FH Ventures: Ex-Tesla Founder Making Fats from Coffee

Hi there,

We’re working on the next edition of "What FoodTech VC’s are watching"

Last edition featured 25 of the top investors in this space, was shared over 100+ times on social and viewed by 10k+ people.

Want to be featured in this edition?

Reply to this email with your answer to "3-5 sectors across Food / Climate Tech thats exciting you now?"

You can find my top 5 here 👀

Now onto 5 new deals of the week - including fats made from coffee, and fish from cells.

🐟 Bluefin Foods Inc. (Newly Opened)

📍 HQ: United States💸 Raising: $525k USD🙋‍♀️ CEO: Taissa Maleh (UCLA Grad)👀 Existing investors: Sustainable Food Ventures, Negma Ventures💡 Pitch: "Bluefin Foods is a cultivated seafood company developing novel technologies to ensure everyone can access the highest quality and most nutritious cultivated seafood."📈 Traction:- In less than 8 months, we could taste our first cultivated seafood prototype.- It was made from our proprietary and established mackerel cell line integrated into our edible scaffold.- We have now started the work to manufacture our novel and custom bioprocess, specific for the high-efficiency production of cultivated meat (high quality, high quantities, low costs).

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

🏭 Gaia Technologies (Searching Lead)

📍 HQ: Switzerland💸 Raising: CHF200K🙋‍♂️ CEO: Claudio Reinhard (ETH Zurich Grad)👀 Existing investors: n/a💡 Pitch: "Gaia Tech turns agricultural production waste into high-value ingredients for cosmetics and food manufacturers. Gaia Tech has developed an innovative to extract natural antioxidants from olive oil production sidestreams."📈 Traction:- Gaia Tech is emerging from the ETH Zurich research project “Phenoliva” - The company was founded by Claudio Reinhard and Professor Laura Nyström in 2021. - Gaia Tech was selected to participate in the Startlife and Masschallenge accelerator programs.

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

🍪 Joydays, Inc (Searching Lead)

📍 HQ: United States💸 Raising: $1.5M USD🙋‍♀️ CEO: Amy Cohn (ex-Dapper Labs, Heal Inc., Sony)👀 Existing investors: Pepsico & M13💡 Pitch: "We create foods that don't spike your blood sugar. Joydays is a next generation food company creating feel good foods with actual function for the people with chronic conditions."📈 Traction: - Secured distribution in all 10 stores at Central Market- Advisors in top execs in diabetes and diabetes tech- Talking to Walmart Diabetes division - Selected as one of 50 startups from 2000 applicants to Mercury Seed Raise+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

☕️ The Kawa Project (Searching Lead)

📍 HQ: United States💸 Raising: $3.2M USD🙋‍♂️ CEO: Aaron Feigelman (UCLA Grad, ex-Tesla)👀 Existing investors: $1.5M soft circled from follow ons / potential co-lead💡 Pitch: "The Kawa Project is focused on upcycling industrial waste from coffee brewing factories into novel plant-based fats that can mimic animal fats, such as fats from pork and poultry. Later, we intend to introduce protein made from one of our industrial byproducts."📈 Traction: - Received soft-circled order for $200,000 of our lipid material.- Launched revenue-generating pilots of our lipids with a sustainable soap company in Canada, as well as a culinary pilot with Netflix. - Scaled up to 200 pound per day of lipid production.

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

🍄 Mush Foods (Searching Lead)

📍 HQ: Israel💸 Raising: $5M USD🙋‍♂️ CEO: Shalom Daniel (ex Unilever)👀 Existing investors: Milk&Honey ventures, Beni Nofech, The Kitchen Hub💡 Pitch: "Mush Foods is growing the proprietary next generation of great-tasting, sustainable alternative protein, based on mushroom mycelium as an ingredient for industrial food companies, retail and foodservice."📈 Traction: - Dozens of dinners and pilots with over 800 people tasting our 50CUT dishes.- Upcoming pilots in NYC will draw an expected 6000 guests.- Three industrial trials have led to three cooperation agreements and JDAs.

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

🔥 Popular Last Week

🍭 Biofect Innovations (3 VC intro's) - Sustainably bring high-value B2B protein ingredients to the food system, to support the creation of eco-conscious food products. Raising: $1M USD

🧀 Funki - Creating animal-free cheese and dairy products that are indistinguishable from traditional and artisanal options through precision fermentation technologies. Raising: €200K EUR

🏭 Yeastup - B2B global producer of vegan proteins and fibers from natural and sustainably sourced upcycled yeast. Raising: 6M CHF

💰 Funding Spotlight: Hedgehog

👋 Founders: Jamie Balsillie and Wilson Ruotolo📆 Founded: 2022💡 The pitch: Hedgehog might just be the hottest startup of the YCS22 batch (or at least on Linkedin). The Stanford co-founders are building robotic farms that grow mushrooms and fungi for <1/3rd the cost. With Wilson’s expertise in dexterous manipulation robotics and with technology to simulate gentle gecko-like robotic hands, the pair believe this can be applied, at scale, to carefully harvest and package mushrooms.👀 Investor inc: FoodHack, Haystack & Notable Angels. 👉 CTA: The team might be open to another VC to join this round. Ask for an intro if that's you.

💡 8 Quick Reads

👕 Biomaterials: With materials offering a simpler route to market than food; with less regulation, and discerning customers in a better position to pay higher prices. Why is it that investment here lags been behind alternative proteins for food?

This week we deep-dived into the world of Biomaterials to look at the 32 companies creating alternatives to plastic derived materials - from lab-grown leather to mycelium, biofabricated collagen to cell-based fur, the future is bright and the More on that here

🙌 100+ Investors have already applied to attend this years Demo Day and the early startup applications are wild. If you haven't already - apply to join here, or refer a startup to pitch here

🌎 Good Reads: “Climate science is going to become the new computer science,” said Billionaire John Doerr on a recent Bloomberg interview. “It’s where all the young people want to work for all the right reasons.”"

🎙 Good Listen: Nice fund returner breakdown on 20VC with Sheel Mohnot looking at his biggest wins. Biggest fund returner was a $230M exit - the catch, they invested in $2.5M valuation, the company took on very little dilution and exited fast so could show LP's DPI.

🤔 Good Thought: Peter Nixey, Founder of Intentional.io and Former Venture Partner at EF & Breega shared his honest insights on "how exhausting, demoralising & honestly humiliating the investment process (can be) for founders"

😁 Good Laugh: The internet has been obsessed with videos of a day in the life of tech workers (aka: eating & socialising mostly). But I think a day in the life of a VC is a pretty accurate view of how some investors are really spending their days.

💡 Good Tweet: the actual TLDR of market conditions for fundraising right now. Investments are happening, just at adjusted valuations.

📊 Good Data: Is Climate Tech recession proof? Sifted's latest analyst says yes

😅 Bit of Fun

At this rate, it might take awhile.

Thanks for reading today's edition! And here's the perfect palette cleanser for any occasion.

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

😁 Love It 😐 Meh 😕 Hate it

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.