Hampton Creek

Hampton Creek Inc.
Formerly called
 Beyond Eggs, Inc.
Hampton Creek Foods, Inc.
Privately held company
Industry Food technology
Founded December 11, 2011 (2011-12-11)
Founder Joshua Tetrick,
Headquarters San Francisco, CA, U.S.
Coordinates 37°46′20″N 122°24′41″W / 37.772142°N 122.411514°W / 37.772142; -122.411514
Products Just Mayo, Just Cookies, Just Cookie Dough
Revenue Estimated US$30 million (2014)[1]
Website hamptoncreek.com

Hampton Creek is a food technology company headquartered in San Francisco focused on finding new ways of utilizing plants in food products.[2][3] The company was founded in December 2011 by CEO Joshua Tetrick.[4][5]

The company raised $90 million of Series C funding in December 2014, led by Horizons and Khosla Ventures. Hampton Creek has raised $120 million in total investment.[6] Investors include Li Ka-Shing, Jerry Yang, Marc Benioff, Eduardo Saverin[7] Khosla Ventures,[8] Peter Thiel's Founders Fund,[9] Eagle Cliff Partners[10] and the Collaborative Fund, amongst others.[11]

History

Hampton Creek was founded in the summer of 2011.[12] The organization received $500,000 in seed funding in December 2011 from Khosla Ventures.[13] In June 2012, Hampton Creek relocated from Southern California to a facility in Northern California. Also in June, the company received a $1.5 million Series A round of funding from Khosla Ventures. The funds were used to expand the company's headquarters and add additional employees. One of the first new hires was a former Top Chef contestant, Chef Chris Jones.[13] Hampton Creek was selected by Bill Gates to be showcased on his website in a feature called, The Future of Food.[14][15]

Technology

The company aims to use technology to make healthier food without trans fats and MSG.[16] Notable team members included former lead of the biochemistry team, Joshua Klein, PhD, who worked on HIV drug therapy research prior to working for Hampton Creek.[17]

In July 2014, Hampton Creek announced that Dan Zigmond, formerly lead data scientist at Google Maps, is VP of data science.[18] He left the position in May 2015 and moved to a strategic advisory role.[19]

Plant Database

Hampton Creek's data scientists are actively weeding out billions of proteins from hundreds of thousands of plants to learn what could form the equivalent of a chicken's egg. The company is seeking to create the largest plant database in the world.[20]

AEB advocacy campaign

In September 2015, a Freedom of Information request by Ryan Shapiro[21] revealed a number of cases where the government-controlled American Egg Board (AEB) had engaged in a systematic paid advocacy campaign targeting Hampton Creek. The AEB paid food bloggers to post articles containing the group's talking points regarding eggs, targeted personalities and websites that had posted articles covering the company in a positive manner, and purchased keyword advertising on Google Search to display advertisements on searches for Hampton Creek or its founder Josh Tetrick, among other actions. AEB chief executive Joanne Ivy stated at one point that Hampton Creek was a "crisis and major threat to the future." These actions violate USDA policies, which disallow advertising by its marketing boards that are "deemed disparaging to another commodity."[22]

Products

Just Mayo

Hampton Creek's first product is a mayonnaise substitute called Just Mayo.[23] Eat The Dough was first featured by Katie Couric's talk show, Katie, on February 4, 2014.[24] Hampton Creek is also working with several corporations on removing eggs from existing products already on the market.[13]

Just Cookie Dough

In 2014 Hampton Creek introduced Just Cookie Dough, an eggless chocolate chip cookie dough that can be baked or eaten out of the jar.[25]

Just Cookies

Just Cookies were launched in 2014 as a more sustainable and healthy cookie. Flavors currently offered are chocolate chip, sugar, oatmeal raisin and peanut butter. The cookie is made without butter or eggs, which makes it cholesterol free. Both Oprah Winfrey and Chef Andrew Zimmern have also publicly commented they are fans of Just Cookies.[26]

Funding

On February 17, 2014, Hampton Creek announced it had raised $23 million in Series B funding. The funding round was led by Li Ka-shing's venture capital firm, Horizons Ventures Limited.[27][28][29][30][31] Other participants in the round include Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang,[28] Google's Jessica Powell,[30] Ali and Hadi Partovi,[30] Scott Banister, Ash Patel,[31] as well as Hampton Creek's early investors Khosla Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Kat Taylor, and Tom Steyer’s Eagle Cliff.[31] CEO Joshua Tetrick announced that Hampton Creek would use the funds to continue its growth in North America, establish a presence in Asia, build strategic partnerships, and grow its team.[27][30] The Series B funding round brought the company's total funding to date to $30 million.[30]

In December 2014 it was announced that Hampton Creek raised $90 million in a series C round of funding, led by repeat investors Horizons and Khosla Ventures.[32] The series C funding round brought the total to $120 million.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.privco.com/private-company/hampton-creek-foods
  2. ↑ Swallow, Erica. "Mashable". Mashable. Retrieved 27 August 2014.
  3. ↑ Schwartz, Ariel. "The Most Realistic Fake Eggs In Existence Are Now On Sale". Fast Company. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
  4. ↑ Ha, Anthony (February 13, 2013). "Khosla-Backed Hampton Creek Foods Launches Beyond Eggs, A Genuinely Convincing Egg Replacer". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  5. ↑ Bilton, Nick (October 20, 2013). "Disruptions: Silicon Valley’s Next Stop: The Kitchen". Bits blog. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  6. ↑ Hay, Timothy. "Food Startup Hampton Creek Raises $90 Million Led by Horizons, Khosla". Wallstreet Journal. Retrieved 18 December 2014.
  7. ↑ Mac, Ryan. "http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2014/12/18/hampton-creek-90-million-benioff-saverin/". Hampton Creek Backed By Benioff And Facebook Cofounder In $90 Million Round. Forbes. External link in |title= (help)
  8. ↑ "Portfolio: Sustainability". Khosla Ventures. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  9. ↑ "Hampton Creek Foods". Founders Fund. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  10. ↑ "Portfolio Companies". Eagle Cliff Partners. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  11. ↑ "Collaborative Fund". Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  12. ↑ Feltman, Rachel (July 22, 2013). "One Founder’s Quest to Eliminate Eggs from Food Supply Chains". Triplepundit.com. It was, in part, through the inspiration of high school buddy and co-founder Josh Balk (an occasional contributor to TriplePundit)– then working for the Humane Society helping corporations increase their use of cruelty-free eggs.
  13. 1 2 3 Watson, Elaine (September 13, 2013). "Plant Egg Entrepreneur: We're not in business just to sell products to vegans in Northern California". foodnavigator-usa.com. Manufacturers were telling us that existing egg replacers for bakery in particular were not up to the mark.
  14. ↑ "The Future of Food". The Gates Notes. March 18, 2013. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  15. ↑ Bill Gates: Food Is Ripe for Innovation, Mashable
  16. ↑ Roberts, Anna. "PopSugar". http://www.popsugar.com/food/Hampton-Creek-Just-Scramble-Taste-Test-35901606. External link in |website= (help)
  17. ↑ Feltman, Rachel (December 17, 2013). "Start-Up Aims to Replace Eggs with More Sustainable Vegetable Proteins". Scientific American. Josh Klein used to work on vaccine development for HIV, but these days he focuses on a different biochemical conundrum: making cakes moist and fluffy.
  18. ↑ Buhr, Sarah (July 3, 2014). "How A Former Google Data Guy Could Change What We Eat For Breakfast". TechCrunch.com.
  19. ↑ "Dan Zigmond". LinkedIn. Retrieved 2015-05-13.
  20. ↑ Novet, Jordan. "Hampton Creek’s data scientists team up with chefs to find the holy grail of plant proteins". VentureBeat. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
  21. ↑ http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/03/437213511/how-big-egg-tried-to-bring-down-little-mayo-and-failed
  22. ↑ Thielman, Sam. "US-appointed egg lobby paid food blogs and targeted chef to crush vegan startup". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 September 2015.
  23. ↑ Wortham, Jenna; Miller, Claire Cain (April 28, 2013). "Venture Capitalists Are Making Bigger Bets on Food Start-Ups". The New York Times. Retrieved February 14, 2014.
  24. ↑ Couric, Katie (February 4, 2014). "Hampton Creek on Katie Couric's 'Katie'". "Katie".
  25. ↑ Lopez-Alt, Kenji. "Serious Eats".
  26. ↑ McColl, Sarah. "Is This the Cookie of the Future?". TakePart. Retrieved August 29, 2014.
  27. 1 2 Jon Swartz (17 February 2014), Food tech startup gobbles up $23 million in funding, USA Today, retrieved 19 February 2014
  28. 1 2 Ryan Mac (17 February 2014), Egg Replacing Startup Hampton Creek Foods Raises $23 Million From Asia's Richest Man And Yahoo Cofounder Jerry Yang, Forbes, retrieved 19 February 2014
  29. ↑ Alec Liu (18 February 2014), Asia’s Richest Man Is Betting Big On Silicon Valley’s Fake Eggs, VICE Magazine, retrieved 19 February 2014
  30. 1 2 3 4 5 Lora Kolodny (17 February 2014), Hampton Creek Raises $23M to Make Eggs Obsolete, The Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital Dispatch, retrieved 19 February 2014
  31. 1 2 3 Anthony Ha (17 February 2014), Plant-Based Food Startup Hampton Creek Foods Raises $23M Round Led By Horizons Ventures, TechCrunch, retrieved 19 February 2014
  32. ↑ Kowitt, Beth. "Fortune". FOrtune. Retrieved 18 December 2014.

Further reading

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