New Wave. The Food Tech Playbook: What Actually Scales
This week on New Wave Weekly:
👉 Why food & ag still scare generalist VCs
Despite being a $8T industry employing more people than any other, exits are small, timelines are long, and the science is heavy. So why does capital hesitate? And what are they missing?
👉 Where the real opportunities are in food tech
From ingredients with 1% inclusion rates, to functional foods, to GLP-1 alternatives, to sugar-free sweet proteins, which models actually scale in venture timelines?
👉 Food as Medicine: the next multi-billion category?
GLP-1 drugs reshaped consumer behavior… but can food do the same? We explore peptides, functional mushrooms, sugar replacement, and why nutrition may beat pharma at its own game.
👉 The investment memo for food tech — across stages
What does “good” look like at pre-seed? Seed? Growth? Revenue thresholds, market entry strategy, brand vs B2B ingredients, regulatory cycles, and why biotech in food still needs ~15 years and $100M to get to market.
👉 Do brands or ingredients win? The great debate
Lavie, Beyond Meat, Oatly, challenger brands vs. enabling technologies, and why doing “both biotech AND brand” almost never works.
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Wave Makers:
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