Consumer VC

Thank you Erin Grant for pitching this as an episode idea and making it happen. This episode is all about storytelling. What does a good story need, what are the mechanics, and how to build a compelling brand through the power of storytelling. To tackle this topic, I’m joined by Brentos Fernandez, Head of Creative at Listen Ventures and Jeff Cantalupo who is the founder and General Partner at Listen Ventures. Listen Ventures. Backs and builds the brands of tomorrow Including Calm, Kiwi Co, Factor, Catch Co, I/D, & Slumberkins. Without further ado, here they are. How do you craft a good story? What are the elements? Is there a part to storytelling that brands or people typically miss? Point of view When you think of aspiring, young brands, what do they tend to do right vs. the incumbents?How are they able to stand out from the rest of their peers with storytelling? How do you analyze brands that have a face to the brand vs. brands that don’t? How do you shape the persona of the brand? When you invest and consult with brands, what is usually missing that you can help with the story? Story being built out of human need Story Emotional connection - Post-brand Organic growth stories How do you define community? How have brands leveraged their authentic story for growth? What’s an example of an inauthentic story? After a brand gets acquired, what must incumbents do in order for keep that brand authenticity alive? In this era where you don’t have the growth arbitrage channels do you need to have a celebrity part of the brand in order to help tell that story and be seen? When founders pitch to you, what do they usually do wrong when they are telling a story? Brand - sum of all the experiences What does brand mean to you? What’s one thing you would change about the perception of storytelling and/or branding? What’s one book that inspired each of you personally and professionally? What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?

Thank you Radha Kapoor for the introduction to Michele Romanow, co-founder and CEO of Clearco. Clearco offers fast affordable funding for ecommerce companies to fund your inventory or marketing needs. Michele is a serial entrepreneur and also one of the dragon’s on Canada’s Dragon’s Den. We discuss what’s misunderstood about scaling ecommerce companies, when venture capital makes sense vs. revenue based financing, her aha moment on Dragon’s Den that led to founding ClearCo and much more. Without further ado, here’s Michele. You’ve been an entrepreneur your whole career. What was the origin story behind Clearco? How did you and Andrew start Clearco? What was your first test if this new finance model could work? How did you think about scale for and what was the early diligence process like when trying to work out if you’re going to finance these companies?What are the requirements? How have those requirements evolved? What were some of your learnings as you were growing Clearco that was most surprising? How did you approach raising capital from VCs? What was their initial response?Did you have any VCs that thought what you were doing was a conflict to venture capital? How do you work together with venture capital? There are no more Facebook arbitrage opportunities, some consumer VCs have shifted to investing in eCommerce infrastructure where the customer are brands, What’s your assessment of the current landscape within DNVBs when it comes to growth and financing options?We say on the podcast a lot - it’s easy than ever to build a company, harder than ever to build a brand. What’s key for brands to be able to get past the noise and become large sustainable companies? What makes a brand compelling to you to invest in (either with Clearco or as an angel/investor on Dragon’s Den)? ClearCo probably sees a lot of DTC metrics from 1000s of companies.Which are the best measures of success? Which metrics are most misunderstood? If she could only pick 3 metrics to understand health/growth of a brand — which 3 would she pick? How do you also think about the competitive landscape now for the alternative capital financing that you pioneered? What are some of the other products you offer founders? I know the focus is eCommerce businesses, but do you also think about helping DNVBs as they head into retail?How do you think about launching new products at Clearco? Tell you where you can improve in your business? If you build a killer product people will come Recently, Andrew stepped back and became Executive Chairman, you became the CEO from President. What was the reason for the change? How do you think about launching new products at Clearco? 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 that you have for founders?

Our guest today is McKeever Conwell II or as he’s most well known Mac the VC, Founder and managing partner of Rarebreed Ventures. RareBreed Ventures is a pre-seed fund that invests in exceptional founders primarily outside of large tech ecosystems, earlier than everyone else. We discuss how Mac built relationships on Twitter with investors and founders and was able to raise a VC fund all on Twitter, his due diligence process and how he thinks about customer acquisition. What led you to becoming an entrepreneur? Why investing? Why did you decide to become a VC and start a fund? How were you able to leverage Twitter to become an investor?What was your strategy? I know you invest in both consumer and enterprise. What makes consumer investing hard? Where are you seeing the opportunity within consumer? How do you approach sourcing and finding diamonds in the rough? What's you diligence process? How do you validate how large a problem the entrepreneur is solving?Rebundled What's the most common reason why you passed? What are some of your favorite accelerators that are still under the radar? Do you believe in pattern recognition is important when it comes to investing? What is a day in the life of an emerging manager? What have founders needed the most help from? What motivates you everyday? 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?Why should white guys have all the fun? What's one piece of advice that you have for founders? What's the best piece of advice that you've received?

Our guest today is Michael Ronen, co-founder and President of Branded. Branded acquires and partners with top performing Amazon sellers. So as you can imagine, we’re going to be talking about creating brands on Amazon. Previously, Michael was one of the Managing Partner’s at SoftBank Investment Partner’s historic Vision Fund 1. We discuss the opportunity within eCommerce while at SoftBank vs. Branded, building brands on Amazon vs. off Amazon. What was your initial attraction to invest in early and growth-stage companies? How did you end up at Softbank? Why did you leave Softbank to start Branded? What was your initial attraction to the Amazon ecosystem? Was there anything you thought some of the earlier aggregators were missing that lead you to want to jump in? What are synergies amongst your portfolio? What categories are attractive? What’s the goal of a brand? What’s a successful revenue goal? Modern foreign thinking brand focused on personal care Brands that have patent or design - how is Amazon as a partner? One company is building an incredible infrastructure - AWS You have the intent to buy How do you build a brand based off of a listing? How do you build a brand on Amazon where you are just another listing? What’s the strategy at Branded? How do you think about differentiation from others? Why the focus on consumables? How do you think about synergy amongst your brands? How did you go about building your team? What’s your approach to retaining founders? What was your approach to fundraising? How many companies do you look to buy? How do you think about the best categories? Do you get nervous about Amazon private labels? How is Amazon a great partner? What are your criteria for acquisition? What are the advantages of acquiring Amazon brands vs. Shopify / DTC brands? Does there have to be a retail / brick-and-mortar strategy in order for you to be interested in the brand? What’s one book that inspired you personally? One book that inspired you professionally? Lea Coca - CEO of Chrysler - Autobiography Swim with the sharks without being alive - Harvey MacKay “Play Nice But Win” - Michael Dell What’s one piece of advice for founders?

So this was our first LIVE episode, which we recorded at Cosmic Coffee & Beer Garden in Austin, TX during SXSW. To everyone who came out and was there in the flesh, thank you thank you thank you and a special thanks to Marc Nathan for organizing the event as it was a ton of fun. I chatted with Jason Karp, Founder of Hu Kitchen, Hu Chocolate and CEO of HumanCo. HumanCo is a holding company that’s invested in healthy living. We’re going to learn more about their brands Snow Days, Against the grain and Cosmic Bliss. We discuss the rebrand of Coconut Bliss to Cosmic Bliss and question if there is a current bifurcation within the better for you movement. Here are some of the questions I ask him: How has your health journey shaped your professional journey? Did you have experience in the CPG space before? Was the goal always to start a chocolate company and eventually create other products? Why did you sell Hu to Mondelez? What is HumanCo? When you think about introducing new products at HumanCo, what is your value system within better-for-you? Your products, both at Hu and now HumanCo, are premium-priced. Can you talk about the pros/cons of premium pricing and why you believe people are willing to pay more? A couple of years ago you acquired Coconut Bliss, which was a plant-based ice cream company. You recently decided to introduce dairy ice cream and rebrand Coconut Bliss to Cosmic Bliss. What was the thinking behind that decision? What was the reaction? Do you think there is a divide or polarization within BFY? As we take a step back and look at the marketing/branding within better-for-you products overall, what marketing resonates with you and marketing that you don’t like? What’s your approach? It seems like the term “plant-based” is everywhere within the better-for-you space (it certainly was all over Expo West). Do you think the term has lost its meaning? What are your thoughts about adding genetically modified ingredients to food to make it sustainable? Do you consider lab-grown meat genetically modified? What’s one part of the better-for-you movement that’s most misunderstood? What’s one piece of advice that you have for founders in this current climate?

Our guest today is Jackie Fast, Managing Partner at Sandbox Studios VC. Sandbox Studios is a 'next-generation' venture capital firm which addresses the challenge of funding and collaboration expertise for celebrity-owned products. She’s also well known for founding the agency Slingshot Sponsorship which she started from her bedroom with 2k pounds and a laptop to a multi-million-dollar global powerhouse. On this episode we discuss when it makes sense for a company / founder to partner with a celebrity, the intersection of talent and entrepreneurship especially when it comes to consumer brands. Some of the questions I ask Jackie:

Our guests today are Greer Terrler and Cara Kaufman, founders of Simple Food Ventures. Simple Food Ventures is an early stage venture firm that invests in the future of healthy foods and products. We discuss how they both began investing in better for you products, do they only invest in better for the planet or better for you, and what makes a product work on shelf. Here are some of the questions I ask them: What was your attraction to the food and beverage industry?Why did you and how did you both transition into venture capital? What stage is a company usually have to be at in order for you to be initially interested? Founder and the roadmap How did Simple Food Ventures come together? What do you see as the opportunity within food and beverage? Does a product need to be able to get on shelf / in retail for you to peak your interest? Does a product need to be differentiated in order for you both to get excited? Walk me through how you conduct due diligence. How do you source and meet founders? What’s one part of the better-for-you movement that you think is a contrarian take / not as obvious? What’s one thing you would change about venture capital? What’s one book that inspired each of you personally and a book that inspired each of you professionally? What’s one piece of advice that you have for founders?

Our guest is Ksenia Yudina, the Founder and CEO of UNest, the first mobile app that makes it easier than ever for parents to open a simple and affordable tax-advantaged investment account for their kids. We talk about how she immegrated to the U.S., transitioning careers from real estate to finance and where she realized alot of new parents are very motivated to invest in their parents, but don’t kow where to go. Without further ado, here she is. What was it like moving to the United States at 18? What was your first American experience like? How did you make your way to California? How did you become attracted to finance? What was the insight that led to the founding of UNest? Went to alot of networking events First round of capital - Seed round FB Groups that have kids What is the mission? What’s the monetization model? How did you approach getting early adopters excited about UNest? You just raised $26 million, what has been your customer acquitition strategy? How are you looking to scale? What’s the incentive to stay with UNest long term? How did you go about building a technical team? What was the next step? When did you raise investment?What was the biggest reason why investors believed in the product?What was the biggest reason why investors passed? What’s one thing you would change about fundraising? What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?From Zero to OneHard Things About Hard ThingsThe Most Important Thing What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?

Our guest today is Eric Kinariwala, founder and CEO of Capsule. Capsule is the pharmacy that delivers your prescriptions, the same day, for free. We discuss the pharmacy visit that led to his aha moment of founding Capsule, his approach to integrating technology with picking up your prescriptions, and how he approached expansion and scale. Here are some of the questions I ask Eric: You started your career as an investor. Was your goal always to become an entrepreneur. Why did you decide to start Capsule? How did you figure out this was a service other people might also like to have? Did you do any market research?Why was it so badWhat’s the role of the pharmacist?How could you go solve the problemThe first thing was to build a pharmacy?How do you deliver the highest quality experience?Why did doctors, consumers love it at the early days? When you were thinking of starting this business, what were the first steps and the first questions you had to ask to see if this was viable? Did you have to first establish relationships with the doctors so they can send the prescription to you all, what was the process from sending in a note to delivering the medication? Winning together Everybody needs some looking after sometimes How were you able to sell prescriptions online? Was there any regulations you had to jump through? What were some of your early challenges? What were specific medications you first looked at when it came to selling? How did you think about your wedge into the market? What was your process of raising capital?What was the biggest reason why an investor passed? What was the process of finding drivers and building out the delivery business? How do you think about the future of DTC healthcare? How did you approach customer acquisition in the early days? You started in New York, how do you approach market expansion? What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?On the wings of eagles - Ross PerotThe checklist manifesto What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?

My guest today is Mike Smerklo, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Next Coast Ventures and author of Mr. Monkey and Me. Next Coast is investing in a new generation of entrepreneurs building disruptive companies in big markets. We discuss why Mike invests in consumer when his operational experience is in enterprise as well consumer trends he’s passionate about, How he organized a search fund and purchased a company and ran it, and his SHAPE formula and how entrepreneurs could think about mental toughness. Here are the questions I ask him: What was it like being recruited by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz at Opsware? How did you end up purchasing ServiceSource? Why did you? So you have all this software and enterprise experience, when and why did you become interested in consumer? How did Next Coast Ventures start? I know you believe that in order to win today you have to build a community over relying on social media. What does community mean to you? What brands are building amazing communities that should serve as case studies? Do you need to stand for something to win in consumer? What is the future of retail in your mind? What are some of your investment themes? What has been your reaction to the pandemic as you think about new consumer behaviors and opportunities? What’s your diligence process? What’s some of the most common mistake you see entrepreneurs make? Would love to learn about your SHAPE formula and how do you think about mental toughness for entrepreneurs? What’s one thing you would change about VC? What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?