What Led Larry Cheng To Invest Early in Chewy, Chamberlain Coffee & US Mobile

Larry Cheng is the Managing Partner at Volition Capital, a $1.7B growth equity firm behind breakout brands like Chewy, Chamberlain Coffee, BURST, and Grove Collaborative. Volition’s unique approach? No early VC checks. No burn-at-all-costs playbooks. Just capital-efficient businesses with traction—and a partner who’s okay being the first check in.

In this episode, Larry breaks down:

• How Chewy went from a “low-margin pet food startup” to the largest e-commerce acquisition in history
  

• Why Volition bets on unsexy markets and skips the Valley hype
  

• How Chamberlain Coffee learned the hard way that virality cuts both ways
  

• Why most VCs misunderstand capital efficiency—and how it actually creates alpha
  

• What makes a founder irresistible without raising a single VC dollar
  

If you’re building or backing brands in today’s cautious market—this is a masterclass in discipline, scaling smart, and going big without losing your company.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro 01:10 Why Larry Left Traditional VC to Start Volition 03:25 The Two Types of Founders Who Bootstrap to $5M+ 06:20 How Volition Approaches Valuations 07:55 Why They Backed Chewy When No One Else Would 10:45 Investing in Physical Products vs. SaaS 12:30 The Truth About Virality and Bad Product Experience 14:10 How They Evaluate Customer Acquisition Channels 16:30 Defining Capital Efficiency (Pre and Post Investment) 19:00 Why Most of Their Portfolio Never Raises a Series B 22:00 What Changed Post-ZIRP: Founder Power vs. Investor Power 24:45 The Secret Sauce to Surviving the Hype Cycles 26:30 The “Unsexy Markets” That Became Home Runs 29:45 Why AI Might Be SaaS 10 Years Ago—But Riskier 33:00 Lessons From Grove Collaborative’s Public Struggles 36:50 Chewy’s Secret Weapon: Negative Working Capital 38:40 Existing vs. New Market Creation (And Why Larry Prefers Existing) 41:10 Knowing When to Exit—and What That Conversation Looks Like 44:10 Fund Horizon, Exit Timing, and Founder Alignment 45:40 Larry’s Book Picks: The Bible and 5 Types of Wealth 46:30 The Biggest Consumer Red Flag Today: “Made in China” 48:40 Favorite Innovation: Teslas Driving His In-Laws Around 49:50 The Biggest Venture Lesson: Power Law Is Real 51:20 Why Volition Intentionally Concentrates Their Bets 52:10 Pattern Matching: Useful Signal or Dangerous Bias? 53:25 The Biggest Myth About VCs (Hint: They’re Not All Sharks)

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