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How This Startup Raised a $1.7 Million Seed Round on Chicken-Less Eggs

Clara Foods figured out how to pitch a unique product without making investors balk. Read on to learn how they did it.

By Andrew Rosenblum

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Eggless egg whites sound like another vegan treat, but San Francisco-based startup Clara Foods is shooting for omnivores. It inserts genes for egg whites into yeast, which then ferments in tanks, like beer, and creates a product that is genetically egg but never involved a chicken. Clara cofounder and CEO Arturo Elizondo thinks that will appeal particularly to those who want to eat eggs but avoid the messy egg industry: Last year's avian flu outbreak, for example, cost the economy $3.3 billion and resulted in the disposal of more than 45 million U.S. hens. Yeast, meanwhile, is drama-free.

Chicken-less egg whites -- you must have developed quite the elevator speech.

We thought one pitch would work for everybody. Just not using a chicken was so revolutionary -- we thought that would be enough. But different investors were interested in different things. Some were true foodies. They asked, "You can create fluffier meringues?" Others were focused on sustainability: They really wanted to do something for the world and the environment.

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