They Built a Meal Delivery Unicorn. Now They Have $75 Million to Invest in the Next Big Thing |
They Built a Meal Delivery Unicorn. Now They Have $75 Million to Invest in the Next Big Thing
The co-founders of Cutting Horse have their sights set on supplements, pet food, AI software, and other consumer products
BY BRIAN CONTRERAS, STAFF WRITER @_B_CONTRERAS_
Cutting Horse founders Chris Protasewich and Michael Wystrach. Illustration: Inc; Photo: Courtesy company, Getty Images
Michael Wystrach and Chris Protasewich know what they’re talking about when it comes to consumer brands. Wystrach co-founded the mail-order meal company Freshly; Protasewich invested in it, then later came aboard as an operator. Nestlé eventually acquired Freshly for a whopping $1.5 billion.
Now the duo are teaming back up for the inaugural fund of their growth equity firm Cutting Horse—named for a variety of horse prized for its precision—which aims to back ventures in everything from food and beverage to cosmetics and lifestyle.
The fund closed with $75 million in capital commitments, the co-founders announced today, despite setting an initial target of only $50 million.
“We’ve done close to a dozen [special purpose vehicles and] angel investments” since exiting Freshly, says Protasewich. “That really set the foundation for Cutting Horse, which is our way to formalize what we had already been doing”—that is to say, bring a founders’ mindset to their investments in early-stage consumer brands.
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Adds Wystrach: “There’s a tremendous amount of firsthand knowledge that a founder can bring to fellow founders and fellow operators that is not always apparent on spreadsheets or models.”
The oversubscribed fund aims to back “high-growth consumer product and service businesses” that are generating between $1 million and $20 million in revenue, the Cutting Horse team said in a press release, which also noted that Protasewich and Wystrach have previously served as investors, board members, and advisors to dozens of brands in the food, beverage, health, wellness, pet and consumer service sectors.
Wystrach says they want to team up with founders early on so that they can help them build out their business thoughtfully—and maybe even a little more conservatively—than a career venture capitalist might push for.