Episode 123: Collateral Good: Mariana Gonzalez on Why "A Flat Round Is the New Up Round," Corporate-Backed Venture, and Investing Through the Food-Tech Reset
In this episode, I sit down with Mariana Gonzalez, Co-Founder & Partner at Collateral Good, a Zurich-based, globally-investing venture fund managing €100M across three funds — food innovation, packaging innovation, and textile innovation — with 24 portfolio companies and a distinctive edge: they're backed by major corporates. Grupo Bimbo (the world's largest bread manufacturer) is a key LP in the food fund; Hugo Boss anchors the textile fund. That closeness to industry gives Collateral Good direct access to corporate pain points and the R&D decision-makers who actually adopt new technology. Mariana — a Mexican industrial engineer who cut her teeth as a buyer and then in operations and logistics at Costco — brings a rare retail-and-supply-chain lens to venture. We get into her clear-eyed read of the market reset: why "a flat round is the new up round," why this is an investor's market after the founder's market of 2021–22, and how Collateral Good's new, larger strategy will target more market-proven companies plus "special situations" created by the valuation correction. Along the way, Mariana delivers some of the most practical fundraising wisdom we've had on the show — on pressure-testing business models, transparency as a two-way street, cap-table alignment ("it takes a village"), how she actually approaches bridge rounds from the investor's side, and the founder qualities she now screens for.
🎧 Listen to the full masterclass to hear why food-tech timelines run 5+ years longer than the deck says, how corporate LPs and CVCs are getting far more strategic (and why they still need funds like hers), when Mariana will and won't back a "moonshot," how she runs bridge conversations honestly from a position of strength, and the two founder traits she believes separate the survivors: brutal honesty and asking for help early.
Key Facts: Collateral Good
- Mariana Gonzalez (Co-Founder & Partner): https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariana-gonzalez-lopez-25093817a
- Website: collateralgood.eu
- Headquarters: Zurich, Switzerland
- Firm: A climate-first / impact venture fund operating since 2018, managing €100M across three funds — food innovation, packaging innovation, and textile innovation — with 24 portfolio companies. Leads, co-leads, or follows depending on what's best for the company.
- Select Portfolio (food): The EVERY Company, LiveKindly, Heartbest (plant-based dairy, Mexico), Bramble (pet food, US), among 24 companies across the three funds.
Blurb
COLLATERAL GOOD is a different kind of venture firm: a Zurich-based, climate-first fund that has spent since 2018 building three thematic funds — food, packaging, and textile innovation — on a foundation most investors can't replicate. Its LPs are the corporates that ultimately buy innovation: Grupo Bimbo in food, Hugo Boss in textiles. That gives the €100M, 24-company firm something rarer than capital — a direct channel to the industry's real pain points and the R&D teams who decide what actually reaches a shelf. Led in this conversation by co-founder Mariana Gonzalez, a Mexican industrial engineer whose formative years were spent inside Costco's operations, the fund pairs venture conviction with a hard-nosed understanding of how slowly consumers and supply chains truly change.
