Consumer VC: Venture Capital I B2C Startups I Commerce | Early-Stage Investing I Brands

Our guest today is Joe Marchese, who is a serial entrepreneur and has started a few VC funds including Human Ventures, Casa Komos, Groundswell, True X, Reserve and Attention Capital. His resume is pretty wild. Joe has alot of experience within marketing and advertising so on today’s episode we’re going to focus on how to approach marketing channels, what channels are still undervalued and maybe you can get more bang for your buck, and his approach to building brands and partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs. How did you get your start in media and advertising? What was your attraction to entrepreneurship as well as working with founders? What advertising channel is still underappreciated by brands? What’s still misunderstood about media today? (follow on: talk about the Attention Economy.) How do you monetize attention? What’s your approach to starting businesses? How did Human Ventures come together? When you are incubating companies at Human, what do first-time entrepreneurs misunderstand the most when it comes to growing their businesses? What’s your diligence process when you’re analyzing companies? Are there specific categories that you’re currently deep in or intrigued by? What’s one thing you would change about venture capital? What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that has inspired you professionally?Probable impossibilities Life’s Edge by Carl Zimmer What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

My guest today is Matt Nichols, founder of Commerce Ventures. They back entrepreneurs from every background building the infrastructure for tomorrow's industries. We focus our time deconstructing web.3 and how it could be impactful to brands and change retail. Here are some of the questions I ask Matt: How did you get started in venture capital? When did you found Commerce VC? Why the focus on retail? How can blockchain technology help retail? What’s wrong with current loyalty programs? Paint us a picture of the change in buying behavior for a consumer from the moment they step into a store. Do brands need to embrace Web3 in order to win in the next generation? How should brands approach the creation of digital goods and partnerships with platforms? What’s your due diligence process Supply chain traceability What’s your view about digital goods? What could you not do that blockchain solves for? What’s the relationship between NFT and luxury? What has to work in order for the whole supply chain to transact through smart contracts? How do you also think about customer identification when it comes to wallet ownership? How is this a better point of contact with a person than email?Activity is fully traceable What do you think is one thing that’s overlooked when it comes to the intersection of blockchain and retail? Too many use cases What’s one book that inspired you professionally or personally?The Hard Things About Hard Things Endurance - Shackleton’s Journey to the Southpole Spend time with the customers, try to understand their problems?

Our guests today are Seth Goldman and Spike Mendelsohn, co-founders of Eat The Change and PLNT Burger. Eat the Change is a snack company that’s on a mission to create chef-crafted and nutrient-dense snacks that are kind to the planet. PLNT Burger are plant-based burger restaurants. Currently they have 11 of them. Prior to going into business together, Seth is well known for being the founder of Honest Tea and Chef Spike Mendelsohn was one of the Top Chefs on the show Top Chef and started quite a few restaurant establishments including VIm & Victor, We, The Pizza, Santa Rosa Taqueria, my personal favorite Good Stuff Eatery. I’m on the record that Good Stuff makes the best burger I’ve ever tried. I’m really excited to have both Seth and Chef Spike on the podcast, not only because they are legends, but they started each of their businesses where I grew up. Seth started Honest Tea in Bethesda, which is where I was raised, and many of Spike’s restaurants are in DC and the surrounding areas. This was a thrill to have them on. Without further ado, here is Seth Goldman and Chef Spike. Some of the questions I ask them – What were each of your attractions to entrepreneurship and food? Activist When you think about all the businesses each of you have started, what’s been the common thread? How did you guys meet each other? When was the moment that you realized you wanted to work with one another? What makes your partnership special? What was the inspiration behind PLNT Burger? How do you think about products that are better for you vs. better for the planet? Has “plant based” become a catch-all term for better for you, even though there is now a debate if plant-based alternatives are better for you than the original meat product? When you think about releasing new products, how do you make sure they are better for you and not just the planet?Incredible planet challenge Why did you decide to start Eat the Change and what is it?How did you measure impact? What’s been the reaction so far? Have to have something that’s different Did you raise outside capital Why did you found it in Bethesda? What’s your approach to creating new better-for-you products? How do you measure impact? What’s your retail approach? How do you think about launching new restaurants and CPG brands? Is there an overall strategy that ties the two together? How do you approach consumer education when it comes to what people should eat? What’s one book that inspired each of you personally and one professionally?Mission in a bottle My Life in Full - Seth The Call of the Wild - Seth Danny Meyer - Setting the Table - Spike Zappos book - Tony What’s one piece of advice each of you have for founders? What’s your favorite piece of advice that you received?

Our guest today is Amy Lacey, founder of Cali’flour Foods. Cali’flour makes craveable comfort food that’s always low carb. With simple fresh ingredients and no fillers. That includes pizzas, crusts, flatbreads, crackers and full on entrees. We discuss why Amy became an entrepreneur, how she created a cauliflower pizza recipe that wasn’t brittle and didn’t fall apart, even with incredible ecommerce sales, why she decided to partner with a retail-minded investor as opposed to an ecommerce minded one, their approach to packaging when they entered stores and much more. What was your attraction to entrepreneurship? What led to the founding of Cali'flour Foods and better for you alternatives for pizza? How did you first make cauliflower pizza since cauliflower is so brittle? What was the first step to starting your company? How did you go about developing your supply chain? Where was your first point of distribution? What was the initial reaction? At what point were you looking for investment? What were some of the differences in the business when you raised capital? Did you packaging change to fit into retail? How did you approach scale? Was it tough scaling in retail and also trying to continue to scale online? Mike Anderson came in as CEO. What was that transition like? It seems like using cauliflower as a substitute ingredient in other products has become the standard. Do you feel like you've led the charge here? What's one thing you would change about fundraising? What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?Personally - Four Agreements The One Thing Storybrand by Donald Miller What's the best piece of advice that you've received? What's the best piece of advice for any entrepreneur?

Our guest today is Melissa Urban, Founder of Whole30. The Whole30 program eliminates cravings, improves physical energy and quality of sleep and has changed millions of people’s lives. It’s a pretty amazing story. We’re going to hear how Melissa changed her lifestyle completely, getting into nutrition and getting in shape. Why she started a blog and ran this 30 day diet experiment and that turned into what became Whole30. How she approaches partnerships with CPG brands that fit the Whole30 identity, and what led her to create her own products. Without further ado, here’s Melissa When did you become interested in nutrition and fitness? Why did you decide to blog? What compelled you to write a book?t How do you approach partnerships or relationships with brands? Why did you decide on the name Whole30? How did you think about the differences between the Whole30 diet and the Paleo diet? What was the original intention of the brand? Who is the target audience for Whole30? Was there a clear path to success and a business plan or were you just kind of figuring it out? When did you decide to start launching your own products? I.e. salad dressings? How do you select the right partners to license products for? Did you ever think about raising capital for Whole30? There are lots of food fads out there. How do you think about longevity, sustainability with Whole30? What do you think is misunderstood about nutrition? Do you iterate what’s allowed and not allowed on Whole30? Recently you came out and said that MSG for example is now ok on Whole30 when it wasn’t allowed on the diet before. How do you think and approach the evolution of Whole30? Do you have any advice for other founders in your willingness to learn and evolve? What do you see as the future of wellness or what makes you excited about? What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter Shoe Dog by Phil Knight What’s one piece of advice for founders?

Our guest today is Jordan Gaspar, the Managing Partner at AF Ventures. AF Ventures is dedicated to growing the next generation of brands, having invested in Circul, By Heart and Harmless Harvest. We discuss how she founded AF Ventures and leveraged her network as a lawyer, and how she thinks about growth for digitally native brands in this current age. Some of the questions I ask her: Can you please share a little about AF Ventures background? What was your initial attraction to consumer brands? How has AF Ventures evolved over the past few years? What are the most recent trends within consumer that you are most passionate about? How has COVID impacted recent trends? Does a product “need to work in retail” for you to invest? Why did you decide to raise a SPAC? We’ve also seen incredible growth from brands despite global supply chain issues. As an investor and advisor, how do you navigate or comprehend where we are currently at? What’s one thing you would change about venture capital? What VC advice do you have for entrepreneurs/founders?

My guest today is Marc Hostovsky, founder of Minoan. Minoan connects people with products in spaces that feel like home. This is a concept that Marc calls native retail. We discuss what’s missing today when it comes to trying out products, the intersection of ecommerce and retail and what is actually native retail. Here are the questions I ask Marc: What was your attraction in ecommerce? Why did you want to work in ecommerce? What were some of your learnings at Walmart that have impacted you? What were you doing at Walmart? The importance of pace and hiring Hiring missionaries vs mercenaries What was the insight that led to the founding of Minoan? Why did you decide to build a product that wasn’t in ecommerce but was around physical retail or native retail? Not really having products to shine Why do people like shopping in stores? Real world shoppable experiences - be in moments of use, integrating commerce What are the use cases? Walk us through when and why a customer would use Minoan? Is the goal to eventually to become an online retailer or stay as a marketplace? What’s the customer experience like? How did you first approach hotels, Airbnbs and other places?How do you partner? How do you monetize? Is it a marketplace model? How do you work with brands? What was your approach to growth?What types of properties do you look for? What was your approach to raising money?What was challenging about the process? What’s one thing you would change about the fundraising process? What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?Why Buddism is true? By Robert Wright Competing Against Luck What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?

Our guest today is Natalie Gordon, founder and CEO of Babylist. Babylist is a baby registry and ecommerce platform, combining content, commerce and data to serve millions of expecting and new parents. We focus on why Natalie decided to start Babylist when she just became a new mother, how reading The Lean Startup impacted her decision making to solving the chicken and the egg problem of marketplaces, finding product-market fit and a unique approach to partnerships. Here are some of the questions I ask Natalie: 1. What was the insight that led to the founding of Babylist? 11 years ago - creating your own baby registry There must be a better way!!!! Worked on another startup in the language learning space If you can work on it for Small aspirations day by day Lean startup Inflection point on PinterestDid you always want to become an entrepreneur? What were some lessons learned during your time at Amazon that were helpful in your journey? What were some of the first steps that you had to take to validate your idea? How do you think about using content to lead to curation to purchase? What are the requirements to sell on Babylist? When you have a marketplace, you have a chicken and the egg problem. What were the first steps you took to solve for it? Was it tougher getting supply going vs. demand or vise versa? Did you keep inventory?How did you approach demand / customer acquititon channels in the early days? How did you approach raising capital? What were some of the moments that as you look back were actually huge unlocks for your business? How did you make the business more sustainable for you You’ve now started selling your own products and aren’t just a marketplace. How do you think about what products to launch? What has been the reaction? How do you think about trying and testing out products for parents online and in brick and mortar? What has been the result during the pandemic when it comes to purchase behavior? What’s one thing you would change about venture capital? What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? Professionally: No rules rules by Reid Hastings Personally: Dear Sugar - online advice columnWhat’s one piece of advice that you have for founders? Long game Relationships are long

Our guest today is Nick Saltarelli one of the Co-founders of Mid-Day Squares. Mid-Day Squares is the first functional chocolate bar. Nick founded the company with his wife, Leslie and brother-in-law Jake. We discuss how and why his family wanted to start a chocolate company, why they decided to vertically integrate instead of outsourcing manufacturing, their combination of marrying content with a CPG and much more. Without further ado, here’s Nick. And there you have it. I hope you all enjoyed Nick’s story of how and why he started Mid-Day Squares. Did you always want to know you wanted to be an entrepreneur? What were some of the pivotal moments in your life that helped shaped you personally and professionally, how you wanted to work with people? Why did you focus on CPG? How did you meet Lez? How did you land on chocolate? Why did you decide to share everything publicly? How did Jake come on board? Is it a tough dynamic working with your wife and your brother-in-law? What was your process for raising capital? How did you think about brand and branding? Why did you decide to create your own manufacturing plant vs. outsourcing manufacturing? How do you think about storytelling and building a passionate audience?

Our guest today is our second second time guest, Mike Duda. Mike is the General Partner at Bullish. Bullish is a consumer only venture capital fund and creative agency. Some of their investments include Sunday, Spark Grills, Hu, Care/of. I mention these brands specifically because all the founders of those companies have been on the podcast but they’ve also invested in Peloton, Harry’s Warby Parker. If you want to learn the founding story of how Mike founded Bullish, highly recommend his first episode in 2020. In this episode we focus on his process to identifying a consumer insight, what needs to happen in order for an insight to become an investment opportunity and his analysis on consumer behavior. I was delighted Mike was willing to come back on the show for a chat, without further ado, here he is. Questions I ask Mike: What’s your process to identifying a nascent consumer insight? I’ve had investors come on the show talk about their jobs are to identify the difference between a consumer trend and a fad. How do you make that distinction? What has to happen in order for a trend to become big? One of the massive trends in 2010s was home fitness, and you were big winners with your investment in Peloton. I’d love it if you could walk through how you made that investment? What's the next big thing in consumer that you think is under-appreciated or contrarian? What’s often misunderstood investing in consumer oriented companies? If the bet is right when it comes to a trend, how important is having a competitive advantage in your product? When you think about the major themes and changes in consumer behavior, what comes to mind? Is investing in consumer products saturated since it's easier than ever to launch a company? What do you think is misunderstood by tech when it comes to CPG? What’s misunderstood when it comes to brand? What’s under-appreciated when it comes to building a brand? What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?