Sarah Kunst (Cleo Capital) - The Future of Work, Complicated Consumer and How to Have a Diverse Portfolio

Thank you Soraya Darabi for the intro to today's guest Sarah Kunst, managing director of Cleo Capital. Cleo Capital is an an early stage VC fund focused on the preseed & seed stages. Some of their investments include 42 Birds, Athena and Lovewellness. She's also a contributing editor at Marie Claire Magazine and previously served as a senior advisor to Bumble.

A couple of book that Sarah recommends is Attached by Amir Levine and Daring Greatly by Brene Brown.

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You can follow her on Twitter @sarahkunst. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

In this episode we discuss -

1. What initially attracted her to venture capital and investing in consumer facing companies in particular? How did Cleo Capital come together? Her diligence process. Is it harder to find conviction when meeting founders online? How do you think about the early stage landscape during these times? Her thoughts around raising a seed fund vs. series A during COVID.
2. Her advice for companies in secondary and tertiary markets. Her thoughts around the warm introduction. Consumer trends that you are excited about and maybe leaned more during COVID What's one thing that she would change when it came to venture capital?
3. Her most recent investment and what makes you excited about it? One piece of advice for founders?