After successfully exiting her first venture, I Love Pies, Jessie Stanley wanted her next chapter to really matter.
A food technologist with deep experience in product development, she’d spent years inside the food industry and had seen firsthand the scale of waste. Inspired by a personal passion for sustainability, Jessie founded Good Grub Agritech with a bold idea: transform food waste into high-value insect protein and biofertiliser using black soldier fly bioconversion.
The potential was enormous, but scaling from a home experiment including early trials in her sister’s bathtub, to a high-tech agri-robotics facility required significant funding, technical expertise, and investor readiness.
Catalytic Support
Jessie joined Creative HQ’s Climate Response Accelerator in 2024, a pivotal turning point for both her and Good Grub. Despite her business background, entering the venture-backed climate-tech space was unfamiliar territory.
Creative HQ supported Jessie to:
- Sharpen her venture story: Intensive coaching on pitching, storytelling, and simplifying complex science for investors.\
- Build investor readiness: Through practical sessions on venture capital dynamics, business modelling, and commercial strategy.
- Connect with the right people: Through Creative HQ’s network, Jessie secured introductions to investors, partners, and industry experts including Motion Capital, who would later become a cornerstone investor.
- Find strength in community: Being part of a cohort of founders tackling climate-related challenges provided camaraderie, peer learning, and space to share the highs and lows of entrepreneurship.
- Gain exposure: Jessie pitched on stage at the Climate Tech Summit in Wellington to an audience of 500, her first major pitch event.
The accelerator’s structured coaching, exposure, and venture-readiness support were catalytic, leading directly to Motion Capital’s initial $50K investment and opening doors to larger funding opportunities.
The Results & Outcomes
Since completing the accelerator, Jessie and the Good Grub team have:
- Secured $5M in funding to date, combining strategic investors, venture capital, and grants, including a $3.5M Waste Minimisation Fund grant.
- Protected their technology with a patent, positioning Good Grub as a leader in insect-based protein solutions in New Zealand.
- Gained national visibility, including pitching live at the 2024 Icehouse Ventures Showcase in front of 1,000+ attendees.
- Positioned themselves to unlock their government grant by completing their final $2M funding round.
Impact beyond the Programme
Creative HQ’s accelerator helped Jessie make the leap from an exciting concept to a venture-ready business. The structured coaching, investor connections, and cohort effect gave Jessie and her team the confidence and the platform to attract funding, partners, and visibility at scale.
“The accelerator came at exactly the right time. I knew food and I knew business, but I didn’t know venture. Creative HQ helped me refine our story, build my confidence, and connect with the right people. Being part of the cohort gave me a sense of community and winning investment through the programme was the start of the process.”
