Investment Climate Podcast

Episode 121: Iris Ventures: Florian Wojewodzki on the CPG Venture Math Behind a Series A, Making Founders "Whole" on Dilution, and the Health-and-Wellness Supercycle
In this episode — the show's first growth-stage consumer/CPG investor after 130 episodes — I sit down with Florian Wojewodzki, Partner at Iris Ventures, an early-growth, consumer-focused fund headquartered in Barcelona with a satellite in London, managing just over €225M across two funds. Florian gives one of the most transparent breakdowns of venture math I've heard: Iris underwrites every deal to 4x its money (they're a MOIC shop, not an IRR shop), targets a 3–5 year hold, and typically leads or co-leads for 15–25% ownership with €7–8M initial checks that can step up to €20M inclusive of follow-ons. We get into exactly what a Series A founder needs to clear the bar (roughly €3M+ revenue, real capital efficiency, healthy gross margins, strong repeat), why Iris never underwrites to multiple expansion or to IPO, and how they think about exits (mostly strategic sale). Florian is refreshingly candid about founder incentives — Iris has asked existing cap tables to hand founders back 5–10 points when they've been over-diluted, because a founder without skin in the game is a problem down the line. Then we go deep on his biggest conviction: a 10–15 year health-and-wellness supercycle, why "health is wealth" is reshaping wallet share, where the real edge lives (novel, science-backed ingredients over commoditized "brand plays"), and the thesis behind his recent seed investment in Lucille, a senior-nutrition brand chasing a massive, un-innovated white space.
🎧 Listen to the full masterclass to hear the founder question Florian always asks ("what are you optimizing for?"), why raising at the highest possible valuation can set you up for pain, the 4–5x top-line growth you need to be "in the money," why consumer is a natural moat while everyone else piles into AI and defense, and how Iris found Lucille pre-launch through an angel network.
Key Facts: Iris Ventures
Florian Wojewodzki: https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-wojewodzki-36434424
Website: weareiris.com
Headquarters: Barcelona, Spain
Fund: An early-growth, consumer-focused venture fund managing just over €225M across two funds
Stage & Focus: Almost exclusively Series A / Series B branded consumer propositions (with a very high bar for 1–2 seed deals per fund). ~80% Western Europe + UK, up to ~20% opportunistically in the US.
Check Sizes: €7–8M initial, stepping up to €20M inclusive of follow-on reserves; leads or co-leads all rounds and takes board seats.

Blurb
IRIS VENTURES is a rare thing in European venture: a true consumer specialist, deploying just over €225M across two funds into Series A and B branded consumer businesses with the brand sensibility and ear-to-the-ground the category demands. What makes this conversation so useful is Florian Wojewodzki's willingness to show the actual machinery of the decision. Iris is a MOIC shop that underwrites every deal to 4x over three to five years, never bets on multiple expansion, and is transparent with founders at the term-sheet stage about exactly what it has promised its LPs. The result is a clear, teachable picture of what a growth-stage consumer round really requires — roughly €3M+ in revenue, genuine capital efficiency, durable gross margins, and a credible path to a strategic exit — and an honest account of the traps, from raising at a valuation you can't grow into to arriving at Series A already over-diluted.

Episode 120: Re-Examining Technology Adoption: Lance Lively on Market Pull, CPG Unlocking, and Beyond Meat’s Missteps 
In this episode, I speak with Lance Lively, founder of Livelyhood and former executive at The Every Company and BioLumen. Lance breaks down why the alternative protein industry hit a commercial plateau despite early techno-optimism, challenging standard S-curve adoption models and offering a masterclass in how market demand actually works. Lance walks us through the intellectual foundations of alternative protein, dissecting how pioneers misread historical case studies like kerosene, automobiles, recombinant rennet, and synthetic insulin to build a flawed premise: that "superior" technology inherently guarantees market dominance. He exposes the severe survivorship bias behind the S-curve, explaining why tech features do not drive adoption, but rather how unblocking pre-existing, acute market demand creates the conditions for new technologies to flourish. We go deep on the contrast between pitch-deck promises and real-world supply chains: how animal welfare pledges failed to drive commercial adoption for precision-fermentation eggs until Avian Flu price spikes forced multinational food brands to seek a functional hedge; why plant-based meat stalled sub-1% market share as animal meat was culturally reframed as a healthy, whole food while alt-meat got labeled as ultra-processed; and how CPG breakouts like Gruns achieve explosive scale not through deep tech, but by unblocking friction points for hyper-specific customer profiles.
🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear why kerosene didn't displace whale oil simply because it was "better," but because industrial growth desperately needed evening light right as whale scarcity priced buyers out; how Avian Flu outbreaks turned precision-fermentation egg proteins into an essential supply-chain hedge; why animal meat flipped into a "health food" in the cultural zeitgeist while plant-based meat lost its halo; and how deep-tech founders can stop building in a vacuum by embedding themselves in industry to solve blocked customer priorities.

Key Facts & Key Concepts 
Lance Lively (Founder & CEO): https://www.linkedin.com/in/lancelively 
Website: https://www.findlivelyhood.com/
Headquarter: USA
Core Thesis: Advanced technology does not generate market adoption—unblocked market demand does. Startups that focus on tech specs rather than unblocking customer friction are trapped in survivorship bias.

Blurb 
LIVELYHOOD founder Lance Lively addresses a fundamental question facing food-tech: where is the adoption we were promised? Around 2019, alternative protein pioneers operated on an axiomatic belief that animal-free products would inevitably conquer animal agriculture following the classic sigmoidal "S-curve" seen in smartphones, automobiles, and synthetic insulin. But as plant-based meat market share sits below 1% and former industry darlings struggle, Lance delivers a candid diagnosis of what went wrong. By re-examining the real economic forces behind historic tech shifts—from whale oil to kerosene—he shows why ethical pledges fall flat until supply chain shocks force enterprise action, and outlines a practical framework for founders to build products around unblocking real customer pain points.

Episode 119: Nous: Lorenzo Pessini on Landing dsm-firmenich as a Strategic Lead, the Clinical Study That Closed the Round, and Why He Chose B2B Over Building a Brand
In this episode, I speak with Lorenzo Pessini, the 27-year-old CEO & Founder of NOUS, an Italian food-tech company building the functional ingredients of the future for food, beverage, and nutraceuticals. NOUS just closed a €2.315M seed round led by dsm-firmenich Ventures (co-led by Eatable Adventures and CDP Venture Capital) — and the story of how it came together is a masterclass in working with a strategic. dsm-firmenich's scouting team found Nous roughly 18 months earlier, when the company was a pre-seed unknown whose only real digital footprint was a press release from its FoodSeed pre-seed. Lorenzo walks us through the pivot that reframed their flagship ingredient, Koncentra, from a "caffeine alternative" (a losing race against cheap synthetic caffeine) into a botanical brain-wellbeing ingredient for energy, focus, and mood — and how a jointly-run clinical study with dsm-firmenich became the single thing that closed the round. We go deep on the mechanics most founders never hear: what clinical studies actually cost (€70K to €180K+), how crossover designs cut the bill, why placebo is the golden standard, and the 9–15 month timeline from protocol to publication. Then Lorenzo makes a candid case for B2B over B2C, explains a deliberately counterintuitive IP strategy (patent the product, keep the process a trade secret), and shares grounded wisdom on valuation, transparency, and the patience a corporate partnership demands.
🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear why a press release should spotlight the company, not the founder; how to get a strategic to co-invest in the very clinical study that de-risks their own deal; the crossover-study trick that turns 20 participants into a 60-person comparison; why Lorenzo would rather be "in the shadows" doing R&D than exposed to consumer pressure; and his approach to benchmarking valuation by calling other founders — with a crucial caveat about comparing apples to apples.

Key Facts: Nous
Lorenzo Pessini (CEO & Founder): https://www.linkedin.com/in/pessinilorenzo
Headquarters: Italy
What They Do: A B2B food-tech company developing science-backed functional ingredients for food, beverage, and nutraceuticals. Flagship ingredient Koncentra is a botanical phytocomplex (a combination of molecules from four raw materials) positioned for brain wellbeing — supporting energy levels, cognition/alertness, and mood — via a proprietary extraction and granulation process.
Funding: €2.315M seed round led by dsm-firmenich Ventures, co-led by Eatable Adventures (via Accelera Ventures) and CDP Venture Capital.

Blurb
NOUS is built on a disciplined idea: that the winning functional ingredients of the future won't be the loudest consumer brands, but the scientifically-validated building blocks inside them. Its flagship, Koncentra, is a botanical phytocomplex engineered through a proprietary extraction and granulation process to support energy, focus, and mood — a "brain-wellbeing" ingredient designed to sit inside the products of the world's biggest beverage and supplement companies rather than compete with them on a shelf. When a race against cheap synthetic caffeine proved a dead end, Nous repositioned the ingredient around what a third party could actually prove it did, and let the science lead.

Episode 118: XiA'H: Dan Cabral on Being "Found" by Investors from Monterrey, Pivoting from Product to Platform, and Turning LOIs into Paid Pilots
In this episode — a first for the show, our first founder from Mexico — I speak with Dan Cabral, CEO & Co-Founder of XiA'H, a Monterrey-based biotech that discovers, develops, and scales science-backed functional ingredients from nature using biotechnology. XiA'H just received investment from Big Idea Ventures, kick-starting its pre-seed round. Dan's story is a playbook for building outside the big VC hubs: starting with essentially zero pesos and an FFF round, she stitched together global accelerators — a START Fellowship at the University of St. Gallen that took him to Switzerland for six months, then Mass Challenge — until the ecosystem started referring him upward and Big Idea Ventures reached in on LinkedIn and "found" him. We dig into XiA'H's sharp pivot from a B2C functional chewing gum to a B2B ingredient platform, how they de-risk a famously fragmented ingredient-development pipeline, and how they beat the "you're too early / can young scientists really execute?" objection by converting LOIs into paid pilots and scaling to 50-litre bioreactor batches.
🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear how a founder in a "blooming but new" ecosystem gets found by a global fund, how XiA'H compresses ingredient development from 6–10 years to 2–3 (and one protein matrix from months to two weeks), the pet-nutrition work they're proud of, how Dan raised an FFF round without fear, and why she'll "follow XiA'H to the end of the world" if that's what scaling takes.
Key Facts: XiA'H
Dan Cabral (CEO & Co-Founder): https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-cp
Website: https://www.xiah.com.mx/
Headquarters: Monterrey, Mexico 
What They Do: A biotech ingredient platform that discovers, develops, and scales science-backed active functional ingredients from nature. XiA'H transforms plant biomass into high-value bioactives using precision fermentation and enzyme-based processing (rather than harsh solvents or heat), bridging the gap between science and commercial execution for brands.
Funding: Pre-seed round kick-started by an investment from Big Idea Ventures (Global Food Innovation Fund II); currently raising the balance of the pre-seed from angels, VCs, strategics/CVCs, and non-dilutive grants.

Blurb
XiA'H is proof that world-class deep-tech founders are everywhere — the opportunity just isn't evenly distributed yet. Based in Monterrey and built by a pair of self-described "crazy scientists" (Dan Cabral and his sister), XiA'H uses precision fermentation and enzyme-based processing to turn plant biomass into high-value functional ingredients, standing in the gap between promising science and market-ready product. In an ingredient industry that is powerful but deeply fragmented — where brands want new, natural, functional ingredients already shelf-stable and de-risked — XiA'H compresses a development cycle that normally runs six to ten years down to two or three, and takes an ingredient from discovery to pilot in about twelve weeks.

Episode 117: B-COS: Chiara Guidi on Ghent's Founder-Friendly Spin-Out Playbook, Plant Vaccines Over Pesticides, and Why Lean Beats Big in AgTech
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Chiara Guidi, Co-Founder & CEO of B-COS — a University of Ghent spin-off, incubated at Biotope by VIB, that is building "plant vaccines": carbohydrate bioactives (chito-oligosaccharides) produced by precision fermentation that switch on a crop's own defense system, making it more resilient and cutting the need for chemical pesticides. A year out of academia, Chiara and her team have raised €1M combining VC and grant funding. She gives an unusually candid look at what it takes to commercialize 15 years of university research: how B-COS became the very first company through Ghent's new "Fast Lane" spin-out program — a standardized, founder-friendly deal (low equity, low royalties, a worldwide exclusive perpetual license) that let them incorporate in a month instead of a year — and why a brand-new deal structure that no investor had seen before became one of the trickiest parts of the raise. We dig into how she turned public research into a de-risked asset investors love, how she built commercial traction at pre-seed through 100+ customer conversations, the two-track product strategy (long-horizon crop protection plus faster-to-market biostimulants), the reality of Belgium's grant ecosystem, and a refreshingly disciplined, "lean-and-mean" philosophy on valuation and survival.
🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear why a spin-out license can hand investors 15 years of de-risked science essentially for free, how B-COS answered the "there's nothing here yet" objection at pre-seed, why you often need funding in hand before you can win a VLAIO grant, how Chiara benchmarks valuation in a market with only five or six possible acquirers, and her answer to the question every deep-tech founder dreads: why won't the giants just crush you?

Key Facts: B-COS
Chiara Guidi (Co-Founder & CEO): https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiara-guidi-
Website: b-cos.eu
Headquarters: Belgium
What They Do: "Plant vaccines" for sustainable crop protection. B-COS uses precision fermentation to produce carbohydrate bioactives (chito-oligosaccharides) that activate a crop's natural defense system — improving resilience against fungal disease, nematodes, and drought stress, and reducing chemical pesticide use. Initial focus crop: 
Funding: €1M pre-seed (VC + grants), backed by Agri Investment Fund (AIF) and VP Capital, with support from Biotope by VIB, a VLAIO research grant, and EIT (European Institute of Innovation & Technology).

Blurb
B-COS is built on an elegant idea: instead of spraying crops with chemicals to kill what attacks them, teach the plant to defend itself. Using precision fermentation to brew carbohydrate bioactives — chito-oligosaccharides that act like a vaccine for plants — B-COS switches on a crop's own immune response, building resilience to fungal disease, nematodes, and drought while cutting reliance on synthetic pesticides. Spun out of fifteen years of research at Ghent University and incubated at Biotope by VIB, it is a platform with reach well beyond its first focus crop.