In The Money: eCommerce, DTC, and CPG

The meal delivery industry lost $20 billion last year. Feast & Fettle is profitable, growing 40%+, and just launched in Manhattan. Carlos Ventura, CEO of Feast & Fettle, joins In The Money to break down how a $200K personal chef service in Providence, Rhode Island became one of the only profitable players in the most capital-destructive category in consumer, through full vertical integrati...

What if your next customer acquisition channel isn't a platform, it's a licensing catalog? David Born, brand licensing consultant, joins In The Money to demystify one of the most overlooked growth levers available to consumer brands in the $5M to $30M range: licensing world-famous IP like John Deere, Peanuts, Disney, Batman, and Toy Story. The proof point that anchors the whole conversatio...

What does it take to hold your ROAS floor for six years, through COVID, rising CACs, and the collapse of most of your 2019 launch cohort? Jordan Nathan, Founder and CEO of Caraway, joins In The Money to break down the discipline behind one of the most successful DTC homeware brands of the last decade, from the fundraise that required sixty checks, to the rolling thunder marketing calendar that kee...

Joe Welstead, Co-Founder of Oshun, returns to In The Money for a deeper conversation on the systems behind one of the fastest-growing hydration brands, still just two people, still profitable, still cash generative, and now launching a second brand. Since launching in April 2024, Joe and co-founder Jack Atkinson have built Oshun to mid-seven figures with no institutional capital, an unflavored ele...

What's the difference between brand and branding and why is confusing the two one of the most expensive mistakes a consumer founder can make? Rick Desai, Managing Partner at Listen Ventures, joins In The Money to break down the investing philosophy behind one of the most concentrated consumer portfolios in venture. Listen manages $130 million across four funds, backs just twelve brands per fun...

What does it actually cost to hold an uncompromising product standard in premium homeware? Joe Parenteau, Co-Founder and CEO of Fable, joins In The Money to break down how a former accountant with no design background built one of North America's most design-forward homeware brands, and why they've walked away from roughly 30% of supplier relationships mid-development rather than ship a pr...

Sahand Dilmaghani, Founder and CEO of Terra Cafe, joins In The Money to tell one of the more quietly impressive origin stories in consumer hardware, a founder who spent months recording conversations with strangers in retail stores, carried espresso machines door to door across New York City, and built a relationship with a Chinese manufacturer just weeks before the world shut down during COVID. T...

What happens when a former consumer brand founder gets tired of the working capital grind, spots a broken format in adult recreational sports leagues, and decides to engineer the conditions for adults to actually make new friends? Tommy Flaim, Founder of Silly Pickles, joins In The Money to break down one of the more unexpected growth stories in the consumer space, a pickleball league that started...

What does it look like to send 25 to 30 cold emails to a founder you've never met because you believe in a product so much you're willing to bet your career on it? Kieran Mathew, CEO of Equip Foods, joins In The Money to break down one of the more unconventional origin stories in better-for-you supplements, an operator who joined an existing business, took over day-to-day functions from th...

What happens when a high-protein, clean-ingredient frozen pizza brand spends two years grinding through cold chain nightmares, supply chain restarts, and a fundraising carousel, and then lands at number one in the frozen pizza category at Target? Michael Rolland, Co-Founder of Yough!, joins In The Money to tell one of the more honest origin stories in better-for-you frozen food, a brand built arou...

What does it look like to sell a brand to Kraft Heinz for a reported $200 million, and then build the second one with three kids under seven and no social media on your phone? Morgan Zanotti, Founder and CEO of Waay, joins In The Money to break down what changed and what stayed the same the second time around. Waay is a fizzy, clear sparkling protein water, 10 grams of protein, 45 calories, zero s...

What does it look like to build a premium hydration brand in one of the most crowded categories in consumer health, and win by doing almost everything differently? Joe Welstead, Co-Founder of Oshun, joins In The Money to break down how a repeat founder took every assumption about the electrolyte category and threw them out. No sachets. No citrus. No agency. No VC. Just a pump dispenser, an unflavo...

What does it actually mean to invest in brand before it's measurable? Florian Wojewodzki, Partner at Iris, joins In The Money to break down one of the most distinctive approaches to consumer investing in Europe and the US, a fund that tracks over 5,000 brands, backs founders they've known for years before writing a check, and won't hire anyone who isn't genuinely obsessed with bran...

What happens when a tech founder walks away from a successful exit, spends time drinking wine in Southern Europe, and comes back convinced the American wine industry is getting it completely wrong? Stephen Vlahos, Co-Founder and CEO of Gratsi, joins In The Money to tell the story of building an eight-figure, no-additive, zero-sugar wine brand from scratch, through a pivot that COVID forced on him,...

What does it actually look like to grind for a decade in CPG before the category finally catches up to you? Jason Burke, Founder and CEO of New Primal, joins In The Money to tell one of the most honest origin stories in better-for-you snacking; twelve years of building, a lot of expensive mistakes, and a front-row seat to one of the biggest category inflections in modern grocery. New Primal commer...

Corporate venture capital has a reputation problem. And according to Brian Bernstein, that reputation is mostly earned. Brian Bernstein, Investor at Rich Products Ventures, joins In The Money to make the case for why corporate VC doesn't have to work the way founders fear and to explain exactly how Rich Products Ventures is structured to be different. Rich's is an 80-year-old privately hel...

What does it look like to build a hardware brand to eight figures with two employees, no VC, and a rule that every product must be first order profitable from day one? Sam Coxe, Founder and CEO of Flaus, joins In The Money to tell one of the most disciplined founder stories in the DTC space; a Skadden M&A attorney who put her entire life savings into a consumer electronics company, got told no...

What happens to your cash when you land a purchase order from Target, Walmart, or Costco? Ben Brachot, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Dwight Funding, joins In The Money for round two to break down the working capital reality that most consumer founders discover too late and the financial infrastructure decisions that separate the brands that scale from the ones that quietly run out of runway....

What if the best family technology isn't the most powerful one, it's the most purposeful one? Mei Lin Ng, Co-Founder and CEO of Hearth Display, joins In The Money to tell the story of building a hardware startup for families from the ground up, two years of customer research before a single line of code, three years of pre-orders before ready-to-ship inventory, and a $10M raise doing what...

What does it actually look like to build a mid-eight figure consumer brand with seven people and zero venture capital? Alex Schinasi, Co-Founder and President of Hulken, joins In The Money to break down the Minimum Viable Company, a model she's built from scratch after two VC-backed SaaS companies taught him everything she didn't want to do again. Hulken hit $50M+ in revenue with fewer tha...

What happens when a made-to-order brand tries to sell custom shirts online and discovers that guys won't do homework before buying clothes? Kirk Keel, Co-Founder of Stantt, joins In The Money to trace one of the more honest origin stories in menswear: a DTC-first vision that quietly died at checkout, a flea market in Chelsea that accidentally proved the model, and a decade of wholesale growth...

What does it actually take to get a brand onto a retail shelf, and keep it there? Erin Wall spent nearly a decade as a buyer and merchant at Target before becoming a broker, and now runs Lunr, a capital provider purpose-built for the most dangerous moment in a consumer brand's life: the gap between a purchase order and a fully stocked, actually-selling shelf. This is a conversation about what...

What happens when a top Amazon operator walks away from a great agency business to try to help dogs live longer, healthier lives? Jonathan Willbanks, Founder and CEO of Arterra Pet Science , joins In The Money to break down the leap from building Cartograph, one of the best-known Amazon agencies in CPG, to founding a pet wellness brand built around one mission: extending canine healthspan. This is...

What’s the difference between a great European consumer founder and a great American one? A lot more than you’d think. Sam Kaplan returns to In The Money to break down the biggest differences between U.S. and European consumer investing; from founder psychology and capital efficiency to TAM, exit paths, and what growth really looks like on each side of the Atlantic. This is a sharp conversation ab...

What does it actually take to build a durable apparel brand in 2026? Matt Scanlan , Co-Founder of Naadam , joins In The Money to break down the real economics behind building a modern apparel business, from hero products and inventory discipline to channel mix and financing strategy. Naadam became famous for its $98 cashmere sweater , challenging luxury pricing while maintaining quality and ethica...