FH Ventures: Cauliflower Cheese and Cultivated Scallops 🧀

You probably saw the news this week that Mondelēz is set to Acquire Clif Bar for nearly $3 billion.

Beyond the inspirational headline, the acquisition serves as a reminder for just how tough a billion dollar exit really is in the food space:

• Clif is a 30-year in the m success story (Gary Erickson launched the business back in 1992!)

• It's an estimated 3.2x rev. multiple (Clif Bar had $900 million in annual sales ahead of the sale)

Exits here are usually a result of many, many years of fighting incumbents for market share, slewed with product recalls, legal battles and subject to fluctuating input prices that eat into margins (Clif's estimated EBIT margin was ~10%).

The light at the end of the tunnel is typically a 2-4x exit multiple and a globally renowned brand name that hopefully consumers know and love for years to come. (Unless you're Honest Tea).

Though FoodTech has emerged as a way to differentiate tech / IP heavy businesses from plain-old food companies - ultimately they're in the same business of producing, innovating, distributing and selling food.

And whilst becoming a FoodTech founder (and investor) has become cool lately - the occasional reminder of what the road ahead and potential exits looks like can be a a good gut check for startups here.

Who better to summarise the point than Mondelez's own Senior Director of Venture Investments:

Sorry for the long intro - below are 5 new startups of the week and 5 good reads.

🧫 Alt Atlas Ltd. (Newly Opened)

HQ: United KingdomRaising: $500kExisting investors: Big Idea Ventures, Animoca BrandsStatus: Just OpenedCEO: Sofia GiampaoliPitch: "AI-powered ingredients to make cultivated meat a reality. The company is creating a machine learning software platform that supplies functional ingredients and solutions for the alternative meat and dairy industry."

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

👨‍🌾 Agrinoze (Soon to open)

HQ: IsraelRaising: $10M USDExisting investors: gr8day VCStatus: Soon to openCEO: Omer MatityahuPitch: "Agrinoze optimizes soil by utilizing a proprietary irrigation and fertigation algorithm to grow any crop, anywhere, with zero human intervention. The system has been field-proven to increase crop yield by hundreds of percentage points, conserve water, maximize nutrient efficiency, and improve soil health."

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🧀 Grounded Foods (Newly Opened)

HQ: USARaising: $3M USDExisting investors: Nucleus Capital, Stray Dog Capital, Big Idea Ventures, Aperion Investment Group, Route 66 VenturesStatus: Just OpenedCEO: Veronica FilPitch: "Creating a platform for dairy alternatives using one of nature's most sustainable, nutrient-rich and immediately scaleable resources: hemp. Resulting in the creation of a nutrient-dense, fully functional and allergen-friendly 'cream'."

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

❄️ NUU (Newly Opened)

HQ: BrazilRaising: $4M USDExisting investors: n/aStatus: Just OpenedCEO: Rafaela GontijoPitch: "NUU is a Brazilian regenerative CPG brand focused on yucca-based frozen products. We’ve bootstrapped our way to 7M BRL ARR, all with 100% of our equity still owned by people in operating roles. With 25% MoM growth into 600+ POS, it’s time for a $20M BRL Series A."

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

🧜‍♂️ Mermade Seafood (Oversubscribed)

HQ: IsraelRaising: $2.5M USD (oversubscribed)Existing investors: OurCrowdStatus: Closing SoonCEO: Daniel EinhornPitch: "Mermade is a seed-stage company in the cultured seafood space that developed a proprietary technology to upcycle and reuse growth media. While other companies dispose of the spent media, Mermade implements a biologic sidestream valorization process, resulting in a substantial reduction in production cost, improved scalability, and reduced environmental impact. Its first product is cell-based scallops."

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🔥 Popular Last Week

🦑 Tandem Repeat (Closing Soon) - synthetic biology and materials science company that eliminates plastic pollution and minimizes the dependence on animal based products.Raising $2M USD

🌿 FUL Foods (Searching lead) - Building the future-proof nutrition brand for the climate change generation from life's source and sustaining force, microalgae.Raising $5M USD

🚜 Offset AI (Searching lead) - delivers actionable acre-by-acre insights at a low cost by deploying a large sensor network, tagging the captured data, and using AI to deliver growing insights. Raising: $4M USD

+ there's 60 other companies raising now - request an intro if you'd like to chat with their founders.

👀 Fund Spotlight: Sustainable Future Ventures

👋 Founders: Matthew Chagan, Conan Lauterpacht📆 Founded: 2021💰 Fund Size: €50m first close of target €100M close💡 The idea: “Will target investments in technology companies that enable a more sustainable built environment and will focus on late Seed to Series B technology companies globally, with a strong focus on Europe."👀 Portfolio inc: GBuilder and Liftango.

💡 Good Reads & Tweets

🧫 Very good read here by Steve Molino Principal investor at Clear Current Capital on the role and relationship of IP to advance the Cell Ag industry.

TLDR: argues that IP is worthless without execution and urges companies and investors to adjust their focus on IP in cell ag to find a balance between IP-driven and fully open-source, so the industry can thrive, while also still attracting traditional investors with the capital required for cell ag to scale.

🍷 Canned Wines: have gone mainstream in the last few years - thanks to the convenient confluence of Covid-19, the rise in outdoor socialising and growing environmental concerns.

With the global canned wines market valued at $211.4M in 2020 and expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.2% from 2021 to 2028 - there's a rise in players like Djuce Wines and The Copper Crew focussed on making our next glass, from a can.

More on that here.

🥚 WATCH: Building a billion dollar vegan company: The unlikely story behind former college football player Josh Tetrick now co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, Inc. and his meteoric rise to plant.-based success. Spoiler: It hasn't been easy.

💡 Top 10 Most Active Climate Tech VCs - Interesting to see that 5/10 of the funds mentioned here are specialised Food & Ag funds (CPT, Unovis, AgFunder, Siddhi, S2G).

Reinforces the point I made early this week that Food investing is Climate investing (something I've noticed that some "pure" Climate funds often forget or look down on).

📊 "The YC Spread" : A quick look at where the accelerator / VC powerhouse has been investing, how their strategy has changed over time, what sectors they've made the most bets in and how that's performed so far.

😅 Bit of Fun

Funny, but sad.

Thanks for reading - feeling like you missed out on NFT NYC? here's a 7-second summary.

And please let me know what did you think of today's edition?

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

Disclaimer: ‍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.

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