After spending several years as a startup investor and advisor, Ali Partovi is picking one team to play for, and that’s Hampton Creek.
Although the San Francisco company is known for dreaming up wacky food products, like egg-less mayonnaise and cookie dough, it has the ambitious mission of using technology to produce affordable and healthy food on a mass scale.
“This is my first full-time gig in years, reflecting my passion for the company and my admiration for their team, especially CEO Josh Tetrick,” said Partovi, who is joining as chief strategy officer. “Hampton Creek falls perfectly at the intersection of my passions: technology, sustainable food, and consumer marketing.”
Partovi, along with his twin brother Hadi Partovi, have been actively investing an starting companies for years. Together, they founded Seattle-based iLike, which was sold to MySpace in 2009, and more recently Code.org, a computer education non-profit. Some of the brothers’ more significant investments together include stakes in Dropbox, Facebook and Zappos. They invested in Hampton Creek’s $23 million second round back in February.
In his new role, Partovi said he’ll be deeply involved in marketing, including the company’s Facebook strategy, which has been responsible for boosting sales. He’ll also serve as a close advisor to Tetrick as the company expands and hires more executives. One notable hire was the Google Maps’ former lead data scientist Dan Zigmond, who is tasked with building the largest plant database useful for making alternative foods.
As an example, Hampton Creek’s first product, Just Mayo, displaces the egg with plant-based proteins. Another product it is gearing up to launch soon is called Just Cookie Dough, which as the name implies is cookie dough without the eggs. The products started off at yuppie-filled locations, like Whole Foods, and now have gone mainstream with distribution across Walmart, Costco, Safeway, Kroger, DollarTree, and even cafeterias at universities and Google.
Partovi is joining the company while it seeks to raise a third round of funding. To date, it has raised $30 million.
Beyond the Partovi brothers, others bankrolling the company include Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang; Bill Gates via Khosla Ventures; AME Cloud Ventures and other angel investors.
