Dive Brief:
- CircleUp, a crowdfunding investment company, has helped startups — including food and beverage ones — raise millions of dollars in funding, whereas such capital might not normally be available or easily accessible.
- Unlike Kickstarter, CircleUp doesn't accept every business that wants to be listed, and in fact only accepts about 5% of applicants. But for those applicants, CircleUp has helped them raise $140 million for 120 companies to date with an average investment of $100,000, said Rory Eakin, CircleUp’s cofounder and COO, to Fortune.
- While the company did not disclose revenue or or growth numbers, Eakin said the total amount invested in companies this year is five times that of 2014.
Dive Insight:
Through CircleUp, investors have the opportunity to invest in a different type of asset than they normally do as they look toward food and other consumer packaged goods rather than hunting for the next Facebook or Google.
That even includes major food companies like General Mills, which created a multi-million dollar venture capital sector, 301 Inc., to be able to invest in food startups.
General Mills could have saved itself $820 million if it had invested in its 2014 acquisition, Annie's, earlier on rather than having to acquire the smaller company after it had achieved bigger successes and proved its growth potential.