At PlanetDairy, we consider everyone involved in challenging the food system status-quo as collaborators rather than competitors. And in the spirit of working together to improve the system for everybody, we’re sharing our own experience of being a foodtech start-up
1. Seek funding
It can be a really good idea to apply for soft funding from public funds relatively early in the process. These funds can give extra speed to the development – without giving up ownership shares. We have ourselves been successful in obtaining funds from Innovationsfonden, Plantefonden and Biosolutions Zealand. Through this, we have also established collaborations with the University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University and the Technical University of Denmark.
2. Consider outsourcing
We currently have two partners who produces for us, and more will be joining soon. They have the skills and capacity to produce products according to our recipe. This gives us a secure foundation and we can scale quickly. In retailer conversations, we could guarantee quality and volume from the start – even for large campaigns. That would be difficult if we had to produce ourselves.
3. Think big from the start
Think big and global when starting up. Our founders all have backgrounds in the corporate world and the dairy industry, and so have all worked with a global scope. They therefore already had clear ideas about where they wanted to go with our company ten years into the future rather than ‘just’ thinking one, two, three years ahead. If you have a technology and a product that can fly, it’s important to scale it up as quickly as possible.
