Most food startups run out of money before they run out of ideas. The ones that don't share one thing in common: they started planting before they were hungry.

In this Build in Public episode of Tomorrow's Bites, Andres Jara is back with a month that took him from securing funding in the Netherlands to speaking on stage at a regenerative agriculture summit in Colombia, and seeing his father for the first time in seventeen years.

This episode goes deep on something most founders avoid talking about in public: the actual mechanics of funding a food startup without giving away equity, without accumulating debt you can't repay, and without signing something that ends your journey before it begins. Andres breaks down the exact funding construction Favamole used, combining a grant from Stichting DOEN, a co-financed arrangement with the Rabo Foundation, and a convertible grant structure most founders have never even heard of.

But the real lesson isn't financial. It's about timing.

In this conversation, Andres reveals:

Why the biggest funding mistake founders make is starting to look when they're desperate, and what to do instead
How a convertible grant works: you only pay it back if you succeed, and why that changes everything psychologically
Why Favamole split its funding plan across two organizations on purpose and what transparency had to do with it
What Colombia's 53-year civil war accidentally protected, and why it makes it one of the most exciting food systems on the planet right now
Why he went to a Latin American summit and refused to ask for anything
And what meeting his father after 17 years taught him about how to show up in a negotiation

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Building in Public #8: How To Secure Funding As A Food Startup In Your First Year - With Andres Jara Co-Founder Of Favamole

Tomorrow's Bites with Andrés and Sjacco

Building in Public #8: How To Secure Funding As A Food Startup In Your First Year - With Andres Jara Co-Founder Of Favamole