Establishing a start-up is on its own no easy task, but Newstead has attempted to take the challenge one step further by pledging to make zero profit.
He is also eschewing traditional top-down marketing and investment approach that most smaller companies would look to.
Bite Society’s first products to launch are a vegan chocolate ball and a vegan chocolate bar, and despite the challenges these products are already in three different countries: Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong, with China and Singapore also in the pipeline.
“The advantage of bootstrapping and not having investors is that you can start with a blank slate and say okay, what would the ideal, mission-driven food project be, and how can we really make an impact,” he told FoodNavigator-Asia.
In addition to this, he aims to make the entire model transparent so as to share all learnings and valuable experiences with other start-ups in the vegan industry via the firm’s website, and claims to have already helped five other companies in their attempts so far.
“That’s the bigger goal of Bite Society, to inspire and help other vegan start-ups,” he added.
Newstead is also an angel investor, particularly concentrating on plant-based and cell-based meat start-ups such as Singapore’s Shiok Meats, and would generally base his investments on the start-up’s probability of success and the impact it would bring.
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