“About 87 point something percent of the money now goes to AI. If I'm going to VCs now, I am from the about 10% that are trying to get their money, which we're not an AI. We're a food company. We have those margin constraints. We're not as fast in scale as software and other things that don't need to have food safety, physical things, regulation. So it's becoming almost impossible to raise money from VCs these days in the category of food.”
sputnikintelligence.com
Asked about crowdfunding as a way to raise money for Oshi, the founder explains that venture money has swung so heavily to AI that a food-tech company struggles to get a meeting. It is why he turned to customers as investors.
…a conference, you see everything protein. Okay. Relax. It's good to have protein, but it's not the only issue. The issue is not people are not having enough protein. The issue is people eating not healthy. And protein is one of many things that they need to make sure they're having in their diet.
Let's come on to that crown funding now because it was a pretty successful campaign, very successful campaign. Why did you decide crowdfunding was the right route for Oshi at this particular stage for the company?
In the end, 90%, about 87 point something percent of the money now goes to AI. Okay. If I'm going to VCs now, I am from the about 10% that are trying to get their money, which we're not an AI. And it's hard, you know? There are things that are more profitable than us. We're a food company. We have those margins constraints. We're not as fast in scale as software and other things that don't need to have, you know, food safety, physical things, regulation. So it's becoming also almost impossible to raise money from VCs these days in the category of food because of that. And I think that, you know, leveraging that you have people that are buying the product every week. They love what you do. They believe in what you do. And they're not only interested to invest, they're also interested to help. You know, out of the hundreds of investors, let's say 50% of them are also check the box on would love to, for example, go to store and check in the product. And now we have ambassadors all over the country that we can actually say, hey, we just launched in a chain in your state. Can you go there and take a picture of two, three stores? We want to see how it looks like on shelf. If it's in the right place, got it for free. So it's…
Yeah, there's something quite nice about turning your customers into shareholders, I guess, that share that mission and share that drive to help the company succeed. It's uh, yeah, maybe that's something we should look towards. Um, now, when you originally um started talking about this interview…
Not really. So, first of all, out of the four million, three million was from one particular investor. So, it's only a million from the crowd that we're about to close. And for me, it was like an optimistic but realistic target. Okay, if I would think I would do more, I would raise two million. If…
And has crowdfunding brought anything that you didn't anticipate, either positively or negatively?