Key takeaway
There is a petroleum-derived blue in your kids’ confectionery and sports drinks. The US is moving to ban it. A natural replacement already exists. It still took years to get funded. That delay is the whole story. And it is not really about the dye.
In this episode, Todd Crowley speaks with Mark Gustowski and Timothy Hui of Mandalay Venture Partners on why capital has stayed out of Australian agrifood, a sector that is 13 per cent of GDP and gets less than 2 per cent of venture funding.
Why allocators trained on tech keep misreading food. Why Beyond Meat taught the whole category the wrong lesson. Why the fixes to real problems sit unfunded while the money looks elsewhere.
Australian food is 13 per cent of GDP. It gets less than 2 per cent of venture capital. That gap is not an accident. It is where the entire conversation starts.
Todd Crowley sits down with Mark Gustowski and Timothy Hui of Mandalay Venture Partners to work through why institutional money has stayed out of Australian agrifood for so long, and what the cautious capital is missing.
Part 1 covers:
The petroleum-derived blue colour sitting in your kids’ confectionery and sports drinks. The US is moving to ban it. It is still on shelves here.
FUL Foods, the spirulina-derived natural blue already replacing it, and why a fix this obvious took this long to fund.
The 2 per cent of capital / 13 per cent of GDP problem, and why allocators trained on tech keep misreading food.
Why Beyond Meat made every investor in this category wrong about the lesson.
This is the structural read on why Australian agrifood has the demand, the science base and the runway, and still cannot get the cheque.
Part 2 covers the bets that prove the thesis. Watch it next.
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