Sophie Bakalar (fable & Collaborative Fund) - What is Market Expertise?, Conscious Consumerism, and How She Sensed An Opportunity

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?