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

Our guest today is John Foraker, co-founder and CEO of Once Upon a Farm. Fresh snacks with immune-boosting probiotics to keep your little one's wellness top of mind. For chilly season or any reason! Before John was the CEO of Annie’s Inc. We discuss his learnings running Annie’s for over a decade, how he became the CEO of Once Upon a Farm, what led Jennifer Garner to become a co-founder, what it’s like developing a new category, why they chose to expand to retail really fast. Without further ado, here’s John. Some of the questions I ask John: What was your initial attraction to natural foods and natural products? What were some of your learnings running Annie’s for nearly 20 years? What was the aha moment and led you to found Once Upon A Farm? What were the first steps after realizing this was something you wanted to pursue? How did you connect with Jennifer Garner and have her come on board? How do you build a brand in a new category? How did you approach building the supply chain? What has been the hardest parts of building Once Upon A Farm? How did you approach fundraising?What’s the biggest reason why a company passed on you? What’s the best thing that’s happened to the business?What’s the worst? How do you think about your positioning when you enter retail - natural grocery or conventional? How do you approach scale? What’s your fascination with NFTs? What’s one thing you would change about raising venture capital? What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?Omnivore’s dilemma Ramping your brand by James Richardson What’s one piece of advice 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: What was your initial attraction to technology and innovation? How did you end up in San Francisco working in technology? What led you to founding your student debt company? How did you develop a relationship with Pernod Ricard? Why did they want to launch their own investment fund? How separate is the fund Pernod Ricard? Do investments need to be strategic or are they pure financial? Why do you have a focus on consumer technology (and technology in general) opposed to only beverage? How do you provide value to technology companies? What types of companies do you look for? What's your diligence process? What are some of the trends you are excited about in CPG? What's one thing you would change about VC? What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? What's one piece of advice for entrepreneurs?

Our guest today is Avrum Elmakis, founder & CEO of CLMBR. CLMBR is an at-home the first vertical climber with a touch screen and on-demand, instructor-led classes. It’s a full body and one of the most efficient workouts you can do. We discuss how he became an entrepreneur, what led to founding CLMBR, how he was able to get Lebron James, Jay-Z and Novak Djokovic to invest and how he thinks about establishing new fitness habits. Without further ado, here’s Avrum. Here’s what I asked him: How did you get into climbing? What led you to founding CLMBR? What were the first steps you took? What was the moment when you were all-in? How did you build your product and get a prototype? Why did you decide to launch an indie gogo campaign?What was the initial response? How did you go about building your supply chain since this sounds like a complicated product? You launched during the pandemic in April 2020. Was the plan always to launch in April? Seems like the ideal timing to launch an at home fitness option?How did you approach distribution? What were sales like once you launched? What was user feedback? How did your recent fundraise come together? How did Jay-Z sign on? As the world opens up, how do you see the future of fitness and habits around working out? What's next on the horizon for CLMBR? What's one thing you would change about fundraising? What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? What's one piece of advice that you have for founders? What's the best piece of advice that has stuck with you?

My guest today is Abigail Cook Stone, the founder of Otherland. Otherland transforms your home into an immersive world that never stands still with their amazing scented candles. We discuss how her attraction to design led her to candles, what was missing from the market in her mind, and how she approached her supply chain getting off the ground and scale. Here’s some of the questions I ask her: What was your initial attraction to design? When did you start thinking about starting a candle company? Was it something you always thought about or was there a specific aha moment? What was missing from the market? How did you think about the brand? How did you seek validation?Did you run any early tests? What was your manufacturing process? How do you think about product launches? Why did you decide to raise venture capital?What was the biggest reason why a fund passed? How did you experience at Ralph Lauren and at Founder's Collective help shape Otherland? 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? What's one piece of advice you have for 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. What was your initial attraction to investing in consumer focused businesses? How did you end up joining Softbank? How is Vision Fund 2’s focus different from Fund 1? Why should founders partner with the Vision Fund? What is your decision-making process? How do you get to a decision quickly in today’s market? How do you leverage your platform? Walk us through your due diligence process. When a founder comes to you, how do you think about the size of problem they are solving? How are you thinking about today’s market climate? Do you think valuations are high? What’s your target cadence for consumer investments? There’s been alot of investment in direct-to-consumer healthcare. What’s your thesis around the future of healthcare?Wellness and preventative care Where is the opportunity when it comes to the ecommerce stack serving consumer brands? How do you think about scale in non-software businesses/consumer brands? I.e. Vuori 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: Innovator’s Dilemma Personally: American Sickness What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?

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: What was your introduction to venture capital and your initial attraction to it? What was the transition like from corporate VC, specializing in investing in advertising technology startups to starting your own fund? Is New York the center for consumer investing? Where do you see the opportunity with consumer brands? What are some of the trends your paying close attention to? 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? 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? 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? As we come out of this COVID period, are you shifting your focus to any new verticals? What's one thing you would change about venture capital? What's one book that inspired you virtually and one book that inspired you professionally? What's one piece of advice for entrepreneurs? What's the best piece of advice you've received?

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: 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? 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? 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? If web 3 / blockchain technology does become the future, what has to also hold true or needs to happen? 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? 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? 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? 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? Is there any theories of the next consumer technological shift you don't believe? Since you sit at Series A, since there is alot of excitement and high valuations, do you ever consider going earlier What was your favorite book that you read this past year? What's one piece of advice for consumer founders during these times?

My guest today is Tushar Garg, co-founder and CEO of Flyhomes. Their mission is to build the world’s best home buying experience. We discussed how Tushar got into real estate and why he saw not much innovation on the buy side when you’re thinking about a new home, their approach to growth and raising capital and how they look at new markets to enter. We discuss: Why did you want to become an entrepreneur? Why did you decide to focus on Real Estate? What were the inefficiencies? What's the founding journey and the insight that led to FlyHomes? What was your first market and how did you decide on it? When did you decide to raise capital?What was the biggest hangup from investors? What was missing from the Real Estate Transaction? How do you choose which market to expand in? What makes a compelling market to you? What has been the effect of the pandemic on real estate and FlyHomes? What were some of the early mistakes you made as a founder? 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? What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?

My guest today is Steve Hughes, founder of Sunrise Strategic Partners. Sunrise Strategic Partners provides growth capital and expertise to emerging brands in the healthy, active and sustainable living space. Some of their investments include Cali’flour foods, Kodiak Cakes, and Maple Hill Creamery. We discuss the current SPAC market, the history of the natural foods movement, and transitioning from a digitally native brand to becoming an omnichannel brand. Here are the questions I ask him: What was your initial attraction to the food industry? Why did you decide to focus on natural / organic foods? How did you start Boulder Brands? Did a SPAC in 2005, Boulder Brands How do you view SPAC market today? Why did you want to start Strategic Sunrise your own private equity shop? Diligence process - What is brand authenticity to you? What is your sweet spot when it comes to sales? Has to be a big category How do you think about strategics? Is there a particular sector your not bullish on that other investors are bullish on? What's the current landscape for strategics? How has the tide shifted in the past few years? Where do you fall with profitability vs. growth? How do assess a company that is built for digital and hasn't gone into store yet? What were some of your learnings through COVID? 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?

Thank you Deb Benton for introducing me to our guest today Nisha Dua , co-founder and General Partner at BBG Ventures . BBG Ventures is an early-stage fund backing big ideas that will reshape the way we live. One of the first episodes of this podcast was with Susan Lyne, who is the other co-founder of BBG and Susan graciously accepted to come on the show without knowing who I was when the podcast hadn't even been released yet so I am VERY grateful to the BBG. Some of their investments include Zola, Blueland, Real, and Zero Grocery. Nisha and I discuss the opportunities within health and wellness, climate friendly consumption, and solving problems for the 99%. Some of the questions I ask her: What was your initial attraction to venture capital? How did you meet Susan Lyne? How did BBG Ventures come together? What are some of your themes or areas of focus? How do you evaluate founders and teams? What are characteristics about consumers that might be nuanced or not everyone understands? What are the proof points? How do you think about price in this current market? How do you think about your role as an investor? Has COVID changed any of your thoughts on your investment themes? How do you think about price in the market Consumption change FOMO timelines and price What's one thing you would change about venture capital? I know there are no silver What has been your lowest moment in your journey and how did you get out of it? What's one book that inspired you professionally and one book that inspired you personally? What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?