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Investment Climate

Alex Shandrovsky
Investment Climate
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  • EcoTech Capital: Adam Bergman shares how to get funded in 2025
    EcoTech Capital: Adam Bergman shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs 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 58: EcoTech Capital: Adam Bergman shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I sit down with Adam Bergman, Managing Director at Ecotech Capital and one of the most respected voices in global AgTech and FoodTech finance, for a brutally honest, data-driven look at the state of exits, valuations, fundraising, and what it will take for founders to survive 2025–2026. Adam breaks down why most exits today are distressed sales, why strategics have lost trust after years of overhyped promises, and why 2026 may be both the start of a new upswing and the highest-bankruptcy year in the sector. We dive into what real milestones look like now, which business models still attract capital, why robotics and automation are surging, the long-term future of cultivated meat, and how GLP-1 drugs and the MAHA movement could reshape global food demand. This is an unfiltered masterclass on what founders must do to stay alive—and what success will realistically look like over the next decade.Key Facts EcoTech Capital:Goal: Committed to offering strategic insight and financial direction to companies on key growth strategies, tactical initiatives, and strategic alternatives to help companies develop a strategy for continued growth and ultimately a successful future exit, whether through an IPO or M&A transaction.Adam has raised $1.5B+ across AgTech, FoodTech, and ClimateTech.Alex’s Top Findings:“The Exit Winter”: Why There Are Almost No Exits in Ag & Food Tech Today. Adam explains that the current lack of exits is rooted in unrealistic valuations, overfunding from 2018–2021, and stalled IPO/M&A markets. Most exits today are either fire sales or companies selling at invested capital, not valuation. Strategics feel burned, private equity can’t touch unprofitable companies, and the sector is stuck until real profitability appears.  ”Very few companies in this industry have reached profitability — and if you don’t have profitability, you’re going to struggle to get anyone in PE.  And so now, who are you left with from an M&A perspective? You're left with strategics. Strategics can be great buyers.”2026 Will Be the “Great Shakeout Year”. Adam predicts that 2026 will bring the highest wave of bankruptcies the sector has ever seen. Many companies have been surviving on safes from 2022–2025, and investors will soon need to decide which portfolio companies to continue supporting. This will expose zombie companies and force consolidation. “  By 2026, you’ll have companies that’ve done safes for three or four years. Investors will finally ask: Is this business actually close to scale and profitability?  If we've been unable to get other outside investors to put money into the company in the last few years, has anything changed? Can we get any outside capital? What does the exit landscape look like for this company and others?”What Companies Should Do Now: Narrow Focus and Hit Real Milestones. Adam says the strongest CEOs today are ruthlessly narrowing scope, cutting burn, and focusing on a small number of milestones that can unlock revenue or strategic partnerships. The “go-big-
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  • Remilk: Ori Cohavi and Yochai Maytal Share How They Created Real Dairy Without Cows.
    Remilk: Ori Cohavi and Yochai Maytal Share How They Created Real Dairy Without Cows.Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs  Today's episode is different in an investment climate. I usually interview founders right after they raise capital, but this conversation is about what matters even more: delivering on promises to investors, partners, and, most importantly, consumers. Remilk is moving from vision to reality. The company is officially launching in Israel, rolling out cafes, and then grocery store shelves across the country, producing real milk without cows. In partnership with God Dairies, one of Israel's most established dairy manufacturers and distributors, this is execution at scale. It might be the moment that redefines, revitalizes, and even saves food tech. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.Episode 57: Remilk: Ori Cohavi and Yochai Maytal Share How They Created Real Dairy Without Cows.In this episode, I sit down with Remilk Co-Founder & CTO Ori Cohavi and Upstream Bioprocess Lead Yochai Maytal for the most honest, behind-the-scenes deep dive yet into their groundbreaking cow-free dairy launch with Gad Dairies. We break down the blind taste tests (including my own), why their milk froths, cooks, and tastes indistinguishably from traditional dairy, how they achieved positive gross margins at an industrial scale, and the strategic JV model that’s letting them enter the market differently from any other precision-fermentation company. We also dig into past challenges, the truth behind the board shake-up, global expansion strategy, the path to competing with subsidized dairy, and what it will take for Remilk to reshape the global dairy industry.Key Facts Remilk:Goal: To create real dairy without a single cow, bringing a message of hope and joy to our planet, our body… and cows!Alex’s Top Findings:75% Less Sugar, Same Experience. By removing lactose, Remilk eliminates the natural milk sugar that quietly adds 5% sugar to every glass. They replace it with a much smaller amount of “table sugar,” leveraging its higher sweetness to keep the sensory profile while cutting total sugar by 75%. The result is a product that tastes like regular milk, with a similar sweetness perception but far less sugar load. This gives them a strong “better for you” angle without asking consumers to sacrifice taste. ” It's actually very similar to the level of sweetness of milk, but it has 75% less sugar. We do not use any lactose in the product. You can put in a quarter of the amount [of sugar] and get the same experience.”The JV Model: Tech & Brand as Equal Partners. Rather than just selling ingredients, Remilk built a full joint venture with Gad, one of Israel’s premium dairy brands (~₪1B+ business). Remilk brings the protein, formulations, and process know-how; Gad brings market knowledge, brand trust, and distribution. “ We are responsible for the technology, for supplying the end products, and Gad is mostly responsible for the marketing efforts for the distribution. But I think what we are doing is much more than co-branding, so it's much more than being an intel inside or remake inside. When I look at a partnership with Gad and why I think it's going to work, it's because each side brings its strength and each one is complemented by the other in its weaknesses.”Already Positive Gross Margins (Atypical in Food Tech). Unlike most novel food companies that subsidize early sales, Remilk says it wouldn’t launch if it weren’t already gross-margin positive. Milk is the hardest product economically, but they balance it with other higher-margin products in the portfolio. They emphasize that they waited until both taste and unit economics reached a minimum bar before going to market, and tha
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  • Fragaria Fruits: Harish Varadharajan shares how to get funded in 2025
    Fragaria Fruits: Harish Varadharajan shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs 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 56: Fragaria Fruits: Harish Varadharajan shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I sit down with Harish Varadharajan, co-founder & CEO of Fragaria Fruits, who is on a mission to redefine India’s $140B fruit-eating experience by making high-quality berries available year-round in a market that currently only sees strawberries for three months a year. Harish breaks down how they built a hyper-frugal pilot farm on just $200K of angel money, proved plant-level unit economics, unlocked crazy demand from Indian e-commerce and retail players, and then secured a $2M mix of equity and creatively structured agri-debt—including instruments that return 15–22% tax-free to HNIs. We talk about how WEH Ventures tracked them for six months, tasted the product, and offered an unsolicited term sheet, why valuations in India follow a very different “playbook” from Silicon Valley, and how Fragaria thinks about IP, competition, and government-protected markets. It’s a masterclass in capital-efficient agtech, using debt as a growth weapon, and building defensible moats in emerging markets—all anchored around something as simple and powerful as a better strawberry.Key Facts Time-travelling Milkman:Goal: To redefine the fruit meeting experience of Indian customers.Recently closed a $2M led by WEH Ventures and Rainmatter.Alex’s Top Findings:How WEH Went From “Too Early” to a Fast Term Sheet. WEH Ventures initially passed on the idea stage but tracked the team for six months. Once Fragaria had (1) plant-level performance, (2) clear demand signals from Indian e-commerce players, and (3) real interest from HNIs for debt, WEH flipped and issued a $500k term sheet within days—even though Fragaria wasn’t formally fundraising. ”WEH Ventures, at that point, thought our idea was too early. We are not a hundred percent sure of different things, which was, in a way, a good thing to happen to us at that point. So we took a bit of angel funding and we picked up the farm, brought the strawberries out by selling in the market. When WEH Ventures was tracking us, they tasted our berries, and they were like, ‘Man, these are extraordinary. These guys know what they're doing.’ Then they came back, they called me for a meeting in Bangalore on a Friday night, and on Monday, we got a term sheet for half a million.”Prove the Plant, Not the Farm. The pilot was designed only to prove product and plant-level economics, not to build a profitable farm. They worked backwards from “how do we get 2–3 kg/day to test?” and optimized everything for ultra-low CapEx. “ We have to prove we can get great quality strawberries in India. People are ready to buy these properties. So we don't need cages and tons of strawberries. We just need to get 2-3 kg of strawberries a day. We went around India for suppliers to sign in the cheapest way to build a farm. So we ended up building the farm, which is 70-80% cheaper than the Western farm.”Debt as a Core Part of the Scaling Strategy. Harish views Fragaria as half farming, half balance-sheet management. With a physical, cash-generating asset, he doesn’t want to use equity for every ex
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  • Time-travelling Milkman: Dimitris Karefyllakis shares how to get funded in 2025
    Time-travelling Milkman: Dimitris Karefyllakis shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs 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 55: Time-travelling Milkman: Dimitris Karefyllakis shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I sit down with Dimitris Karefyllakis, co-founder & CEO of Time-Travelling Milkman, a Dutch startup redefining plant-based creaminess. The company recently closed a €2M pre-Series A round led by Puratos, a global bakery and chocolate giant that first became a strategic partner after years of R&D collaboration. Dimitris walks us through how they turned a pilot relationship into an investment, set firm fundraising timelines to close in just eight months, and scaled production to 1,000 tons of their patented oleo cream — a sunflower-seed-based fat system replacing dairy and palm oil in foods like cream cheese and chocolate fillings. With over €5M total raised (including €1M in grants) and partnerships spanning Europe and Greece, Time-Travelling Milkman is proving that capital efficiency, technical grit, and patient partnerships can outpace the hype.🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear how Dimitris raised from corporates, scaled sustainably, and built “the future of creaminess” — one sunflower seed at a time.Key Facts Time-travelling Milkman:Goal: To make plant-based dairy truly indulgent, without compromise.Recently closed a €2M pre-Series A round led by PuratosAlex’s Top Findings:Strategic Lead Came from Years of Technical Co-Development. The lead investor is a confectionery/bakery/chocolate corporation that had already been testing OleoCream for years. Familiarity with the tech and use cases made the investment discussion straightforward. ”Our lead investor is a corporation from Belgium, and they work in confectionery baking and chocolate. We had already been testing with them for a couple of years, and we saw a good strategic fit as well. They saw it from their side, and it was an easier discussion because they know what we do, they know what we want to do in the future, and they were quite right to chip in and lead the round.”De-Risking Corporate Concentration: Two Strategics on the Cap Table. Bringing two strategic balances influences and broadens commercial pathways; it also reassures future investors that the company isn’t beholden to a single corporation. “ Received this advice early on is to try to have at least two corporates on the cap table. Because then, both of them will be pulling, let's say, from different directions. But then the average will still be good for the company. That's valuable. So you don't get, let's say, manhandled by only one partner. So if you get the valuable partners that really know what you do, and they can help you.”Valuation Discipline Paid Off. Time-travelling Milkman avoided the “Gatsby years” hype. Lower prior valuations prevented painful flats/downs and enabled a fair step-up grounded in real progress and investor alignment. “ We never got the opportunity to have exaggerated valuations… now it went higher… a fair deal that was balanced from both sides.”
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  • Seaqure Labs: Johan Henriksson shares how to get funded in 2025
    Seaqure Labs: Johan Henriksson shares how to get funded in 2025Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs 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 54: Seaqure Labs: Johan Henriksson shares how to get funded in 2025In this episode, I sit down with Johan Henriksson, CEO & Co-founder of Seaqure Labs, on a mission to make aquaculture impact-positive with mycelium. Fresh off a €470K pre-seed (led by Sweden’s Almi with angel consortia), Seaqure is scaling mycelium-based “Myprotein” feed ingredients via solid-state fermentation, aiming to replace fishmeal/soy with a cost-competitive, sustainable, drop-in alternative. We dig into how early coffee chats with a regional investor matured into a round, why sector-agnostic local funds beat pan-EU agri VC for pre-seed, the Swedish “teacher’s exemption” that streamlined their spin-out from Chalmers, and the plan to decentralize production near sidestreams for scale. If you’re a fish farmer or feed company curious about trials—or just fungi-curious—this one’s for you. Key Facts Seaqure Labs:Goal: To make aquaculture impact-positive with mycelium.Recently raised €470K pre-seed led by Sweden’s Almi with angel consortia.Alex’s Top Findings:Local, sector-agnostic capital closed faster than EU agri-food VCs. Seaqure Labs began by pitching pan-European agri-food investors but learned many were either stage-mismatched, reserving capital for portfolios, or already “full” in a given fermentation modality. Shifting to Swedish, sector-agnostic investors with a clear business-model story accelerated the round. “ We had many dual paths as a fundraising strategy. So to be honest, we started off having a fully European VC-focused. So we've basically been around for a bit more than a year. But they did help us after we pivoted into looking more at regional and Swedish investors. So we did get good introductions to different angel investors, angel consortia, and potential VCs that are investing in AgriFood tech.”Smart use of non-dilutive ‘startup debt’ to bridge to pre-seed. A low-risk regional loan covered early salaries and project work, repaid only as revenues/profits arrive—buying time to run a disciplined pre-seed process.“There is something called… a regional loan… You can borrow… It’s a very low-risk loan… once you start generating revenue… You also start paying off this loan slowly.”Valuation: milestone-based, maturity-driven, not headline chasing. At pre-seed, they avoided inflated valuations seen in earlier European markets and aligned expectations with the current environment. The round was sized to fund key proofs (scalability, trials), accepting slightly higher dilution for realistic next-round readiness. “ We had a thought of slightly higher rounds and valuations in pre-seed… but we realized the market has changed… what matters is proving capability to the next round.”
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