Chilean food tech startup The Not Company (NotCo) raised $30M from Bezos Expeditions, The Craftory, Kaszek Ventures and IndieBio to continue to expand their product line and expand into new Latin American markets and the US. NotCo was previously received $3M from Kaszek and IndieBio, a biotech accelerator in Silicon Valley, according to Chilean newspaper La Tercera. They were also accelerated by Start-Up Chile.
The NotCo uses algorithms and artificial intelligence to create foods like mayo, milk, ice cream and others from non animal products. According to Matias Muchnik, NotCo’s founder, they want to “disrupt how food is produced around the world.”
The key to the business isn’t to just create gluten free, lactose free, soy free products, but to use algorithms and AI modeling via their software Guiseppe, to create new products and make them better.
According to La Tercera, 2018 was an excellent year for NotCo, growing from 14 people to 60 and expanding Not Mayo sales from Chile to Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and the United States.
La Tercera’s Pulso interviewed Matias Muchnick about how he was able to convince Jeff Bezos to invest:
Pulso: How did you meet Jeff Bezos and build a relationship with him?
Matias Muchnick: It all started when I took an entrepreneurship program at Stanford. I made friends with a professor who knew Melinda Lewison, the CEO of Bezos Expeditions. My professor told her about our business and our potential. In addition, we’d already met other US based investors, who also talked about us.
Pulso: After Melinda reviewed NotCo’s information, she called Muchnick to talk about the business.
MM: “It was an incredible conversation because she was extremely clear that Bezos didn’t care that the company came from Chile, or any other part of the world. The key was that NotCo had spectacular technology that had potential to make significant changes at a worldwide level.
Pulso: A week after the call, Muchnick received an email saying that Bezos wanted to invest in the $30M round.
MM: The biggest reason Bezos as interested was that he saw a disruptive technology that was working on one of humanity’s biggest challenges: food. It happened really fast and was an honest process. Melinda told us “We either link something or we don’t.”
We’re really happy not only because the world’s richest person and the CEO of Amazon is investing, but also because a very smart person and his team that understands branding extremely well believes we have a great brand and a great team.
We’re trying to schedule an in person meeting with Jeff Bezos, where he’ll get to try our products, and we’ll hopefully talk about how we can expand and our technology’s potential.