Fundraising & Finance

CPG growth consumes cash before it produces it. You pay the co-packer, hold the inventory, ship the order, and wait sixty or ninety days to get paid — and then the retailer deducts a portion of it. A brand can be growing quickly, be profitable on paper, and still fail because the working capital cycle outran the bank balance.

That shapes what funding is for and what kind you want. Equity raised to fund inventory is expensive equity. Much of the capital an emerging CPG brand needs is working capital, and the instruments that fit — lines of credit, purchase order financing, receivables facilities — are different from the venture path most founders default to reading about.

These posts cover what CPG investors actually underwrite and at what stage, how to build financials that survive diligence, working capital and inventory financing, deduction and chargeback impact on real cash, and the unit economics that have to hold before growth is worth funding.