5 Minutes with A Future Food VC: Alwyn Capital’s Heather Courtney

In our new 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.

Heather Courtney is a General Partner at Alwyn Capital.

What future food technologies most excite you?

Technologies that can be applied across multiple markets. Many early-stage companies in alternative protein have struggled to raise funding over the last 18 months, as investors have shifted from prioritizing growth at all costs to focusing on revenue.

If companies have technology that can be applied to existing industries while keeping an eye on serving frontier industries as they scale, they can generate early revenue while capturing the upside of future innovations.

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

1. Technologies that reduce COGS and improve quality in plant-based, fermentation, and cultivated products (e.g., media recycling in cultivated meat, continuous bioprocessing in fermentation).
2. Advanced manufacturing machinery and techniques for alternative proteins.
3. Precision fermentation—yes, this is probably a popular answer right now, but there’s a good reason. There is immense opportunity in strain engineering, cheaper feedstocks, more efficient bioreactors, and continuous bioprocessing to drive costs down and yields up. One of our portfolio companies, Sunflower TX, is developing precisely this kind of technology. Sunflower has created the first microbial perfusion fermentation system designed for continuous protein production, enabling more protein to be produced with less space and lower costs.

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

Bringing truly “future food” products to market – Upside Foods’s cultivated chicken filet, Perfect Day’s precision fermentation whey, GOOD Meat’s cultivated chicken, and EVERY’s hen-less egg, to name a few. Yes, there is still much work to be done, and no, these products aren’t perfect yet. But let’s take a moment to appreciate them for what they are: significant milestones in food innovation.

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

A serious magic wand? I’d abolish subsidies for animal agriculture so that plant-based meat could compete on a level playing field.

Beyond that, plant-based meat has a messaging problem. We’ve spoken to Sonalie [Figueiras, Green Queen’s founder and editor-in-chief] about this at length, and I agree with her—our industry has forgotten that women, specifically moms, make the majority of household purchasing decisions. We need to focus on what moms care about: their family’s health, saving time, and making life easier. We need to fix our messaging.

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

Tenacity. (There’s a lot more than one, but you only wanted one.)

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

The one we missed knows who they are—we’re still in touch and tracking the company. We were deep in diligence when the lead investor decided they wanted the entire round.

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

It’s too early to tell with most of our portfolio, but Cultured Decadence was acquired in 2020, so that was a clear win! We have other high-performing portfolio companies, but we’ll only know they’re real successes when they achieve an exit. Ultimately, true success will come when the industry takes off across all verticals, creating a win for people, the planet, and animals.

What has been your most disappointing investment so far?

We had a company shut down in 2022. It was one of our favourite products, and the founder had a great work ethic and the right team, but COVID wreaked havoc on them, and they couldn’t recover. Robert and I did everything we could to create a better outcome for the company, but in the end, they folded. That one still hurts.

What do people misunderstand/get wrong most about VC?

Not every business is a good fit for VC dollars, and that’s completely fine. We look for companies that, if everything goes to plan, could return the entire fund through that one investment—not every company is built for that kind of trajectory. You might have a solid business that could grow into a very large enterprise, but if it can’t do that within 10 years or less, VC funding might not be the right fit.

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

It wasn’t this month, so maybe I’m cheating a little here, but a few months ago, Robert and I tasted the latest iteration of New School Foods‘ plant-based salmon filet. It was so spot-on that it was unsettling. I even heard a fish eater say they thought it was virtually indistinguishable from conventional salmon. Seafood has been notoriously difficult to replicate with plant proteins—until now. New School Foods has changed the game.

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

There’s a great spot near my mum’s house in St. Petersburg, FL, called Good Intentions. They make a plant-based dish called Crab Fries—a pile of fries with shredded hearts of palm and jackfruit, Old Bay, garlic butter, parsley, shredded parmesan, and aioli. I didn’t know I needed Crab Fries in my life until I had them, and now I’m obsessed.

It’s a tough time for restaurants right now, especially those sourcing local, sustainable ingredients. So many of my favorite plant-based restaurants in NYC and beyond have closed. If there’s a spot you love, please support them.

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

My love for animals drives everything I do. I envision a future where they are no longer treated as expendable.  At Alwyn Capital, we are working to make that vision a reality—one that benefits animals, people, and the planet.

I began my career as a pharmaceutical researcher—I loved working in a lab and learning how biological systems function. Now, I have the privilege of collaborating with founders operating at the frontiers of biotechnology to build a more sustainable future.

Disclaimer: Green Queen founding editor Sonalie Figueiras is an advisor to Alwyn Capital.