FH Ventures: Solid State Fermented Seafood

Keeping todays intro short as I'm writing this from the mountains of Valais and there's a great hike I want to get in before the weather turns 🏔

"Holidays" are always tricky as a founder - my general rule of thumb is:- Work 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening.- Do the essential and operational - not the optional.- Never take or schedule any external calls. - Always pick up the phone for the team. - Keep yourself busy during the day.

And be ready to throw away all holiday plans in case an emergency comes up and you need to spend a few hours putting out fires 🧯

Any other best practices for managing work and holidays?

Find below 4 new deals of the week and 4 great tweets. I'm off 🥾

☁️ CloudEatery (Just Opened)

HQ: GermanyRaising: €900k EURExisting investors: n/aStatus: Just OpenedCEO: Remo GianfrancescoPitch: "We convert underutilized kitchen infrastructure into digital foodcourts. With our proprietary tech platform we can offer multiple restaurant brands designed for delivery to profit margin that other players can't reach.."

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

🐟 Esencia Foods (Just Opened)

HQ: GermanyRaising: €400k-500k EURExisting investors: n/aStatus: Just OpenedCEO: Hendrik KayePitch: "Esencia is building the future of seafood and fish based on mushroom mycelium using solid state fermentation. First products will be scallops and salmon; then we expand our product range."

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro+ Watch video of the first prototypes

🖨 OuroFoods (Newly Opened)

HQ: USARaising: $1M USDExisting investors: n/aStatus: Newly OpenedCEO: Elizabeth BennettPitch: "We're giving cancer patients their taste back. Ouro Foods is using patented, advanced 3D tissue engineering technology to make plant- and cell-based protein that "corrects" flavors for people who suffer from taste-impairment as a common side effect of chemotherapy and radiation treatment."

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro 

🚜 WeFarm (Searching Lead)

HQ: UKRaising: $4M USDExisting investors: Octopus Ventures.Status: Searching LeadCEO: Kenny EwanPitch: "Wefarm is bringing online a community of 500m small scale farmers to share their experience and knowledge as well as buy products they need to run their farm on the marketplace. These farmers spend $400B a year on inputs and Wefarm is aiming to move online 50% of all this spend"

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro (sign up/sign in required)

🔥 Popular Last Week 

🐟 Loki Foods (Oversubscribed) - the first plant-based seafood venture from Iceland, leveraging a completely renewable energy grid and pristine water. Raising $400k USD.

🧀 Prose Foods (Searching lead) - leveragin a novel class of proteins, abundant in plants, to recreate the texture and functionality of animal-free cheese and more. Raising: $2M EUR. (13 VC intros last week!)

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

👀 Funding Spotlight: SCiFi Foods (prev. Artemys Foods)

👋 Founders: Joshua March (CEO) and Kasia Gora (CTO)📆 Founded: 2019💰 Round Size: $22 million Series A💡 The idea: “Scale is a constant question mark when it comes to cultivated technology, - SciFi Foods is solving for that by using both of the technologies — plant-based and real cultivated beef cells — in its approach, which includes bioengineering and technologies, like CRISPR, to grow meat from animal cells at a large scale and more affordably. Using CRISPR, the company can make tiny changes to the cells so they shift their behavior to growing at a large scale." Source👀 Investor inc: a16z, Peter Rahal (RXBar co-founder)

🌿 Portfolio Spotlight: Brevel

👋 Founders: Yonatan Golan (CEO), Matan Golan (COO) and Ido Golan (CTO)📆 Founded: 2017💰 Round Size: $8.4 million Seed💡 The idea: Combing sugar-based fermentation of microalgae with a high concentration of light at industrial scale to produce non-GMO microalgae at cost levels comparable to pea and soy.📈 Traction: Today the company is piloting their micoalgae solutions with Food & Beverage leaders across the globe - resulting in an improved nutritional profile of products without changing taste, color, texture, or cost for the end consumer.👀 Investor inc: Good Startup, Tet Ventures, NevaTeam Ventures and FoodHack. 👉 CTA: Brevel are prepping for the Series A raise and keen to connect with later stage VC's - request an Intro if you'd like to chat with the CEO.

💡 Good Reads & Tweets

🥪 Plant Based Deli Slices were among the fastest-growing plant-based meat product types in 2021 but despite this, those in the know would still call this sector up-and-coming.

According to research by Market Data Forecast, the lunch meats and bulk deli meats market represents a $300BN market opportunity. And from soy-based salami to mycelium slices, the choice for vegan deli counter fans is growing: More on that here.

🪦 RIP to Klarna, ClipDrop, Magnet, Raycast, FigJam, 1Password and all the other Stealth startups that Apple just wiped out with their new features. 

💡 The hard reality of FoodTech Valuations. Steve consistently puts out some of the best insights and thoughts on the industry - and I have to agree with this one. Well over half the startups we see are pre-revenue but they're typically raising at tech valuations.

😅 "First Check" The amount of times I've heard of "pre-seed / first check" VC's pass on early stage startups because they're too early.. If you (or your IC) don't have the gut for early stage investing please don't label yourself as an early-stage investor 🙏 

📈 Buy now - pay later? I'm not entirely sure what this means - but it can't be good, right?

😅 Bit of Fun

"trust me dad, I know what I'm doing." 

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

😁 Love It 😐 Meh 😕 Hate it

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.

Everything shared here is confidential. If you're caught sharing / forwarding this emai, you will be banned 🛑