Investment Climate Podcast

Adam Tarshis, co-founder and CEO of Mozza Foods, joins Alex Shandrovsky on the Investment Climate podcast.

Mozza is a molecular farming company engineering soybeans to produce authentic dairy casein — the protein that makes cheese melt and stretch — as a drop-in ingredient for dairy manufacturers, without cows and without building precision-fermentation factories.

In this episode: why molecular farming beats bioreactors for cost parity, funding deep tech in food when capital is scarce, infrastructure and regulation paths (USDA/FDA), and what it takes to get soybean-grown casein to market (target launch late 2028).

Guest: Adam Tarshis, Co-founder & CEO, Mozza Foods
Host: Alex Shandrovsky

Media partners: vegconomist · Food Tech Weekly
Book a conversation: https://cal.com/foodtechweekly/1-1-call

In this episode, I sit down with Javed Husain, Founder & CEO of Totaleehalal — the UK's halal-only food delivery marketplace for restaurants, groceries, and meat, built around strict halal assurance (HMC-certified positioning) so Muslim consumers aren't guessing what's on the plate.

Javed came out of advertising/media and bootstrapped Totaleehalal after an exit rather than raising a classic VC round. We get into why he built a 100% halal marketplace instead of sitting on existing delivery apps, how certification and contamination controls actually work in food delivery, the London rollout (West/East) and path to broader UK coverage, and what kind of capital — if any — fits a values-driven, assurance-first consumer marketplace.

🎧 Listen for the bootstrap story, the halal-assurance ops playbook, and what support Totaleehalal needs next from the Food Tech Weekly community.

Key Facts: Totaleehalal
Javed Husain (Founder & CEO)
Based: London, UK
What they do: Halal-only food delivery marketplace (restaurants, groceries, fresh meat) with strict certification / no non-halal contamination; charity pledge in launch coverage.

Episode 123: Collateral Good: Mariana Gonzalez on Why "A Flat Round Is the New Up Round," Corporate-Backed Venture, and Investing Through the Food-Tech Reset
In this episode, I sit down with Mariana Gonzalez, Co-Founder & Partner at Collateral Good, a Zurich-based, globally-investing venture fund managing €100M across three funds — food innovation, packaging innovation, and textile innovation — with 24 portfolio companies and a distinctive edge: they're backed by major corporates. Grupo Bimbo (the world's largest bread manufacturer) is a key LP in the food fund; Hugo Boss anchors the textile fund. That closeness to industry gives Collateral Good direct access to corporate pain points and the R&D decision-makers who actually adopt new technology. Mariana — a Mexican industrial engineer who cut her teeth as a buyer and then in operations and logistics at Costco — brings a rare retail-and-supply-chain lens to venture. We get into her clear-eyed read of the market reset: why "a flat round is the new up round," why this is an investor's market after the founder's market of 2021–22, and how Collateral Good's new, larger strategy will target more market-proven companies plus "special situations" created by the valuation correction. Along the way, Mariana delivers some of the most practical fundraising wisdom we've had on the show — on pressure-testing business models, transparency as a two-way street, cap-table alignment ("it takes a village"), how she actually approaches bridge rounds from the investor's side, and the founder qualities she now screens for.
🎧 Listen to the full masterclass to hear why food-tech timelines run 5+ years longer than the deck says, how corporate LPs and CVCs are getting far more strategic (and why they still need funds like hers), when Mariana will and won't back a "moonshot," how she runs bridge conversations honestly from a position of strength, and the two founder traits she believes separate the survivors: brutal honesty and asking for help early.

Key Facts: Collateral Good
Mariana Gonzalez (Co-Founder & Partner): https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariana-gonzalez-lopez-25093817a
Website: collateralgood.eu
Headquarters: Zurich, Switzerland
Firm: A climate-first / impact venture fund operating since 2018, managing €100M across three funds — food innovation, packaging innovation, and textile innovation — with 24 portfolio companies. Leads, co-leads, or follows depending on what's best for the company.
Select Portfolio (food): The EVERY Company, LiveKindly, Heartbest (plant-based dairy, Mexico), Bramble (pet food, US), among 24 companies across the three funds.

Blurb
COLLATERAL GOOD is a different kind of venture firm: a Zurich-based, climate-first fund that has spent since 2018 building three thematic funds — food, packaging, and textile innovation — on a foundation most investors can't replicate. Its LPs are the corporates that ultimately buy innovation: Grupo Bimbo in food, Hugo Boss in textiles. That gives the €100M, 24-company firm something rarer than capital — a direct channel to the industry's real pain points and the R&D teams who decide what actually reaches a shelf. Led in this conversation by co-founder Mariana Gonzalez, a Mexican industrial engineer whose formative years were spent inside Costco's operations, the fund pairs venture conviction with a hard-nosed understanding of how slowly consumers and supply chains truly change.

Episode 122: Nurtured Nuts: Bryant Williams on Winning Pitch Competitions, the Anatomy of a 5-Minute Pitch, and Gene-Editing the Allergens Out of Peanuts
In this episode, I sit down with Bryant Williams, Founder & CEO of Nurtured Nuts Company — the Minnesota-based food-tech startup commercializing the allergen-less peanuts created by AgriNetica's gene-editing (CRISPR) and bringing them back to the schools, airlines, and restaurants that banned them. Just weeks before we spoke, Bryant took first place at IFT FIRST's "The Pitch!" competition in Chicago — his fourth pitch-competition win — so we turned this into a genuine masterclass on the single most underrated founder skill: pitching. Bryant walks through his exact 5-minute pitch, beat by beat, and explains the thinking behind each move: why he opens with a 14-word one-liner in the first fifteen seconds; how he builds an emotional "hook" that makes even the peanut itself a character worth rooting for; how he frames the solution, the market (a ~2BUSpeanut-buttermarket,~200M in restricted food-service, and a secondary opportunity he sizes north of a trillion), the products and business model, the scientific credibility, and the go-to-market; and how he "lands the plane" with an ask that turns the whole room into potential partners. We also get his practical preparation playbook — mirror reps and timed run-throughs, knowing your audience, researching the judges, and slowing down because "you have more time than you realize."
🎧 Listen to the full masterclass to hear the exact line Bryant closes every pitch with ("I've shared a lot with you — but the most important thing I'm missing is you"), why concise beats comprehensive, how he makes nostalgia do the selling, and where Nurtured Nuts is on its path to the first commercially available allergen-less peanut.

Key Facts: Nurtured Nuts Company
Bryant Williams (Founder & CEO): https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryant-c-williams
Website: https://www.nurturednuts.com/
Based: Minnesota (Minneapolis), USA
What They Do: Commercialize AgriNetica's peanut, gene-edited to remove the three clinically relevant proteins responsible for the anaphylactic response in peanuts — creating an allergen-less peanut that can re-enter "restricted" markets (schools, airlines, restaurants) while preserving flavor, nutrition, and versatility.
Recognition: Grand-prize winner of "The Pitch!" at IFT FIRST 2026 in Chicago ($10,000 prize) — Bryant's fourth pitch-competition win (also Bend Venture Conference 2024, a Sango virtual competition, and Summerfest Tech AI in Milwaukee).

Blurb
NURTURED NUTS COMPANY is chasing something that sounds impossible and feels inevitable: a peanut that can't hurt you. Using second-generation gene-editing, AgriNetica — which owns the gene-editing technology and IP — has removed the three clinically relevant proteins behind the anaphylactic response, "rebuilt the peanut," and — with USDA approval and a Georgia field planting — begun what's reported as the first commercial-scale outdoor cultivation of gene-edited peanuts in the U.S. The prize isn't just safety; it's category re-creation. Peanuts once lived on every lunch table, plane, and ballpark before allergy risk exiled them. Nurtured Nuts wants to bring them back — and open entirely new doors in beverages, confectionery, snacks, and sports nutrition along the way.
AgriNetica developed the peanut — it owns the gene-editing technology and IP, and runs the clinical and scientific work. Nurtured Nuts is the commercialization partner (sales, manufacturing, distribution, marketing).

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.