DJ Tan: $4.2M Fundraise Flavor House, Bean-Free Coffee Product-Market Fit & Climate Change vs. Food Tech – E620

" We are not ashamed about failing. If you sign up for our newsletter, you can see our metrics month on month. If this month is bad, it is there. That transparency creates trust. People trust you to report when things are not good, they trust you to seek help when things are not good. A lot of founders try hard to fix things internally and only when it gets to the eleventh month say they have one month left and need help, and then it is too late for anyone to do anything. Here we are saying this is what we know, where we are lacking, please help us. And it can only be good for the company." - DJ, Co-Founder and CTO of Prefer

Jeremy Au and DJ Tan sit down to discuss how Prefer grew from a bold bean-free coffee experiment into a flavor house tackling climate-threatened ingredients. They explore the evolution from naive product launches to customer-driven adoption, why B2B positioning makes more sense than B2C in food tech, and how shifting investor expectations shaped their fundraising strategy. Their conversation covers product development cycles with baristas, the science of replicating flavors like coffee and chocolate, and how climate change is forcing businesses to rethink supply chains. DJ also shares lessons on storytelling, scaling options, and the importance of founder transparency when building trust with investors.