How A 34-Year-Old With No Experience In Food Science Convinced Investors To Give Him $30 Million To Make Eggs Obsolete

Hampton Creek, a startup that's creating plant-based alternatives to eggs, announced $23 million in funding last month.

That brings the total funding to $30 million from investors. Asia's richest man, Li-Ka Shing, is an investor. As is the world's richest man, Bill Gates. It also has investment from Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Khosla Ventures, and the Founders Fund.

Today, the company announced that its egg-free mayo is being sold in Costco in Colorado. It also says that its mayo is the fastest-selling condiment in Whole Foods' history.

The man behind the company is 33-year-old Josh Tetrick. This is his first company.

Prior to founding Hampton Creek, he was working for the U.N. in sub-Saharan Africa. He says he felt frustrated by his work because it was slow moving, and at times corrupt.

He was talking about his work with his best friend one day. His friend could hear his frustration. Together, they started talking about what Tetrick could do instead. Eventually, they ended up talking about the egg industry. From there, they landed on the idea of using plants to replace eggs.

Tetrick started reaching out to friends and friends of friends. Eventually he hooked up with some chefs to make a proof of concept. From there, he raised a seed round of funding. Then, he started hiring biochemists and food scientists. In a year and a half he had figured out how to make mayo and cookie dough that didn't need eggs.

When he went to raise $23 million last year, he used the following pitch deck. We got him on the phone to explain the deck, and run through the pitch that landed him millions.

Here's how a first-time entrepreneur got the richest men in the world to open their wallets.