Fellowship Spotlight: Supply Change Capital
Supply Change Capital is the perfect example of a venture fund founded by a pair of historically underrepresented emerging managers with their finger on the pulse of the next wave of value creation.
Noramay Cadena and Shayna Harris, the co-managing partners of this food and Ag-tech fund, invest at the intersection of food, culture, and technology. When these power partners started the VC Include Fellowship for BIPOC First-Time Fund Managers in February 2021, they had not yet raised any money for their fund. By the end of the year, and after finishing the program, they successfully closed $18MM.
But let’s step back and shine a spotlight on the two brilliant founders of Supply Change Capital.
VC Power Partners
Noramay and Shayna met over a decade ago in business school at MIT. Combined they have over 40 years of executive experience at companies like Mars, Boeing, and Farmer’s Fridge.
Shayna established sustainable supply chain sourcing practices at Mars, and she helped scale Farmer’s Fridge to tens of millions of dollars in revenue as the venture-backed start-up’s first COO.
Noramay spent 12 years in the aerospace business before jumping into the VC space in 2015. Over the past several years she co-founded a micro-VC, ran an accelerator program, and became deeply embedded in the venture community through Portfolia, Kauffman Fellows, and by co-founding LatinxVC.
Massive Investment Opportunity
Noramay and Shayna’s unique perspective on the future of food is that it will be intersectional and driven by four major forces: sustainability, supply chain efficiency, increasing demand for healthy options, and an ever-increasing multicultural society.
Food is a multi trillion-dollar industry. Plus, multicultural consumers are the fastest growing segment of the US population and are significantly more likely to purchase natural and organic food.
But it’s not only multicultural consumers who have a taste for culturally diverse foods. Over 80% of Americans already eat this cuisine, and over a third of them are willing to pay more for it. You only have to go to your local supermarket to see that Greek yogurt, salsa, soy sauce, and hummus have become American staples.
Given the growing buying power of multicultural populations, and the growing taste for culturally diverse food of average Americans, Supply Change Capital is tapping into a huge investment opportunity.
Supply Change Capital meets the needs of these consumers by investing in three verticals:
Food and Ag-tech
SaaS solutions, data and AI sciences, biotech, and precision farming will comprise a large portion of their portfolio.
Sustainable ingredient technology
Most agree that highly processed and synthetic foods are increasingly being rejected while plant-based, sustainable ingredients are on an upward trend. More and more consumers are reaching for products like Beyond Meat and Oatly, so Supply Change invests in sustainable, third-wave, plant-based ingredients.
Culturally appealing brands
The co-GPs look for brands that speak authentically to multicultural audiences. To understand the types of brands they seek out, think Goya 2.0.
How the VCI Fellowship Helped Supply Change Capital
“One of the biggest challenges as emerging fund managers is finding other folks who have walked these steps from similar backgrounds,” explains Noramay, “and one of the benefits of VCI has been access to individuals who are ahead of us, but not so far ahead that they’ve forgotten where they come from.”
Shayna reflects on another way the VCI fellowship helped them. “We’ve been able to build community with the other fund managers in the program. And that’s been so critical to staying the course, knowing that you’re not in it alone. We’re all hustling, we all have families, we’re part of communities, we have so many obligations. It’s been really great to get energy from one another as we’re going through the highs and the lows of this process,” she says.
We’re sure that we will be talking about the successes of Supply Change Capital for many years to come, and we look forward to watching Shayna and Noramay help change the face of venture capital and make the industry more reflective of our country and our world.
