JACOB AFRIAT
Jacob Afriat is the founder of Great Circle Ventures, a venture fund investing in early-stage food, beverage, and health and wellness CPG brands, and lives in NY with his wife and four kids.
Before launching Great Circle Ventures, Jacob spent years in banking at HSBC and Credit Suisse (both in the US and Europe), earned his CFA, then did an MBA and decided he wanted out of traditional finance.
He joined Aloha, the plant-based protein bar, before they'd even launched, as one of the earliest team members, then joined KeyMe, a robotics and data science company, where he became CFO and got deep into data-driven decision making. After that, he joined Danone's corporate venture arm, where his team deployed over 500M across 23 companies and acquired brands including Harmless Harvest. That experience of watching the slow, relationship-driven mechanics of how a $200B corporation acquires a startup is what led to the creation of Great Circle Ventures.
HOW HE OPERATES:
How Jacob manages his health, his family, and a VC Fund:
Sleep is the non-negotiable
Prioritizes sleep over almost everything else
Uses an Oura ring and tries to keep his sleep debt as close to zero as possible
Avoids red-eye flights, limits himself to one per year maximum
Sleep range on weeknights is 10pm to midnight depending on the day
Works out every day
Has been working out since college and now calls it a withdrawal feeling when he doesn't
The gym isn't just physical, it's where he thinks through work problems without interruption
"There's no kids around screaming. It's a very good place for me to have my alone time."
With four kids, a wife, and a fund, uninterrupted focus time is rare. The gym is where he gets it.
Careful about the food he ingests and tracks his biomarkers
Avoids seed oils, anything in processed snacks
Watches saturated fat closely because of cholesterol
Notes that the new generation doesn't share this concern, Gen Z is fine with coconut oil, double cream yogurt, etc.
For him, it's personal and necessary
Also uses Function Health to track everything and make sure what he’s eating is helping his biomarkers
Manages blood sugar through food order and preparation
Eats fiber before protein, fat, and carbs to reduce sugar spikes
Refrigerates pasta overnight to increase resistant starch
Pairs bread with fat to lower the glycemic response
Swaps white rice for brown rice - "small modifications can have a 10 to 20% impact on your body's response, and sometimes it doesn't even impact your taste"
These aren't drastic changes. They're small, compounding adjustments learned from years of being in the food industry.
Date night every Wednesday at 8pm. No exceptions
With four kids and two busy schedules, there's no natural time to connect with his wife
So they made it a rule: every Wednesday at 8pm, they go to a restaurant together
Just the two of them. No one else is invited.
Bets on grit at pre-seed, data at Series A
At pre-seed, there's barely a product, no real metrics, no consumer adoption data. "The only thing you have is a founder."
So Jacob's team measures grit: how easily would this founder give up?
"As long as you don't give up, it's not game over. What makes a company successful versus not is how you handle the ups and downs."
As companies mature toward Series A and beyond, the data takes over. But at the earliest stage, the founder is the entire bet.
“If you're happy, if you have a good relationship, if you're doing a good job at home, you'll be doing a good job at work. It's all related.”
MY TAKEAWAY:
I love hearing this directly from an early-stage investor. At pre-seed, the only metric is the founder. So Jacob bets on the person who has no backup plan: the 22-year-old college dropout who put his savings and his parents' money into a hummus brand, not the Stanford MBA who can walk into a $300K job tomorrow. The opportunity cost of the founder is a metric I'd never thought about, but it just adds to the list of the many reasons why the founder is the most important metric of a deal.
The health of a founder rolls over into the business; you need a founder who has clarity and can execute on decisions quickly (which is easier without the brain fog and many other issues that arise from poor health habits).
Jacob's career is built on one principle: diversification. Don't put everything into one bet. He took his banking experience and his startup operations experience and combined them into venture capital. The same logic applies to health. You can't just nail your sleep and ignore your gut. You can't eat clean and never move. Diversify your health the way you'd diversify a portfolio.
Lastly, Regarding Jacob’s comment on younger people not caring as much about saturated fat, and cream, coconut oil, etc… guilty as charged. I consider ice cream for bears a superfood.
WHAT MOVES THE NEEDLE (From Jacob):
Go to bed early
Make time to connect with loved ones.
STEAL THIS:
Actions you can take right now
Try eating your meals in order: fiber first, then protein and fat, then carbs. It reduces your blood sugar spike without changing what you eat, just when you eat it. Do it for a week (when I started this years ago, I saw an immediate shift in my energy and hunger levels and stopped feeling like I needed to snack all day).
If you're in a relationship and your schedules are chaotic, pick one night a week to spend time with your partner and make it non-negotiable.
WHAT HE IS BUILDING:
Great Circle Ventures - Early-Stage Food, Beverage, and Wellness CPG
Great Circle Ventures is a $20 million fund investing pre-seed through Series A in food, beverage, and health and wellness brands. The premise is that large corporate food groups (think Danone, Nestlé, General Mills) want to acquire high-growth startups, but by the time a brand is big enough to be on their radar, the price is already too high and there's no existing relationship.
Great Circle solves that by investing early, aligning with corporate partners on their acquisition priorities for the next five years, and nurturing the relationship between the startup and the potential acquirer from day one. Jacob's experience at Danone's venture arm taught him that the earlier the connection starts, the higher the chance of a successful exit for everyone.
Additionally, large corporate food groups don’t invest at pre-seed. The check sizes are too small, the legal costs would exceed the investment, and the process takes too long. But by the time a brand hits $200M in valuation, the relationship window has closed. So Great Circle invests early, aligns with corporate partners on what they're looking for in the next five years, and nurtures the relationship between the startup and the acquirer from day one.
CHECK OUT GREAT CIRCLE VENTURES:
Thank you for reading!
