food-and-beverage
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Stephan Czypionka Is Measuring Dumplings and Cataloging Palm Trees
The Austrian marketer has spent a career translating taste across borders. At CJ Foods, his playbook pairs hard measurement with cultural curiosity - the same instinct behind a side project cataloging hundreds of palm species.
Alon Chen
A family WhatsApp thread about Friday dinner became Tastewise, an AI system built to tell food companies what people want before the focus group comes back.
Sean Goldsmith
Sean Goldsmith is the co-founder and CEO of The Zero Proof, an Atlanta-based platform for premium non-alcoholic wine, beer, and spirits. What started in 2019 as a review blog he ran with childhood friend Trevor Wolfe after both took a break from drinking has grown into one of the largest curators and retailers in the adult non-alcoholic category, with 400+ products, owned brands like Lapo's and Saint Viviana, and a Series A backed by Asahi.
Andrea Johnston
Andrea Johnston is a seasoned revenue and operations executive with over 30 years of building high-growth businesses across SaaS, consumer tech, and marketplace platforms. After a decade at OpenTable — rising from VP of Western Region Sales to Chief Operating Officer — she led global revenue at Corel/Alludo, joined Truckstop as Chief Revenue Officer in 2024, and is now CEO at Franki, the video-led restaurant discovery and rewards app that is rewriting how 25,000+ monthly users find their next great meal. Johnston is a go-to-market architect, board advisor to multiple tech startups, and speaker at the 2025 Khosla Ventures CEO Summit.
Kelly Thompson
Kelly Thompson is a food industry executive with more than 30 years of experience who led Incredo (formerly DouxMatok), the sugar-reduction technology company behind Incredo Sugar. Trained as a food engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she built her career in research, development and quality at Kraft Foods, WhiteWave Foods and Continental Mills before joining Incredo in 2022 to head North America. She rose to Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Executive Officer, steering the commercialization of a real-cane-sugar ingredient that lets manufacturers cut sugar by up to half while keeping the taste.
Matt Beaton
Matt Beaton is CEO of Mike's Hot Honey, the Brooklyn-based chili-infused honey brand he built with college friend Mike Kurtz. He joined in 2015 when the company was pulling in $100,000 a year, and grew a one-SKU business into a roughly $40 million operation stocked in more than 30,000 retail stores and 3,000 restaurants. He came out of brand-management jobs at Wrigley and PUR Water and an MBA from Kellogg, and now runs the classic case study for what happens when you refuse to launch a second product.
Sai Alluri
Sai Alluri is the co-founder and CEO of Momos, a Singapore-and-San Diego-based software platform that helps multi-location restaurant brands manage customer feedback, reviews, marketing, and reputation with AI-powered workflows. He was an early Uber employee, helped launch Uber Eats across Asia-Pacific, then built and ran GrabKitchen - Southeast Asia's largest cloud kitchen network - before starting Momos in 2020 with Andrew Liu after watching favorite restaurants shut during COVID. Momos raised a $10M Series A in September 2024, bringing total funding to about $16.5-17M.
Christina Diiorio
Christina Diiorio is the founder and CEO of The Yay Company, the Charlottesville-based startup behind Yay Lunch, a modern K-12 school lunch program that partners with local caterers and chefs to deliver fresh, kid-approved meals directly to schools at no cost to the school. A former food editor at Goop, MindBodyGreen and Zagat and a Georgetown graduate, she launched Yay in 2018 after her own son came home hungry and unhappy with his cafeteria options. She has raised roughly $15.5M+ across Series A and later rounds from investors including Valor Siren Ventures, Reach Capital and FJ Labs, growing the company past 200% year-over-year and into markets from Atlanta to New York.
Liang Crow
Liang Crow is listed in business-contact directories as Chief Executive Officer of Juicero, the San Francisco cold-press juice company that became a defining parable of Silicon Valley hardware ambition. Juicero built a Wi-Fi-connected countertop press paired with proprietary single-serving produce packs, raised roughly $120 million from marquee investors, and priced its first machine at $699. In April 2017 Bloomberg reporters showed the packs could be squeezed by hand, the company suspended sales that September, and it was defunct by December. Crow's name is attached to the CEO chair in Apollo and similar records; beyond that role listing, little independent public biography is verifiable.
Jarrod Jordan
Jarrod Jordan is a consumer-goods and technology marketing executive now serving as Chief Executive Officer of Rarebird, Inc., the specialty coffee company built around Px (paraxanthine). A Columbia University graduate based in New York, he built his reputation running data-driven, omnichannel marketing at scale: as Chief Marketing Officer of the smart-earbud pioneer Bragi, as Chief Marketing and Digital Officer at consumer brands company Iovate Health Sciences, and as a founding member and Executive Vice President of Thuzio, the marketing SaaS startup he helped grow from four people to nearly eighty across five cities. A frequent conference keynoter and on-camera business analyst, Jordan has become known for turning quantitative rigor into brand momentum.
Alex Abelin
Alex Abelin is the co-founder and CEO of PlantBaby, the Hawaii-based company behind Kiki Milk, a whole-food, organic plant-based milk built for kids. A three-time founder who spent seven years at Google and sold his smart-city startup LQD WiFi to Verizon in 2016, he traded payphone kiosks for pumpkin seeds after he and his wife Lauren couldn't find a clean plant milk for their son. PlantBaby has raised roughly $7M and hit $4.8M in revenue in 2024, selling through its own site plus Sprouts, Wegmans, Erewhon, Amazon and Thrive Market.
Rosa Li
Rosa Li is the founder and CEO of wildwonder, the sparkling beverage brand she built around the herbal tonics her grandmother brewed in Beijing. A Stanford MBA and former private equity investor, she traded Wall Street spreadsheets for a homemade carbonation rig made from a beer keg, launched in 2020, and landed a deal with DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on Shark Tank in 2023. wildwonder now reaches 3,000-plus retailers across 40 states and has sold millions of cans.
Youngwon Lee
Youngwon Lee is the founder and CEO of Dokkaebier, an Oakland-based craft brewery built around Asian ingredients and Korean folklore. After more than a decade in the wine and spirits trade across Seoul and California, he launched Dokkaebier in February 2020, named for the mischievous shape-shifting spirits of Korean myth. He brews beers like a kimchi sour and a yuzu blonde, and set out to change an industry where only about 2% of professionals identify as Asian American. In three years he released 40-plus beers, reached 400-plus retailers, and in 2023 acquired Oakland's Federation Brewing to take over its taproom near Jack London Square.
Amanda Luke
Amanda Luke is the CEO of Bonafide Provisions, the family-founded California maker of organic, traditionally-prepared bone broth. A UC Berkeley and Columbia-trained marketer, she spent years building health-and-wellness brands at Safeway and Luvo before joining the small Carlsbad broth company in 2018, rising from VP of Marketing to CEO within roughly a year. Under her leadership the women-led brand pushed beyond frozen broth into keto cups, cooking broths, and shelf-stable pantry products, positioning Bonafide as one of the most recognizable clean-label bone broth names in the United States.
Jennie Ripps
Jennie Ripps is the founder and CEO of Owl's Brew, the boozy-tea company she co-built with Maria Littlefield to put real fruit, tea and botanicals back into ready-to-drink cocktails. A certified tea sommelier who started in publishing, she hand-blends every flavor base in her own kitchen before it ever reaches production. Owl's Brew has earned 40+ tasting awards and reaches shelves at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Target and Total Wine, plus stadiums from Yankee Stadium to TD Garden. Beyond the bottle, Ripps champions women in the alcohol industry through the Wise Women Collective and brings readers together with the Boozy Book Club.
Kerry Song
Kerry Song is the founder and CEO of Abbot's (formerly Abbot's Butcher), a Costa Mesa, California plant-based meat company she launched in 2017. A Princeton economics graduate who once worked in finance at Morgan Stanley and Citigroup and spent five years as a brand strategist for Tony Robbins, she built Abbot's around a strict clean-label promise: no gluten, no soy, no gums, no synthetic flavors, no preservatives. The brand became the only Whole30 Approved plant-based meat and grew from a Venice farmers-market table into a category leader stocked in thousands of retailers including Sprouts, Publix and Target.
Nick Wiseman
Nick Wiseman is the co-founder and CEO of Little Sesame, a Washington, D.C. born hummus company that grew from a 500-square-foot restaurant basement into a national consumer brand sold in nearly 3,000 stores. A third-generation Washingtonian who started cooking at 15 and trained on New York's fine-dining line, Wiseman built Little Sesame with chef Ronen Tenne and cousin David Wiseman, anchoring the brand to regeneratively grown organic chickpeas from Montana. In July 2025 the company closed an $8.5M Series A to fund a new 23,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and a push to convert 10,000 acres to regenerative farming by 2027.
Rashad Hossain
Rashad Hossain is the founder and CEO of RYZE Superfoods, the mushroom coffee brand he started in his mother's basement in March 2020 and grew into a multimillion-dollar direct-to-consumer company. A Harvard economics graduate who quit a brand-marketing job at Kraft Heinz to build a coffee he would actually want to drink, he blended six functional mushrooms with organic arabica into a product that has racked up more than 175,000 customer reviews. He earned a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Food & Drink list in 2022. Before RYZE he founded Keepspace, a social journaling platform that won a $50K Harvard innovation award and later became the HOW I RYZE gratitude app.
Will Nitze
Will Nitze is the founder and CEO of IQBAR, a brain-and-body nutrition brand he built from a Kickstarter campaign into a nine-figure CPG company selling plant-based protein bars, hydration mixes, and instant coffee in more than 10,000 retail doors. A Harvard psychology and neuroscience graduate who once sold software to oil-and-gas companies, he formulated his first products with no food-science background, scaled IQBAR past 100 million bars sold, and now hosts the founder podcast Eating Glass.
William Hicks
William Hicks is the co-founder and CEO of Magic Mind, the mental-performance shot that wants to retire your second cup of coffee. A Princeton cum laude grad who left Barclays after deciding investment banking was too soulless to stomach, he went on to co-found the lupini-bean snack company BRAMI before partnering with James Beshara to build Magic Mind into a brand poured into the morning routines of tens of thousands of people. He preaches '90-day trailing average emotions' as the only sane way to survive the violence of startup life.
Adriana Echandi
Adriana Echandi Bachtold is the Group CEO of Morpho Travel Experience, a Latin American travel retail and food & beverage powerhouse with over 2,800 employees across 11 countries. Starting as a cashier-seller at what was then Grupo Britt in 2002, she rose through every rung of the organization to become CEO - overseeing 300+ commercial spaces in 23 airports serving 78 million passengers annually. Named Businesswoman of the Year 2022 by Costa Rica's El Financiero and a Moodie Davitt People of the Year honoree, she leads a company built around 'sense of place' - connecting global travelers with authentic local culture, artisan products, and sustainable practices. A fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, she has built a company where 50% of management are women, equal pay is non-negotiable, and a kiosk in San José has become a $225 million regional retail force.
Karl Strovink
Karl Strovink is the CEO of Blue Bottle Coffee, the Oakland-born specialty roaster now owned by Nestlé. A Berkeley native with an MBA from MIT Sloan, he arrived in 2019 from a twelve-year run at Converse and has spent his tenure pushing Blue Bottle toward oat milk by default, instant espresso, zero-waste cafés, and aggressive expansion across Asia, all while protecting the brand's small-batch identity inside a thirty-billion-dollar coffee parent.
David Lester
David Lester is the co-founder and former President of OLIPOP PBC, the prebiotic soda brand that grew from a $100,000 bet into a $1.85 billion company in under seven years. A former Diageo brand marketer who worked with Smirnoff, Gordon's Gin, and Johnnie Walker across three continents, Lester paired his CPG expertise with co-founder Ben Goodwin's scientific formulation genius to create a soda that supports gut health without sacrificing the nostalgia of a cold fizzy drink. OLIPOP now generates over $425 million in annual revenue, holds 65,000+ retail doors, and controls 87% of the functional soda category - a category it essentially invented.
Michael Pengue
Michael J. Pengue is the Chief Executive Officer of Hint Inc., the San Francisco-based maker of unsweetened fruit-infused water that pioneered the better-for-you flavored water category. With more than 30 years in the beverage industry, Pengue has led multibillion-dollar businesses at Nestlé Waters North America, helped orchestrate the $1.65 billion sale of Bai Brands to Dr Pepper Snapple, and built ZOA Energy into the fastest-growing energy drink in the US before its acquisition by Molson Coors. Appointed CEO of Hint in November 2024, he is leading a comprehensive 2026 brand relaunch designed to reframe hydration as desire rather than discipline.
Carle Stenmark
Carle Stenmark is a General Partner at VMG Partners in San Francisco, where he leads the firm's technology investing practice (VMG Tech). After spending his first years at VMG investing in branded consumer products, he convinced the firm's LPs to launch a dedicated tech strategy backing the software, marketplaces, and AI-native businesses that power the consumer ecosystem. He has partnered with founders at Afresh, Boulevard, FERMAT, Claim, Nowsta, and Daily Harvest.
Michael Mauze
Michael Mauze is the Co-Founder and General Partner of VMG Partners, a San Francisco-based consumer-focused growth equity firm he co-founded in 2005. With a career spanning investment banking at PaineWebber and Lehman Brothers to private equity at TSG Consumer Partners, Mauze has spent decades backing consumer brands before 'consumer' became the hottest word in venture capital. VMG has backed over 60 brands including Spindrift, Drunk Elephant, KIND Snacks, and Daily Harvest, and closed its sixth fund at $1 billion in 2025. Beyond the portfolio, Mauze is known for his jazz philanthropy, a five-year cross-country bicycle odyssey, and a $3 million gift to his alma mater Davidson College.
Olgica Bakajin
Olgica Bakajin is the CEO and Founder of Porifera Inc., a San Leandro, California-based company pioneering forward osmosis membrane technology for the food, beverage, and industrial water sectors. A physicist by training - B.A. from the University of Chicago and Ph.D. from Princeton - she spent nearly a decade at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory developing carbon nanotube membranes that move water 1,000x faster than conventional materials. Her 2006 Science paper on carbon nanotube desalination became the most-cited chemistry article in the journal. In 2009 she spun Porifera out of LLNL, and the company now serves 100+ customers across 20+ countries, helping breweries, coffee roasters, and winemakers concentrate their products without heat, preserving flavor, aroma, and nutrients while slashing energy use by up to 80%.