Elly Truesdell (New Fare Partners) - How she started a cat food brand with Bobby Flay, Going from Whole Foods to launching VC fund, When brands should vertically integrate

The Consumer VC: Venture Capital I B2C Startups I Commerce | Early-Stage Investing I Brands

Our guest today is Elly Truesdell, Founder & Managing Partner at New Fare Ventures. a venture capital fund centered on the modern eater and evolving American palate. Some of the investments include Made By Nacho, Mid-Day Squares, Foxtrot and Tacombi. We discuss her time at Whole Foods, how she ended up meeting Bobby Flay and founding Made by Nacho, why she wanted to start a fund and how she thinks about investing in food and retail.

Some of the questions I ask her:

1. Were you always into nutrition and buying food from natural channels?
2. What was your role at Whole Foods? What is the global director of local brands and product innovation?
3. What has to go right for a brand to get into Whole Foods?
4. Why did you decide to leave to become the CEO of Canopy Foods?
5. What attracted you to investing?
6. Co-packers is the #1 issue - can’t scale because they don’t have
7. What led you founding Made by Nacho?
8. How did you meet Bobby Flay?
9. What was it like working with an iron chef who is used to restaurants and creating these incredible dishes vs. starting a CPG brand?
10. Why did you found New Fare? What’s the origin story? What attracted you to venture capital?
11. Why is there room in consumer investing and CPG? Is there a statistic that you keep coming back to?
12. What causes a trend to have it’s moment?
13. Upcycled ingredients
14. Easy to entry - what’s it like fundraising
15. How do you think about portfolio construction?
16. What are some of the trends in consumer that you’re really excited about?
17. How do you approach portfolio construction?
18. How do you think about vertical integration?

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