Laura Katz

Why We Chose Her: 

Baby formula was headline news in February last year (2022). Contaminated product from one of the only two companies that provide this inarguably crucial product caused several babies to become ill and two to die, and the recall--and resulting lack of supply of the product when the problem became known--threatened the health of tens of thousands more. Here was a societal need that had been festering below the radar for years. 

But it wasn’t under the radar to Laura Katz, who had founded Helaina just three years earlier to address what she saw as an even more basic problem. “I was only 23 when I witnessed this essential part of the food system being left behind,” she says, noting that the infant formula category has remained mostly stagnant since the 1960s, when commercial formula first became widely popular. “As a food scientist, I observed investment and new technologies funneled into areas like alternative meat and dairy.”

"We really think about food as medicine, so creating a platform that allows us to bring real immunity properties to food products is something people are always going to think about, especially right now," Laura told PitchBook during an interview at the health conference at Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, last November, where Helaina was among the featured startups.

Helaina is a nutrition startup that utilizes fermentation to produce breast milk proteins with the same health and immunity properties as breast milk. Laura reports the company has raised $25 million in funding “to help provide parents with the freedom of choice in feeding their infants.”

That funding is, itself, a success story. “Just 2.1%, I believe, is the percentage of female founders who get funding,” she says. But Helaina seems to be in a special category. As she told The Star last year, “When we connect with investors, a lot of them say to us, ‘We wish this product existed when we had children.’ For us, that’s been a way into really starting these conversations. It’s helped a lot with fundraising.”

While feeling fortunate for having attracted outside people as backers who care about Helaina’s mission, Laura also credits the valuable assistance of one of her mentors, who was not only one of Helaina’s first investors but helped her by introducing her to potential investors in every round of funding. “It’s those types of people who help you get where you need to go,” she says.

Noting that any human over the age of 1 can live on varied nourishment but that formula (or breast milk) is the sole source of nourishment for infants, Laura emphasizes the need for innovation and investment in food technology to support foods that are essential to human health. And she’s built her business to serve that social need because, she says, “The future of nutrition, the ability of our babies to thrive, and gender equality in the workplace depends on it.”