In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.
Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.
Episode 50: FOOD Founders Studio
On this episode, I’m joined by Giacomo Cattaneo (CEO) and Alex Morel (CTO), co-founders of FOOD Founders Studio, a venture studio building B2B food-tech companies from university IP to market-ready startups. They’ve raised $1.2M toward a CHF 3M holding-company model that funds and co-founds 3–4 ventures (roughly $1M per project) while keeping meaningful founder ownership and targeting faster, M&A-driven exits. They explain how they reverse the usual flow—start with validated industry problems, then license tech (balancing royalties/equity so founders still own the majority), and why they expect shorter timelines than typical food-tech. We close on lessons from a year-long raise (persistence beats neat timelines) and a call for partners: investors aligned with pragmatic derisking, universities/R&D labs with commercialization-ready IP, seasoned CEOs to lead new ventures, and food companies eager to pilot their off-flavor removal tech.
Key Facts FOOD Founders Studio:
- Goal: To build and launch B2B food tech ventures from untapped European academic IP.
- Recently raised $1.2M toward a CHF 3M holding-company model that funds and co-founds 3–4 ventures (roughly $1M per project)
Alex’s Top Findings:
- Timeline: A Year of “No’s,” Then Yes. It took ~12 months from first rejection to the lead check—bridged by pure grit and personal financing. “Almost a year from the first No. Me [Giacomo] and Alex were pouring money into it to make it up till our accounts were dry. Too many pieces of the puzzle of this very ambitious puzzle that is taken on its own technology. The founders, the story, the positioning on solving the systemic issues, as well as the technology. We stayed on, and fortunately, we were able to build the first foundational partnerships, and now we are building. ”
- From “Are You a Fund?” to “We’re In.” Giacomo and Alex converted confusion into commitment by delivering value—securing tech, partners, and an investable first venture; the family office joined the investment committee, too. “ We started like everybody, a beautiful story on a PowerPoint that promises the world. But at some point, you need to start showing you can do it. As soon as we got very confident in our selection of the first technology, we could give a real, concrete outlook about what kind of ventures we are going to build, and our ability to execute on our mission. I think that also gave the family office a better justification to sit around the table internally, trying to figure out that this just makes sense. Now this family office is in… It’s in on our investment committee as well.”
- Problem-First Scouting, Then Tech. FOOD Founders Studio starts by validating urgent industry problems, then sources university tech that can solve them—flipping standard “tech looking for a use” on its head. “One of the benefits… is that we do create a portfolio of startups… We take a lot of time to really refine this funnel, selecting only one technology… that becomes then the foundation of the new startup that we built.”
Link to Apple Podcast here.
Catch the full podcast series here.
