Are you a food innovator?

Join our 16-week incubation/acceleration program to
build and scale your food startup.

APPLY NOW

Accepting applications for March 2019

WHY PROVEG?

Over the past 10 years, ProVeg has been continuously working with both startups and established companies to expand the plant-based food system. We have an excellent grasp of changing market needs and are ideally placed to help maximise the impact of new startups by connecting them to a large international network of key players in the food industry.

Our partners include food producers, restaurants, catering firms, and canteens, as well as lawyers, investors, health insurance companies, and the medical community.

Our Corporate Outreach and Services team comprises experts in communication, food production consulting, catering, and startups, as well as product development and certification. Our programmes include:

Corporate
Outreach

Food
Services

Test
Community

Fairs and
Events

V-Label

LEARN MORE ABOUT PROVEG AND GET INVOLVED

OUR PROGRAMME

In our 16-week Incubator Programme we go through all subjects which make companies successful.

Our Incubator Programme is flexible and tailored to the specific needs of each startup. It consists of workshops covering subjects relevant to all participants, including online conferences from experts in their fields and one-on-one sessions with mentors and coaches.

The programme covers startups’ visions and missions, as well as the testing of products for market entry. Startups work on their brand, marketing strategies, and concrete activities in order to optimize sales and market footprint. Supply chain management will be also be explored, identifying potential cost-savings and bottlenecks.

Finally, we get your startup ready for scaling, prepare you for the perfect investor pitch, and help you to find the best partner possible, using our network of experts, food companies, distributors, and investors.

We are looking forward to receiving your application and hearing about your great business ideas.

Together we can change the world!

our mentors

David Benzaquen
CEO
PlantBased Solutions, Ocean Hugger Foods

Founder and CEO of PlantBased Solutions, an award-winning, strategic brand management, marketing, and operations consultancy for plant-based consumer products. PlantBased Solutions has advised some of the world’s largest and most successful meat and dairy-alternative brands, including Gardein, Daiya, Miyoko’s Kitchen and more. David is also the CEO of Ocean Hugger Foods. Founded by Certified Master Chef James Corwell, Ocean Hugger Foods makes delicious, plant-based alternatives to the world’s most popular seafood items to stop the overfishing crisis. Ocean Hugger Foods’ flagship product, Ahimi, an alternative to raw tuna made from tomatoes, is sold throughout the US and Canada and will be launching in Europe and Asia in 2019. The company will also soon launch its eggplant-based eel, carrot-based salmon and more. Ocean Hugger Foods was recently recognized as Whole Foods Market’s Supplier of the Year for Outstanding Innovation. Benzaquen serves as an adviser to multiple food accelerators, venture capital funds and startups. He and his companies have been profiled in The New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, Wired, Inc, CNN and more.

Måns Ullerstam
Founder
Kale United

Serial entrepreneur building many companies / teams from 1-100 people. Raised a lot of money with venture capitalists in the last 20 years. Plant-based investor & vegan. Founder of Kale United, a Swedish ethical holding company with a vision to create a plant-based world. Their mission is to increase the global availability and awareness of plant-based products. Working together, they will make plant-based brands game-changers on the global stage. 

Dr. Mark Post, CEO Mosa Meat

Dubbed ‘the father of clean meat’, Dr Post presented the first ‘clean meat’ patty in 2013. Post first joined the KNAW Interuniversity Cardiology Institute of the Netherlands in 1989 before being appointed full-time Assistant Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School in 1996. Five years later, he moved with his lab to Dartmouth Medical School, and was appointed Associate Professor of Medicine and of Physiology.

Matt Tom
Founder & CEO
MTCC LLC

 Matt specializes in New Product Development and Commercialization, especially in the food technology space where he integrates the sciences with digital technologies. With over 15 years of experience in the Food & Beverage sector, from planting to harvest to marketplace and full life cycle testing, Matt has been involved with bringing tasty and innovative plant-based foods to the market that are healthier and more sustainable than their non-plant-based counterparts, first through government research at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service collaborating with companies like PepsiCo, General Mills, Clorox, and P&G, and more recently at Silicon Valley food tech startups such as Impossible Foods, Kite Hill, Hampton Creek, Ripple Foods, and more. Matt is passionate about social impact, public health, and environmental sustainability via the world’s food system. He is excited to help entrepreneurs make a splash in this area! To learn more about him and his work, please visit his website at mtcc.io. 

Rich Kelleman
Founder & CEO
Bond

20+ years working as a strategic planner at some of the most creative agencies in the world (CP+B, Fallon, Goodby, FCB), for clients like P&G, Kellogg’s, Facebook and Chevrolet. Now the founder & CEO of Bond, working with some of the world’s most progressive veterinarians, scientists and technologies to understand how to take bigger leaps with pet food. Leaps that can lead to food that’s exceptionally cleaner, kinder and nutritious.

Jan Wirsam, Professor Hochschule Für Technik Und Wirtschaft Berlin

Prof. Jan Wirsam is focusing on innovation, production management, digitalisation and business model innovations, as well as plant based value creation and sustainability at the Technical University of Applied Science (HTW). He has been working closely with ProVeg international on various projects over the past three years.

Bob Kodrzycki
Biotech business leader

29 years of industry experience in synthetic biology, microbials, biologicals and genomics in the agtech, industrial biotech and renewables sectors. A PhD scientist who understands business. Combines a passion for biotech, experience in Fortune 500 and startup companies as well as management skill to move bio-based products to the market. Helping science-based companies improve their operations and also investors with due diligence. 

Viktor Maciag
Lead Tissue Engineer

5 years of work experience in biological laboratory specializing in mammalian cell culture. Experienced in building laboratory and starting projects from scratch, and most mammalian cell culture and laboratory techniques. Plus working as a tissue engineer at his second, very nascent, start up. Familiar with looking for new hires and growing out a team. Running, designing, researching, and developing experiments. Taught and mentored others in many of these practices. 

Frank Cordesmeyer
Co-Founder & CEO
Good Seed Ventures

Frank is a food scientist focusing on the development of alternative protein sources. He is the Co-Founder & CEO of Good Seed Ventures, a venture capital fund dedicated towards innovative and sustainable solutions within the food value chain. As the Director of Communications Europe at the Cellular Agriculture Society, a non-profit dedicated to advancing the field of cellular agriculture, Frank mobilizes volunteering and collaboration efforts across Europe, engaging academic, governmental, and industry leaders.

Jörn Gutowski
Founder
TRY FOODS, Zeevi

A native of Northern Germany, Jörn Gutowski spent most of his young adulthood abroad. While working for an international non-profit he travelled worldwide and was exposed to many new cultural and culinary experiences. His passion and appreciation for food was so deeply affected that in 2013 he decided to put his 10+ years background in marketing and business into his new venture TRY FOODS. Following the slogan „feed your curiosity“, TRY FOODS has been developing tasting sets helping people to expand their knowledge of and their palate for high-quality food products. Most recently, he co-founded Zeevi, another food startup which is producing tofu based on chickpeas. 

Jared Schachter
Founder, Freelance Consultant
Biblio-app

Jared has a diverse background in Strategy, Finance, Operations, and Product. He has worked directly with entrepreneurs and C-level executives and has a proven track-record of making data-driven decisions, optimizing operations, and managing teams and projects in organizations of all sizes. He’s also passionate about making a positive impact in the world and his interests lie in mindfulness / personal development, plant-based / clean meat, effective altruism, and exploring different cultures through global travel. 

Sebastian Joy, ProVeg Co-Founder & CEO

Sebastian Joy is one of the most renowned representatives of the vegan movement in Europe. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of ProVeg International, and is a board member of the European Vegetarian Union (EVU). He also is a lecturer in nonprofit management at the Berlin School of Economics and Law.

Matthias Rohra, ProVeg COO

Matthias Rohra has more than 20 years experience in business, including leading a marketing agency, being a brand business development manager, as well as marketing director at the Coca-Cola Company and McFit, Europe’s largest gym chain.

Jan Bredack, Founder Veganz

Jan Bredack is the Founder and CEO of Veganz, the first vegan supermarket chain in Europe. The wholesale activity of the Veganz group has increased impressively since the beginning of 2014 and their shop-in-shop concept has been successful in hundreds of retail grocery stores. Prior to founding Veganz, Jan Bredack was a former Senior Manager with Mercedes Benz.

Kati Radlof, Founder Loose Frog Consulting

Kati Radloff is the founder of Loose Frog Consulting, an agency that specialises in public grant procurement in the European and national context. Her expertise lies in spotting available grants, conceptualizing project ideas, bringing project partners together, and accompanying proposal writings up to submission.

Tobias Leenaert, Author and Director Ceva

Tobias Leenaert is a longtime speaker, trainer, and strategist. He is also the co-founder of the Belgian organization EVA (Ethical Vegetarian Alternative), the first vegetarian/vegan organization to receive structural funding from a national government. Under Tobias’ management, EVA launched a successful campaign that resulted with the city of Ghent becoming the first city ever to officially support a weekly vegetarian day. Tobias gives animal advocacy trainings worldwide together with Melanie Joy, for the Center of Effective Vegan Advocacy (CEVA). He is also co-founder of ProVeg.

Elliot Roth
CEO, DIY Astrobiologist & Writer
Spira Inc.

Elliot is incredibly motivated to solve physiological needs using simple biological design. He had 2 successful non-profits, 6 failed startups and raised 100’s of thousands of dollars for his companies. After being trained as a University Innovation Fellow at the Stanford d.School, Elliot started multiple entrepreneurial projects including the DIYbio lab Indie Lab, TEDxVCU, and 6 failed startups. He graduated Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in Biomedical Engineering and spent 5 years consulting in product design and business strategy before starting Spira.
He is a Kairos Fellow, a Seasteading Ambassador, a member of the TFF NextGen Council, and sits on the Virginia Governor’s Council for Youth Entrepreneurship. Elliot has spoken at Synbiobeta, SXSW, and Thought for Food on social impact, synthetic biology and food. 

Devon Fritz, Director Founders Pledge, Germany

Devon joined Founders Pledge, following a diverse background in consulting and software development for both the public and private sectors, working for various organizations as well as running his own business. He organizes networking events with high-profile speakers for European founders.Through Founders Pledge, founders commit to donating at least 2% of their personal proceeds upon exit. Pledgers join a network of successful entrepreneurs and investors who’ve all made the same commitment. Since June 2015, Founders Pledge has raised more than $400 million for charity.

Kurt Schmidinger, Future FoodsAustria

Kurt Schmidinger is a geophysicist and earned a doctorate in food science in Vienna, focusing his dissertation on clean (i.e., cultured) and plant-based alternatives to animal products. In 2005, he founded the project Future Food, which gathers and presents a worldwide portfolio of alternatives to animal products for human nutrition, as well as possible future technologies for food production, such as biofermentation and clean meat.

INTERESTED IN MENTORING A STARTUP? READ MORE

Comprehensive network of experienced business coaches and consultants

  • specialising in start-up companies
  • provided by ACT

Corporate Partners

Corporation partnerships are essential for startups to create a linkage with other service providers and the private sector. Corporate support allows value generation to startups that will expand their knowledge in aspects of structure and management of a company which add to the growth of startups.

Innovation Partners

Innovation partnerships are important to us to promote inspiration and synergise the entrepreneur network. The lens of innovation will only be expanded with partnerships that will assist in nurturing and fueling creativity along with expertise. It is important to make valuable innovation connections in order to accelerate and validate ideas that will only result in great outcomes.

Delivery Startups

We have partnered with delivery services that are aimed at helping to boost the growth and capacity of both our startups and delivery startups. With more access to information and customers, we want to ensure that the innovative ideas are exposed to the most consumers available within the future market.

Ecommerce

Access to e-commerce partners within our incubator allows for companies and entrepreneurs to support collaboration within a flexible environment. As traditional retail and e-commerce continues to merge it is important to recognize the opportunities that reside online and the access to expansion of consumers around the world.

Restaurants

Partnering with restaurants allows startups to test ideas on the plate and opens opportunity to really shape a menu that speaks to the upcoming food trends. Developing a product that serves a need can be proved when scaling it to restaurants that will only help in defining the future market.

Retail Channels

Our retail partnerships gives retailers access to our network of entrepreneurs and startups that provide information on the newest disruptive ideas and transformation of the food industry. Our startups receive the most insightful feedback for consumer trends and possible outlets for mass market distribution.

Individuals

Individual investors are a part of our growing network, allowing private parties to be in the loop of ideas while providing feedback that may help in product sales and improved optimisation. Individual investors are key to ensure that startups connect with investments that are diversified and transparent.

Institutions

Our institution investment platform allows entrepreneurs to connect with networks of institutions that provide access and funding support to startups. This also acts as a pipeline for investor firms to observe and search promising startups. Our partnerships are important in order to allow easy access and knowledge transfer to close deals in a timely manner.

READ MORE ABOUT OUR PARTNERS AND INVESTORS

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