The Fish 2.0 2017 business competition for sustainable seafood enterprises launched yesterday with a new track structure that will build seafood innovation networks in coastal regions around the world and create global networks around key opportunities in the seafood industry.
The competition gives participating entrepreneurs unparalleled access to investors, advisors, and partners who can help their businesses grow. Over 60 percent of the finalists in the Fish 2.0 2015 competition gained investment, new partners, or new customers from connections they made during the program.
“Fish 2.0 made us a company to watch—and that’s opened the door to a lot of press opportunities, investors, retailers, and partners,” said Jacqueline Claudia, CEO of Colorado-based Love the Wild. “The best thing coming out of Fish 2.0 is the network. It’s a real community, and the connections keep getting stronger.”
“Fish 2.0 does a great job of getting all the different stakeholders in a room behind real solutions to a more sustainable, open, and transparent seafood sector,” said Amy Novogratz, managing partner at Aqua-Spark, a Fish 2.0 supporting sponsor in 2015 and 2017. “The conversations and collaborations that start in that room drive quite a bit for us.” The Netherlands-based Aqua-Spark fund, which invests in aquaculture across the value chain, invested in Love the Wild after the 2015 competition and is tracking a number of the companies the partners met at Fish 2.0. “We hope to see companies this year that are not yet on our radar,” Novogratz added.
This year’s new track structure puts participants in competition initially with their regional peers or in one of two global themed tracks, with the top scorers from each track moving on to the global finals. The six regional tracks are Chile and Peru, New England (U.S.), Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, South Atlantic and Gulf Coast Shellfish, and West Coast (U.S.). The global tracks are Transparency and Traceability, and Supply Chain Innovation. Each track has specific eligibility criteria.
“This new structure will ensure diversity among finalists and give investors a global perspective on emerging innovations in the seafood industry. It also begins to create regional networks that can support growing businesses, as well as global networks for innovators working on seafood’s biggest challenges,” said Monica Jain, Fish 2.0 founder and executive director. “This feeds into Fish 2.0’s larger project of creating a global platform for seafood that can drive innovation, business growth, and positive social and environmental impacts.”
