Top 50 Organic Food Angel Investors in United States

Kyle Vogt is the CEO of Cruise and former cofounder of Twitch

Shamin Walsh has over 13+ years as an active angel investor who gained experience in the consumer space through her early investments in companies such as Sweetgreen, Flexport, and Sir Kensington’s.Prior to joining BAM Ventures as a managing director, she was a consumer-focused partner at an early-stage generalist firm with tangible assets in3PL/fulfillment, cold storage/co-packing, and manufacturing, giving her a holistic perspective through which to evaluate emerging consumer businesses. She managed the investment portfolio and served on several boards, such as Alchemy 43. She also leveraged her experience as a transactional attorney to assist in contract negotiations, fund formation, and fund construction.

Gary R. Hirshberg, Ph.D., Co-Founded Spiffly, Inc. in 2014. Gary Hirshberg serves as a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. He serves as an Advisor at Renewable2 Management Company and Renewal2 Investment Fund. Gary Hirshberg co-founded Stonyfield Farm, Inc. (Stonyfield Farm Yogurt) in September 1983 and served as its Chief Executive Officer,since September 1983 until January 2012, President, since 1989. He oversaw Stonyfield's phenomenal growth, from its infancy as a seven-cow organic farming school to its $330 million in annual sales. In 2001, Stonyfield Farm entered into a partnership with Groupe Danone and in 2005, he was named Managing Director of Stonyfield Europe. He served as Director of the Rural Education Center at Stonyfield. Gary Hirshberg was a Managing Director at Stonyfield Europe. Previously, he served as an Executive Director at The New Alchemy Institute. He has extensive experience as an environmental activist, including terms as the Founding President of the Cape and Island Self Reliance Corporation and as the Founding President of the Cape Cod Environmental Alliance. Prior positions include serving as a Water-Pumping Windmill Specialist and an Environmental Education Director at the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Gary Hirshberg served as an Advisor at Renewal Partners LLC, Solera Capital, the Heinz Center Leadership Summit and the Corporate Ecoforum. Gary Hirshberg is Co-Founder and Chairman of O'Naturals. He served as the Chairman of Stonyfield Farm, Inc. He served as the Chairman of The Social Venture Network. Gary Hirshberg serves on several corporate and non-profit Boards including Applegate Farms, the Dannon Company, Honest Tea, Peak Organic Brewing Company, The Full Yield, Climate Counts, Stonyfield Europe, Ltd, Glenisk, Ltd, Solera Capital and Sambazon. He serves as Member of Advisory Board at Spiffly, Inc. He has been a Director at Blue Apron, Inc. and since February 27, 2017 Blue Apron Holdings, Inc. since October 2016. Gary Hirshberg serves as Director of Sweetgreen, Inc., Danone Communities and Quantum Designs, LLC. He serves as a Director of Ramp Sports LLC and The Full Yield, Inc. He served as a Director of Stonyfield Farm, Inc. Gary Hirshberg served as a Director of Monogram Energy, Inc. since June 1995. He served as a Trustee of Leadership New Hampshire, Inc. He serves as a Member of the Advisory Board of Simon Equity, LLC. He serves as Member of Social Advisory Board at Commons Capital Management LLC. Gary Hirshberg served as a Director of the New Hampshire Audobon Society and the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod. Gary Hirshberg is the Author of the book Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World. He is a frequent speaker on topics including sustainability, climate change, the profitability of green and socially responsible business, organic agriculture and sustainable economic development. Gary Hirshberg has won numerous awards for corporate and environmental leadership, including Global Green USA's "1999 Green Cross Millennium Award for Corporate Environmental Leadership." He was named "Business Leader of the Year" by Business NH Magazine and "New Hampshire's 1998 Small Business Person of the Year" by the U.S. Small Business Administration. More recently, 2009 was a year of big wins as Gary Hirshberg was named one of "America's Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs" by Business Week magazine, Stonyfield was chosen "Business of the Year - Manufacturing" by Business NH magazine and Stonyfield won an EPA Clean Air Excellence award. He also is featured in 2009's most successful documentary, "Food, Inc." Gary Hirshberg served on the Advisory Panel for Newsweek magazine's Global Environmental Leadership Conference. He has received eight honorary doctorates and was named a Gordon Grand Fellow at Yale University. Gary Hirshberg holds an honorary Doctor of Science from New Hampshire College, an Honorary Doctor of Law from Notre Dame College in Manchester, New Hampshire and a B.A. from Hampshire College.

Gary Vaynerchuk is the Chairman of VaynerX, a modern-day media and communications holding company, and the active CEO of VaynerMedia, a full-service advertising agency servicing Fortune 100 clients across the company’s 4 locations. In the late 90s, after identifying “the internet” as a land-grab opportunity, Gary transitioned his father’s localliquor store into one of the first wine e-commerce platforms resulting in growing the family business from $3-60MM in sales during a 5-year period.During his time in the family business, Vaynerchuk also started one of the first long-form episodic video shows on YouTube in 2006 called WineLibraryTV, filming 1,000 episodes over a 5-year window. Gary’s wine knowledge, charisma, and uncanny ability to engage with his community landed him appearances on national television with Ellen Degeneres and Conan O’Brien, as well as establishing him as one of the most followed people on social media during its nascent years.Not only did Gary leverage content creation and the rise of social media for his personal brand, but it was the seed which would become the pillar to his now 9-year old advertising agency VaynerMedia, servicing brands with an ever-expanding variety of offerings.Outside of being the Chairman and CEO of his own companies, Gary is a highly sought after public speaker, a 5-time New York Times bestselling author, as well as a prolific angel investor with early investments in companies such as Facebook,Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo, and Uber.Gary is currently the subject of DailyVee, an online documentary series highlighting what it’s like to be a CEO and public figure in today’s digital world, as well the host of The GaryVee Audio Experience, a top 50 global podcast, and host of #AskGaryVee, a business and advice Q&A show which can be found on both YouTube and Facebook.Gary also appeared as judge in Apple’s first original series “Planet of the Apps” alongside Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Alba and Will.i.am onIn addition to VaynerMedia, VaynerX also houses The Gallery, a new publishing company started after acquiring leading women’s lifestyle property PureWow in January 2017. In addition to running VaynerMedia, Gary also serves as a partner in the athlete representation agency VaynerSports and restaurant reservations app Resy.Gary is a board/advisory member of Ad Council and Pencils of Promise, and is a longtime Well Member of Charity:Water.

Jonathan is the Founder of Torch Capital. A long time entrepreneur and investor, he has spent his career at the intersection of the media, technology and entertainment industries. He is the Co-Founder of digital media company InsideHook and has spent a decade as an active early stage investor and advisor to a number of New York and LA's topstart-ups.

Sean Rad is the Founder of Tinder, the world's largest dating platform. Founded in 2012, Tinder is the highest grossing app on Apple's app store since 2017 and was valued at over $40 Billion dollars in 2021. Rad served as Tinder's CEO and Chairman at various times from the company's inception until 2017. Rad also foundedCardify in 2012, Adly in 2009, and Orgoo in 2004.In 2020, Forbes included Rad on their list of the decade's top 10 tech entrepreneurs. In May 2016, he was awarded an honoree diploma from the University of Southern California while delivering their undergraduate commencement.

Kimbal Musk is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at Big Green.

Bill Gates is the Co-chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He attended Harvard University.

Mark Cuban is the founder of Fireside, Chairman and Founding partner of AXS TV, and the Owner of Dallas Mavericks. Prior to that, he was the Co-Founder of Broadcast.com. Mrk attended the Indiana University Bloomington.

Bryan Rosenblatt (born July 4, 1989 in New York, New York, United States) is an American Venture Capitalist and entrepreneur. He is a Partner at Craft Ventures, a venture firm with over $2 billion AUM started by David Sacks. He is also a founder of Riverside Ventures, which he started in 2017, and a former executive at Reddit and Twitter. Hepreviously worked at Reddit as the Head of Sales. Bryan Rosenblatt attended the University of Connecticut School of Business and Charles University.

Timothy Ferriss is a start-up angel investor Twitter, Posterous, RescueTime and others, blogger and entrepreneur. Tim's best-known written work is The 4-Hour Workweek, which had been sold into 35 languages and reached #1 on The New York Times, BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. On May 3, 2009, it celebrated its 2ndstraight year on The New York Times business bestseller list since its publication on April 27, 2007. Tim is a Guest Lecturer in High-Tech Entrepreneurship and Electrical Engineering at Princeton University since 2003. Other education-related interests includes social media-based fundraising experiments, such as LitLiberation, which outraised television host Stephen Colbert 3-to-1 with no fixed costs. Most recently, Tim used Twitter as a distributed tool for gathering data on post-campaign donations (see Tweet to Beat). Tim is on the advisory board of DonorsChoose.org, Evernote, StumbleUpon, Trippy, about.me, TaskRabbit and Uber. Tim has been invited to speak at some of the world’s most innovative organizations, including Google, MIT, Harvard Business School, Nike, PayPal, Facebook, The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Microsoft, Ask.com, Nielsen, Princeton University, the Wharton School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Tim has also been invited to speak and keynote at world-renowned technology summits including EG, FOO Camp, E-Tech, Supernova, LeWeb, and the Web 2.0 Exposition, where he shared the stage with figures like Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Board of Google, and Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon. Tim received his B.A. degree from Princeton University in 2000, where he studied in the Neuroscience and East Asian Studies departments.

David Becker is a CEO & Founder at First Internet Bank.

Bill Gates is the Co-chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He attended Harvard University.

Matt Mullenweg is the CEO at Automattic Inc. Matt Mullenweg attended the University of Houston.

Clark Landry is the Managing Partner of Clover Leaf Ventures.Most recently, Clark was co-founder and COO at CESPPA, a cybersecurity company. Formerly, Clark was co-founder and COO at Maple Media (raised $30 million from private equity investors), co-founder and executive chairman at SHIFT (acquired by Brand Networks), co-founder and CEO at TopLevel Domain Holdings (now Minds + Machines - publicly-traded on the London Stock Exchange's AIM), co-founder and CMO at TagWorld (acquired by Viacom). Clark was a founding investor of Gradient X, a mobile DSP (acquired by SingTel), Traffic Marketplace, an advertising network (acquired by Vivendi), Adconion Media Group, a provider of digital media advertising solutions (acquired by Amobee), Conversion Logic, an advertising attribution company, and CREXi, a commercial real estate marketplace.Clark holds a bachelor of arts degree in economics from Yale University.

Christopher Emmanuel Paul is an American professional basketball player for the Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association.

Madeline Darcy is the Founder and Managing Partner at Kaya Ventures. Madeline Darcy attended Harvard Business School.

Patrick Schwarzenegger

Walter Robb is the co-founder and co-CEO of Whole Foods Market.

Natalie Massenet is co-founder and partner of Imaginary Ventures, a venture fund investing in early-stage opportunities at the intersection of retail and technology, as well as the non-executive co-chairwoman of Farfetch, a global e-commerce platform for luxury fashion. Massenet is best known for founding the luxury fashion online retailerNet-A-Porter, in 2000. In the year before she stepped down from her role following its merger with YOOX, the Net-A-Porter-Group recorded net revenues of almost $1 billion. Massenet began her career as a journalist and fashion editor, working at WWD and Tatler before setting up Net-A-Porter. In 2009, she was awarded an MBE, and in 2016 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, both in recognition of her contributions to the U.K. fashion and retail industry. Massenet was chairman of the British Fashion Council between 2013 and 2017.

Justin Mateen is the Founder of Tinder, the world's largest dating platform. Founded in 2012, Tinder is the highest grossing app on Apple's app store since 2017 and was valued at over $40 Billion dollars in 2021. In 2021, Business Insider ranked Mateen as the best early stage investor in the US, placing him at the number 1 spot on thetop 100 list of US Seed Investors. In 2020, Forbes included Mateen on their list of the decade's top 10 tech entrepreneurs. Fast Company has listed him as one of the most creative people in business.

John Foraker is the Co- Founder & CEO at Once Upon a Farm .

Sir Richard Branson is the current Founder of the Virgin Group and Owner and Founder of Virgin Limited Edition. He previously worked at OneWeb as a Board Member. Sir Richard Branson attended Bishopsgate School.

Seth Rodsky is the founder and managing partner at Strand Equity. He is also the founder of Hello Sunshine Official, Draper James, and Spotlight Brands. Seth is a former chairman at Strategic Group.

Justin Gold is the founder of Justin’s, a natural foods company that produces organic and all-natural nut butters and peanut butter cups. From humble beginnings at local Farmers’ Markets to launching a national brand, Justin’s is now one of the country’s fastest growing natural foods companies, with Gold serving as an innovator and thought-leaderin the space. Gold is a passionate entrepreneur who encourages others to follow their passion and never stop asking questions along the way. He lives in Boulder with his wife and children, finding his work/life balance by enjoying an active lifestyle there as an avid trail runner, mountain biker, skier and backpacker.

Dr. Peter Hsieh is a General Partner of Acorn Pacific Ventures, based in Silicon Valley.He did Venture Capital from 1997-2004 in Silicon Valley, then 2004-2013 in Beijing.Dr. Hsieh received his master's and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from Stanford University and his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from NationalTaiwan University.

Ty Bennett

Investor

David J. Namdar is the Co-Founder of NFT.com. Attended at University of Southern California.

Takuya Noguchi founded and was appointed as CEO of BULK HOMME.

Laurie Benenson founded Movieline Magazine, serving as its editor-in-chief for six years. She went on to write for the New York Times Arts and Leisure Section for five years as a West Coast correspondent on film and television.

Peggy McCarthy

Howard Lindzon - Founder & General Partner @ Social Leverage

Early Stage Tech Investor; LP; Mortgage Backed Securities Trader, Columbia MBA, Portuguese, Spanish and English.

Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter is an American singer, actress, songwriter, record producer, director, model, dancer, fashion designer and businesswoman. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Beyoncé performed in various singing and dancing competitions as a child.

Ben is the Founder and General Partner of Bling Capital. He has backed 19 "unicorn" billion dollar companies, with the best yet to come.Previously, Ben was a General Partner at Khosla Ventures, where he focused on consumer, Internet, mobile, marketplace, SaaS and consumer health businesses. There, he led investments in Wattpad, Tapingo,Gitlab, True Accord, Webflow, among many others.Previously, Ben served in senior operating roles at Google, YouTube and Facebook. He also is an active angel investor with early stakes in Airtable, Lyft, Square, Palantir, Quora, Gusto, Udemy and others.While at Google, he served as Senior Director of Search and Local Business Products, which included overseeing Google Images, Videos, Books, News and Finance. At YouTube, Ben was Senior Director of Partnerships and Platform, where he was responsible for music, movies, sports and news, as well as mobile, television and API partnerships. In his first role at Google, he was the founder and general manager of Google’s commerce group, which includes Google Wallet and Google Shopping.At Facebook, Ben was the first director of the Facebook platform and oversaw the development of the company’s developer ecosystem. He also led product, marketing, developer operations and partner solutions. Ben played a crucial role in developing Facebook Connect, which helped grow Facebook across the web.Ben holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) from UC Berkeley, and a M.S. and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. Ben is a Department of Defense fellow and a recipient of UC Berkeley’s Bechtel Achievement Award, given to the top graduating senior from the College of Engineering.

Nikita Fahrenholz is the CEO and Founder at Actio.

Eric Marcoullier is the Co-founder, Head of Strategy, and Director of Enaia. He was the Director at Compliable before that. He attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the University of Florida, and Tulane University.

Andrew Abraham is the CEO and Founder at Orgain, Inc.

David was hired at Google in 2000 as one of the first 200 employees, and was the first executive to lead their international BD, sales, and operations. He launched Google’s first international ads and founded their offices in Asia, Europe and Latam. He hired the first intl. mgmt. teams, and established Google’s overseas business. After Google,David co-founded XG Ventures, a Google alumni fund and was Co-founding Partner of SK Telecom Ventures, a $100M corp. VC fund based in Silicon Valley. His personal and VC investments include over 50 companies with 20+ acquisitions such as Tapulous (acq. by Disney), Posterous (acq. by Twitter), Scoopler (acq. by Google), ABitLucky (acq. by Zynga), Chai Labs (acq. by Facebook), Cue (acq. by Apple), Kabam (acq. by Netmarble), Chartboost, Wish, and many others. David is an LP in Y Combinator and SV Angel. In 2015, he partnered with Michael Bay (Transformers, The Rock) at 451 Media, to lead their tech and media investments and partnerships. David later formed Open Source Studios, a Stanford Business School based advisory group with prof. and two time Oscar winner Bill Guttentag, to help founders of tech & media startups such as MasterClass and Illumix. David is also a Partner at B&C Group, a leading talent mgmt. & prod. co., connecting Korea, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. He currently invests in emerging tech & media companies through his venture capital fund SLVC.David is on the advisory boards of ASES (Stanford Entrepreneurship Society), and HPAIR (Harvard Project for Asian & Intl. Relations).BloombergBusinessweek “Google’s Real Power” flic.kr/p/7FVJgr The Hollywood Reporter: https://bit.ly/2UEQAujDecoding Silicon Valley: goo.gl/ZFAefzTechcrunch: goo.gl/9q9chzTop Angel Investors: goo.gl/4eqfbm“New Silicon Valley Stars of Korean Descent” goo.gl/ZwFCu6"[슈퍼리치]실리콘밸리 뉴 코리안 슈퍼리치" goo.gl/WBQOf0“스타트업 눈앞 이익만..." goo.gl/KB78mCSina News: bit.ly/2QaCqAc

Kenneth Hertz, is a Senior Partner in the Beverly Hills law firm of Hertz Lichtenstein & Young LLP. Ken and his partners specialize in representing talent and new media companies in the sports and entertainment industries. The firm's clients include Will, Jada, Willow and Jaden Smith, No Doubt, Gwen Stefani, The Black Eyed Peas, will.i.am,Keith Richards, Herbie Hancock, Jason Mraz, Britney Spears, Janet Jackson, David Blaine, Shaun White, Wayne Gretzky, Jamie Oliver, James Patterson, Lionel Richie and Enrique Iglesias.

Vera Baker is an Angel Investor for Atomico, and an Investment Advisor to The Jua Fund, an early-stage, Pan-African, Venture Capital Fund that invests the first check into exceptional founders at the pre-seed and seed stage. Additionally, she works directly with budding startups as a Director at the Founders Institute Paris Chapter and a mentor tounderrepresented founders at the Colors Accelerator in Paris and the Unconventional Accelerator in the Nordics.

Ashok Vasudevan is the Co-Founder at CSAW. He attended Harvard Business School.

Serial startup founder, CEO Appi Creative Solutions and investor in companies including Cleanit.Africa, Xfests and Djama. By far the coolest startup tech guy you will ever meet… ever. He blends his unique experiences as software developer, design artist and entrepreneurship, With over 10 years experience in the technology scene, he has workedwith so many internationally renowned brands including Uber, Alstom, G.E, Apple ,IBM etc and a track record of projects and startup Jonathan is a hands-on entrepreneur that likes to get the job done.A software developer turned entrepreneur that made over 200% in profit in his first year in business as a technology company and is set to achieve big feats with the new set of digital products

Nicholas Brown is a managing partner at Imaginary.

Alex Pattis is a General Partner at Riverside Ventures. He attended The University of Arizona.

Carolyn McCarthy - Founder @ Wild Food News

Steve Sacks is Chairman at Sonnant. He attended Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Ashley Graham is an American model and television presenter.

Alan is a successful serial entrepreneur with multiple exits over a 15 year period to companies including Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO), Level 3 Communications (NASDAQ: LVLT) and Internet Security Systems (now NYSE: IBM). He is a 2014 Finalist for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Award for Central Texas and has been a Founder, Executive,Angel Investor and Fund Manager throughout his career in the private sector after serving in the United States Army as an Airborne, Air Assault and Ranger qualified Captain in the Corps of Engineers. He has also created and managed companies that have won both regional and national awards for growth, including the # 36 ranking on the 2014 Forbes list of America’s Most Promising Companies, the # 1 ranking on the ABJ Fast50 list of the 50 Fastest Growing Companies in Central Texas, the # 40 ranking on the 2013 Inc. list of the 500 Fastest Growing Companies in the United States, the # 4 ranking on the 2013 Inc. list of the 500 Fastest Growing Software Companies in the United States, the # 2 ranking on the 2008 Deloitte list of the Technology Fast 50 in Orange County and the # 21 ranking on the 2008 Deloitte list of the Technology Fast 500 in North America. As a mobile and multiscreen industry expert, Alan is frequently quoted in trade publications, serves as a panelist at industry events and writes for the Wall Street Journal’s Accelerators Blog.Previously, Alan was President of Alternative Investments for Curo Capital LLC and Managing Director for Trymetris Capital Management LLC. In the past, he was a Co-Founder and Director of Telverse Communications, a next-generation advanced services ASP focused on wholesale communications services for carriers and service providers, which was acquired in July 2003 by Level 3 Communications. Before this time, Alan was Director of Marketing for the Voice Technology Group at Cisco Systems and was responsible for business, market and community development, including business planning and strategy for Cisco’s global packet communications initiatives. In November 2000, Alan joined Cisco as part of the Vovida Networks acquisition, where he served as Co-Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer and led the company from idea conception through its eventual acquisition by Cisco. Alan holds an MSIE degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, an MBA degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a BSIE degree from The U. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife Kelly and their four children and serves on the President’s Council at the University of Miami (FL).