The conference started on Thursday afternoon with an introduction to Finance 101 by CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, Gary Hirshberg.  Gary kept this session pretty high level going over a mock cash flow statement and how in a CPG company, this really is the pulse of your business.  The finance session as it went on (4 hours total) really built upon the ground level concepts into more of an advanced understanding at what metrics would be important for these entrepreneurs.

While I think it’s crucial for any business to truly watch, it really brought to light for me some of the differences between my background and what food entrepreneurs face in terms of challenges.  Web based startups largely do not have significant overhead due to rarely needing to purchase anything (except maybe a computer/server?), but food startups are almost the exact opposite.  They have to make packaging, the actualproduct and find a producer, and if they have enough cash, a distributor as well.  To take that even a step further, if they are an organic, like many of them that attended were — they must be certified which has a cost associated with it.

Later that afternoon Brad Sterl, President of Rustic Crust spoke about how his company was founded, and grew to be a leader in the organic pizza crust market that it is today.  While Brads background is varied, suffice to say he worked in the restaurant industry before founding Rustic Crust.  Soon afterwards he sought funding, and partnered with Clear Venture Partners.  It’s always interesting to me to hear about how founders started a company from just an idea and built it up.  In fact, that’s primarily why I do the “Profile of” pieces on this blog - not because it’s interesting to me… but because I think there’s something to be learned from all of us on how successful entrepreneurs built their companies.

After that session, we got a treat, we listened to what it was like for Trish Karter, founder of Dancing Deer Baking Company and Gary and Meg Hirshberg speak about how their business were built, and in Meg’s case how it affected the family.  There was literally so much information in this session that I could likely write a whole different post about it.  In fact, I think I will do that sometime.  Much of the material Gary covered in this session can likely be found in his book.  While Meg writes a monthly column, Balancing Acts, in Inc. Magazine on family issues, if you don’t know of it or have not read it… go check it out!

The second day was mainly case study focused.  There was a finance, marketing, and management & organization session where we got a peek at real companies such as [me] & goji a company that provides custom ordered cereals based on your configuration online.  This second day was truly revealing as  the panelists and audience really dug into some of these companies and asked all sorts of questions.  Needless to say I’m sure it will make each one of the companies better for it.

So, would I go again?  Absolutely.  It was great to learn about a different segment of entrepreneurs and startups, especially with so many in New Hampshire.  I really look forward to getting some of them on this blog going forward.

If you have any questions about my experience, or any of the companies present, let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them.