The Deal Table

Kevin Lavelle took Mizzen+Main from zero to more than 100 Nordstrom doors in 16 months. Then he hired the CEO who replaced him.

More on Kevin Lavelle and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/kevin-lavelle

The brand is now in almost 1,000 retail locations plus 11 of its own stores. He covers the parts founders usually skip: raising $100,000 at a time from angels, signing a personal guarantee with almost nothing behind it, what changed once a private equity firm was on the cap table, and why he chose an L Catterton investment in early 2017 over selling the company.

Then he started over. Harbor, his second company, began the night a rival baby monitor app crashed. It pairs a camera with smart audio and a remote night nanny, against in-home night nurses that run $300 to $700 a night. Tim Ferriss invested and asked what was expected of him. The answer was nothing.

Along the way: why the best baby monitors are still bad, why the AI chip sits inside the camera, what 300 to 400 discovery calls turned up, momfluencers commanding $40,000 to $80,000 a post, and a US birth rate down to 3.6 million a year.

Kevin Lavelle is the founder of Mizzen+Main, the performance dress shirt brand he started building in 2011 while working at Hunt Oil in Dallas, and the founder and CEO of Harbor, a baby monitor and infant sleep company. He is an SMU graduate and a former Oliver Wyman consultant, and he lives in Dallas.

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 Zero to 100 Nordstrom doors in 16 months

05:46 A sweaty staffer, and a shirt idea

09:05 Raising $100,000 at a time

13:55 Signing his first personal guarantee

19:03 L Catterton, and the executive coach

22:30 The decision to step back as CEO

37:10 The night the baby monitor app crashed

42:10 Smart audio and the remote night nanny

49:51 Momfluencers at $40,000 a post

01:04:30 Tim Ferriss invests, and expects nothing

Newsletter: thedealtablepodcast.com/connect

Lane Carrick on selling a business, The Optima Advantage: amzn.to/48nLElW

Instagram: instagram.com/thedealtablepodcast/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/the-deal-table/

The Deal Table is hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick, filmed in Dallas, and produced by Harper Belmont Media.

Roughly half the handshake deals struck on Shark Tank never close. Abe Minkara ran diligence on them for seven years at Mark Cuban Companies.

More on Abe Minkara and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/abe-minkara

Here he opens the whole machine. More than 40,000 entrepreneurs apply each season and 150 to 200 get picked. The pitch that airs as five minutes actually runs an hour or more, and after the opening minute there are no retakes. The average check is about $200,000, pre-seed to Series A, and the deals with three, four or five Sharks attached are the ones most likely to die.

Deals get killed by ordinary things: $5 million in claimed sales against $3 million in the books, a Walmart commitment that turns out to be an email, an undisclosed lawsuit. If a handshake deal did not close there was a good chance the episode never aired, a fix the show made after companies started using it purely for exposure. For the ones that do air, $200,000 in sales inside 48 hours and close to $1 million in a week is real.

Then he explains what he does now at Legacy Knight, the Dallas multifamily office he co-founded in late 2019. It serves families in the $50 million to $500 million range, pools their capital to clear $10 to $20 million fund minimums, and runs private equity as its largest allocation.

Abe Minkara is a founding partner at Legacy Knight, a Dallas multifamily office he co-founded in late 2019 and that Citywire ranked the fastest growing registered investment advisor in Texas. He previously spent seven years as a managing director at Mark Cuban Companies, much of it running diligence on Shark Tank investments.

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 Harder to get on than into Stanford

02:48 40,000 apply, 150 to 200 get picked

04:24 One scripted minute, then no retakes

10:37 If the deal died, no episode aired

11:40 Commit to ten, expect half to fall out

13:35 The average check is about $200,000

30:12 $50M to $500M: the multifamily office

44:10 Private equity as the biggest bucket

48:50 Clearing $10 to $20 million minimums

55:27 Slap AI on the name, raise $10 million

Newsletter: thedealtablepodcast.com/connect

Lane Carrick on selling a business, The Optima Advantage: amzn.to/48nLElW

Instagram: instagram.com/thedealtablepodcast/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/the-deal-table/

The Deal Table is hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick, filmed in Dallas, and produced by Harper Belmont Media.

The Morgan Stanley real estate book Michael Levy was handed after 2008 had run from $10 billion to $95 billion in seven years. Then it blew up.

More on Michael Levy and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/michael-levy

Nobody could say what was actually in it. He calls the reporting a pile of spaghetti, and it took months to find the bottom. Almost all of it was good real estate, just 85 percent levered, and tens of billions in assets went back to the lenders.

Eight years later he left New York to become the first non-family CEO in the 77 year history of Crow Holdings, the Dallas firm Trammell Crow started. His first rule on arrival was do no harm. Today the business runs as five silos: real estate development, real estate investment management, oil and gas out of the Permian, community solar, and an in-house investing arm. Six hundred people, eight years in the seat, no crises.

He also explains why a real estate family went into oil and gas. He watched the capital markets boycott tobacco, noticed that the investors who stayed made the money, and read the ESG capital flight out of energy the same way. Unlevered going-in returns in that book ran 15 to 30 percent, because capital had stopped being a commodity.

Michael Levy is the CEO of Crow Holdings, the Dallas real estate and investment firm founded by Trammell Crow 77 years ago, and the first person outside the Crow family to run it. He spent 1994 to 2016 in New York at Prudential Securities, Salomon Brothers and Morgan Stanley, where he was handed the real estate business after the financial crisis.

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 The 2008 lesson he still runs on

06:59 Leaving New York for a 77-year firm

08:25 "Do no harm" as the first rule

11:30 First week, 1994: 25% cut in a day

13:04 New York is transactional, Dallas is not

17:44 The five silos inside Crow Holdings

42:01 $10 billion to $95 billion in 7 years

44:48 85% levered, and the alignment problem

52:37 Why a real estate family went into oil

54:09 The tobacco boycott that taught him

Newsletter: thedealtablepodcast.com/connect

Lane Carrick on selling a business, The Optima Advantage: amzn.to/48nLElW

Instagram: instagram.com/thedealtablepodcast/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/the-deal-table/

The Deal Table is hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick, filmed in Dallas, and produced by Harper Belmont Media.