I have met founders who seem terrified of planning. This is often in the beginning, in Phases 1 or 2. The business is all upside at this early point in the journey. And most entrepreneurs hate shutting down opportunities. They generally thrill on seizing them,
Plenty is a wildly funded ag-tech startup with a crudely estimated trailing revenue of ~$100M a year. Founded in August of 2014, it is coming up on eight years in the market, refining its offer and, most notably, its indoor, vertical, hydroponics technology. Salad greens
It’s no secret that female-operated startups receive far less funding than those founded by men. The apparent reason is how humans form high trust relationships, like giving millions of dollars to strangers. Investors do this with people who are most like them along the lines
Folks new to the industry often get shocked when they start uncovering how much some design firms will charge to re-do their package graphics, essentially. A considerable strategy fee (for what?). Some kind of brand/visual identity fee (OK). A whole lot per UPC/SKU (penalizing a
The vast majority of CPG startups operate as B2B businesses. They don’t interact with their consumers, even when they sell DTC (!). They aren’t even curious about how ordinary people receive and use their products. As long as case volume sales grow, they’re happy. As
Billions have flowed into plant-based and cell-based meat ventures in recent years. The behavioral assumption they all make is that there is a very large addressable market of consumers, ordinary middle-class consumers, waiting for environmentally responsible meat substitutes to appear. Meat alternatives originated in the 1970s
Actually, I don’t know if you are. But what if you are? Categories are cultural spaces full of meanings and experiential expectations. Cheddar cheese tastes like X. I tend to want it on Z, but not on W. And down the nuanced rabbit hole we
Many new CPG founders are concerned about the highly unstable, week-to-week velocities and month-month sell-in volumes for their product lines. The fear is heightened once you are inside a significant chain. I get it. But here’s the thing. This is completely normal. It’s like your
As Omicron peaks, CPG retail out-of stocks are at an all-time high. IRI calculates them at around 88% of full, which is approximately 7% below normal levels. In Food, the situation is worse, especially in shelf-stable, center store categories, where OOS are hovering around 84%
Those in the beverage category have been watching bottled water brand Liquid Death (LD) very closely, long before last week’s Series C announcement. LD came out of the gates quickly for a team with no prior (publicly known) beverage operating experience. If the average early-stage