Consumer VC

My guest today is Megan Bent, Managing Partner at Harbinger Ventures. Harbinger Ventures is a leading growth-equity investment firm focused on identifying and scaling high-growth companies in the consumer sector. Some of their investments include Once Upon a Farm, Cora and Vinebox.

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Some of the questions I ask Megan:

1. What was your initial attraction to consumer packaged good?
2. How do you think about brand authenticity
3. Why did you decide to focus on venture capital and innovation?
4. What was your first role as an investor?
5. When does it make sense for a CPG company to fundraise from venture capital vs. angels or not fundraise at all?
6. How did you come to found Harbinger Ventures? What's the focus?
7. What are the missed opportunities that you are seeing in consumer?
8. What are some of the positives of having a concentrated portfolio?
9. What's the typically percentage of ownership you typically take?
10. Do you invest in companies that are typically pre product market fit?
11. In CPG, how do you think about IP and competitive moats?
12. How is your model unique compared to other venture models out there?
13. How do you leverage your platform to help founders?
14. What are some of the trends in consumer that you're focused on?
15. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
16. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
17. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
18. What's one piece of advice to founders?

Thank you Kate McAndrew for the introduction to my guest today Tyler Mincey, Partner of Bolt VC. Bolt invests at the intersection of the digital and physical world. Tyler started his career on the ipod team at Apple, focusing on the shuffle, classic, nano and touch. I don't know when I last heard those product lines to be honest. What I loved about our conversation and what you'll learn is Tyler's deep love and appreciation for hardware / tech enabled products. Alot of VCs want to focus on software, but Tyler certainly spends alot of his time looking at physical products that can change our world.

Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Gorgias. Gorgias combines all your communication channels including email, SMS, social media, livechat, and phone, into one platform and gives you an organized view of all tickets. Sign up here and mention the Consumer VC podcast for two months free.

Questions I ask Tyler.

1. What attracted you to engineering?
2. What was it like working on the ipod and the iphone?
3. So after working at Apple, you ended up working for a product studio and incubator. What attracted you to startups?
4. How did working at a large company like Apple help make you think about innovation?
5. What are some of hardest parts of producing hardware?
6. We've talked about on this show about how important it is to eliminate friction, mostly focusing on user design relating to software. What are some examples in hardware when you are thinking about user design and working with startups?
7. How do you think about design vs. sustainability?
8. What led you to Bolt?
9. Why investing?
10. When you are conducting due diligence on a company, when it comes to product what are you looking for?
11. What makes the team the right team that's worth investing in?
12. How has some of the business models evolved with SaaS with a box companies?
13. What are some of the current trends that you are most excited about?
14. What's one thing you would change when it came to venture capital?
15. What's one piece of advice you have for founders?

Our guest today is Rachel ten Brink, who is an investor, Founder, CMO, and Board member. She was one of the founders and the CMO of Scentbird, which is a beauty subscription services that let's you choose from over 700 top rated perfumes each month. She also was a Partner at Five Four Ventures. In this episode you'll learn about personal care trends that Rachel is paying attention to, how working in big CPG led her to become an entrepreneur, and what it was like going through Y-Combinator.

You can follow her on Twitter @rtenbrink1.

Questions that I ask Rachel:

1. What attracted you to a career in consumer packaged goods?
2. What were some of your learnings working in corporate personal care and food and beverage?
3. What attracted you to entrepreneurship and innovation?
4. Tell us a bit of the founding story of Scentbird?
5. What was the opportunity that you saw?
6. What was it like being in YC?
7. How did you approach scaling the business?
8. How did you think approach partnerships?
9. After Scentbird, what attracted you to investing?
10. What do you think alot of investors don't get when investing in consumer packaged goods?
11. What's your investment strategy?
12. What's your advice to founders with how they approach brand?
13. Walk me through your due diligence process.
14. How do you evaluate founders?
15. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
16. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
17. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
18. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?

My guest today is Brian Reilly, founder of Will Ventures. Will Ventures is a venture capital fund that focused exclusively on leveraging the power of sport to shape the future. In this episode (as you can imagine) you'll learn about sports technology, health and wellness innovation and what's next in Media and content and how his upbringing helped shape him as an investor. Without further ado, here's Brian.

And there you have it. It was a pleasure chatting with Brian, you can catch him on Twitter @brianreillyvc

Some of the questions I ask Brian:

1. Was the idea always to see how you could remain close to sports?
2. What was your attraction to venture capital, innovation and quite honestly being around entrepreneurs?
3. Talk to me about your journey up to founding Will Ventures?
4. Why did you decide to start your own venture capital fund?
5. I was talking to an entrepreneur the other day who is building technology in the sports - media space who told me only a handful of investors truly invest in sports technology. Do you feel the areas that you focus on at Will Ventures is quite niche?
6. How do you describe your investment themes?
7. Walk me through your due diligence process.
8. How do you assess founders?
9. Have there been moments in your life that have impacted how you invest, who you invest in and what you look for?
10. How do you measure grit and what are some of the keys to leadership?
11. What are opportunities that you're currently focused on?
12. Due to COVID and remote work, are you finding yourself seeing more and more opportunities outside the main hubs of entrepreneurship (SF, NYC, LA, Boston etc.)?
13. What's one thing you would change about venture capital process?
14. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
15. What's your most recent investment and what makes you excited about it?
16. What's the best piece of advice you've received?
17. What's one piece of advice for founders?

My guest today is Sandy Gibson, founder of Better Place Forests. Better Place Forests is America's first conservation memorial forests. Instead of graves and tombstones, families choose a private, protected family tree to return their ashes to the earth together. In this episode, we talk building a business that focuses on the end of life, burial traditions and cemeteries. Sandy is one of the most unique founders I've had on the show on this and his story is very inspiring.

Some of the questions I ask Sandy:

1. What was your initial attraction to entrepreneurship?
2. Why did you decide to focus on the burial / end of life space? - making the world more beautiful
3. Traditional burials have been around for thousands of years. It's typically part of one's tradition and tied to cultures, faiths. When it came to timing of launching your business. Why now? Do you think people were questioning tradition? Was there a certain statistic that stood out?
4. A grave is something that can last forever, at least longer than a tree as all trees just like all living things die. When you think about eternally, how are you able to make people feel comfortable that their resting place will be a tree rather than something that could last longer?
5. How do you describe your target audience?
6. How did you go about securing land?
7. What's the typical sales cycle?
8. This is a sensitive area to talk about. How do you approach that in your marketing?
9. Since this is a product that only one person will buy never again, how
10. When did you need to raise capital and why?
11. What was your fundraising strategy?
12. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
13. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
14. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
15. What's one piece of advice for founders?

My guest today is John Gannon, founder of GoingVC. GoingVC is a VC Career accelerator. GoingVC is designed to help you break into venture capital by directly connecting motivated VC job seekers with VC firms. GoingVC also has its own investment arm. We discuss how to enter VC, the rise of cohort based learning, and what the consumerization of enterprise really means.

You can also follow him on Twitter @johnmgannon

Here are some questions I ask John:

1. What was your attraction to venture capital?
2. How did you start Going VC? What was the gap you were seeing?
3. Tell us a bit about Going VC?
4. What are some trends in consumer that you are focusing on?
5. How has venture capital changed since you started at a fund after grad school?
6. What are the differences of people in your cohorts that make it into venture vs. those that don't?
7. Are their special skill sets that one needs to have to enter the consumer side?
8. Are you seeing funds become more specialized or more generalists?
9. How do you look at consumer companies?
10. What's one thing you would change about VC?
11. What's your best piece of advice for someone that's looking to go into VC?

My guest today is Ben Zises, founder of SuperAngel.fund. SuperAngel Fund is an early stage rolling fund investing in Consumer, PropTech & Future of Work companies. Some of the companies he's invested in are quip, Caraway and Arber. Ben is usually the first check in on the investments that he makes and in our conversation we touch on what's it's like investing in companies pre-product-market fit, learning the mechanics of a rolling fund vs. a traditional venture capital fund.

Head over to SuperAngel.fund to learn more about subscribing.

You can also follow Ben on Twitter @bzises

Here are some of the questions I ask Ben:

1. What was your attraction to entrepreneurship?
2. After Retail MLS, why did you decide to become an investor?
3. What are some of the challenges when investing in CPG businesses?
4. You say you invest at day 0. what do you mean by that?
5. What are some of the benefits of having a rolling fund vs. traditional venture capital fund?
6. How do you approach portfolio construction?
7. How do you judge founders?
8. Everybody does due diligence a little bit differently. How do you do due diligence when you invest?
9. What are some of the reasons why you might pass?
10. How do you think about digitally native brands today? It's easier than ever to start a digitally native company and there's no longer FB and google arbitrage marketing opportunities.
11. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
12. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
13. Not to underestimate any
14. What's one piece of advice that you have to consumer founders?

My guest today is Justin Kolbeck, CEO and co-founder of Wild Type. Wild Type is on a mission to create the cleanest most sustainable seafood on the planet, starting with salmon. This is the first founder of a cell based food company I've had on the show and as someone who didn't know much about cell base food or commercial fishing, this was quite eye opening for me. We talk about the current state of the ocean, the supply chain for fish, the process for producing cell based food and their approach to quick feedback loops in trials.

Some of the questions I ask Justin:

1. When were you first introduced to cell based seafood and meat?
2. What was your attraction to entrepreneurship? What was that decision making process like? Was it gradual?
3. What was the insight that led you to founding Wildtype foods?
4. Why is this product so essential for the world? What's the current state of commercial fishing?
5. Why do you believe you were in a unique position to found this company?
6. When founding WildType Foods, what was the first step? How did you approach making a cell based salmon product?
7. Why did you decide to start with salmon?
8. What's your go-to-market strategy?
9. How do you imagine your ideal consumer?
10. Is there a difference in taste?
11. How did you approach investors and raise capital?
12. What's one thing you would change about fundraising or venture capital?
13. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
14. What's one piece of advice for founders?

Our guest today is Steven Sashen, one of the founders and CEO of Xero Shoes. Xero Shoes produces lightweight minimalist footwear designed for walking, running, and athletics.

Here are some of the questions I ask Steven:

1. How did you discover minimalism shoes and what led you to founding Zero Shoes?
2. Bring us up to speed. What's wrong with cushioned shoes?
3. What has been consumer reaction? Do you find there was already a market of consumers who knew about the detriments of cushioning in shoes or did it take lots of consumer education on your end?
4. What does going all green mean to you and true environmental impact mean to you?
5. Why did you decide to start with sandals?
6. One of the things I love about your shoes is that I think they are pretty affordable. I got my Prios I think for $80 and they come with a 5,000 sole
7. Was there a moment where you thought to yourself "hey this is actually working"? If so when did that moment occur?
8. What was your approach to your supply chain?
9. How did you think about expanding the number of products and SKUs?
10. Can you unpack that in terms of quality control and traditional
11. It seems like there are a number of shoe companies capitalizing on zero drop, but aren't truly minimalist. Can you unpack the differences?
12. Why did you decide to raise venture capital and what was your fundraising strategy?
13. Now you've raised private equity, what's the dynamic like having a board of directors and your decision making process?
14. When it comes to your own decision making process, what were a few moments that you really learned from that influenced you as a leader?
15. What's one thing you would change about consumer perception towards our feet?
16. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
17. What's one piece of advice you have for entrepreneurs?

Our guest today is Ariel Kaye, founder of Parachute. Parachute is a home essentials brand that is designed in Los Angeles and manufactured by expert craftspeople across the globe including Portugal, Turkey and the U.S. In this episode you'll learn how Ariel saw the opportunity to create a brand in bedding, approached an omni-channel strategy, managing her stores and business during COVID.

You can follow Ariel on Twitter @arielkaye

Some of the questions I ask Ariel:

1. What attracted you to consumer brands?
2. What was the insight that led you to founding Parachute?
3. What was missing from bedding?
4. What was the competitive stack?
5. What the supply chain could look like?
6. What was your approach to brand design?
7. How did you source your product?
8. What was your launch strategy?
9. How did you pick which SKUs to launch with?
10. How did you pick distribution channels?
11. What was your approach to retail and omnichannel?
12. Why did you choose to go direct, creating your own stores?
13. How do did you think about organic growth vs. paid?
14. Approach to customer retention and building a dedicated audience.
15. How did you think about expanding into other categories?
16. How did you have to pivot during COVID?
17. As we come out of COVID, what's on the horizon for Parachute?
18. What was your approach to fundraising?
19. What's one thing you would change about fundraising?
20. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
21. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
22. Don't sweat the small stuff
23. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?