Consumer VC: Venture Capital I B2C Startups I Commerce | Early-Stage Investing I Brands | Technology
Mike Gelb
Consumer VC takes a look into early-stage consumer investing and venture capital. If you are interested in learning about consumer trends, have a b2c business and interested in learning about the fundraising process at the early stage, you have come to the right place.Mike interviews some of the top venture capitalists in the world that focus on B2C and consumer type companies or have a deep track record investing in these categories such as marketplaces, SaaS, social, CPG and non-tech subscription.Mike also interviews founders that are building some of the most disruptive consumer facing companies in the world. The conversation usually includes the insight the founder discovered, fundraising strategy, and the pitch.This podcast also includes bonus episodes. Each bonus episode dives into a particular subject that might not have to due with the fundraise or venture capital, but still would be helpful to founders. For example, a bonus episode on brand strategy or how to construct a board of directors. All bonus episodes will be clearly labeled.For all episodes, please visit www.theconsumervc.com. For updates, you can follow @mikegelb on Twitter.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Oct 30, 2019 • 42min
Jay Kapoor (Launch Capital) - Persistence, Building Trust & Finding Founder-Market Fit
Jay is a Principal at Launch Capital, one of the pioneers of seed-stage investing firms. They often write the check to startups that they invest in. Some of their big consumer wins include Spotify and Snap.
Jay has worked at Launch since 2018 and also has experience working in corporate VC and Techstars. He's written some great articles and thought-provoking Twitter updates on venture capital and startups. You can follow him @jaykapoornyc and on Medium.
In this episode, you will learn the following -
1. Jay's background and how he became passionate about early investing? The challenges when it comes to conducting due diligence on consumer-facing businesses. A day in the life working with founders at Techstars.
2. How he approaches decision-making processes and establishing trust amongst founders in their decision-making abilities.
3. How investor attitudes towards D2C companies changed over the past few years? How successful founders are adapting to increasing online marketing customer acquisition costs and continue to scale?
4. What are some of the reasons why a company in an accelerator is not able to raise a seed round or progress to the next phase of fundraising? A specific metric that is insightful that other investors might gloss over when evaluating startups?
5. One company that he either invested in or worked with that he's proud of? One company that he wished he invested in?
A book that has impacted Jay both professionally and personally is Daniel Pink's "To Sell Is Human".
Oct 22, 2019 • 5min
0. Why The Consumer VC
This is an introductory episode explaining what will be covered and the goals for this podcast "The Consumer VC". For this episode, I recruited my brother Rob Gelb to interview yours truly about the podcast, the range of topics I hope to cover in the coming interview episodes in this podcast. For more information about this podcast, please check out our site or follow on Twitter.
