Entrepreneurship and alternative proteins

Crafting a pitch deck is both art and science, and is vital to raising funds and shaping the narrative for your company. Our pitch deck review form offers a checklist to ensure your deck is what investors are looking for. We recommend you work through this exercise and also ask an advisor to do so. If you’d like GFI to review your pitch deck please fill out our fundraising support form.

Based on our previous evaluation of pitch decks for alternative protein companies, our recommendations include:

Show (or build) evidence of customer traction, market pull, and/or product-market fit.

Even in pre-R&D, you can provide evidence of consumer demand for your product through a variety of creative ways like product crowdfunding pre-sales, focus groups, surveys, and letters of intent from future customers.

Refine your go-to-market strategy.

Whether launching direct-to-consumer, B2B, or in foodservice, how will your strategy impact your product formulations, marketing plan, company culture, and fundraising ability?

Identify your value proposition and what makes it defensible.

Investors want to see that you’re innovating in product development rather than simply pursuing a market niche in the short term. What is your advantage when there are ten companies pursuing the same market?

Calculate or project your unit economics.

The venture capital model is driven by exceptional returns. You’ll need to be highly profitable when you are at scale. Even when it requires assumptions, knowing your unit economics is critical to demonstrating feasibility.

Tell a compelling story.

If you are mission-driven, absolutely lead with that, but don’t rely on the problems inherent to animal agriculture to carry your pitch. Investors want more. Focus on what makes your company unique and what makes you well-positioned to succeed.

GFI APAC’s investor directory contains investors who have opted in to sharing their information with fundraising alt protein startups. The directory has a variety of angel and institutional investors and can be filtered by typical investment round, typical check size, types of companies most interested in, and location. This resource is only available to alternative protein companies that are actively fundraising — you’ll need to submit a pitch deck for approval. To access, fill out our fundraising support form and we will follow up.

Joining an incubator or accelerator like Big Idea Ventures, Brinc, Food-X, IndieBio, ProVeg, or Y Combinator can be an excellent way to refine your business, build networks, and raise funds. Check out our map of incubators and accelerator programs relevant to alternative proteins. We recommend exploring the map to see if there are any programs that might be a good fit. Did you know GFI also went through Y Combinator?

GlassWall Syndicate is a third-party non-profit organisation consisting of mission-driven accredited investors devoted to removing animals from supply chains. We highly recommend GlassWall Syndicate to fundraising early stage alternative protein companies. Learn more and apply.

Join GFI’s fundraising database to get your company in front of interested investors. First list your startup in GFI APAC’s company database and then add your fundraising details to the fundraising database. You can add and edit your fundraising details at any time.

Finding the right talent is critical to growing your company. Add alt protein jobs and internships to our APAC jobs board to maximise visibility for new roles at your organisation. And request access to GFI APAC’s talent database. This is the go-to resource for employers and founders in the alternative protein space seeking mission-aligned talent, including employees, contractors, advisors, and more. This database contains resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and contact information for professionals, scientists, and students who want to be a part of the future of food.

GFI’s plant-based meat manufacturing guide provides an introduction to the process of extrusion. And our plant protein primer compares various plant proteins on cost, allergenicity, sustainability, and other factors.

If you are not building your own production facilities, working with co-manufacturers will be essential. We have a non-exhaustive directory of co-manufacturers, co-packers, private labelers, and consultants to help with your search. When evaluating prospective co-manufacturers, feel free to consult GFI’s co-manufacturer evaluation checklist.

GFI has a dedicated webpage with other resources for food manufacturers, like our white paper on formulating with animal-free ingredients.

To spotlight all of the knowledge and infrastructural resources that food companies can leverage to build their business and meet rising consumer demand for more secure and sustainable foods, we have launched a “one-stop shop” database in collaboration with FoodInnovate⁠—a joint initiative launched by Enterprise Singapore together with A*STAR – Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), IPI, JTC Corporation, and the Singapore Food Agency.

This important tool allows startups to find any and all relevant resources offered by the Singapore government, with options to search by “need” (e.g. bringing in foreign talent, upstream R&D funding, etc.) or by “development stage” (e.g. pilot stage, internationally commercialised, etc.).