Lena Mareike Wenzel of EIT Food discusses organizational growing pains and founder leadership pitfalls during the pre-Series A scaling phase.
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“Also you as a founder, right? You're not a founder anymore. You're basically becoming a leader, a CEO. That's a switch that people also just have to do. And sometimes, yeah, sometimes miss to do correctly.”
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More from Lena Mareike Wenzel
Insight
Wenzel: Startups Alone Cannot Disrupt the Food System
“Because you can't just have only startups, because they just won't be able to disrupt the system, right? So you need everybody else on board as well.”
Lena Mareike WenzelMar 25, 2025▶ 17:4434 - Scaling Food Innovation: How RisingFoodStars Supports Startups in the Food Industry
AssertionSupported
EIT Impact Fund invests €500K to €1.5M in EIT Food companies
“We do have, for example, our own, we call it EIT impact fund basically operates as a VC and they invest in companies that are part of EIT food. So that's a prerequisite and they invest Anything up to 1.5 million euros per company, usually starting with about 5…”
Lena Mareike WenzelMar 25, 2025▶ 5:2834 - Scaling Food Innovation: How RisingFoodStars Supports Startups in the Food Industry
Insight
Wenzel: FoodTech startups struggle with commercialization rather than creativity
“Most companies come out of R&D, right? So you have a very heavy R&D focused companies usually that then all of a sudden have to be become sales organizations, right? So I think it's rather the opposite challenge that you have rather creative, inventive people …”
Lena Mareike WenzelMar 25, 2025▶ 20:3634 - Scaling Food Innovation: How RisingFoodStars Supports Startups in the Food Industry
Disclosure
Wenzel: RisingFoodStars supports later-stage scale-ups aligned with EIT Food missions
“And so also within Rising Food Stars, it is our scale-up It is one actually of three of our flagship entrepreneurship programs. We work with the latest stage companies, and so any of our companies that we support in that program has to basically fulfill one of…”
Lena Mareike WenzelMar 25, 2025▶ 1:2034 - Scaling Food Innovation: How RisingFoodStars Supports Startups in the Food Industry
Disclosure
Wenzel: RisingFoodStars focuses on IP-heavy tech over B2C consumer apps
“What we work with is quite IP heavy. So we don't work with the usual B to C consumer apps though I'm sure there's great solutions out there, but what we really focus on is more of a tech heavy focus, right?”
Lena Mareike WenzelMar 25, 2025▶ 2:0634 - Scaling Food Innovation: How RisingFoodStars Supports Startups in the Food Industry
Disclosure
Wenzel: RisingFoodStars onboards only 15 new companies annually
“We onboard only 15 new companies each year, but companies can stay with us for up to three years.”
Lena Mareike WenzelMar 25, 2025▶ 3:5834 - Scaling Food Innovation: How RisingFoodStars Supports Startups in the Food Industry
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