NotCo

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Bezos-backed Chile’s first unicorn uses proprietary AI algorithm to analyze food molecules to produce plant-based meat and dairy products that taste like the original.

Matías Muchnick graduated among the top 10% in business administration from the University of Chile in 2011 and went on to complete a master’s in Finance in 2012. He gained some work experience in Santiago as an analyst at LarrainVial in 2010 and spent the summer working at JP Morgan in Hong Kong after his graduation in 2011.In 2012, he became an entrepreneur and founded the wellness app Chooz, a project sponsored by the Chilean government. In 2013, he co-founded Eggless, the first food company in Chile to offer vegan mayonnaise in Chilean supermarkets like Walmart and Jumbo. He exited the business in 2015 and, in the same year, joined an entrepreneurship bootcamp at the University of California, Berkley, where he approached the biochemistry department to learn more about data and science. He also completed executive programs at Harvard Business School in 2015 and at the Stanford University in 2018.In November 2015, he co-founded the Chilean foodtech Not Company (NotCo) with astrophysicist Karim Pichara, who he met in Harvard, and Pablo Zamora. Based in New York, Muchnick is the CEO of NotCo, which combines AI with food science to create plant-based products that mimic animal-based food like milk and burgers.

Karim Pichara has a PhD in Computer Science from the Catholic University of Chile where he has been working for over 10 years since 2010. From 2011, Karim Pichara has also been working as a research associate at the Institute of Applied Computer Science, Harvard University, specializing in data mining and machine learning for astronomy. In November 2015, while at Harvard, Pichara and Matías Muchnick co-founded a plant-based foodtech, The Not Company (NotCo). Pichara became the CTO and headed the development of NotCo’s algorithm called “Giuseppe” that can analyze molecular structures of animal-based food to create similar plant-based food that cater to the human perception of taste and texture. 

Ahmir Khalib Thompson, better known as Questlove, is an American DJ, songwriter and filmmaker. He is the drummer and joint frontman of the hip-hop band the Roots and has also made several appearances in movies and television. He has been also a musical director at the 2020 and 2021 Academy Awards ceremony. The plant-based food investor was reportedly behind President Barack Obama’s upcoming birthday celebration in 2021. Questlove has backed plant-based food companies Impossible Foods and NotCo.Also in 2021, Questlove directed a film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, the Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), which won the US Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.

Based in Sao Paulo, Maya Capital was co-founded in 2018 by Lara Lemann and Mônica Saggioro. The VC manages two funds that invest in early-stage startups in Latin America. The first is worth $26m and the second raised $15m in October 2020. Half of the amount raised will be invested in new startups, while the balance will fund Series A rounds of portfolio startups.Together with co-investors like Kaszek Ventures and Y Combinator, the VC has invested in 25 startups in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico. Investments include plant-based foodtech NotCo, the car-rental operator Kovi and online education platform Trybe. Maya aims to increase its portfolio to 35 startups, focusing on post-Covid opportunities in diverse sectors like health, finance, mobility and logistics.

US-French private equity company L Catterton is based in Greenwich, USA, with 17 offices around the world and over $28bn of equity capital. It mostly invests in the consumer industry as well as real estate and technology startups.Founded in 1989 and currently led by co-CEOs Michael Chu and Scott Dahnke, in 2016, L Catterton partnered with the LVMH Group and Groupe Arnault combining Catterton's operations with LVMH and Groupe Arnault's real estate and private equity operations across Europe Asia, and North America. The partnership formed the largest global consumer-focused private equity firm yet the 31st largest private equity firm in the world. L Catterton holds majority stakes in companies like Birkenstock, Crystal Jade, Bliss, John Hardy amongst others; it also invests in technology startups in their growth and hyper-growth phases. Most notable investments include Aleph Farms, ClassPass, and more recently the plant-based products manufacturer NotCo. Its latest growth fund, L Catterton Growth IV, targets an investment range of $10m–$75m in North America and Europe.

The British F1 racing driver and five-time FIA Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton has started to promote veganism and sustainable lifestyles, investing in several technology startups that develop solutions in that field.In 2019 he launched  Neat Meat, the British vegan fast casual chain, in collaboration with The Cream Group, UNICEF Ambassadors and early investor in Beyond Meat Tommaso Chiabra. More recently he participated in a Series D funding round backing NotCo, the first Chilean unicorn selling plant-based food and beverage products across Latin America and the US.Hamilton is actively fighting to promote sustainable and eco-friendly practices across industries. In 2019 he also pushed Mercedes-Benz to discuss the possibility of including animal-free interiors in their cars. On that he said: I want to be part of a system that is going to help heal the world and do something positive for the future.”

Roger Federer, the Swiss 20-times Grand Slam tennis champion, has turned into an angel investor while planning his professional life beyond and after his tennis sports career.In 2019, he invested in On, the Swiss running shoe manufacturer for an undisclosed funding amount. Federer currently has no formal role in the company but he’s actively involved in its R&D and product development. “I feel like I can give input on any of the lines, the shoes, anything moving forward. I can give my opinion on anything and On can either take it or leave it. I feel like [with] a major brand like Nike, that's literally impossible. It just wouldn't work,” he has said.More recently, Federer participated in a Series D funding round backing the first Chilean unicorn NotCo, which sells plant-based food and beverage products across Latin America and the US. 

Pablo Zamora is a biotechnologist from the University of Santiago, where he worked as a professor and research scientist until 2008. In 2009, he started his postdoctoral research on Mexico’s maize genetics at UC Davis Life Science Innovation Center. He worked there as a senior scientist and associate until 2014. In 2015, he was appointed the center’s Chief Science Officer based in Chile, a position he was in till January 2018.From 2013–2015, he also worked on various plant and microbe genomics projects as a senior scientist in Mars Advanced Research Institute. He was also an editor from 2012–2017 at the Journal of Technology Management & Innovation and worked at the non-profit PIPRA from 2010–2018 as international alliance manager in Sacramento, University of California.In 2015, he co-founded The Not Company (NotCo) based in Santiago. He was appointed CSO in February 2018, a role he led until March 2020, when he left the company to focus on a new project, AptaBuilder, a $60m program that promotes R&D for Chilean technology-based ventures. Zamora still consults as NotCo’s senior scientific advisor.

Future Positive Capital is a Paris-based VC with a second office in London. Its investments cover deep-technology companies applying AI, biotechnology, synthetic biology, as well as robotics. Co-funded in 2016 by ex-Index Ventures associate Sofia Hmich along with Alexandre Terrien and Michael Rosen; it has made 18 investments to date. In 2019 Future Positive raised over $57m pan-European impact investment fund, claiming that most European VCs are continuing to staying focused on sectors, such as consumer, fintech, and marketing, or web and mobile technologies. Future Positive’s belief is that there is instead, a long-tail of investment opportunities to back businesses that actually tackle “the world’s most pressing problems”.Through this fund, it will back throughout Seed and Series A stages, with the possibility to follow up on Series B investing between around €300,000 and €5m. Since then the company has backed startups in the like of BioBeats, an AI company focused on preventative mental health, cell-based startup Meatable, and more recently NotCo, the Chilean unicorn disrupting the food and beverage sector with AI-enabled plant-based products.The team counts on an extensive network of mentors, innovators, impact angel investors and entrepreneurs such as F1 pilots Nico Rosberg, the MD of Alibaba France Sebastien Badault, the Omid Ashtari the President of Citymapper amongst others.

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