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

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?

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. https://www.ferret.ai/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=consumervc&utm_campaign=Q4 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. Head Here to get started. https://www.gorgias.com/?gspk=bWlrZWdlbGI4MTk3&gsxid=h9iBxY4DHuTn My guest today is Claire Díaz-Ortiz, who is a venture capitalist and author of 9 books including twitter for good and design your day and is based in Argentina. She was one of the early employees at Twitter who has been dubbed "The Woman Who Got the Pope on Twitter" and Claire has also been named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company. In our conversation we discuss her early blogging days and the rise of social, how to back more diverse founders, evaluating solo founders and Latin America. Some of the questions I asked Claire: What was your initial attraction to technology and how did you end up as early employee at Twitter? What were some the initiatives did you How did you get the pope on Twitter What are some of the strategies that you've seen work for entrepreneurs when it comes to growing their business on social media, particularly Twitter? How do you think about the future of social? We've talked about on this show how brands of today are founder driven, meaning the founder's story and ability to story tell can be a large part of what's resinating with consumer. When you are underwriting, how do you think about the separation from the founder and the business? You invest in both Latin America and the US. What are some of the biggest opportunities in the the latin American market within B2C facing businesses?What's most misunderstood about Latin America by U.S. investors? Walk us through your due diligence process. How do you evaluate opportunities? One of the parts of venture capital is bringing more diversity to the table, especially women, and investing in more women founders. What has to change in order for this to happen? I believe even before the pandemic, you were a proponent on using Zoom and online communication tools as a way to meet new people and invest. Now we've seen an acceleration of this during COVID, but how does this change where venture ecosystems exist? What's one thing that 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 - https://www.ferret.ai/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=consumervc&utm_campaign=Q4 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. Head Here to get started - https://www.gorgias.com/?gspk=bWlrZWdlbGI4MTk3&gsxid=h9iBxY4DHuTn Thank you Susan Lyne for the introduction to our guest today, Andy Dunn, the founder of Bonobos. Bonobos was one of the first digitally native brands to exist. They eventually sold to Walmart for over $300 million. In this episode, Andy shares the founding journey of Bonobos, how he thinks about the current state of digitally native brands and a clue about what he's up to next. Without further ado, here's Andy. Some of the questions I ask Andy: What was your initial attraction to entrepreneurship? You started Bonobos at Stanford. How did you meet your co-founder Brian Spaly? Did you have other business ideas? How did you land on pants? What was the insight? What was the customer feedback? What was first step for testing out this idea? Why did you decide to move the business to New York instead of staying the bay have access to tech talent? How did you find your first customers and gain early momentum? We talk on this podcast about doing things that don't scale in the early days. What were some of the activities you did that wouldn't have scaled? When did you decide to sell online? When did you decide to raise capital? Who was your first investor? What are the aspects of Bonobos that resonated with them? Who was your target customer? How were you able to get to your customer? Why did you decide to move the company to New York? Why weren't you ready for a Series A? Was it hard to recruit tech talent in New York? How did you approach hiring? How were you able to attract talent? How did you build culture? How did you approach growth vs. profitability? When did you decide (if you decided) to focus on profitability? Didn't know how to build the tech stack? How did you approach hiring tech talent? When and how did you develop the concept for guideshops? What was your omnichannel strategy? What was your approach to leadership? When and how did you develop the concept for guideshops? What was your omnichannel strategy? When was the moment when you knew the trajectory of Bonobos was looking good? What was your approach to leadership? When did you decide to do paid marketing? What were some of the challenges and trials you had to face while you were building Bonobos? What were some of the mistakes that you made during Bonobos? What was the process like selling to Walmart? I know you also invest as well. How do you describe the current landscape of DNVBs?How do you evaluate brands and founders? 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 one piece of advice that you have

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 Head to [ferret.ai](http://ferret.ai/) using promo code: CONSUMERVC 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. Head [Here](https://www.gorgias.com/?gspk=bWlrZWdlbGI4MTk3&gsxid=h9iBxY4DHuTn) to get started. Our guest today is [Rui Ma](https://twitter.com/ruima), who is the founder of [Tech Buzz China](https://www.techbuzzchina.com/) and helps funds identify tech investments in both the U.S. and China. Tech Buzz China is a podcast and a community for those interested in China tech. I've been a fan of Tech Buzz China for a long time and learned so much about the ecommerce innovation that's happening in the east from Rui. As you might be thinking, we're going to discuss the Chinese cross over brands in this episode and talk about C2M businesses and how supply chains have changed over the past few years. 1. What was your initial attraction to technology? 2. You've worked as an investor for a long time, what propelled you to also found Tech Buzz China? 3. What are some of the differences in consumer behavior in China and the United States? 4. What needs to happen in order to bring livestream to the masses in the west? 5. Do you think the creator economy is going to develop like it has in China with livestreamers considering to IPO? 6. How do ecommerce platforms test new features? 7. What do you make of Chinese brands coming to the west and having success?     1. Do you believe Chinese consumer brands today are facing an opportunity like Japanese brands in the 70s (on the cusp of becoming global)     2. If you are an American brand is it more difficult to gain a presence in China? 8. You mention that now it's a super efficient time to build brands in China. Why is this so? 9. Unlike startups in the US may choose to bootstrap and grow their business slowly, many businesses in China just want to make a quick buck, they usually get involved in raising very early. Do you think CPG startup bootstrapping stands any chance in China?  10. Would love your take on valuations / multiples of a traditional business vs a software business. It seems a much more traditional business (like a Starbucks, which has a sizable digital retail component) than a software / platform / digital business? 11. What do you think Americans most misunderstand about the Chinese consumer tech? 12. What's one book that impacted you professionally and one book that impacted you personally? 13. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?

Ferret is the first relationship intelligence tool for all business savvy investors to know, for the first time, who they can trust Head to [ferret.ai](http://ferret.ai/) using promo code: CONSUMERVC to jump to the top of the waitlist. Our guest today is [Andrea Hippeau](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-hippeau-64658227/), Partner at [Lerer Hippeau](https://www.lererhippeau.com/). Lerer Hippeau is a New York based early stage venture capital fund with some of their investments include Allbirds, Chubbies, Cotopaxi and Glossier. We discuss how to invest in pet products, measuring environmental and sustainability, and what makes a digitally native brand venture backable.  Some of the questions I ask Andrea: 1. What was your initial attraction to venture capital? 2. Difference between family office vs. venture capital? 3. What interests you in consumer brands? 4. How do you think about regulation? 5. How do you measure environmentally and sustainability? 6. In an era where you don't have those growth marketing arbitrage opportunities on FB and Google, what makes you excited about investing in brands today? 7. One of your areas of expertise is the pet space. How do you dissect such a large market?     1. What particular sub segments are you most fascinated by and growing?     2. What areas do you think are over saturated? 8. What were some of your biggest learnings during COVID? 9. I had on Ernest Schmitt from The Craftory who made the case that digitally native brands are hitting retail way to early. When do you think it's appropriate to go into retail? 10. Has Figs going public changed any of your perception of the scale relating to digitally native brands? 11. What are the typical gross margins, CAC/LTV ratio or pay back period you like to see in a company today? 12. What make a digitally native brand venture backable? 13. How do you analyze companies and figure out if a company has gotten past the noise and could be venture scalable? 14. As we (hopefully) come out of COVID soon, what questions are you asking yourself relating to how consumers are going to spend their time and money? 15. What's one thing you would change about venture capital? 16. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? 17. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders? 18. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?

My guest today is [Kevin Campos](https://fifthwall.com/team/kevin-campos), Partner and Head of Retail at [Fifth Wall](https://fifthwall.com/). Fifth Wall manages the largest fund specialized in real estate technology. On the retail side, some of their investments include Allbirds, Cotopaxi and Foxtrot. This was an awesome conversation about Kevin's upbringings in retail, how that shaped his career, the changes in retail during COVID and why landlords should be open to tech enabled tenants and their advantages. Without further ado, here's Kevin. Some of the questions I ask Kevin: 1. What was your attraction to retail? 2. What were some of your learnings from your parents since they were both business owners?     1. Summer Camp Campos was working in the  3. What attracted you to work at Fifth Wall and on the investing side of retail?     1. Operating ideas     2. Ideas vs. execution 4. How do you think about investing in consumer brands in this current environment? 5. We've talked on this show about the changes in retail during COVID, which were drastic. How has (or has) that changed your thinking when you're advising companies if/when they should go into retail? 6. Recently I had on Ernesto Schmitt, co-founder of the venture fund The Craftory and he said that he believes alot of digitally native brands are heading into retail way to early. How do you make of the current market? 7. What are some creative growth strategies you've seen brands incorportate? 8. How important is Amazon to a brand strategy? 9. How will the retail store change as we come out of COVID? 10. Do you have to be a sustainable brand to win?     1. Also, what does sustainability mean to you? 11. Are there certain markets or parts of certain cities within the U.S. that you think are destined to become a retail destinations? 12. When does it make sense for a brand to create their own stores as opposed to go wholesale when thinking about expanding into retail? 13. What's one thing you would change about venture capital? 14. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? 15. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?