Rachel Stinebaugh joins our Investment Team
Rachel extends our firm's footprint to San Francisco
Please welcome Supply Change Capital’s newest team member, Rachel Stinebaugh! Rachel is energized by solving the world's most complicated and pressing problems. She studied economics, global health & health policy at Harvard and has spent the last 8 years working across impact, health, energy, and food systems. During her time at UC Berkeley’s Haas MBA, she served as the VP of Social Impact for the Haas Venture Capital Club. Rachel brings extended experience working through financial, commercialization and operational models, running programs, and developing product strategy.
As a Senior Associate on the Supply Change Capital team she’ll lead deal flow and our investment process, and she will run our MBA/PhD fellowship program. Rachel’s prior experience will help us continue to operate a best-in class data-driven investment process. And as a bonus, she extends our footprint to San Francisco.
We asked Rachel to share her thoughts on the industry and her career path; learn more below!
How did your upbringing lead you to the food & beverage industry, and ultimately venture capital?
Food has always been a focal point in my life — it was an important way for me to connect with my various identities growing up in a multiracial household. On Sundays my family would go straight from the Episcopal church that my mom really identified with to the local dim sum parlor my dad loved for Sunday lunch. I still dream of the veggie dumplings they’d make – it was a small place but every Sunday they rolled around the dim sum cart to the 10 tables they had squeezed in there.
When I started traveling internationally after college, I began to realize how vast and complex our global food system is. I’d be sitting at a restaurant in Burundi drinking Amstel beer brewed and bottled in- country by a company whose majority stakeholder was Heineken, discussing how we might export some of the coffee grown in the hills nearby, ultimately landing in the cup of a Starbucks customer in the US. I saw vast palm oil plantations wherever I went. At some point it dawned on me that the palm oil produced in places like Burundi ends up all over the world, in well known products on the shelf in grocery stores in the US and beyond.
These rich and wide-ranging experiences made me super curious and hungry to learn about the intricacies of the world around me, especially when it came to food. That’s what ultimately led me to food and agriculture startups and then venture capital — a love for shared experiences over food, and a real curiosity for how food is made!
What inspired you to join Supply Change Capital?
I had been following Supply Change for a while and was super excited to meet the team when I got the chance earlier this year. When I first met Noramay and Shayna, things really just clicked. It felt like we were speaking the same language and cared deeply about the same things, both in food/ag and in life.
I did some more research and was really blown away by the caliber of the founders in the Supply Change portfolio, as well as the range of investments SCC has made in areas I’m interested in like biomanufacturing and AI. I was thrilled to see that there were some awesome founders I already knew in the portfolio, like Maricel at Compound Foods and Akash from Tendrel.io.
I was also super impressed with how many of SCC’s investments include founders who are women and folks often underrepresented in venture. That really sealed the deal for me – I’m excited to be a part of a team that values action above all when it comes to DEI.
You’ve worked on the other side of the VC table, helping founders raise capital. What’s the biggest insight you’re bringing to the flipside?
I’ve been able to work with some really great companies and founders over the last few years on topics ranging from go-to-market channel strategy to fundraising and building teams. I’ve learned a lot from these awesome folks and the work we did together, but I would say what I’m most excited to bring to the table as an investor is all that I’ve learned about the benefits and drawbacks of B2B vs. B2C models.
Choosing the right channel strategy is super difficult, and it can really make or break a business! There are very different sales cycles for different channel strategies in food and agriculture. The team you need to build to work with customers at big food companies will look entirely different from the team you need to build to scale a brand that interfaces directly with consumers. I’m excited to act as a sounding board for portfolio founders as they’re thinking through what channel strategy makes the most sense for their companies.
What are your predictions for the future of food - where will we be in 20 years?
Climate change is going to fundamentally change the way we eat.
I think food and agricultural production is going to become more decentralized over the next 20 years. We won’t ship tulips from the Netherlands to grocery stores in Colorado anymore. 98% of US lettuce production won’t be concentrated in places like California’s Central Valley or Yuma, Arizona. The Colorado River simply can’t sustain it, which is why the government is paying farmers to lay their land fallow.
While this transition will be challenging in many ways, it also presents a lot of opportunity for technologies like synthetic biology, which allow for food production to happen wherever a facility with bioreactors is built. I also see a lot of opportunity in the long-run for food ingredients made from algae, fungi, mycelium and lemna, which can grow prolifically in a variety of geographies and growing conditions.
What’s a technology that you think is going to be a game changer for food & ag?
AI! It’s a hot topic in pretty much every industry right now, and with good reason. There are so many different ways AI is going to be used to change the way we grow and consume our food. Companies like Brightseed are taking a food-as-medicine approach to AI, using it to help us better understand the bioactive compounds that make certain foods so good for our health. Companies like Helios AI (an SCC portfolio company) are leveraging AI to increase supply chain transparency for food companies.
We’re only just scratching the surface in our understanding of how AI will shape the food system. I’m excited to dig into this space among many others at Supply Change!
What is your favorite efficiency hack?
I’m a huge fan of timeblocking! It’s so simple but being intentional about my calendar helps me make sure that I have both the time to learn new things from amazing people and the time I need to reflect and get things done.
What is a consumer food brand that didn’t exist 3 years ago but you can’t live without?
This is cheating a bit because I’m pretty sure they existed more than 3 years ago, but I am super obsessed with Diaspora Co spices! I make food with their black pepper and chili powder every single day. As someone who really loves cooking with high quality ingredients, their products are such a no-brainer.