FH Ventures: The Saas platfrom for plastic reduction

Hey There,

Last week was a fun one for us as community members across 5 different cities (Sofia, Stockholm, Dubai, Stanford, Cape Town) hosted meetups for their local FoodTech Founder and Funder ecosystem.

Already hearing of stories of potential partnerships, investments and soon-to-be stealth founders. Community is awesome.

Check out the highlights below - and save the dates for the upcoming meetups (I'll be attending in Berlin 🇩🇪)

🐟 Hooked Foods (Next generation of seafood)

📍 HQ: Sweden💸 Raising: Series A🙋‍♂️ CEO: Tom Johansson👀 Existing investors: Oysterbay VC, Brightly Ventures, Proveg, Katapult Ocean, Big Idea Ventures, Food Angels, Kale United, Pluscap💡 Pitch: "Hooked develops next generation of seafood which is 100% plant-based and full of protein, omega-3, vitamins & minerals without any microplastics and heavy metals. No bycatch, overfishing, maximized fish farms or destructive fishing methods. Just great taste."📈 Traction:- "Successfully launched Toonish, Salmoonish, Spreads and Fish-ish sticks and has grown 25% MoM since 2021 with distribution in 76% of Swedish retail.- Patented IP and recipes developed by our inhouse R&D team in our lab in Stockholm, being scale-up and produced with our partner in Germany that can produce 110mt/week of our recipes. - Talented high performing team of 19 people with senior experience from big companies such as Danone, Uber, P&G, Arla, Kraft Heinz, Absolut, Nocco, BCG and PhDs from various universities and research institutes across the globe."👉 View Deck or Request an intro to the founder

🍦 Enjoy Trill (Sugar reduction )

📍 HQ: Switzerland 💸 Raising: 500k SAFE🙋‍♂️ CEO: Sylvain Perret👀 Existing investors: n/a💡 Pitch: ""Born in Switzerland, Enjoy Trill is an innovative future foods company with specialized expertise in sugar reduction and plant-based applications. Without compromising on taste and texture, we re-engineer popular foods, making them healthier to consume and kinder to the planet to produce."📈 Traction:- "From 2020 to 2022, we have increased our Points of Sale 12x (currently 650+ stores), increased our Retail Accounts 7x (currently 14 retailers), and increased our markets 5x (currently in 5 countries)."

👉 View Deck or Request an intro to the founder

🐟 Wanda Fish Technologies (Cultivated Seaf-based cheeze)

📍 HQ: Israel💸 Raising: Series A🙋‍♀️ CEO: Daphna Heffetz👀 Existing investors: The Kitchen Hub, CPT Capital; Peregrine Ventures, Pico Ventures Partners, MOREVC💡 Pitch: "Wanda Fish is a FoodTech company with a platform that produces fish fillets using sustainable cell-cultivation practices. Our flagship product is the Bluefin Tuna fillet. Using a proprietary GMO-free platform, our premium cultivated whole-cut fish fillets comprise the fish's own muscle and fat cells. Our product will therefore have the taste, texture, and nutritional levels as close as possible to the fresh, wild-catch fillet."📈 Traction:- "POC of whole-cut cultivated fish fillet prototype - R&D Cell-line pipeline: Bluefin Tuna, Yellowtail, & Mackerel - Unique fat formation technology: rapid, low-cost, and versatile, e.g., from Akami to Otoro Bluefin tuna cuts - Six patent applications (PCT/National phase)- Our proprietary, scalable, and efficient technologies enable: - High-density cell suspension production - Optimized culture media composition - Novel bioreactors design"

👉 View Deck or Request an intro to the founder

📊 Source Green (SaaS for plastic transition) 

📍 HQ: Hong Kong💸 Raising: $1M USD🙋‍♀️ CEO: Sonalie Figueiras (Founder of award winning media outlet, GreenQueen)👀 Existing investors: David Yeung, Sandhya Shriram, Ka Yi Ling💡 Pitch: "Source Green is a climate tech SaaS startup on a mission to help brands quit plastic with 1)The world’s first plastic impact calculator tool that brands can use to manage their plastic-free transition and 2) the world’s largest sourcing platform for circular, tree-free & plastic-free packaging solutions."📈 Traction:- "Built self-serve sustainable packaging marketplace with over 40 live suppliers - Won & delivered packaging materials innovations consulting project with P&G (all global packaging teams) - Won sourcing contract with Richemont for replacing all their internal logistics packaging with plastic-free options - Created MVP of world's first packaging waste true cost calculator"

👉 View Deck or Request an intro to the founder

👀 Funding Spotlight: Bioraptor (Portfolio co. 🎉)

💰 Round Size: $3M 🙋‍♂️ Founders: Ori Zakin and Yaron David💸 Investors: Lool Ventures, CPT Capital, FoodHack❓ TLDR: - If we are to truly scale up new foods (think: precision fermentation, cell culture, etc) then BioRaptor will play a big part in this. It's basically a way to supercharge scientists.- Their platform collects data across the entire process including media, bioreactors and downstream devices - and turns it into actionable insights and collaboration tools to increase yield and quality. - With the capabilities to translate a myriad of data sets and variables into simplified ai-generated insights across the supply chain, Bioraptor has the potential to accelerate research in not only fermentation and cell cultivated research but also BioTech, AgTech and Pharma. 💡 Insight: Pick and shovels plays are hot right now. AI is hot right now. Bioraptor brings the best of both together, led by an experienced team that know how to build / scale software products. 👀 Similar: YC backed Invert Bio

💡 Good Reads

🌾 Perennial crops: What if we had field-tested technology to address runoff, erosion, drought, flooding, biodiversity and carbon emissions? Enter perennial crops.

Their longer life cycle means deeper roots, fewer inputs, less runoff and lower carbon emissions. And without replanting, farmers plow their fields less.

As the first perennial crops are now farm-viable and reaching scale for food manufacturers, writer Sam Panzer take's a look into the innovation and investment needed to commercialise them. (FYI: most of Sam's past predictions end up becoming true)

📉 Plant-based meat sales - what's happening? When Michal Klar (Co-founder and Better Bite Ventures) releases an article, you read it.

This one takes a hard look at the performance of plant-based meat sales globally and what that all might mean.

spoiler: there's no easy answer.

🍄 Materials x Mycelium: Mycelium, it turns out, has so many uses (thanks to their many beneficial properties) that we thought it worth revisiting the topic.

We’ve written about all things fungi before, but with so many new developments in the sector, we thought it was about time for a deep dive into the category.

Starting with mycelium’s potential in packaging and materials - from mushroom-based cartons to sound-proof mycelium panels used in construction, the variety is mind-boggling.

Read the full deep dive here

🏭 The yelp for biomanufacturing: cool launch by Synonym x GFI x Blue Horizon x Material Innovation Initiative.

Companies that need fermentation capacity can now search Capacitor’s growing list of facilities to find and connect with ones that meet their needs. Users can refine searches by location, scale, bioprocess, feedstock and more.

💬 Quick Tweets

🙌 1000% this and I'm here for it.

💡 3 Synbio Trends: Max is super plugged in, this is a good quick thread:

👏 Micro-fluencers turned VC: Tsung is one of the smartest in biomaterials, cool to see this move and smart play by Collbaorative Fund and Climate Capital Bio

😅 Bit of Fun

Can confirm true.

Thanks for reading - you tell me - what did you think of today's edition?

😁 Love It 😐 Meh 😕 Hate it

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

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.