Crunchbase data showed that BetterBrand’s founder, Aimee Yang, is one of only 147 women to ever raise a Series A over $5 million from institutional investors. BetterBrand is best known for its flagship line of low-carb, high-protein frozen bagels produced with IP-protected Grain-changing TechnologyTM.
In addition to VERSO Capital, returning VCs and notable individuals like Gaingels, Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, Craft Lane, Cruise’s founder, and CEO Kyle Vogt, venture capitalist Chris Hollod, and Harry Styles’ manager Jeff Azoff and his AppleAAPL -0.6% Music spouse Glenne Azoff all participated in this round. Emmy Rossum, Patrick Schwarzenegger, and Wendy’s family member Sean Thomas are among the investors in BetterBrand.
“Aimee Yang is an incredible entrepreneur and a solid operator,” stated Vogt in a statement. For people who have felt they needed to give up some of their favorite foods to meet their nutritional demands, her company offers clean, useful items that can change their lives. Join us on this thrilling adventure!
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Determined Founder Aimee Sets Out to Revolutionize the Carb Industry
Aimee’s combination of determination, vision, and ability to develop sets her apart as a founder,” added Gaingels managing director Lorenzo Thione in commenting on the funding round. Under her direction, we at Gaingels are confident that BetterBrand will revolutionize the way we think about carbs by providing us with a delicious and nutritious alternative.
BetterBrand’s $170 million value on Crunchbase is more than any other company ever, including industry giants like Meta ($100 million upon series A) and TeslaTSLA -5.5% ($22.9 million). This achievement, according to Yang, is due to the market potential of BetterBrand, the brand’s resonance with consumers, and the company’s expected revenue growth over the next 12 months.
“We were trying to figure out a fair place to land on price,” Yang recently told me during an exclusive interview. “Given the ambition we have, and how quickly we’ve grown from our direct-to-consumer data and wholesale velocity, we landed at this valuation which is very encouraging.”
BetterBrand’s original classic flavor debuted two years ago today, and the company has since introduced four other flavors: chocolate chip, cinnamon, everything, pretzel, and sesame. Each serving contains about 25 grams of protein and 5 grams of net carbohydrates, which is about the same as two banana slices.
As Yang previously described, the company’s Grain-changing TechnologyTM can lower carbohydrates in normally high-carb diets while enhancing the creation of short-chain fatty acids, thereby optimizing human metabolism.
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BetterBrand Poised for Explosive Growth in 2023
Sales for the company’s first year had increased by 800%. BetterBrand plans to continue its rapid expansion in 2023 after a successful launch at Whole Foods shops worldwide in 2018 and expansion into more than 1,000 other locations across the country and beyond.
According to Yang, “Whole Foods, as our key partner, has been incredibly supportive of our launch into retail.” “The most exciting part is that all our growth has been happening virtually and organically,” the founder said. “This speaks to the excitement the product can generate among the consumer, and our messaging around freedom, inspiration, and empowerment.”
She emphasized the need of keeping her team small (less than ten full-time employees) and optimize the margin from the start to keep BetterBrand in excellent condition, particularly as a frozen brand. A lot of the traffic and the sharing on social media just propagate themselves, and we haven’t spent a dime on influencer marketing,” said Yang. We’ve always been committed to being a clean-label company, which is a big part of why we chose the frozen food section in the first place.
Based on projections from Data Bridge Market Research, the low-carb diet market will increase from its 2021 value of $10.93 billion to $8.65 billion by 2029, a compound annual growth rate of 6.9%. By reimagining similar high-carb baked items, BetterBrand intends to capture a larger share of the market.
“We’re launching a new product next in combination with Thrive Market, and that will transform an everyday food item with a ton of use cases into the same amount of carbs as two slices of apple,” Yang said.
