The Consumer VC: Venture Capital I B2C Startups I Commerce | Early-Stage Investing I Brands (Mike Gelb)

Our guest today is Eric Kinariwala, founder and CEO of Capsule. Capsule is the pharmacy that delivers your prescriptions, the same day, for free. We discuss the pharmacy visit that led to his aha moment of founding Capsule, his approach to integrating technology with picking up your prescriptions, and how he approached expansion and scale.

Here are some of the questions I ask Eric:

1. You started your career as an investor. Was your goal always to become an entrepreneur.
2. Why did you decide to start Capsule?
3. How did you figure out this was a service other people might also like to have? Did you do any market research?Why was it so badWhat’s the role of the pharmacist?How could you go solve the problemThe first thing was to build a pharmacy?How do you deliver the highest quality experience?Why did doctors, consumers love it at the early days?
4. When you were thinking of starting this business, what were the first steps and the first questions you had to ask to see if this was viable?
5. Did you have to first establish relationships with the doctors so they can send the prescription to you all, what was the process from sending in a note to delivering the medication?
6. Winning together
7. Everybody needs some looking after sometimes
8. How were you able to sell prescriptions online? Was there any regulations you had to jump through?
9. What were some of your early challenges?
10. What were specific medications you first looked at when it came to selling? How did you think about your wedge into the market?
11. What was your process of raising capital?What was the biggest reason why an investor passed?
12. What was the process of finding drivers and building out the delivery business?
13. How do you think about the future of DTC healthcare?
14. How did you approach customer acquisition in the early days?
15. You started in New York, how do you approach market expansion?
16. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?On the wings of eagles - Ross PerotThe checklist manifesto
17. What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?

Our guests today are Jon Sebastiani and Mark Rampolla. Jon founded Krave Jerky, one of the first premium jerky brands, and Mark founded Zico, one of the first coconut water brands in the U.S. It’s very rare for an entrepreneur to sell their business, get a good outcome, and then be able to buy back the business from the acquirer. This episode is about how both Jon and Mark founded, scaled, sold, and bought back their businesses.

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Anna Whiteman, Vice President at Coefficient Capital. Coefficient Capital is a new venture capital fund that leads early growth investments in fast-moving consumer goods, typically investing in Series A and B rounds. So far they've invested in Just Spices, NomNom, Hydrant and Personal Care. Anna also founded Rad Ladies, a private network of female founders. Previously Anna worked at VMG on investments including Health Warrior and Vermont Smoke and Cure, and also at Tribeca Venture Partners and Credit Suisse.

One book that inspired Anna professionally is Stress Test by Ian Robertson. One book that inspired Anna personally is A Theory of Justice by John Rawls.

You can follow Anna on Twitter @AnnaWhiteman2. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

In this episode you will learn -

1. What attracted her to finance, consumer and startups? Anna walks through her diligence process at the Series A and Series B. What are some of the milestones that startups need to achieve? At what stage do DNVBs usually expand to offline retail? How does she think about subscription vs. non-subscription DNVB businesses? Is there a difference to how she approaches due diligence? How is she thinking about optimizing for profitability vs. growth in today’s landscape?
2. What she think about the future of online advertising? What is Rad Ladies? What are some changes in consumer behavior that she’s focusing on? I’ve heard some folks say on this show it’s a contrarian time to be investing in consumer. Why do some folks think that and does she believe it? What is one thing that she would change when it came to venture capital?
3. What is a company that is on her anti-portfolio? What (if any) lessons did she learn from that? What is one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? What is your most recent investment and what makes you excited about it? What’s one piece of advice for B2C founders?

Thank you Ashish for introducing me to our guest today, Nuno Gonçalves Pedro, General Partner at Chameleon. Chameleon typically invests at the seed and series a level principally product led technology companies. Some of their portfolio includes Draftkings, Robinhood and Keepsafe. We discuss the evolution of eCommerce, if companies actually create new markets, and how he uses quant to make investment decisions. Without further ado, here’s Nuno.

Questions I ask Nuno:

1. What was your attraction to technology?
2. What led you into venture capital?
3. When you look at consumer investing and the evolution of ecommerce in Asia, what technologies do you think are going to make its way to the west?
4. How did Chamaeleon come together?
5. Why has your focus been consumer? What makes you excited as a consumer investor?
   1. Where do you think some of the big opportunities are in consumer?
6. Walk me through your due diligence process -
   1. How do you analyze teams?
   2. How do you use quant to help make decisions?
   3. What are the important insights and data points?
7. How do you think about the next consumer platform? There’s lots of buzz around the metaverse, web3. How do you think about what’s coming next after the iPhone?
8. What tends to be the reason why you pass on a consumer tech company?
9. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
10. What’s one book that inspired you professionally and one book that inspired you personally?
    1. Professionally - Post Capital Society - Drucker
    2. The How of Happiness - Sonia
    3. Modern Physics Ancient Faith
11. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
12. What’s one piece of advice that you have for founders?

My guest today is Mike Ghaffary who is a partner at Canvas Ventures, a firm that specializes on leading Series A. Some of their investments include Flyhomes, Nubrakes, and Zola. This is Mike’s second time on Consumer VC and is our first second time guest. His first appearance we went deep on how to evaluate and invest in marketplace businesses. On this episode, we discuss what is the next big thing in consumer after the iPhone? Is it web3, metaverse, remote work applications or something completely different?

Questions I ask Mike:

1. When we spoke a couple of months ago, you mentioned how this is the perfect entrepreneurial landscape for B2B. What did you mean by that?
2. We've now had the iPhone for 14 years, which has been the platform (coupled with android) for consumer technology. What are the options for the next consumer platform as you see it? Who are the candidates?
3. There's lots of chatter about web 3 and how web 2 companies need to become web 3 companies in order to survive. What does that mean? What do you think about?
4. If web 3 / blockchain technology does become the future, what has to also hold true or needs to happen?
5. VR was hot a few years ago and then quickly crashed and burned. Now VR is back as an interesting market to VCs. What has changed?
6. What do you make of Facebook changing to Meta and how do you believe the metaverse means?Is it going to be similar to the open web where you have companies that build parts to it but there is no one owner of it?I discussed with Rui Ma how in China, livestreaming is a very powerful way to market your brand and is a multi-billion acquisition channel but it only happened because Alibaba introduced it on Taobao and user adoption became widespread as a result. This is early, but with Facebook changing to Meta, are we in the beginnings of a similiar inflection point where one of the incumbents is going to make metaverse/VR technology more widespread as a result?
7. When you think about the next paradigm shift as an investor since it's still uncertain, how then do you think about current opportunities?Is this why it's easier to stay in B2B currently until the next platform arrives?
8. Meanwhile, we've also seen new consumer marketplace businesses that have been built that are the same business models from 10-15 years ago. Do you think new marketplace businesses can still be successful?
9. Is there any theories of the next consumer technological shift you don't believe?
10. Since you sit at Series A, since there is alot of excitement and high valuations, do you ever consider going earlier
11. What was your favorite book that you read this past year?
12. What's one piece of advice for consumer founders during these times?

Our guests today are Vincent Diallo and Joseph Sartre, founding partners of Interlace Ventures. Interlace is a seed stage fund that invests in founders that are re-inventing commerce and retail for better consumption. We focus this conversation on their learnings in innovation when they both worked in China, opportunities in future of retail they are focused on in the United States, and how we can make venture capital more inclusive.

Highly recommend following them on Twitter @Vincent11D and @josartre. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

Some of the topics we discuss -

1. What was your initial attraction to consumer and commerce innovation?
2. How did Interlace Ventures come together?
3. You both worked in China for an extended period. What are a few examples of how retail technology is different and more advanced compared to the United States?
4. How do you think about commerce technology that doesn’t exist yet in the United States, but can vs. technology that could only work in China?
5. What is “headless commerce” and how do you think about the software stack for e-commerce?
6. Walk me through your due diligence process.
7. BLCK VC's mission
8. What’s one thing you would change as it relates to venture capital?

Our guest today is Josh Cliffords, Founder & CEO of FreeWater. FreeWater is exactly what you think it is. FreeWater. Where they give away water and make money on selling ads on the bottle. We discuss the origin story of FreeWater, the economics of an ad-based physical product business, how he approached his distribution and finding sponsors, reactions to him building FreeWater, other products he wants to move into. Without further ado, here’s Josh.

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 Introducing aVenture - venture capital for everyone

With aVenture everyone can now invest directly into venture capital funds through our platform while also benefiting from periodic liquidity options.

If you agree, sign-up for their waitlist at aventure.vc.

aVenture is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company that permits users to launch, manage and invest in venture funds on its platform, http://aventure.vc. aVenture operates independently of any investment advisors on its platform. Certain funds listed on the aVenture platform are provided by independent fund managers and may be registered as investment advisors in the U.S., or qualify for exempt reporting status.

Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

In today’s episode, we’re thrilled to host Bryan Kim, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, for an insightful conversation on the intersection of venture capital and consumer innovation. Brian shares his remarkable journey from a thriving career in investment banking to becoming a driving force in the tech industry. He opens up about the transformative experience of working with Alibaba during its groundbreaking IPO and how it inspired his pivot toward partnering with visionary founders. Thank you to our Partner –– Propeller Industries https://www.propellerindustries.com/ Propeller Industries is the leading strategic finance and accounting partner for venture-stage companies. (0:00:00) - Intro (0:08:51) - Snap's Early Growth and User Engagement (0:20:32) - AI Innovation in Consumer Companies (0:35:26) - Founders and AI Innovation Trends (0:44:22) - The Future of Social Products (0:52:49) - Revolutionizing Revenue Models With AI (0:57:49) - Book for Growth and Inspiration Subscribe to Our Newsletter: https://www.theconsumervc.com/ Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Hjm74Z... Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast... Follow on Twitter: / mikegelb Follow on Instagram: / mikegelb Follow on TikTok: / consumervc

Our guest today is Brent Vartan, Managing Partner of Bullish. Bullish is an investment firm and Brand Agency designed for consumer businesses living early in an S-curve. Some of their investments include Peloton, Harry’s and Warby Parker. Bullish just released their report “Bullish On Consumer: Operationalizing Demand-Side Themes for Better Outcomes”. We will dig into the report and their three cultural themes within consumer.

Click Here to Download Bullish’s Consumer Report

Some of the questions I ask Brent:

1. What’s the origin and purpose of creating this report?
2. How was the report constructed? What was the starting point? Walk us through how you thought about human desires relates to cultural themes?
3. How did you come out with your three themes
4. What was most surprising to you from this research?
5. How do these themes translate to different age demographics?
6. I’ve had on investors who aren’t thematic in consumer. Who knows they don’t have crystal balls they don’t think about themes or trends, it’s understanding the insight that the entrepreneur brings to the table, researching that insight along with the founder. How can this report help your decision making when finding new companies?
7. What do you think is still misunderstood about investing in early consumer brands?
8. You had this line of should be businesses vs. could be businesses. What’s an example of a could be business or are there certain themes out there that you’ve noticed that you think will bear a bunch of could be businesses that don’t have alot of legs in the future?
9. Do you think this changes how brands are constructed at the get go? For example, if you are appealing to a specific theme, like in the uncompromising self for example. You had Public Goods in there, which went multi-category fairly early on. Now I had on the founder of Public Goods who said he had a really hard time fundraising because they were multi-category. .When I asked a PE investor on this show if they would invest in Public Goods, they said no because the exit potential wasn’t there. Do you think you will see more of these?

Our guest today is Wyatt Taubman, Founder of Vive Organic. Vive Organic is fresh pressed wellness shots from organic superfoods.

Some of the questions I ask Wyatt:

1. What led to the founding of Vive Organic?
2. How did you approach your supply chain?
3. How did you envision the brand?
4. How did you think about distribution channels?
5. How did you think about product expansion
6. How did you approach fundraising?
7. Why did you sell to Suja?

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With aVenture everyone can now invest directly into venture capital funds through our platform while also benefiting from periodic liquidity options.

If you agree, sign-up for their waitlist at aventure.vc.

aVenture is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company that permits users to launch, manage and invest in venture funds on its platform, http://aventure.vc. aVenture operates independently of any investment advisors on its platform. Certain funds listed on the aVenture platform are provided by independent fund managers and may be registered as investment advisors in the U.S., or qualify for exempt reporting status.

Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

Want to keep up to date with The Consumer VC? Subscribe to my newsletter Here.

Our guest today is Mark Samuel, Founder & CEO of IWON Organics. IWON Organics snacks are delicious, high-protein, Non-GMO, gluten-free, plant-based snacks made from purely organic ingredients. This was a treat for me as I’ve been following Mark on LinkedIn for a long time and it was great to finally connect with him. We discussed his health journey and entrepreneur journey, why his road eventually led to CPG, what he thought about building a brand vs. what he knows now, how he thinks about new sales channels and growth and more.

We discuss:

1. When did you get serious about your health?
2. What attracted you to entrepreneurship?
3. How do you found IWON organics? What’s the problem that you’re attempting to solve?
4. What was your approach to creating the product?
5. How did you approach creating the supply chain?
6. How did you get into your first retail accounts?
7. What are the future areas of expansion, and what is the end game for them?
8. When did you start posting on LinkedIn and starting a podcast/Youtube channel?
9. How has your role evolved?
10. How do you think about how much capital to raise
11. What were some of the early mistakes you made in CPG?
12. How is CPG different to some of the other businesses you’ve founded?
13. How are you approaching today’s market?
14. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one

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 Introducing aVenture - venture capital for everyone

With aVenture everyone can now invest directly into venture capital funds through our platform while also benefiting from periodic liquidity options.

If you agree, sign-up for their waitlist at aventure.vc.

aVenture is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company that permits users to launch, manage and invest in venture funds on its platform, http://aventure.vc. aVenture operates independently of any investment advisors on its platform. Certain funds listed on the aVenture platform are provided by independent fund managers and may be registered as investment advisors in the U.S., or qualify for exempt reporting status.

Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

Want to keep up to date with The Consumer VC? Subscribe to my newsletter Here.

Our guest today is Hilary Quartner, one of the founders and Co-CEOs of Hilma. Hilma creates natural remedies for your medicine cabinet that are backed by science. Previously Hilary worked at The Wonderful Company, FIJI Water and was part of the founding team at Jet Black.

You can Hilary on Instagram @hilarykquartner and Hilma @hilma_co. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

A book that inspired her professionally is Competing Against Luck by Clayton Christensen and two books that inspired her personally are Educated by Tara Westover and The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley.

Here's what you will learn:

1. What attracted Hilary to consumer brands and entrepreneurship. How Hima came together and the opportunity her and her co-founders' saw. How they thought about differentiation. Lessons learned in developing "The Clinical Herbal" category.
2. Decision making process when you have co-CEO business structure. How she thinks about organic growth. Some of the early mistakes when founding Hilma. What was most critical to her success? Why they chose to fundraise? Some of the effects COVID has had on their business? One piece of advice for founders

Brian is an executive coach and owner of Dashing Leadership. He helps early-stage founders grow into more effective leaders. Previously he started and ran Fitocracy, one of the largest fitness social networks of its time, and sold it in 2015. Afterwards, he joined 500 Startups as a venture partner and later led major product initiatives at Credit Karma and Eaze.

If you’re interested in learning more about how coaching can help you perform better as a leader, please schedule an introduction call at www.dashingleadership.com If you want to keep up to date on Brian you can follow him on Twitter @brianmwang. If you are a founder and working on something innovative,, have a question you’d like to hear VCs or founders answer on the show you can DM me and follow Mike on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

One of Brian’s favorite author’s is Haruki Murakami. A book that inspired Brian personally is Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang. A book that inspired Brian professionally is Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson.

On this episode you will learn - 

1. What attracted him to entrepreneurship and founding Fitocracy? What were some of the learnings from his experience as a founder? What is coaching and what attracted you to it? How is coaching different to advising and mentoring?
2. What are some of the ways that you help founders? How is the impact different to advising and mentoring? What’s typically the cadence?
3. What are some typical or common areas that founders might need help in that you think about?
4. How do you think about effective leadership?
5. What is one piece of advice that you would have for all founders?

Our guest today is Nagraj Kashyap, Managing Partner of SoftBank’s Vision Fund one of the world's largest venture capital fund, with over $100 billion in capital. Nagraj leads their consumer investment practice for north America. It was amazing chatting with him about how Vision Fund 2 is different from fund 1, his thesis around the future of healthcare the ecommerce stack and how he thinks about scale for non-tech consumer businesses. WIthout further ado, here’s Nagraj.

1. What was your initial attraction to investing in consumer focused businesses?
2. How did you end up joining Softbank?
3. How is Vision Fund 2’s focus different from Fund 1?
4. Why should founders partner with the Vision Fund?
5. What is your decision-making process? How do you get to a decision quickly in today’s market?
6. How do you leverage your platform?
7. Walk us through your due diligence process.
8. When a founder comes to you, how do you think about the size of problem they are solving?
9. How are you thinking about today’s market climate? Do you think valuations are high?
10. What’s your target cadence for consumer investments?
11. There’s been alot of investment in direct-to-consumer healthcare. What’s your thesis around the future of healthcare?
    1. Wellness and preventative care
12. Where is the opportunity when it comes to the ecommerce stack serving consumer brands?
13. How do you think about scale in non-software businesses/consumer brands? I.e. Vuori
14. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
15. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Professionally: Innovator’s Dilemma
    2. Personally: American Sickness
16. What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?

Thank you Caroline McMorrow for the intro to our guest today Will Nitze, Founder & CEO of IQ Bar. IQ Bar is a plant-based protein bar company for your brain and body! We discuss how Will got turned on to brain food and the origin story of IQ Bar, how he growth hacked his Indie Gogo campaign which I had never heard of anything like he did before, getting into retail, why they went conventional first, which is unusual and why they aren’t in Whole Foods currently. Without further ado, here’s Will.

Some of the questions I ask Will:

1. What were you doing before IQ Bar?
2. What was the genesis behind the brand?
3. What is brain food?
4. Why a bar? What was still left to be conquered in bars?
5. How did you get into retail?
6. How did you approach formulation?
7. How do you think about your branding a copy and being accessible but also very serious about nutrition?
8. Did you first do DTC?
9. Why did you do a Kickstarter campaign?

***Sponsor***

 Introducing aVenture - venture capital for everyone

With aVenture everyone can now invest directly into venture capital funds through our platform while also benefiting from periodic liquidity options.

If you agree, sign-up for their waitlist at aventure.vc.

aVenture is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company that permits users to launch, manage and invest in venture funds on its platform, http://aventure.vc. aVenture operates independently of any investment advisors on its platform. Certain funds listed on the aVenture platform are provided by independent fund managers and may be registered as investment advisors in the U.S., or qualify for exempt reporting status.

Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

Want to keep up to date with The Consumer VC? Subscribe to my newsletter Here.

Jason Stoffer is a General Partner at Maveron. Maveron is a premier consumer focused fund that invests in seed and Series A companies that empower consumers to live on their terms. Some of Maveron’s investments include Everlane, Allbirds, General Assembly, eBay, and Coursehero. Jason is focused on investing in education, e-commerce, and technology-enabled consumer businesses.

Jason Stoffer was an early Board member at zulily. He sourced Maveron's investments in, and currently serves on the boards of General Assembly, Julep, Lively and Dolls Kill. He also led several of Maveron's most promising seed investments, including CourseHero, Everlane and Peach.

Jason Stoffer was formerly a member of the advisory board of the Lumina Foundation’s Next Generation Learning Initiative. He is also a mentor for TechStars. Previously, he was a board member of Startl, an education incubator.

You can follow Jason on Twitter @jstoffer. You are welcome to follow along behind the scenes @mikegelb and @consumervc.

One book the inspired Jason personally is Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and one book that inspired him professionally is Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter.

In this episode you will learn -

1. What attracted Jason to startups, technology and venture capital? Why the focus on consumer, what attracted you to invest in purely consumer companies at Maveron?How he thinks about early momentum and traction? What makes investing in consumer companies difficult? When does a company need to have product market fit?
   
2. What are some qualities in first time founders that he looks go? What’s the Maveron founder scorecard? How he analyzes mediocre markets and why he’s a fan of  the Warren Buffet quote “When a great team meets a mediocre market, only the market maintains its reputation” strong markets.” What has changed in how he invests throughout the years? How does he think of the term “Founder Friendly” and what has happened with WeWork changed anything on his view.
   
3. Qualities his diligence process when analyzing founder-market fit? What are consumer trends that he is focused on in today’s landscape?  How does he think about D2C brands in the current era with online acquisition costs continuing to rise since there is so much competition for SEM and Facebook ads?
   
4. What is something that he would change when it came to venture capital? What is your most recent investment and why is he excited about it? What is one company that he had the opportunity to invest in, didn’t, and in retrospect wish you did? What is one piece of advice that he has for founders of consumer companies?
   

This episode are highlights from my conversation with Charles Hudson.

Charles Hudson is the Managing Partner and Founder of Precursor Ventures. Precursor Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in the first institutional round of investment for the most promising software and hardware companies. Some of their investments include The Athletic, Goodr and Co-Star.

Links:

Click here to listen to my full conversation with Charles Hudson

Click here on Mobile to join our Community.

This episode are highlights from my conversation with Sasha Astafyeva.

Sasha Astafyeva, Partner at Atomico. Atomico invests in Europe’s most ambitious tech founders at Series A and beyond. Some of their investments include Farmdrop, Habito, and teatime games. Sasha leads new investments in consumer. Previously, she was a Principal at Felix Capital and VP of Finance and Business Intelligence at VivaReal.

Links:

Click here to listen to my full conversation with Sasha.

Click here on Mobile to join our Community.

Join host Mike Gelb on The Consumer VC as he talks with Preston Rutherford, co-founder of Chubbies. In this episode, Preston delves into their founding journey, tackling topics like why they raised VC money, overcoming early manufacturing challenges, and evolving their brand strategy. He shares insights into achieving product-market fit, the importance of balancing short-term and long-term goals, and navigating the challenges of scaling and profitability. Post-Chubbies, Preston also discusses his new venture, Marathon, and its mission to help brands measure the impact of brand building. For informative and entertaining content on the intersections of venture capital and consumer innovation, check out the full episode.00:00 Introduction01:24 Introducing Preston Rutherford of Chubbies01:34 The Founding Journey of Chubbies06:12 Challenges in Early Manufacturing09:21 Building a Brand Identity23:34 Raising Capital and Financial Challenges26:28 The Early Days and Initial Challenges26:55 Navigating Co-Founder Dynamics29:04 Pressure and Growth Metrics31:20 Shifting Focus to EBITDA34:42 The Decision to Sell Chubbies40:11 Channel Expansion and Inventory Management43:19 Lessons in Brand Marketing46:53 Reflections and Future Insights54:56 Final Thoughts and Farewell

Our guest today is Mike Ghaffary, General Partner at Canvas Ventures. Mike is the first third time guest of the show. The last time I had Mike on we spoke about what’s the next consumer platform after the iPhone? Funnily enough, we didn’t mention AI. We thought we needed to revisit this question and discuss the opportunity in AI from a consumer technology lens.

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This issue is brought to you by Vauban from Carta. Vauban from Carta is the easiest way to launch & run your venture investing. They offer SPVs, and fund vehicles for GPs at all stages of the journey - from your first syndicate to operating a multi-million dollar venture fund. Their end-to-end platform automates your back-office and manual workflows so you can focus on what matters: finding the next unicorn & building investor relationships.

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Presenter: Burkland Associates helps you build the right systems that can keep up with your growth and can handle all the finance, accounting, tax and hiring services that consumer startups need to scale.

For more information head to burklandassociates.com

Presenter: Skillful runs online, immersive programs that help people launch and accelerate their careers in business roles in tech - Strategy & Ops, Product, Strategic Finance and Growth.

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My guest today is Michael Markesbery, co-founder and CEO of OROS. OROS produces award winning apparel with their patented SOLARCORE® Insulation. It's the warmest Zero-Bulk Gear. In Michael's words, they science the shit out of everything when it comes to outdoor apparel that keeps you warm. This was such a fun chat about how he's building this incredible brand that uses space technology to build their product. Without further ado, here's Michael.

1. What was your attraction to space?
2. How did you develop a relationship with NASA?
3. Arogel - very brittle
4. Arogel to foam
5. Solarcore
6. Really warm fiber
7. What IP
8. How did you come up with the idea for OROS?
9. Walk us through the technology.
10. Why did you think there was a need for this?
11. What was your first product?
12. When did you decide to fundraise?How was that experience?What was investor reactions?
13. Where did you decide to sell? What was the launch strategy?
14. How do you describe your target consumer?
15. What were some of the stumbling blocks along the way?
16. Are you the exclusive holder of the license with NASA? What's that relationship like?
17. What's your percentage of B2C vs. B2G sales?
18. What do you have on the roadmap for new products?
19. What's one thing you would change about the fundraising process?
20. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
21. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?Don't ever ask for favors, ask for advice
22. What's one piece of advice for founders?Take the moonshot

Our guest today is Mike Hirshland, co-founder of Resolute Ventures. Resolute Ventures is a lead seed and “pre-seed” investor focused on backing and connecting a community of Founders who share an entrepreneurial spirit and energy. Some of their investments include Bark Box, Clutter, and Lumen. We discuss what pre-seed and seed investing is today, the opportunity within Web3, and how he builds conviction within founders. Without further ado, here’s Mike.

Some of the questions I ask

1. How did you enter venture capital?
2. What were some of the learnings from that
3. How did Resolute come together?
4. What got you interested in the seed stage?
   1. How do you describe seed today?
   2. 10 financing in a year
5. How do you think about risk in this market?
6. Henrik Werdelin of BARK recently told Mike his "superpower is authenticity" which is what founders need now. What does that mean? Why is authenticity so important?
7. One of your big themes is community. What’s your approach to building community, why is it so important and why did you create the Resolute DAO?
8. How do you think about the opportunity within Web3? What are use cases that get you excited?
9. Emotionally support
10. Can we imagine a world where solving a problem
11. What parts of Web3 is investible?
12. How do you think about the current market/landscape?
13. What’s you diligence process?
14. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
15. What’s one book that inspired you professionally and one book that inspired you personally?
    1. As It Is

This episode are highlights from my conversation with Samara Hernandez.

My guest today is Samara Hernandez, founder of Chingona Ventures. Samara invests at the preseed and seed stages on industries that are massively changing and founders whose backgrounds uniquely position them to create businesses in growth markets that are often overlooked. We discuss how she analyzes overlooked opportunities, some of the differences when investing in consumer vs. enterprise, and Chicago.

Links:

Click here to listen to my full conversation with Samara.

Click here on Mobile to join our Community.

My guest today is Dan Reich, who is a serial entrepreneur. Some of the companies he founded are Spinback, TULA and Troops.ai. TULA started as a digitally native health and beauty brand where Dan served as CEO from inception to over $1mm in sales in less than one year. Troops is a B2B technology company that is building a mobile-first, intelligent CRM. Since Dan has extensive backgrounds in both B2B and B2C, in this episode we focus on some of the differences when building a B2C company vs. B2B.

Here are some questions I ask Dan -

1. What was your attraction to entrepreneurship?
2. Why did you decide to launch a skincare brand? What was the insight?
3. How did you think about the competitive landscape within skincare?
4. When did you realize after launching this could be something real?
5. What was your approach to scaling online?
6. What was your initial omnichannel strategy?
7. How were you able to successfully fundraise?
8. What was the hardest part of TULA's business to get investors over the line?
9. Why did you decide to step down as CEO?
10. What compelled you to start a completely different business in Troops.ai?
11. What are some of the differences building an enterprise business vs. consumer business?
12. As an investor, what do you look for in an entrepreneur?
13. Are there specific categories you focus on or find attractive?
14. Walk me through your decision making process.
15. What's one thing you'd change with the fundraising / venture capital process?
16. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
17. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
18. What's one piece of advice for founders currently building?

Our guests today are Angela Vranich and Ben Lewis, the dynamic duo behind Little Spoon, as we explore their journey from high school sweethearts to co-founders of a revolutionary baby food brand. Listen in as they share how their early fascination with consumer brands led them to the natural products industry, and how their personal relationship evolved into a successful business partnership. Angela and Ben provide a candid look at the challenges and rewards of building a business as a couple, the motivations that fueled their entrepreneurial spirit, and the key partnership principles that have guided their journey.

Thank you to our Partner –– Propeller Industries https://www.propellerindustries.com/

Propeller Industries is the leading strategic finance and accounting partner for venture-stage companies.

(0:00:01) - Building Little Spoon With a Partner

(0:10:31) - Revolutionizing the Baby Food Industry

(0:19:15) - Expanding Product Line for Growing Kids

(0:32:56) - Direct-to-Consumer Success in Marketing

(0:46:21) - Balancing Growth and Profitability Strategy

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My guest today is John Gannon, founder of GoingVC. GoingVC is a VC Career accelerator. GoingVC is designed to help you break into venture capital by directly connecting motivated VC job seekers with VC firms. GoingVC also has its own investment arm. We discuss how to enter VC, the rise of cohort based learning, and what the consumerization of enterprise really means.

You can also follow him on Twitter @johnmgannon

Here are some questions I ask John:

1. What was your attraction to venture capital?
2. How did you start Going VC? What was the gap you were seeing?
3. Tell us a bit about Going VC?
4. What are some trends in consumer that you are focusing on?
5. How has venture capital changed since you started at a fund after grad school?
6. What are the differences of people in your cohorts that make it into venture vs. those that don't?
7. Are their special skill sets that one needs to have to enter the consumer side?
8. Are you seeing funds become more specialized or more generalists?
9. How do you look at consumer companies?
10. What's one thing you would change about VC?
11. What's your best piece of advice for someone that's looking to go into VC?

Our guest today is James Currier, Founder & General Partner of NFX. VC firm investing in pre-seed and seed stage startups. Some of their investments include DoorDash, Lyft and Outdoorsy. We focus this conversation on maybe the biggest tech trend in 2022 – A.I. How much opportunity is there for startups vs. the Googles and Microsoft’s of the world, which layer of A.I. provides the most value and much much more. Please note we do discuss OpenAI but this conversation was recorded prior to their $10 billion deal with Microsoft. Without further ado, here’s James.

1. What’s the difference between how AI has been viewed in the past / analytical AI and generative AI?
2. What’s the history of generative AI?
3. Why is it a goldrush and receiving lots of hype? Why now in this moment in time?
4. How does generative tech change the internet?
5. Will generative AI change how we think about search and finding an answer? Will it replace Google?
6. How do you build an enduring business based on API on GPT-3 or other AI language models?
7. What will it effects be on the creator economy and artists?
8. Do you see generative tech replacing jobs or devalue jobs?
9. How do you think writing coaches
10. What’s the biggest surprising categories or use case you’re excited about?
11. What’s the advantages of building your own applications off open AI models vs. proprietary? What’s the use case for either?
12. What are the biggest reasons why an generative AI company will succeed vs. fail?
13. How do you analyze companies building using generative tech?
14. What will generative tech do for entrepreneurship?
15. Do you think building an generative 
16. What are the various applications to generative AI that haven’t been explored yet that you’re interested in?
17. What’s your recommendation to founders who want to be part of this wave?
18. Since there’s lots of hype of generative tech, what are use cases that you’ve found that doesn’t make sense?
19. How fast are the AI models improving and becoming more accurate?
20. What’s on book that’s inspired you personally and one book that’s inspired you professionally?
21. Acid Dream - history of psychedelic drugs
22. How to Change Your Mind - Nue Life Health
23. Scale by Jeffory West
24. What’s one piece of advice for founders?

***Sponsor***

 Introducing aVenture - venture capital for everyone

With aVenture everyone can now invest directly into venture capital funds through our platform while also benefiting from periodic liquidity options.

If you agree, sign-up for their waitlist at aventure.vc.

aVenture is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company that permits users to launch, manage and invest in venture funds on its platform, http://aventure.vc. aVenture operates independently of any investment advisors on its platform. Certain funds listed on the aVenture platform are provided by independent fund managers and may be registered as investment advisors in the U.S., or qualify for exempt reporting status.

Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

Want to keep up to date with The Consumer VC? Subscribe to my newsletter Here.

Our guest today is Tige Savage, co-founder and managing partner of Revolution Ventures. Revolution a venture capital fund based in Washington, D.C. Some of their investments include RunKeeper, Homesnap, Framebridge, and LivingSocial. This episode really hit home for me. I'm originally from the DC area and love the area. It's probably bad form it's taken me this long to have an investor that's based there on the show. In this conversation you'll learn how Revolution invests in companies that are outside of the bay area, how Tige views risk at the early stages and how he thinks about brands that are sustainable.

Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Gorgias. Gorgias combines all your communication channels including email, SMS, social media, livechat, and phone, into one platform and gives you an organized view of all tickets. Sign up here and mention the Consumer VC podcast for two months free.

Click Here to sign up.

Some of the questions I ask Tige:

1. What was your attraction to venture capital?
2. How did Revolution come together?
3. What are the three investment funds that Revolution invests out of?
4. What's interesting about the DC startup ecosystem?
5. Life of revolution - off the beaten path of geographies
6. Spending time on the road
7. How did you think about sourcing, and different regions
8. Was alot of community building
9. References were more important than they ever have before?
10. Traded the risks of unknown for pricing risks
11. Why don't you make investments in the bay area?
12. How do you currently think about price in this market?
13. When investing in pre-product market fit, what are qualities you look for in founders?
14. Are there particular themes in consumer that you focus on or are you more opportunistic?
15. What did you learn from COVID?
16. Digitally native brands
17. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
18. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
19. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?
20. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?

Our guest today is Annie Kadavy, Managing Director at RedPoint Ventures. Redpoint partners with exceptional entrepreneurs starting at the earliest stages of the climb some of her investments include Tend, Shash, and SIlk & Sonder. We discuss her introduction to entrepreneurship building in her garage, tiptoeing the line throughout her career between operator and investor, the business models she’s intrigued by and investible in her opinion. Without further ado, here’s Annie.

We discuss:

• Building products in her garage
• How she founded BetterSitter
• Becoming a GP at CRV Ventures
• How she invested ClassPass, DoorDash, Patreon
• What it was like working at Uber
• Why she joined RedPoint Ventures

***Sponsor***

 Introducing aVenture - venture capital for everyone

With aVenture everyone can now invest directly into venture capital funds through our platform while also benefiting from periodic liquidity options.

If you agree, sign-up for their waitlist at aventure.vc.

aVenture is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company that permits users to launch, manage and invest in venture funds on its platform, http://aventure.vc. aVenture operates independently of any investment advisors on its platform. Certain funds listed on the aVenture platform are provided by independent fund managers and may be registered as investment advisors in the U.S., or qualify for exempt reporting status.

Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

Want to keep up to date with The Consumer VC? Subscribe to my newsletter Here.

This is a highlight from my conversation with Soraya Darabi.

Soraya is one of the Founding Partners of TMV, where she focuses on the future of living well.

Links:

Click Here to Listen to Full Episode with Soraya Darabi

Click Here on Mobile to Join Our Community

Listen in as we explore the exciting journey of Miguel Leal, co-founder and CEO of Somos Foods. Miguel shares his experience transitioning from successful stints at Kind Snacks and Chalula to establishing his own brand. Inspired by a disparity in the market, he decided to revolutionize the Mexican food aisle by creating authentic, plant-based, non-GMO products. He also discusses the pivotal decision to quickly shift to retail and the profound impact of AI technology on the brand's success.

Our conversation navigates the unique challenges and opportunities that arose during the launch of Somos Foods. Miguel sheds light on the creation process, the impact of the pandemic, and how his conversations with his wife and friend Daniel Lubecki, founder of KindSnacks, sparked the genesis of the company. Discover how their passion for authentic Mexican cuisine and the need for innovation in the market led to the creation of this game-changing brand. 

Lastly, we discuss the importance of retail expansion and product innovation for Somos Foods. Miguel offers insights into the company's unique approach to market expansion, pricing and margin structure, and how they successfully created a complete customer experience. He also shares his thoughts on the value of social listening and how it led to the creation of popular recipes. So, tune in and learn about the transformational journey of Somos Foods, their innovative strategies, and their quest to bring authentic Mexican cuisine to your kitchen.

This is an introductory episode explaining what will be covered and the goals for this podcast "The Consumer VC". For this episode, I recruited my brother Rob Gelb to interview yours truly about the podcast, the range of topics I hope to cover in the coming interview episodes in this podcast. For more information about this podcast, please check out our site or follow on Twitter.

Our guest today is Jessica Peltz-Zatulove, co-founder and General Partner at Hannah Grey. Hannah Grey is a first check venture fund investing in founders reimagining everyday experiences to improve work and life which she co-founded with Kate Beardley, who also came on the show. We ask the question what are community driven brands, identity driven brands and how brands are engaging with Web3 and how to scale brands sustainably. Without further ado, Here’s Jessica.

Questions I ask Jessica:

1. What was your introduction to venture capital and your initial attraction to it?
2. What was the transition like from corporate VC, specializing in investing in advertising technology startups to starting your own fund?
3. Is New York the center for consumer investing?
4. Where do you see the opportunity with consumer brands? What are some of the trends your paying close attention to?
5. Investing in consumer brands is hard because a successful exit typically looks very different to a successful exit in technology. When you speak to entrepreneurs building consumer brands, how do you know that brand is actually venture backable vs. a lifestyle business?What are some of the characteristics?What do you want to see in the founder?Is it harder investing in a consumer business if you are not the target customer?
6. Since you come from an advertising background, given you no longer have the arbitrage opportunities on FB and Google to scale, what are some of the creative ways you've seen companies scale that is sustainable?
7. I know we're in the early innings of the metaverse and there's lots of excitement over different aspects to it. How do you map out the different parts to the metaverse and when investing where is the opportunity for venture like returns?How are you seeing the metaverse evolve over the next few years?What are some of the consumer behavior changes you are currently thinking about?
8. As we come out of this COVID period, are you shifting your focus to any new verticals?
9. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
10. What's one book that inspired you virtually and one book that inspired you professionally?
11. What's one piece of advice for entrepreneurs?
12. What's the best piece of advice you've received?

Thank you Kate McAndrew for the introduction to my guest today Tyler Mincey, Partner of Bolt VC. Bolt invests at the intersection of the digital and physical world. Tyler started his career on the ipod team at Apple, focusing on the shuffle, classic, nano and touch. I don't know when I last heard those product lines to be honest. What I loved about our conversation and what you'll learn is Tyler's deep love and appreciation for hardware / tech enabled products. Alot of VCs want to focus on software, but Tyler certainly spends alot of his time looking at physical products that can change our world.

Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Gorgias. Gorgias combines all your communication channels including email, SMS, social media, livechat, and phone, into one platform and gives you an organized view of all tickets. Sign up here and mention the Consumer VC podcast for two months free.

Questions I ask Tyler.

1. What attracted you to engineering?
2. What was it like working on the ipod and the iphone?
3. So after working at Apple, you ended up working for a product studio and incubator. What attracted you to startups?
4. How did working at a large company like Apple help make you think about innovation?
5. What are some of hardest parts of producing hardware?
6. We've talked about on this show about how important it is to eliminate friction, mostly focusing on user design relating to software. What are some examples in hardware when you are thinking about user design and working with startups?
7. How do you think about design vs. sustainability?
8. What led you to Bolt?
9. Why investing?
10. When you are conducting due diligence on a company, when it comes to product what are you looking for?
11. What makes the team the right team that's worth investing in?
12. How has some of the business models evolved with SaaS with a box companies?
13. What are some of the current trends that you are most excited about?
14. What's one thing you would change when it came to venture capital?
15. What's one piece of advice you have for founders?

Arie Abecassis, is the founder and partner of ICONYC Labs and was the chairman of the board at SeatGeek. ICONYC labs is a business and funding acceleration platform customized for early-stage Israeli tech startups looking to accelerate growth and cut time to market. SeatGeek is the largest internet event ticket search engine. Arie also is a venture partner / mentor at DreamIt Ventures and has over twenty years of experience in building technology companies as an operator, advisor and venture capital investor.

A book that inspired Arie personally and professionally is Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull.

*You can check out Arie's article at Entrepreneur here. You can also follow him on Twitter @arieabec If you are a founder and working on something innovative, have a question you’d like to hear VCs or founders answer on the show you can DM and follow your host on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc. For all episodes, please visit theconsumervc.com.*

In this episode we discuss -

1. What attracted Arie to technology and startups?What led him to founding ICONYC labs? What does it mean to be an advisor? What is the role of a board member and how should one think about the value a board member will add to a company? What should founders think about when finding their lead investor? How should founders think about structuring their board of directors? Why have a board?
2. Examples of good governance vs. bad governance, founder friendly vs. non founder friendly. For first time founders, what has he seen them struggle with the most when it comes to board meetings? At what point do companies need to think about having a board of directors? What’s typically the structure in a board?
3. How should founders put their board of directors to work? What’s one thing that you would change when it came to venture capital? What’s one piece of advice that you have for founders?

Thank you Joe Tonnos for the introduction to today's guest, Mitch Hayes, founder and CEO of Los Sundays Tequila. Los Sundays is the tequila for the millennial and founded on the principles of Quality, Originality and Style.

One book that inspired Mitch personally is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho . One book that inspired him professionally is Damn Good Advice by George Lois.

You can follow Los Sundays on Instagram @los_sundays. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

Some of the questions I ask Mitch -

1. Talk to me about your attraction to entrepreneurship and what led you to founding Los Sundays?
2. What was your approach when it came to taste testings?
3. How did you decide on your first type of Tequila and how do you think about product mix?
4. Your approach from the beginning was thinking about demand first rather than supply and being able to capture demand.
5. How were able to generate demand?
6. What was your launch strategy?
7. Is there pay to play when it comes to drinks in bars and recommendations from bartenders?
8. How did you approach your supply chain from the very beginning?
9. How did you think about your brand positioning?
10. How did you think about growth, offline and online?
11. Why did you choose to fundraise?
12. What was your fundraising strategy?
13. What has been some of the effects of COVID on your business?
14. What's one piece of advice for founders that are planning on starting a food and bev type business?

This episode are highlights from my conversation with Coulter Lewis.

Coulter Lewis is the founder and CEO of Sunday. Sunday provides nutrient and soil health plans for garden and lawn care. Previously, Coulter founded Quinn Snacks, the successful farm to bag snack company.

If you enjoy this episode, click here to listen to my full conversation with Coulter

Our guest today is Gail Becker, founder of CAULIPOWER, the most disruptive company in the better-for-you frozen food space named as one of the top 10 World’s Most Innovative Food Companies in 2022 by Fast Company. The hyper-growth company reached more than $100m in revenue in three years under her leadership as CEO. We discuss how and why she left corporate America to start Caulipower, her approach to growth through retail, how she thought about fundraising and managing her cap table, what capital efficiently means to her and product expansion. Without further ado, here’s Gail.

On this episode of the Consumer VC podcast, we are joined by Kevin Parakkattu, partner at Plug Play Ventures, for an intriguing exploration of the rapidly evolving landscape of the media industry, particularly the rise of GenAI. Kevin and I talk about the potential of AI to replace writers' jobs in the future and the potential legal implications surrounding the use of AI-generated content. 

We then turn our attention to the commerce industry, discussing the challenges that direct-to-consumer brands face, such as inventory overstock and cost-cutting. Kevin provides insights into the need for working capital, growth opportunities in the venture capital space, and how Plug Play Ventures has been able to create value for their investments. We also delve into the changing multiples of direct-to-consumer brands and the criteria for investing in pre-revenue consumer brands.

Subscribe Here for all new episodes and a weekly consumer fundraising update.

Our guest today is Mike Jones, one of the co-founders of Science Inc. Science Inc. is a venture studio and fund that develops, invests in consumer-focused businesses. Some of their portfolio includes Liquid Death, Dollar Shave Club, Grove Collaborative. Mike previously founded UsePlane, Tsavo Media and served as the CEO of MySpace. We discuss how he accesses what founders he wants to work with, what truly makes a good idea, how Liquid Death came together, their growth opportunities and he met Mike C, what he learned from Dollar Shave Club about making viral content, and much more.

Our guest today is Bri Kimmel, Founder of Worklife Ventures. Worklife is the first fund designed for builders, creators & individual contributors. Some of her investments include Clubhouse, Hopin and Italic. We focus this conversation on how having fun is serious business, the ins and outs of the creator economy and evaluating companies where a celebrity is a cofounder.

Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Gorgias. Gorgias combines all your communication channels including email, SMS, social media, livechat, and phone, into one platform and gives you an organized view of all tickets. Sign up here and mention the Consumer VC podcast for two months free.

Click Here to sign up.

Questions I ask Bri:

1. How did Worklife VC come together? What compelled you to become an investor and move to the other side of the table?
2. Build a community to make entrepreneurship
3. Zendesk - support leadership forum; large scale community events
4. How do you define a creator? Tech more approachable for local small businesses online
5. Why did you want to specialize in investing in products that help builders, creators, and individual contributors thrive? Cash drops -
6. Year at home, alot of people starting small businesses
7. I bet people will seek shelter and go to stable companies
8. Health insurance problem / back office in starting a business
9. What are nuances in the creator economy that you think most people might not understand?
10. What unique ways are you seeing creators build communities?
11. What type of products and needs haven't been met yet for creators?
12. How are you imagining the future of social?
13. What do you also make of celebrities founding companies? Is that going to be the future for launching consumer products? The hardest part is to bring the audience today
14. What are the downsides of having a celebrity co-founder?
15. What were your learnings from how Dispo unfolded?
16. As we come out of this period of COVID, what are you focusing on when it comes to change of consumer behavior?
17. What's your due diligence process when you analyze companies?
18. What's one thing you would change when it came to venture capital?
19. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
20. What's the best piece of advice that you've received that you've said the most amount of times?

*Please note that this episode was recorded before the coronavirus global pandemic*

Logan Langberg is a Principal at Imaginary Ventures. Imaginary is a Venture Capital Fund that invests in early–stage opportunities at the intersection of retail and technology in Europe and the US. Some of their investments include Everlane, Glossier, and Daily Harvest.

Logan was previously an investor at Alliance Consumer Growth, a leading consumer growth equity fund, where he invested in and supported Harry’s, LOLA, Honest Kitchen among other innovative consumer companies. It was a blast talking with Logan about food and bev, future of retail and much more.

You can follow Logan on Twitter @LangbergLogan. To follow along behind the scenes of the show, you can follow @mikegelb and @consumervc.

A book that impacted Logan personally is Boris Johnson’s The Churchill Factor. One book that impacted Logan professionally is Brad Feld’s Venture Deals.

In this episode you will learn - 

1. Why did Logan come down from growth equity to venture capital? What interested him in consumer? How does he think about good growth vs. bad growth? How does he think about optimizing for growth vs. profitability? 
2. What is his investment criteria for companies? What’s his due diligence process? How important is market expertise? How does he think about price in this current investment landscape? What is the reason that PE firms have come down stream? Do founders need to be concerned with over raising? 
3. What are some metrics that he focuses on the most? How does he think about portfolio construction and returns for each investment? How Logan thinks about the future of retail? What is one thing that he would change when it came to venture capital? What is his most recent investment and what makes you excited about it? What is one piece of advice for consumer entrepreneurs?

Thank you Tige Savage for the introduction to our guest today, Steve Case. Steve is the co-founder / former CEO of AOL. He also founded Revolution & Rise of the Rest. Revolution focuses on early-stage venture capital investments in technology-enabled businesses in the growth, venture and seed stages.

Rise of the Rest is a nationwide bus tour to work with entrepreneurs in emerging startup ecosystems. We focus this conversation around his latest book “The Rise of the Rest”.

We discuss:

• What Steve did after he left AOL in the early 2000s
• The origin of Revolution Ventures
• What inspired him to found a bus tour
• The most surprising lessons he’s learned when visiting non-obvious startup ecosystems
• How Rise of the Rest’s seed fund is structured and how it’s performed
• Why he’s optimistic about innovation in America
• What leads to a vibrant entrepreneurial community & and much much more

Thank you for listening.

Our guest today is Adam Cohen-Aslatei, founder and CEO of dating app S'More, the dating app that is built for relationships. Adam has had an extensive career working in the online dating industry and the advertising world. He walks us through why S'More is different, how he thinks about bringing inclusivity to online dating and how he successfully fundraised.

You can check out S'more here and follow them on Instagram here.

A few books that inspired Adam personally are Freakonomics by Steven Levitt, Getting To Yes by Roger Fisher and Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone.

You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

Some of the questions I ask Adam -

1. Tell me about your initial interest in the online dating space.
2. You’ve worked for many of the major dating apps, what was the insight that you saw that led you to founding S’More?
3. What was your approach when founding the company? Did you have a technology background? How did you decide to make the jump?
4. How did you think about the competitive landscape within dating apps?
5. How did you approach fundraising? Did you know VCs or have a venture network?
6. What were other features that make S’More more inclusive?
7. We talked before about “Love is Blind”, have you seen that as an influence in how folks are approaching S’More?
8. What’s one piece of advice that you have for founders?

Our guest today is Sean Riley, co-founder and CEO of DUDE Wipes. DUDE Wipes makes flushable wipes—billions of 'em—assembled right here in the USA. DUDE is bootrapped, only taking outside investment of $300k from Marc Cuban on SharkTank and are set to do $90 million this year in sales. We discuss his entire journey from the aha moment up until scaling the brand.

***Sponsor***

 Introducing aVenture - venture capital for everyone

With aVenture everyone can now invest directly into venture capital funds through our platform while also benefiting from periodic liquidity options.

If you agree, sign-up for their waitlist at aventure.vc.

aVenture is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company that permits users to launch, manage and invest in venture funds on its platform, http://aventure.vc. aVenture operates independently of any investment advisors on its platform. Certain funds listed on the aVenture platform are provided by independent fund managers and may be registered as investment advisors in the U.S., or qualify for exempt reporting status.

Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

Jason Shuman is a Principal at Primary Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm responsible for backing NYC's most promising founders. Some of their investments include Ticketfly, Jet, Deliveroo, and Package Free.

Jason has been working in New York as a VC for the past four years.  In college, Jason launched a direct-to-consumer footwear company that sold hand-sewn boat shoes and driving moccasins. He later went on to work at New York-based seed fund Corigin Ventures, where he invested in several companies including Latch, Loftsmart and Morty.

Thank you Sumeet Shah for the intro.

One book that inspired Jason personally is Attached by Amir Levine. One book that inspired Jason professionally is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

If you’d like to keep up to date with Jason, you can follow him on Twitter @boatshuman. To follow along behind the scenes of the show, you can follow @mikegelb and @consumervc.

In this episode you will learn -

1. What attracted him to start his own footwear company and become an entrepreneur? What were some of the learnings from that experience? How does he think about market timing? What attracted him to switch from being a founder to venture capital and working on the other side of the table? What makes seed investing as a stage so interesting to him? What attracted him to consumer?
   
2. What are his own KPIs for founders that are looking to fundraise a seed round? What are some qualities in founders that you look for? What is his own due diligence process? What metrics does he focus on and how has his evaluation changed the past few years What should the diligence process be for an early hire? How does he think about growth - organic vs. paid. Why does Primary Ventures only invest in New York Companies? What is some advice for founders that live in secondary and tertiary markets? What are changes in consumer behavior or consumer trends that he is most excited and focused on and looking at investment opportunities? What is something that he would change when it came to venture capital?
   
3. What is one company that he had the opportunity to invest in, didn’t, and in retrospect wish he did? What is one piece of advice that he has for founders of consumer companies?
   

Our guest today is Ben Savage, Partner at Clocktower Technology Ventures. Ben and his fund focuses on investing in Fintech and financial services. As you could image, we're going to be talking about the consumer side to fintech. You'll also learn how his time working under Ray Dalio at Bridgewater shaped him as an investor, why digitally native financial services haven't taken off as fast as digitally native CPG brands, and opportunities in fractional ownership. Without further ado, here's Ben.

Some of the questions I ask Ben:

1. I'd love to first hear about your background since you've had a breadth of experiences as an investor. What was your attraction to finance and how did you get your start?
2. You worked at Bridgewater Associates. On this program we always ask each guest what's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally and Principles has come up time and time again. What was it like working there first hand and what did working with Ray and his team teach you? Transparency you deliver for feedback. Pick your battles
3. Receive honest feedback for founders?
4. How did Clocktower come together? Why the fintech focus?
5. Why has it taken so long for consumer financial services to be adopted D2C models? Is it harder to obtain consumer trust?
6. How are these consumer financial services able to build trust?
7. What is the reason why Alipay
8. How do you think about this era of new investable assets? What's not currently investable that you think could be become investable in the future?
9. What's the best new idea that you've heard - fractional ownership, technology is allowing us to trade into tradeable wealth.
10. They say that the future of consumer is fintech. What do you think investors don't understand about fintech?
11. How are you thinking about the current state of cryptocurrency?
12. At a macro lends what makes fintech in Latin America interesting and one of your focuses?
13. Why are the margins going up
14. How are you going to accelerate consumer adoption for banks?
15. We talk about how every consumer tech company becomes a fintech company. Do you think investors are truly prepared for this?
16. Are you also thinking about ways to make private markets more liquid?
17. What was your biggest learning due to COVID?
18. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
19. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
20. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?

My guest today is John Sherwin, the founder and CEO of Hydrant. Hydrant hydrates you faster and more efficiently than water alone.In this episode you'll learn about a part of health and wellness that has been overlooked: dehydration and that we're living in a dehydrated economy, why it's underserved, how he grew digitally and why he decided to go into both Walmart and Whole Foods. Without further ado, here's John.

Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Gorgias. Gorgias combines all your communication channels including email, SMS, social media, livechat, and phone, into one platform and gives you an organized view of all tickets. Sign up here and mention the Consumer VC podcast for two months free.

Click Here to sign up.

Some of the questions I ask John:

1. What was your initial attraction to entrepreneurship?
2. How did you end up founding Hydrant? What was the insight?
3. What did you learn about Dehydration vs. hydration 1.
4. How did you approach validating your idea?
5. What was the DTC strategy?
6. What was life like during COVID? What was going through your mind when everything started shutting down in March last year?
7. What was your omni channel strategy?
8. When did you retailers
9. When did you know it made sense to transition from regional to national?
10. How did you approach brand awareness and marketing in secondary and tertiary markets?
11. Since you're in Walmart and Wholefoods, do you approach those customers and consumer segments differently?
12. How do you think about leadership and building a team?
13. Why did you decide to raise venture capital?
14. What was that process like?
15. What's one thing that you think investors misunderstands about being the CEO of CPG brands?
16. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
17. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?

My guest today is Luke Vernon, Managing Partner of Ridgeline Ventures. Ridgeline Ventures is an independent investment group that provides founders and brands a unique alternative to traditional investment firms. Some of their investments include Cotopaxi, Bobo’s, OROS, and Pro’s Closet. Previously he was the CEO of Eco products, which he grew from $1mm to $80mm. We discuss his learnings as an operator, why he invests in consumer brands where other investor interest has softened, the benefits of being a family office and how he thinks about investment timelines.

1. What were three of your biggest learnings growing Eco Products from $1mm to $80mm?
2. Since you also started Luke’s Circle and helps companies find talent, what is the key to hiring the right people?
3. After Eco Products sold, what eventually got you thinking of becoming an investor?
4. How did Ridgeline Ventures form?
5. Why doesn’t Ridgeline take outside capital?
6. There’s been alot of funds that have pivoted or moved away from investing in consumer brands. What are the opportunities that you’re focused on?
7. What’s your due diligence process?
8. Pricing strategy in each channel
9. How to scale the operations of the business
10. How long does it take to scale?
11. Food manufacturing
12. Self manufacturing
13. Great vehicles to finance CAPEX
14. What were some of your learnings during COVID?
15. How can a board provide value to a company?
16. What’s one thing you think is overlooked when investing in consumer businesses?
17. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Endurance by Ernest Jackelin
    2. Blue Ocean Strategy
18. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?

Our guest today is Marcos Gonzalez, Founder & Managing Partner of VamosVentures. VamosVentures is committed to creating a pipeline of diverse VC investors. Their investments include Stix, DRNXSMYTH, and Suma.

We also discuss:

• How he invests in both software and consumer businesses
• Approach to portfolio construction
• How to increase the number of diverse founders who are venture-backed
• His diligence process
• Why he’s bullish about Los Angeles
• Latin American products that will be adopted by the U.S. & much more

Thank you for listening.

Our guest today is Mike Asem, General Partner of M25. M25 is an early-stage venture firm based in Chicago, investing solely in companies headquartered in the Midwest. We discuss what movie got intrigued by venture capital, what’s misunderstood about investing in the midwest and the consumer landscape in that region, and his learnings since publishing M25 diversity report. Without further ado, here’s Mike

1. What was your attraction to entrepreneurship and venture capital?
2. How did you found M25? What’s your thesis?
   1. Was in the nano space
   2. Purdue research foundation
   3. Worked with portfolio companies
   4. Angel portfolio
   5. Established yourself as a former
3. Many tech VCs have steered clear from investing in consumer brands. Why do you still think there’s an opportunity?
4. What makes a consumer brand interesting to you?
5. How do you approach looking at consumer trends and trying to understand consumer behavior?
6. We talk about brands that are venture-backed have to appeal to the masses and not just the top 1%. How do you measure that when you’re in due diligence?
   1. If it plays in Peoria
7. Lori Coulter - Summersalt
8. M25 releases a diversity report. Can you explain the origins of how this began and what it includes?
9. What’s your outlook as well for Chicago as a venture ecosystem and the midwest?
10. What’s your thesis around consumer healthcare?
11. Why did you decide to create Unicorn to the Moon?
12. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
13. What’s one book that’s inspired you personally and one book that’s inspired you professionally?
    1. Eboys - Benchmarks early days

Our guest today is Anthony Zhang, founder of Vinovest. Vinovest allows you to invest in Wine Globally Without Leaving Home and Without Storing It Yourself. He also previously founded EnjoyNow and Know your VC. We discuss his introduction to entrepreneurship, what it was like coming back from a spinal injury to guide EnjoyNow to a successful exit, why he started Vinovest, how people were investing in wine previously, and much much more.

We discuss:

1. When was the first moment you were entrepreneurial?
2. You founded EnvoyNow, Know Your VC and now Vinovest. What do you feel like is the thread that combines each of those experiences.
3. In 2016 you suffered a huge accident and became paralyzed. This was while you were CEO of EnvoyNow and had to take a step back. You realized that your co-founders wanted to leave and the company wasn’t doing well. Walk me through what it was like coming back to your company day to day and still want EnvoyNow to be successful even though it was falling apart?
4. Why Vinovest? Why wine as an asset class? Were you always into wine?
5. How were people investing in wine previously?
6. What were your first steps when founding? How did you build the market?
7. How profitable is wine as an alternative investment?
8. How does it work?
9. What’s the level of demand for a platform like Vinovest? When did you feel like there was a significant demand for this product?
10. The wine is eventually is going to go bad / there’s an expiry date. How do you deal with this?
11. Who are they finally selling to?
12. When did you start Whiskey Vest?
13. Are you worried about the non-alc craze?
14. How do wine producers benefit?
15. Are their alternative assets that you don’t think make sense?
16. How did you raise capital?
17. What’s one book that’s inspired you personally and professionally
18. Six Types of Working Geniuses
19. 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

***Sponsor***

 Introducing aVenture - venture capital for everyone

With aVenture everyone can now invest directly into venture capital funds through our platform while also benefiting from periodic liquidity options.

If you agree, sign-up for their waitlist at aventure.vc.

aVenture is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company that permits users to launch, manage and invest in venture funds on its platform, http://aventure.vc. aVenture operates independently of any investment advisors on its platform. Certain funds listed on the aVenture platform are provided by independent fund managers and may be registered as investment advisors in the U.S., or qualify for exempt reporting status.

Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

Want to keep up to date with The Consumer VC? Subscribe to my newsletter Here.

Thank you Anna Barber for the intro to today's guest, Michael Barlow, founder and CEO of Fernish. Fernish offers premium furniture rentals that feel like home, delivered and assembled in a week. We discuss how Michael approached validating his idea of furniture rental, figuring out the supply chain, and how they adjusted to shifts in demand for certain products during COVID.

A book that inspired Michael is Against The Gods by Peter L. Bernstein.

I highly recommend following Michael on Twitter @mleebarlow. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

Here are a few questions that I ask Michael -

1. You originally came from a finance background, what attracted you to innovation and entrepreneurship in general?
2. Tell me about the aha moment that you had for Fernish and how were you able to validate your idea?
3. It seems like on the supply chain side of things, renting/transporting furniture would be very complex since the pieces are typically large, you have to store them. How did you manage to get around that in the early days? Also, under the hood, how does your supply chain function?
4. When I speak with founders, we talk about how when testing ideas, they focus on demand over the supply. And if that idea gets validated (i.e. there is a demand for it) then they go and build it. Was this part of your approach? If so, what were some of your early tactics?
5. What were some of your early growth levers?
6. What were some of the challenges regarding COVID?
7. Has their been a shift in demand towards certain products i.e. office desks, and chairs?
8. Did you have to make any pivots - whether that's with your supply chain or product offerings?
9. How did you approach raising capital?
10. Why did you choose to go through Techstars/an accelerator instead of trying to raise your own round off the bat?
11. We used to be in the age of optimizing for growth no matter what, now we've shifted as profitability has become what companies want to achieve. How do you think about that balance?
12. What's one thing you would change about the fundraising process?
13. Was there an early mistake that you made while building Fernish that changed the way you thought about business strategy or business in general?
14. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?

Our guest today is Ben Lerer. Ben Lerer is a Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau. Lerer Hippeau is a venture capital fund based in New York who were early investors in Warby Parker, Glossier, and Topicals. He also founded Thrillist, an online media website website back in 2004 and was former CEO of Group Nine Media until it was acquired by Vox Media.

Thank you to our Partner –– Propeller Industries – https://www.propellerindustries.com/

Propeller Industries is the leading strategic finance and accounting partner for venture-stage companies.

Thank you to our presenting partner –– Propeller Industries https://www.propellerindustries.com/ Propeller Industries is the leading strategic finance and accounting partner for venture-stage companies. Our guest today is Jeff Byers, CEO of Momentous. Momentous produces and sells best in class human performance products. Previously, Jeff Byers founded Amp Human and later acquired Momentous, merging the two companies. He’s also a former professional football player and played at USC in college (Fight On✌️) 00:00 Welcome to The Consumer VC 00:40 Introducing Jeff Byers and Momentous 02:02 Jeff Byers' Transition from NFL to Entrepreneurship 04:31 The Birth of Amp Human and Momentous 07:46 Challenges and Innovations in Supplement Industry 14:17 Acquisition of Momentous and Future Plans 25:37 Navigating the Supplement Market 33:25 Sourcing and Trust in Supplements 34:12 Challenges in the Supplement Industry 34:29 Transparency Issues in Ingredient Sourcing 37:30 The Problem with Chinese Creatine 40:49 Commoditization of Supplements 46:23 Importance of Protein, Omegas, and Creatine 53:08 Momentous' Approach to Supplements 58:04 Building Trust and Transparency 01:02:26 Books that Inspire 01:06:21 Final Thoughts and Conclusion Subscribe to Our Newsletter: https://www.theconsumervc.com/ Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Hjm74Z... Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast... Follow on Twitter: / mikegelb Follow on Instagram: / mikegelb Follow on TikTok: / consumervc

Our guest today is [Neil Sequeira](https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-sequeira-76739a40/), Co-Founder & Managing Director at [Defy](https://defy.vc/). Defy backed exceptional entrepreneurs at the early stages. Some of their investments include Fable, Triller, and Boom Sports. Previously, Neil served as Managing Director of General Catayst and has been a venture capitalist for the past 20 years. I had a blast chatting with Neil about the current state of VC, celebrities cofounding consumer companies, the verticalization of social and categories he's comfortable writing the first check in. Without further ado, here's Neil.

Some of the questions I ask him:

1. What was your initial attraction into venture?

2. How did you make your way into venture capital?

3. You've had a ton of experience investing in consumer technology and consumer goods companies. How do you think about the market today? When things are tough

4. What's your approach for looking at opportunities?

5. What's your due diligence process?

6. How do you think about fund differentiation?

7. How do you approach price and ownership?

8. When I talk to investors, deals are closing really fast. Their wish is for the market to actually move slower. Have you had to alter at all your due diligence process at all to get to conviction faster?

9. What makes a good board member?

10. What does an entrepreneur really want?

11. Do the things that makes their life easier

12. What has been your biggest learning from COVID?

13. How are you seeing the world of startups and venture capital as the world begins to open up?

14. How has venture capital changed?

15. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?

    1. Very diverse firm

    2. People invest in people who look like them

16. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?

17. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?

18. What's one piece of advice for founders currently building?

Sophie Bakalar is the founder of Fable, an e-commerce pet store help pets (and their humans) lead healthier, happier lives through better design. She is also a Venture Partner at Collaborative fund, a seed stage fund that focuses on the growth of the creative class and the concept of collaborative consumption. Some of their investments include Reddit, Impossible Foods, Tala, Lyft, and Kickstarter.

Previously, Sophie a credit trader in a hedge fund and started a B2B and founded digit charts, a company specializing in image processing software for charts, which was acquired in 2016.

You can follow Sophie @sophiebakalar. If you’d like to follow along behind the scenes of the show, you can follow me @mikegelb and @consumervc.

A book that impacted her personally is The Overstory by Richard Powers. A book that impacted her professionally is Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough

1. What attracted her to startups and venture capital? What were some of her learnings as the founder of di8it chart that transferred and influenced on the other side of the table as a venture capitalist? What attracted her to Collaborative fund and early stage investing? What excites her about consumer investing? What Consumer insights is she most focused on? How does she think about the future of retail?
   
2. When she was full time at Collaborative fund, what are some qualities that she liked to see from founders? What are consumer trends that she focused on in today’s landscape? How does she think about D2C brands in the current era with online acquisition costs continuing to rise since there is so much competition for SEM and Facebook ads?
   
3. What led her to founding Fable? What is something that she would change when it came to venture capital? What is one piece of advice that you have for founders of consumer companies?
   

Our guest today is McKeever Conwell II or as he’s most well known Mac the VC, Founder and managing partner of Rarebreed Ventures. RareBreed Ventures is a pre-seed fund that invests in exceptional founders primarily outside of large tech ecosystems, earlier than everyone else. We discuss how Mac built relationships on Twitter with investors and founders and was able to raise a VC fund all on Twitter, his due diligence process and how he thinks about customer acquisition.

1. What led you to becoming an entrepreneur?
2. Why investing? Why did you decide to become a VC and start a fund?
3. How were you able to leverage Twitter to become an investor?
   1. What was your strategy?
4. I know you invest in both consumer and enterprise. What makes consumer investing hard?
5. Where are you seeing the opportunity within consumer?
6. How do you approach sourcing and finding diamonds in the rough?
7. What's you diligence process? How do you validate how large a problem the entrepreneur is solving?
   1. Rebundled
8. What's the most common reason why you passed?
9. What are some of your favorite accelerators that are still under the radar?
10. Do you believe in pattern recognition is important when it comes to investing?
11. What is a day in the life of an emerging manager?
12. What have founders needed the most help from?
13. What motivates you everyday?
14. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
15. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Why should white guys have all the fun?
16. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?
17. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?

Our guest today is Bilal Zuberi, Partner at Lux Capital. Lux Capital Investing in people inventing the future. Some of their investments include Happiest Baby, Citizen, Carbon Health and Duck Duck Go. Bilal also founded GEO2 Technologies and comes from an extensive technical and science background. What we explore on today’s episode is how to invest at the intersection of deep tech and consumer.

Some of the questions I ask him:

1. One of your focuses is investing in Deep Tech. We haven’t covered Deep Tech yet on the podcast, what is deep tech?
   1. Business model innovation vs technological innovation
   2. Mission-oriented go to market chops
2. When you think about consumer deep tech companies, what do you think about? What are the use cases where consumers could benefit from deep tech?
3. Betting on teams that own the problem, not just the solution
4. How is investing in deep tech different to other types of categories when you think about return timeline?
   1. How flexible are you with the length?
5. Even if you do have an incredible consumer tech product with a clear competitive advantage or compelling value prop, how do you analyze the marketing and branding?
   1. Would you invest in a company that has compelling technology, but you don’t understand the branding or how it would work?
   2. Can brand be a sustainable competitive advantage?
6. How do you analyze deep tech products? What’s your diligence process?
7. What’s tends to be the reason why you pass on a consumer-focused company?
8. Why did you join Lux and how do you describe Lux’s investment philosophy?
9. How are you thinking about today’s market when it comes to price?
10. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
11. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? Professionally - High Growth Handbook

Personally - Engineering Marvels of the World

1. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
2. What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?

Our guest today is Ernesto Schmitt, Co-Founder and Arch Craftor of The Craftory, a $375 million global investment fund that invests exclusively in CPG brands. Some of their investments include TomboyX, Hippeas, and Edgard & Cooper. Previously, Ernesto was a serial technology entrepreneur who has had successful exits to Twitter, Snap and Intel. You'll learn why Ernesto believes digitally native brands are heading into retail too early, expectations at the series A and B, and his approach to analyzing founders globally.

Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Gorgias. Gorgias combines all your communication channels including email, SMS, social media, livechat, and phone, into one platform and gives you an organized view of all tickets. Sign up here and mention the Consumer VC podcast for two months free.

Click Here to sign up.

Some of the questions I ask Ernesto:

1. What was your initial attraction to technology?
2. What made you want to become an entrepreneur?
3. How did Peoplesound come together? Did you plan on heading into the music world?
4. After being a founder all these years, why did you decide to become an investor and raise a fund?
5. How did The Craftory come together?
6. Why did you only focus on CPG where it seems like most of your experience dealt with technology?
7. How do you evaluate founders and brands?
8. What's your due diligence process like?
9. Do you look at American brands differently than European brands? Are there macro consumer trends in CPG that are different in Europe vs. USA?
10. Has Brexit changed the way you invest or look at companies?
11. When do you think it makes sense for DNVBs to hit the shelves and go into retail?
12. What are opportunities that you are seeing in CPG?
13. What's an example of an investment conflict in CPG?
14. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
15. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
16. What's one piece of advice you have for founders?

Our guest today is Caleb Wang, CEO and Co-Founder MiLa. Authentic soup dumplings, chinese noodles and chef crafted sauces. Made fresh and shipped! We talked about how he and his wife, Jen first stated a restaurant, how that expanded to an ecommerce business, how they raised capital and why they raised capital, and much much more.

David Wu is a Partner at Maveron. Maveron is a premier consumer-focused fund that invests in seed and Series A companies that empower consumers to live on their terms. Some of Maveron’s investments include Allbirds, General Assembly, eBay, and Coursehero.

David joined Maveron to help identify new investments in emerging direct-to-consumer brands – especially those in the hardware and tech categories. Some of David’s investments include Booster, Eargo, Illumix, Modern Fertility, and August.

If you would like to keep up to date with David, you can follow him @davewu. You are also welcome to follow your host @mikegelb and @consumervc for updates.

In this episode, you will learn:

1. How building a houseboat to cruise down the Mississippi River has its parallels to building a company? What being a professional bassist taught David about himself? What attracted David to work at high growth startups? What led you to move from being an operator to investor?
   
2. Why he is so interested in early-stage consumer investing and why is it so difficult? Traits he likes to see in founders. Advice for founders in secondary and tertiary markets that are looking to fundraise.
   
3. What makes a good venture capital partner? What does founder-friendly mean to you? Why Maveron turned down $70 million in investment? How he thinks about the importance of ecosystems and startup hubs? What are some consumer trends and opportunities that he is excited about?
   
4. What is something that he would change when it came to venture capital? Will an impact mission brand lead to higher margins? Maveron’s core values.
   
5. What his most recent investment and what makes you excited about it? One company that he had the opportunity to invest in, didn’t, and in retrospect wish he did? One piece of advice he has for founders of consumer companies? How he thinks about online customer acquisition in today’s age?
   

Our guest today is Brian O’Malley, Partner at Forerunner. Forerunner is one of the top consumer venture capital firms that tirelessly champions founders who deliver the innovation they demand. Some of Brian’s investments include Sunday, Canal and Dumpling. Recently they raised $1 billion for Fund 6. We discuss how Forerunner’s thesis has evolved over the past few years, what is the empowerment economy, and current valuation and venture climate today.

We discuss:

1. How do you define investing in consumer today?
2. It seems as though Forerunner’s thesis has evolved from only investing in pure consumer companies to ecommerce enablement/B2B, along with other funds that primarily focus on consumer. Can you talk about why the transition?
   1. Is part of the reason why because it’s harder than before to pick brands that could generate great returns?
3. What is the empowerment economy?
4. In your article “Empowering Main Street”, you mention how OpenTable and Yelp achieved massive local market share, but they weren’t embraced. What do you mean by that and how do identify if a company you’re looking at is being embraced? Partnering up with their customers
5. Did COVID at all change your thesis when it came the your empowering economy thesis?
6. When you’re looking at empowering SMBs or bringing them online, when does a white label option make sense vs. a standalone application?
7. I certainly understand the push for consumers wanting to shop local, but isn’t partly what killed local stores that they couldn’t compete on price with the Walmarts / Targets? How do you think about consumer price sensitivity?
8. When you and your conduct your consumer insights research, how do you make sure there’s alignment with what people say and how they act?
9. Where customer
10. What are some of the differences between investing and evaluating a business where an SMB is the customer rather than the customer?
11. How do you also think about the current venture landscape when it comes to valuations?
12. There’s been a lot of chatter about some of the more high-profile companies folding and there’s been a debate about who is responsible - could the board have guided the CEO to cut burn for example. After you invest, what do you think about a board’s role and board construction?
13. What’s one thing you would change about VC?
14. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that has inspired you professionally?
    1. The Wright Brothers book
    2. Shoedog by Phil Knight
15. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?

Today’s guest is Matt Higgins, Founder and CEO of RSE Ventures. RSE is a private investment firm that focuses on sports and entertainment, media and marketing, food and lifestyle, and technology. Most recently he wrote the book “Burn The Boats”, which is a counterintuitive formula for a life of perpetual growth can find a link in the shownotes to get your copy. Some of their investments include Vaynermedia, Milk Bar, Magic Spoon and Banza. 

We discuss:

• Why he pivoted his career from the public sector to the private sector
• Working for the NY Jets and Dophins
• How he met Gary Vee & why he invested in Vaynermedia
• His thoughts on direct to consumer brands
• Why he likes investing in restaurants
• Pickleball

Want to keep up to date with The Consumer VC? Subscribe to my newsletter Here.

***Sponsor***

 Introducing aVenture - venture capital for everyone

With aVenture everyone can now invest directly into venture capital funds through our platform while also benefiting from periodic liquidity options.

If you agree, sign-up for their waitlist at aventure.vc.

aVenture is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company that permits users to launch, manage and invest in venture funds on its platform, http://aventure.vc. aVenture operates independently of any investment advisors on its platform. Certain funds listed on the aVenture platform are provided by independent fund managers and may be registered as investment advisors in the U.S., or qualify for exempt reporting status.

Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

Want to keep up to date with The Consumer VC? Subscribe to my newsletter Here.

*Please note Office Hour episodes are not edited and the sound quality will not be as good as other episodes as they are recorded on one track.*

Office Hours are opportunities for listeners to ask past guests questions themselves. We will be releasing the recorded versions each Saturday.

This Office Hour with Jason Shuman was recorded live on June 9th. Jason Shuman is a Principal at Primary Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm responsible for backing NYC’s most promising founders. Some of their investments include Ticketfly, Jet, Deliveroo, and Package Free.

If you enjoyed Jason, feel free to check out his full podcast episode here.

Gautam Gupta is a Partner at M13 and founded and previously was the CEO of Naturebox.

M13 is a venture fund headquartered in Los Angeles that has invested in some of the most innovative consumer companies like Pinterst, SnapChat, Lyft, Bird, and Ring.

Naturebox, a subscription online delivery service that home-delivers all-natural snack foods. Before that, he started his career as an early stage investor at General Catalyst when he was just 18.

If you would like to keep up to date on Gautam, you can follow him @gramblings.To follow along behind the scenes of the show, you can follow @mikegelb and @consumervc.

A book that inspired Gautam professionally is The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William N. Thorndike. A book that inspired Gautam personally is Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight.

In this episode you will learn -

1. When did he know that he wanted to be an entrepreneur? What got him into Venture Capital? What made you want to leave venture capital to found NatureBox?
   
2. I think you’re the first guest I’ve had on this show that started his or her career in VC, then became a founder/CEO then came back to VC. The learnings and takeaways when he founded his own company that impacted him as an investor? Why he decided to join M13? What’s his advice for founders that live in secondary and tertiary markets that are outside LA, SF and NYC? How should founders think about board construction for their companies? What are changes in consumer behavior that he is focused on? What’s one thing he would change when it came to venture capital?
   
3. What is his most recent investment and what makes him excited about it? One company that he had the opportunity to invest in, didn’t and in retrospect wish he did?
   
4. What is one learning that was impactful and could be helpful for founders of venture backable B2C consumer companies?

Our guest today is Ariel Kaye, founder of Parachute. Parachute is a home essentials brand that is designed in Los Angeles and manufactured by expert craftspeople across the globe including Portugal, Turkey and the U.S. In this episode you'll learn how Ariel saw the opportunity to create a brand in bedding, approached an omni-channel strategy, managing her stores and business during COVID.

You can follow Ariel on Twitter @arielkaye

Some of the questions I ask Ariel:

1. What attracted you to consumer brands?
2. What was the insight that led you to founding Parachute?
3. What was missing from bedding?
4. What was the competitive stack?
5. What the supply chain could look like?
6. What was your approach to brand design?
7. How did you source your product?
8. What was your launch strategy?
9. How did you pick which SKUs to launch with?
10. How did you pick distribution channels?
11. What was your approach to retail and omnichannel?
12. Why did you choose to go direct, creating your own stores?
13. How do did you think about organic growth vs. paid?
14. Approach to customer retention and building a dedicated audience.
15. How did you think about expanding into other categories?
16. How did you have to pivot during COVID?
17. As we come out of COVID, what's on the horizon for Parachute?
18. What was your approach to fundraising?
19. What's one thing you would change about fundraising?
20. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
21. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
22. Don't sweat the small stuff
23. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?

This episode are highlights from my conversation with Eric Paley.

Thank you Adelle Archer for introducing me to today's guest, Eric Paley, who is one of the Managing Partners at Founder Collective. Founder Collective's mission is to be the most aligned VC for founders at seed. Some of Eric's investments include Uber, CoverWallet, Seat Geek, Whoop, Thred Up and so many other incredible companies.

Links:

Click here to listen to my full conversation with Eric.

Click here on Mobile to join our Community.

Our guest today is Wayne Wu, General Partner at VMG. VMG focuses on investing and building iconic consumer brands. They've invested in some incredible companies like Kind Healthy Foods, Justin's, Drunk Elephant, Health Warrior, Quest Nutrition.

Disclaimer: This is the opinion of Wayne Wu, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions and thoughts of VMG Partners. Any opinions, projections, forecasts and estimates contained in this production are based on certain assumptions and may change without notice. This is not an offer to buy or sell any investments.

Here's what you'll learn -

1. His initial attraction to consumer and finance. How he ended up at VMG? How he thinks about organic vs. paid growth? His process when analyzing brands and founders? How he evaluates if the brand of a company is strong and authentic? How he thinks about portfolio construction? How does he think about thematic investing? How he thinks about investing in new categories?
2. Advice for founders that are in secondary or tertiary markets. What has been some of the changes when it comes COVID? Has it been hard establishing conviction within founders when meeting with them remotely? How he thinks about the cold email? What's one thing that he would change when it comes to venture capital? What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?

You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

Our guest today is Vijen Patel, who is the co-founder of Pressbox (now Tide Cleaners) and The 81 Collection. Pressbox was a 24/7 dry cleaning and laundry service that Vijen bootstrapped to a very successful exit to P&G. The 81 Collection is a VC fund that focuses on the hard industries.

We discuss:

• Why he had no choice but to bootstrap his dry cleaning tech business
• His approach to scale and expanding to multiple cities
• How P&G tried to destroy his business
• Why he eventually sold to P&G and became CEO of Tide Cleaners
• The founding story of The 81 Collection
• Why investing in hardware is underrated

Caitlin Strandberg is a Principal at Lerer Hippeau, the most active early-stage venture capital fund in New York. The firm has more than 250 active portfolio companies with investments in leading consumer and enterprise companies, including Allbirds, Casper, Guideline, and K Health. Lerer Hippeau invests across all sectors, backing founders with product vision, customer insight, and a keen instinct for brand building.

Previously, Caitlin was an early employee at LearnVest (acquired by Northwestern Mutual) and Behance (acquired by Adobe), as well as served as Vice President of FirstMark Capital.

You can follow Caitlin on Twitter Here, where she posts lots of great content on startups. If you would like to follow your host, Mike, for updates on the show, you can follow him Here on Twitter.

Two books that Caitlin would like to recommend are The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon by Brad Stone and Ready Player One by Earnest Cline.

In this episode, you will learn –

1. What attracted Caitlin to startups and venture capital? The learnings and takeaways from being an operator at early-stage startups to venture capital?
   
2. The challenges when investing in consumer startups at the early stages? How she evaluates opportunities and identifies if a startup is solving a real consumer pain point?
   
3. Is the DTC area the golden age of brand? How she thinks about margin in relation to DTC? How much do consumers care about sustainable, eco-friendly products in relation to price? After investment, the cadence of communication among founders.
   
4. What makes New York special? How she thinks about online customer acquisition today. What is one company that she is excited about investing in? What is one company she wishes she invested in? One piece of advice for founders of consumer companies?
   

If you would like to follow along you can click “Subscribe” on the Apple podcast app or whichever platform you are listening on. If you enjoyed the episode, feel free to also leave a review. You are also to see all episodes here and learn more at www.theconsumervc.com and follow Mike on Twitter or Instagram

Our guest today is Juan Pablo Cappello, founder of Nue Life. Nue Life is a mental wellness company that offers in-home ketamine therapy. This was a fascinating conversation about where our current healthcare system has failed us with the wrong incentive structure, new alternative therapies, his own mission and inspiration, and what the goal is for Nue Life.

Some of the questions I ask Juan Pablo:

1. When were you first exposed psychedelics and ketamine?
2. What inspired you to found Nue Life?
3. How did you develop a program?
4. What are some of the regulation speed bumps that you’ve had to go through in order to launch?
5. What’s the business model? How much do you charge? How long is the program?
6. What was your approach to acquiring new customers?
7. Do you see your customers going through your program multiple times / on going or is it a quest to always bring on new customers?
8. What’s been your approach to scale?
9. What’s been your approach to raising money?
10. Shat was your attraction to entrepreneurship?
11. What were your learnings from starting Patagon, the first online bank in LatAm?
12. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
13. What’s one thing that’s misunderstood about psychedelics?
14. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
15. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?

Our guests today are Greer Terrler and Cara Kaufman, founders of Simple Food Ventures. Simple Food Ventures is an early stage venture firm that invests in the future of healthy foods and products. We discuss how they both began investing in better for you products, do they only invest in better for the planet or better for you, and what makes a product work on shelf.

Here are some of the questions I ask them:

1. What was your attraction to the food and beverage industry?
   1. Why did you and how did you both transition into venture capital?
   2. What stage is a company usually have to be at in order for you to be initially interested?
   3. Founder and the roadmap
   4. How did Simple Food Ventures come together?
   5. What do you see as the opportunity within food and beverage?
   6. Does a product need to be able to get on shelf / in retail for you to peak your interest?
   7. Does a product need to be differentiated in order for you both to get excited?
   8. Walk me through how you conduct due diligence.
   9. How do you source and meet founders?
   10. What’s one part of the better-for-you movement that you think is a contrarian take / not as obvious?
   11. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
   12. What’s one book that inspired each of you personally and a book that inspired each of you professionally?
   13. What’s one piece of advice that you have for founders?

My guest today is Sara Deshpande, Partner at Maven Ventures. Maven Ventures is a consumer focused micro-fund that focuses on investing in seed stage companies. Some of their investments include Zoom, Wild Type, Angellist and Nuggs. What I most enjoyed about this conversation was looking at what types of businesses were being built on top of Zoom and the opportunities in telehealth. Without further ado, here's Sara.

You can catch her on Twitter @sara_desh.

Three books that have inspired Sara:

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

Maid by Stephanie Land

Some of the questions I ask Sara:

1. You came from healthcare consulting at Deloitte. What was your attraction to venture capital, startups and innovation?
2. Tell us a bit about Maven.
3. What do you consider micro-VC?
4. Walk us through your due diligence process?
5. How do you access how big of a pain point a company is solving?
6. What are some of the opportunities that you're seeing telehealth?
7. Another area of focus are technology that serves families. What's an example of a company you're excited in this space or a problem that you are hoping to see solve?
8. Has COVID affected any of the themes you focus on?
9. What are some other trends that you're curious about?
10. What's one thing that you would change when it came to venture capital?
11. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
12. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?

Our guest is Brandon Yahn, co-founder and partner of Convivialité Ventures. Convivialite is Pernod Ricard’s venture arm, the second largest wine & spirits company in the world. Their focus is to invest in technology companies that are changing the way people socialize, entertain, and share experiences together. We discuss his approach to thematic investing, how he thinks about strategic and non-strategic investments, particular areas within consumer technology he’s fascinated by.

Here’s some of the questions I ask him:

1. What was your initial attraction to technology and innovation?
2. How did you end up in San Francisco working in technology?
3. What led you to founding your student debt company?
4. How did you develop a relationship with Pernod Ricard?
5. Why did they want to launch their own investment fund?
6. How separate is the fund Pernod Ricard? Do investments need to be strategic or are they pure financial?
7. Why do you have a focus on consumer technology (and technology in general) opposed to only beverage?
8. How do you provide value to technology companies?
9. What types of companies do you look for?
10. What's your diligence process?
11. What are some of the trends you are excited about in CPG?
12. What's one thing you would change about VC?
13. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
14. What's one piece of advice for entrepreneurs?

Today’s episode we focus on the wonderful world of consumer fintech and our guest today is Drew Glover, General Partner of Fiat Ventures and Founding Partner of Fiat Growth. Fiat Growth is a growth consultancy helping to scale some of the largest fintech companies out there - Chime, Lemonade, Copper. They decided to launch a VC fund that focuses on emerging fintech companies. 

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Our guest today is David Friedberg, Founder of The Production Board and Bestie on the All-In podcast. The Production Board is a holding company that builds and invests in businesses that transform global systems of production and distribution across: Agriculture, Life Sciences, Energy and Manufacturing. On the consumer facing side, some of their investments and/or companies they’ve built include Supergut, The Every Company, Cana, and Soylent. The All-In podcast is one the top podcasts in the world. I try to focus this conversation on the consumer side to The Production Board’s business and how David thinks about brand building in the future. You’ll also here how he founded his previous company, The Climate Corporation and origin story to The Production Board, his investment philosophy and at the end a little chat about the All-In podcast.

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Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

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Our guest today is Jesse Draper, Founding Partner of Halogen Ventures. Halogen Ventures is a Los Angeles, California based Venture Capital fund focused on investing in early stage consumer technology startups with a female in the founding team. Some of their investments include Hop Skip Drive, Clover Letter, and Binti. Previously, Jesse was an actress and founded/hosted The Valley Girl Show, where she interviewed some of the biggest names in business, entertainment, government, and technology.

One book that impacted Jesse personally is To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care by Cris Beam. One book the inspired Jesse professionally is High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil.

You can follow Jesse @jessedraper on Twitter. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

Here are some of the questions I ask Jesse -

1. Talk to me about your attraction to acting and why the shift to VC?
2. What was the opportunity that you discovered that led you to starting Halogen?
3. What types of businesses or areas do you focus on at Halogen?
4. What makes you excited about Los Angeles as a venture hub?
5. I know that every company that you invest in must have at least one woman in a leadership role. What are some ways that the VC community could be doing to be more inclusive?
6. Talk to me a little bit about your due diligence process?
7. What stage do you invest in and how are you thinking about the early stage landscape?
8. COVID is very top of mind right now, has this shifted your strategy on what areas you should focus on?
9. Has it been harder finding conviction since you have to meet founders remote?
10. What's one thing that you would change when it came to venture capital?
11. What's your most recent investment and what makes you excited about it?
12. What's one company that you had the opportunity to invest in, didn't and in retrospect wish you did?
13. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
14. What's one piece of advice to founders?

Thank you Mike Ghaffary for the introduction to our guest today, Mark Gainey, the founder of Strava. Strava is the #1 app for runners and bikers and is the destination to record any activity. In this conversation we talk about how Mark's passion for sports compelled him to Strava, what focus really means as a founder and Mark has some amazing examples of that, we also talk about scaling and his approach to building community. Without further ado here's Mark.

Some of the questions I ask Mark

1. The first company you founded was in the B2B space, which did really well Kana Communications. What made you want to build a B2C company? Finding motivation, staying inspired
2. Why did you decide to focus on cycling, since I remember when we first spoke you were a very competitive runner and you were very competitive in college at crew?
3. What was the insight that led you to found Strava?
4. What was the initial go to market strategy and how did you think about how the go-to market ties into the vision?
5. How did you acquire your first customers?
6. Athletes are normally aren't one sport athletes
7. How did you approach the balance of focus on a core problem/customer set vs. expanding to different use cases?
8. How did you approach growth?
9. Growing by partnerships
10. When did you decide to not just focus on biking but to also focus on measuring other activities?
11. What was the moment or several moments on your journey that helped made you stop and realize "ok, there's certainly something here", some type of validation?
12. How did you think about competition and who is a competitor vs. partner?
13. How did you approach your pricing strategy and what you to make free vs. premium?
14. What was your approach to community? Was that always the intent?
15. I know you were a huge athlete growing up and very competitive. How has that helped shape you as a leader and influenced your approach on how you've build Strava?
16. How do you make sure it's decentralized
17. What's next? What do you see is next for Strava?
18. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
19. What's one piece of advice for entrepreneurs?

Our guest today is Justine Palefsky, Co-founder and CEO of Kindred. Kindred is the trusted home swapping network and harnesses the power of community to allow you to travel more for less. We discuss the opportunity within travel and house swapping and how to construct a marketplace where one unit of supply equals one unit of demand

1. What is Kindred?
2. How did you both meet?
3. Did you both always have the intention of founding a business?
4. When was the aha moment that led to Kindred?
5. How is Kindred different from other home swapping sites?
6. What was your first test to test this theory that people would be open to a house-swapping community?
7. Why did you think you both would make good co-founders for this business?
8. How did you first construct Kindred? It started off as a private Instagram group, right?
   1. What did you learn from that experience?
9. How did you think about the marketplace dynamics in this type of business?
10. How did you decide how to monetize since this is actually quite a complex business?
11. Once you’re part of this private community, how do you incentivize people to actually house swap?
12. Monetization. How did you approach?
13. How did you approach fundraising?
14. What are typical demographics?
15. How do you approach customer acquisition?
16. What was your approach to fundraising?
    1. When did you begin fundraising?
    2. What were the biggest reasons for passing?
    3. What did investors like the most about this business?
17. Now that the world is beginning to open back up, how do you think about change in consumer behavior and scale?
    1. Were people doing house swaps during the height of the pandemic?
18. What’s one thing you would change about fundraising?
19. What’s one book that inspired each of you personally and one book that inspired each of you professionally?
    1. Undaunted Courage by Lewis and Clark
    2. The Courage to be Disliked
20. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

Mike Ghaffary is a General Partner at Canvas Ventures, one of the premier thesis-driven early-stage venture capital funds in San Francisco that invests in Fintech, Digital Health, Marketplaces, and New Enterprise. Prior to Canvas, Mike was a General Partner at Social Capital and as an angel investor, some of his investments include Strava, Skip Scooters, Pocket, Philz Coffee, Atrium, and Superhuman. He also has 10 years of operating experience as CEO of Eat24, VP Business and Corporate Development at Yelp, Director of Business Development at TrialPay, and co-founder of Stitcher and BarMax. And before that, Mike started his investing career at Summit Partners.

For this episode, we talk quite extensively about evaluating marketplaces. Mike has written a few articles on the subject, the one we touch on is “Where I’m Investing and 15 Marketplace Questions”.

Two books that have impacted Mike professionally and personally is Give and Take by Adam Grant and Drive by Daniel Pink

You can follow Mike on Twitter @newmike for updates. You are also welcome to follow your host @mikegelb and @consumervc for updates.

On this episode you learn -

1. What attracted Mike to working in startups and becoming a founder? How important having operational experience is? What’s makes him excited to invest in consumer tech in this current climate?
   
2. What is a marketplace? An overview of the advantages of marketplaces. What marketplace founders need to consider when identifying and building marketplaces? Cross-side and same-side network effects & negative network effects. How important is having your own unique distribution? Evaluating switching costs.
   
3. Online customer acquisition costs for both supply and demand. The current outlook of online CAC in today’s climate.
   
4. One thing he would change about venture capital. How an entrepreneur should think when a venture fund says they need a lead investor in order to invest?
   

...and much much more!

If you would like to follow along you can click “Subscribe” on the Apple podcast app or whichever platform you are listening on. If you enjoyed the episode, feel free to also leave a review. You are also to see all episodes here and learn more at www.theconsumervc.com and follow Mike on Twitter or Instagram

Our guest today is Patrick Chun, Founding Partner of Juxtapose. Juxtapose is an inception stage investment firm. Some of the companies that they founded include Tend, Care/of, and Dayforward. Their process for how they build companies is pretty unique for this show. We discuss their model, why their model is less risky than traditional venture capital, and his process for finding the right CEO to lead each business. Without further ado, here’s Patrick.

1. What is Juxtapose? What was the initial insight or prior experience that influenced your decision to found it? Why did you choose to found it?
2. Why do you believe your model is less risky than traditional venture capital?
   1. You are incubating
   2. When you say do the work, what do you mean?
3. What’s your process identifying an observation
   1. True verifiable fact in the world
   2. When your
   3. Lots of observation
   4. How many observations do you have a week
   5. Insights you can pull off of an observation
   6. On-demand dispatch
   7. Track 500-1000 observations
      1. Talk about 50-100
4. What’s your process for building businesses step by step – from the ideation stage to creating beta products / product is in market?
5. Recycled and reentered the funnel
6. 4-6 months
7. How do you think about timing as well?
8. Obsolete assumption
   1. You can never have an investor home
9. When do you bring on an experienced CEO and team? How do you think about that process?
   1. What are qualities you’d like to see from the CEO?
   2. From 0 to 10 at what stage is the company in when you bring on a CEO?
   3. How do you source “Michael Jordan” CEOs? If they are the Michael Jordan’s, what typically get them excited to join the company - since I’m sure they get alot of offers to lead different teams?
      1. Can it be difficult to attract since these companies are still small?
   4. How do you hire the team?
10. Once a company has a CEO, how do you think about the role of Juxtapose moving forward with the business?
    1. The best supporter of the company from 0-200 people
    2. Is the shift from operator to more of board member/observer type role?
11. Do you ever get the itch to become a CEO of one of your companies?
12. How do you approach hiring for your studio? Are you looking for people who have operational experience or more investor experience since it seems the studio model is at the intersection of both?
13. What are the challenges with the studio model? What can get overlooked?
14. What are the shortcomings of the venture studio model or what do studios tend to struggle with?
15. Was there a prior experience that led you to want to build a different type of firm than traditional VC?
16. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
17. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. 4,000 weeks Oliver Burkman
18. What’s the best piece of advice for founders?
    1. What is it that people will see in the market and if you’re right

My guest today is Justin Kolbeck, CEO and co-founder of Wild Type. Wild Type is on a mission to create the cleanest most sustainable seafood on the planet, starting with salmon. This is the first founder of a cell based food company I've had on the show and as someone who didn't know much about cell base food or commercial fishing, this was quite eye opening for me. We talk about the current state of the ocean, the supply chain for fish, the process for producing cell based food and their approach to quick feedback loops in trials.

Some of the questions I ask Justin:

1. When were you first introduced to cell based seafood and meat?
2. What was your attraction to entrepreneurship? What was that decision making process like? Was it gradual?
3. What was the insight that led you to founding Wildtype foods?
4. Why is this product so essential for the world? What's the current state of commercial fishing?
5. Why do you believe you were in a unique position to found this company?
6. When founding WildType Foods, what was the first step? How did you approach making a cell based salmon product?
7. Why did you decide to start with salmon?
8. What's your go-to-market strategy?
9. How do you imagine your ideal consumer?
10. Is there a difference in taste?
11. How did you approach investors and raise capital?
12. What's one thing you would change about fundraising or venture capital?
13. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
14. What's one piece of advice for founders?

Thank you CJ Fowler at Goat Rodeo Capital for the introduction to our guest today, Melissa Facchina, Co-Founder & Co-Managing Partner of Siddhi Capital. Siddhi Capital is an operationally-focused food and beverage growth equity firm. Their portfolio includes Mid-Day Squares, Aura Bora (who both have been on the show) Copper Cow Coffee, Mud/Wtr, Magic Spoon, Momofuku Goods. I had a blast chatting with Melissa about her story, what makes great entrepreneurs in the food & bev space and do great entrepreneurs have to be great operators and much more.

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Our guest today is Marc Washington, Founder & CEO of Supergut. Supergut is the world's only clinically validated food that nourishes the gut microbiome and delivers meaningful results across gut health, blood sugar levels, wellbeing, sleep, weight management and other categories of overall health. I’ve personally been very impressed with their products. We discuss Marc’s gut health journey and the founding of Supergut, how the microbiome affects gut health, how he thought about creating real IP and product differentiation, his approach to marketing, positioning, sales channels and who the intended consumer of Supergut’s products is, and much more.

Some of the questions I ask:

1. What got you interested in gut health and can you describe why it’s important to have a healthy gut and how to improve it? Why are microbiomes so important and why was that your focus area?
2. How does the gut microbiome affect gut health, blood sugar levels, wellbeing, weight management, and your overall health?
3. Can you provide us with deeper insight into the science behind Supergut and the DNA sequencing?
4. What was the insight and science that led to Supergut? What was missing from the market? What did consumers not understand?
5. How did you think about formulation. Why did you decide to do both bars and powders/shakes? Which came first?
6. Once you had these products, how did you approach distribution and finding your early adopters? Consumer education?
7. What was your sales channel strategy?
8. How did you think about fundraising and finding the right partner?
9. How did you raise your seed round and what has it been like working with The Production Board? What’s it like with only one investor?
10. How do you think about differentiated brand building online? How do you position yourself against other gut health / microbiome focused products and better for you products in general? There’s lots of excitement for the better for you movement and lots of products out there, but probably only a few that are going to become household names. Seems like there’s a lot of buzz about these types of products that better serve you better.
11. It’s really hard to do DTC subscription well. Is the idea to become a large DTC focused subscription company like an Athletic Greens and hope to educate and develop new habits for consumers or is it to become a wholesale brand and cross over into Walmarts and Targets?

***Sponsor***

 Introducing aVenture - venture capital for everyone

With aVenture everyone can now invest directly into venture capital funds through our platform while also benefiting from periodic liquidity options.

If you agree, sign-up for their waitlist at aventure.vc.

aVenture is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company that permits users to launch, manage and invest in venture funds on its platform, http://aventure.vc. aVenture operates independently of any investment advisors on its platform. Certain funds listed on the aVenture platform are provided by independent fund managers and may be registered as investment advisors in the U.S., or qualify for exempt reporting status.

Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

Want to keep up to date with The Consumer VC? Subscribe to my newsletter Here.

Our guest today is Paul Voge, one of the founders and CEO of Aura Bora. Aura Bora is sparkling water made from real herbs, fruits, and flowers for earthly tastes and heavenly feelings. The flavors are definitely one of kind and different like Lavender Cucumber, Cactus Rose, Peppermint Watermelon. I was skeptical at first but when I tried it, I must say I LOVED it. My personal favorite is lemongrass coconut. Paul has a pretty fascinating story about how he started and his approach to building a sparkling water company with out-there wacky flavors that are delicious.

1. How would you define your relationship with Sparkling water before you started a sparkling water company?
2. Did you always want to be an entrepreneur?
3. What was the “aha” moment?
4. What was the first flavor you LOVED that you felt you perfected?
5. How did you think about different flavor profiles/expanding SKUs
   1. I had Seth on last week
6. How did you think about experimenting with flavors? Was this something you did yourself, did you hire/partner with a food/drink scientist?
7. You didn’t have any experience within CPG. How did you go about building your network?
8. Why invest in beverage brands?
9. What was the hardest part fundraising?
10. How do you think about ads?
11. When did you feel like you were on to something?
12. At what point did you quit your job?
13. What was your distribution strategy? Was it to start DTC and then go into retail or go into retail from the getgo?
14. How did you get into Whole Foods?
15. Why did you move from Boulder to San Francisco?
16. What were some of the things you had to pick up on quickly since you didn’t come from CPG prior to starting Aura Bora?
    1. How much should you spend in tradespend?
17. You were in SKUs accelerator, what was so valuable about that experience?
18. It’s March 2020. COVID happens and your cranking, trying to get into stores. Walk us through what’s happening during that time?
    1. How did you approach developing relationships with stores during that period?
    2. How did COVID change your distribution approach?
19. We talk to a number of CPG retail investors on this show that emphasize it’s all about velocity rather than the total number of stores you’re in. What’s good velocity to you? How do you measure success?
20. Why did you decide to go on Shark Tank? What was that experience like?
    1. Was the intent always to take a deal no matter what?
21. What was your approach to raising a fundraising round?
22. How do you think about SKUs and flavor approach today? What’s the strategy?
23. What’s one thing that you’ve been surprised in the consumer response - could be positive or negative. Negative could be more interesting.
24. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Seth Goldman - Mission in a Bottle
    2. Mark Rompolla - Build Something Great
    3. The Last Lecture
25. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
    1. Amateurs talk strategy, experts talk logistics
26. What’s one thing you would change about the CPG industry?

Our guest today is Chaz Flexman, who is the founder & CEO of Starday. Starday is a next-generation food conglomerate that uses data science to predict product-market fit and create food brands. We discuss why he left Pattern Brands to go into food, how they create and launch new products very cheaply, how they think about data and trends and different categories to enter, and building relationships with retailers.

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Our guest today is George Milton & Erin Link, Founders of YellowBird Foods a Modern Hot Sauce business.

We discuss:

• How did they get into Whole Foods?

• How did they also get into Walmart?

• How did their approach to retail expansion?

• How did they approach branding and positioning for Yellowbird

Thank you to our Partner –– Propeller Industries – https://www.propellerindustries.com/

Propeller Industries is the leading strategic finance and accounting partner for venture-stage companies.

Thank you Luke Vernon for the intro to our guest today Davis Smith, Founder & CEO of Cotopaxi. Cotopaxi builds gear that fuels both outdoor experiences and global change.

We discuss:

• Why he founded digitally native businesses
• Founding businesses with his cousin
• The mission behind Cotopaxi
• How he was able to raise capital
• Early approach to promotion for Cotopaxi
• The differences between Cotopaxi and Patagonia
• How he grew the brand
• Why he shut down his store in San Francisco

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With aVenture everyone can now invest directly into venture capital funds through our platform while also benefiting from periodic liquidity options.

If you agree, sign-up for their waitlist at aventure.vc.

aVenture is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company that permits users to launch, manage and invest in venture funds on its platform, http://aventure.vc. aVenture operates independently of any investment advisors on its platform. Certain funds listed on the aVenture platform are provided by independent fund managers and may be registered as investment advisors in the U.S., or qualify for exempt reporting status.

Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

Want to keep up to date with The Consumer VC? Subscribe to my newsletter Here.

Our guest today is Steven Sashen, one of the founders and CEO of Xero Shoes. Xero Shoes produces lightweight minimalist footwear designed for walking, running, and athletics.

Here are some of the questions I ask Steven:

1. How did you discover minimalism shoes and what led you to founding Zero Shoes?
2. Bring us up to speed. What's wrong with cushioned shoes?
3. What has been consumer reaction? Do you find there was already a market of consumers who knew about the detriments of cushioning in shoes or did it take lots of consumer education on your end?
4. What does going all green mean to you and true environmental impact mean to you?
5. Why did you decide to start with sandals?
6. One of the things I love about your shoes is that I think they are pretty affordable. I got my Prios I think for $80 and they come with a 5,000 sole
7. Was there a moment where you thought to yourself "hey this is actually working"? If so when did that moment occur?
8. What was your approach to your supply chain?
9. How did you think about expanding the number of products and SKUs?
10. Can you unpack that in terms of quality control and traditional
11. It seems like there are a number of shoe companies capitalizing on zero drop, but aren't truly minimalist. Can you unpack the differences?
12. Why did you decide to raise venture capital and what was your fundraising strategy?
13. Now you've raised private equity, what's the dynamic like having a board of directors and your decision making process?
14. When it comes to your own decision making process, what were a few moments that you really learned from that influenced you as a leader?
15. What's one thing you would change about consumer perception towards our feet?
16. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
17. What's one piece of advice you have for entrepreneurs?

Our guest today is Michael Ronen, co-founder and President of Branded. Branded acquires and partners with top performing Amazon sellers. So as you can imagine, we’re going to be talking about creating brands on Amazon. Previously, Michael was one of the Managing Partner’s at SoftBank Investment Partner’s historic Vision Fund 1. We discuss the opportunity within eCommerce while at SoftBank vs. Branded, building brands on Amazon vs. off Amazon.

1. What was your initial attraction to invest in early and growth-stage companies?

How did you end up at Softbank?

Why did you leave Softbank to start Branded?

What was your initial attraction to the Amazon ecosystem?

Was there anything you thought some of the earlier aggregators were missing that lead you to want to jump in?

What are synergies amongst your portfolio?

What categories are attractive?

What’s the goal of a brand? What’s a successful revenue goal?

Modern foreign thinking brand focused on personal care

Brands that have patent or design - how is Amazon as a partner?

One company is building an incredible infrastructure - AWS

You have the intent to buy

How do you build a brand based off of a listing?

How do you build a brand on Amazon where you are just another listing?

What’s the strategy at Branded? How do you think about differentiation from others?

Why the focus on consumables?

How do you think about synergy amongst your brands?

How did you go about building your team?

What’s your approach to retaining founders?

What was your approach to fundraising?

How many companies do you look to buy?

How do you think about the best categories?

Do you get nervous about Amazon private labels?

How is Amazon a great partner?

What are your criteria for acquisition?

What are the advantages of acquiring Amazon brands vs. Shopify / DTC brands?

Does there have to be a retail / brick-and-mortar strategy in order for you to be interested in the brand?

What’s one book that inspired you personally? One book that inspired you professionally?

Lea Coca - CEO of Chrysler - Autobiography

Swim with the sharks without being alive - Harvey MacKay

“Play Nice But Win” - Michael Dell

What’s one piece of advice for founders?

Our guest today is Elle Lanning, Managing Partner at Managing Director at Camino Partners. Camino Partners is a $350m business-building and investment platform helping entrepreneurs create enduring value with values as their compass that was founded by Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of KIND Snacks. Some of Camino Partners’ portfolio includes Somos, CAVA and Belgium Boys. We discuss Elle’s time at KIND, what KIND got right, how Camino Partners came together and what they look for in CPG brands.

****Sponsor****

This issue is brought to you by Vauban from Carta. Vauban from Carta is the easiest way to launch & run your venture investing. They offer SPVs, and fund vehicles for GPs at all stages of the journey - from your first syndicate to operating a multi-million dollar venture fund. Their end-to-end platform automates your back-office and manual workflows so you can focus on what matters: finding the next unicorn & building investor relationships.

Click Here to Get Started

Thank you Oksana Stowe for the introduction to our guest today, Susan Lin. Susan is a Partner at Felix Capital. Felix Capital is one of the premier consumer investors based in the UK. Some of their investments include Goop, Oatly, Peloton, Seller X. We discuss what consumer-driven means and how that’s even spilled over to B2B, difference when scaling a european company vs. U.S., what are real competitive advantages for companies, and why Felix recently raised $600 million

1. What was your attraction to entrepreneurship and venture capital?
2. How do you think about investing in consumer-driven companies today?
3. What do you think about
4. How do you spend your time? Do you have a thesis?
5. Congratulations on raising $600m! We’ve seen this trend in consumer that as funds get larger and larger, investing in consumer brands becomes less of a focus. Will this be the case with Felix?
6. Why did you decide to join Felix Capital?
7. What’s different about the European venture ecosystem vs. U.S.?
8. What are your thoughts on the fundraising market of today?
9. Where are some of the trends and opportunities you’re seeing in Europe?
10. What do you make of this current market?
11. What’s one thing you would change about VC?
12. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one that inspired you professionally?
    1. When breath becomes air
13. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
    1. Authentic self

Lee Hower is the Co-Founder and Partner of NextView Ventures. NextView is a high-conviction hands on seed-stage VC firm that invests in founders who are redesigning the everyday economy. Some of their investments include Grove Collaborative, Skillz, Plastiq, Attentive, LetGo and TapCommerce. Previously, Lee was an early employee at Paypal and served as the Director of Financial Services. He then went on to co-found LinkedIn and serve as a Principal and Venture Partner at PJC.

Thank you Gautam Gupta for introducing me to Lee!

One of Lee’s blog posts that we discuss on the show is Denouement. All of Lee’s and NextView’s blog posts are available here.

One book that inspired Lee professionally is Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins. One book that inspired Lee personally is Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordoff

If you would like to keep up to date with Lee, you can follow him on Twitter @leehower. To follow along behind the scenes of the show, you can follow @mikegelb and @consumervc.

In this episode you will learn -

1. What attracted Lee to work in technology and what was it like working with the Paypal Mafia? What were some of the learnings from those moments and what led him to co-founding LinkedIn? Is operational experience important to an investor?
   
2. What are some of the qualities in a founder that he focuses on and look for? His due diligence process? How does he think about portfolio construction at the seed level? What are data points when it comes to consumer companies that you most focus on in the early stages? What he means by the everyday economy? How he thinks about today’s venture capital era and why he refers to it as the denouement era?
   
3. How does he think about the future of venture capital in the new decade? What are some consumer trends that he is most excited about?
   
4. What is one thing that he would change when it came to venture capital? What is his most recent investment and what makes you excited about it? What’s one piece of advice for early stage B2C founders?
   

Anna Barber is the Managing Director of Techstars - Los Angeles. Techstars is a global seed accelerator and worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed and is currently in over 150 countries worldwide. Some of their alumni include Classpass, Pillpack, and Contently. Previously, Anna has experience as a corporate lawyer, McKinsey consultant, product executive and entrepreneur in ed tech, retail and e-commerce.

For all founders in the Los Angeles area, applications to be part of Techstars LA Accelerator 2020 cohort are open! You have until April 5th 2020 to apply. Click Here To Apply

Three books that inspired Anna personally and professionally are Dare to Lead by Brene Brown, Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up by Jerry Colonna and Why We Buy by Paco Underhill.

On this episode you will learn -

1. Why Anna became an investor in Tech? What is the criteria for startups looking to apply to Techstars accelerator? The three different phases in the Techstars 12 week program.
   
2. What are some qualities she looks for in founders and founding teams? Why engagement metrics are so important. Why in the early stages, CAC/LTV is not an important metric.
   
3. “The Pied Piper Effect”. If you have a better name, she’s all ears. Why is investing in consumer so challenging? What are some of the consumer trends that she’s most excited about? Why consumer is not formulaic.
   
4. Why it is such an exciting time to be in the Los Angeles tech ecosystem? What are some of the reasons why a Techstars alumnus startup might fail to raise the next round? What’s one thing she would change about venture capital? Tips how to reach out to venture capitalists
   

You can follow Anna on Twitter @annawbarber. You are also welcome to follow along behind the scenes @mikegelb and @consumervc

Thank you Soraya Darabi for the intro to today's guest Sarah Kunst, managing director of Cleo Capital. Cleo Capital is an an early stage VC fund focused on the preseed & seed stages. Some of their investments include 42 Birds, Athena and Lovewellness. She's also a contributing editor at Marie Claire Magazine and previously served as a senior advisor to Bumble.

A couple of book that Sarah recommends is Attached by Amir Levine and Daring Greatly by Brene Brown.

Click here to sign up for Lunchclub.

You can follow her on Twitter @sarahkunst. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

In this episode we discuss -

1. What initially attracted her to venture capital and investing in consumer facing companies in particular? How did Cleo Capital come together? Her diligence process. Is it harder to find conviction when meeting founders online? How do you think about the early stage landscape during these times? Her thoughts around raising a seed fund vs. series A during COVID.
2. Her advice for companies in secondary and tertiary markets. Her thoughts around the warm introduction. Consumer trends that you are excited about and maybe leaned more during COVID What's one thing that she would change when it came to venture capital?
3. Her most recent investment and what makes you excited about it? One piece of advice for founders?

Thank you Deb Benton for introducing me to Carle Stenmark, General Partner at VMG. VMG, short for Velocity Made Good, is one of the premier consumer private equity funds known for their investments in KIND, Quest Nutrition, Sun Bum, and Justin’s. However, Carle leads VMG’s technology practice and recently the firm went through a bit of a rebrand, which we will discuss. This conversation is around why and what types of technology companies VMG invests in. Without further ado, here’s Carle.

Some of the questions I ask Carle:

1. What attracted you to consumer investing?
2. How did you end up working at VMG?
3. What’s VMG Philosophy
4. When I think about VMG I think KIND Bars, Quest, Sun Bum, Natural Balance, Drunk Elephant, brands that have to work in retail where you make your money shipping pallets and not individual orders like to do online. Why create VMG Catalyst What was the original thesis?
5. How has VMG evolved? Why do a rebrand?
6. Did you have to present this rebrand for LPs? Does it change how your funds get deployed?
7. How do you approach tech investing and how is it different from consumer investing?
8. What’s the added value from VMG? What’s the way you’re able to make introductions?
9. The evolution That was the rebrand 
10. What’s your typical check size and range of investing on the technology side?
11. We’ve seen tech investor 
12. How will your day to day change?
13. What types of questions do you ask yourself?
14. Do you think it’s different from what it takes to grow a technology business vs a consumer business?
15. Do you think a technology business can be started from anywhere?
16. Purpose built for one vertical
17. Mirror ecommerce with online
18. Inventory management systems
19. Innovation within consumer journeys and data

1. Is there synergy with VMG growth and VMG Catalyst?
2. How is it different from VMG growth?
3. How do you think about returns and portfolio expectation from VMG Growth to VMG Catalyst?
4. How do you balance the number of investments in commerce infrastructure plays like Shogun and Swell with ecommerce / consumer facing brands selling physical goods?
5. How do you analyze founders? When do you feel is the right time to get involved in a company?
6. Recently closed $400 million. How are you thinking about capital deployment in this market?
7. Online grocery is really tough to nail. What stuck out when you made the investment in Wee!!!?
8. How are you thinking about these macro economic times? I’ve heard it’s become very tricky pricing growth rounds.
9. How do you analyze consumer pain points that could develop into big opportunities?
10. What would you like to see changed when it comes to products within ecommerce infrastructure?
11. What’s one thing he would change about venture capital?
12. What’s one book that inspired him personally? What’s one book that inspired him professionally?
13. Shoedog
14. Unbroken
15. What’s one piece of advice?

***Sponsor***

 Introducing aVenture - venture capital for everyone

With aVenture everyone can now invest directly into venture capital funds through our platform while also benefiting from periodic liquidity options.

If you agree, sign-up for their waitlist at aventure.vc.

aVenture is a San Francisco, California-based financial technology company that permits users to launch, manage and invest in venture funds on its platform, http://aventure.vc. aVenture operates independently of any investment advisors on its platform. Certain funds listed on the aVenture platform are provided by independent fund managers and may be registered as investment advisors in the U.S., or qualify for exempt reporting status.

Mike is a paid spokesperson for aVenture and is compensated $6,000.

Want to keep up to date with The Consumer VC? Subscribe to my newsletter Here.