Cleo Capital's Sarah Kunst on scouting for business ideas in unlikely places

Cleo Capital's Sarah Kunst thinks the investing landscape focuses a great deal on the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- in plainspeak, that's stuff that isn't really essential. Or, in Kunst's words, the kind of product that answers the question: "what will make you feel better in the moment?"

Her investments are in companies that supply basic needs. "There's the whole thing on the bottom: where you do you live, where do you eat, how do you feel loved?' Kunst said on the Modern Retail Podcast.

That includes Zero, which calls itself "the first plastic-free grocery delivery service" -- and is available in the Bay Area only, for now -- and StyleSeat, which aims to help beauty professionals run and grow their personal businesses.

Kunst also started a scout program -- "when a venture fund pays for you to angel invest" -- and Chrysalis, a fellowship for tech workers laid-off as a result of the coronavirus (and curious to start their own businesses). "This wasn't us flying everybody to a private island for six weeks, it was 'hey, we have a Slack channel,'" Kunst said. "When you provide space for people, a lot of creativity just kind of flourishes."

"We didn't turn people into founders. We took people that we believed could be founders and we showed them that a lot of what was holding them back was that zero to one. Candidly, they didn't even need an idea. Not every person started their own company. A lot of them joined with other people," Kunst said.