NOSH Live Winter 2023 Day Two Recap: Turning Challenges Into Wins As A Founder

At day two of NOSH Live, CPG food industry leaders and brand representatives gathered back in Marina Del Rey, California to discuss the power of disruption, how the struggle of being an emerging brand’s founder is part of the growth and why setting realistic goals can lead to long-term success.

Building Family Among Founders And Funders

Two of the founders and general partners of the Family Fund came to NOSH Live to discuss the formation of their early stage investment group and why building a community among founders is a central tenet of the fund.

Launched in March, the $25 million fund founded by former SnackNation CEO Sean Kelly, ForceBrands founder Josh Wand and Vital Proteins founder Kurt Seidensticker writes “smaller checks” to founder-led brands in the late seed to early series A stage investment rounds. Kelly and Wand emphasized that the true value is in operating as a sounding board and support system for CPG leaders.

“There’s an intersection of what you want to do and what the world needs,” Kelly said. “How do we help founder performance? A lot of founder performance is on the personal side. It’s the mental, it’s emotional, it’s the spiritual, it’s helping them if they’re having massive personal challenges.”

The fund’s leaders offer the unique perspective of bringing capital to brands who need it but also helping early-stage founders in determining when to seek more investment capital. One of the challenges of being the leader of an emerging brand is in the fundraising process, Wand said.

“It’s a scary journey. It’s a lonely journey and you constantly deal with rejection,” he said. Helping brands determine when the proper time to grow the business and how to scale in the right ways is one of the core value propositions of working with the Family Fund.

By creating a community of founders and providing valuable experiential-based consulting to companies, the Family Fund can help ease that journey and support its founders.

Part of the decision to launch the fund was the challenging investment environment in the last year, which has pushed many founders to raise capital for the wrong reasons, Wand said.

“Capital should be fuel on the fire for growth,” he said. “Companies that are not thoughtful about the stage in which they bring capital in, always regret raising capital.”

The investment climate has shifted the paradigm from growth at all costs to resiliency and setting realistic goals. The Family Fund duo talked about how valuations can impede the right kind of growth trajectory for early stage brands. The key is setting realistic goals can pave the way for success, Kelly said, as opposed to setting investor expectations higher than the brand can reach at its current growth stage.

Money is not always a bridge to success but “can be a pier,” Kelly said. “Don’t raise money unless you have to.”

Bringing Lessons Learned In Big CPG To The Emerging Space

In a panel discussion featuring Nature’s Bakery CMO Vilma Livas, Partake Foods founder and CEO Denise Woodard, and Arnulfo Ventura, former CEO Alter Eco Foods and Beanfields, sat down with NOSH editor Carol Ortenberg to talk about the lessons they learned from working within large CPG companies and how that shaped their leadership strategies at smaller brands.

One common theme discussed by all three panelists was being flexible to the needs of the brand while always maintaining the vision of why it was founded.

That flexibility is key to continuing to innovate and find a brand’s value proposition to its consumers, said Livas, who managed brands at Nestlé for over nine years.

“Keep questioning…It’s never static. It’s something that you have to continue to iterate as the needs of your business and the complexity of your business change.”

Taking his experience working in business development at PepsiCo and Califia Farms to leading Beanfields and Alter Eco, Ventura said that not only should a brand be flexible but the leader needs to be as well.

“It’s like a game of double dutch,” he said. “Before you want to come in and add a new move you have to first jump in and get with what’s going on and get with the program. Ultimately, work from within.”

For Woodward, she took lessons building Partake Foods not only from her time at Coca-Cola but, as a child, watching her entrepreneurial father start his own trucking business. She learned that building a brand goes beyond just what’s on the packaging but is a “holistic” process. It is shaped by how she (as a founder) interacts with consumers, the language she uses to speak with Partake’s partners and the feeling that the brand evokes to its customers.

Building a robust data tracking system and leveraging that information to guide a brand’s growth was another important lesson Woodward brought to her founder role from working in Coke’s corporate structure. She learned that she needed to have an in-depth understanding of Partake’s unit economics in order to build a strong foundation for future growth.

“I knew that data was going to be the thing that helped me make the best decisions, that would allow them to raise funding, that allowed me to get into more detailed work,” she said. “Gathering that data early on and then doing the work myself so that I could learn all the different facets of the business.”

Most importantly, a smaller business has the advantage of adapting quickly and to change course when things aren’t working, Livas said.

“Your cost to fail is not zero, but it’s the lowest it’ll ever be,” she said. “Inspect what you expected and then go back and fix it. Optimize it.”

Also at Day Two of NOSH Live Winter 2023:

• To kick the morning off, SPINS head of industry relations Kathryn Peters explained the opportunity in disruption and how brands can maintain their authenticity while following changing consumer trends.
• Mason Dixie Foods founder and CEO Ayeshah Abuelhiga came on-stage to talk about “changing comfort food for good.” She explained how she built her biscuit and waffle brand from its beginnings reducing waste in the restaurant industry to weathering the challenges of the pandemic and her successful pivot fully into CPG as a disruptor in the frozen baked goods category.
• Charles Coristine, LesserEvil president and CEO, shared his 12 Rules to Win in CPG and talked about the journey of the snack company and how the company has slowly built itself into a powerhouse by not being afraid to fail.
• How does a brand translate authentic regional cuisine into a successful CPG business? Tacombi + Vista Hermosa founder and CEO Dario Wolos talked about how a fateful bike ride in New York was part of bringing Mexican food to different parts of the store.
• To learn about all the finalists and the lucky winner of NOSH Live Pitch Slam Winter 2023, check out our full coverage.