The protein innovation built for a growing population

Issue #9 | December 2025

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Welcome to The Capitalist Hippie Newsletter, a collection of learnings from those rewriting the rules of business. You’re getting this email because I wanted to keep you in the loop. If it’s not for you, no problem — just hit unsubscribe at any time.

In our latest podcast episode, I sat down with Thijs Bosch, the newly appointed CEO of The Protein Brewery, the Dutch food-tech company scaling a fungal protein ingredient and fresh off a €30 million Series B. Their product uses 1% of the land, 3% of the emissions, and yields up to 26× more protein per hectare than beef — numbers that stop you in your tracks.

The tech is smart, and the raise is significant, but what stood out most wasn’t the science or the capital. It was how quickly Thijs named something most climate-aligned brands quietly struggle with: the market rarely rewards the story that feels most comfortable to the founder.

The Protein Brewery could easily position themselves in the usual “meat-alternative” storyline. It’s the obvious category. The expectations are built-in. But it’s not actually where their ingredient belongs. It performs differently, lives in different aisles, and solves different problems.

Instead of inheriting a narrative that doesn’t fit—one that would box them into a tiny slice of the market—they made a harder, more disciplined call: lead with what the product is, not the category people assume it belongs to. In a space where sustainability talk is now table stakes, that clarity becomes a competitive advantage.

Let’s break down what that looks like in practice and where many sustainability-focused brands start to drift.

Listen to the episode now →

For years, the alternative protein world has primed consumers to expect a tradeoff: taste, texture, or familiarity in exchange for a moral win. That’s a tough baseline for any brand trying to build something new.

The Protein Brewery avoided that storyline entirely. Their ingredient doesn’t behave like a replacement or a stand-in; it stands on its own. Complete protein, prebiotic fiber, neutral taste, and minimal processing that requires fewer inputs and a simpler supply chain. Not bonus features or justifications. Actual advantages.

Instead of forcing themselves into the meat-alt frame, the team mapped the ingredient to the places where it naturally performs best. That shift changed the audience, the message, and the competitive set. It turned a confusing category fit into a clear one.

The takeaway: Good positioning isn’t about choosing better adjectives. It’s about choosing the right comparison set. When you define your own frame, you define your own competition.

In the 1950s, M&M’s didn’t try to out-glamour other chocolate brands. They picked a single, almost boring truth and built an empire on it: the candy coating keeps the chocolate from melting in your hands. While other brands sold decadence and indulgence, M&M’s sold a functional promise: you get the chocolate you want without the mess.

What made it work? It addressed the real job the product was doing in people’s lives: a treat you could toss in a bag, share with kids, or keep in your pocket without ending up covered in melted chocolate. The line was simple, specific, and stuck with people for decades.

The climate marketing lesson: When everyone else is selling a big idea, sometimes the smartest thing you can do is sell the simple, functional truth that makes your product the obvious choice.

With competition rising across the protein landscape, The Protein Brewery didn’t chase the loudest category. They made a quieter, more strategic move: enter the segments where their ingredient’s benefits matter most.

Their whole-food mycelium input fits naturally where people already care about what’s in their protein, how it’s made, and how it feels in their body—sports nutrition, functional supplements, better-for-you formulations—categories where buyers focus on digestibility, efficacy, and processing transparency.

As Thijs put it:

The principle: Find the market that already understands your strengths. Don’t launch in the category that requires the most explanation.

1. Lead with the outcome, not the ideology: People don’t buy a belief system, they buy the result. When a product’s functional benefits are strong enough, the values story becomes a reinforcement, not the headline.

2. Start with the customers who feel the improvement most acutely: Early validation comes from the markets that judge products by performance. These buyers create clearer signals, faster learning cycles, and more honest feedback than broad consumer categories ever can.

3. Let your constraints sharpen your edge: Every product has limits — cost, processing, format, scale. The opportunity lies in finding the contexts where those limits become advantages. What seems like a constraint in one category can become a differentiator in another.

The brands gaining ground right now aren’t accepting the labels handed to them, they’re opting out of shorthand altogether. In crowded markets, the default storyline becomes the constraint: it restricts pricing, narrows your competitive set, and forces you to fight upstream just to be understood.

More founders are stepping into lanes shaped by how their products actually behave, not the categories they’re expected to mimic. That was the subtext of my conversation with Thijs: The Protein Brewery isn’t bending its narrative to fit an inherited frame. And once you stop trying to retrofit your story into the wrong context, strategy opens up: who you sell to, how you price, where you launch, and what you highlight.

The strategy: Don’t inherit the frame. Build the one that lets your product compete on its real strengths, not someone else’s expectations.

If you’re working in a complex or regulated category, this episode is for you. My conversation with Thijs goes beyond the tidy origin story and into the real decisions founders navigate when the stakes are high.

We get into:

Listen now →