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Koralo
The opportunity moved. The investor story moved with it.
Koralo co-ferments microalgae and mycelium. It set out to make a fish alternative, and found a larger functional ingredient opportunity inside the same technology. We rebuilt the investor narrative around that opportunity and carried it through the teaser, the full deck and the route into diligence.
- Situation
- A new opportunity
- Audiences
- Investors
- Leadership involved
- Founder
- Work
- Investor positioning, story architecture, teaser, deck
The problem
Four stories in one deck.
Koralo’s earlier deck carried four propositions at once.
Each one was real. Together they made it hard to see what an investor was being asked to believe. The proof was spread across different products, markets and technical explanations.
Before any design work started, Sina, CEO and founder of Koralo, said the storyline had to change first.
Investors could not tell which proposition they were being asked to back.
- Fish-free seafood
- A functional food ingredient
- An aquafeed supplement
- A co-fermentation platform
The shift
From fish analogue to functional bioactivity.
Dropping the seafood chapter would have made the change look arbitrary. We kept it as the route to the discovery. Koralo started with a product, learned from it, and the evidence opened a larger opportunity.
The discovery
The fish product was the way in.
Building the seafood product gave Koralo manufacturing knowledge, customer conversations and early traction. It also surfaced bioactivity in the ingredient. The story needed that causality in plain sight, so an investor could follow each step from the first product to the larger opportunity.
- 01Seafood
A fish analogue made by co-fermenting microalgae and mycelium.
- 02Discovery
Developing the product revealed more in the ingredient than texture and taste.
- 03Bioactivity
Early evidence pointed to a functional effect on gut health.
- 04Functional ingredient
A larger opportunity across food, beverage and animal nutrition.
“It was never about replacing a protein. It was always about delivering superior nutrition.”
The decisions
The opportunity leads. The technology defends it.
Some investors were wary of companies that lead with fermentation or alternative protein. The technology stayed in the story and moved down the order. It now explains why Koralo can deliver the ingredient and why others will find it hard to copy.
Before
- Co-fermentation technology
- Several applications
- Why each application matters
After
- The functional ingredient opportunity
- Scientific and commercial proof
- Why Koralo can deliver it
- Patented co-fermentation, as the defence
The proof
Evidence in the order the claims need it.
Koralo had five kinds of evidence. Putting all of it in front of an investor at the first meeting would bury the argument. We sequenced it, so the proof gets more specific as the claims do.
- MarketThe need, and the alternatives buyers use today.
- CommercialApplications, customer conversations, pilots.
- ScientificMechanism, studies and nutrition.
- TechnicalPatents, process and formulation behaviour.
- OperationalManufacturing, cost structure and scale-up.
The scientific and nutritional material stays confidential. This page shows how it was organised and leaves out what it says.
The investor journey
One story, five stages of the raise.
We wrote the full story first, then set what each stage of the raise had to do. The teaser, the meeting, the deck, diligence and the data room each have a different job. The same argument runs through all five.
- 01Teaser
Earn the first conversation.
- 02Meeting
Answer the live questions.
- 03Full deck
Build the case and hold up to scrutiny.
- 04Diligence
Carry the proof behind each claim.
- 05Data room
Let the investor verify it.
Beyond the deck
The story moved into the rest of the company.
The work spread from the raise to the rest of the company. We looked at website positioning and homepage copy, case studies for the data room, how technical the public explanation should be, and which evidence should support which claim.
What happened next
The short story opened most conversations.
Koralo told us it used the shorter investor story for most of its conversations.
Services in this workInvestor Storytelling Pitch Storytelling Biotech Branding
From the LibraryWhat an Investor Deck Actually Has to Make Easy to Decide
