Due Diligence

Michelle Goad is an Operating Partner at The Chernin Group, a growth equity firm that invests in iconic media & commerce brands like Barstool Sports, Hello Sunshine, Food52, The Athletic, and more. Prior to that Michelle led Nike's entry into social commerce after selling her conversational commerce startup, PS Dept., to the multibillion dollar brand in 2017. Michelle started her career in fashion where she has had various roles at fashion & retail brands like Donna Karan, Barney's, and Marc Jacobs.

Michael Ma is the founder & CEO of CreatorDAO, a decentralized community that accelerates creators with capital & technology. He is also a VC and founded Liquid 2 Ventures alongside legendary football player Joe Montana after helping First Round Capital launch Dorm Room Fund in Boston. Prior to venture capital, Michael got his MBA at Harvard Business School and before that sold his startup TalkBin to Google 7 months after cofounding the company with Qasar Younis.

In this conversation we discuss:

Amy Errett is the founder & CEO of Madison Reed, a hair color brand that sells direct-to-consumer and offline through third-party retail stores like Ulta and through over 50 of their own hair color bars around the U.S. They have raised over $200M in venture capital including most recently from Sandbridge and Marcy Venture Partners, Jay Z's venture firm. Amy Errett is a partner at True Ventures and prior to founding Madison Reed was a general partner at Maveron, a consumer fund founded by Dan Levitan and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz in 1998.

Jerry Colonna is the CEO, and co-founder, of Reboot.io, an executive coaching and leadership development firm that operates from the philosophy that "better humans make better founders". Jerry became one of Silicon Valley's most well-known executive coaches after a career in venture capital in which he cofounded Flatiron Partners with venture capitalist Fred Wilson in 1996 in New York City and joined JPMorgan Partners (JPMorgan's private equity arm) as partner years later. He has been profiled by top publications including Wired which called him the coach that "makes founders cry".

Jerry Colonna is the author of Reboot: Leadership & The Art of Growing Up, a guide to radical self-inquiry for founders & CEOs to become more effective in the workplace. The book has been named one of Inc. Magazine's Top Leadership Books of 2020, Bloomberg's Best Books of 2019, and one of Mindful Magazine's Best Mindfulness Books of 2019. He is publishing his second book in November 2023 titled Reunion: Leadership & The Longing To Belong about how leaders can contribute to systemic belonging in the face of a divided and oppressive society.

Connie Chan is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a leading Silicon Valley VC firm with over $35B under management. Connie joined Andreessen Horowitz in 2011 after working at HP in China and in private equity and became a general partner in 2018. She also spearheaded the firm’s Asia network to bridge the gap between Silicon Valley startups looking to navigate opportunities in the Chinese consumer tech ecosystem and companies in Asia seeking to better understand Silicon Valley.

--

Get 20% off Lyvecom for your Shopify store at lyvecom.com/dulma

Imran Khan is the CEO and co-founder of Verishop, a platform for discovering 5000+ indie brands across fashion, beauty, home, and wellness. Prior to founding Verishop with his wife, Cate Khan, Imran was the Chief Strategy Officer at Snap where he lead the company to its IPO and before that he served as Managing Director of Global Internet Investment Banking at Credit Suisse and Managing Director of Internet Equity Research at J.P. Morgan for seven years.

In this episode we discuss Imran's time on Wall Street, his perspectives on the fate of TikTok given his background working with Chinese tech companies, and the opportunity he saw after working with Alibaba and at Snap in helping great independent consumer brands with a platform that was designed for discovery, community & growth through Verishop, his current company.

Ezra Cooperstein is the President of Night, a management company for the world best digital creators, including MrBeast, Moriah Elizabeth, Safiya Nygaard, Codie Sanchez, Graham Stephan, and more. He was previously CEO of Maker Studios and President of Fullscreen and Rooster Teeth and has over two decades of experience in digital content, media & the creator economy.

Patrick Schwarzenegger is an investor, founder, actor & model. In 2020 co-founded MOSH, a brain wellness brand that makes nutritional bars for brain health, with his mother Maria Shriver to fund research focused on women's Alzheimer's. He has also invested in companies including Liquid IV, Poppi, Olipop, Whoop, Rumble, MUD/WTR, Verb Energy, Malk Organics, and Tecovas. 

In this conversation we discuss:

Learn more about MOSH here

In this episode I interview Ju Rhyu, CEO & co-founder of Hero Cosmetics. Ju co-founded Hero Cosmetics in 2017 after working in the corporate world when a trip to South Korea inspired her to bring hydrocolloid acne patches to the U.S. market — and thus Mighty Patch (one of Amazon's bestselling personal care products!) was born, kicking off a dazzling success story that is still just beginning.

We discuss:

For more info:

Ju Rhyu's Instagram & Twitter

If there is such a thing as an "OG girlboss", Candace Nelson would be it. 

Her entrepreneurial journey began when she left investment banking to cofound the cult favorite cupcake brand Sprinkles which has sold over 200M+ cupcakes since it was founded in 2005 & has been beloved by Hollywood celebrities from Jessica Alba to Blake Lively to Oprah. She sold the company in 2012 and went on to become executive producer of Netflix's Sugar Rush, a judge on Food Network's Cupcake Wars, and executive producer of Hulu's upcoming Best In Dough. Most recently she is known for cofounding the award-winning pizzeria chain Pizzana. She is an active angel investor, the NYTimes bestselling author of The Sprinkles Baking Book and now the author of the new manual for aspiring entrepreneurs, Sweet Success: A Simple Recipe to Turn Your Passion into Profit.

In this episode we discuss:

Sweet Success (book)

Try Lyvecom for 1 month free