Video

Matt D'Amour of Yumbutter talks about the importance of having multiple things that distinguish your food brand so you can remain defensibly unique and mitigate the risk of competition. They joined the food scene when their category (nut butters) was not crowded yet and they were positioned well to overcome roadblocks.

The best entrepreneurial candidates for VAPG do their due diligence, looking at all aspects of the business, like financing, marketing, product testing, talking to others and hire a team (like lawyers, accountants, etc.) that can help them before rushing into the process.

Jonny Hunter of the Underground Food Collective talks about his company's horizontally integrated business model and the efficiencies of sharing a common a common brand, administrative services and marketing across multiple related business entities through shared ownership, experienced management and shared consumer insights.

Having your own business is difficult and as a founder, you start out with just you. So many things that are difficult to deal with happen in business and how you adapt is key to business survival. Finding creative revenue streams and maybe even a new business model can be the way your business survives deaths, fires and funding falling through.

Food, beverage and value-added agriculture businesses need to raise money serially in order to grow. And, they need different kinds of money at different stages of their growth path. And, specific sources of money are often for specific uses, and all of this needs to be documented.

How you form your food, beverage or value-added agriculture business has huge implications for your particular business development and growth path, as well as regulatory and tax considerations. This includes what kinds of money you are able to raise.

Equity-based crowdfunding (not to be confused with donation or rewards-based crowdfunding) is a new industry and it may not be worth pursuing as a source of capital for such small amounts of money from so many investors who now have an ownership stake in the business.

There are many trends affecting consumers' interaction with and purchasing behavior with food, including the interest in local, organic, free-from and other claims.The consumer is overwhelmed with choice and retailers are trying to satisfy these trends to give them more choices given all of these niche diets and preferences.