You are Marta Sequeira, a principal at a small Lisbon advisory firm. A venture fund has sent back Verdão Foods' €3.0M Series A plan with one line in red: "Strategy lacks coherence — fix or pass." The investment committee sits on Thursday, and you have seventy-two hours to decide what to hand back.
The situation
Verdão Foods was founded in Lisbon in 2024. Eight people make chilled, high-protein vegan ready-meals, sold through one premium supermarket chain and a direct subscription. It booked €1.2M of revenue over the last twelve months at a 41% gross margin. It produces on a single chilled line running at 70% of capacity. It spends €95,000 a month and has cash for about five months.
The plan asks for €3.0M to reach 1,400 retail listings nationwide and enter three export markets within eighteen months. It keeps premium, chef-grade, clean-label language on every page while modelling a 28% price cut to win volume, which would take gross margin to 26%. It budgets no regulatory, cold-chain or distributor cost abroad: the fund's analysts put the omission at about €600,000. And there is no second site in the budget.
Your firm scores plan coherence from 0 to 100; Verdão's scores 38. The fund's analysts rate its investability at 32. You put the founders' backing for a changed plan at 55: both built the company on the export idea. You are on a fixed fee and promised them two decisions repaired, not the company. Two of the committee's partners have hired you before. And if the fund passes, Lisbon will know within weeks.