James Kennedy sits down with Vincent Biscaye, founder of Two Step Advisors and former commodities trader who walked away from a high-flying career to help entrepreneurs build real, sustainable businesses in CPG (especially food & beverage). Vincent shares how growing up across multiple countries shaped his leadership style, why finance in CPG is uniquely brutal (and why so many brands get blindsided), and what founders must understand about working capital, distributor deductions, promotions, and inventory accounting. They also unpack the fundraising reality for beverage brands, the pivot Vincent made from building a cold-pressed juice brand to launching his advisory firm, and the exact stage where fractional finance support becomes a game-changer.
About Vincent Biscaye:
Vincent Biscaye is the founder of Two Step Advisors, a finance and accounting firm specializing in food & beverage and consumer packaged goods. Before entering the CPG world, Vincent built a successful career as a commodities trader, ultimately leading a trading desk. He later became a co-founder of a cold-pressed juice company during the early rise of HPP (High Pressure Processing) – gaining firsthand experience in the cash-flow intensity, working-capital traps, and retailer/distributor complexity that define the industry. Today, Vincent helps emerging brands professionalize their numbers early and scale with clear financial visibility.
What You’ll Learn:
● From Trading Desk to Startup Finance: Why Vincent left a lucrative commodities career to build something more meaningful.
● CPG Working Capital Reality: Why growth often creates cash crises and what founders miss when they “win” a big account.
● Distributor Deductions & Surprise Short-Pays: How a $100K order can turn into a much smaller check (and why).
● The Hidden Cost of Scaling: Why margins drop when you move from direct sales to distributors and how to plan for it.
● Fundraising Stages in Beverage: The typical raise path from early money to seed to Series A and what milestones matter.
● Inventory & COGS Complexity: Why CPG accounting is so difficult (and how miscoding inventory destroys your P&L).
● Discounts, Promotions & Net Sales: Why investors care about net sales – not “gross sales with heavy discounting.”
● POV From the Inside: What Vincent learned co-founding a cold-pressed juice business and how it shaped Two Step Advisors.
Episode Highlights:
“Trading was comfortable – but it wasn’t meaningful. I wanted to build something real.”
“Growth in CPG is a working-capital problem: the more you grow, the more cash you need to survive.”
“If you don’t understand distributor deductions, you’re going to get destroyed.”
“Net sales are what investors value – not inflated gross sales built on heavy discounts.”
More About Vincent’s Role:
At Two Step Advisors, Vincent and his team provide bookkeeping, controller support, and fractional CFO services purpose-built for food & beverage brands. They help founders build clean financials early, understand true margins, navigate distributor/retailer complexity (fees, promotions, deductions), and implement scalable systems as the business grows—from spreadsheets at the start, to inventory tools, and eventually ERP-level operations. Vincent’s goal is to support brands from early traction through scale – until they “graduate” to full-time hires.
