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

Presenter: Burkland Associates helps you build the right systems that can keep up with your growth and can handle all the finance, accounting, tax and hiring services that consumer startups need to scale. For more information head to burklandassociates.com Presenter: Skillful runs online, immersive programs that help people launch and accelerate their careers in business roles in tech - Strategy & Ops, Product, Strategic Finance and Growth. Click Here to Apply to the Next Cohort   Thank you Madeline Keulen for the intro to Lori Coulter, founder of Summersalt. Summersalt produces flattering swimwear designed to fit you, not the other way around. The internet’s favorite swimwear — & your new go-to for everything from activewear to PJs. It was so fun chatting with Lori about how she developed Summersalt into one of the fastest growing swimwear brands. Without further ado, here's Lori. Here are some of the questions I ask Lori. What was your attraction to fashion? You were designing swimwear for 10 years, what sparked Summersalt? Body scanning Could you IP Scanned over 10,000 women, 1to1 fit Customer who was neglected What was the insight that you found that incumbents weren't understanding? How did you approach distribution? What was the old way to distribute swimwear and gain consumer trust? Resort businesses Privacy from the own home, direct mail How did you approach brand and your positioning? Swimwear (I'd imagine) is a seasonal business. How do you think about introducing new products so you aren't only a seasonal business? How did you go about hiring a team? Why did you decide to raise venture money?How was that process? What's the biggest reason why a fund passed on you? 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?Peter Thiel Zero to OneBillion Dollar Brand What's the best piece of advice that you've received?The highs are never as high as you think they are What's one piece of advice for founders?

Presenter: Burkland Associates helps you build the right systems that can keep up with your growth and can handle all the finance, accounting, tax and hiring services that consumer startups need to scale. For more information head to burklandassociates.com Presenter: Skillful runs online, immersive programs that help people launch and accelerate their careers in business roles in tech - Strategy & Ops, Product, Strategic Finance and Growth. Click Here to Apply to the Next Cohort   Thank you Will McClelland for the intro to our guest today, Sarah LaFleur, founder of M.M.LaFleur. M.M.LaFleur creates luxury apparel and accessories with the same attention to detail as high-end fashion houses. This was a great chat about how to launch an apparel brand and as well as how to adapt during COVID and new market tastes. Without further ado, here's Sarah. Some of the questions I ask her: What was your attraction to entrepreneurship? Why did you decide to focus on women's workwear? What were the current options for women when it came to workwear and what did you set out to change? What were the first steps when deciding you wanted to found the company? How did you think about sourcing materials? What was your approach to production? How do you approach personalization to your customers? What was the launch strategy? How did you reach your target audience? Has COVID changed your business since people are not yet going back into the office? As we come out of COVID (hopefully soon), what do you see changing when it comes to formal wear (if anything)? When did you decide to raise capital?What was that process like?What was the most common reason why an investor would pass? 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?The Second Sex by Simone DebuarInternal What's one piece of advice for founders? What's the best piece of advice that you've received?

Presenter: Burkland Associates helps you build the right systems that can keep up with your growth and can handle all the finance, accounting, tax and hiring services that consumer startups need to scale. For more information head to burklandassociates.com Presenter: Skillful runs online, immersive programs that help people launch and accelerate their careers in business roles in tech - Strategy & Ops, Product, Strategic Finance and Growth. Click Here to Apply to the Next Cohort My guest today is Michael Markesbery, co-founder and CEO of OROS. OROS produces award winning apparel with their patented SOLARCORE® Insulation. It's the warmest Zero-Bulk Gear. In Michael's words, they science the shit out of everything when it comes to outdoor apparel that keeps you warm. This was such a fun chat about how he's building this incredible brand that uses space technology to build their product. Without further ado, here's Michael. What was your attraction to space? How did you develop a relationship with NASA? Arogel - very brittle Arogel to foam Solarcore Really warm fiber What IP How did you come up with the idea for OROS? Walk us through the technology. Why did you think there was a need for this? What was your first product? When did you decide to fundraise?How was that experience?What was investor reactions? Where did you decide to sell? What was the launch strategy? How do you describe your target consumer? What were some of the stumbling blocks along the way? Are you the exclusive holder of the license with NASA? What's that relationship like? What's your percentage of B2C vs. B2G sales? What do you have on the roadmap for new products? 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? What's the best piece of advice that you've received?Don't ever ask for favors, ask for advice What's one piece of advice for founders?Take the moonshot

Presenter: Burkland Associates helps you build the right systems that can keep up with your growth and can handle all the finance, accounting, tax and hiring services that consumer startups need to scale. For more information head to burklandassociates.com  Presenter: Skillful runs online, immersive programs that help people launch and accelerate their careers in business roles in tech - Strategy & Ops, Product, Strategic Finance and Growth. Click Here to Apply to the Next Cohort  Thank you Daniel Gulati for the introduction to our guest today, Jeremy Cai, founder and CEO of Italic. Italic is the destination for the best luxury goods without the brand names. In this episode we touch on his unique C2M business model in luxury, the evolution of ecommerce, learnings from Costco and Amazon and his approach to scale. Without further ado, here's Jeremy. Questions I ask Jeremy: What was the insight that led you to found Italic and how did you approach the business model? What were some of the first steps you took whether that's market research or speaking with manufacturers that helped made you release this could be an opportunity? Now Italic changes the manufacturers business model? Since your dealing with manufacturers directly, what is there business model. I'd image it's heavy inventory When it comes to ecommerce, how do you think about differentiation and your focal point in building a marketplace + subscription business? Who do you believe is your target customers? Walk us through a little bit of the world of contract manufacturing and your model?Do contract manufacturers typically have exclusive partnerships with the major brands?How do you ensure quality?What's your current take rate?What's the delivery process?What is C2M? Has it been the missed opportunity in ecommerce?How do you see the model evolving? What were some of the effects of COVID? As retail opens back up, how do you think about What's the vision? What are we going to see from Italic in the next 5-10 years? What was your approach to fundraising? 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 the best piece of advice that you've received? What's one piece of advice to founders?

Presented by Ferret: Ferret is the first relationship intelligence tool for all business savvy investors to know, for the first time, who they can trust Click Here to jump to the top of the waitlist. Presented by Gorgias: Gorgias is the #1 helpdesk for Shopify, Magento and BigCommerce stores, and can turn your customer support into a profit center.If you’re looking to increase your retention for your business, mention Consumer VC and get 2 months of Gorgias for free. Click Here to get started. Our guest today is Tali Vogelstein, who is one of the founding investors at Avid Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm in NYC that invests in visionary founders building transformative businesses across consumer internet, fintech, and software in North America, Europe, and Israel. On this episode, we focus on how to invest at a global scale and the opportunities, breaking down different verticals for fintech, as well as their fund strategy. Here's some the questions I ask Tali: What was your attraction to finance and venture capital? How did Avid Ventures come together? What's the structure of how you deploy capital? How do you think about risk? Why do you choose not to lead rounds? How do you stay price disciplined? How do you think about market size? How do you make sure you don't underestimate markets? What do you think about copying business models, x for y market that work well in one market and a founder is trying to replicate that business in a new market? How do you think about the current environment where you have soaring evaluations? What's the biggest misconception when it comes to fintech? How do you think about distribution innovation vs. product distribution? Since you invest globally, how do you think about markets and consumer or prosumer pain points?How do you analyze that pain point?How do you analyze if this is a good market to invest in? What makes a market nice to invest in? How do you break down future of work? What type of businesses are you bullish on? What's one thing you would change about venture capital? What's one thing book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? What's the best piece of advice that you've received? What's one piece of advice for founders?

Presented by Ferret: Ferret is the first relationship intelligence tool for all business savvy investors to know, for the first time, who they can trust Click Here to jump to the top of the waitlist. Presented by Gorgias: Gorgias is the #1 helpdesk for Shopify, Magento and BigCommerce stores, and can turn your customer support into a profit center.If you’re looking to increase your retention for your business, mention Consumer VC and get 2 months of Gorgias for free. Click Here to get started.  Thank you Ben Jang for the intro to our guest today, Jon Sebastiani, founder of Sonoma Brands and Krave Jerky. Sonoma Brands is a private equity firm focused on the growth sectors of the consumer economy. Krave was one of the first better for you beef jerky brands on the market. Jon is the first founder we've had on this show that not only scaled and sold his company to a strategic, but also reacquired the company. Some of the questions I ask Jon: You're a fourth generation wine maker, and was president of Viansa winery. Why did you decide to become an entrepreneur and focus on beef jerky? What were your first steps when you decided to start the brand? When did you realize Krave was gaining traction? What were some of the things you did right or went your way that led to Krave's success? Looking back, what were some of the mistakes that you made? How did the sale to Hershey come about? Why did you decide to create Sonoma Brands? Why do you decide to focus on the growth stage instead of early stages? What's different creating and scaling a brand now vs. when you did it with Krave? What are elements you look for in businesses? What is the opportunity investing in consumer brands? Why did you buy Krave back? What are current trends you're passionate about? Do you only look at single category businesses? How do you think about growth vs. profitability? Is there a trend that you think is misunderstood? As an investor what is a good exit? 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 the best piece of advice that you've received? What's one piece of advice for founders?

Presented by Ferret: Ferret is the first relationship intelligence tool for all business savvy investors to know, for the first time, who they can trust Click Here to jump to the top of the waitlist. Presented by Gorgias: Gorgias is the #1 helpdesk for Shopify, Magento and BigCommerce stores, and can turn your customer support into a profit center.If you’re looking to increase your retention for your business, mention Consumer VC and get 2 months of Gorgias for free. Click Here to get started.  Thank you Paul Martino for the intro to our guest today Stuart Landesberg, founder of Grove Collaborative. Grove Collaborative delivers eco-friendly home essentials, including household cleaning, personal care, baby, kid, and pet products. I had a blast chatting with Stuart. I know I say that a lot, but I found how he started and grew Grove Collaborative and dealt with the challenges that he faced especially raising capital fascinating, and really enjoyed learning from him. Some of the questions I ask Stuart: What was your attraction to entrepreneurship? How did Grove Collaborative come together? What was the insight? How do you think about price? How do you balance creating and sourcing products that are better for the planet but are also able to compete in price against products that are not good for the planet / the incumbents? How did you pay attention to growth? How do you decide to launch a new product?Unique level of customer dataHow were you able to build this community? Commitment to innovation? Did you start out solely and then an online retailer and then decide to create your own brands? How do you curate third party brands? How do you pick your partners? How do you approach tone and the Grove customer? How did you approach growth and scale? How do you build consumer trust and balancing lots of SKUs, lots of choices but also simplicity? What was your approach to hiring? You will also be creating your own stores? Why did you decide to fundraise? What was your fundraising process? What was the reaction from investors in the beginning? 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? What's the best piece of advice that you've received

Presented by Ferret: Ferret is the first relationship intelligence tool for all business savvy investors to know, for the first time, who they can trust Click Here to jump to the top of the waitlist. Presented by Gorgias: Gorgias is the #1 helpdesk for Shopify, Magento and BigCommerce stores, and can turn your customer support into a profit center.If you’re looking to increase your retention for your business, mention Consumer VC and get 2 months of Gorgias for free. Click Here to get started.  Our guest today is Carter Reum, Co-Founder of M13. M13 is one of the largest LA-started venture capital fund. Some of their investments include Lyft, Tonal, Classpass, Daily Harvest. Previously Carter founded VeeV, the alcohol grain spirit brand. This was a fun conversation where we discuss how to build a modern venture capital consumer-focused fund, technology thesis, and evolution from fund 1 to 3. Some of the questions I ask Carter What was your attraction to venture capital? How did M13 come together? Build a platform - what does that look like? How then do you think about distribution What's the opportunity you are seeing in consumer technology?How has your thesis evolved from fund 1 to fund 3?Why have you shifted your focus away from digitally native brands? I've talked with investors who don't want to have a significant increase in the AUM of their fund and specialize. You have seemed to take the opposite approach as each new fund has grown quite significantly. What is the strategy? Why are you bullish on LA?What's most misunderstood about LA as a startup hub? What were your learnings through the pandemic? Great seed investors, but nowDid this change your approach to specific sectors? Today there is so much money in venture capital and the private markets. It's extremely competitive for deals. How do you think about price discipline, speed and diligence in today's market?ConcentrationDiligence cycle How do you think about fund differentiation?Propulsion Firm - how can I help How do the various parts to your fund interact with one another?Since you also launch companies from your studio, when do you think about building vs. buying a piece of another company? 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 was your biggest learning during COVID? What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?Assessing and evolving growth vs. fix mindsetNeeds to be a story teller Is it tough working with your brother Courtney? What's the best piece of advice that you've received?

Presented by Ferret: Ferret is the first relationship intelligence tool for all business savvy investors to know, for the first time, who they can trust Click Here to jump to the top of the waitlist.  Presented by Gorgias: Gorgias is the #1 helpdesk for Shopify, Magento and BigCommerce stores, and can turn your customer support into a profit center.If you’re looking to increase your retention for your business, mention Consumer VC and get 2 months of Gorgias for free. Click Here to get started.  Our guest today is Will Schmitt, Head of Venture Strategy at Miroma Ventures. Miroma just launched a $100 million fund focused on consumer and media brands. Previously he was at Naturaza and led investments in OROS, Yellowbird - If you remember the founder of Yellowbird, and Cleancult. He also previously co-founded Trail Post Ventures with Nick Mindel. We discuss how Will thinks about fund differentiation, starting a business online vs. retail, and pulling the right levers for growth. Without further ado, here's Will. Some of the questions I ask Will: What was your attraction to finance and consumer? What were doing before Miroma Ventures? How did you end up joining Miroma?  How do you think about fund differentiation? When do you typically like to partner with companies? I've had on investors who say for digitally native brands, don't touch paid marketing until you get to $1 million in sales via word of mouth. I've had other investors who say the bar is so high that you should only really be thinking about raising venture capital if you have a $10 million revenue run rate. How do you think about the right growth levers, when to use them and if a company can be venture backabl When are early signs that a consumer brand has gotten past the noise? Community has become a bit of buzzword. How have you seen brands build community? One of your missions is to invest in under represented founders, particularly female founders. As Claire Diaz-Ortiz said on her episode if you don't have a biast, you actually aren't human and the biasm in venture is people typically invest in people who look like them. i.e. overwhelming majority of VCs are white males, so the majority of founders that get funded are white males.What do you do differently? How do you think about breaking that mold and make sure you have a diverse network? How do you think about diversification? What does a great exit look like for you? I've had on Ernesto Schmitt (related?) and he said that brands are heading into retail way too early. I then had on Andy Dunn from Bonobos who thinks you should start in retail from the very beginning. When do you think is the right moment to head into retail? What are some of the particular verticals or trends that you are excited about? 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 the best piece of advice that you've received? What's one piece of advice for founders?

Presented by Ferret: Ferret is the first relationship intelligence tool for all business savvy investors to know, for the first time, who they can trust Click Here to jump to the top of the waitlist. Presented by Gorgias: Gorgias is the #1 helpdesk for Shopify, Magento and BigCommerce stores, and can turn your customer support into a profit center.If you’re looking to increase your retention for your business, mention Consumer VC and get 2 months of Gorgias for free. Click Here to get started.  My guest today is Doug Hudson, founder and CEO of Tend. Tend has reimagined the entire dental experience with transparent pricing, modern studios & no judgment ever. Previously he founded several consumer health companies. In this chat we discuss building companies in regulated sectors, why he decided to focus on disrupting the dental industry, and how he approaches expansion. Some of the questions I ask Doug: You've built multiple businesses in heavily regulated industries, what was your attraction to heavily regulated industries? When you founded Tend, what was the fresh perspective and opportunity that you saw?What was the opportunity in dental?When you say direct to consumer when it comes to dentistry, what do you mean by that?How does the online experience relate to the in-store experience?How you go about building a brand around a patient journey The NPS score for dentists are generally, very low. How did you think about improving that score in the category with Tend? So once you decided this was the next opportunity, what were some of the first steps to building Tend?How did you pick the first location?How do you think about retail design and ambiance for each location?How did you approach building a brand? What was your approach to attracting customers? How do you think about the different components of Tend?What's the decision making process like when launching new products? What's your approach to city expansion? Why did you decide to fundraise from venture capitalists? What was your approach to fundraising?What was your process?What was the biggest reason why investors past? What's one thing you would change about the fundraising process? What's one book that inspired you professionally and one book that inspired you personally? What's the best piece of advice that you've received? What's one piece of advice for founders?