Five Seasons Ventures

Five Seasons Ventures is a sector-specialist venture firm focused on European food, beverage, nutrition, and consumer technology. It invests from seed to growth stage, targeting consumer brands that combine category-leadership ambition with sustainability credentials. The firm takes board seats and provides active governance for portfolio companies spanning alt-proteins, e-grocery, pet food, and healthy snacking.

Investment decisions are driven by co-founding Managing Partners Ivan Farneti and Niccolo Manzoni. Farneti started his venture career in 1997 at Deutsche Bank and co-founded Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures. Manzoni developed his food-tech thesis while investing in pioneers like Impossible Foods at a large European family office. The partnership is extended by Partners Sam Kaplan and Saskia Hoebée, who lead deal execution and board oversight from London and Paris.

It is a venture capital firm, not a family office. While co-founder Niccolo Manzoni previously invested on behalf of a leading European family office, Five Seasons Ventures itself is structured as a third-party asset manager raising institutional funds and investing in external portfolio companies.

The firm sources through a combination of founder networks built over decades in food innovation, board relationships at accelerator programs including Startupbootcamp FoodTech and MassChallenge, and a dual-hub presence in Paris and London. Partner Sam Kaplan's prior experience at Burch Creative Capital provides additional access to consumer-brand founders navigating the crossover between US and European markets.

The firm explicitly concentrates on food, beverage, and adjacent consumer categories. It does not invest in enterprise SaaS, fintech, deep tech, or life sciences outside of nutrition and women's consumer health. This narrow mandate is the core of the firm's specialist positioning.

Five Seasons Ventures takes board seats and an active governance role in its portfolio companies, consistent with leading or co-leading rounds. The firm's partners serve on the boards of companies including Air Up, KoRo, and Mammaly, which indicates it typically negotiates for significant minority positions and structural influence rather than passive co-investment stakes.

Sustainability is both a core investment thesis and an operational capability. The firm employs a dedicated Head of Sustainability, Gaetan Kerloc'h, who previously helped asset managers define their ESG strategies and worked with food companies on supply-chain ESG roadmaps at consultancy INDEFI. Portfolio companies receive sustainability guidance as part of the firm's board-level involvement.