In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews traders about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the funding playbooks of profitable Local weather Tech CEOs and Main VCs.
Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to quite a few world meals tech accelerators and corporations, together with various proteins and mobile agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech firms. This podcast is syndicated by means of our media companions; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.
Episode 32: Catchfree
On this episode, I spoke with Severin Eder, co-founder of Catchfree, a Swiss startup creating plant-based seafood options. Severin shares the story behind their latest 1.2M CHF seed spherical, why they’ve taken a B2B-first strategy, and the way they’re scaling with out patents—utilizing commerce secrets and techniques, chef-led validation, and investor relationships rooted in regional assist. We unpack startup classes round cap desk alignment, food-tech fundraising in as we speak’s market, and the way Catchfree constructed momentum by letting their product—and never simply their pitch—do the speaking.
Key Details Catchfree:
- Purpose: To craft plant-only seafood with out harming nature.
- Lately raised a 1.2M CHF seed spherical co-led by FortyOne Group and Stiftung Startfelt.
Alex’s High Findings:
- Good Capital By Regional Foundations and Strategic Angels. The seed spherical (CHF 1.2M) was raised by means of a regional basis (Stiftung Startfeld) and personal fairness group (FortyOne Group), not conventional VCs. “ There was an occasion that this basis frequently holds the place you can pitch your startup in entrance of traders. What was nice for us was that we not solely had the possibility to explain our imaginative and prescient in a pitch, but in addition let the traders expertise it. Catchfree merchandise throughout a tasting afterwards. As they are saying, the way in which to the guts is thru the abdomen. This additionally applies to the success of promoting meals innovation. We met our lead investor throughout one in all these occasions. “
- Avoiding IP Pitfalls: Commerce Secrets and techniques Over Patents. The crew opted for commerce secrets and techniques as a substitute of early patent filings to retain flexibility, scale back value, and keep away from public disclosures till commercialization. “ We work loads with commerce secrets and techniques at the start, and we have now modified our recipes loads and significantly over the past three years. Our firm was based in mid-2024, and since then, our complete recipe strategy has been. Even our product portfolio has all advanced and pivoted a bit bit primarily based in the marketplace insights. I’d say in meals tech, within the sense that you just work loads with recipe improvement, you’re employed loads with commerce secrets and techniques, and the recipe we have now proper now could be utterly totally different from what was performed again on the time. Even the merchandise we’re engaged on proper now, or the merchandise that we’re gonna launch now, weren’t even within the ideation again on the time.”
- Objection Dealing with: Style First, Tech Second. Skepticism about shopper adoption and scalability was overcome by means of relentless tastings (~70) and clear scale-up roadmaps. “When you might have a bodily product, folks need to expertise it — and it’s your best asset. We outlined a sound technological roadmap… and projections to achieve worth parity.”
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Catch the complete podcast series here.
