Perfat Technologies: Jyrki Lee-Korhonen shares how to get funded in 2025
Perfat Technologies: Jyrki Lee-Korhonen 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 51: Perfat Technologies: Jyrki Lee-Korhonen shares how to get funded in 2025On this episode, I sit down with Jyrki Lee-Korhonen, CEO & co-founder of Perfat Technologies, a Finnish spin-out turning cutting-edge lipid science into healthier, drop-in fat ingredients for food makers. Perfat just closed €2.5M—led by Beyond Impact and Newtree Impact, with follow-on from Nordic Science Investments, Big Idea Ventures, and University of Helsinki Funds—after a 7–8 month process that hinged on shifting from any CapEx to a capital-light plan. Jyrki explains how Perfat’s oleogel-based, non-novel tech (no fermentation, off-the-shelf equipment) delivers ~80% less saturated fat and up to 30% fewer calories, while adding dietary fiber—a compelling alternative to butter, palm/coconut oil, and even cocoa butter. We get into IP (patents + trade secrets acquired from the university), B2B commercialization with near-term production and distributor sales, creative valuation structuring, and the asks: intros to customers/CMOs and a Supply Chain Manager to help scale in 2025.Key Facts Perfat Technologies:Goal: Healthier and more sustainable fats to deliver tasty, more nutritious foods.Recently closed €2.5M—led by Beyond Impact and Newtree Impact, with follow-on from Nordic Science Investments, Big Idea Ventures, and University of Helsinki FundsAlex’s Top Findings:Valuation: Market Reality + Creative Structure. Benchmarks and needs set the baseline; they used a flexible, milestone/tap-on structure to align everyone. “ We came up with a structure that offered the investors the kind of valuation that they were looking for, at the same time giving a little bit of upside to the management in terms of when we meet certain milestones, etc. So it's a pretty flexible structure that we have, and so we have to have a bit of creativity to meet everyone's interests for the round. ”Investors’ CapEx Allergy → Capital-Light Plan. They pivoted away from CapEx and toward CMOs/scale partners to fit today’s investor preferences. “We initially envisaged that part of the funding would be reserved for some CapEx, but it became clear quite early on that most investors these days are quite allergic to anything that smells of CapEx. So we did adjust our fundraising a bit towards a more capital-light plan. This also allowed us to scale back a bit down the road. I, overall, don't think it was necessarily a bad thing as such. These days, you do hear a lot about investors don't want to see CapEx in the plan.”How the Lead Happened: Network > Target List. The lead wasn’t on their initial list; a warm network intro unlocked a first Nordic investment for one of the funds and brought in the second. “ The introduction came through our network. To be fair, the name wasn't on our original list, as that investor, in this case, was Beyond Impact. They hadn't been active in the Nordics in the past, so we actually ended up being their first investment in the Nordic region. And then later on, they introduced us to New Three Impact, who then called it the deal.”
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