Consumer VC

By Mike GelbBusiness Investing

Consumer VC episodes

October 06, 2022Mike Senackerib (Dewey's Bakery) - How a 90-year old bake shop turned into a CPG powerhouse
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 –
Why did a bake shop decide to create a CPG brand? What’s the history of Dewey’s?
Why did you decide to join Dewey’s and let your brand be acquired by the company?
What did you think was missing within the cookie and biscuits category?
What are some of the challenges taking a bake shop and building out a line of packaged goods products?
What are some of the benefits being vertically intergrated? Were you able to not have as much disruption due to the supply chain crunch?
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?
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?
What did you learn from COVID?
What has been your biggest lessons learned about ecommerce?
What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
32 min
October 04, 2022Mike Mayer (Windmill) - Building the smart AC Unit that's eye candy for your window
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:
Did you always want to be an entrepreneur and start a business with your brother?
Competing clothing brand called Peaches
What was the insight that led you to founding Windmill?
How did you build out your supply chain?
How do you approach industrial and brand design?
What are some of the regulations?
Talk about all your different revenue streams?
Why do seasonal business
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?
What was the process of convincing investors?
How have you grown since founding Windmill?
Changes in COVID
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?
How do you use software coupled with the physical product?
What’s one thing you would change about fundraising?
What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
Unbroken
30 min
September 30, 2022Matt Gibson (New Culture) - Creating Cheese Without the Cow
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:
What inspired you to want to make animal-free cheese?
You had a passion for food did you come from the food industry?
What is Microbial fermentation?
Did you decide to use a co-packer or vertically integrate? Why?
What was your process for raising money?
Why did you have to raise twice before launching?
What have been some of the challenges in bringing New Culture to market? You’re set to launch in 2024?
What’s your launch/distribution plan? Will you hit retail from the beginning? Will you only do ecommerce?
How do you describe your ideal customer?
What is the future of cheese?
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?
What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
32 min
September 27, 2022Noah Gray (Onda) - How he's Scaling Shay Mitchell's Tequila Seltzer Brand
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:
How did you end up in the beverage space? What attracted you to build an RTD tequila brand?
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
Drinking to enhance
What was the insight that led you to founding Onda? What was missing from the market? How did Shay Mitchell become involved?
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?
What’s your advice for founders who might partner with talent?
How did you think about distribution?
When did you think Onda started to resonate with consumers?
What was your approach to raising capital?
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?
What was the most non-obvious thing you’ve learned since founding Onda?
Vice clauses
Better-for-you
What do you think about the competitive landscape? How do you think about competition?
What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that has inspired you professionally?
Professionally: Mission in a Bottle - Seth and Barry
Personally: Paul Anderson - Liquorice pizza
What’s one piece of advice for entrepreneurs?
38 min
September 22, 2022Brent Vartan (Bullish) - How desires lead to opportunities & Bullish on Consumer Report
Our guest today is Brent Vartan, Managing Partner of Bullish. Bullish is an investment firm and Brand Agency designed for consumer businesses living early in an S-curve. Some of their investments include Peloton, Harry’s and Warby Parker. Bullish just released their report “Bullish On Consumer: Operationalizing Demand-Side Themes for Better Outcomes”. We will dig into the report and their three cultural themes within consumer.
Click Here to Download Bullish’s Consumer Report
Some of the questions I ask Brent:
What’s the origin and purpose of creating this report?
How was the report constructed? What was the starting point? Walk us through how you thought about human desires relates to cultural themes?
How did you come out with your three themes
What was most surprising to you from this research?
How do these themes translate to different age demographics?
I’ve had on investors who aren’t thematic in consumer. Who knows they don’t have crystal balls they don’t think about themes or trends, it’s understanding the insight that the entrepreneur brings to the table, researching that insight along with the founder. How can this report help your decision making when finding new companies?
What do you think is still misunderstood about investing in early consumer brands?
You had this line of should be businesses vs. could be businesses. What’s an example of a could be business or are there certain themes out there that you’ve noticed that you think will bear a bunch of could be businesses that don’t have alot of legs in the future?
Do you think this changes how brands are constructed at the get go? For example, if you are appealing to a specific theme, like in the uncompromising self for example. You had Public Goods in there, which went multi-category fairly early on. Now I had on the founder of Public Goods who said he had a really hard time fundraising because they were multi-category. .When I asked a PE investor on this show if they would invest in Public Goods, they said no because the exit potential wasn’t there. Do you think you will see more of these?
40 min
September 20, 2022Cristina Nuñez (True Beauty Ventures) - How to invest in beauty and personal care brands
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:
Why start a fund only focused on beauty and personal care?
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
What makes great packaging great that pops in retail?
What’s amazing about beauty and personal care products from an investor's perspective?
How do you make DTC work as a beauty and personal care?
What are some of the trends that you get excited by?
How do you think about added value?
What’s the initial check size do you underwrite?
What does differentiated distribution mean to you?
What does product innovation mean to you? Does the product need to have product innovation in order for you to invest?
What’s the case for having a vertically focused fund? What’s the long term goal?
What do generalist/non-vertically exclusive funds tend to not understand about your category?
Realized that people take care of themselves
What has worked in the beauty and what doesn’t work in beauty?
What has to be right in order for you to invest?
Why a concentrated portfolio?
What’s one thing you would change about VC?
What’s one book that inspired you professionally and one book that inspired you personally?
What’s one piece of advice for founders?
46 min
September 15, 2022Alison Cayne (Haven's Kitchen) - From founding a cooking school to creating a sauce brand
Our guest today is Alison Cayne, who is the founder of Haven’s Kitchen. Haven’s Kitchen is a cooking school and a sauce brand that creates fresh sauces in easy-squeezy, lightweight pouches.
In this episode we discuss:
Why she wanted to teach others how to cook
Founding Haven’s Kitchen in NYC
Why she decided to launch your own sauce line
Her approach to packaging and brand positioning
How she got into retail
The current fundraising environment in CPG
36 min
September 08, 2022Chuck Newhall (NEA) - How he founded one of the most successful venture capital firms in history
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.
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. 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?
4. Why did you want to be a financier rather than an entrepreneur?
5. What makes a great venture capitalist? What qualities do you need?
6. How did the partnership come together? How did NEA raise your first fund, what was the size of your first fund?
7. What are your rules of fundraising?
8. What is your approach to portfolio management?
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?
What makes a great VC firm and what tends to be their downfall?
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
How do you think about founder uniqueness?
You mention in the book how venture capital is different to other forms of financing. What regulations or legal systems would you change?
What has been the biggest changes / shifts in venture capital since you started?
38 min
August 25, 2022Nick Moran (New Stack Ventures) - Going from podcast to syndicate to fund, how he’s investing in founders outside major markets and the state of the current VC market
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:
You’re long Web 3, but during the short term you aren’t investing in it. Mind explaining your reasoning?
How have you seen valuations change in companies that are outside silicon valley? Is it as drastic?
What’s still overlooked when it comes to ecosystems outside the bay?
How do you view this investing period? How do you think about deploying capital currently? Has this environment changed how you invest?
How do you think about company sustainability, profitability vs. growth?
What about consumer technology do you focus on in today’s environment?
Walk us through your diligence process.
What are the must-haves from a founding team?
What’s your biggest piece of advice for new fund managers?
Recently raised over $40 million for your latest fund. Why that amount specifically?
What’s one thing you would change about venture capital?
What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that’s inspired you professionally?
Can’t Hurt Me by David Gogans
Who is Michael Ovitz?
What’s one piece of advice for founders?
35 min
August 23, 2022Sita Chantramonklasri (Siam Capital) - How to raise a VC fund as a first-time manager, what investing in sustainability really means and her due diligence process
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:
Tell me about your journey into venture and your interest in investing
Innovation and capital
Why did you decide to raise your own fund?
What was it like raising a fund for the first time? Was it hard raising a single GP fund as a woman?
What did you think was missing from the market of venture capital?
What’s your thesis? What is the fund’s mandate?
What does sustainability and ESG mean to you?
Where do you see the opportunities in better for the planet and better for you?
Are you more focused on investing in physical products vs. software?
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?
What’s the difference between Siam and an impact fund?
How do you think about this term conscious consumer?
What are your guidelines of better for the planet vs better for you? (repetitive?)
What’s one thing you would change about venture capital? (repetitive?)
What do you look for in founders?* (added)
What advice would you give emerging managers/folks looking to raise a fund? (added)
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
33 min

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Consumer VC takes a look into early-stage consumer investing and venture capital. If you are interested in learning about consumer trends, have a b2c business and interested in learning about the…