Our principals and industry venture partners have 375 years of combined experience, contacts and connections.
Sharon Kieffer
Managing Partner
Sharon Kieffer has spent the majority of her 20+ year career as a successful innovator and business builder in the consumer packaged goods industry. As an executive at PepsiCo and Kraft Foods she leveraged her strong consumer and business insights to create and build over $2 billion of new CPG businesses around the globe. Most notably she worked to launch Aquafina and Starbucks ready to drink beverages in the US and expand the Philadelphia and Kraft cheese brands into new categories internationally. Today, she is focused on working alongside entrepreneurs to help create the next generation of differentiated and high growth CPG businesses.
Sharon began her marketing career in advertising at Leo Burnett, working on personal care and paper businesses. She spent the next 18+ years rising through the ranks in Marketing and Innovation at Kraft Foods, Fort James and PepsiCo. Most recently, Sharon was the VP of Global Innovation at PepsiCo where she led disruptive innovation efforts for the Quaker brand and Global Nutrition Group around the world.
Sharon received both a B.B.A. and an M.B.A from the University of Wisconsin. She enjoys spending time with her husband and twin boys and pursuing her passions of athletics, the outdoors and health and wellness. She is an avid Badger and Packer fan, has completed two marathons, biked through Italy and enjoys hiking whenever possible.
Andy Whitman
Managing Partner
Andy Whitman is a successful consumer products executive and investor who melds the experience of a Fortune 100 leader with the passion and resourcefulness of an entrepreneur. After a successful career with General Foods and Kraft Foods and recognizing that nurturing smaller businesses to achieve rapid growth was his passion, he focused on investing in and helping to operate small consumer products companies. For example, he successfully partnered with management and co- investor Catterton Partners to assist Wellness pet food and Old Mother Hubbard pet treats to be one of the largest CPG exits in the last decade.
Andy began his career managing icons like Kool-Aid and Tang. After years of delivering results on big brands, he jumped at the opportunity to run small, autonomous businesses within Kraft in a shirtsleeves environment. Taking charge of brands as small as $10 million that Kraft had been unable to grow or run profitably, Andy's entrepreneurial leadership produced outstanding results. His ability to grow businesses comes from his proven general management experience built upon a diverse breadth of prior functional assignments, including marketing, sales, operations planning and corporate development.
He currently or previously assisted pro bono by serving as a board member for the Jewish United Federation Foods & Hospitality Trade Sector, Marketing Executives Network Group (MENG), Venture Board of the Women's Self-Employment Project and White Plains Child Day Care Association, a Head Start agency.
Andy received a B.B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and an M.B.A. from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. He is an outdoor adventure traveler, an active skier, an avid college basketball fan, a Culinary Institute of America-trained cooking enthusiast and a devoted Parrothead – as a result of traveling early in his career with singer Jimmy Buffett.
Dave Bauserman
Partner
Dave Bauserman is recognized throughout the industry for his breadth of operations knowledge and ability to effectively negotiate solutions that benefit all stakeholders. The majority of his 35-year career has focused on operations and manufacturing at General Foods and Kraft. His industry experience includes processing, packaging and distribution of liquid and dry, refrigerated, frozen and ready-to-eat, boxed, pouched, bottled and canned products produced under regulations including USDA and FDA. He has held positions ranging from frontline plant operations to executive leadership.
Dave led Kraft's external (3rd party) manufacturing organization that managed a complex producer network of over 100 companies and 150 plant locations across the USA and Canada. He developed and executed outsourcing strategies that facilitated expeditious new product introductions, improved asset utilization, minimized capital investments and maximized continual cost savings while ensuring product safety and brand equity protection. Since leaving Kraft in 2002, Dave has been actively involved in manufacturing, co-packing, supply chain and other operational issues with many high growth emerging branded consumer products companies.
Dave holds a B.S. degree in Business and Industrial Management from San Jose State University.
Mike Levinthal
Partner
Mike Levinthal is a seasoned venture capital professional with over 25 years of investing experience. He brings deep experience in deal structuring, portfolio company oversight, coaching entrepreneurs and fund management.
Mike spent 20 years as a General Partner with the Mayfield Fund where they raised and managed 6 funds totaling $1.4 billion during that time. He sponsored such successes as Citrix, Concur Technologies, Heartstream, Pure Software and WebMethods. Mike also founded Mayfield Software Partners, a side fund consisting of 20 leading software entrepreneurs as investors, and ONSET Partners, a venture firm specializing in incubating new companies. He started his career in venture capital at New Enterprise Associates (NEA). In addition, Mike has been involved in consumer investing, including Pete's Wicked Ale and High West Distillery (both beverage companies), Blue Marlin (memorabilia), Skull Candy (consumer electronics) and Il Fornaio (restaurants).
Mike currently sits on the board of several private companies including Orabrush, Applabs, Alliance Health, Swarmbuilder, Zinch, Matchbin and High West Distillery. He was on the board of Altiris (NASDAQ: ATRS) until its acquisition by Symantec for close to $1 billion. He has served as an advisory board member to the Stanford Technology Venture Program and established the Mayfield Fellows program at Stanford University and University of California at Berkeley.
Mike holds an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and received both his M.S. and B.S. degrees in Engineering from Stanford University.
Gary Sebek
Partner
Gary Sebek is a well rounded consumer products operator having served as CFO and CEO in several industry leading, high growth companies. His experience integrates a background in executive business administration, strategic development, operations and corporate finance including P&L/balance sheet management, annual/strategic planning process leadership, capital structure strategies implementation, large scale information systems deployment and supply chain transformation. Gary's mergers and acquisitions experience includes having bought, sold, recapitalized and financed several consumer products companies.
With experience in corporate finance since 1992 and consumer goods in the natural and organic industry from 1999 to 2007, Gary served as CFO and then President/CEO of Rudi's Organic Bakery, leading the 26x growth from $2 million to $52 million including the merger and integration of 3 smaller organic bread brands to form Charter Baking. Subsequently, he twice led Aurora Organic Dairy as CFO and later COO since 2005. He co-led the evolution of private label organic milk with four fold (4x) revenue growth while leading all corporate banking and equity funding initiatives, which totaled more than $80 million. Gary began his career in public accounting with KPMG.
Gary holds a B.A. in Accounting from DePaul University and his CPA certification under the University of Illinois. He received his M.B.A. specializing in Business Development and Operations from the University of Colorado.
Charlie Friend
Senior Associate
Having grown up in a family food business, Charlie Friend joined 2x Consumer Products Growth Partners in 2010. Charlie previously spent 4 years with On-Cor Frozen Foods in various capacities including Director of Corporate Strategy, Marketing Manager and Area Sales Manager. Earlier in his career, he spent time in brokered sales with Crossmark, Inc.
Charlie sits on the Board of Directors of Jewish Council for Youth Services (JCYS). His passions include spending time with his family, traveling around the world, playing golf and, most importantly, cheering on his Michigan Wolverines.
Charlie received his B.A. from University of Michigan and his M.B.A at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.