Dubroff: Beneath the pink hat, a strong mind for building a business
You don’t interview Patricia Bragg. You sit in your chair trying to take notes while she tells stories and delivers a lecture or two or four on healthy living. “Sit up straight, don’t slouch, suck in your gut,” she says. “And never cross your legs.” With that, Bragg walks up and down the floor of Read More →
Venture capital firm hungers for health-foods startups
Santa Barbara-based venture capital firm NGEN Partners has a new investing focus on a somewhat unlikely sector: healthy, environmentally friendly food.
Since its founding in 2001, NGEN has had a focus on funding sustainability-oriented companies. Its early focus was on energy and materials. Catalytic Solutions, a nanotechnology firm spun out of UC Santa Barbara that made emissions scrubbing cheaper and more effective in automobiles, was an early investment. Soraa, an LED lighting firm created by several UCSB professors that has gone on to receive big money from Khosla Ventures and others, remains active in the firm’s portfolio.
Grown in Ghana: Santa Barbara startup makes African superfruit supplement
A Santa Barbara startup hopes to bring the rumored superfood qualities of the African baobab fruit to the U.S. market. The company said the product provides a highly-concentrated source of nutrition and has a sweet-yet-tart flavor that blends grapefruit, pear and vanilla, and an oil.
The winning formula: Family creates nutrition-drink business
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Tri-county companies ride health-foods boom
Producers of organic and natural foods in the Tri-Counties are seeing robust consumer demand despite higher production and retail costs for some of their products, a panel of speakers said at a breakfast meeting Wednesday. The event was hosted by the Association for Corporate Growth at the Westlake Village Inn. Scott Deardorff, fourth-generation owner and Read More →
