In The Money: eCommerce, DTC, and CPG

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...

Building a consumer brand looks very different depending on where you start. Jeremy Evans of Era Ventures joins In The Money to break down how they invest in seed-stage consumer brands across the U.S., Australia, and the UK, and why geography shapes everything from founder psychology to capital strategy. This episode dives into global consumer investing, capital efficiency, omnichannel strategy, a...

Revenue is not product-market fit. Unit economics are. Connor Ryan of Bridge joins In The Money to break down how they underwrite seed-stage consumer brands and why artificially manufactured revenue doesn’t impress them. We cover: Why unit economics are a higher bar for product-market fit than revenue How founders can “manufacture” revenue and why that’s dangerous Consumer as a discrete math probl...

What happens when a national TV weatherman decides most umbrellas are junk and builds a better one? Rick Reichmuth, Chief Meteorologist at FOX and Founder of Weatherman Umbrella, joins In The Money to break down how he turned credibility, distribution, and product obsession into a profitable consumer brand in one of the most overlooked categories in retail. This isn’t a vanity influencer story. It...

Freestyle pivoted twice before it found real velocity. Russ Wallace joins In The Money to break down how his seven-figure brand that wasn’t quite clicking transformed into one of the fastest-growing challenger diaper brands in mass retail, by letting go of a story that mattered to the founders and obsessing over what actually mattered to customers. We cover: The two major pivots that changed Frees...

Chickens are now the third-most popular pet in America and almost no one in tech or venture is paying attention. Sean Warner, Co-Founder of Grubbly Farms, joins In The Money to break down how he built an 8-figure consumer business by leaning into one of the fastest-growing and most overlooked pet categories in the U.S.: backyard chickens. What started as an insect-protein experiment turned into a...

Can premium consumer brands still scale in a K-shaped economy even if they never reach most Americans? In this episode of In The Money , Tyler Morgan of BFG breaks down how seed and Series A consumer investing has changed and why some brands can now reach $100M+ in revenue by serving a smaller, more affluent customer base. We cover: The K-shaped economy and why premium brands can still win How “as...

Branch almost died in March 2020. A $4M B2B pipeline collapsed to $30K in ten days, and the company had to reinvent itself overnight. In this episode, Greg Hayes , co-founder of Branch , walks through one of the most consequential pivots in modern consumer: going from B2B office furniture to DTC at the height of COVID, and then rebuilding the company again into a multi-channel, profitable, capital...

Food is capital-intensive, margin-compressed, and brutally hard, so why do some investors still believe it’s one of the most underfunded opportunities in venture? Nate Cooper, founder of Barrel Ventures, joins In The Money to break down how he underwrites food and beverage businesses, from pre-revenue to Series A, and why velocity, habit, and lifetime value matter more than software-style margins....

Is growth a marketing problem or a market problem? Isaac Mertens, founder of Flux Footwear, joins In The Money for one of the most honest operator conversations of the year. Isaac has trained as a media buyer, worked at a top-tier agency, spent eight figures on paid media, and still says this plainly: great marketing can’t save you from a bad market and no agency is coming to rescue your business....