Alok Advani

The Nabisco factory was the largest bakery on Earth. In the plant controller’s office, my job was to build P&Ls from the atomic level — raw ingredients. Train cars would roll up full of flour, salt, and sugar, and we’d turn them into billions of cookies, delivered worldwide. The scale and efficiency blew me away, and I’ve never seen the food business the same way since.

Working on Super Bowl commercials is a dream come true for a young marketer. And we couldn’t touch a project of that scale without pinpoint clarity on our brand positioning. I’m a zealot for clear positioning. If you can align your brand’s values with the consumer’s values, you win in the market.

Running Conagra’s accelerator was as much about integration as innovation — and integration isn’t getting two ERP systems to sync. It’s people. Startups and enterprises are oil and water. But combine a big CPG’s strategic focus with a startup’s agility and get them moving at the same speed, and you have a winning combination.

That’s what made us successful at SuckerPunch — we were maniacal about sticking to a smart, lean strategy, but we moved at startup speed. Our competitors couldn’t keep up.

Venture and entrepreneurship are two sides of a coin. As Director of Chicago Seed Co, I see hundreds of brands a year. I see daily what a brand gets measured against and what makes or breaks a deal. CPG is built brick-by-brick, and CPG fundraising is no different. It’s a discipline that requires focused execution.