Stefano Bernardi

#foodstartups

Today everything was very calm here at 500startups. Companies are hard at work on their pitches (they have to be ready by 12pm tomorrow) and everyone was immersed in doing what they couldn’t do in the last crazy days.

Myself, I’ve been working hard on something super-secret I might be showing you at the end of these two weeks. Stay tuned.

But today another big thing was going on, 500startups is hosting a special event targeted to startups in the food and health sector, so around 6 the office started getting packed. The New Food Chain: Investing in Food Startups event is on.

Dave seems to be a fan of the market. He invested in Spoondate, Culture Kitchen,  Foodspotting, Craftcoffee and Skipola.

The event was really interesting with a lot of companies demoing and pretty interesting talks. The Elacarte guys were really pumped and have a product I’ve been envisioning for a few years, I just hope to find a restaurant that uses them soon.

Shopwell is awesome. They collect info for you and then they give you recommendations on the healthiest products for you to buy. They also have an iphone app so you can scan products’ barcodes and get an instant score about them. Other interesting companies are Smartgardener and Punchfork.

Most of the companies here are really focused on having an impact on the world, and it’s awesome. Cookpad’s founder said that hopefully much more capital and talent will get involved in solving the three biggest problems we have right now: energy, water and food and not spending too much time building social games.

Also, food was awesome. Now, I’m back to work and getting ready for tomorrow.