The Startup CPG Podcast

In this bonus solo episode, host Daniel Scharff breaks down everything founders need to know about Founders & Funders, Startup CPG's flagship fundraising event happening December 10th in New York City, to help you decide whether you should apply.


Daniel explains why he built the event: after hearing founders describe spending up to 50% of their time on fundraising, he wanted to create a highly efficient, application-based summit that brings together the top 100 VCs in emerging CPG with the community's strongest brands for a single, high-impact day. Unlike the free, ticketed regional roadshows Startup CPG runs throughout the year, the December event is capped, competitive, and application-based, designed around fast, curated one-on-one meetings rather than open networking alone.


Daniel walks through exactly how the day works, from the one-pager application brands submit ahead of time (which VCs review to select the meetings they want) to what a typical five-to-ten-minute investor conversation actually looks like. He also shares who's already confirmed to attend, from major retailers to dozens of top consumer VC firms, and offers honest, practical advice on applying, including how early you should apply and what actually matters in your application video.


Listen in as he covers:

  • Why Daniel created Founders & Funders after hearing founders describe spending half their time on fundraising
  • The difference between Startup CPG's free, ticketed roadshows and the application-based December summit
  • How the one-pager application works, and why VCs use it to pre-select which brands they want to meet
  • What a typical one-on-one meeting at the event actually looks like, and how long they really last
  • Why Daniel believes even brands not actively fundraising yet should consider applying for 2027
  • The retailers and VCs already confirmed to attend this year's event, including 7-Eleven Ventures, Albertsons, Walmart, and dozens of leading consumer VC firms
  • How the rolling, batch-based application review process works, and why applying early matters
  • What to actually include in your application video, and why it doesn't need to be polished
  • Why building relationships with investors early, even before you're ready to raise, pays off later
  • How the roadshows can be a great alternative or complement for brands who aren't accepted to the December event


Apply for Founders & Funders by Startup CPG: https://bit.ly/podcastfnf



Episodes mentioned in this episode:


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Show Links:

Creators and Guests

Host
Daniel Scharff
Founder/CEO, Startup CPG

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

Daniel Scharff
Welcome to the Startup CPG Podcast. Today's episode is a little different. If you're looking for a sign whether you should apply to founders and funders, this is it. This is your sign. This is your wake up call. Today's episode, it's just me. I'm talking to you about the event. I want to make sure that everybody out there really has it clear in their mind whether it might be a good fit for them, whether they should consider it, what actually happens at the event and who is attending it. I'm going to take you through all of that today. If at the end you're convinced you should apply, check the show notes. We've got the direct link to the application for you and good luck to everybody. All right, here we go. Hello, everybody.

00:50
Daniel Scharff
I have been trotting around the country getting so many questions about our Founders and Funders event. I wanted to just record a solo episode here telling you all about it, why I created it, why we do it, why we think it's really important for brands, and why we believe that it is really important for you to apply for it right away. Founders and funders, we have this flagship event that happens December 10th in New York City. Over the course of this year, we've had four road shows allowing brands to meet the most significant VCs around the country. And it all builds up to this December event in New York City. The main difference is the December event, this major summit is application based. The roadshows, we love that all brands can buy tickets for those. The December event, the attendance is cap.

01:33
Daniel Scharff
This is the biggest event of the year, so it is application based. It's very competitive to get in because the value of it is unreal. We are bringing the top 100 VCs in emerging CPG for a full day event. It's really thoughtfully designed. So there's going to be one one meetings that happen throughout the day. Probably a thousand one one meetings total. And we do that because I believe that is the most productive way to have an event. If you look at other trade shows that attract these kind of VCs, it's so hard to predict whether you're even going to meet the right VCs, whether they're looking for your kind of a product or even they might be the right match for you. We want to create a highly productive, tailored event that brings the most value for everybody.

02:19
Daniel Scharff
Hence founders and funders, which attracts the top brands of the year, the top VCs of the year, and puts them together in a way that maximizes the chance of checks getting written. That's the output that we want a little bit more about why we created this thing. I heard from a lot of people, including Paul from our Bora, that he had been spending 50% of his time the entire journey on fundraising. It makes my skin crawl when I hear that. Because we do this for founders, we live for founders. And I want you to building your business, not spending time trying to get checks all the time, because it's hard enough as it is. And I think on the parts that take the most amount of time, number one, identifying who all the VCs are, number two, doing outreach.

03:05
Daniel Scharff
Number three, keeping up the momentum with them. It's hard for me to really help with the relationship maintenance part, but I can definitely help you understand who are the VCs and how could I try to meet them in a way where we can also quickly understand if it's worth keeping in touch with. Step one for us was actually building our database of all of the most active VCs. It's available on our website. Once we had created that, were looking at it and thinking, gosh, there are so many great VCs who are actually writing checks right now. What if we had got all of them together for an event in one room where they could meet the amazing brands from our community and hopefully just make more of these investments happen.

03:46
Daniel Scharff
I think we really did it at the right time as well, because a while back I was actually pretty down on the investing landscape in general. It seemed like all of the funds had moved later stage. There weren't as many people writing checks into pre seed to even series B brands. But that started turning around. And as I started making that database and meeting the brands and listening to Hannah's interviews on this podcast with all the investors, I realized it's actually flourishing. There's a lot of M and A activity happening in the later stage, which trickles down and encourages later stage investment, which encourages earlier stage investment. It's actually a great time for early stage brands to fundraise to meet investors. That was the impetus behind this event.

04:30
Daniel Scharff
And I hope that this event that we throw will only contribute to that and create so much excitement and bring the most amazing investment opportunities to investors that we can spur even more investment in emerging cpg. And and I believe that it is actually happening. So that's why we created this event. I believe that generally the fundraising process is incredibly inefficient. It's not like buyers, where you have submission portals for all the retailers and the known universes of retailers is actually pretty tight. You can look at our retail tracker and see who all of them are and your broker knows who all of them are. And that's a pretty established process as well. It's easy to know who all of them are. In investment fundraising world, that's just not as true. It actually takes a long time to figure it out.

05:19
Daniel Scharff
I think in the old world you would have been asking other brands who they had raised from trying to Google around for different lists, but we've done all that work for you. When I started recruiting for this event, I started asking around some of the VCs that we had gotten to know. Like, hey, if we put on this kind of an event, would you attend? And what we heard from them was overwhelmingly, yes, that is a fit for us because there is nothing like that in this industry. There is no early stage dedicated fundraising event where we can meet the best pipeline of these early brands. And anybody who works for a VC or has their own vc, that's their job. They want deal flow, they want high quality deal flow.

06:01
Daniel Scharff
They want to be meeting the brands that could be a fit for their thesis and to get to know them and obviously eventually write checks and hopefully make money with all of them. Overall, if you're thinking about applying, I want you to think about it this way. You might not be actively fundraising right now. In fact, if you're trying to close your round right now, it might be too late even because the event isn't going to happen until December. Although your round, you may hope to close before then, but may actually not. I really believe that this event is a fit for anyone who is even considering fundraising in 2027. The reason for that, I think a lot of people may be working on retailer openings or whatever right now and thinking, yeah, I might raise in the middle of 2027.

06:46
Daniel Scharff
That's going to come a lot sooner than you think. Also, this process of fundraising takes a lot longer than you think. The number one thing that I hear from brands who have successfully fundraised is I wish I had started the process earlier because it's lengthy getting to know a vc. I really believe even if you are accepted to this event and come, it may take a couple times. Meeting the same VC and building the relationship before you will actually have a good shot at getting a check from them. The whole thing takes a long time. There's a lot of trust that you have to build over time. You're going to want to get the best terms, meet the right VCs who you really want to work with.

07:25
Daniel Scharff
And I would just try to give yourself as much time as possible for that so you're not desperate, trying to chase a close when you're running out of money or you have to, I think in a worst case scenario, say no to an amazing opportunity because you just don't have a way to fund it. And I hear that happen all the time. People post on our slack, hey, I've got this incredible opportunity. I don't have a way to fund it. I'm going to have to say no to it. I want you to at least have the option available to you of a funder who is interested in your journey and wants to jump on board with you overall. What's going to happen at this event?

08:00
Daniel Scharff
So generally we structure the day in as productive a way as possible, which means for the brands who are accepted ahead of time, we are going to ask you to fill out a very tight one pager template that has all the information about your brand. It's beautifully designed. It asks for your mission, information about the founders, your fundraising history, your traction points. You have to put images of your products and the SRPs.

08:25
Daniel Scharff
It's a really tight way for the investors to be able to review every single brand that is coming because we're going to send them a PDF with 201 pagers that they have to be able to get through really quickly searching for brands that are interesting to them that might fit their investment thesis and tell us then, okay, Here are the 12 that I would like for you to arrange a one one meeting with at the actual show and that's going to be an incredible way to start your journey with them because if you meet with them at the show, it means they've already expressed a real interest in you and it's not cold. Those discussions will start on a completely different note. When both people have opted into a discussion like that, you'll see the meetings will be fast and furious.

09:10
Daniel Scharff
Typically they're about five to ten minutes this initial one one discussion, but people are there all day so you can always circle back with them. Our goal is not to try to give you 30 minutes with an investor because that would actually limit how much time you get with everybody. If you just meet with them for 30 minutes, you're only going to get to talk to a couple people. We would like to get you the beginning conversation with as many funders as possible and for them also we want them to meet as many brands as possible and then great, you all can connect afterwards or even later in the day at the event because there's plenty of networking time built in as well. From a funder perspective, they're looking at the event really as the greatest pipeline for them to discover emerging brands.

09:55
Daniel Scharff
And they really do run the full gamut. We have plenty of firms there who invest in even pre seed companies. We also have ones who really don't get started until series A, Series B. But again, it's really great to start building your relationship with them early on because you will hear this from VCs over and over again. They really like to get to know a founder. They like to see over the long run. Are they doing the things that they tell you they're going to do? Are they hitting milestones? Can you build trust with them over time? So it's really an incredible opportunity for them to get to see some of you rising stars really early on, even if they're not actually going to cut checks until later in your fundraising journey. But again, there are plenty of VCs there.

10:40
Daniel Scharff
We have a hundred in total who are actually going to cut your first check. I really believe that. Also, we have recruited some incredible retailers to come. Some of them invest and some of them touch investment in tangential ways or really just want to get to know the best brands of the year who are at this event. Just to list a bunch of the people who are coming because I want you to hear all these names that you will recognize. So from a retailer perspective, already we have confirmed seven ventures from 7Eleven Albertsons Growth Accelerator program, Sprouts, Walmart. There'll be a bunch more that sign on as well. Thrive Market I know is coming from a VC perspective. I'm just going to read a bunch of names here and these are just the ones that have already confirmed for this year.

11:26
Daniel Scharff
And we have a couple months to go and every day we're getting inbound requests from them. So get ready. Let's see how fast I can get through this.

11:33
Daniel Scharff
Amberstone, ASTO Consumer Partners, Barrel Ventures, BFG Partners, Bluestein Ventures, Brand Project, Kavu Consumer Partners Sarity Partners Coefficient Capital, Cult Capital Cutting Horse, Enlightened Hospitality Investments, FNF Ventures, FF2032 that's part of Bimbo Ventures, First Look Ventures, Great Circle Ventures, Greycroft Ground Force Capital, Guild Capital, Hepco Capital Management Human Co Investments Humble Growth idea Farm Ventures, iHeartMedia Imaginary Ventures Joyce Partners El Caterton Manitry Partners Melitas Ventures Norwest Venture Partners Pallet Ventures Paperboy Ventures Prelude Growth Partners Provenance Consumer Partners RCV Partners Rich Product Ventures, Rokhan Venture Partners, Silva Ventures, City Capital, Simple Food Ventures, Sonoma Brand Capital, Space Station Investments, Springdale Ventures, Stripe Sugar Capital, the Family, Fun Tonic Ventures, Touch Capital, True Beauty Ventures, TSG Consumer Partners, Vanquish Equity, VHS Ventures and Willow Growth Partners. That's just as of today.

12:27
Daniel Scharff
I'm sorry if I missed anyone who signs on after this before the episode gets published, but there are so many great people who are going to be in this room, many of them traveling from all over the country to come to this incredible event in New York City to meet you. In terms of how the day goes, these meetings, you can hear past episodes that will give you a lot of tips. There's a great one that we did with our friends from Leisure, Hydration and Melitas that talks about recommendations for brands in these meetings. But there's a really pro way to do it that's not just about giving someone a full five minute pitch, but rather they're going to know about your brand because they've chosen you from the one pager already.

13:02
Daniel Scharff
And really asking smart questions that are also showing you've done your homework on them, you understand who they are and what they look for. And in a way you're interviewing them as well to see if they could be the right partner for you. So I encourage anybody who's interested to go back and have a listen to that past episode with Leisure. It really is a great one. And again, just keep in mind you're not necessarily trying to close an investment on the spot. That's really unlikely. You're trying to build a relationship. So having a good conversation that's positive, that keeps people wanting to learn more and follow more about your brand and get to know you and stay in touch. That's really the goal.

13:37
Daniel Scharff
And just making a great impression on them, showing them that you are a confident, competent founder who knows their ambition and the opportunity ahead of them and is really going for it. Obviously, everybody should be extremely well prepared. They may ask you specific numbers, they may want you to concisely talk about your traction. All of this you'll have done in the one pager and just be ready to really naturally explain it to people and make sure that while you're explaining all of the numbers and everything, they still understand and see the passion in your eyes and your heart because they are taking big bets on founders, especially at the early stage. So what I'd like to end with is talking to you a little bit more about the value of the event.

14:21
Daniel Scharff
I think there is so much there and again, it is Application based. We are going to get so many applications overall for this event. The earlier that you apply, the better, because it's on a rolling basis. So we're basically reviewing these in batches. Like every hundred applications will then be reviewed together and their acceptances that come out of that. I really apologize to all of the brands who would like to get to this event especially we are pumping it up and telling you how great it's going to be. And a lot of people will not be accepted for the event. We do have a hard cap on how many people we can have. Trust me, it's the last thing that we want to do to ever say no to brands. We do have to do it a lot of the time.

14:57
Daniel Scharff
And that's exactly why we created the road show format of this. And we're going to be increasing that next year because we want you to have access to these VCs. So even if you aren't accepted, please use the list of VCs from this event, the one from our database as well, on our website, which is free for everyone to access to build relationships with these VCs. And I really encourage you to attend the roadshows that we have because it's the exact same format and it happens all over the country. And you can meet VCs in your region or you can travel to those events to meet as many VCs as possible. And these events are stacked with VCs. The road shows are getting between 20 and 60 VCs at each of the stops, depending on the city. And it's just, again, a great opportunity.

15:38
Daniel Scharff
The feedback has been wonderful on those, but again, this December 1st is selective. The earlier that you apply, the better, because when it gets to that later stage and we only have a few slots left, it becomes incredibly competitive. So for the best chance, apply as soon as possible and really put your best foot forward. There's a lot in there in the application and there is a whole team that reviews all of these applications and they do it extremely conscientiously. They are going through everything. They're going through what we ask for around your traction, around your fundraising history, looking at the video that you submit as well on the video, I think that does trip up some people. We're not expecting some polished video with cap cut and all this stuff. Really.

16:23
Daniel Scharff
This is a grip it and rip it exercise of turn your iPhone around, face it at you, and just tell us for one minute about your business. And all the other stuff is in there in your application. So don't worry about everything, really. Just I want to see the best summary of your business and why you are fundraising and why you think you'd be a good fit for this event. So don't overthink it, don't spend too much time on it. Definitely don't let it delay you from actually submitting for the event. Just get it done. So overall message here, if you're even thinking about applying, do it. If you're even thinking maybe I will need to fundraise in 2027, if all of these things go right, I might need the capital. Definitely apply.

17:07
Daniel Scharff
I really believe so much in the value of this event and the feedback from brands was so incredible last year. I just wanted to make sure that all of you heard this from me. Why we do it, how the event actually works, what is the value that you can get from it as a brand. All of the networking, meeting other brands who are in the room, there's so much great stuff that actually happens there. And for us as a community, I was a brand and I want to create all of the things that I would have wanted as a brand that weren't out there. And that's why you see all of the grocery run events that we create, all the opportunities and access to, I think the most important stakeholders in this industry who can do the most to help your business.

17:48
Daniel Scharff
I think we really crush it on the distribution side with all of the grocery run events and our opportunity knocks campaigns. And this is how we do it to try to help you get investment or at least make the fundraising process less laborious for you. Just less time wasted on the early stuff, figuring out who people are and where they're going to be and how can you get a LinkedIn message to them that they'll respond to. We can't fix everything for you, but this is really the best way that we have to try to grease the whole wheels of this fundraising operation and bring more investment to early stage brands and save you time as a founder in this whole process. So good luck to everybody in the application.

18:29
Daniel Scharff
Again, I'm sorry if you weren't selected this year, but who knows, maybe it's just not the right year for you. Maybe next year will better opportunity. We will keep trying to grow the capacity of this event as we're able to. You can probably imagine this is actually quite a complex and expensive event for us to put on. We definitely want to grow it as we can, but we're really focused on the quality, it being valuable for everybody. We take that responsibility so seriously of when brands are accepted and they're flying into New York for this event during an expensive time of just absolutely delivering for them and the VCs, the best experience possible for the VCs. That's what keeps them coming back. And they loved the event last year.

19:10
Daniel Scharff
So we do it as best we can in the way that we believe is the most impactful and we always will. Thanks everybody for listening. I hope to see you there or at one of our road shows in 2027. And good news. We're expanding the number of road shows and we have some really cool ones that we will announce coming up. Thank you everybody. Take care of well, my friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in cpg. As you may know, we're not just a podcast. We're a community of brands and experts and you should join. You can sign up @startupcpg.com you'll then get an invite to our online Slack community.

19:51
Daniel Scharff
You're going to hear about amazing events near you, all of our special opportunities to get you a front of buyers, investors, brands and more. It's a free community. So what are you waiting for? I will see you there or on our next episode. Bye Bye.