Investing in an Animal-Free Food System: Milk & Honey Ventures
Release Date: 10/01/2024
No Palm, No Problem: Fermenting the Future of Fat
Business for Good Podcast
Palm oil is everywhere—from food to cosmetics to biofuels—but its production is a leading cause of deforestation, habitat destruction, and greenhouse gas emissions. What if we could have all the benefits of palm oil without the downsides? Enter , a Dutch biotech startup using fermentation to produce a sustainable alternative to palm oil—without the need for palm trees. Instead of chopping down rainforests, they’re upcycling agricultural waste, feeding it to their specialty yeast, and brewing a fat with the same characteristics as high-end palm oil in the process. The company’s...
info_outline
Turning Air Into Butter: Savor’s Revolutionary Approach to Alternative Fats
Business for Good Podcast
What if the fat in your butter, cheese, or even burger could be made without animals, without plants, without fermentation, and without agriculture at all? That’s exactly what is doing. Using a groundbreaking process that transforms compounds like CO₂ and elements like hydrogen into rich, animal-free fats that can mimic what animal fat does, this California-based startup is rethinking how we produce and consume one of the most essential ingredients in food. In this episode, I sit down with Kathleen Alexander, cofounder and CEO of Savor, to dive into the science behind their...
info_outline
Cleaner Air from Better Plants: The Neoplants Story
Business for Good Podcast
We spend about 90 percent of our lives indoors, yet the air inside our homes and offices is often far more polluted than the air outside. Volatile organic compounds—better known as VOCs—are constantly emitted by furniture, cleaning products, and even the very walls around us. Formaldehyde, benzene, toluene—these chemicals sound like something you’d find in an industrial park, but they’re actually in the places where we eat, sleep, and work. Well, what if nature could give us a hand here? What if plants, and even microbes, could be supercharged to clean our air at a level that...
info_outline
Helping Alt-Protein Startups Survive the Winter: Ahimsa’s Consolidation Approach
Business for Good Podcast
It’s no secret that the alternative protein startups are struggling these days. A combination of lower revenue, intense competition, and less available venture capital is leading to a contraction in the sector, with countless alt-meat and dairy companies conducting layoffs, declaring bankruptcy, and even folding altogether. Enter , a newly formed investment group acquiring promising but distressed plant-based brands. This isn’t charity, though. Ahimsa's belief is that, with their consolidation strategy and pooled resources, these brands that are built on a strong underlying product...
info_outline
Subtracting the Bean from Coffee: The Minus Story
Business for Good Podcast
Did you know that it takes 140 liters of water to make a single cup of coffee? Turns out that coffee, as far as plant crops are concerned, has a fairly heavy footprint on the planet. And it’s getting harder to farm, with climate change altering where and how many coffee beans can even be grown. You’ve heard of making meat without chickens, and milk without cows. Well, you can also now get coffee without beans. This episode’s guest is the CEO of , a startup reimagining how you enjoy your daily brew. Minus has developed an innovative way to replicate the rich flavor, aroma, and experience...
info_outline
Can a Problem as Big as Climate Be Solved by a Solution as Small as a Microbe?
Business for Good Podcast
In this episode we’re diving deep into the fascinating world of carbon recycling with a trailblazer who’s reshaping how we think about waste and sustainability. Our guest is Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of —a company on a mission to transform our biggest environmental challenge into an economic opportunity. LanzaTech is pioneering a process that takes industrial emissions—the kind of harmful gases that typically contribute to climate change—and recycles them into valuable products like fuels, fabrics, and everyday consumer goods. The concept might sound like science fiction, but it’s...
info_outline
From Harvard Business School to Rural Africa: Nicole Poindexter’s Journey to Advance Clean Energy Access
Business for Good Podcast
In this episode we’re taking you on a journey to some of the most remote corners of West Africa, where energy access is scarce, and innovation is changing lives. Our guest is Nicole Poindexter, the founder and CEO of , a company that's bringing clean, reliable solar power to off-grid communities in countries like Sierra Leone, Benin, and Liberia. Nicole and her team are doing something extraordinary: building solar mini-grids that provide electricity to tens of thousands of people who otherwise rely on polluting and expensive energy sources—or have no power at all. And, impressively,...
info_outline
From Korea to the US: UNLIMEAT Puts its Signature on the Plant-Based Meat Movement
Business for Good Podcast
Most plant-based meats in the US have centered around American staples like hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, and sausages. But there’s a world of meat consumption out there, and some of the most popular meat dishes are ones many Americans may have never even tried. In recent years, South Korea has seen great success exporting its culture around the world, with mega-popular K-dramas like and , K-pop like , and yes, K-food like . Now, South Korean plant-based meat player is bringing its twist on K-meat to thousands of US supermarkets. Already, the company’s Korean-style alt-meats...
info_outline
Bringing Clean Energy to African Businesses
Business for Good Podcast
Imagine trying to run a small business without a constant supply of energy. With electricity intermittency, you may not have access to wifi, a phone, a computer, a way to service your customers and more. One way to solve this problem is to have constant access to fossil fuels to run diesel generators, but this is an expensive and dirty way to operate, creating unsustainable costs for the business and the planet. Enter , a South African company specializing in the design and production of advanced lithium-ion battery storage solutions for residential, commercial, and industrial applications....
info_outline
One Good Human: Eric Schulze on Cultivated Meat’s Past and Future
Business for Good Podcast
Eric Schulze loves the intersection of science and food so much that after many years as an FDA regulator, he decided in 2016 to leave the federal government to join the then-nascent Memphis Meats (now ). He’d go on to spend the next seven years working to advance the cultivated meat pioneer’s science, technology, communications, and ultimate regulatory approval by the agency for which he used to work. Now, Eric’s charting a new path for himself, founding , a consultancy aimed at assisting and even launching biotech startups seeking to bring their new innovations to the world. In...
info_outlineAround the time his son was born in 2011, Beni Nofech saw a video that changed his life. After listening to an argument about the need to move away from the view that animals are mere commodities for humanity to use however we like, Beni adopted a vegan diet and soon found himself attending animal movement and alt-protein conferences. From there, he began making angel investments in food tech startups that could help animals, eventually leading him to leave his career in the medical device world to become a full-time venture capitalist in the alt-protein food tech world.
Today, Beni runs Milk & Honey Ventures, an eight-figure investment fund with a mandate to place early-stage bets on Israeli food tech startups that are seeking to displace animals in the food system. He’s backed some of the biggest names in alt-protein, including many companies who’ve been on this podcast before.
In this episode, Beni and I discuss the state of alt-protein investing, whether he views the current apparent malaise as permanent or transitory, and what he sees for the future of this important industry.
I’ve known Beni since 2016 and can attest that he’s a great guy with important insights from which anyone who cares about building a better food system will benefit.
Discussed in this episode
-
Beni was influenced to become vegan after seeing this speech online.
-
Beni helped promote this 2016 fundraising video by SuperMeat, to which Paul donated.
-
Beni served on the board of the Modern Agriculture Foundation.
-
Beni recommends: Startup Nation, Clean Meat, Sapiens, and Calvin and Hobbes.
-
Bonus: One of Paul’s favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips.
-
The Good Food Institute’s suggestions for white space in the alt-protein sector.
-
Pitch Milk and Honey Ventures at [email protected]
More about Beni Nofech
Beni is the Founding Managing-Partner of Milk & Honey Ventures - Israel’s leading venture capital fund exclusively dedicated to the Sustainable-Protein industry.
He has been a key player in the sector in Israel for over a decade, actively serving as an angel investor, entrepreneur, and advocate for the industry.
His experience spans investments in over a dozen startups, including some of the most notable success stories in the global alternative-protein space today.
Beni’s passion is the effective acceleration of disruptive Sustainable-Protein technologies