Investor Spotlight: Brian Bustamante-Nicholson, Greycroft

In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, host Hannah Dittman sits down with Brian Bustamante-Nicholson, a partner at Greycroft in the consumer brands vertical, to explore what growth-stage investors actually look for in consumer businesses—and how founders can build with intention from day one.

Brian has spent 15 years working alongside founders building consumer businesses, developing a sharp lens for what actually drives durable growth versus what just looks good in a pitch deck. His experience spans deep e-commerce knowledge and evaluating brands at the earliest stages through to scale, giving him a practical, operator-minded view of how products, teams, and metrics evolve over time. At Greycroft, Brian leads a separate consumer investment strategy alongside founding entrepreneurs Catherine Power (Avaline, Burst, Merit) and Eric Ryan (Method, Olly), investing in exceptional growth-stage consumer businesses at inflection points—typically $5-15M in revenue with strong product-market fit signals.

Throughout the conversation, Brian shares the core pillars he looks at during diligence (velocities, cohort behavior, repeat purchase rate, unit economics, margin structure), why capital efficiency matters more than flashy growth, and how strategics evaluate businesses the same way investors do—making gamesmanship around metrics a losing strategy. He discusses lessons learned from standout portfolio companies like Array (anti-aging hair care), what strong founders consistently get right for long-term success, and how to think about building real defensibility as you grow—particularly the importance of retail distribution as a moat in oversaturated categories like health and wellness, skincare, and beverage.

Brian also shares his perspective on how AI is beginning to meaningfully show up in the consumer space through agentic commerce (AI agents shopping on consumers' behalf), why building digital footprints and distribution today will benefit brands tomorrow, and why being a first adopter in platform shifts creates outsized advantages through better marketplace economics. Whether you're navigating business decisions or fundraising conversations, this episode offers grounded, thoughtful insights on how investors evaluate consumer businesses and what it takes to build enduring brands that compound over time.

Listen in as they discuss:

• Brian's background: 15 years investing from Stripes Group to Sonoma Brands to Greycroft's consumer strategy
• What Greycroft looks for: $5-15M revenue, strong product-market fit, unit economics, margin structure
• Portfolio case study: Array anti-aging hair care and investing at inflection points
• Why capital efficiency matters: strategics see through gamesmanship around margins and growth
• Retail distribution as a moat: differentiation in oversaturated digital-native categories
• How AI is changing commerce: agentic shopping and building trust with AI agents through reviews and digital footprints
• Lessons learned: patience, concentrated strategies, and building enduring businesses with strong fundamentals
• Fundraising process: relationship-building timelines and how many meetings before closing deals
  
  

Episode Links:

Brian Bustamante-Nicholson - Partner, Greycroft
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-b-nicholson-a813372/

Greycroft Website: https://www.greycroft.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/greycroft-partners/

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• Episode music by Super Fantastics
  
  

Creators and Guests

Host

Hannah Dittman

Operations and Finance Correspondent at Startup CPG

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Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
The first adoption within these technology shifts, these platform shifts gain outsized advantages and that's because the marketplaces in the beginning are inefficient. And I think you can read a bunch of folks that have invested through both kind of Web 2.0 to mobile to social and all those shifts. A lot of people have written extensively how the people that refer to those shifts benefited just from better economics because the marketplaces were still calibrated.

00:44
Hannah Dittman
Hey everyone, I'm Hannah Dittman, operations and finance host of the Startup CPG podcast. And today I'm joined by Brian Bustamante Nicholson of a partner at Greycroft in the consumer brands vertical. Brian has spent his career working alongside founders building consumer businesses, developing a sharp lens for what actually drives durable growth versus what just looks good in a pitch deck. His experience spans deep e commerce knowledge and evaluating brands at the earliest stages through to scale, giving him a practical, operator minded view of how products, teams and metrics evolve over time. In this episode we talk about how AI is beginning to meaningfully show up in the consumer space. The core pillars Brian looks at during diligence and the reasoning behind why investors care about certain metrics.

01:26
Hannah Dittman
He shares lessons learned from working with standout consumer companies, what strong founders consistently get right for long term success, and how to think about building real defensibility as you grow. This conversation is grounded, thoughtful and highly relevant for founders navigating both business decisions and fundraising conversations. If you want to better understand how investors evaluate consumer businesses and how to build with intention from day one, this episode is for you. Enjoy. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Hannah and today I am here with Brian Bustamante Nicholson, an investor from Greycroft. Brian, welcome to the show.

02:06
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
Hey, it's great to be here, Hannah.

02:07
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, we're so excited to have you today. To kick off, I'd love to get a brief background of your experience in the space and what led you down your path to Greycroft in the first place.

02:18
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
Sure. So I've been an investor in the consumer space for about 15 years. I started my career with the consumer technology space. I've kind of had one foot in the world of what called digital native brands and then one foot in traditional consumer branded products. But anyways, I started my investing career at a firm called Stripes Group in New York City. I was there pretty early with the first fund and was fortunate to grow with that for about six years and at the time Stripes was focused on kind of two areas or three areas I should say. But really software really like hard tech, consumer branded products, big pet food companies, things like Califia and then consumer Internet and technology. And my bank grant before that was covering Internet companies as engineer, banker.

03:06
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
And so I sort of sat there in the world of consumer Internet and it was a great time in New York city. This is 2011, 1213. That's when I would call next generation digital native brands, the Warby's and Caspers and so forth. And so I invested in everything from digital native brands and products like Reformation to digital media companies and E commerce companies. And over the course of that time I really started gravitating more towards branded products like traditional consumer branded products because I felt that my understanding of digital was really an asset there that a lot of the other firms in the space really didn't have. And so I had the opportunity to join an upstart consumer growth equity fund called Sonoma Brands where really focus on traditional cpg, a lot of food and bev, personal care, beauty, health and wellness type stuff.

04:04
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
And then I had the opportunity to work with an entrepreneur that I had invested behind named Catherine Power. I had invested in all of three of her Rands, Abilene, Burst and Merit. She's an incredible entrepreneur that's in a lot in the beauty of personal care space. And she had joined Raycroft who had also invested in all of her companies and she joined to stand up a separate consumer investment strategy. And she and I had been collaborating as investor and entrepreneur and I had the opportunity to join her as a partner on the Investing center and Gravecroft. It's been around for close to 20 years. A traditional venture firm has done a lot within software now AI, E Commerce and digital media, but had dabbled in consumer investing and had some great investments there, things like Seed Health and Thrive Market.

04:58
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
And so when Grey Cross stood up, the separate consumer strategy was the opportunity to kind of build a fur within a firm and again to work with an entrepreneur that so respected and loved collaborating with them. Catherine. So it was a pretty easy decision and I joined to leave the practice here about a year and a half ago. And we are, as I said, a separate fund within Gray Crop, separate team, but we work collaboratively with the software strategy here and the sustainability strategy as well, which is its own distinct fund team. And what we're doing is we're investing in exceptional growth stage consumer businesses. We want to be really the first institutional capital to these companies.

05:43
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
Very similar to what I had been doing over the course of my career, really finding brands that are reaching those inflection points in terms of product market fit. Typically they're going from 5 to $15 million in that range. But we're looking for businesses that have that those really strong signals around product market fit that you can validate through all kinds of metrics that we look very closely at. And we can be a great partner to these entrepreneurs by virtue of our experience as entrepreneurs and also our ability to help Cadillacs grow through our relationships with certain retailers and of course, our connectivity to some of the bigger digital platforms out there through the venture for relationships.

06:27
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
Last thing I'll say is I had the opportunity to recruit another person to our team about a year ago, an incredible entrepreneur named Eric Ryan, who's the founder of brands like Olivitamin and Method soaps and products. And so he joined us as an operating advisor here nine months ago. He's going to be doing more with us beyond just being an operating advisor. So we're very excited about that. And yeah, it's really been an incredible opportunity to build what I think is kind of the dream team with consumer investing.

07:01
Hannah Dittman
Thank you so much for that awesome intro and what great experience. I think it sounds like you guys have some serious operational powerhouse muscle leading the charge in your division of Greycroft and a lot of passion and knowledge of for the space across different categories. So I'm sure you guys see a lot of interesting, cool deals and meet a lot of great people. You mentioned as you were going through the Greycroft overview, a little bit that you're a growth stage fund looking at companies between about 5 to 15 million in revenue at an inflection point. I'd love to double click a little bit more into that. When you're saying growth for those that maybe are a little bit less familiar with the investing spectrum, what does that mean to you and to your firm? What check size are you writing?

07:45
Hannah Dittman
And when you're talking about inflection point, what are some tangible examples that founders can have in their back of their minds to understand if they're a fit for what you're focusing on?

07:54
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
Yeah, when I say growth, I mean signals very strong around product market fit. So things like velocities, cohort behavior, repeat purchase rate, also unit economics are really important to us at these stages. So the companies don't have to be profitable, but they have to have the kind of margin structure and visibility into being profitable within a couple years. I think the team is very important to us. So we want to back founders that can take businesses from inception into hundreds of millions of dollars. It's not always the case that we get there. I've certainly invested in brands where kind of collaboratively worked with the entrepreneur to hire a more experienced CEO that really likes to preside and run companies that are 50 plus. Why not in sales? Because it's a lot of ministry kind of manager stuff at that point.

08:51
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
But what we're really looking for are great entrepreneurs that can be very involved within innovation, the brand and marketing strategy and really just represent the brand. So that's how I defined growth for us. The definition is a little squishy because I think you might meet LPs that consider what we do very much venture because of our check size. But the opportunity that I see in the marketplace for consumer investment firms to focus on these inflection points where there's really strong signals around product market fit that weren't around maybe 15 years ago because of what's happened with on the channel strategies, the ability to collect debt and signals from so many different points in the purchase journey for customers.

09:47
Hannah Dittman
Really great fulsome explanation and a lot of interesting nuggets for listeners to pick up on what you guys consider North Star signals or anchor points that are really important. Could you maybe give an example of portfolio company that you've invested in and what that life cycle was like up to date at least. What stage were they at when you came in and how wide were they distributed? What big milestones did they have on the horizon and what was kind of the dynamic of the partnership really built?

10:17
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
For sure we have a portfolio, a company called Array which is anti aging solution for hair care. It's both ingestible and topical driven and that's a business that has been very capital efficient which is another thing that we look forward with companies even at the early stages but had tracked the company and saw that there were some great signs of product market fit particularly within its direct to consumer and Amazon channels and saw a big opportunity within retail as well. We invested in the business when it was about a 5 million run rate and for certain categories we'll weam a little bit earlier particularly within areas like VMS because of the fact that the margin structure tends to be pretty high.

11:03
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, jealous of the VMS margin and.

11:07
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
The fact that these businesses tend to have great direct to consumer businesses where the proximity to the customers there. And so as I said, we invested what was it at about a five month run rate growing over 100% over year break even. So wasn't super profitable because of the stage but wasn't losing a bunch of money and we just felt this is the profile of the business that be partnering with an entrepreneur that's built a very clear vision in a market that like there was a lot of opportunity, there weren't a lot of other brands come after the space and had all the right metrics and look for those kinds of businesses where we can come in and again help build the team, be helpful with recruiting.

11:57
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
One of the, I guess one of the detriments of being very capital efficient business at those stages is you tend to be pretty lean. And so a big part of what we do is leveraging our clinically. We have a proprietary database and sourcing for against talented operators, our corporate across all the functional areas. So people are pretty effective with helping to fill gaps and these companies particularly at this stage. So it's been a great one to be a part of.

12:27
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, I feel like anti aging has been a big trend in hair care for a little bit now and I definitely feel like the stickier the segment is, the better it is for you. And you know, it's really helpful you giving those metrics and kind of painting the picture. I think from the investor seat, you know, the founder seat, you're thinking something totally different about your business sometimes than you are from the investor seat. And hopefully by the time you get into a fundraising dialogue, those mentalities are more aligned of where the business goes from there. You know, a founder might not be thinking about the exit every day or how important certain things are to scale or how quickly.

13:05
Hannah Dittman
And that's definitely something that's top of mind for investors when you're saying things like the growth rate was so good, the business was capital efficient, they were small but sizable. How I'm interpreting that is, you know, there was a proof that this was going to be a business that was going to last because it had traction, it had gotten to a scale, it had a big enough customer base that was around for long enough and had a high enough affinity that you could trust that business was going to be relevant in the future. It was growing quickly, meaning it was on an upward trajectory, not a downward one. And you felt like you could get conviction behind where the company was going.

13:43
Hannah Dittman
It was capital efficient, meaning all the money you were going to put into the business wasn't going to get immediately wasted out of the business and it was going to go to a productive use of funds to continue to grow and scale and ultimately hopefully build towards an exit. And I think and not to put words in your mouth, so correct me if that's real. All set But I think like something I think is important to highlight for founders too is just the way the reason behind why some of these things are important. I think especially with enough episodes that we've done now, people kind of understand that the checklist that and the watermarks that they might be looking for, I need to do this, I need to do that, I need to do this.

14:21
Hannah Dittman
But the real reason behind it and why is because investors are looking for an investment the same way that you would be thinking about buying a house that you're going to flip or a stock that you want to purchase for your own life. There's like the business rationale and the business case behind what gets someone excited about a deal. And those metrics are kind of unveiling some of that conviction in different ways. And the way they might be thinking about things is related but slightly different than maybe how you're thinking about your business because you're building, not investing.

14:54
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
The dirty little secret is that's also what acquirers of businesses are all focused on too, right? They want to find they're buying a home that they're going to put a lot of capital in and appreciates very nicely. And so you have to put yourself in the seat of the strategic, assuming that's your path that you want to achieve for clear. And they want to find great compounding businesses that are going to compound for 5, 10, 15 years. And so yeah, I bring that up because there's a lot of gamesmanship that I see going on with companies where spent heavily into marketing, grow the business even in ways that aren't so ROI positive for a period of time and say don't worry investors sport, we're going to get some scale and flip the switch and focus on margins.

15:50
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
The strategics understand this and they see the gamesmanship that goes on. So if you're building a business that's going to sacrifice unit economics and capital efficiency even for just a few years in hopes that you can flip the switch, increase margins and show a strategic that you can generate 15% EBITDA margins, they're smart enough, they're going to figure it out. You know, I think that the best path is to show you can sustainably grow. It doesn't have to be a hundred percent year over year, but you can grow the business in a capital efficient way and navigate all the changes that can happen within digital marketing. Trade's one thing, but digital marketing is so dynamic, particularly with what is around the corner in terms of AI.

16:39
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
And so I think just showing that you can be nimble at build a consistent track record or growing the business in a capital efficient way is really important and I don't see enough brands doing that.

16:50
Hannah Dittman
Great point, Brian, and great color, I think. Also, I think the real crux of understanding fundraising and investing sometimes is just understanding the investor's job. Spent many years in diligence and not to put words in your mouth again, so feel free to disagree. But I think such a big part of the investor job is you're asking yourself when you're looking at information, how real is this, how sustainable is this, how valid is this, how much can I trust that this continues? You know, a founder's job is to have like vision for a future that almost doesn't exist. And an investor's job is to look at what has already happened and predict what will continue to happen or not going forward. They don't have a crystal ball.

17:35
Hannah Dittman
They're really going off of information you're giving them and trying to understand, okay, great, you had amazing sales growth, but why was it because you just threw money at it and it's not that sustainable? Are these all new customers that are never going to come back? And then when you need to comp this growth next year, when I'm involved, we now have to repurchase a brand new suite of customers for even more money. You know, they're thinking about it that way.

18:02
Hannah Dittman
And you mentioned traction, you mentioned product market fit that gets brought up so much on this podcast and I think just to double click on it, the reason why is because that gives people the confidence that they can really trust the metrics in your business to continue in a sustainable way and that the future business will look similar, if not better, to what it looks like now. And that's something people can get behind. You know, you don't want to get into a house and realize, yeah, the walls look great, but there was actually mold behind all of them and there was actually termites under the floorboard even though they were brand new floors and all this stuff. So yeah, I think that's at least my perspective on the investor lens. Happy to let you correct me if I'm off on any of that.

18:43
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
Yeah, that's all right.

18:44
Hannah Dittman
I'd love to pivot into a little bit of thought leadership from you. Obviously you're learning and digesting and meeting a bunch of people and spending so much time in the space. I'm sure trends and theses and different things are jumbling around in your mind all the time. Are there any consumer trends, market shifts Macroeconomic factors that are of particular interest to you right now.

19:09
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
So I could tell you my observations. My observations are there's a lot of activity as in a lot of new brands being launched in areas that have had some of the bigger outcomes in terms of M and A. Right. So there's been a lot of activity within health and wellness and bms. A lot of brands launching there, A lot of brands launching within skincare. That's been the case for several years now. There's a lot of brands that have launched within beverage. And so my observation is those areas feel a little bit overbought. I can use kind of a public equity analogy there. And I think that there's still. I mean, I love the innovation going on, but some of it feels very derivative in terms of the value propositions.

19:56
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
And if I'm in one of those three categories, which again, have a lot of very active buyers, maybe skincare sit these days, I would be focused on retail distribution. I say that because when you have a world where you can pop up a Shopify site and the product category is one that lends itself to a direct to consumer channel and you can leverage influencers, creators, streamers to generate attention, awareness, the ability to go in and, you know, it's important to do those things, but the ability to leverage those things to go and build a great retail strategy, improve your success within those doors becomes a moat. And I think with all those categories, we are looking for brands that have a superpower with digital.

20:50
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
We actually look for more digital native founders, but have begun to make the transition into retail and are showing very strong velocities there and understand the roadmap, whether it be going from natural to conventional to club, or in the same pure space and going from clean to Sephora and so forth, we want to find entrepreneurs that think along those lines, particularly within those categories.

21:19
Hannah Dittman
Very helpful and a great nugget. I feel like the world has changed in so many ways, but business fundamentals remain the same. And I think being able to adapt across different channels is a real skill set for founders. Like what makes something successfully digitally native doesn't have the same P and L or the fundamentals of a brick and mortar business. And as you scale through that can really change the business quite a lot. So, yeah, I think having a really solid perspective and understanding the channel you're playing in and the dynamics of that particular channel are critical to getting it right. What about the more ancillary space, like AI? A lot of times that gets brought up now for founders. They're trying to figure out how to roll that into their strategic planning or talk about it with investors.

22:10
Hannah Dittman
What are your thoughts on AI influencing the CPG consumer landscape?

22:14
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about agent commerce. As I mentioned at the outset here, one of the benefits of being within Graveroft is just our proximity to what's happening within all things AI, both at the infrastructure level, going into applications. And I think what people are really excited about on the consumer application front is agents doing stuff on our behalf. Right. So if you apply that to commerce, there's a lot of pontificating going on, but to me the answer is pretty clear. AI, all it's doing is it's making the Internet come alive. Right. The Internet can be proactive and go do things, have agency, et cetera. And who are the main beneficiaries of an Internet that comes alive? It's the major platforms, both with content and things being personalized for you in terms of media consumption, but also with commerce.

23:11
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
And so I think the coming wave of gentle commerce, which means leveraging AI to do shopping on your behalf, you know, going out there filling your basket and building a frequency of purchase almost as like a utility, coupled with the personalization that's going to happen by virtue of whatever shopping platform you're on, see your history, understanding you and your preferences. I think it's going to benefit brands that have built trust with agents, as strange as that sounds. And how do you build trust with agents? It's by building reviews. It's by incentivizing customers to talk about your brand on Reddit and the social platforms in positive ways. It's being carried by the right platforms out there. Right. That will check the list for the agents as far as convenience value and, you know, time to receive your product.

24:14
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
So if I'm a consumer brand, I mean, it's early days, but it's really not, you know, building your digital footprint, building your distribution footprint is really important. And I think that's going to benefit a lot of brands by virtue of the AI shopping cart that I think is going to emerge where the personalization will hopefully allow the agents to add things to your basket. But I also think that once you're sort of in the routine and you're leveraging agents to do this shopping, it's going to be hard to review out, assuming that you like the product. Right. It's going to be kind of recurring.

24:51
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
And so to the extent AI benefits or creates any incremental shopping behavior, I think it's going to come about with things like Instacart and Amazon and Walmart and Tumber Gift and all these places that really have selection and have the capability to deliver quickly and have the data to understand you and your preferences.

25:17
Hannah Dittman
Very intelligent and insightful points. Yeah, I've kind of always had the perspective that your digital presence, it's the same as merchandising in store. You know, when you're in Target, you want to be like eye focus on the shelf, you want your brand block. There's a lot of these things in the terms of visual merchandising that really matter for your success as a CPG brand or a consumer brand more broadly. And that thinking can easily be translated to digital present. Obviously easier to say, harder to execute on, but there are pillars that can really make a difference for your position with consumer attention and ability to scale and cut through the noise online the same way that you can differentiate and cut through the noise on shelf. It's just a much more vast and a much more evolving shelf space in the digital world.

26:12
Hannah Dittman
But yeah, I think times are changing so quickly with AI and it makes a lot of sense that focusing on agents and shopping recommendations and being in the first wave of that ecosystem will be really helpful for brands. I'm sure. And I'm sure there'll be some big winners that come out of getting that right. The same way that the first to get influencer marketing right, the first to get meta ads right, the first to get Amazon right, had a lot of scalability and halo network effects that can really make a business assuming everything else kind of is in line. It's like a little bit of the lightning striking.

26:49
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
That's a great point. The first adoption within these technology shifts, these platform shifts gain outsized advantages and that's because the marketplaces in the beginning are inefficient. And I think you can read a bunch of folks that have invested through both kind of Web 2.0 to mobile to social and all those shifts. You know, a lot of people have written extensively how the people that were first to those shifts benefited just from better economics because, you know, the marketplaces were still calibrating. And so I would encourage rants to go out there and start testing and iterating and become a first adopter because chances are you'll figure things out more quickly than others. You'll be well positioned, but you'll also be able to take advantage of just a better economic structure.

27:44
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, totally. Speaking of lessons learned, I'd love to spend some time with some reflections from you. You've got a wealth of knowledge. You've been doing this for a long time. You're seeing a lot of things I'd be remiss not to pick your brain a little bit. What are some things maybe that you wish you knew at the beginning of your investing career that you know now that could have helped along the journey or helped avoid some maybe pitfalls or oversights?

28:08
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
Patience. It's probably the best one. You know, I was, I think this industry attracts a lot of go getters and you know, type A personalities and people that just to go out there and get stuff done. And I was trained in this way as a junior associate. But I've really come to understand it more profoundly as I've grown as an investor which is so important to wait for the fat pitch. And so I think that it comports well with our strategy which is to run fairly concentrated with this funk we have here. Meaning we'll invest probably in between three and five companies a year at the most. I think that in the beginning of your career there's this desire to get reps and move quickly and make an investment and get some work experience.

29:02
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
And that's of course all well and good and it is a benefit over the course of your career. But what's more beneficial is investing in great businesses that are going to compound. They're going to have great exits. I'd much rather have a personal track record of 10 exceptional companies than 50 that were, you know, a bunch were okay and a few were great. And I again I think that comports well with our strategy within consumer because as opposed to tech, we don't have the power law dynamics that rewards venture like investing. Meaning taking a lot of shots on gold because one or two things can return your fund three times over. That just doesn't happen.

29:49
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
And so within consumer I think it's especially important to run a concentrated strategy where you're waiting for those great companies that outlier metrics and where you have the bandwidth to get involved and help those companies. Because the other great thing I love about consumer investing as opposed to tech, much more volatile with the consumer, you have much more predictability of outcomes because you have tried and true roadmaps. Right? Or playbooks I should say that have worked. And that's why we architected the team we have with Katherine and Eric that have those playbooks and across various categories because we feel like we can affect the outcome. You can only do that with a certain number of companies and give a portfolio. So all those Things kind of lead me to this conclusion that be patient, see everything, wait for the vantage.

30:48
Hannah Dittman
Sage advice and I think something that founders can learn from too. I think it's easy to come out the gate and want everything for your business all at once. But breadcrumbing a little bit and really crushing each goal and working methodically through it and having some patience can also be really beneficial for your brand as well. You've worked with a lot of different people. You have great operators on board with you as well. If you could tell founders or operators one piece of advice that you think would be profound for them, given how many pitches you've seen and whether it's in the fundraising journey or on the operating side post investment, what would your advice be and why?

31:30
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
I think it's to focus on building an enduring business. Because if you focus on building a great business with strong fundamentals, you protect the brand on the customer experience versus going after short term growth. What you'll end up building is a business that other people want to own and pretty simple. But assuming that you pick the right verticals and you able to find that product market fit, which is probably the most difficult thing. Right. We invest at the stage post product market fit because there's a magic that kind of happens between having an idea and getting to that point to where consumers are raving about your product.

32:14
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
So assuming you get there, you know, I think doing everything you can to really protect that and focusing on the integrity of the business and the brand and distribution strategy, making your partners on the table happy pays dividends above and beyond.

32:32
Hannah Dittman
Great piece of advice and nice reminder to keep it a North Star in mind. It's so easy to get lost in the sauce sometimes of everything that's going on. And I think sometimes the right answer of where you need to keep your mind focused sometimes is the simple basics of just doing the foundational things that are very important to any brand. Right. As you know, startup CPG has the largest slack community in the industry with now over 30,000 members. I'd love to pull a question directly from our channel and have you answer it as a case study for any founders that might have a similar question. The question for today is how many times do you meet with investors before getting a deal done in the fundraising process?

33:12
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
Sure. So I would say there's a few different approaches. I mean, I can speak to you. I think the best investments, the best relationships, much better I've had where I've invested. It's been long relationships where I made a business when it Was far too early for us to underwrite. But were able to track the business, build that relationship, show that we could add value in the interim. And when the business sort of reached a point to where the founder thought it could make sense to raise money, were right there and were kind of the obvious solution, perfect partner. So in those circumstances, I would say there's probably five to 10 meetings over the course of that entire relationship to actually filing, closing that investment. But yeah, in some cases that's over three years or two years or something like that.

34:08
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
And a lot of those meetings are us trying to add value and coming up with ways to make introductions and so forth. But let's just say that you're a founder of this money and you're running a three month process and you meet Brian at Greycroft. I'd say, you know, three or four meetings. To us being there and being able to underwrite and close an investment, pretty efficient. But those tend to be less common than the businesses were tracking for 1, 2, 3 years and much longer. History of getting to know as entrepreneurs. It's also great, I might just add, for the founders to do that because I'm sure everyone knows this, but when you pick an investment partner, it can often be like getting married. That's what a lot of people say. It's dating right up until the marriage.

35:01
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
And so I think founders that if they really want to ensure success in terms of that investor relationship, they should start it early. And I think some of the best entrepreneurs that I know that we probably weren't fit in the beginning, but are consciously making the decision to get out there. And firms such that when the time comes, they know those partners, the funds very well. And you should also be doing diligence and reference checks on those investors with other contributors.

35:35
Hannah Dittman
Such a great additional point and I think really helpful to shed some light on the planning process for founders as they think through what they might be getting in for and what they need to prepare for and how long they need to prepare for. Always probably a bit longer than you think it will take. Like everything in operations and everything else, things always take longer than the hopes and dreams are. But I think the relationship being the foundational piece is the most important and probably will pay dividends to put it in some of that legwork and time up front before we wrap up today, Brian, it was so great chatting with you.

36:10
Hannah Dittman
For founders that want to get in touch with you, where can they find you or what is the best way for them to get in contact with you and what advice would you have for them?

36:18
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
So you can reach me at Graycroft and the best way to reach me is through my LinkedIn which I think my LinkedIn profiles at or slash BJ Nicholson send me a DM there and I'd be happy to get in touch. And the advice that I have for people that are thinking about making the plunge to entrepreneurship is go have a lot of conversations like talk to a lot of founders investors out there that can inform where you should be building because you might have a certain passion around a certain product or category and it might just be not a great business. So I think it's important that you really do your homework before you spin your wheels. I love founders that have that they're deeply passionate about category they're in but I think that a to validate that against the market opportunity.

37:13
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
And we live age where it's pretty easy to in touch with investors, with other entrepreneurs with big strategics, go do that work and take advantage of that.

37:24
Hannah Dittman
Great advice and I think wise words of wisdom throughout our episode today. Thank you so much for your time, Brian. It was so lovely chatting with you and I'm sure everyone is really going to love hearing all of your insights across the investing space, fundraising operations and all the other additional nuggets you shared. Thanks again.

37:42
Brian Bustamante-Nicholson
Thank you Anna. Great talking with you.

37:46
Hannah Dittman
Thanks so much for tuning in everyone. If you like this episode, show us some love with a five star review at ratethispodcast.com startupcpg I'm Hannah Ditman, podcast host and correspondent here at Startup cpg. I hope you'll join me again as we dig into more juicy topics like ops, finance and all the real talk founders actually need. Come say hi on LinkedIn or ping me on Slack. I'm always eager to hear your questions or brainstorm future episode ideas. If you're a potential sponsor and want to get an on the fun and appear on the podcast, shoot us an [e-mail] and last but not least, if you haven't already, don't miss out on our free Slack community for emerging brands and CPG lovers alike. Join [e-mail] we'd love to have you. See you next time.