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Image Credits:Sean Su, Purple Photo Group / Ashley Hartman and Andrew Bluestein, managing partners at Bluestein Ventures
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Image Credits:Sean Su, Purple Photo Group / Ashley Hartman and Andrew Bluestein, managing partners at Bluestein Ventures
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Food technical school investment may have declined along with overall venture working capital , butBluestein Venturesis not letting that slow it down . The Chicago - based early - degree venture capital firm closed on $ 45 million in capital commitment for its Fund III .
Andrew Bluestein , co - managing partner of Bluestein Ventures , founded the firm in 2014 and brought on Ashley Hartman , also co - managing married person , eight years ago . They get together other speculation capital letter firms , likeKost Capital , Supply Change CapitalandJoyful Ventures , that have latterly raised novel funds to invest in intellectual nourishment tech .
Bluestein Ventures invests at pre - seeded player to Series A and has amassed a portfolio of more than 50 companies , aim consumer - facing technology across the intellectual nourishment provision chain like health and wellness , proprietary nutrient technical school , commerce and digital technology .
Previous investments include Factor75 , a disposed meal bringing overhaul acquired by HelloFresh in 2020;Foxtrot , a group of technical school - enabled corner stores;FourKites , which developed freightage visibility software package ; andMeati , a mycelium - based substitute protein . It was also an former investor inNew Culture , which is create animal - free cheese products .
affluent with fresh capital , Foxtrot ’s ‘ gizmo store of the future ’ is derive to a location near you
The first two investment company were drop anchor by the Bluestein Family , which includes Ilene Gordon , former chairman and CEO of fixings company Ingredion , and Bram Bluestein , a firm advisor .
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In addition to the fellowship role , the third stock is the first to include a chemical group of external investors . The radical include strategics , extra home power , executives and enterpriser from the food sphere . In association with the newfangled fund , Bluestein and Hartman are joined by Lindsay Levin , who was previously master marketing officer at RXBAR , as venture pardner .
“ When we started Bluestein Ventures , people would ask us why we were investing in food , ” Bluestein told TechCrunch . “ Now that we ’ve seen a flock of the vogue around consumers alter their consumption habits or the focus more on wellness and wellness , it ’s a much easier conversation to have . ”
The firm mean to deploy Fund III into between 20 and 25 companies . It has already invest in a few company , including BiomeSense , an end - to - goal political program to scale gut microbiome research and testing ; WECO Hospitality , a chef - quality organize - repast deliverance service ; and Attane Health , a marketplace for food for thought prescriptions for those with inveterate conditions .
nutrient technology , similar to healthcare technology , can take some R&D time to be in full developed . Bluestein Ventures consider the sphere is at some major prosody points that will accelerate initiation in the next few old age , especially as more consumer prioritize their health and wellness , Hartman told TechCrunch .
Add in technologies that are promote , like artificial intelligence , political machine learning and synthetic biota fermentation . On the regulatory side , the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is okay newfangled ingredients and devices and aid to reframe health .
“ We take a appendage approach to our investing across the supply Sir Ernst Boris Chain , and we ’re investing in the earlier stage of a company ’s lifecycle , ” Hartman told TechCrunch . “ For Fund III , we ’re continuing to build out a portfolio with an accent on how we transform the food scheme . Our full themes this time are nutrition , sustainability and digitization . We look for what is happening at the early stages of innovation within those spaces . ”
Investors drool over food technical school companies perfecting precision fermentation
