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

Our guest today is Ben Jones, CEO of Haus Labs by Lady Gaga. Haus Labs by Lady Gaga is Lady Gaga’s clean artistry makeup brand powered by innovation.

Here's some of the questions I ask:

1. How did you meet Lady Gaga and what was your first impression? and can you tell me about the founding story of what was originally Haus Laboratories? What was the reason she wanted to start a makeup brand?
2. Lady Gaga is one of the busiest celebrities in the world, touring the world, acting, and engaging in a number of activities. How does she engage and interact with the brand and team? What role does she play in the company?
3. There have been so many celebrity beauty launches in the last few years. Some may argue that the consumer could be a bit fatigued and incredulous of these types of brands. How does Haus Labs break the mold and cut through the celebrity brand launch noise?
4. Why did you decide to launch originally on Amazon? Why wasn’t that successful, what did you learn? Do you think you can build a brand on Amazon? Haus Labs originally decided to launch with Amazon and did not achieve the growth and success originally planned. This was a bold move at the time. (FYI Amazon is a great place to leverage brand awareness and scale but not the best to create it or brand build).
5. Do you thnk you’re original thesis about beauty correct?
6. Haus Labs quickly pivoted distribution to Sephora (now almost in 500 doors) and executed a full brand and product relaunch.
7. What did you learn from Sephora?
8. What are the lessons learned since the original launch and what is the future for Haus Labs 2.0?
9. Why did you change the name from Haus Laboratories to Haus Labs by Lady Gaga.
10. Why did you rebrand to be “clean”? What does that mean to you?
11. What are the challenges building an ecommerce brand?
12. Makeup has seen a major resurgence post Covid. How do you see the beauty industry continue to evolve? What trends and categories are most exciting to you?
13. Building community is so crucial to creating a successful beauty brand. How does Haus Labs leverage Lady Gaga’s existing community to drive product sales and build strong consumer loyalty in this category?
14. In a very challenging DTC environment, how is the company thinking about omni-channel growth? What is the role of DTC, if any, vs wholesale (Sephora, etc)?
15. What changed in their product or marketing as a result of learning from their users
16. What tech do they experiment with as a brand?
17. What are their role models when it comes to product and customer experience?
18. What’s one book that’s inspired you personally and a book that has inspired you professionally?
    1. Shoe Dog
    2. Save the Cat - storytelling
19. What’s one piece of advice for founders?
    1. Don’t underestimate experience and pattern recognition

Our guest today is Katlin Smith, founder and CEO of Simple Mills. Simple Mills are Clean, nutritious foods for a better life - it’s that simple. I’m a big fan of their products. We discuss the insight and inspiration behind founding Simple Mills, her approach to raising capital and picking the right investors, how consumer preferences have evolved since she first got started, her approach to nutrition and thinking about better-for-you products in general.

Some of the questions I ask:

1. What was the inspiration behind starting Simple Mills?
2. You built a large company without raising too much outside capital. What was your strategy and for someone starting a consumer brand today, what suggestions would you give them?
3. You’ve been able to grow your company to incredible heights. How have you thought about the shift in the number of brands that are focused on better-for-you products and people that have dietary restrictitions or sensitivities?
4. How has Simple Mills evolved to focus not just on people’s health, but also the planet’s health?
5. How has consumer preference evolved since you started?
6. How Simple Mills has evolved not just people’s health, but also planet’s health?
   1. How do you think about your own process for creating your products and what are some of the changes you’ve had to make?
   2. Conscious capitalism
   3. How do you think about ingredient choice and sustainability?
   4. How has your mission evolved?
7. As a consumer, how have your preferences changed when eating or deciding new products to try?
8. With conventional and natural grocery blurring, how do you approach your retail strategy?
9. There are lots of narratives when it comes to nutrition and what is and what isn’t good for you. What’s one aspect that you think might be overlooked or misunderstood that’s your belief?
10. What were some lessons that you learned throughout your journey in the tough moments?
11. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that has inspired you professionally?
    1. All we can save - truth, courage
    2. The Art of Possibility
12. What’s one piece of advice for founders?
13. What’s the best piece of advice that you received?

Our guest today is Eze Vidra, Managing Partner of Remagine Ventures. Remagine, focuses on a cluster of these interconnected sectors, specifically media, entertainment, sports, commerce and data. We discuss consumer tech investing in Israel, VR & AR, and different use cases when it comes to the metaverse. Without further ado, here’s Eze.

We discuss:

1. I know you’re very focused on Israel. Why has Israel thrived as an entrepreneurship center?
2. Since it is a small market, how do companies approach expansion? Do you see it more spreading into europe or U.S. or east?
3. What was your initial attraction to technology and entrepreneurship?
4. At what point did you become a venture capitalist and why did you no longer want to be an operator?
5. Why did you leave Google Ventures to start Reimagine?
6. Walk me through your due diligence process.
   1. How do you evaluate opportunities?
   2. Do you think of your selves more thematic or opportunistic?
7. What are some of the areas/categories that get you excited?
8. What are the biggest opportunities that are overlooked?
9. What is the current state of the creator economy?

Our guest today is Abe Shafi, co-founder and CEO of IRL. IRL is Your group messaging app where you can Chat, create polls, post photos, and coordinate plans with your friends. We discuss: The founding story of IRL and the original thesis, growth, how they had to pivot their strategy during COVID, the approach to fundraising and where the company is currently at. Without further ado, here’s Abe.

We discuss:

1. Why entrepreneurship?
2. Why did you want to create a consumer company?
3. What was the insight that led you to found IRL?
4. What were people using at the time?
5. What was the pain point you were initially trying to solve?
6. What was your approach to UI and organizing communities on your product?
7. How did you approach growth? What did success look like/what did you want a user to accomplish when they visited IRL?
8. During COVID, how did you have to pivot?
9. Despite the pivot, why do you think you became a unicorn in 2021 and raise money from Softbank?
10. What happened from that moment to now where you had to lay off 25% of your staff?
11. What’s this change in market conditions been like for your company?
12. With all of these transitions, what does community mean to you?
13. How do you build community and what’s different between a community and an audience?
14. Seems like community has become one of the main themes of Web3. How do you position IRL in a Web3 world that has this promise for different revenue streams for creators?
15. What is the future of rented platforms i.e. social media channels and channels you own i.e. email? Will these come together? How do you think about your own position at IRL?
16. How do you think about this transition from Web2 to Web3?
17. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Thích Nhất Hạnh
       1. No such thing as stability
    2. Hard Things About Things
    3. Netflix “No Rules
18. The biggest piece of advice?

Our guest today is Ashleigh Hinde, Founder and CEO of Waldo. Waldo makes daily contact lenses without the hassle or price tag. We discuss how she’s building a brand with a product that you can’t see, how she approaches e-commerce and retail, and why she founded a contact lens company in the first place.

Some of the questions I ask:

1. What was the insight or pain point you went through that led you to founding Waldo?
2. Did you always want to be an entrepreneur?
3. How much do contacts usually sell for? How did you think about pricing strategy?
4. How did you approach your supply chain/manufacturing?
5. On the price point / margin side
6. Efficient customer acquisition
7. So you think about sustainability and
8. It seems similar to what you are doing in contact lenses - making them more affordable, building a digitally native brand - it sounds similar to what Warby Parker did with eye glasses. What are some of the differences selling contacts vs. glasses?
9. How important is having buy-in from eye doctors for customer acquisition? Does their recommendation have a big effect on the customer on which contacts they should buy from? How do you approach partnerships?
10. How did you come to strike a big partnership with Walmart? Why?
11. What does the customer journey look like?
12. How do you build a brand with a product that you can’t see?
13. What was the geographical distribution strategy? Why did you start in the UK then come to the US and how do you think about the contact lens market from a global perspective?
14. How do you think about impact?
15. How do you think you’ve grown since founding Waldo?
16. What is the stickiness part of your business or how do you think about competitive advantages
17. How did you approach fundraising? What was the biggest reason why an investor would pass or make the investment? What was the bet?
18. What is one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Professionally: The Hard Things About Hard Things
    2. Personally: Designing Your Life
19. What’s the best piece of advice for founders?

Our guest today is Mike Hirshland, co-founder of Resolute Ventures. Resolute Ventures is a lead seed and “pre-seed” investor focused on backing and connecting a community of Founders who share an entrepreneurial spirit and energy. Some of their investments include Bark Box, Clutter, and Lumen. We discuss what pre-seed and seed investing is today, the opportunity within Web3, and how he builds conviction within founders. Without further ado, here’s Mike.

Some of the questions I ask

1. How did you enter venture capital?
2. What were some of the learnings from that
3. How did Resolute come together?
4. What got you interested in the seed stage?
   1. How do you describe seed today?
   2. 10 financing in a year
5. How do you think about risk in this market?
6. Henrik Werdelin of BARK recently told Mike his "superpower is authenticity" which is what founders need now. What does that mean? Why is authenticity so important?
7. One of your big themes is community. What’s your approach to building community, why is it so important and why did you create the Resolute DAO?
8. How do you think about the opportunity within Web3? What are use cases that get you excited?
9. Emotionally support
10. Can we imagine a world where solving a problem
11. What parts of Web3 is investible?
12. How do you think about the current market/landscape?
13. What’s you diligence process?
14. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
15. What’s one book that inspired you professionally and one book that inspired you personally?
    1. As It Is

Our guest today is Mike Senackerib, CEO of Dewey’s Bakery. Dewey’s Bakery was founded in 1930 in Winston-Salem and was famous regionally for their baked goods. Fairly recently they opened a CPG line with lots of treats. Their cookies are incredibly delicious, not just saying that because Mike came on the show. We discuss the history of Dewey’s, why they decided to start a CPG line, approach to baking and manufacturing, brand positioning and how Mike became the CEO.

Some of the questions I ask –

1. Why did a bake shop decide to create a CPG brand? What’s the history of Dewey’s?
2. Why did you decide to join Dewey’s and let your brand be acquired by the company?
3. What did you think was missing within the cookie and biscuits category?
4. What are some of the challenges taking a bake shop and building out a line of packaged goods products?
5. What are some of the benefits being vertically intergrated? Were you able to not have as much disruption due to the supply chain crunch?
6. How do you also think about the positioning of Dewey’s and sales channels? Given Walmart and Target are featuring more premium products, do you see yourselves as a brand for conventional grocery?
7. There’s been lots of better for you products within cookies and the dessert/snack space. How do you think about what consumers want in a modern cookie company?
8. What did you learn from COVID?
9. What has been your biggest lessons learned about ecommerce?
10. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
11. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?

Our guest today is Mike Mayer, Co-CEO of Windmill. Windmill is the smart, quiet AC unit that looks nice. As you can imagine, we discuss the wonderful world of air conditioning. How he co-founded Windmill with his brother if he had any intention of getting into the air condition business, his approach to getting Windmill off the ground, fundraising, new revenue streams, and releasing new products.

Some of the questions I ask:

1. Did you always want to be an entrepreneur and start a business with your brother?
2. Competing clothing brand called Peaches
3. What was the insight that led you to founding Windmill?
4. How did you build out your supply chain?
5. How do you approach industrial and brand design?
6. What are some of the regulations?
7. Talk about all your different revenue streams?
8. Why do seasonal business
9. How did you think about your sales channels? Why did you do retail out the gate, how did you get into retail as your first channel?
10. What was the process of convincing investors?
11. How have you grown since founding Windmill?
12. Changes in COVID
13. We saw with high AOV products the repeat purchase rate isn’t very high. How did you think about additional products you could sell or even being able to build a subscription business?
    1. How do you use software coupled with the physical product?
14. What’s one thing you would change about fundraising?
15. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Unbroken

Our guest today is Matt Gibson, co-founder and CEO of New Culture. New Culture makes animal-free dairy products that stretch, melt, and taste like the real deal through fermentation. We’re going to discuss why he made animal free cheese, what makes cheese cheese, how it’s different to other cheese alternatives, and his go to market strategy, which I think is quite unique.

Some of the questions I ask him:

1. What inspired you to want to make animal-free cheese?
2. You had a passion for food did you come from the food industry?
3. What is Microbial fermentation?
4. Did you decide to use a co-packer or vertically integrate? Why?
5. What was your process for raising money?
6. Why did you have to raise twice before launching?
7. What have been some of the challenges in bringing New Culture to market? You’re set to launch in 2024?
8. What’s your launch/distribution plan? Will you hit retail from the beginning? Will you only do ecommerce?
9. How do you describe your ideal customer?
10. What is the future of cheese?
11. Within food tech, we’ve talked and debated on this show about better for you vs. better for the environment and how some of the animal meat-alternative products are better for the environment, but aren’t exactly better for you. How do you think about this at New Culture?
12. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Our guest today is Noah Gray, co-founder CEO of Onda. Onda is a sparkling tequila brand famously co-founded by Shay Mitchell. We discuss how Onda came to be, how Shay became involved, the intersection of celebrity and consumer, his fundraising and retail strategy. Without further ado, here’s Noah.

I ask him:

1. How did you end up in the beverage space? What attracted you to build an RTD tequila brand?
2. Was the plan to always offer a product with zero sugar/carbs? Was it your consumer asking or was the market already going that way and you felt it necessary to offer a SKU that offered zero sugar/carb
3. Drinking to enhance
4. What was the insight that led you to founding Onda? What was missing from the market? How did Shay Mitchell become involved?
5. Many celebrities and athletes are wanting to be associated with a consumer product, ranging from beverage to cosmetics. What has Shay done for the brand aside from her social media responsibilities?
6. What’s your advice for founders who might partner with talent?
7. How did you think about distribution?
8. When did you think Onda started to resonate with consumers?
9. What was your approach to raising capital?
10. Of course, the category continues to grow and with low barriers to entry, there are a lot of players. Seems like Onda has raised considerably more capital than many of the other brands. How is that money being put to use? Are you simply buying distribution/customers or how does that convert to velocity?
11. What was the most non-obvious thing you’ve learned since founding Onda?
12. Vice clauses
13. Better-for-you
14. What do you think about the competitive landscape? How do you think about competition?
15. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that has inspired you professionally?
    1. Professionally: Mission in a Bottle - Seth and Barry
    2. Personally: Paul Anderson - Liquorice pizza
16. What’s one piece of advice for entrepreneurs?

Our guest today is Cristina Nuñez, Co-founder and General Partner of True Beauty Ventures. Some of their investments include Maude, Crown Affair, and K18. Today’s episode focuses on how to invest and build a beauty and personal care brand. Without further ado, here’s Cristina.

Some of the questions I ask her:

1. Why start a fund only focused on beauty and personal care?
2. What do you look for? Does a company have to be omnichannel from day 1 in order for you to be interested? How do you think about this intersection of influencer x brand
3. What makes great packaging great that pops in retail?
4. What’s amazing about beauty and personal care products from an investor's perspective?
5. How do you make DTC work as a beauty and personal care?
6. What are some of the trends that you get excited by?
7. How do you think about added value?
8. What’s the initial check size do you underwrite?
9. What does differentiated distribution mean to you?
10. What does product innovation mean to you? Does the product need to have product innovation in order for you to invest?
11. What’s the case for having a vertically focused fund? What’s the long term goal?
12. What do generalist/non-vertically exclusive funds tend to not understand about your category?
    1. Realized that people take care of themselves
13. What has worked in the beauty and what doesn’t work in beauty?
14. What has to be right in order for you to invest?
15. Why a concentrated portfolio?
16. What’s one thing you would change about VC?
17. What’s one book that inspired you professionally and one book that inspired you personally?
18. What’s one piece of advice for founders?

1. Our guest today is Chuck Newhall, who is one of the founders of New Enterprise Associates or also known as NEA. NEA is one the largest and most renowned venture capital firms in the world. The companies he financed have over $400 billion in revenues today. He’s also a Vietnam War veteran and earned many combat decorations including the purple heart and is an American hero. 
2. Chuck released his latest book “Dare Disturb the Universe, a memoir on venture capital” which is an amazing story about the history of investing in innovation and that gets to the core about what it is and it’s role in the economy.

Some of the questions we discuss:

1. 1. What is the purpose of venture capital and what are its origins?2. When does it make sense to bring in a seasoned CEO vs. a CEO entrepreneur?Recruiting Sidgemore forLoss money for a period of time3. What attracted you to venture capital?
2. 4. Why did you want to be a financier rather than an entrepreneur?
3. 5. What makes a great venture capitalist? What qualities do you need?
4. 6. How did the partnership come together? How did NEA raise your first fund, what was the size of your first fund?
5. 7. What are your rules of fundraising?
6. 8. What is your approach to portfolio management?
7. 9. You had the line that NEA and Kleiner Perkins could not be more different firms. What did you mean by that?10. How do you think about focus when you are multi-stage?
   1. What makes a great VC firm and what tends to be their downfall?
   2. How do you think about innovation vs. sustainability? Most of the tech companies for example that go public aren’t profitable. Uber and Lyft for example that have been
   3. How do you think about founder uniqueness?
   4. You mention in the book how venture capital is different to other forms of financing. What regulations or legal systems would you change?
   5. What has been the biggest changes / shifts in venture capital since you started?

Our guest today is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures. New Stack's mission is to invest in the Outsiders. Nick is also the host of The Full Ratchet. We discuss why he’s bearish about Web 3 short term, how he thinks about deploying capital in this current market and how he thinks about long-term sustainability of a company when he invests. Without further ado, here’s Nick.

Some of the questions I ask:

1. You’re long Web 3, but during the short term you aren’t investing in it. Mind explaining your reasoning?
2. How have you seen valuations change in companies that are outside silicon valley? Is it as drastic?
   1. What’s still overlooked when it comes to ecosystems outside the bay?
3. How do you view this investing period? How do you think about deploying capital currently? Has this environment changed how you invest?
4. How do you think about company sustainability, profitability vs. growth?
5. What about consumer technology do you focus on in today’s environment?
6. Walk us through your diligence process.
7. What are the must-haves from a founding team?
8. What’s your biggest piece of advice for new fund managers?
9. Recently raised over $40 million for your latest fund. Why that amount specifically?
10. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
11. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that’s inspired you professionally?
    1. Can’t Hurt Me by David Gogans
    2. Who is Michael Ovitz?
12. What’s one piece of advice for founders?

Thank you Oscar Adelman for the introduction to our guest today, Sita Chantramonklasri, Founding Partner at Siam Capital. Siam Capital is in search of innovation that betters people and the planet. We discuss how Sita got into investing, what it was like raising a fund for the first time, what investing in sustainability really means, and her underwriting guidelines.

Some of the questions I ask Sita:

1. Tell me about your journey into venture and your interest in investing
2. Innovation and capital
3. Why did you decide to raise your own fund?
4. What was it like raising a fund for the first time? Was it hard raising a single GP fund as a woman?
5. What did you think was missing from the market of venture capital?
6. What’s your thesis? What is the fund’s mandate?
7. What does sustainability and ESG mean to you?
8. Where do you see the opportunities in better for the planet and better for you?
9. Are you more focused on investing in physical products vs. software?
10. How do you also think about the future of your fund? Do you want to be a single GP always or do you want to grow into a larger fund?
11. What’s the difference between Siam and an impact fund?
12. How do you think about this term conscious consumer?
13. What are your guidelines of better for the planet vs better for you? (repetitive?)
14. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital? (repetitive?)
15. What do you look for in founders?* (added)
16. What advice would you give emerging managers/folks looking to raise a fund? (added)
17. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?

• Educated by Tara Westover
• Hidden Valley Road
• Noise By Daniel Kayman
• Think Again by Adam Grant

Our guest today is Clément Pointillart, Executive Director at Verlinvest. Verlinvest is an international, evergreen investment company with over €2bn assets under management backed by families who have together built some of the world’s largest consumer brands.Their portfolio includes Oatly, Who Gives a Crap, Vita Coco and Hint. Clement leads the Verlinvest US office and am part of the Consumer Products and Retail practice. We discuss how he examines brand equity, if product differentiation really matters, and how he thinks about grocery distribution strategy. Without further ado, here’s Clement.

1. What attracted you to consumer investing?
2. How did you end up joining Verlinvest?
3. How do you evaluate if a company has brand equity? And how do you spot and predict a consumer trend early?
4. Product differentiation
5. Only long-lasting
6. How do you analyze product differentiation? Does it matter?
7. How do you think about distribution? Even though conventional grocery is introducing organic/better for you options, does it make sense for all better for you products to go into conventional grocery?
8. What are categories that you’re particularly excited about?
9. What are signs that a premium product could achieve mass adoption?
10. How do you analyze price for better-for-you products and if they are priced properly?
11. How should a brand focus on international expansion?
12. Mission that is clear, authentic, and bring in status quo
13. When does it make sense to
14. What does a successful outcome look like to you?
15. Does a brand have to have a mission in order for you to be interested?
16. People spending more time at home, purchasing an e-bike
17. What are the differences between VC and growth equity investing?
18. What’s one thing you would change about growth investing?

Our guest today is Jonathan Wolfson, who is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Brainiac Foods. Brainiac Foods produces brain-boosting snacks with the nutrients young minds need. We discuss his framework for founding a company and the origin story of Brainiac and what he thought was missing from the market and his approach to building product and new SKUs. Without further ado, here’s Jonathan.

And there you have it. I hope you all enjoyed that.

1. Before founding Brainiac, you’ve been a very successful serial entrepreneur. What’s your framework from brainstorming ideas to committing to found a new company?
2. Why did you decide to found Brainiac?
3. Very science-led that’s focused on what the brain is made of
4. Would you allow your kid?
5. Could they do adulting? Because
6. Supply chain challenges have been pretty enormous
7. What nutrients is the brain made of that are different to the rest of the body? How do you think about nutrition?
8. There’s been lots of innovation within food to make snacks and meals healthier. What do you think was missing from the market?
9. What were the first steps you took when founding Brainiac?
10. What age demographic are you targeting and where brain food might be the most beneficial?
11. How did you conduct market feedback since this seems like a new category requiring education for the consumer (parent)?
12. What are the benefits of brain nutrition-oriented food?
13. How did you approach your sales channel mix from the beginning? Did you start out as digitally native and then decide to move into retail?
14. How do you approach new SKU development and product expansion?
15. What was it like raising from VCs? What was their response?
    1. Investing in CPG products tends to be out of style with VCs. What do you think made Brainiac so interesting as a company?
16. How do you think about competitive advantages for Brainiac vs new entrants?
17. What’s so far been the biggest challenge when founding Brainiac?
18. You’ve been successful both as a B2C founder and a B2B founder. What are some of the challenges when founding a B2C company?
19. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that has inspired you professionally?
    1. Free Solo
    2. Notebook and plan everything to a notebook
20. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
21. What’s one piece of advice for founders?

Thank you Oksana Stowe for the introduction to our guest today, Susan Lin. Susan is a Partner at Felix Capital. Felix Capital is one of the premier consumer investors based in the UK. Some of their investments include Goop, Oatly, Peloton, Seller X. We discuss what consumer-driven means and how that’s even spilled over to B2B, difference when scaling a european company vs. U.S., what are real competitive advantages for companies, and why Felix recently raised $600 million

1. What was your attraction to entrepreneurship and venture capital?
2. How do you think about investing in consumer-driven companies today?
3. What do you think about
4. How do you spend your time? Do you have a thesis?
5. Congratulations on raising $600m! We’ve seen this trend in consumer that as funds get larger and larger, investing in consumer brands becomes less of a focus. Will this be the case with Felix?
6. Why did you decide to join Felix Capital?
7. What’s different about the European venture ecosystem vs. U.S.?
8. What are your thoughts on the fundraising market of today?
9. Where are some of the trends and opportunities you’re seeing in Europe?
10. What do you make of this current market?
11. What’s one thing you would change about VC?
12. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one that inspired you professionally?
    1. When breath becomes air
13. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
    1. Authentic self

Our guest today is Ollie Forsyth, Global Community Manager and Investor at Antler. The global venture capital firm enabling and investing in the world's most exceptional people from the earliest stages. Ollie recently published a piece called “The New Creator Economy: A guide on Web3 creator platforms”. We focus our conversation on his learnings while researching this paper and as you can imagine the future of the creator economy and Web3.

Our guest today is Mike Asem, General Partner of M25. M25 is an early-stage venture firm based in Chicago, investing solely in companies headquartered in the Midwest. We discuss what movie got intrigued by venture capital, what’s misunderstood about investing in the midwest and the consumer landscape in that region, and his learnings since publishing M25 diversity report. Without further ado, here’s Mike

1. What was your attraction to entrepreneurship and venture capital?
2. How did you found M25? What’s your thesis?
   1. Was in the nano space
   2. Purdue research foundation
   3. Worked with portfolio companies
   4. Angel portfolio
   5. Established yourself as a former
3. Many tech VCs have steered clear from investing in consumer brands. Why do you still think there’s an opportunity?
4. What makes a consumer brand interesting to you?
5. How do you approach looking at consumer trends and trying to understand consumer behavior?
6. We talk about brands that are venture-backed have to appeal to the masses and not just the top 1%. How do you measure that when you’re in due diligence?
   1. If it plays in Peoria
7. Lori Coulter - Summersalt
8. M25 releases a diversity report. Can you explain the origins of how this began and what it includes?
9. What’s your outlook as well for Chicago as a venture ecosystem and the midwest?
10. What’s your thesis around consumer healthcare?
11. Why did you decide to create Unicorn to the Moon?
12. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
13. What’s one book that’s inspired you personally and one book that’s inspired you professionally?
    1. Eboys - Benchmarks early days

On today’s episode we’re talking about cooking oils. Thank you Craig Shapiro for the introduction to our guest today is Jeff Nobbs, who is the founder and CEO of Zero Acre Farms. Zero Acre Farms is on a mission to remove destructive vegetable oils from the food system. Zero Acre Farms is an oil that’s instead made from fermentation.

Some of the questions I ask him:

1. When did you start to care about health and the science of nutrition?
2. You’ve started quite a few businesses before and you’ve been very successful. When did you start thinking about alternatives to vegetable oil?
3. What is the origin of vegetable oil?
4. How did you land on microorganisms and fermentation? What were other processes you were considering? Can you walk us through the process?
5. What’s been the challenging part on the R&D side? How do you think about your competitive advantage?
6. Why did you choose to raise $37 million? How were you able to raise it? What resonated with investors? What’s the most expensive part to Zero Acre Farms? Have you seen tech investors shift away from investing in CPG or only in CPG where there isn’t product innovation?
7. How do you approach the price point? With innovation comes a premium. How do you think about premium pricing vs. maximum impact?
8. There’s kind of a bifurcation within better for you products – do you value products that are better for the planet or products that are better for your body, It’s hard to create products that can fill both those requirements. How do you think about it since you’ve been an entrepreneur within health and wellness for a long time?
9. What were some of your lessons learned since you started a CPG brand before and a restaurant before that has impacted how you think and operate Zero Acre Farms?
10. What’s the company you most admire (Craig Shapiro asked this question)? How do they impact you?
11. What is the vision for Zero Acre Farms? What will be the most challenging to fulfill that vision?
12. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that’s inspired you professionally?
    1. The Three-Body Problem
    2. Think and Grow Rich
    3. The History of the World
13. What’s the biggest piece of advice to founders?

My guest today is Mark Achler, who is a serial entrepreneur and Managing Partner at MATH Venture Partners. Recently he published his book that he co-wrote with Mert Iseri called Exit Right. which is about how to position and think about a successful exit way before it happens. So on this episode, we discuss how to Exit Right.

1. What were your biggest learnings from those interviews in “Exit Right”
2. Trust - we wish CEOs would come to us before
3. Is there misalignment between VCs and founder/CEO
4. How should you go about picking the right investors?
5. Seems like there’s kind of a one way street when it comes to acquisitions with VCs and founders. It’s ok if the VC thinks about it and as it analyzes investing in certain companies, what an exit could look like, but founders aren’t allowed to talk about it or bring it up at all when they pitch because it means they “aren’t focusing on the growth of the business”. Do you both think there is a disconnect and a certain awkwardness that exists in these discussions?
6. When should founders start to think about building relationships with corporate development teams?
7. What were your learnings after you conducted these interviews and conduct this research project?
8. In the FAIR framework, you emphasize how culture and values are critical for success. But it’s hard to know if the culture is the right culture for the team. How do you suggest founders understand the culture of the potential acquirer?
9. On the fit question, what do you think about culture? How do decisions get made? What are your values? Is there a place where you want to live?
10. Waterfall distribution - how much money goes through which share of class
11. Should founders accept money from corporate VCs?
12. We also talk about being aligned with your VCs. Of course, VCs are looking at a particular exit horizon. It could range from 5-10 years. Of course, it’s hard to know how the company is going to pan out and when you should start shopping for exits when it makes sense. How do you make sure you have alignment as a founder when you’re approaching VCs?
13. How do you make sure it’s not a phishing expedition?
14. I had on a founder who was building the business for acquisition and what that meant to him was growth at all costs, but it didn’t happen and he had to pivot to make the business sustainable and profitable. When you do build relationships with corporate development, should that impact how you build your business?
15. What are ways founders can ensure they aren’t going on a fishing expedition?
16. What are common mistakes founders make in the diligence process?
17. What’s one book that has inspired each of you personally and professionally?
18. What’s one piece of advice that you have for founders?

Our guest today is Justine Palefsky, Co-founder and CEO of Kindred. Kindred is the trusted home swapping network and harnesses the power of community to allow you to travel more for less. We discuss the opportunity within travel and house swapping and how to construct a marketplace where one unit of supply equals one unit of demand

1. What is Kindred?
2. How did you both meet?
3. Did you both always have the intention of founding a business?
4. When was the aha moment that led to Kindred?
5. How is Kindred different from other home swapping sites?
6. What was your first test to test this theory that people would be open to a house-swapping community?
7. Why did you think you both would make good co-founders for this business?
8. How did you first construct Kindred? It started off as a private Instagram group, right?
   1. What did you learn from that experience?
9. How did you think about the marketplace dynamics in this type of business?
10. How did you decide how to monetize since this is actually quite a complex business?
11. Once you’re part of this private community, how do you incentivize people to actually house swap?
12. Monetization. How did you approach?
13. How did you approach fundraising?
14. What are typical demographics?
15. How do you approach customer acquisition?
16. What was your approach to fundraising?
    1. When did you begin fundraising?
    2. What were the biggest reasons for passing?
    3. What did investors like the most about this business?
17. Now that the world is beginning to open back up, how do you think about change in consumer behavior and scale?
    1. Were people doing house swaps during the height of the pandemic?
18. What’s one thing you would change about fundraising?
19. What’s one book that inspired each of you personally and one book that inspired each of you professionally?
    1. Undaunted Courage by Lewis and Clark
    2. The Courage to be Disliked
20. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

Our guest today is Juan Pablo Cappello, founder of Nue Life. Nue Life is a mental wellness company that offers in-home ketamine therapy. This was a fascinating conversation about where our current healthcare system has failed us with the wrong incentive structure, new alternative therapies, his own mission and inspiration, and what the goal is for Nue Life.

Some of the questions I ask Juan Pablo:

1. When were you first exposed psychedelics and ketamine?
2. What inspired you to found Nue Life?
3. How did you develop a program?
4. What are some of the regulation speed bumps that you’ve had to go through in order to launch?
5. What’s the business model? How much do you charge? How long is the program?
6. What was your approach to acquiring new customers?
7. Do you see your customers going through your program multiple times / on going or is it a quest to always bring on new customers?
8. What’s been your approach to scale?
9. What’s been your approach to raising money?
10. Shat was your attraction to entrepreneurship?
11. What were your learnings from starting Patagon, the first online bank in LatAm?
12. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
13. What’s one thing that’s misunderstood about psychedelics?
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?

My guest today is Luke Vernon, Managing Partner of Ridgeline Ventures. Ridgeline Ventures is an independent investment group that provides founders and brands a unique alternative to traditional investment firms. Some of their investments include Cotopaxi, Bobo’s, OROS, and Pro’s Closet. Previously he was the CEO of Eco products, which he grew from $1mm to $80mm. We discuss his learnings as an operator, why he invests in consumer brands where other investor interest has softened, the benefits of being a family office and how he thinks about investment timelines.

1. What were three of your biggest learnings growing Eco Products from $1mm to $80mm?
2. Since you also started Luke’s Circle and helps companies find talent, what is the key to hiring the right people?
3. After Eco Products sold, what eventually got you thinking of becoming an investor?
4. How did Ridgeline Ventures form?
5. Why doesn’t Ridgeline take outside capital?
6. There’s been alot of funds that have pivoted or moved away from investing in consumer brands. What are the opportunities that you’re focused on?
7. What’s your due diligence process?
8. Pricing strategy in each channel
9. How to scale the operations of the business
10. How long does it take to scale?
11. Food manufacturing
12. Self manufacturing
13. Great vehicles to finance CAPEX
14. What were some of your learnings during COVID?
15. How can a board provide value to a company?
16. What’s one thing you think is overlooked when investing in consumer businesses?
17. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Endurance by Ernest Jackelin
    2. Blue Ocean Strategy
18. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?

Our guest today is Joe Spector, Founder & CEO of Dutch. Dutch is the online vet care when you need it. Previously Joe was one of the founders of hims & hers. We discuss the opportunity he saw within pet insurance and care, how his approach to fundraising is different than hims & hers, why he wants to change the incentive structure within the vet industry.

1. Why did you decide to leave hims & hers?
2. What was the aha moment that led to Dutch?
3. What was the opportunity that you saw?
4. Why did you decide to focus on telehealth for pets?
5. What is the major pain point for pet owners?
6. Can you lay out for us the value chain for healthcare for pets? How are the regulatory requirements different from healthcare for humans?
7. How did you approach raising capital?
8. In the early days, they have to be good at multiple things
9. What was the first problem you wanted to solve?
10. How did you approach distribution and sales?
11. Paying vets $80 an hour
12. Hims & Hers raised money every 90 days and raised lots of money. How do you approach fundraising and the capital structure of Dutch?
    1. What was it like fundraising during COVID?
    2. Don’t use a recruiter
13. There was a substantial increase in pet ownership during COVID and telemedicine was more widely adopted as a whole during this period. How was Dutch affected? Did you grow faster than you expect?
14. Since only 2% of pet owners have insurance, how do you approach consumer education?
15. How do you think about the incentives for vets - they make money off selling the drugs, so they would want to recommend more drugs for your pet - and what is Dutch doing to create better alignment with the vet and the pet owner/pet?

Our guest today is Brian O’Malley, Partner at Forerunner. Forerunner is one of the top consumer venture capital firms that tirelessly champions founders who deliver the innovation they demand. Some of Brian’s investments include Sunday, Canal and Dumpling. Recently they raised $1 billion for Fund 6. We discuss how Forerunner’s thesis has evolved over the past few years, what is the empowerment economy, and current valuation and venture climate today.

We discuss:

1. How do you define investing in consumer today?
2. It seems as though Forerunner’s thesis has evolved from only investing in pure consumer companies to ecommerce enablement/B2B, along with other funds that primarily focus on consumer. Can you talk about why the transition?
   1. Is part of the reason why because it’s harder than before to pick brands that could generate great returns?
3. What is the empowerment economy?
4. In your article “Empowering Main Street”, you mention how OpenTable and Yelp achieved massive local market share, but they weren’t embraced. What do you mean by that and how do identify if a company you’re looking at is being embraced? Partnering up with their customers
5. Did COVID at all change your thesis when it came the your empowering economy thesis?
6. When you’re looking at empowering SMBs or bringing them online, when does a white label option make sense vs. a standalone application?
7. I certainly understand the push for consumers wanting to shop local, but isn’t partly what killed local stores that they couldn’t compete on price with the Walmarts / Targets? How do you think about consumer price sensitivity?
8. When you and your conduct your consumer insights research, how do you make sure there’s alignment with what people say and how they act?
9. Where customer
10. What are some of the differences between investing and evaluating a business where an SMB is the customer rather than the customer?
11. How do you also think about the current venture landscape when it comes to valuations?
12. There’s been a lot of chatter about some of the more high-profile companies folding and there’s been a debate about who is responsible - could the board have guided the CEO to cut burn for example. After you invest, what do you think about a board’s role and board construction?
13. What’s one thing you would change about VC?
14. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that has inspired you professionally?
    1. The Wright Brothers book
    2. Shoedog by Phil Knight
15. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?

Our guest today is John Timar, CEO of Kill Cliff. Kill Cliff is America’s best-selling clean energy drink and the official drink of the Atlanta Braves. We discuss how the Navy Seals impacted John and led the founding of Kill Cliff, some of the creative marketing initiatives Kill Cliff has done the past few years including a partnership with Joe Rogan, why at one point they considered a rebrand, and how they doubled down on their core audience and release new SKUs. Without further ado, here’s John.

1. Why did you want to be a Navy SEAL?
2. What was the hardest part of becoming a SEAL?
3. What did you most learn from that experience?
4. How was the transition to civilian life?
5. How was the transition from SEALs into business?
6. What did you first do after the SEALs?
   1. Don’t have the community
7. Why did Todd Ehrlich found Kill Cliff? What was the insight? How did you know Todd?
8. When you say lost its way, give an example of something that the company did that was inauthentic to the brand?
9. What were some of the challenges going from enterprise to consumer?
10. How is it a better alternative to what’s out there?
11. Kill
12. What’s been the low points and tough moments within Kill Cliff?
13. When did you get involved? Why did you get involved? What was your first role?
14. How do you approach distribution since I’d imagine the Red Bull probably try to block you?
15. You were able to recruit John Brenkus as your CMO. How did you convince him to join and what has been the impact?
16. How do you approach partnerships?
17. What is Kill Cliff fight club?
18. When did you decide to get into CBD and why?
19. What’s the perception of energy drinks?
20. How did you raise capital?
21. Why were you promoted to CEO?
22. With your partnership with Rogan, has the controversy around him had any affect with Kill Cliff?
23. How do you approach new flavors and products?
24. One piece of advice?

Our guest today is Patrick Chun, Founding Partner of Juxtapose. Juxtapose is an inception stage investment firm. Some of the companies that they founded include Tend, Care/of, and Dayforward. Their process for how they build companies is pretty unique for this show. We discuss their model, why their model is less risky than traditional venture capital, and his process for finding the right CEO to lead each business. Without further ado, here’s Patrick.

1. What is Juxtapose? What was the initial insight or prior experience that influenced your decision to found it? Why did you choose to found it?
2. Why do you believe your model is less risky than traditional venture capital?
   1. You are incubating
   2. When you say do the work, what do you mean?
3. What’s your process identifying an observation
   1. True verifiable fact in the world
   2. When your
   3. Lots of observation
   4. How many observations do you have a week
   5. Insights you can pull off of an observation
   6. On-demand dispatch
   7. Track 500-1000 observations
      1. Talk about 50-100
4. What’s your process for building businesses step by step – from the ideation stage to creating beta products / product is in market?
5. Recycled and reentered the funnel
6. 4-6 months
7. How do you think about timing as well?
8. Obsolete assumption
   1. You can never have an investor home
9. When do you bring on an experienced CEO and team? How do you think about that process?
   1. What are qualities you’d like to see from the CEO?
   2. From 0 to 10 at what stage is the company in when you bring on a CEO?
   3. How do you source “Michael Jordan” CEOs? If they are the Michael Jordan’s, what typically get them excited to join the company - since I’m sure they get alot of offers to lead different teams?
      1. Can it be difficult to attract since these companies are still small?
   4. How do you hire the team?
10. Once a company has a CEO, how do you think about the role of Juxtapose moving forward with the business?
    1. The best supporter of the company from 0-200 people
    2. Is the shift from operator to more of board member/observer type role?
11. Do you ever get the itch to become a CEO of one of your companies?
12. How do you approach hiring for your studio? Are you looking for people who have operational experience or more investor experience since it seems the studio model is at the intersection of both?
13. What are the challenges with the studio model? What can get overlooked?
14. What are the shortcomings of the venture studio model or what do studios tend to struggle with?
15. Was there a prior experience that led you to want to build a different type of firm than traditional VC?
16. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
17. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. 4,000 weeks Oliver Burkman
18. What’s the best piece of advice for founders?
    1. What is it that people will see in the market and if you’re right

My guest today is Patrick Schwarzenegger, CEO and cofounder of Mosh. Mosh is a brain wellness brand co-founded by both Patrick and his mom, Maria Shriver. They’re on a mission to change the conversation about brain health through food, education, research and providing the tools for a "mindstyle" lifestyle. Patrick is also an actor, angel investor in a number of health and wellness brands. We discuss what attracted him to innovation within health and wellness, how he became interested in investing, what he looks for in companies and the founding story of how he and his mom founded Mosh. Without further ado, here’s Patrick.

1. What was your initial attraction or introduction to investing in consumer brands and consumer technology?
2. How would you describe your due diligence process as an investor?
   1. What’s your process for discovering new brands and having a pulse on the latest trends? Do you consider to be more top-down or bottom-up?
   2. What are trends within CPG that you’re particularly excited about and a trend that you think is maybe past its prime or no longer special?
   3. Is there any common threads that you’ve seen when it comes to what makes a successful founder or company? KPIs that stand out?
   4. How early do you typically write a check in a company?
   5. For your investments that didn’t work out. What tended to be the reasons why the companies failed?
   6. What were your takeaways from Expo West?
3. How do you spend your time? You’re a CEO, actor, active angel investor, how do you juggle it?
4. How do you also think and analyze brands that are co-founded by celebrities and people of influence?
5. How did you found Mosh with your mom, Maria?
6. What was the pain point you both wanted to solve?
7. How did you approach building the product?What’s the goal of the brand?
8. Currently, you’re only selling online. Are we going to see Mosh in retail channels? How do you think about what the right channels should be for Mosh?
9. How do you juggle being CEO and also an actor?
10. What’s one thing you would change about the fundraising process or venture capital?
11. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that has inspired you professionally?
    1. Number one book - Atomic Habits
12. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
13. What’s one piece of advice that you have for founders?

Our guest today is Ariana Thacker, founder of Conscience VC. Conscience invests into early-stage & science-led consumer startups. We’re going to discuss why science-led consumer startups is contrarian in itself, what are real tangible defensible moats, and her approach to fundraising her first fund.

1. Why did you want to break into VC?
2. Why did you decide to start your own fund?
3. What was the fundraising process like?
4. How do you partner with founders?
5. What’s your approach to portfolio construction and fund construction? I.e. are you more concentrated or less concentrated, what are your Gen-Z apprentices role within the fund / scout program
6. What do you mean by the intersection of deep tech and consumer?
7. How do you think about defensible competitive advantages?
8. Walk us through why you invested in Nimbus or gained conviction?
9. How far along does a founder need to be in order for you to be at your stage?
10. Are there specific categories that you mostly focus on? 

3 buckets

1. What are some of the challenges investing in deeptech? Why do alot of fund managers stay away?
2. What’s your approach to sourcing opportunities? 

Go through multi pronged approach

1. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
2. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that has inspired you professionally? 

4 agreements - dont personally, dont make assumptions, always do your best, be impeccable with your word

Disciplined entrepreneurship ->

1. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?

Our guest today is Paul Voge, one of the founders and CEO of Aura Bora. Aura Bora is sparkling water made from real herbs, fruits, and flowers for earthly tastes and heavenly feelings. The flavors are definitely one of kind and different like Lavender Cucumber, Cactus Rose, Peppermint Watermelon. I was skeptical at first but when I tried it, I must say I LOVED it. My personal favorite is lemongrass coconut. Paul has a pretty fascinating story about how he started and his approach to building a sparkling water company with out-there wacky flavors that are delicious.

1. How would you define your relationship with Sparkling water before you started a sparkling water company?
2. Did you always want to be an entrepreneur?
3. What was the “aha” moment?
4. What was the first flavor you LOVED that you felt you perfected?
5. How did you think about different flavor profiles/expanding SKUs
   1. I had Seth on last week
6. How did you think about experimenting with flavors? Was this something you did yourself, did you hire/partner with a food/drink scientist?
7. You didn’t have any experience within CPG. How did you go about building your network?
8. Why invest in beverage brands?
9. What was the hardest part fundraising?
10. How do you think about ads?
11. When did you feel like you were on to something?
12. At what point did you quit your job?
13. What was your distribution strategy? Was it to start DTC and then go into retail or go into retail from the getgo?
14. How did you get into Whole Foods?
15. Why did you move from Boulder to San Francisco?
16. What were some of the things you had to pick up on quickly since you didn’t come from CPG prior to starting Aura Bora?
    1. How much should you spend in tradespend?
17. You were in SKUs accelerator, what was so valuable about that experience?
18. It’s March 2020. COVID happens and your cranking, trying to get into stores. Walk us through what’s happening during that time?
    1. How did you approach developing relationships with stores during that period?
    2. How did COVID change your distribution approach?
19. We talk to a number of CPG retail investors on this show that emphasize it’s all about velocity rather than the total number of stores you’re in. What’s good velocity to you? How do you measure success?
20. Why did you decide to go on Shark Tank? What was that experience like?
    1. Was the intent always to take a deal no matter what?
21. What was your approach to raising a fundraising round?
22. How do you think about SKUs and flavor approach today? What’s the strategy?
23. What’s one thing that you’ve been surprised in the consumer response - could be positive or negative. Negative could be more interesting.
24. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Seth Goldman - Mission in a Bottle
    2. Mark Rompolla - Build Something Great
    3. The Last Lecture
25. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
    1. Amateurs talk strategy, experts talk logistics
26. What’s one thing you would change about the CPG industry?

Our guest today is Joe Marchese, who is a serial entrepreneur and has started a few VC funds including Human Ventures, Casa Komos, Groundswell, True X, Reserve and Attention Capital. His resume is pretty wild. Joe has alot of experience within marketing and advertising so on today’s episode we’re going to focus on how to approach marketing channels, what channels are still undervalued and maybe you can get more bang for your buck, and his approach to building brands and partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs.

1. How did you get your start in media and advertising?
2. What was your attraction to entrepreneurship as well as working with founders?
3. What advertising channel is still underappreciated by brands?
4. What’s still misunderstood about media today? (follow on: talk about the Attention Economy.)
5. How do you monetize attention?
6. What’s your approach to starting businesses?
7. How did Human Ventures come together?
8. When you are incubating companies at Human, what do first-time entrepreneurs misunderstand the most when it comes to growing their businesses?
9. What’s your diligence process when you’re analyzing companies?
10. Are there specific categories that you’re currently deep in or intrigued by?
11. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
12. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that has inspired you professionally?
    1. Probable impossibilities
    2. Life’s Edge by Carl Zimmer
13. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

My guest today is Matt Nichols, founder of Commerce Ventures. They back entrepreneurs from every background building the infrastructure for tomorrow's industries. We focus our time deconstructing web.3 and how it could be impactful to brands and change retail.

Here are some of the questions I ask Matt:

1. How did you get started in venture capital?
2. When did you found Commerce VC?
3. Why the focus on retail?
4. How can blockchain technology help retail?
5. What’s wrong with current loyalty programs?
6. Paint us a picture of the change in buying behavior for a consumer from the moment they step into a store.
7. Do brands need to embrace Web3 in order to win in the next generation?
8. How should brands approach the creation of digital goods and partnerships with platforms?
9. What’s your due diligence process
10. Supply chain traceability
11. What’s your view about digital goods?
12. What could you not do that blockchain solves for?
13. What’s the relationship between NFT and luxury?
14. What has to work in order for the whole supply chain to transact through smart contracts?
15. How do you also think about customer identification when it comes to wallet ownership? How is this a better point of contact with a person than email?
    1. Activity is fully traceable
16. What do you think is one thing that’s overlooked when it comes to the intersection of blockchain and retail?
17. Too many use cases
18. What’s one book that inspired you professionally or personally?
    1. The Hard Things About Hard Things
    2. Endurance - Shackleton’s Journey to the Southpole
19. Spend time with the customers, try to understand their problems?

Our guests today are Seth Goldman and Spike Mendelsohn, co-founders of Eat The Change and PLNT Burger. Eat the Change is a snack company that’s on a mission to create chef-crafted and nutrient-dense snacks that are kind to the planet. PLNT Burger are plant-based burger restaurants. Currently they have 11 of them. Prior to going into business together, Seth is well known for being the founder of Honest Tea and Chef Spike Mendelsohn was one of the Top Chefs on the show Top Chef and started quite a few restaurant establishments including VIm & Victor, We, The Pizza, Santa Rosa Taqueria, my personal favorite Good Stuff Eatery. I’m on the record that Good Stuff makes the best burger I’ve ever tried. I’m really excited to have both Seth and Chef Spike on the podcast, not only because they are legends, but they started each of their businesses where I grew up. Seth started Honest Tea in Bethesda, which is where I was raised, and many of Spike’s restaurants are in DC and the surrounding areas. This was a thrill to have them on. Without further ado, here is Seth Goldman and Chef Spike.

Some of the questions I ask them –

1. What were each of your attractions to entrepreneurship and food?
2. Activist
3. When you think about all the businesses each of you have started, what’s been the common thread?
4. How did you guys meet each other?
5. When was the moment that you realized you wanted to work with one another? What makes your partnership special?
6. What was the inspiration behind PLNT Burger?
7. How do you think about products that are better for you vs. better for the planet?
8. Has “plant based” become a catch-all term for better for you, even though there is now a debate if plant-based alternatives are better for you than the original meat product?
9. When you think about releasing new products, how do you make sure they are better for you and not just the planet?
   1. Incredible planet challenge
10. Why did you decide to start Eat the Change and what is it?
    1. How did you measure impact?
    2. What’s been the reaction so far?
    3. Have to have something that’s different
    4. Did you raise outside capital
    5. Why did you found it in Bethesda?
    6. What’s your approach to creating new better-for-you products?
    7. How do you measure impact?
    8. What’s your retail approach?
11. How do you think about launching new restaurants and CPG brands? Is there an overall strategy that ties the two together?
12. How do you approach consumer education when it comes to what people should eat?
13. What’s one book that inspired each of you personally and one professionally?
    1. Mission in a bottle
    2. My Life in Full - Seth
    3. The Call of the Wild - Seth
    4. Danny Meyer - Setting the Table - Spike
    5. Zappos book - Tony
14. What’s one piece of advice each of you have for founders?
15. What’s your favorite piece of advice that you received?

Our guest today is Amy Lacey, founder of Cali’flour Foods. Cali’flour makes craveable comfort food that’s always low carb. With simple fresh ingredients and no fillers. That includes pizzas, crusts, flatbreads, crackers and full on entrees. We discuss why Amy became an entrepreneur, how she created a cauliflower pizza recipe that wasn’t brittle and didn’t fall apart, even with incredible ecommerce sales, why she decided to partner with a retail-minded investor as opposed to an ecommerce minded one, their approach to packaging when they entered stores and much more.

What was your attraction to entrepreneurship?

1. What led to the founding of Cali'flour Foods and better for you alternatives for pizza?
2. How did you first make cauliflower pizza since cauliflower is so brittle?
3. What was the first step to starting your company?
4. How did you go about developing your supply chain?
5. Where was your first point of distribution?
6. What was the initial reaction?
7. At what point were you looking for investment?
8. What were some of the differences in the business when you raised capital?
9. Did you packaging change to fit into retail?
10. How did you approach scale?
11. Was it tough scaling in retail and also trying to continue to scale online?
12. Mike Anderson came in as CEO. What was that transition like?
13. It seems like using cauliflower as a substitute ingredient in other products has become the standard. Do you feel like you've led the charge here?
14. What's one thing you would change about fundraising?
15. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Personally - Four Agreements
    2. The One Thing
    3. Storybrand by Donald Miller
16. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
17. What's the best piece of advice for any entrepreneur?

Our guest today is Melissa Urban, Founder of Whole30. The Whole30 program eliminates cravings, improves physical energy and quality of sleep and has changed millions of people’s lives. It’s a pretty amazing story. We’re going to hear how Melissa changed her lifestyle completely, getting into nutrition and getting in shape. Why she started a blog and ran this 30 day diet experiment and that turned into what became Whole30. How she approaches partnerships with CPG brands that fit the Whole30 identity, and what led her to create her own products. Without further ado, here’s Melissa

1. When did you become interested in nutrition and fitness?
2. Why did you decide to blog?
3. What compelled you to write a book?t
4. How do you approach partnerships or relationships with brands?
5. Why did you decide on the name Whole30?
6. How did you think about the differences between the Whole30 diet and the Paleo diet?
7. What was the original intention of the brand?
8. Who is the target audience for Whole30?
9. Was there a clear path to success and a business plan or were you just kind of figuring it out?
10. When did you decide to start launching your own products? I.e. salad dressings?
11. How do you select the right partners to license products for?
12. Did you ever think about raising capital for Whole30?
13. There are lots of food fads out there. How do you think about longevity, sustainability with Whole30?
14. What do you think is misunderstood about nutrition?
15. Do you iterate what’s allowed and not allowed on Whole30?
16. Recently you came out and said that MSG for example is now ok on Whole30 when it wasn’t allowed on the diet before. How do you think and approach the evolution of Whole30?
17. Do you have any advice for other founders in your willingness to learn and evolve?
18. What do you see as the future of wellness or what makes you excited about?
19. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter
    2. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
20. What’s one piece of advice for founders?

Our guest today is Jordan Gaspar, the Managing Partner at AF Ventures. AF Ventures is dedicated to growing the next generation of brands, having invested in Circul, By Heart and Harmless Harvest. We discuss how she founded AF Ventures and leveraged her network as a lawyer, and how she thinks about growth for digitally native brands in this current age.

Some of the questions I ask her:

1. Can you please share a little about AF Ventures background?
2. What was your initial attraction to consumer brands?
3. How has AF Ventures evolved over the past few years?
4. What are the most recent trends within consumer that you are most passionate about?
5. How has COVID impacted recent trends?
6. Does a product “need to work in retail” for you to invest?
7. Why did you decide to raise a SPAC?
8. We’ve also seen incredible growth from brands despite global supply chain issues. As an investor and advisor, how do you navigate or comprehend where we are currently at?
9. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
10. What VC advice do you have for entrepreneurs/founders?

My guest today is Marc Hostovsky, founder of Minoan. Minoan connects people with products in spaces that feel like home. This is a concept that Marc calls native retail. We discuss what’s missing today when it comes to trying out products, the intersection of ecommerce and retail and what is actually native retail.

Here are the questions I ask Marc:

1. What was your attraction in ecommerce? Why did you want to work in ecommerce?
2. What were some of your learnings at Walmart that have impacted you?
3. What were you doing at Walmart?
4. The importance of pace and hiring
5. Hiring missionaries vs mercenaries
6. What was the insight that led to the founding of Minoan?
7. Why did you decide to build a product that wasn’t in ecommerce but was around physical retail or native retail?
8. Not really having products to shine
9. Why do people like shopping in stores?
10. Real world shoppable experiences - be in moments of use, integrating commerce
11. What are the use cases? Walk us through when and why a customer would use Minoan?
12. Is the goal to eventually to become an online retailer or stay as a marketplace?
13. What’s the customer experience like?
14. How did you first approach hotels, Airbnbs and other places?
    1. How do you partner?
15. How do you monetize? Is it a marketplace model?
16. How do you work with brands?
17. What was your approach to growth?
    1. What types of properties do you look for?
18. What was your approach to raising money?
    1. What was challenging about the process?
19. What’s one thing you would change about the fundraising process?
20. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Why Buddism is true? By Robert Wright
    2. Competing Against Luck
21. What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?

Our guest today is Natalie Gordon, founder and CEO of Babylist. Babylist is a baby registry and ecommerce platform, combining content, commerce and data to serve millions of expecting and new parents. We focus on why Natalie decided to start Babylist when she just became a new mother, how reading The Lean Startup impacted her decision making to solving the chicken and the egg problem of marketplaces, finding product-market fit and a unique approach to partnerships.

Here are some of the questions I ask Natalie:

1. What was the insight that led to the founding of Babylist?

1. 11 years ago - creating your own baby registry
2. There must be a better way!!!!
3. Worked on another startup in the language learning space
4. If you can work on it for
5. Small aspirations day by day
6. Lean startup
7. Inflection point on Pinterest
   1. Did you always want to become an entrepreneur?
   2. What were some lessons learned during your time at Amazon that were helpful in your journey?
   3. What were some of the first steps that you had to take to validate your idea?
   4. How do you think about using content to lead to curation to purchase?
   5. What are the requirements to sell on Babylist?
   6. When you have a marketplace, you have a chicken and the egg problem. What were the first steps you took to solve for it? Was it tougher getting supply going vs. demand or vise versa?
8. Did you keep inventory?
   1. How did you approach demand / customer acquititon channels in the early days?
   2. How did you approach raising capital?
   3. What were some of the moments that as you look back were actually huge unlocks for your business?
   4. How did you make the business more sustainable for you
   5. You’ve now started selling your own products and aren’t just a marketplace. How do you think about what products to launch? What has been the reaction?
   6. How do you think about trying and testing out products for parents online and in brick and mortar?
   7. What has been the result during the pandemic when it comes to purchase behavior?
   8. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
   9. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
9. Professionally: No rules rules by Reid Hastings
10. Personally: Dear Sugar - online advice column
    1. What’s one piece of advice that you have for founders?
11. Long game
12. Relationships are long

Our guest today is Nick Saltarelli one of the Co-founders of Mid-Day Squares. Mid-Day Squares is the first functional chocolate bar. Nick founded the company with his wife, Leslie and brother-in-law Jake. We discuss how and why his family wanted to start a chocolate company, why they decided to vertically integrate instead of outsourcing manufacturing, their combination of marrying content with a CPG and much more. Without further ado, here’s Nick.

And there you have it. I hope you all enjoyed Nick’s story of how and why he started Mid-Day Squares.

1. Did you always want to know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?
2. What were some of the pivotal moments in your life that helped shaped you personally and professionally, how you wanted to work with people?
3. Why did you focus on CPG?
4. How did you meet Lez?
5. How did you land on chocolate?
6. Why did you decide to share everything publicly?
7. How did Jake come on board?
8. Is it a tough dynamic working with your wife and your brother-in-law?
9. What was your process for raising capital?
10. How did you think about brand and branding?
11. Why did you decide to create your own manufacturing plant vs. outsourcing manufacturing?
12. How do you think about storytelling and building a passionate audience?

Our guest today is our second second time guest, Mike Duda. Mike is the General Partner at Bullish. Bullish is a consumer only venture capital fund and creative agency. Some of their investments include Sunday, Spark Grills, Hu, Care/of. I mention these brands specifically because all the founders of those companies have been on the podcast but they’ve also invested in Peloton, Harry’s Warby Parker. If you want to learn the founding story of how Mike founded Bullish, highly recommend his first episode in 2020. In this episode we focus on his process to identifying a consumer insight, what needs to happen in order for an insight to become an investment opportunity and his analysis on consumer behavior. I was delighted Mike was willing to come back on the show for a chat, without further ado, here he is.

Questions I ask Mike:

1. What’s your process to identifying a nascent consumer insight?
2. I’ve had investors come on the show talk about their jobs are to identify the difference between a consumer trend and a fad. How do you make that distinction?
3. What has to happen in order for a trend to become big?
4. One of the massive trends in 2010s was home fitness, and you were big winners with your investment in Peloton. I’d love it if you could walk through how you made that investment?
5. What's the next big thing in consumer that you think is under-appreciated or contrarian?
6. What’s often misunderstood investing in consumer oriented companies?
7. If the bet is right when it comes to a trend, how important is having a competitive advantage in your product?
8. When you think about the major themes and changes in consumer behavior, what comes to mind?
9. Is investing in consumer products saturated since it's easier than ever to launch a company?
10. What do you think is misunderstood by tech when it comes to CPG?
11. What’s misunderstood when it comes to brand?
12. What’s under-appreciated when it comes to building a brand?
13. What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?

My guest today is Sumi Das, who is a Partner at CapitalG. CapitalG is Alphabet’s independent growth fund. Some of their investments include Airbnb, Lyft, and Duolingo. We discuss CapitalG’s relationship to Google, Google Ventures, and the advantages of a single LP, Sumi spends alot of time not only thinking about consumer opportunities in North America,, but also in emerging markets so we focus on some of the differences building consumer technology and evaluating opportunities in different regions and what makes technology transferable to other markets and not transferable. Without further ado, here’s Sumi.

Here are some of the questions I ask Sumi:

1. What was your interest in technology?
2. How did you end up at CapitalG, and also, can you tell us a little about what CapitalG is and your relationship to Alphabet and Google?
   1. The future is mobile - what’s the future today?
3. What’s your definition of growth-stage investing?
   1. How big can this market be?
   2. Can they scale to adjacent markets?
4. How do you think about the differences when investing and building companies in emerging markets vs. the U.S.?
   1. What makes a piece of technology transferable into other markets?
   2. What type of market do you have to start by building everything at the same time vs. focusing on one specific use case?
   3. How does this translate into your theory of when it makes sense to bundle vs. unbundle?
   4. How does scale look different?
5. When you’re investing in emerging markets, what consumer characteristics are you looking for or are appealing?
6. How do you think about engineering talent abroad and recruiting for your companies?
7. How do you think about valuations at the growth stage in this current market?
8. They say that growth stage happens when you have product-market fit. How do you analyze on a deeper level if a company does have product-market fit and the depth of that connection?
9. What’s one thing you would change about VC?l
10. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Professionally - Sam Walton biography
11. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
12. What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?

Thank you Ashish for introducing me to our guest today, Nuno Gonçalves Pedro, General Partner at Chameleon. Chameleon typically invests at the seed and series a level principally product led technology companies. Some of their portfolio includes Draftkings, Robinhood and Keepsafe. We discuss the evolution of eCommerce, if companies actually create new markets, and how he uses quant to make investment decisions. Without further ado, here’s Nuno.

Questions I ask Nuno:

1. What was your attraction to technology?
2. What led you into venture capital?
3. When you look at consumer investing and the evolution of ecommerce in Asia, what technologies do you think are going to make its way to the west?
4. How did Chamaeleon come together?
5. Why has your focus been consumer? What makes you excited as a consumer investor?
   1. Where do you think some of the big opportunities are in consumer?
6. Walk me through your due diligence process -
   1. How do you analyze teams?
   2. How do you use quant to help make decisions?
   3. What are the important insights and data points?
7. How do you think about the next consumer platform? There’s lots of buzz around the metaverse, web3. How do you think about what’s coming next after the iPhone?
8. What tends to be the reason why you pass on a consumer tech company?
9. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
10. What’s one book that inspired you professionally and one book that inspired you personally?
    1. Professionally - Post Capital Society - Drucker
    2. The How of Happiness - Sonia
    3. Modern Physics Ancient Faith
11. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
12. What’s one piece of advice that you have for founders?

Our guest today is Bilal Zuberi, Partner at Lux Capital. Lux Capital Investing in people inventing the future. Some of their investments include Happiest Baby, Citizen, Carbon Health and Duck Duck Go. Bilal also founded GEO2 Technologies and comes from an extensive technical and science background. What we explore on today’s episode is how to invest at the intersection of deep tech and consumer.

Some of the questions I ask him:

1. One of your focuses is investing in Deep Tech. We haven’t covered Deep Tech yet on the podcast, what is deep tech?
   1. Business model innovation vs technological innovation
   2. Mission-oriented go to market chops
2. When you think about consumer deep tech companies, what do you think about? What are the use cases where consumers could benefit from deep tech?
3. Betting on teams that own the problem, not just the solution
4. How is investing in deep tech different to other types of categories when you think about return timeline?
   1. How flexible are you with the length?
5. Even if you do have an incredible consumer tech product with a clear competitive advantage or compelling value prop, how do you analyze the marketing and branding?
   1. Would you invest in a company that has compelling technology, but you don’t understand the branding or how it would work?
   2. Can brand be a sustainable competitive advantage?
6. How do you analyze deep tech products? What’s your diligence process?
7. What’s tends to be the reason why you pass on a consumer-focused company?
8. Why did you join Lux and how do you describe Lux’s investment philosophy?
9. How are you thinking about today’s market when it comes to price?
10. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
11. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? Professionally - High Growth Handbook

Personally - Engineering Marvels of the World

1. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
2. What’s one piece of advice you have for founders?

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.

1. How do you craft a good story? What are the elements?
2. Is there a part to storytelling that brands or people typically miss?
3. Point of view
4. When you think of aspiring, young brands, what do they tend to do right vs. the incumbents?
   1. How are they able to stand out from the rest of their peers with storytelling?
5. How do you analyze brands that have a face to the brand vs. brands that don’t?
6. How do you shape the persona of the brand?
7. When you invest and consult with brands, what is usually missing that you can help with the story?
8. Story being built out of human need
9. Story Emotional connection -
10. Post-brand
11. Organic growth stories
12. How do you define community?
13. How have brands leveraged their authentic story for growth?
14. What’s an example of an inauthentic story?
15. After a brand gets acquired, what must incumbents do in order for keep that brand authenticity alive?
16. 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?
17. When founders pitch to you, what do they usually do wrong when they are telling a story?
18. Brand - sum of all the experiences
19. What does brand mean to you?
20. What’s one thing you would change about the perception of storytelling and/or branding?
21. What’s one book that inspired each of you personally and professionally?
22. 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.

1. You’ve been an entrepreneur your whole career. What was the origin story behind Clearco? How did you and Andrew start Clearco?
2. What was your first test if this new finance model could work?
3. 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?
   1. What are the requirements?
   2. How have those requirements evolved?
4. What were some of your learnings as you were growing Clearco that was most surprising?
5. How did you approach raising capital from VCs? What was their initial response?
   1. Did you have any VCs that thought what you were doing was a conflict to venture capital?
6. How do you work together with venture capital?
7. 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?
   1. 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)?
8. ClearCo probably sees a lot of DTC metrics from 1000s of companies.
   1. Which are the best measures of success?
   2. Which metrics are most misunderstood?
   3. If she could only pick 3 metrics to understand health/growth of a brand — which 3 would she pick?
9. How do you also think about the competitive landscape now for the alternative capital financing that you pioneered?
10. What are some of the other products you offer founders?
11. I know the focus is eCommerce businesses, but do you also think about helping DNVBs as they head into retail?
    1. How do you think about launching new products at Clearco?
    2. Tell you where you can improve in your business?
    3. If you build a killer product people will come
12. Recently, Andrew stepped back and became Executive Chairman, you became the CEO from President. What was the reason for the change?
13. How do you think about launching new products at Clearco?
14. What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
15. What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
16. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
17. 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.

1. What led you to becoming an entrepreneur?
2. Why investing? Why did you decide to become a VC and start a fund?
3. How were you able to leverage Twitter to become an investor?
   1. What was your strategy?
4. I know you invest in both consumer and enterprise. What makes consumer investing hard?
5. Where are you seeing the opportunity within consumer?
6. How do you approach sourcing and finding diamonds in the rough?
7. What's you diligence process? How do you validate how large a problem the entrepreneur is solving?
   1. Rebundled
8. What's the most common reason why you passed?
9. What are some of your favorite accelerators that are still under the radar?
10. Do you believe in pattern recognition is important when it comes to investing?
11. What is a day in the life of an emerging manager?
12. What have founders needed the most help from?
13. What motivates you everyday?
14. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
15. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Why should white guys have all the fun?
16. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?
17. 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.

1. 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?