FH Ventures: cultivated pet food and alt-oysters 🦪

We're back!

Last week was off hosting the FoodHack Summit (photos up here) - a pretty fun 2 days where we had the chance to meet so many of you IRL.

My biggest takeaway: people really wanted to network after two years cooped up.- Cons: We literally couldn't keep people around the stage. - Pros: 2576 meetings took place at the event (apparently a new record).

Despite literally all markets being down - there still seems to be a crazy energy and appetite to make business happen in foodtech right now.

If you missed the event and want to attend in 2023 - pre-register here (23/40 already gone) + discover some of the attending startups and their raises below.

Now enough about that - we've been drowning in deal flow recently.

For today's newsletter - I'm going try a different format to present open deals. Instead of sharing deal-by-deal like we usually do - we've curated a few categories based on what we think you'll like.

Please let me know at the end what you think by voting here or letting me know if you prefer we revert to the old format.

🐟 Alt Seafood Booms

Alt-seafood startups have come in abundance this year - what was once a sector with just a few players has become one full of contenders big and small, plant-based and cultivated and from across the globe.

1. Bluana Foods (Romania) - raising €200k EUR - full profile + deck

2. Happy Ocean Foods (Germany) - Raising €2.5M EUR - full profile + deck

3. Lohas Foods (Singapore) - Raising $3M USD - full profile + deck

4. Loki Foods (Iceland) - Raising $400k USD - full profile + deck

5. Mermade Seafood (Israel) - Raising $2.5M USD - full profile + deck

6. Pearlita Foods (USA) - Raising $2M USD - full profile + deck

7. Revo Foods (Austria) - Raising $25M USD - full profile + deck

8. Smallfood Inc. (Canada) - Raising "Series A & Bridge" - full profile + deck

🐕 Cultivated Reaches Pets

There are 3 cultivated pet food companies in our network raising a round right now to bring more sustainable and ethical foods to our furry friends - varying in stage and scale.

1. Because, Animals (USA) - raising $25M USD - full profile + deck2. Five Letter Foods (Finland) - raising €600k EUR - full profile + deck3. Good Dog Food (UK) - raising £3M GBP - full profile + deck

🚀 Summit Startups

One of the best parts about the Summit is that we were able actually taste the foods.

Highlights: More Foods meat's was delicious (and very popular), Eggfield's plant-based alternative was indistinguishable in both sweet and savoury baked goods, and THICCs ice cream were a hit in the hot weather as they're felt lighter than full dairy options.

1. Cidrani Biome (Croatia) - €900k EUR - full profile + deck

2. De Novo Dairy (South Africa) - $5M USD - full profile + deck

3. Eggfield (Switzerland) - Soon to open - full profile + deck

4. Ergo Bioscience (USA) - $3M USD - full profile + deck

5. Everink (Switzerland) - CHF 750k - full profile + deck

6. FlexSea (UK) - Soon to open - full profile + deck

7. Greencovery (Netherlands) - €2M EUR - full profile + deck

8. MAOLAC (Israel) - $2M USD - full profile + deck

9. More Foods (Israel) - $6M USD - full profile + deck

10. Mzansi Meat Co. (South Africa) - $5M USD - full profile + deck

11. Probitat (Finland) - €1M EUR - full profile + deck

12. Time-Travelling Milkman (Netherlands) - €2.5M EUR - full profile + deck

13. Yasai (Switzerland)- $4M USD - full profile + deck

Feeling overwhelmed by Deal Flow?

Join the FoodHack Syndicate where we select the top startups of the batch, diligence the deals, win the allocations, and invest as Angels with tickets of $5k and up.

There's 150+ of us already investing - apply here.

Fund Spotlight: Cocoa Ventures 🍫

👋 Founders: @calfonsorico, @danonanthony📆 Founded: 2022💰 Size: $17M (took 7 months to close)💡 The idea: "Cocoa Ventures’s big idea is to compete with other investors — by not competing with them. The plan is to get into a round early, and then help early-stage founders “build the cap table they want"🤔 Thesis: "Cocoa Ventures will write angel-sized cheques of $150k-500k in pre-seed and seed-stage Europe-based startups in any sector. It will never lead deals and won’t take board seats. "👀 Portfolio: 3 are in climate tech, 3 in fintech and DeFi.👍 Why I like this? Very similar to our approach at FoodHack, don't compete with VC's, get into the best deals, and shoot for 0.6-1% at exit.

🍄 Deal of the week: Bosque Foods, who were selected as "most likely to oversubscribe" at the last FoodHack Demo Day, has done exactly that.

The round was led by Berlins FoodLabs, along with VC's Happiness Capital, SOSV and Blue Horizon taking part and Tier cofounder Lawrence Leuschner along with myself as angels 👋

Headed up by ex-INFARM employee Isabella Iglesias-Musachio, Bosque Foods will use the funding to produce its mycelium alt-meat on a small scale and start collaborating with chefs and restaurants to figure out what the final product should look (and taste) like, and begin applying for regulatory approval in key markets.

Their early range of products have already been quite impressive - and I'm bullish on the Fungi takeover (this marks my fourth investment in this space!)

🍦 Vanilla Substitutes: Alongside being the world’s most popular flavour, vanilla is also one of the most pricy, second only to saffron. That’s why a small group of startups and ingredients suppliers are exploring new ways to produce vanilla and vanillin - both natural and artificial - in a more sustainable, cost-effective and reliable way.

With the global vanilla market worth $1434.5M in 2021 and expected to reach $1956M million by 2028 - this is a market worth going after.Full deep dive here inc. 2x case studies (FoodHack+)

💡 Valuations are now adjusting in FoodTech seed stage - we've tracked 3 adjusted valuations in the past week and investors in our community are becoming more price sensitive with adjusted outlooks on exits. In alt-protein companies like Beyond and Oatly are facing their own adjustments on the public market - and the past quarter we've seen far more alt-protein deal flow than demand. Just check out all the alt-seafood deal flow we're tracking on FoodHack.

I'm expecting very choppy waters ahead - keen to hear your thoughts too?

📉 Tech Layoffs: Log into twitter the past few weeks and you would have seen CEO's of some of the most popular tech companies announcing layoffs. There's even a platform thats live tracking layoffs across tech - and the truth is, it's not pretty.

There's way too many complexities to cover of why this is happening right now and how we got here - but IMO the venture funded founders that aren't making cuts to headcount and burn are the ones to be more weary of..

💡 Honest Insights on the reality of how crowdfunding platforms work and there value-add from a startup that just "raised" on the crowdcube. This shares a sentiment I've heard from other founders too who've used similar platforms and something I've thought a lot about as we move to a more platform play.My take to mitigate this:1) need to be more selective on deals featured (don't judge me on this newsletter 😉)2) need to hyperfocus on a niche - and bring relevant angles / deal flow in that niche

Adversely - I don't think crowdfunding will slow down anytime soon, but quite the opposite. As markets tighten up and venture funding slows (see Softbanks announcement) startups will look to convert their customers / community into investors and use that as complementary funding to VC money. Much like we did for our own round.

2 Winning Pitches

One of the Summit highlights was the Start-up Pitch Competition with the judges Christina (Astanor), Beatriz (Portfolia), Christian (FoodLabs), Hugh (SOSV) and Erika (FoodHack).

Though we set out to only pick 1 winner - we honestly couldn't decide and had a tie with two winners; Michroma and No Palm Ingredients - both very impressive early-stage companies in the innovative ingredients sector.

Both these companies are opening / soon to open their rounds and looking at potential leads - if you're intersted to chat with the founders - request an intro to Michroma or No Palm (FoodHack will be investing in both)

Bit of Fun

"Our competitive advantages includes our relentless focus on the 20% of customers that like the color green".

Thanks for reading today's edition, and please let me know what did you think of today's edition?

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Until next time,

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.