the Venture Partner of Sarsia, John Berg said that, " Three to four years ago, the emphasis was on replacing existing farming infrastructure with plant-based products or cellular agriculture. Now, it’s much more about embracing current supply chains and making them sustainable and regenerative. As a VC with a thesis and a perspective, is that something that you've also seen your colleagues have, improving supply chains rather than replacing."

Send a textOrbisk: Olaf van der Veen shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 11: Orbisk: Olaf van der Veen shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talked to Olaf, co-founder and CEO of Orbisk, who help professional kitchens to reduce the food service sector and parallel industries of their food waste issues and thus improve their sustainability and profitability. Olaf's talk provides valuable insights into navigating venture capital, building trust with investors, creating strong customer relationships, and using innovative business models to fund hardware in the SaaS space. It highlights how clarity, purpose-driven action, and strong stakeholder relationships contribute to successful fundraising.Key Facts Orbisk:Goal: To make the world food system more sustainable.Recently raised €8M lead by Regeneration VC and PeakbridgeAlex’s Top Findings:Having strong product traction and growth helps in securing investors, even when there are setbacks in fundraising. “ We were in a fortunate position that we're on a pretty good growth trajectory. That makes a whole lot of conversations a lot easier. Even irrespective of this series A, we were in a position where we would have the company go well without the investment. We are at a point that's not far from cashflow neutrality and positivity. It's just that our growth ambitions wouldn't be met. So that makes the conversation a whole lot easier.”The importance of choosing the right lead investor who actively participates in fundraising and provides clear structure. " That is basically what I should have recognized earlier. As a lead, you expect to really take the lead in this round, to provide clarity in the round, sort of boundaries, process, provide structure and clarity."Being hyper transparent is important. " As a company and as a founder, I always promised myself and everyone around me also that hyper transparency that I'm asking for in others." Olaf promised.

Send a textHubcycle: Julien Lesage shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 10: Hubcycle: Julien Lesage shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talked to Julien, CEO of Hubcycle, a company which runs into factories and find where there are losses or leftovers, recurring by products, recurring losses, and convert or transform it into new ingredients. Julien shared about the strategies, mindset, and learning moments that shaped their fundraising journey. The podcast talks about the challenges of fundraising, the strategies used to attract and retain investors, and the importance of maintaining transparency, resilience, and alignment with long-term goals.Key Facts Hubcycle:Goal: To increase the yield of our agricultural resources.Recently raised €15 Million, Series A.Alex’s Top Findings:HubCycle’s use of a fundraising partner is uncommon but was pivotal due to their complex, non-SaaS business model. “ So basically we had a fundraiser for this round basically because we have kind of a complex business. We are not like SaaS business, we are an industry and at some point you have to make the playbook clear for VCs to understand how scalable the model is.” Julien shared.Prioritized aligning with people who understood their business model. " When you work with the right people, you want to align interests. If we speak about the retainer, it's almost nothing compared to the rest. So we are aligned and we want to be aligned on our aim and on the aim of the project, which is to seal the deal."Open communication about potential risks and challenges with investors built trust. " You're speaking with people that went through the same process as you are. We have always been very transparent. When we are receiving a challenge from the team or from auditors or anything, we're sharing mail. Without any translation or any hiding. That’s when you build confidence and trust."

Send a textDaily Crunch: Laurel Orley shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 9: Daily Crunch: Laurel Orley shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talked to Laurel Orley, Crunch Executive Officer and co-founder of Daily Crunch Snacks, a women-owned certified and mental health mission driven company bringing innovation to a trusty but dusty nut snack category through our patent pending sprouting process, innovative game changing flavors and craveable crunch. Laurel shared about finding investors who align with their mission and believe in their product. She also stressed the importance of having detailed plans and projections to show investors how funds would help scale effectively. Key Facts Daily Crunch:Goal: To make feeding your body with real + healthy foods easier, and to remind you to take time for your mental health.Recently closed Series A with Launch Tennessee as lead investor.Alex’s Top Findings:Daily Crunch positions itself firmly in the nut category, a multi-billion-dollar market, instead of trying to compete across multiple categories. “You cannot be everything to everyone, or you're nothing to nobody. The nut is a massive multi billion dollar category in the U. S. Right now, our share in the category is 0. 1%. Which means we have a lot of opportunity for growth in this category before even considering going into another category. We do have plans later on down the road to go into other categories, but we really need to stay focused here first.”The team carefully selected investors aligned with the brand's vision and said no to those who didn’t feel like a good fit. "If your gut is telling you that they're the wrong people, they're the wrong people, and you should not let them in." Laurel emphasized.Using a structured, phased fundraising process and regular updates kept potential investors engaged and encouraged participation. "We did a three-wave close... Once we closed wave one, I’d send out an email: ‘Here are the updates, and we just launched in Target.’ All of a sudden, people would say, ‘Oh yeah, shoot, I missed wave one, but count me in for wave two.’"

Send a textOceanloop: Fabian Riedel shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 8: Oceanloop: Fabian Riedel shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talked to Fabian, Founder and CEO of Oceanloop, a food tech company which develops and scales up a platform technology to farm fish or seafood land-based anywhere in the world. The discussion highlights the fundraising approach which emphasizes a strategic blend of equity and venture debt to scale operations. The conversation delved into the broader fundraising strategy to scale up sustainable shrimp farming and build a robust seafood business ecosystem.Key Facts Oceanloop:Goal: To contribute to the growing demand of animal proteins with a sustainable, land-based aquaculture technology, offering a viable alternative to wild fishing and traditional aquaculture.Recently raised $35 Million from European Investment BankAlex’s Top Findings:Look out alternative funding sources like venture debt. “The venture debt program is without any securities like you usually have to provide when you talk about a classical bank financing. They have a certain interest rate that can be high when you are very successful, but in general, that is a very fair program—big upside for equity investors because the EIB takes on part of the risk.” Fabian answered on being asked about venture debt and its structure.Focus on the product that is primarily imported in the country. “So the main part is white tiger prawns that are farmed in Southeast Asia or South America are imported to Europe. Shrimp a high demand protein. In total, the demand for shrimp is growing heavily. Shrimp is the most important seafood in the world. There, there are 5 million tons of shrimp farms every year. So the idea is why don't we use technology and innovation to farm that species? So we plan to have a fully independent, highly automated and software controlled environment for farming. That's a high value species, also highly important.” Fabian discussed how they came up with the technology.Started a D2C Marketplace for your product types to build a direct relationship with the customer. “I kind of bootstrapped within my company where we introduced other high quality seafood products under our roof. We sold exclusively in Germany and Austria. This is how everything started then this business grew and now we have 300 seafood. So it's a seafood platform and it's an e-commerce business. So we sell D2C and send to private customers every day in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, our seafood products, and we source those products from the whole world.” Fabian shared during the podcast.

Send a textPrefer: Jake Berber shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 7: Prefer: Jake Berber shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talked to Jake Berber, co-founder and CEO of Prefer Coffee, who makes more affordable and sustainable food & beverages, starting with coffee. The talk focuses on investment outreach and strategies to attract funding or expand business opportunities. The discussion highlights real-world examples of successful outreach efforts and offers insights into overcoming challenges such as market skepticism or limited resources. Additionally, it underscores the need for authenticity, thorough research, and leveraging networks to maximize impact. Key Facts Prefer:Goal: To make delicious and affordable coffee without the beansRecently raised $2 MillionRound led by Forge VenturesAlex’s Top Findings:Staying proactive in providing updates and showcasing demand from B2B clients. “I was always checking in with positive updates of maybe MOUs or MTAs that we were signing where I could show this demand coming in for the story that we were telling. We are selling B2B to these large FMCGs and ingredient companies. Then I could say, "Look, now we've signed an MTA and we're going into R& D with these guys to make a product” so that keeps the conversation going.” Jake answered on being asked how he made sure the process is actually moving forward rather than getting stuck.Focuses on sustainability and climate change, not disrupting the coffee industry. “We wanted to share why we are making bean free coffee and I think it was really important to be a coffee company that wants to support the industry rather than saying coffee is the bad person. We wanted to say, in this case, climate change is the bad person. Climate change is sort of the villain of the story. So that was really important and actually a big communication change for us. This is a story that they were much more open to. So just that change of communication from making a product because coffee is bad to “Hey, I know the price of coffee is going up, but I think that we can help you out here so you can maintain these customers that love your taste and love your price.” Jake emphasizes.Showing market validation is important. Jake mentioned the reason why they needed oat latte before selling concentrate, “To unlock this business model of the ingredient/concentrate for the large FMCGs, they needed to see some market validation that people are actually interested in this. They needed to de-risk the market and so we launched this oat latte ready-to -drink just to de-risk that market showing them that people are interested. So in the meantime, we need to be doing all we can to grow this brand, to grow this company, to create traction. So this is a way that we can really take things and take matters into our own hands and just create traction.”

Send a textFabas: Anik Thaler shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, co-produced by vegconomist, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs. Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. Episode 6: Fabas: Anik Thaler shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talked to Anik, co-founder of Fabas Foods, which develops ingredient systems for amazing dairy alternatives. The talk focuses on the journey of securing investment for a food tech startup, including the challenges and decisions involved in raising capital. Overall, it discusses the challenges and strategies involved in fundraising, the importance of investor relationships, and the pivotal decisions that shaped the company’s direction.Key Facts Fabas:Goal: To change the way we eat in the future by bringing more beans onto our fields and plates.Recently closed seed round over CHF 1.3 million led by Swiss family office and some corporate investors.Alex’s Top Findings:Cold Outreach does not work especially when trying to get into Family Offices. When being asked if she ever heard of a family office in the past or already knew and then were looking for a warm connection, Anik answered “No, that's the thing with the family office. Normally they are not that present in public, maybe as other VCs who normally have websites and have LinkedIn profiles. So most family offices don't have that. You need to know some people who already know them, which makes it much harder actually to access those.”Be prepared to Pivot. “So as we raised our first CLA, so what we call then pre seed, we've been focused on building a B2C brand. So we started with a portfolio of B2C products. We made some hummus products, some burgers, and falafel. Always with the vision to bring more pulses onto our plates, but then we quickly realized that it's not just about launching new products to the market and having maybe a bit nicer taste with more locally produced products, but to rather really improve them. There we saw that the ingredients that are currently used are one of the biggest challenges to overcome. So that's when we started to focus more on ingredient development ourselves and then pivot towards a B2B ingredient supplier.” she added.Speed to market is key in today's environment. “Our technology is based around extraction and fermentation, but we work with pulses, meaning fava beans, peas, chickpeas. All those sources are not novel food and the process itself neither which makes it much easier to access the market quickly.” Anik said on being asked if they are on novel foods.

Send a textfoodforecast: Justus Lauten shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, co-produced by vegconomist, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs. Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. Episode 5: foodforecast: Justus Lauten shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Justus Lauten, founder and CEO of foodforecast, shared insights into his journey of building a startup focused on reducing food waste through AI-driven predictions for bakeries, supermarkets, and gastronomy. foodforecast uses advanced AI technology that enables precise sales planning, making production and ordering processes 100% automated and minimizing food waste. The segment provides valuable insights into how essential networking, traction metrics, and strategic investor introductions are in securing funding, as well as the reality of managing fundraising efforts over extended periods in challenging market conditions.Key Facts foodforecast:Goal: To reduce the value of food waste by 10 billion euros over the next 10 years.Raised over €3 million, led by three institutional investors: Future Food Fund, Scalehouse Capital, and Aeronaut Invest.Alex’s Top Findings:The First business angels were the management of the bakery. Justus shared that, “The first business angels were the management of the bakery. It was not the company itself. It was the private persons who were investing their private money. They were not familiar with the startup business, but they were seeing that the product was working and that was important for me that they were behind the idea and the product. Of course they also had networks inside the bakery companies as well into other bakery companies.” Knowing the effects of the investment and dilution is important. As Justus said, “We put a very low valuation into the contract because I was not very skilled at that point. I didn't know the effects of the investment and dilution and that the founder of course should always carry a certain amount of shares during the funding process. This is something that's very important to the investors and that you as a founder should always look at. You should always make sure that you have enough shares for each round. They would have gotten too many shares which would have endangered the next round because the next VC would say okay look this is not working.”When The crisis happens, often your customers can become your investors. “I went to the lion's den in January or February. We got a deal but then unfortunately Corona also hit Germany and all the restaurants and bakeries had to shut down partially. The deal more or less fell flat. At that point I had only spent my personal money and my bank account was nearing zero. I was getting nervous. That was the point when I approached the business angels first, so they were already customers, they knew exactly what I was doing, they knew also the potential of the software so they were really the angels in that part of the story because they helped the company survive and really push to the next level in finding an institutional VC.” Justus added

Send a textBygen: Lewis Dunnigan shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, co-produced by vegconomist, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs. Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. Episode 4: Bygen: Lewis Dunnigan shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talks to Lewis Dunnigan, Co-Founder & CEO at Bygen, which has developed a unique new technology called 'low-temperature activation' (LTA) that enables the production of sustainable and high-quality activated carbon. The discussion highlights the strategic considerations for startups navigating licensing agreements and the importance of aligning interests between founders, investors, and partner organizations. The emphasis on operational transparency, risk mitigation, and the importance of a strong foundational technology is critical for gaining investor trust and achieving long-term success.Key Facts Bygen:Goal: To enable the low cost and sustainable production of a material called activated carbonRaised US$ 2.5 Million led by some Australian climate tech investors, including Breakfree Victoria, Albert's impact capital and Artesian Investments.Alex’s Top Findings:Focus on licensing the technology rather than build on operating production facilities. “Our decision early on to focus on licensing the technology rather than build on operating production facilities, it really kind of enabled us to even be considered a viable investment by a VC because it is a means to grow the company through relatively little investment.” Lewis emphasized.Signing-up offtake agreements before production. Lewis said, “We basically sign-up offtake agreements before production plants come online. That's an easier way to sell it. You don't get the same high value as you get by selling it in small quantities. So we sort of keep 95 percent of our offtakes for those types of customers and then we also have some internal sales capabilities to sell smaller amounts at higher prices on the spot market.”Getting the IP out of the university. “We did manage to get the IP out of the university but it wasn't an easy process. We actually went out and got feedback from the market and said that we don't think that we'll be able to raise money if we license it, sub-license the technology, or if we have the technology but there's significant royalties attached to it. They have equity in the business in return.” Lewis added.

Send a textÄIO: Nemailla Bonturi shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, co-produced by vegconomist, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs. Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. Episode 3: ÄIO: Nemailla Bonturi shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talks to Nemailla, CEO of AIO, which are producing more sustainable fats and oils by using yeasts and upcycling side streams from industry and agriculture. She talked about the strategic approach to fundraising, challenges with European regulations, and the importance of versatile revenue streams. She also highlighted how local government grants played a pivotal role in setting up their pilot plant and expanding the team by providing €1.8 million in non-dilutive funding, which also improved their valuation. Key Facts ÄIO:Goal: To change the way we produce, consume and perceive foods and other productsRaised €6.1 Million, €1.8 million grant from the Estonian Business Innovation Agency.Lead Investor is 2C Ventures Joining the round was Nordic for Tech VC, Voima Ventures, and SmartcapAlex’ Top Findings:Prioritize Shorter Commercial Regulatory Path- Cosmetics are usually quicker than food in terms of regulation. “Our investors understand that novel food will take time. We are preparing ourselves. We're going to apply in the U.S. but also we are aiming for other verticals such as cosmetics. So we have already started to prepare to be added to this ink list so we can start selling cosmetics. So we have proof that it's also very versatile. So you can go to food, you can go to cosmetics, you can go to pet food. It's one process, one product, and a very diverse application. And that we are very driven towards the price.” Nemailla highlighted on the podcast.Serendipitous Investor Connection at a Local Event. The company met its lead investor, 2C Ventures, through an unexpected encounter with an LP during a local event in Tallinn.When choosing scale up partners make sure they speak your business language- in this case it was Singapore. “I think the first part is finding the partner that has all the capex you need. We work with side streams. It's not like rocket science that we need very fancy equipment. But of course we need to have the right set of equipment, and they need to follow exactly how we tell them. So they have to be flexible towards our know-how. So this is one point. The second point, what made AIO go to Singapore is the speed. They're very flexible, they are very good business people.” Nemailla added.

Send a textThe Raging Pig Company: Arne Ewerbeck shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, co-produced by vegconomist, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs. Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. Episode 2: The Raging Pig Company: Arne Ewerbeck shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talks to Arne, Co-Founder of The Raging Pig Company, a Hamburg-based food tech startup focused on developing and distributing hog alternative products. Their current offerings include a wide range of plant-based German sausages, including bacon, with plans to expand into other products and mycelium-based options. The conversation highlighted that success in the food tech startup landscape, particularly for alternative protein products, hinges on creating exceptional products, building strong relationships with investors, and maintaining a unique brand identity. By focusing on these areas, The Raging Pig Company has been able to secure funding and establish itself as a promising player in the market.Key Facts The Raging Pig Company:Goal: To revolutionize bacon that lets you enjoy the taste that you love in a healthy, sustainable and cruelty-free way.Currently raised seed round led by Sprout and About Ventures.Alex’ Top Findings:Measure Your Market- Going Bottom To Top. As per Arne “From the bottom to the top, how many plant based sausages were sold last year? Because that is the market. You're addressing in the first place in the short term and obviously that number will be very small compared to what you think the potential market size would be and obviously then you can think about.”Your Brand Doesn't Need To Be Provocative. Arne highlighted that “There's no reason for us to be provocative towards a company which is producing pork products. That's something which we are not doing. We already have a brand which gets a lot of attention anyway. We don't need to put our fingers to somebody else.”Be a brand that offers an experience. “Everybody has a very clear description of what they would expect. No matter how good the product tastes, the consumer would always look for the experience of having a sausage. So when it comes to how the product works, texture, taste, mouthfeel, what happens with the sausage after you grilled it, for example. All of these properties, you need to address. Aside from just the right spices and saltiness level, this is something which is very important. What the consumer cares about, other than the price and the taste, is they want to be entertained.” Arne added.

Send a textNovameat: Giuseppe Scionti shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, co-produced by vegconomist, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs. Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. Episode 1: Novameat: Giuseppe Scionti shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talks to Giuseppe, CEO and Founder of Novameat, a food tech company based in Barcelona that focuses on creating next-generation plant-based meat alternatives (whole cuts, deli cuts, and shredded cuts. Giuseppe emphasizes the importance of long-term relationship-building with investors and the concept of lines versus dots. The key techniques and strategies are also highlighted, as well as some practical insights on how they close the round.Key Facts Novameat:Goal: To set a new standard for superior whole cuts that have the same delicious flavour and texture as animal meat but come from a different protein source.Raised €17. 5 Million Series A.Lead Investors: Sofinnova Partners and Forbion.Alex’ Top Findings:It took 18 months to close this round and Giuseppe was prepared with that timeline in mind. Be realistic to what rounds take and work way backwards. As per Giuseppe “We are Planning from the beginning to be a resistant company. So we were set up for whatever it takes to find the best iInvestors, that means the best fit.”Make in person conferences special, Giusape brought the R&D head of the world's best restaurant with him to conferences to offer unique experiences to investors and VIPs. ”Because we are in Barcelona, you need to take advantage of what you have. We have the number one, best restaurant in the world, Frutar. I brought with us the R&D chef. We got the booth, we showed the products and we took advantage of all the great investors that we can get to the conference, get the list of them, use the platforms of the conferences.I brought a lot of investors in the back door of the hotel, in the actual kitchen, where the chef of the hotel really loved our product. But this was not shown in the conference. It was a VIP experience that nobody knew about.” Giuseppe added.Be prepared to stalk. When you are in a room with a VIP investor which might be hounded by others, take the time and wait until he goes to a more secluded spot. Come up and thank him for the impact of the talk or their work and build the relationship. You will be afraid but do it anyway. Just like Giuseppe experiences, he shared “I actually stalked one of the most famous investors in the cafeteria outside of the conference. I actually followed the person because everybody was talking to this famous person. I was drinking coffee alone outside of the hotel in San Francisco since nobody would follow him outside of the hotel. I stopped him when I saw him and said “Hello. It was great to listen to you in the panel and you may be interested in this or that.”

Send a textREDUCED: Emil Munck de Voss shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, co-produced by vegconomist, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs. Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. Episode 16: REDUCED: Emil Munck de Voss shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talks to Emil, co-founder and CEO of REDUCED, founded in 2020, aims to tackle food waste by creating flavor solutions from food side streams. These flavor solutions, such as intense stock or broth, are sold to food professionals and manufacturers for use in products like ready meals, meat alternatives, soups, and sauces. Email emphasizes the importance of preparation, relationship building, and understanding both the financial and operational aspects of fundraising in closing the round. He highlights several important techniques and strategies for securing funding, especially in the food tech sector.Key Facts REDUCED:Goal: To reduce food waste by using vegetables, protein and other sources of nutrition left over from the conventional food industry.Raised €8 million in August 2024Investors: Novo Holdings, ECBFAlex’ Top Findings:Investor Relationships: Emil emphasizes the importance of networking and building relationships within the food industry through advocacy groups and boards, which led to several key investor introductions.Fundraising Approach: Emil prepares thoroughly for investor meetings, recognizing that one bad meeting can kill an opportunity. He stresses the importance of clear, truthful communication in all dealings with potential investors and partners. He also encouraged demonstrating the product's value by bringing samples to investor meetings and inviting investors to see the production facility firsthand.Fundraising Strategy: Build momentum by creating a wide funnel of potential investors. Prioritize face-to-face or voice meetings over emails to build relationships and gain insights. Provide information in steps to maintain engagement and better understand if the investor is a good fit. Respond quickly to maintain momentum and create urgency in the fundraising process. Practice pitches with less likely investors to refine the presentation before approaching key prospects.VCs vs. Corporate Investors: VCs provide valuable insights into metrics and scaling, fostering an operational mentality focused on growth and performance. Corporate investors contribute by bringing industry knowledge and commercial insights, which are vital for innovation in food tech. Both types of investors can complement each other on the cap table.

Send a textDe Novo Foodlabs: Jean Louwrens shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, co-produced by vegconomist, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs. Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. Episode 15: De Novo Foodlabs: Jean Louwrens shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talks to Jean Louwrens, co-founder and CEO of De Novo Foodlabs, which focuses on using precision fermentation to produce scarce proteins more sustainably and affordably, addressing the challenge of harvesting these nutrients from nature. Jean shared insights on raising a seed round led by Joyful Ventures and building strong relationships with investors. He also highlighted the importance of partnering with large corporations for regulatory support and co-funding, even if it requires some early-stage trade-offs, such as regional exclusivity.Key Facts De Novo Foodlabs:Goal: To give Food & Beverage and nutrition companies a competitive edge with innovative products that are healthier for humans and the planet.Recently closed seed round.Lead investor: Joyful VenturesAlex’ Top Findings:Relationship Building: Developing strong relationships with investors early, even in informal settings, can lead to future investment.Corporate Partnerships: DeNovo has secured strong partnerships with large companies, especially in the dairy industry, for regulatory support, co-funding, and market insights, which has reduced their reliance on venture capital. Commercial Traction: Despite not yet being able to sell commercially due to regulatory hurdles, DeNovo shows traction through letters of intent, regulatory support, and corporate collaboration to prepare for market entry.Off-take Agreements: Locking in pricing for off-take agreements is really challenging, as costs of production may change. Jean recommends creating financial models to project costs and building wiggle room into contracts for price adjustments.Regulatory Strategy: Navigating regulatory approval (e.g., FDA) is complex and time-consuming, often taking longer than expected. To minimize risk, startups should seek advice from legal experts and people who have successfully navigated the process, especially those who worked with regulatory bodies like the FDA.Advice for Early-Stage Companies: Jean advises focusing on customer traction, leveraging corporate partnerships for regulatory and funding support, and potentially seeking external due diligence for competitive analysis.

Send a textAIPERIA: Franz Seubert shares how to get funded in 2024Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs In this podcast series, co-produced by vegconomist, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2024 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs. Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. Episode 14: AIPERIA: Franz Seuber shares how to get funded in 2024In this episode, Alex talks to Franz, co-founder and CEO of AIPERIA, a German based SaaS solution that helps suppliers and retailers in sustainable demand planning for fresh food by enabling end-to-end planning from production to supermarket shelves to ensure only what is sold is produced. Their solution is currently used in around 3,000 stores. Franz emphasized the importance of maintaining ongoing communication with investors, preparing thoroughly for due diligence with an organized data room, and having a team with both business and technical expertise. Key Facts AIPERIA:Goal: To expand both internationally and vertically into the fresh produce assortments of bakery, convenience/deli, packaged meat and flowers & plants.Recently closed $7.5 million Series A round in April 2024.Lead investor: Early Bird VCAlex’ Top Findings:Building Strong Relationships Early: Aiperia maintained ongoing investor relations, even between rounds, to ensure smoother fundraising efforts. Franz highlighted the importance of “closing a round before it's opened” through continuous engagement with potential investorsLeveraging Existing Investors: Aiperia already had well-known investors, like Early Bird, on its cap table. This significantly helped them attract more VCs. Having prominent investors on board early can create credibility and signal to other investors that the company is worth backing. Franz described the fundraising process as more inbound than outbound due to the strong network created through their existing investor relationships.Keep a well-organized data room: This includes all necessary documents like contracts, agreements, and financials. Being well-prepared for the legal, technical, and business due diligence processes can save time and instill confidence in investors. Understand the legal framework: Aiperia had a solid legal structure from their seed round, which made it easier and faster to negotiate their Series A. Franz advised founders to get an experienced lawyer who specializes in startup financing.Technical and Business Clarity: Investors did not perform in-depth code reviews but instead focused on understanding the company’s architecture, scalability, and cloud infrastructure. Franz pointed out that it's important for founders to have a clear roadmap for solving any technical gaps that investors flag, even if the current infrastructure isn't perfect.Building Trust with Investors: By focusing on relationship-building, demonstrating traction, and ensuring preparedness for legal and technical due diligence, Aiperia was able to close their Series A in a smooth, efficient manner. Other founders can apply these strategies by maintaining ongoing investor conversations, prioritizing strong legal and business foundations, and showcasing strong growth and a capable team