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Species Unite

Chris Kerr: The Godfather of Vegan Venture Capital

Species Unite

elizabeth novogratz

Philosophy, Society & Culture

5.0911 Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

"We spent 50 years fighting industry and I mean, fighting industry. And we were poking a bear and poking a bear and poking a bear. And then one day that bear came up and just nuzzled us under the neck and said, "okay, we're interested." …It was industry, it was the big players that came in and said, "why are we fighting this? If consumers are asking for plant-based, we can sell plant-based.'" – Chris Kerr

Chris Kerr is on a mission to upend the entire food industry.   

Chris is the Chief Investment Officer at Unovis/New Crop Capital, a venture capital fund that invests in entrepreneurs whose products or services replace foods derived from animal agriculture. He is also the co-founder and CEO of Gathered Foods, known for its Good Catch plant-based seafood products, the co-founder and Director of Wicked Foods, and the director of Cultivated Food Labs.

Chris is one of the first people that helped direct early-stage investments for plant-based food companies. He's been focused on impact investing with a concentration on the plant-based food sector since 2007, when he worked with the Humane Society of the United States to manage their investments into the plant-based food industry and played a key role in helping Daiya cheese secure distribution in Whole Foods Market.

"You can't rescue your way out of the animal protection world, you just can't. So, what can we do to actually do to change it at its base? If we can change people's opinion about eating plants, eating something other than animals, then maybe we wouldn't have to keep hitting them over the head with the ethical and moral baseball bat." – Chris Kerr

Chris is helping some of the top plant-based companies through investment funding and mentorship, all with the goal of accelerating the plant-based food industry and moving the world away from eating animals.

I hope that you learn as much as I did from Chris and are as excited about what's happening with the future of food. Please listen and share.

Transcript

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0:00.0

We spent 50 years fighting industry and I mean fighting industry and we were poking a bear and poking a bear and poking a bear and then one day that bear came up on and it just nuzzled us under the neck and said,

0:13.1

okay, we're interested, what's going on?

0:16.1

It was the big players who came in and said, you know,

0:18.8

why are we fighting this?

0:20.1

If consumers are asking for plant-based, we can sell Novigrats. This is Species Unite. We have a favor to ask if you like today's

0:38.8

episode and you have a spare minute. Could you please rate and review Species Unite on Apple Podcast or wherever you

0:46.8

listen to podcasts? It really helps people to find the show.

0:58.0

This conversation is with Chris Kerr. Chris is on a mission to turn the entire food industry on its head.

1:02.0

He's chief investment officer at New Crop Capital, a venture

1:05.4

capital fund who invest in entrepreneurs whose products or services replace foods

1:10.9

derived from animals. He's also co-founder and CEO of replace foods I would love to start at the beginning pre all of this kind of before you were doing

1:37.6

any investing or mentoring or running of plant-based companies.

1:42.1

I could go all the way back to the beginning.

1:43.8

Go to the beginning.

1:44.8

There was a kind of a back to the earth movement in the 70s, early 70s.

1:50.0

And my parents, you know, we grew up.

1:51.4

I was born in suburbia, suburb in Philadelphia, and my parents, you know, I was born in suburbia, suburban Philadelphia, and my parents said, you know, we need to, we need to simplify our life.

1:58.8

We moved out to the country. We moved out to dairy country in Pennsylvania and I was, I was seven years old at the time and to me going from suburban

2:06.4

Philadelphia to a farm was like living in a jungle gym. Like it was, like every day was an adventure.

2:13.8

There's always something to do.

2:15.0

There's always things to do, things to work on, things to build.

2:18.1

I had the world's ugliest but largest tree fort,

...

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