Welcome to CPGD’s newsletter for investors.

We started this newsletter because hundreds of our existing 9,000+ subscribers expressed interest in investing in early stage CPG. So we started curating a Deal Flow Portal with vetted, early-access deals. As both our list of investors and deals grew, we decided to expand our offering into a totally separate newsletter.

Each newsletter will feature:

And to introduce myself: hi, 👋 I’m Lucy. I’ve been leading Partnerships at CPGD and and will be curating these founder stories along with my partner Ryan. I attended the University of Chicago and am currently an MBA student at Wharton.

Liked our spotlights? Check out our Deal Flow Portal (password = betterforyou) for a full list of vetted CPG startups currently raising! We refresh this portal every month with new brands.

Highlighting 3 amazing Founders who are raising right now…

Cooking Oil Edition: Algae Cooking Club

Chef-grade algae cooking oil

Seed: 2.5M convertible note

Founder background: Kasra Saidi is the founder of Algae Cooking Club. Picky eater until his early 20s, he quickly became cooking-obsessed after moving to San Francisco post college. At 25, he tried out for Masterchef and missed the cut by one. He then spent a decade working at global creative agencies and consulting for companies like Impossible Foods, Teremana and PANGAIA and helped launch Táche Pistachio milk (which his sister starts and still runs). Most recently, he spent 3 years at the venture studio Squared Cirlces as the head of incubation.

What was the inspiration behind Algae Cooking Club? It's not often stars align, and with this particular opportunity, everything came together quite naturally. I serendipitously stumbled across algae cooking oil while at the venture studio Squared Circles. With helping launch Tàche I knew a lot about the perils of canola oil and the cooking oil industry at large. I started cooking with the oil at home and was blown away. It's packed with healthy Omega-9 fats, elevates the flavors of what your cooking, has the highest smoke point of any oil, it was truly remarkable. It was a natural progression for me to leave my role at Squared Circles and take Alage Cooking Club on as co-founder & CEO.

What does your company do or what problem does it aim to solve? We believe algae is the next 'it' ingredient in the culinary world because it can make your food taste better. It also happens the be healthier and better for the planet in many regards. The first product we are launching is our all-purpose, chef-grade cooking oil alongside Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park who is our Club Culinary Officer.

Any exciting initiatives coming up? We launched Feb 5th but was already been accepted into Thrive Market and Erewhon pre-launch. The oil has been shared with the teams at Sweetgeen, Goop Kitchen and Erewhon with great feedback. We brought on a cast of culinary pioneers such as Sophia Roe to share the algae oil gospel. We have a number of press articles in the making, and were featured as a top 10 trend in Snaxshot 'State of Snax' report. And while not related to Algae Cooking Club exactly, Lebron James is launching his 'Algae' shoe - the algae movement has hit pop-culture.

Raise Details:

Sustainable Care: evolvetogether

Sustainable daily essentials

Seed: $1.5M convertible note

Founder background: Cynthia Sakai is the founder of evolvetogether. She is a Japanese-American entrepreneur and designer, having founded and led companies in the accessories, jewelry, and lifestyle categories since age 18. Her brands — Girlboy by Koco, Vita Fede, and evolvetogether — have been fortunate to garner the attention and organic evangelism of celebrities, tastemakers, and everyday consumers alike. She is a Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) inductee.

What was the inspiration behind evolvetogether? When the pandemic hit, my team and I wanted to use our brand-building and design skills for good. We asked ourselves how we could go beyond product, offering better design and storytelling, all while taking care of people and our planet. That's why we started with medical-grade face masks, addressing our community's health and connectedness needs, and why we've expanded to better-for-you-and-earth personal care.

What does your company do or what problem does it aim to solve? We’re on a mission to connect people to what’s most essential — taking care of the planet and each other. We make beautiful, high-performing daily essentials that make sustainable living a simple part of our customers' everyday routines.

We also believe small, daily actions can add up to a lot of good. That's why we stamp each of our products with global coordinates as a reminder that we’re all connected, no matter our race, gender, religion, or where we live.

Any exciting initiatives coming up? We aim to be the go-to brand for sustainable luxury daily essentials, and we're thoughtfully expanding our product and retail footprints accordingly. Look out for new, innovative products from us in the upcoming months!

Raise Details & Brand Metrics:

Stay Hydrated with Buoy 🥤💦

Functional hydration drops

Bridge Round: $1M (before Series A next year)

Founders’ backgrounds: Daniel, along with his co-founders Eddie and Cole of Buoy all graduated from college in 2015 and took corporate jobs without knowing exactly what they wanted to do. About a year into their corporate journeys, they were all itching to try something new and branch out on their own. Daniel noticed himself constantly struggling with dehydration day to day and wondered if there were ways to hydrate drinks without having to rely on the sugary power electrolytes in the market today. When he went back to school to get his MBA, he partnered with a pharmaceutical expert to create Buoy. Eddie and Cole both joined him full time in 2019 once the product was ready to launch.

What was the inspiration behind Buoy? Our founding team has always been health conscious and we saw a huge opportunity to disrupt what was largely a sugary-sports drink and sweetened powder electrolyte market. Beyond cleaner labels, we wanted to reinvent the way people think about hydration and better serve our planet with sustainable supply chains alongside a philanthropic bottom line that accounts for donations to underserved communities.

What does your company do or what problem does it aim to solve? Buoy makes any drink much more hydrating in just a squeeze. Our liquid electrolyte and trace mineral blend dissolves instantly and evenly in any beverage, even alcohol and coffee. The liquid form factor is not only more convenient and sustainable than powders and dissolving tablets, it’s also more bioavailable as well, meaning your body will use more of the minerals you’re intaking with Buoy.

For every order on our website, we donate to verified 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations supporting people living with chronic conditions.

Anything you’d like our readers to know? We recently launched Digestion Drops that contain bioavailable herbs to soothe discomfort and optimize the digestion process. We have a product collab launching with NBA Superstar Chris Paul next month. In Q2, we will be releasing a completely new product line with a standard in supplements that have not been brought to the U.S. markets before.

Yet what we’re most proud of are all the ways Buoy is helping people who need it most: every day we get incredible reviews from the chronic illness community that we are happy to serve!

Raise Details & Brand Metrics:

Share Your Favorite Recipes on Pepper 🌶️👩🏽‍🍳

Digital social cookbook

Pre-seed: $1M

Founder background: Matt Schkolnick is the COO and co-founder of Pepper. He grew up in NJ as a competitive soccer player. He worked for two startups in college, graduated with a degree in Accounting/Finance from Penn State in 2019, received his Masters in Accounting at Rutgers, and worked in M&A at Deloitte for 3.5 years focusing on due diligence for VCs/PEs on early-stage tech companies. In his free time, Matt loves to exercise & play sports, cook, read, and spend time with family & friends.

What was the inspiration behind Pepper? I started Pepper when I became passionate about cooking for the first time in my life because of a GroupMe I was in with my college friends. We were all sharing what we were making in the kitchen, and this community made me enjoy cooking and made it way more fun by socializing the experience through discussing recipes/dishes. Helping others feel similarly to cooking led me to create Pepper.

What does your company do or what problem does it aim to solve? Pepper empowers home cooks with the tools & community to improve the cooking experience. We solve the problem of what to cook by helping users find simple, easy to follow recipes that feel approachable to make. We help users document recipes in digital cookbooks. And we offer cooking enthusiasts the opportunity to join a community of like-minded people.

Any exciting initiatives coming up? Quite a few including: Featured on Gordon Ramsay's new Fox show, Food Stars, integration with Instacart that allows recipes to be shoppable and have processed over $55k of grocery delivery volume, social audience of 1.6 million+, and completed an equity deal with top cooking content creators

Raise Details & Brand Metrics:

Some brands reached out to give an update on how they’re doing. Keep an eye out for these amazing founders!

Fair & Square

Gluten free, plant based, gut friendly crackers & snacks

“In 2024, Fair & Square is focused on growing through two channels: retail and food service. In retail, we’re focused on supporting the 500 doors we’ve opened with Sprouts and Whole Foods Market. In food service, we’re focused on margin accretive sampling, which is profitable samples sold to corporate offices, hospitals, schools and other venues where snacks are widely available. With the launch of our two newest SKUs last month, we are diversifying our product portfolio with both savory and sweet options to broaden our appeal and position ourselves for expanded distribution. We have significant traction and have achieved this entirely through grassroots marketing. We have more than doubled our online community in the last 8 months through creative brand partnerships, unpaid media opportunities and boots on the ground demos and sampling. We have ambitious revenue targets for 2024 and are seeking capital to support our strategic initiatives. The capital will go towards in-store merchandising, demos, overhead and inventory.” - Nicole Herman, VP Marketing

Congratulations to Bluestein Ventures on their latest raise!

"Congratulations to Bluestein Ventures on closing a $45M Fund III. Bluestein invests in technology across the food supply chain. They've amassed an impressive portfolio of more than 50 companies between Fund I and II, with previous investments including Factor75, Foxtrot, and Meati.

The firm intends to deploy Fund III between 20 - 25 companies. It has already invested in a few, including BiomeSense, an end-to-end platform to scale gut microbiome research and testing; WECO Hospitality, a chef-quality prepared-meal delivery service; and Attane Health, a marketplace for food prescriptions for those with chronic conditions.

‘We are continuing to build out a portfolio with an emphasis on how we transform the food system. Our broad themes this time are nutrition, sustainability and digitization. We look for what is happening at the early stages of innovation within those spaces.'"

And if you’d like an intro to the founders, feel free to reach out ([email protected])!

-Lucy