These Brands Earn $1.33 Back for Every $1 Raised and Still Underfunded
:INCLUDED has published its 2026 Impact Report, and its data section opens on capital efficiency rather than capital raised. The median reporting member generates $1.33 in annual revenue for every $1.00 of lifetime capital raised. Across the 98 member brands in that data set, 61% earn more in a year than they have raised in total, and the report places 39% above 2.5 times their capital and 24% above four times.
The denominator is part of the story. Nearly three-quarters of those brands have raised less than $250,000, 21% have never raised outside capital, and 6% have raised more than $1 million. The report treats that spread as a distribution problem rather than a preference, stating that access, not ability, is the constraint. Crunchbase counted $942 million going to U.S. startups with a Black founder or co-founder in 2025, or 0.32% of total U.S. venture funding.
Team size sharpens the picture. Solo operators make up 46% of the membership, and another 43% work in teams of two to four. Up to 45% of founders report spending more than 30 hours a week on securing capital, which for a solo operator amounts to a second full-time job. Raising capital is also the friction point members name most often, at 33%.
Exhibiting at a premier trade show can run a brand more than $10,000 per event, and removing that cost is what the collective’s sponsored cohorts are built to do. The programming runs through partnerships with Expo West, Newtopia Now, SupplySide Global, BevNET Live, NOSH Live, and the Summer and Winter Fancy Food Shows. Applications go through membership at includedcpg.com, and Newtopia Now opens August 18 in Denver.
Six years in, :INCLUDED reports more than 800 founders served and $15 million in economic value created and distributed to members. When it published its first Impact Snapshot in January 2025, those figures were more than 500 members and $5 million.
For founders building plant-based companies, the capital half of that ratio will look familiar. Companies working primarily in the plant-based ecosystem raised $450 million in 2025, up from $342 million the year before, and GFI calls it an especially challenging year for smaller, emerging brands. The number to watch in next year’s report is the median. A company returning $1.33 a year on every dollar it has ever raised is a company that works, and it is also a company that has not been handed enough capital to find out how fast it could go.
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