FH Ventures (Special Edition): 4 Funds Raising Now

Hi there,

Something different in today's edition - instead of showcasing fundraising startups, we're showcasing fundraising funds.

We've curated 4 emerging funds across the Food, Climate and Health sector - from Paris to LA - that are currently fundraising.

Each of these funds are founded by exceptional partners, with a proven track record and unique access and insights into their sector.

You can find them all below - and per usual, hit intro request to connect with the team.

Let me know at the end what you think of this format - and if you'd like to see more funds again in the future?

🇬🇧 Exceptional Ventures

📍 Location: London, United Kingdom💰 Target Size: £20M🙋‍♂️ Founders: Paolo Pio (General Partner), Matt Cooper (Executive Chairman)✍️ Terms: 2022 vintage, 10 year term, 2.2% management fee, 20% carry.🗓 Closing date: Completed first closing in June 2022. Targeting second closing in Q42022, and final closing in mid 2023.👀 Notable Backers: exited founders, executives and industry experts from Cisco, Google, Amazon, Broadcom, Stripe, SalesForce, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, BCG, Bain, Monster Energy, Generation Bio, Compagnia di San Paolo.

💸 Investment Areas: HealthTech, FoodTech and Financial Health. 70% Europe, 30% rest of the world with US focus.

💡 Focus: Exceptional Ventures is an early-stage Venture Capital firm that invests in high-impact businesses focused on helping people live happier, healthier, and longer lives. We do that by leveraging the experience and networks we have built while running and investing in some of Europe’s most successful businesses. Our focus areas are therefore HealthTech, FoodTech and Financial Health - which we believe are essential to improve quality of life and healthspan.

📈 Traction / Track Record: Launched in 2022, the fund is building a portfolio of 40 companies over 3 years, and so far has invested in 9. The founders have over 50 years of combined expertise across the sectors of focus, and a pre-existing portfolio of over 160 startups including 5 unicorns, 25+ exits and an almost double digit multiple on invested capital.- Matt Cooper: Over 130 direct angel investments over the last 20 years, as well as many indirect through Octopus (of which he is group chairman) and First Minute Capital. Notable investments: Octopus, Zoopla, Wave Optics, Global Collect, QuantumDX, Ieso Azimo, Chronext, Vouched For. Indirect Cazoo, DePop, Bought by Many- Paolo Pio: 45 deals over the last 4 years, including 34 VC deals (25 of which as deal led) and 11 angel investments (of which 4 as lead of the SPV syndicate). Notable investments: Planted, Peace of Meat, Mushlabs, Gourmey, Sigrid Therapeutics, Shop Circle, CheckStep, Limbic, Sigrid.

+ Connect with Paolo to learn more

🇺🇸 Joyful Ventures

📍 Location: Los Angeles, United States💰 Target Size: $40M USD🙋‍♀️ Founders: Milo Runkle (General Partner), Jennifer Stojkovic (General Partner), Blaine Vess (General Partner)✍️ Terms: 2022 vintage, 10 year term, 2.5% management fee, 20% carry. 🗓 Closing date: First closing in mid-October 2022. Targeting second closing in Spring 2023. 👀 Notable Advisors: Miyoko Schinner, Ryan Bethencourt, Bruce Friedrich, Bjorn Oste, T.K. Pillan, Riana Lynn, Dr. Lisa Dyson, Dr. Sandhya Sriram

💸 Investment Areas: FoodTech and AgTech. 50% North America, 50% rest of the world

💡 Focus: Joyful Ventures is an early-stage venture fund investing in the future of sustainable protein. As leaders of the world’s most prolific alternative protein organizations and exited founders, our team brings over forty years of industry experience and an unparalleled network of global dealflow. Our fund is supported by the world’s top founders, CEOs, and leaders in the plant-based and food technology sectors.

📈 Traction / Track Record: Launched in mid-2022, Joyful Ventures will invest in up to 40 early-stage companies in the next three years with deployment beginning in late 2022. The founders have a pre-existing portfolio of over 100 companies, including numerous 10x-20x returns and early investments in Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, UPSIDE Foods, and BluNalu. - Milo Runkle: In 2015, Milo launched New Crop Capital, a $40 million fund and early investor in Beyond Meat, Miyoko’s, UPSIDE Foods, BluNalu, and Good Catch. Milo co-founded The Good Food Institute, the most impactful organization in the alternative protein space. In 1999, at the age of 15, Milo founded Mercy For Animals, raising $130+ million to help farm animals. He has worked with Walmart, Nestle, and McDonald’s to modernize their purchasing, improving the lives of over 2 billion animals.- Jennifer Stojkovic: Jennifer is the founder of Vegan Women Summit (VWS), a media and events platform of over 50,000 women founders, investors, and advocates. She is the author of the bestselling book The Future of Food is Female, the world’s first book focused on women in alternative protein, and is an Independent Director of Natural Order Acquisition Co, a publicly-traded company focused on sustainable protein. She built her career under Ron Conway, Founder of SV Angel, and worked as the industry’s leading lobbyist for the world’s largest tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Meta.- Blaine Vess: Blaine is the co-founder and CEO of Student Brands, a bootstrapped edtech company that was acquired by Barnes and Noble Education for $58.5M. He is also the co-founder and CEO of Solve, a Y Combinator-backed company that was acquired by Blacklane. He’s currently the co-founder of Semblance, a non-alcoholic wine served at a number of award-winning restaurants. Blaine has invested in over fifty early-stage companies and is a Kauffman Fellow, the world’s premiere program for venture capitalists. He serves on the board of Founders Pledge, a community of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who have pledged billions of dollars to charity.

+ Connect with Jennifer to learn more

🇫🇷 Marble

📍 HQ: Paris, France💰 Target Size: €5-€10m 🙋‍♂️ Founders: Jonny Everett (Founding Partner), Ben Tincq (Founding Partner)✍️ Terms: Investment is into a French SAS where investors will hold 80% of the equity. All studio costs and investments are made from the balance sheet, with that vehicle then holding the equity stakes we create in new startups. 1x hurdle applied to any returns.🗓 Closing date: TBD, we are meeting new mission aligned investors at the moment but have not started our Close 2 fundraise formally. 👀 Notable Backers: Grantham Foundation, David Helgason, Sake Bosch.

💸 Investment Areas: Bio-Production, Direct Air Capture, Use & Storage, Carbon Mineralisation, Ocean Carbon Removal, Desert Farming, Clean Fuels & CCUS.

💡 Focus - Marble is a climate tech venture builder. We focus on solving hard climate problems by creating new deep tech climate companies. We partner with scientists, engineers and operators and over a 9-12 month programme, reveal their Founder potential and match their skills to the highest impact problem, de-risk the tech and market approach and source the right co-founders for the startup to succeed. We invest €250k in the best projects at pre-seed, giving us first access to new high growth climate tech companies at a substantial discount vs seed.

📈 Traction / Track Record: Previously built, mentored or invested in 30 deeptech startups. This year Marble will spinout it's first projects across direct air capture, CO2 recycling, carbon-neutral fuels and chemicals, and desert agriculture.

+ Connect with Jonny to learn more

🇺🇸 Vita Ventures

📍 Location: New York, United States🙋‍♀️ Founders: Beatriz Franco (Founding Partner), Brita Rosenheim (Founding Partner)

💸 Investment Areas: Alt Protein, Food & Ingredient Innovation, Next Gen Materials, Food Supply Chain Tech, CPG, Grocery & Retail Tech, Foodservice & Restaurant Tech

💡 Focus: Vita invests in early-stage food tech innovators solving the unprecedented challenges of our $9 Trillion global food system. We are personally and professionally invested in this sector, and look for technologies that strengthen our supply chain, reduce carbon footprint & food waste and promote food safety & health. We focus on both software/hardware and food/material sciences opportunities, and aim to maximize both impact and returns by focusing on ambitious teams with tech-driven, scalable and sector-focused solutions.

📈 Traction / Track Record: - Beatriz Franco: 20 years of investment, startup CEO, public / private markets, and legal experience. Early stage investor into 20+ startups in the Food & Ag space. Partner, Food & AgTech Fund, Portfolia. - Brita Rosenheim: 20 years of investment, M&A, public / private markets and corp. development experience. Partner, Food & AgTech Fund, Portfolia, Partner, Culterra Capital - Previously: Venture Partner, Better Food Ventures, Partner (M&A and Food Tech Adviosry), Rosenheim Advisors.

+ Connect with Beatriz to learn more

🔥 Featured Last Week

🍄 Mush Foods - "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."Raising: $5M USD

☕️ The Kawa Project - "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."Raising: $3.2M USD

🍪 Joydays, Inc. - "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."Raising: $1.5M USD

♻️ 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."Raising: CHF200K

🐟 Bluefin Foods Inc. - a cultivated seafood company developing novel technologies to ensure everyone can access the highest quality and most nutritious cultivated seafood. Raising: $525k USD

🌱 Funding Spotlight: Planted

👋 Founders: Christoph Jenny, Pascal Bieri, Eric Stirnemann📆 Founded: 2019📍 Country: Switzerland 💸 Funding: €70M Series B💡 The pitch: "Founded in 2019 as a spin-off from ETH (Swiss Technical Institute) Zurich, Planted produces meat from proteins such as peas, oat, and sunflower through its novel bio structuring approach, focusing on the perfect bite with clean-label ingredients. Biostructuring combines protein structuring and fermentation."👀 Investor inc: L Catterton (lead) and existing investors Vorwerk Ventures, Gullspång Re:food, Movendo, Be8 Ventures, ACE, ETH Zurich Foundation, Joyance, Yann Sommer and new investor Tengelmann Ventures.

💡 Quick Reads

🌿 Chlorella: Chlorella is a single-celled algae that grows in freshwater ponds and lakes. It’s indigenous to Southeast Asia and Oz, but can be cultivated on an industrial scale in large bioreactors.

Chlorella naturally contains 50 - 70% protein and is jam-packed with nutrients. Compared to common plant-based protein sources pea and soy, it has a low environmental impact. And if that weren’t enough, it’s also rich in antioxidants, minerals, vitamins, fibre and essential fatty acids.More on that here

👖 Good Read: Part 2 of Tsung Xu's deep-dive into the state and future of biomaterials (long read - but very much worth it).

💡 Good Point:

🌡 Good Data:

📞 Good Tweet: It's wild how far we've come since this.

😅 Bit of Fun

Just a joke - but how it can sometimes feels after reviewing FoodTech pitch decks all day.

Thanks for reading,

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.