5 Minutes with A Future Food VC: Better Bite Ventures’s Simon Newstead

In our interview series, we quiz future food investors about the solutions that excite them the most, their favourite climate-forward restaurant, and what they look for in successful founders.

Simon Newstead is a Founding Partner at Better Bite Ventures.

What future food technologies most excite you?

There are many that we’re excited about, a couple of examples are fermentation including for example new types of sustainable ingredients, also interesting coating technologies that help extend the life of food and more.

What are three future food verticals you are actively looking at for 2025?

We’re open to anything that brings down emissions within our food system. If it has an impact on making a better food system, we are open to it. That includes reducing food waste, lowering emissions from fertilizer and working on blends that can lower the meat footprint in existing large channels and form factors.

What do you consider the food tech sector’s greatest achievement in the past five years?

During the past 5 years, the first cultivated meat was regulated and sold, and whilst there’s plenty of work to be done over the long term to bring the potential to the masses, it will go down as a major milestone and achievement.

If you could wave a magic wand, how would you fix plant-based meat?

The basics – price, texture, taste, plus cleaner labels and improved consumer awareness. That said, we see the offerings are improving, and also feel blends are a compelling solution to lower meat emissions in the short term as well.

What’s the top trait you look for in a founder?

Several: being open-minded, willing to take innovation risks and try something different, ability to learn (and track record of execution and learning), communicate and bring others along in the journey, build a team. There’s no one silver bullet – many things are important.

The One That Got Away: What is the deal you wish you had gotten into, but didn’t?

Perhaps getting involved even earlier. As an early-stage investor, there are companies that we might decide are a bit too far along their journey, but otherwise we might want to have engaged with them even earlier.

What do you consider your most successful future food investment so far?

We have several very promising portfolio companies, but as an early-stage investor just a little over three years into our journey, it’s too early to proclaim winners.

What has been your most disappointing investment so far?

We try to follow good decision epistemics and judge our investment calls by the quality of the process we ran through (criteria, analysis, projecting possible scenarios). When we do our future reviews each year, we’re trying to understand if we did a good job with those. I’d say on a meta level, we expanded into other areas of the food system including agri and looking back we could have done that a bit earlier to take advantage of opportunities there.

What do people misunderstand/get wrong most about VC?

That every VC is different in how they run, what their sweet spot is, and how they engage with startups. I’d encourage founders to ask and get to know what each VC they engage with is after, how they make decisions and run, etc.

What is the most ‘future food’ thing you have eaten this month?

Probably the shredded pulled shiitake mushroom filling from Fable Foods in Guzman y Gomez’s taco bowl – that was great! About to travel some more in the coming months, so look forward to adding more entries to the list soon!

Where is your favourite climate-forward restaurant/dish/place to eat anywhere in the world?

I haven’t tried yet some of the bioprinted or new fibre-spun whole-cut products (though my partner Michal has tried a bunch) – that would be fun to taste.

What’s your ‘why’? What motivates you to do what you do?

Personally, I’m driven by making a better food system for all – better for the people, for the animals, for the climate and for the planet. That’s why I got into impact investing and food projects many years ago. It’s a challenging but fun job, and getting to learn from and support all the founders innovating is the best part.