My guest today is Sara Deshpande, Partner at Maven Ventures. Maven Ventures is a consumer focused micro-fund that focuses on investing in seed stage companies. Some of their investments include Zoom, Wild Type, Angellist and Nuggs. What I most enjoyed about this conversation was looking at what types of businesses were being built on top of Zoom and the opportunities in telehealth. Without further ado, here's Sara.

You can catch her on Twitter @sara_desh.

Three books that have inspired Sara:

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

Maid by Stephanie Land

Some of the questions I ask Sara:

1. You came from healthcare consulting at Deloitte. What was your attraction to venture capital, startups and innovation?
2. Tell us a bit about Maven.
3. What do you consider micro-VC?
4. Walk us through your due diligence process?
5. How do you access how big of a pain point a company is solving?
6. What are some of the opportunities that you're seeing telehealth?
7. Another area of focus are technology that serves families. What's an example of a company you're excited in this space or a problem that you are hoping to see solve?
8. Has COVID affected any of the themes you focus on?
9. What are some other trends that you're curious about?
10. What's one thing that you would change when it came to venture capital?
11. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
12. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?

My guest today is Morgan Hirsh, CEO and founder of Public Goods. Public Goods is your one stop shop for healthy, sustainable, everyday essentials you can trust. This episode helps to demystify or understand what sustainability means or could mean for consumer products. I also loved learning about his approach to building Public Goods in multiple categories rather than just one category.

In this episode we discuss:

• What led Morgan to leave Canada and come to New York City?
• Why he decided to start Public Goods?
• What sustainability means
• Investor reaction when he wanted to build in multi-categories
• His approach to leadership

My guest today is Alex Fine, founder of Dame Products. Dame is the home of phenomenally fun toys for adults, that helps people to upgrade their self care with toys for sex. They were also named one of the most innovative wellness companies in 2020 by Fast Company. We touch on alot of areas in both sexual wellness and femtech that have been traditionally heavily stigmatized and her journey guiding Dame to amazing heights.

Some of the questions I ask Alex

1. Let's start at the beginning. What attracted you to entrepreneurship and sex therapy?
2. What was the insight that led to Dame?
3. How did you start creating vibrators?
4. What was the process of testing, finding women to test the product. Was there any hesitancy to sample since they were putting the vibrators under their labias?
5. When did you realize this could be a business?
6. How did you approach marketing and brand?
7. How did you think about the competitive landscape in the vibrator category?
8. How do you think about product extensions and launching new products?
9. What are some of the hurdles or challenges you've had to face?
10. What was your fundraising strategy?
11. What's the most surprising thing you've done and thought you'd never do as a founder?
12. What's one thing you'd change regarding the fundraising process?
13. What's one book the inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
14. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
15. What's one piece of advice for founders?

My guests today are Aditi Dash and Joe Hovde from CircleUp. CircleUp Growth Partners is an early-stage consumer fund that takes a data-driven approach investing in compelling companies. Aditi is one of the investment partners and Joe is one of the data analysts. This is a fascinating conversation about building a data base for the private markets and using that data base as a tool to help make investment decisions and discover trends in CPG.

Some of the questions I ask Aditi and Joe:

1. Let's start at the beginning. What was each of your attraction to working with consumer brands and the private markets?
2. For those that aren't familiar walk us through a little bit of the history of Circle Up.
3. One of the difficulties in the private markets is that company information is private. I understand that you are building a platform to help make investment decisions based on data, but what's that process of convincing a company to share its metrics and data with you?
4. How has the platform helped make investment decisions?
5. What are some of the ways that you've been able to leverage data?
6. What is the relationship between data and how you make decisions when it comes to investing?
7. How do you make sure you don't overindex on the data when analyzing a company to invest in?
8. What are the most important metrics
9. Has the platform led to help you discover new trends?
10. What are some of the trends that you are most excited about?
11. Walk us through your due diligence process.
12. What makes a strong founding team?
13. What's one thing that you would change about venture capital?
14. What's the best piece of advice that each of you've received?
15. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?

My guests today are Wendy Tsu who is a partner of new business ventures at AlleyCorp and Susannah Shipton, Head of Platform and investor at AlleyCorp. AlleyCorp was founded by Kevin Ryan and both founds and funds companies in New York. On this particular episode, we're going to focus more on the founding / incubation side of AlleyCorp, which I thought was truly fascinating. Some of the companies AlleyCorp founded was MongoDB, Zola, Business Insider, GILT and Nomad Health.

Some of the questions I ask Wendy and Susannah:

1. What was each of your attraction to innovation and startups?
2. Tell us about AlleyCorp because it's a bit of a different type of fund that we've discussed on the show.
3. What is an incubation studio and how do you think about innovation?
4. How do you think about ideas that could be businesses? Where do you start?
5. Walk us through your process of once you have a compelling idea what happens next?
6. This concept of idea-market fit. How do you approach ideas, markets and evaluating pain points?
7. What are some of the ways you conduct market research?
8. Once you have conviction in an idea, do you have to have your full team's support to move forward or what are the next steps?
9. How many companies do you typically launch per year?
10. Are you able to walk through a couple examples of consumer facing businesses from ideation stage all the way to a proper business?
11. What's your approach to building teams for young companies?
12. How do you interview potential CEOs for these businesses that you're building and structure team?
13. What do you think are the most important interview questions or the goal of an interview?
14. What's one thing you would change about venture capital or the fundraising process?
15. What's one book that inspired each of you personally and one book that inspired each of you professionally?
16. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
17. What's one piece of advice for founders today?

Thank you Elizabeth Edwards for introducing me to our guest today. Leigh Radford, the Senior Vice President, Founder & General Manager of P&G Ventures. We discuss what is corporate venture capital, how P&G partners with brands, and the advantages for aspiring brands. Without further ado, here's Leigh.

Some of the questions I ask Leigh

1. What was your initial attraction to consumer products?
2. How did you end up working at P&G?
3. Of course, when it comes to building brands, P&G are one of the world's best at doing so. What were some of your learnings of brand building at P&G?
4. Tell me a bit about P&G Ventures.
5. Startup studio, partners with entrepreneurs both inside and outside of the company.
6. What do you look for when analyzing brands?
7. Walk me through your due diligence process.
8. What are some of the advantages for aspiring brands that's hard for incumbents to adapt to?
9. What are some of the advantages for an aspiring brand to partner with corporate venture capital arm vs. a "normal" venture capital firm?
10. When you are analyzing online brands, what are some of the attributes they need to have in order to work in retail?
11. Going the other way, what types of brands might work in retail without having an online presence?
12. What are the KPIs you look for when brands are in retail?
13. What's one thing that 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 that you have for founders?

My guest today is Carey Smith. Carey is the founder of Big Ass Fans, which in less than two decades he took the company from 0 to $250 million in revenue, without the help of investors. Following the sale of Big Ass Fans, Carey started Unorthodox Ventures, where he partners with extraordinary founders, providing capital and expertise to build companies faster. Their portfolio includes Fit Joy, Go Fish and Lumun. This was a great conversation whre we chat about Carey's transition from a founder to investor and how that has helped shaped his decision making process. Without further ado, here's Carey.

And there you have it. It was great learning from Carey and what it means to be a contrarian investor.

One book that inspired Carey is Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim.

Some of the questions I ask Carey:

1. What was your attraction to entrepreneurship?
2. What was the insight that led you to founding Big Ass Fans?
3. Why did you want to sell Big Ass Fans
4. Why did you decide to become an investor?
5. You don't have a sector of focus, how do you think about opportunities?
6. What's your approach to investing in companies?
7. How did you go about building your team?
8. What are some of the advantages for entrepreneurs fundraising from a family office as opposed to a VC fund.
9. How do you approach portfolio construction and exercising pro-rata?
10. What's one thing you would change about the fundraising process?
11. How do you think about sourcing?
12. What's your most recent investment?
13. What's one company you had the opportunity invest in, didn't, and in retrospect wish you did?
14. What's the best piece of advice you've received?
15. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?

Thank you Katie Shea for introducing me to today's guest Helaine Knapp, founder and CEO of CITYROW. CITYROW is a boutique fitness studio which started in New York City that specializes in a total body, high-intensity, low-impact workout using a water-based rowing machine and strength-training exercises. They have since launched Cityrow go, taking the boutique rowing experience into your home with on demand classes.

I highly recommend following her on twitter @HelaineKnapp

A few books that inspired Helaine:

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Questions I ask Helaine:

1. Let's begin before you became an entrepreneur. How did your experiences at Olapic and Buddy Media help you as a founder?
2. What was your attraction to fitness and athletics?
3. What was the insight the led you to founding CITY ROW?
4. Why rowers?
5. What were some of the biggest hurdles when starting out?
6. Why did you decide on the franchise model?
7. Since we haven't discussed the franchise model on this show before, could you walk us through some of the innerworkings?
8. How did you think about growth?
9. What led you to create CITY ROW Go?
10. What were some of the biggest challenges when you decided to introduce this product?
11. What has been some of the challenges with the roll out?
12. What has been some of the effects of COVID?
13. How do you think about the future of the in store rowing experience once we all have the vaccines and people are able to work out in studios and gyms?
14. Walk me through your fundraising process.
15. What was the biggest hangup from investors?
16. People invest in what you know
17. What's one thing you would change about the fundraising process?
18. Not so much of a dance, wish more of a equality
19. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
20. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
21. What's one piece of advice for founders?

Thank you Carlton Fowler for the introduction to today's guests Brandon Schwartz and Lawrence Cisneros, co-founders of DRNXMYTH. DRNXMYTH Makes The Best Cocktails Ever Bottled. I have to say, these are amazing. I tried the product a few weeks ago and think what they are building with DRNXMYTH is very innovative and I hope you'll see that as well. We discuss their origin story of how they created this amazing bottle for cocktails, how their business is becoming a marketplace, how they think about collaborations.

A couple of books that inspired Brandon and Lawrence:

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Klyosakl

The questions I ask Brandon and Lawrence:

1. Let's start from the beginning. How did you two meet and become interested in the alcohol and beverage industries?
2. What was the insight or pain point that you wanted to solve that led to the founding of Drnxmyth come together?
3. When you started realized
4. How did you develop the technology and your supply chain?
5. What were some of the early hurdles?
6. How did you think about brand and brand positioning?
7. Lunchables
8. Pancakes
9. How were you able to validate your idea?
10. What was some of the early growth levers you used and your approach to retail and ecommerce?
11. How were you able to pivot during COVID?
12. What was your approach to fundraising?
13. What was the biggest hang up from investors when they were evaluating your business?
14. How did you approach building community with Drnxmyth?
15. How did you think about flavors and creating different cocktails?
16. Do you plan on creating your own hard alcohols?
17. What's one thing you would change about the fundraising process?
18. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders currently building?

Thank you Sumeet Shah for introducing me to our guest today Kelsey Moreira, founder and Co-CEO of Doughp. Doughp makes 100% raw cookie dough. As you probably can guess, we talk all things cookie dough as well as why Kelsey moved from Oakland to set up shop in Las Vegas, effects of COVID in her store and ecommerce, her mission and her experience on Shark Tank.

And there you have it. It was wonderful chatting with Kelsey. I highly recommend following her @kelsey_moreira on Twitter.

A book that inspired Kelsey -

You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero

Some of the questions I ask Kelsey -

1. You worked in tech for a long time, what attracted you to entrepreneurship and the food and beverage space?
2. What was the insight that led you to founding DOUGHP?
3. How did you decide to approach creating the product?
4. How did you think about DOUGHPs brand and positioning?
5. Why Las Vegas?
6. DOUGHP for Hope initiative
7. Mental health days for staff
8. What did you want to raise capital?
9. How was your experience on Shark Tank?
10. What was your fundraising approach?
11. How did you distribution and different channels?
12. What has been the effect of COVID on your business?
13. What's one thing you would change about fundraising?
14. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
15. What's one piece of advice for folks building a consumer product?