Industry vets launch CPG accelerator, consultancy Velocity

BOULDER — A group of Boulder area consumer-packaged goods industry veterans has launched Velocity CPG LLC, an accelerator program and consulting firm aimed at boosting promising young companies in the CPG space. 

Mentors participating in the new venture, which seeks to blend elements from popular local accelerator programs and industry-support groups such as Techstars and Naturally Boulder, include Jim Leighton, Kerry Gilmartin, Don Martin, Steve Savage, Matt Cutter, Stephanie Carter, Tim Barklage and Asa McKee.

“We want to be the nucleus for all things CPG,” Savage said. “If you need something done, we hope we have the resources to do it.”

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Velocity plans to hire about 10 people to staff the company.

The accelerator side of the business has two components: Velocity’s Discovery program and its Playbook team.

The Discovery program will be an eight-week bootcamp that “takes a deep data dive into the company’s financials, operations, sales, and marketing strategy,” Velocity said. “At the end of that program, the brand will get an assessment of the brand’s viability, and if the brand has immediate promise, they will be invited to the Playbook Team and become an official Velocity brand.”

During the Discovery program, there is no exchange of equity, Savage told BizWest. Velocity is still weighing whether equity investment in participating companies will be a part of the Playbook level of the accelerator program. 

Among the first cohort of participating CPG brands are 1908 Brands’ Pasta Jay’s tomato sauce and the Boulder Clean line of household-cleaning products.

“There’s going to be a lot of partnerships with private equity, bankers, marketing companies,” Savage said of the Velocity program.

Not only will Velocity connect founders with investors, he said, but the consultancy arm of the business also is expected to field calls from private equity firms looking to get into the CPG space and connect these venture capitalists with local founders ripe for investment.

“Eventually we hope to all be under one roof where you have a community of brands helping each other,” Savage said, suggesting that a co-working space could fit the bill. At some point, he added, “we might even have shared warehousing.”