• Howie Town
  • Posts
  • Panic with Friends Podcast - Nate Cooper of Barrel Ventures on the Multi-Trillion Dollar Opportunity to Fix our Broken Food Ecosystem

Panic with Friends Podcast - Nate Cooper of Barrel Ventures on the Multi-Trillion Dollar Opportunity to Fix our Broken Food Ecosystem

Author

Howard Lindzon
February 16, 2023

Panic with Friends – Investing for Profit and Joy

I’m excited to have my friend Nate Cooper, partner at Barrel Ventures, on the show as our second in-studio guest. Nate invests in seed stage companies in the food and beverage space. He’s excited about anything pre-farm to post fork and everything in between. Nate views our food ecosystem as broken, with a multi-trillion dollar opportunity waiting for those who solve it. I’m a personal LP in Nate’s fund, and am passionate about food and packaging; these industries are enormous. Scroll down to read more about our discussion.

You can listen to the podcast here on Spotify or Apple podcast and now all the episodes are on my YouTube channel as well. You can click subscribe on any of these channels and get the podcast alert each week.

You can also listen right here on the blog:

Nate Cooper of Barrel Ventures on the Multi-Tri... by Panic with Friends - Howard Lindzon

I’m excited to have my friend Nate Cooper, partner at Barrel Ventures, on the show as our second in-studio guest. Nate invests in seed stage companies in the food and beverage space. He’s excited about anything pre-farm to post fork and everything in between. Nate views our food ecosystem as broken, with a multi-trillion dollar opportunity waiting for those who solve it. I’m a personal LP in Nate’s fund, and am passionate about food and packaging; these industries are enormous, and while everybody’s been focused on web 2, the world keeps humming along. We don’t realize how important these things are until they’re taken away from us. The market is resilient, and the money eventually rotates into things that actually matter.

https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/STKT8917579627

For more details on today’s conversation read on below…

Guest: Nate Cooper

Profile: Managing Partner at Barrel Ventures

Where to Find Him: LinkedIn, Twitter

What's Nate panicked about? Our planet.

Show Notes:

  • Introduction (00:31)

  • Welcome Nate (01:24)

  • Chicago is my kind of town (02:14)

  • Michael Jordan ‘attends’ Nates bachelor party (03:52)

  • Masters at their craft (06:02)

  • Business runs in the family (07:05)

  • Midwest entrepreneurship (08:26)

  • Kellogg MBA (10:00)

  • Winding down Wise Apple (10:54)

  • Getting started in venture (12:05)

  • Being the best in the world (15:18)

  • Investing in the food ecosystem (16:26)

  • Execution Risk / Market Risk (18:28)

  • Bioplastics (19:49)

  • Staples prone to supply shocks (20:39)

  • Tech is the sauce (22:05)

  • No pop like OLIPOP (23:15)

  • Genius of Liquid Death (26:11)

  • Panicked about getting old (30:09)

  • What else excites Nate about food (32:05)

  • Rolling up food brands (33:08)

  • Howard’s radical free idea (33:33)

  • Investors want brand and formula (34:57)

  • Wrapping up (37:44)

  • Closing thoughts (40:23)

© Panic with Friends, 2022. All rights reserved.

Host: Howard Lindzon | Producer: Knut Jensen | Researcher: Pete Weishaupt Disclaimer: All information provided is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice, or an offer to buy or sell any security. For full disclosures: https://www.howardlindzon.com/c/disclaimer

Join the conversation

or to participate.