PartnerSlate: Why we invested
Technology that makes the food industry more accessible to new entrants by connecting CPG brands and co-manufacturers.
“I have a deep conviction that one of mankind’s biggest challenges in the 21st century is finding a way to feed 10 billion people on the planet in a sustainable and healthy way. Unfortunately, the clock is ticking. Fortunately, thousands of entrepreneurs are bringing their ingenuity and talents to bear on the task. As CEO of PartnerSlate, I’m committed to doing our part to help facilitate their success.” – Vince Tseng, CEO, PartnerSlate
Imagine you are the owner of a start-up food company, producing a better-for-you snacking product for kids. You just raised $2M in a seed financing round, and you need to move out of your shared kitchen and start producing your product in a GFSI certified facility to fulfill your Whole Foods contract. What do you do?
Oftentimes founders will look for an outsourced, contract manufacturing (CM) partner to produce their products. They start by looking through any number of online directories, or hire an expensive consultant to navigate the production landscape. The process can be time consuming and can cause founders to miss the retail reset timeline, delaying much needed revenue in the early days of company building.
Enter PartnerSlate, an all-in-one B2B marketplace and hub for emerging and incumbent brands to quickly match to a co-packer or contract manufacturer and even identify financing for new projects. Retailers typically pay on a Net 30 to Net 120 day cycle which leaves a cash lag for founders; financing production in the interim is a critical piece of the puzzle.
Brand and Contract Manufacturer Match-Making
While labor and supply chain challenges permeate nearly all industries, the specific pain point PartnerSlate addresses for CMs is that there is no standardized intake process for them to identify and onboard new brands. CMs deal with a high volume of dead leads and limited personnel to validate intake requests. Once they successfully close on a new brand or project, CMs have limited services to help them report back to their clients on quality, inventory, or production.
On the brand size, there are more than 1.6M food companies that break down into (1) SMB and/or emerging brands, (2) established/incumbent brands, and (3) private label brands. Over 20,000 new food products are created for commercial sale annually; 50% are from emerging brands who are looking for their first manufacturing facility and 50% are from established brands that are extending product lines or entering new categories.
Contract manufacturing capacity for emerging brands or novel products is hard to secure, and not all co-manufacturers are suited for all brands. It can take over a year to identify a CM that fits specs, as PartnerSlate found through extensive customer discovery interviews with more than 100 brands. On average brands reach out to over 70 CMs before finding a match! The capabilities each brand requires from a CM vary and can be highly specialized. PartnerSlate automates the matching process and provides value-added services to an industry in need of technological innovation.
The Market
The market opportunity is sizable. Contract manufacturing is the invisible backbone behind the food and beverage economy. Around 20% of our food is produced via an outsourced third party. This $120B market is expected to reach $272B by 2030. And the packaged foods industry in the US is valued at $1TN and growing. As consumer preferences change and more plant-based, better-for-you products are making their way to market, PartnerSlate provides essential infrastructure for brands to get new products online quickly, meeting retailer and consumer needs.
Enabling a healthier food system
Supply Change Capital’s mission is to capitalize technologies that enable better food systems. PartnerSlate addresses a key pain point that has been reported first hand to us from a number of companies both in and outside of our portfolio. There are barriers for emerging brands to efficiently identify, match, and onboard with CMs. This is especially true for under-represented minority and female founded companies without pre-existing industry relationships. We believe that PartnerSlate can be a key unlock for emerging, better-for-you, sustainable, and/or diverse led brands to get on shelf, service retailer demand, and reach their consumers more quickly in order to be able to compete equitably.
We believe that in bringing efficiency to the CM marketplace, PartnerSlate will enable a faster and more efficient way to bring better for you and more sustainable brands online. To date, 68% of the projects they’ve enabled represent at least one of PartnerSlate’s social and/or environmental impact goals. And nearly half of founders on the PartnerSlate platform come from under-represented backgrounds.
The Team
PartnerSlate’s CEO Vince Tseng has extensive experience in venture-backed companies, having been the first hire and eventually the CSO at SquareTrade, which was acquired by Allstate for $1.4B in 2017. Founder and Chief Business Officer Matt Suggs, known as the ‘CPG Whisperer’ by the team, first encountered the challenges of production while his wife was building Vive Organics (acquired by Suja Juice in 2022) and launched PartnerSlate to address those painpoints.
What’s Next
The team is hard at work building out the core software to service CMs and brands, while also introducing innovative products like PartnerSlate Capital. PartnerSlate Capital provides access to financing for brands at a time when the start up funding market is tight. PartnerSlate is also building a reputation system, so brands can see which CMs are SQF certified or retail certified by Costco, Whole Foods, and more. Due to their ‘ear to the ground’ mentality, we’re confident that PartnerSlate will continue to provide critical, value-added products to the space.