Jason Karp is back.
The founder of defunct hedge fund firm Tourbillon Capital Partners is raising money for a blank-check company, along with several Tourbillon alumni, in a joint venture with a venture capital firm.
HumanCo Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, is seeking to raise $225 million to acquire businesses focusing on health and wellness and related industries in the United States. Karp is partnering with CAVU Venture Partners, which invests in food and beverage and consumer goods companies, for the SPAC.
The SPAC plans to invest in and build brands focused on healthier living and sustainability, according to the prospectus. “Together, we are focused on investing in and building a uniquely-positioned company within the H&W ecosystem,” the prospectus stated.
The document referred to “its fanatical co-founder” Karp as having a “demonstrated mission and track record within H&W investing.”
Karp founded Tourbillon in July 2011 specializing in long-short equity, with an emphasis on technology, media, and telecommunications stocks (the so-called TMT sector), as well as health care and consumer stocks. He once told attendees of the Milken Institute Global Conference that he uses a former CIA interrogator to conduct personality tests for prospective hires.
In October 2018 Karp announced he would shut down Tourbillon when it was down for the first three quarters of the year after losing money each of the two previous years.
Karp is also chairman and co-founder, along with his wife Jessica and her brother Jordan Brown, of Hu (as in Human), a snack and chocolate company.
In January 2019 Karp co-founded HumanCo along with Ross Berman, who served as president and chief strategy officer at Tourbillon from January 2018 to January 2019. Berman serves as CEO of HumanCo Acquisition Corp.
They are joined by Amy Zipper, chief operating officer, who serves as the COO of HumanCo and was previously president and COO of Tourbillon from September 2012 until May 2018. Brett Thomas, the president of the SPAC, co-founded CAVU Venture Partners and has been a managing partner since June 2015 along with Rohan Oza, the SPAC’s co-chairman nominee. Earlier in his career Thomas worked at Scout Capital Management, a long-short hedge fund.
HumanCo asserted in the prospectus that “there is a massive cultural awakening” within health, wellness and sustainability. It said the size of the health and wellness industry is $4.5 trillion, citing the Global Wellness Economy Monitor October 2018 report.
The prospectus noted that the market is composed of large and growing categories, including personal care, beauty, and anti-aging ($1.08 trillion); physical activity ($828 billion); healthy eating, nutrition and weight loss ($702 billion); wellness tourism ($639 billion); preventative and personalized medicine and public health ($575 billion); traditional and complementary medicine ($360 billion); wellness real estate ($134 billion); spa economy ($119 billion); thermal and mineral springs ($56 billion); and workplace wellness ($48 billion), according to Global Wellness Economy Monitor.
“We believe that there is a generational opportunity driven from four key areas,” the prospectus stated. It cited, as examples, the failure of large, legacy public companies to create enough healthy options and evolve fast enough due to their existing business mix, along with the continued focus on health and wellness among millennials and Gen-Z populations as well as Baby Boomers who want to age well.
