Last fall I sat on a panel at Startup Week to about B2C (Business To Consumer) businesses, especially food businesses, here in Seattle. One of the questions to panelists was: Is Seattle a particularly good place to build this kind of business? And honestly, when I see what a well organized angel stack we have built around tech companies and healthcare, I have to say a relative NO – Seattle is not a particularly good place to build a food business. It can be done, we have a food truck ecosystem, there are commercial kitchens around, restaurants get developed constantly though not in any way that is transparent to me. I think we could do better.
The Edible Alpha podcast I mentioned a post or two ago is put out by a woman with the University of Wisconsin Extension program. She has developed a bootcamp for Entrepreneurs, and a training for would-be company consultants (or investors!) about how to structure financing for a growing food business. Margins in food businesses are lower than in tech companies, and cashflows available earlier, so it makes sense to combine debt with the equity. This is not something Northwest investors have as much experience with.
I am partnering with Domonique Juleon at Business Impact Northwest to bring Tera out to do her trainings. For each group it would be: two days of training, a 4-6 week break (mostly for the entrepreneurs to do some work in response) and then two more days of training. If you are interested as an entrepreneur, please contact DomoniqueJ at businessimpactnw.org. If you are interested as a potential investor/consultant, please contact me. Our goal is 6-10 of each type in order to bring this training here. In an ideal world, we would aim for March or April of 2019 to start.
Shaulablog 