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

Thank you Mike Duda for the intro to our guests today, [Gabby Cohen](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabby-etrog-cohen-b91a635/) and [Tehmina Haider](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tehmina-haider-9081614/). Gabby is the Global head of intergrated marketing at [Harry's Inc](https://www.harrys.com/en/us). and Tehmina is Head of Harry's labs. It was amazing learning about the evolution of Harry's from a razor and shaving company, developing products in new categories and creating a portfolio of brands by both building and acquiring other consumer brands. In this episode you'll learn their approach brand development, the types of brands they look to acquire and how they think about different sales channels. Without further ado, here's Gabby and Tehmina. Some of the questions I ask Gabby and Tehmina: 1. What attracted each of you to work and be part of Harry's? 2. Gabby - How would you describe or pitch Harry's brand to someone who had never interacted or heard of Harry's? 3. How does Harry's approach innovation?     1. Are there macro trends or consumer behaviors that might be an umbrella or a north star     2. What is Harry's Labs?     3. Is there a shared customer     4. When does it make sense to have more of an     5. What types of companies do you look to acquire?     6. How do you make that decision of building in house vs. acquiring?     7. What's Harry's advantage and what could brands gain when acquired? 4. When you build new brands like Flamingo, Cat Person and Headquarters, how do you think about sales channels to sell product (DTC vs. wholesale) and channel mix? 5. How would you describe this current era of DNVB? 6. Has COVID changed which categories you want to focus on when it comes to innovation? 7. What's one thing you would change about the perception of consumer brands? 8. What's one book that inspired each of you personally and each of you professionally? 9. What's the best piece of advice that you've received? 10. What's one piece of advice for founders building brands? 11. What's one book that inspired each of you personally and one book that inspired each of you professionally?

Our guest today is [Neil Sequeira](https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-sequeira-76739a40/), Co-Founder & Managing Director at [Defy](https://defy.vc/). Defy backed exceptional entrepreneurs at the early stages. Some of their investments include Fable, Triller, and Boom Sports. Previously, Neil served as Managing Director of General Catayst and has been a venture capitalist for the past 20 years. I had a blast chatting with Neil about the current state of VC, celebrities cofounding consumer companies, the verticalization of social and categories he's comfortable writing the first check in. Without further ado, here's Neil. Some of the questions I ask him: 1. What was your initial attraction into venture? 2. How did you make your way into venture capital? 3. You've had a ton of experience investing in consumer technology and consumer goods companies. How do you think about the market today? When things are tough 4. What's your approach for looking at opportunities? 5. What's your due diligence process? 6. How do you think about fund differentiation? 7. How do you approach price and ownership? 8. When I talk to investors, deals are closing really fast. Their wish is for the market to actually move slower. Have you had to alter at all your due diligence process at all to get to conviction faster? 9. What makes a good board member? 10. What does an entrepreneur really want? 11. Do the things that makes their life easier 12. What has been your biggest learning from COVID? 13. How are you seeing the world of startups and venture capital as the world begins to open up? 14. How has venture capital changed? 15. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?     1. Very diverse firm     2. People invest in people who look like them 16. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? 17. What's the best piece of advice that you've received? 18. What's one piece of advice for founders currently building?

My guest today is [Alexa von Tobel](https://twitter.com/alexavontobel), Founder of [Inspired Capital](https://inspiredcapital.com/) and [LearnVest](https://learnvest.com/). Inspired is a generalist fund based in New York City that backs early-stage founders with transformative ideas. Some of their companies include Chief, Geneva, Public and Snackpass. They recently closed their second fund of $281 million investing in seed and series A companies. She also founded LearnVest, which was an American financial planning company which she sold for $250 million. In this episode we discuss how New York's entrepreneurial and venture capital scene has risen in the past 15 years, her approach to investing as a generalist and staying price disciplined in this current market. Without further ado, here's Alexa. Some of the questions I ask Alexa: 1. So what inspired you to start Inspired Capital? 2. How did the fund come together? 3. What was fund 1’s focus? 4. Unfair advantages? 5. Operational experience to be a great investor? 6. What were some of your biggest learnings through fund 1? 7. How do you approach investing at seed and Series A? 8. How has New York transformed as a startup and venture ecosystem in the past 15 years?     1. What verticals in New York are you most excited about? 9. How is fund 2 going to be different from fund 1? 10. How do you think about price discipline in the current market? 11. Is founder-friendly in today’s landscape writing a larger check? 12. How do you approach partnering with founders? 13. Are you finding that founders aren’t always choosing the highest prices? 14. How do you stay price discipline in this current market? 15. What’s your sourcing strategy? 16. What parts of the creator economy excite you? 17. Has COVID changed your mind on any particular verticals? 18. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital? 19. What’s one piece of advice for founders?

Our guest today is [Andrew Gluck](https://twitter.com/irrvrntVC), GP at [irrvrntVC](https://angel.co/v/back/irrvrntvc). Irreverant is a rolling fund that focuses on investing in NextGen Commerce, DTC, & AdTech. Some of Andrew's investments include Haus, Caraway, Cadence, Italic, Poppy and Simple. Previously, Andrew founded and was the COO of the marketing agency Agency Within which generated over $5B for brands looking to maximize profitability. In this episode, we discuss the intersection of growth marketing and investing, how Andrew makes investment decisions based on his background in growth as well as how to choose a growth marketing agency. Without further ado, here's Andrew. Some of the questions I ask Andrew: 1. What was your initial attraction to growth marketing? 2. What are some of the changes you've seen in the past 10 years when it comes to digital marketing and scaling companies? 3. Why did you eventually decide to start your own growth marketing agency? 4. When dealing with digitally native brands, what are some of the aspects within growth that sometimes clients might not understand?     1. If a company has most of its sales on Amazon, does that worry you? 5. When does it make sense for a company to start paid marketing?     1. What's the smallest ad budget you recommend that could give you some idea if it's working? 6. How long should a test be? 7. We've heard time and time again on this show it's the easiest point in time to build a company, the hardest period to build a brand. As an investor and marketer, what has to be compelling about a company in order for you to invest your time or money? 8. We've talked on this show about how choosing an agency can be a difficult thing to do. It's hard to understand  9. How did [irrvnt.vc](http://irrvnt.vc) come together? Why did you decide to create a rolling fund opposed to a traditional venture capital fund? 10. Where does a subscription make sense?     1. What are the advantages of a rolling fund? 11. What's one thing you would change about venture capital? 12. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? 13. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders? 14. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?

My guest today is [Rex Woodbury](https://twitter.com/rex_woodbury?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor), who is a Principal at [Index Ventures](https://www.indexventures.com/). Index Ventures is one of the largest and prestigious VC funds inthe world, Some of the companies they've invested in Robinbood, Roblox, and Glossier. Rex focuses his time on thinking how people, culture and technology intersect. He has an amazing weekly newsletter called Digital Native where he shares what he's observing around these pillars, which I highly recommend. You'll learn in this episode about the metaverse - what it is and how the creator economy, crypto, NFTs, web 3.0 all tie into it as well as different use cases of how people are creating their own digital identities. Without further ado, here's Rex. Some of the questions I ask Rex: 1. What was your attraction to technology and media? 2. How do you describe how technology has shaped culture? 3. What is the metaverse today and how do you see the metaverse evolving? 4. How do you describe Web 3.0? 5. What does community 6. With all this being said, how do you think about the modern community and online community in general? 7. What's the difference between creators and influencers? 8. Creator economy is a very hot sector to invest in. How do you analyze though what's investible and what isn't investible? 9. Which legacy platforms are doing a good job attracting creators and which platforms have work to do? 10. Metaverse  11. What's some of the differences from the legacy social media companies vs. modern ones?     1. Are we going to see platform gatekeepers in the future? 12. How do you think about the future of fame? 13. How are people interacting in the meta verse? Which parts of the metaverse do you find most interesting? 14. There's now so many products that are investible. What are products that you are most interested in becoming investible in the future? 15. In your piece on the digital renaissance, you mention "This gets to the heart of this new economy. It’s no longer designed for centralized platforms that monopolize value; it’s built for creators and communities." What does this new economy look like? 16. What will the metaverse look like in the next 5 years? 17. What's one part of the creator economy and the metaverse that most investors may not understand? 18. Are we going to see a billion dollar creator? Will creators ever get to be venture backable? 19. What's one thing you would change about venture capital? 20. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? 21. What's one piece of advice you have for founders? 22. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?

Thank you Daniel Gulati for the introduction to my guest today [Allon Bloch](https://www.linkedin.com/in/allon-bloch-70b1223/), founder and CEO of [K Health](https://www.khealth.com/). K Health is where you can get personalize heath answers and fast. It's the closest doctor's office is in your pocket, Trusted by over 4 million patients. Allon is also a serial entrepreneur who founded not one but two companies that went public - Wix and Vroom. On this show, we ask what's his process to determine whether or not to start a company, how he thinks about markets, why he wanted to innovate within the health sector and much much more. Without further ado, here's Allon. Questions I ask Allon: 1. What was your attraction to be an entrepreneur? 2. What compelled you to start Wix, Vroom and K Health? 3. What makes a market attractive for you to want to start a business? 4. Why health? 5. Walk us through how healthcare currently works? 6. Why has disruption been slow healthcare? 7. What is the biggest problem with healthcare in your mind? 8. Since you didn't come from a healthcare background, how do you approach building a company in an industry that you're new to? 9. What led to the founding of K Health? 10. What was the first problem you wanted to solve? 11. What were the effects of COVID when it came to innovation within healthcare? 12. What is telemedicine and how is K Health different? 13. How do you partner with Primary Care doctors and hospitals? 14. How does the use of AI help primary care doctors? 15. What’s next for K Health? 16. What was your approach to fundraising? 17. What are some of the important habits that you've developed? 18. What's one thing you would change about venture capital? 19. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? 20. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?

My guest today is Ali Hamed, co-founder and Partner of CoVenture. CoVenture offers entrepreneurs multiple ways to finance their businesses. Ali is one of the more unique guests we've had on the show simply because CoVenture's model is quite unique as they can underwrite both equity and debt into technology startups. When Ali and I first got talking, he mentioned that he was consumer curious as opposed to a straight consumer investor. We'll unpack that on the show. We also talk about why Ali is so bullish on the Amazon rollups that have been happening, which social media companies are doing a great job appealing to creators and which aren't, and much much more.. Some of the questions I ask Ali: What was your initial attraction to finance and venture capital? How did CoVenture come together? When should consumer entrepreneurs think about credit options and financing vs. raising from traditional venture capital funds? Is credit as a resource underused in consumer startups? What about consumer makes you curious? Why do you think there is a huge opportunity in investing in Amazon as opposed to to Shopify businesses? For a brand on Amazon, how do you think about what is a competitive advantage? We've talked on this show about how you can't build a brand on Amazon. Are we now starting to see companies be able to build a DTC business outside of Amazon? Why do you hate Instagram? How do you think about the future of media and content? What must the legacy platforms do to service creators? How do you view the future of social and online interaction? We spoke about how music has changed to be shorter, and the song's duty is to hit to the chorus faster because you are optimizing for streams. When you look at other forms of content, what are ways technology has changed other formats? What's one piece about the creator economy that other investors might not understand? 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?

My guest today is Paul Hsiao, co-founder and General Partner at Canvas Ventures. Canvas is one of the leading Series A firms having invested in Zola, Thrive Global and Roofstock. You'll learn what are the ingredients that could make for a spectacular marketplace businesses, what the series a currently looks like, and much much more. Without further ado, here's Paul. And there you have it. It was a pleasure chatting with Paul. You can follow him @paul_hsiao on Twitter. Some of the questions I ask Paul: What was your initial attraction to technology? After Mazu Networks, why did you decide to become a venture capitalist? How did Canvas come together? I know one of your main focuses is marketplace businesses. There’s alot of chatter in consumer how consumer SaaS type businesses are becoming the future of consumer software as a primary business model. What do you make of the current landscape? What makes a market place business exciting for you to invest in? What is your due diligence process? What are the metrics you typically see at the Series A? In today’s market where it seems like there’s more unicorns today than maybe the number of companies that were raising a Series A 10 years ago, what is your expectation when you invest in a company? What’s your biggest learning from this COVID period? After a first time founder raises a Series A, what do you find is the most common element that the founder might have a hard time with when it comes to the board meetings? What are some of the differences investing in enterprise vs. consumer facing businesses? I read that one of your passions is the data economy. How do you describe the data economy and what are some of the ways it could transform B2C businesses? 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 your biggest piece of advice for anyone building businesses that you find yourself saying the most?

Our guest today is Sam Corcos, co-founder and CEO of Levels. Levels makes it easy for people to see how their diet is affecting both their health and their lifestyle in a quantifiable way by measuring biomarkers in real time. In previous episodes we've discussed tracking your sleep, your exercise. Levels is tracking your blood glucose so you can make better decisions about what you consume. This was a fascinating conversation about how to optimize what you eat and how wearables can help you understand your body better. Without further ado, here's Sam.And there you have it. It was a pleasure having Sam on the show. Highly recommend following him on Twitter @SamCorcos.Some of the questions I ask Sam.What was your initial attraction to entrepreneurship? You started a few companies that were in different categories. CarDash (cardash.com) and what made you interested in the human body?Why did you decide to focus on metabolic health and optimizing your health?Why didn't you want to be on the technical side for Levels?What was it like building a company with 5 co-founders? That might be the most amount of co-founders we've had on this show. What's that dynamic like?Why are we in a metabolic health crisis?Why did you decide to focus on continuous glucose monitoring? Is the change in glucose the best indicator to track what foods are best for you?What are some of the biggest myths when it comes to what a healthy diet actually is?It seems like theres conflicting information about nutrition makes them doubt their food choices. How does Levels help in this capacity?How did Levels come together?What's your approach to nutrition?How did you go about building the product?How did you seek customer validation?What's the most expensive piece to you product?When did you realize this is a consumer need?What was it like going through YC?What was your approach to fundraising?What were some of your biggest learnings during COVID?What were some of the most important habits that you've developed for productivity?How did you think about pricing your product?What's one thing you would change about venture capital?What's one book that inspired you personally, one book that inspired you professionally?What's the best piece of advice that you've received?

Our guest today is Ben Savage, Partner at Clocktower Technology Ventures. Ben and his fund focuses on investing in Fintech and financial services. As you could image, we're going to be talking about the consumer side to fintech. You'll also learn how his time working under Ray Dalio at Bridgewater shaped him as an investor, why digitally native financial services haven't taken off as fast as digitally native CPG brands, and opportunities in fractional ownership. Without further ado, here's Ben.Some of the questions I ask Ben:I'd love to first hear about your background since you've had a breadth of experiences as an investor. What was your attraction to finance and how did you get your start?You worked at Bridgewater Associates. On this program we always ask each guest what's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally and Principles has come up time and time again. What was it like working there first hand and what did working with Ray and his team teach you? Transparency you deliver for feedback. Pick your battlesReceive honest feedback for founders?How did Clocktower come together? Why the fintech focus?Why has it taken so long for consumer financial services to be adopted D2C models? Is it harder to obtain consumer trust?How are these consumer financial services able to build trust?What is the reason why AlipayHow do you think about this era of new investable assets? What's not currently investable that you think could be become investable in the future?What's the best new idea that you've heard - fractional ownership, technology is allowing us to trade into tradeable wealth.They say that the future of consumer is fintech. What do you think investors don't understand about fintech?How are you thinking about the current state of cryptocurrency?At a macro lends what makes fintech in Latin America interesting and one of your focuses?Why are the margins going upHow are you going to accelerate consumer adoption for banks?We talk about how every consumer tech company becomes a fintech company. Do you think investors are truly prepared for this?Are you also thinking about ways to make private markets more liquid?What was your biggest learning due to 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?What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?