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FH Ventures: 5 FoodTech's Raising Now

From Scaled-Up Solid State Fermentation to Hydroponic Indoor Gardens

Author

Arman Anaturk
September 29, 2022

Hey There,

Something that seems to be popping up more often is founders going "dark mode" aka: long stretches of no meetings to focus time on deep-work. 

When an average meeting typical requires:

  • time to schedule the meeting.

  • time to think about the meeting.

  • time spent on the meeting.

  • time to follow up after the meeting.

  • time to deliver on action points from the meeting.

It's not a bad idea to limit calls (or at least group them into blocks). 

Much harder for VC's to follows as the job is all about taking calls, winning deals, diligence, etc. - but would love to hear if you've tried implementing something similar? 

Enough Productivity guru hacks - onto 5 deals of the week:

 πŸ§¬Ani Biome (Personalised Nutrition)

πŸ“ HQ: LatviaπŸ’Έ Raising: $1.5M USDπŸ™‹β€β™‚οΈ CEO: Michel WettseinπŸ‘€ Existing investors: - Brinc/Artesian Ventures- Buildit Accelerator- Beamline AcceleratorπŸ’‘ Pitch: "Developing dairy alternatives with their first products being a pea-based milk, followed by a fermented curd cheese and a line of fermented cream cheese spreads. Their products are made of ethically sourced ingredients, a barrel of vitamins & minerals and rich fatty acids & are free from all 14 common allergens."πŸ“ˆ Traction:- "Production facility is up and running.- 50 POS in the EU are reselling Got Foods.- 1’800% Revenue Growth in 9 months.- Signed LOI’s for $2.1M ARR.- Confirmed Retail Launch by 11/2022. "

πŸ… ingarden (Hydroponic Indoor Gardens)

πŸ“ HQ: United StatesπŸ’Έ Raising: $1M USDπŸ™‹β€β™€οΈ CEO's: Mariana FerreiraπŸ‘€ Existing investors: - AngelsπŸ’‘ Pitch: "ingarden makes and sells an award winning (Red Dot, IF awards), hydroponic indoor gardens and an organic seed subscription. Currently sell in USA & Germany. We want to grow geographically as well as in product categories to make sustainable growing and nutritional eating available to anyone, in any home, rain or shine, sun or not.."πŸ“ˆ Traction:- "We have 1,000 seed subscribers with a recurring revenue GM of 80%.- We hit $1M in sales since launching in Germany & the US only 11 months ago - We will be able to achieve a CLV to CAC ratio of 5 within the next 18-24 months."

♻️ Kly (Upcycled Sustainable Ingredients)

πŸ“ HQ: SwitzerlandπŸ’Έ Raising: CHF250kπŸ™‹β€β™‚οΈ CEO's: Moritz MΓΌllerπŸ‘€ Existing investors: - n/aπŸ’‘ Pitch: "Swiss upcycling start-up turning food waste into healthy and sustainable ingredients through fermentation. Our first ingredient is Sustaingrain, a wheat bran sourdough for everyday bakery products that improve sensory aspects while acting as a sustainable nutrient booster with early traction from Jowa, Grupo Bimbo and Freiberger.."πŸ“ˆ Traction:- "Validated interest through a first proof of concept for the use case white bread with Jowa, the biggest bakery in Switzerland- Partnership with ZHAW and ETH who are developing our first prototype, with Kly having the sole ownership of the IP rights as well as exclusive and irrevocable access to the microbial strains, unlimited in time and space.- Current cohorts of MassChallenge and EIT Seedbed"

🌱 Lavva (Plant Based Low-Sugar Yogurt)

πŸ“ HQ: United StatesπŸ’Έ Raising: $3.5M USDπŸ™‹β€β™‚οΈ CEO: Jeff LichtensteinπŸ‘€ Existing investors:- Angels inc. David Heller, Art Wrubel, David Blitzer- Generation CapitalπŸ’‘ Pitch: "Manufacturing cultured plant-based dairy. At Lavva, we have captured the healing compounds of whole fresh plants using the ancient art of fermentation."πŸ“ˆ Traction:- "30k followers on Instagram and National specialty distribution.- Created the most transparent food product as close to how nature grew it without processing shortcuts or additives- Selected "The Best Plant Based Low-Sugar Yogurt" by PureWow in August 2022"

πŸ„ Niskus Biotec (Solid State Fermentation)

πŸ“ HQ: IrelandπŸ’Έ Raising: $1M USDπŸ™‹β€β™‚οΈ CEO: Vincent FarrellyπŸ‘€ Existing investors: - US based Food acceleratorπŸ’‘ Pitch: "Leveraging scaled up solid state fermentation process to provide food companies a new generation of sustainable functional food ingredients that are nutritious, healthy & natural. Niskus first ingredient product range is MycoGrain, a gourmet mushroom mycelium-based protein rich flour suitable to use as a base ingredient for a broad range of food products (bakery, alt meat, and alt dairy products)."πŸ“ˆ Traction:- "7 evaluation trials with food & beverage companies- Achieved 25-40% protein uplift in various food side streams- Improved digestibility and Ξ²-glucan uplift (12%)- Follow on with innovation project collaborations- Seed investment (€120k) Q2 2022- EIT Food Accelerator Network (FAN) member (2022)- 1500 sqft lab & production facility @ Ballybay Food Hub (IE)"

πŸ”₯ Popular Last Week

🧬 Ani Biome (Personalised Nutrition) - "Ani Biome is designing world's first AI-driven personalised fermented microdrinks program for increasing gut microbiome diversity and lowering chronic inflammation."Raising: €600k EUR

 πŸ„ Koralo (Whole-Cut Alt Seafoods) - "Koralo creates natural, delicious, and nutritious whole-cut vegan seafood. Our unique patent-pending co-fermentation technology mimics nature revolutionizing the seafood we eat.."Raising: $2M USD

πŸ§€ ReThink Cheese (Vegan Cheese) - "We developed the world’s first cheese based onorganic faba bean milk. Our cubes, slices and shreds melt, brown nicely, and are mouth-watering delicious."Raising: $1M USD

I tried the ReThink cheese last night - here's what I thought:

πŸ’‘ Quick Reads

❌ Startup closures: We all expected it, now it's happening. Food & FoodTech closures are here.

This week we tracked Swedish eGrocery platform Vembla filed for bankruptcy and serial CPG founder Gregory Struck announced the closure of Noops (and his move to Siddhi Captial as Head of Growth - Noops biggest investor).

Something we'll inevitably be seeing a lot more of next quarter as the environment for CPG has changed, the capital available for "high growth at all costs" tightens up and COVID-boomed models and hires take a hit.

⚑️ Energy Related to the above - energy affects many sectors, but one I feel will be hit the hardest is FoodTech and Biotech where the energy costs typically make up a good chunk of the costs (think: running 5 bioreactors or all powering lab equipment).

Not sure what the solutions are here - but feeling good about our investment into Loki Foods based out Iceland (where they're leveraging a completely renewable energy grid).

πŸ₯— Alt-Proteins Future? Lots of news out there this week about the FDA's new guidelines for β€œhealthy” food, articles on plant-based meat sales being down, and Bloomberg's calling our plan-based patties "woke". 

But for the lazy like myself - this Venn diagram (taken from these tweets) is the best TLDR on what it means for my investments in this space. 

πŸ‘‘ King/Queen-Makers: Meet the 4 awesome judges for our next Demo Day on October 11th. These 4 will be responsible for picking the top pitches - and looking at the track record of past DD winners (8/9 of the selected companies oversubscribed their rounds within 6 weeks of pitching), the stakes are high.

πŸ˜… Bit of Fun

Yep, that happened. And 'Walmart Land' is even worse than you'd expect. 

Thanks for reading, and feel free to forward this to a Food/Climate investor who might enjoy the read too. 

As always - let me know what did you think of today's edition?

😁 Love It 😐 Meh πŸ˜• Hate it

Arman AnatΓΌrk Co-Founder & CEO @FoodHack (HackVentures)

Disclaimer: β€Investing in startups and early stage businesses involves risks, including illiquidity, lack of dividends, loss of investment and dilution. This communication is intended for experienced investors, with sufficient experience and knowledge to understand the processes and risks involved. Do your DD, make your own decisions, invest aware, your capital is at risk.