Funding “Who your investors are is American actor Troy Donahue and his wife, Valerie Allen, play Monopoly at home in 1967. The game seems to have gotten the best of Donahue. as important as how much and when they invest,” Steven Finn from Siddhi Capital said during a panel discussion during Tufts’ Cellular Agriculture Innovation Day earlier this year. To illustrate his point, Finn told the story of two now-defunct cultivated meat companies that Siddhi had in its invest-ment portfolio: New Age Eats and SCiFi Foods. Meeting your match keep it going.” “Both of [these compa-nies] had weird invest-ment stories for totally, totally different reasons with totally different investors,” he said. New Age Eats, he explained, partnered with a lead investor that was “fundamentally misaligned” with the company from the start: While New Age wanted to sell hybrid sausage, the 10 Graphic House investor wanted a cultivated pork fat company. Because of the mismatch, “when things got a little tough, there was not enough good blood to SCiFi Foods, on the other hand, teamed with a lead investor that “effectively pushed everybody else out,” Finn said. “And then [the investor] basically just walked away in the night.” This left SCiFi, he said, with several investors who didn’t have enough “meaningful skin in the game” to save the company. In effect, Finn said, building a balanced capi-talization table with a good mix of investors is an important but often overlooked fundamental for startups. For more perspective, Alt-Meat reached out to CEOs, CFOs and investors about what makes a good investor and a good mix of investors. AS FUNDING REMAINS DIFFICULT TO SECURE AND ALT-PROTEIN COMPANIES CONTINUE TO CONSOLIDATE, HAVING A TEAM OF INVESTORS WITH A GOOD MIX OF BACKGROUNDS AND PLENTY OF PATIENT CAPITAL IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER. Alt-Meat May 2025
Alt-Meat May 2025: Page 10
