Investor Spotlight: Brian Folmer, FirstLook Ventures

In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, host Hannah Dittman sits down with Brian Folmer, founder of FirstLook Ventures, to explore what founders need to know before fundraising—from building compelling pitch decks to avoiding common mistakes that sink deals.

Brian brings a rare full-stack perspective to consumer investing: founder, operator, ecosystem builder, and now investor backing early-stage brands through FirstLook Ventures and SPVs. His journey spans dropping out of law school to launch his first startup, working in corporate retail at Abercrombie and Victoria's Secret, investing at XRC Ventures, and eventually building FirstLook—a monthly curation box that connects emerging brands with 300+ angel investors, VCs, and family offices.

Throughout the conversation, Brian shares what separates founders who successfully raise from those who struggle, breaking down the core elements every pitch deck needs (particularly the "why now" thesis), why demonstrating passion alongside credentials matters for long-term conviction, and how capital efficiency thinking (18 months of runway, not too much capital) sets brands up for sustainable growth trajectories.

Brian discusses why social capital in VC is more valuable than deal volume, explains the psychology of winning over investors beyond just metrics, and shares a compelling case study with Half Day Iced Tea's fiber trend positioning. He addresses common founder questions around retail requirements for fundraising (spoiler: you don't need it), how many rounds to anticipate in a CPG brand's lifecycle, and tactical advice on breaking into venture capital without traditional investment banking experience.

If you're preparing for your first institutional raise, refining your fundraising strategy, or wondering what investors actually evaluate beyond the numbers, this episode offers grounded, actionable insights from someone who's been on both sides of the table.

Listen in as they discuss:

• Brian's journey: law school dropout to founder to XRC Ventures to FirstLook
• FirstLook Ventures mandate: Series A/B focus with $500K average checks
• FirstLook boxes: connecting emerging brands with 300+ investors monthly
• Why consumer investing is more exciting than tech right now
• Current fundraising landscape: why now is a solid time to raise
• Common fundraising mistakes: unrealistic projections and wishy-washy raise amounts
• What makes a great pitch deck: nailing the "why now" thesis
• Case study: Half Day Iced Tea and betting on the fiber trend
• Social capital in VC: why quality beats quantity in deal sharing
• Fundraising fundamentals: setting terms, timeline expectations, and raise amounts
• Capital planning: the 18-month runway rule and avoiding over-raising
• How many fundraising rounds CPG brands should anticipate
• Do you need retail to fundraise? (Short answer: no)
• Breaking into VC without investment banking experience
  
  

Episode Links:

Brian Folmer — Founder, FirstLook Ventures
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfolmer/
Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/firstlookvc/ 

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Show Links:

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• Questions or comments about the episode? Email Daniel at [e-mail]
• Episode music by Super Fantastics
  
  

Creators and Guests

Host

Hannah Dittman

Operations and Finance Correspondent at Startup CPG

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

Brian Folmer
Foreign. There's so many dark times when you're building a brand where you're like, I should honestly give up right now. But if you really are passionate about what you're doing, you're going to keep going, you're going to get through those dark times. And so having that passion element to the slide I think really helps with getting people to buy into like, all right, this founder is in it for the long haul.

00:30
Hannah Dittman
Hey everyone, I'm Hannah Dittman, operations and Finance host of the Startup CPG podcast and today I'm excited to be joined by Brian Fulmer of FirstLook, and FirstLook Ventures. Brian brings a rare full stack perspective to consumer investing, having spent time in the founder chair operating and scaling consumer businesses, building consumer ecosystems, and now backing early stage brands through FirstLook Ventures. His experience spans what it actually takes to build, fund and support consumer companies. Beyond the pitch deck Although he's reviewed plenty of those with a deep appreciation for how relationships, trust and long term thinking shape outcomes in this industry, he brings a great perspective. In this episode we dig into what founders should be thinking about as they head into a fundraise.

01:12
Hannah Dittman
From how to read today's fundraising landscape to what comprises a great pitch deck, Brian shares hard earned lessons from both sides of the table, breaks down common fundraising mistakes, and explains why social capital and relationship management are often as critical as metrics when it comes to building durable companies and investor partnerships. If you're a founder preparing to raise, refining your story, or trying to understand how investors think, this conversation is packed with practical insight. Enjoy. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Hannah and today I am here with Brian Fulmer, an investor from FirstLook Ventures. Brian, welcome to the show.

01:51
Brian Folmer
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

01:52
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, we're super excited to have you today. This is going to be a really fun chat. I know you have a lot of interesting perspectives being in and around the space in a lot of different capacities over the last few years. I'd love to start with a background and get the details of your path to FirstLook and what led you up to this point.

02:09
Brian Folmer
Yeah, certainly. So first and foremost, die hard. Clevelander, born and raised here, did live in New York for about six years, but moved back here about three years ago to be closer to family and started a family of my own. I got my first. I guess the initial start was I actually went to law school after college and between my first second year for law school I was interning at a startup accelerator in my hometown Cleveland. And it was the first time I ever in my life I woke up and it was excited to go to work. And I was like, all right, this might be where I belong in the startup world.

02:41
Brian Folmer
And then while I was working there, I submitted an idea that I had been working on the side during the first year of law school and ended up getting into the program. And so I went from. Dropped out of law school and then went from employee to founder basically overnight. And yeah, worked on that business for about a year and a half and unfortunately didn't have the legs to go the distance and so had to shut it down. Didn't want to go back to law school right away, so jumped in the corporate world, worked at Abercrombie's home office, and then Victoria's Secret's home office, transferred out to Victoria's Secret's New York office eventually. And then from there I joined XRC Ventures. And that was an incredible experience. Originally when I joined, they were an accelerator.

03:22
Brian Folmer
Now they've expanded to be an accelerator and have a growth fund. But while I was there, we used to always get samples delivered to the office. And I mean, more than half the time it felt like it was brands weren't even talking to. They just blindly sent us samples. And so it kind of just hit me one day. I'm like, all right, if they're sending us samples, they're probably doing the same thing to every other investor whose address they can find on the Internet. And individually shipping samples and finding these investors is costly and time consuming. And so eventually kind of just had an idea hit me one day while I was bike riding.

03:53
Brian Folmer
There should just be this box that curates the best brands each month and turns that one to one grind of trying to find investors and shipping them samples into like a one to many type scenario. And so yeah, eventually left XRC in the fall of 2019 and then started FirstLook the next day and then shortly after that started FirstLook Ventures.

04:14
Hannah Dittman
Such an awesome background and clearly the entrepreneurial pull came back to you and you just couldn't get away from the bug. I also didn't know you were an apparel guy. Hard industry to operate in. So I'm sure you've got a lot of lessons learned from that chapter as well. I'd love to get the formal firm overview of FirstLook Ventures kind of mandate the way you guys are operating, check size differentiation and how that kind of works alongside the other areas of the FirstLook business that you've got going on.

04:44
Brian Folmer
Yeah. So on the FirstLook Venture side of things, we invest primarily in series A and B. We will certainly look at kind of later seed stage brands, but otherwise we try to focus on series A and B and we're pretty not a overly tight mandate. We really just want to invest in better for you products and that can be across any category. And I would say our average check size is probably around $500,000.

05:11
Hannah Dittman
Super helpful. And I feel like it makes a lot of sense that your career kind of naturally progressed that way. You've obviously been helping so many other brands with FirstLook boxes, which I'd love for you to kind of maybe explain that aspect of the business before I pepper you with questions for some additional color on where you're coming from and your kind of lens on the but yeah, it makes a lot of sense that you had this network and then you're utilizing it from the investor side and leveraging your background that way. But yeah, would love the formal overview of FirstLook boxes.

05:45
Brian Folmer
Yeah, certainly. So FirstLook , I mean it's pretty straightforward. It's a investor group full of angels, VCs and family offices that are interested in early stage consumer brands. The twist, or what makes us essentially one of one, is each month I'll diligence all these brands, figure out who I think the top six are, and then I take their samples, put them all in a box, and send them out to everybody in our group. And so they get to experience everything, create data rooms so they can learn about the brands. And then afterwards the investors let me know who they want to connect with. I loop everyone together in email and let them take it away from there. And so all investing is direct by the investors and it's totally free for the brands to jump in.

06:27
Brian Folmer
I'm always the first to tell everyone, FirstLook is not a silver bullet. I can't make the investors fall in love and write checks, but best case scenario is they do fall in love and they write you a check and you're on your way. Worst case scenario is if you have a great product, then you'll probably convert a lot of those investors into customers. And so that essentially led me to start FirstLook Ventures about a few years later. I sent the first boxes out in June of 2020, which, funny enough, I'll never say I'm happy Covid happened. However, it was advantageous for us because all these networking events came to a screeching halt as far as founders and investors connecting. And so we ended up being that bridge to help those conversations continue to happen.

07:06
Brian Folmer
And then, yeah, a few years later started FirstLook Ventures, which is me using SPVs to invest in brands. It wasn't until about two or three years ago that we really started building out the community side of FirstLook. And so boxes are certainly the fun part, but maybe the other half of the fun is all of the community things we do. And so a lot of lunches, dinners, happy hours, coffee, meetups, just really trying to get people together. Especially now in age of AI, we need human connection more than ever.

07:31
Hannah Dittman
Deal, sourcing machine, and a man wearing many hats. I feel like you have a lot of learnings, I'm sure from I can't even imagine how many hundreds of brands that you diligence on that side and then on the investing side as well. So I'd love to kind of leverage some of this awesome perspective you have and get your kind of hot takes on the broader CPG investing market and market dynamics. Obviously there's been a lot of changes and flow differences from COVID times to now. It would be great if you could just share some perspective on market insights of where you think things are in the fundraising landscape, any notable takeaways that you have on where things might be going or things that you have seen that are promising.

08:17
Hannah Dittman
Any kind of relevant founder insights that might be helpful for any of our listeners listening in.

08:23
Brian Folmer
Kind of a loaded question, but I think it's a great time to invest in consumer, which obviously I'm biased, but there has been a lot of exits over the past 18 to 24 months, which is encouraging because we all liquidity or an ROI at the end of the day. And so but yeah, it feels like every week there's pretty solid exit of some sort. A few years ago I, you know, if you asked me do you want to always stay in consumer investing, I would have told you, yeah, I love it. But I also tech is really interesting, for example, especially deep tech, which is the most crazy stuff out there. But I would say consumer is even more enticing right now. And that's largely because it's in my opinion a little bit uneasier to underwrite where maybe a company is headed.

09:06
Brian Folmer
I was listening to a podcast not too long ago and the investor, they invested in some AI company and they said they, you know, they put like a $400,000 check in and then literally 30 days later there was like 20 copies of this company replicas of this company that they had just invested in. And essentially their investment within months of investing essentially went to zero. And so it's kind of a scary thing on the tech side as far as, yes, certainly exits are larger on that side, but you can certainly get replaced a lot quicker because it's, you know, tech the way it is with consumer.

09:37
Brian Folmer
It's like, yeah, you may be a $10 million brand, $20 million brand and you start seeing some other similar brands pop up, but at least you have time to compete with them and adjust maybe your marketing or your angle or. And so it's something where consumer brands don't get replaced overnight. And so that's why I think consumer right now is probably more exciting to invest in. At least I'm excited about it. And so, yeah, I think it's a great time to be starting a brand and being an investor in the space.

10:01
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I think that's also a function of consumer psychology versus B2B selling in tech. Like there is so much less aspects of selling software to a functional tech user. For instance, they don't really care about a lot of the ancillary things that drive that purchase. It's a very round peg, round hole, cost efficient situation. Does it work? I mean, there's obviously a lot of complexity in making that work and a lot of intelligence that goes into a lot of these things. But I think the reason why there's so much more room for competition in consumer is because consumer psychology drives so much of the purchasing and there's so many other different attributes and benefits and dynamics at play that can make something attractive to a consumer. In addition to fitting a problem, solution need.

10:57
Hannah Dittman
And that additional incremental layers, I think provide a little bit of protection around the purchasing process, which I feel like it is also the exciting, fun part of consumer and where a lot of the creativity comes in as well. You mentioned there's been a lot of exits. How do you feel about the investing landscape in general on the funding side? Do you feel like there's kind of a lot of funding going on, a lot of deals getting done? If someone's kicking off a fundraise right now, would you have any advice of how they should be kind of thinking about the timeline of their process or how difficult relative to other times in the market it might be to get their deal done?

11:35
Brian Folmer
Yeah, I think now is totally fine time to fundraise. Honestly, I would probably start. If you're on the fence. I would start doing it now because I find that when the markets are down, angels tend to pull back a little bit because they see their portfolio in the stock market and it's in the red when there's like a recession, but when it's up, which I think, yeah, S and P and basically Dow and everything is at an all time high right now. And so everyone's a little bit more risk on at the moment and so and things have been certainly active on our side. We had 19 or 20 investments last year from.

12:07
Hannah Dittman
Congratulations.

12:08
Brian Folmer
Yeah, it was a great year. Fundraising is so funny because was just an email with I think Laurels a coffee brand. But were talking about how sometimes you see a brand where they have unbelievable product and metrics and a fair valuation and like they're struggling to raise. And then sometimes you see these companies, these founders or these brands where it's like, I don't know, seems a little wacky, but like somehow they're just getting money in the door. And so there's so much. Not only is there psychology in winning over consumers, but there is certainly a psychology gain in winning over investors. I sadly do not have a great answer on how to play that game then the day.

12:46
Brian Folmer
Yeah, you can't go too wrong with just having an awesome deck, telling a great story and really just talking to as many investors as you can. Obviously you want it to be targeted in people that you think would be interested in what you're doing, but it truly is at the end of the day, especially at the early stages, a numbers game to find the right investors who believe in you and hopefully think your product is directionally correct.

13:07
Hannah Dittman
That's great perspective. And investing is a human business. These are like humans making decisions. So that makes a ton of sense that there's kind of the relationship or almost the like marketing factor that plays into it as well. You've obviously seen a lot of founders go through the process both with you and around you. Do you have thoughts on some of the maybe biggest mistakes founders make during fundraise? And alternatively, some of the things that founders do that make fundraising go really well for them.

13:36
Brian Folmer
I mean, there's easy mistakes as far as like not having a grip on your numbers in the sense of where, say you're raising $1 million and then in your revenue forecast you're saying, all right, we're going to go from 1 million, we'll say $500,000 last year and now we're going to go to 8 million. We is great. I know we always want to say, you know, everything's going up into the right and we're going to be making all this money. But to only raise $1 million, that's just not especially if you're going to go heavy into retail. For example, there's so many costs with going into retail. So for you to go from 500,000 to 8 million in revenue, but you're only raising $1 million, the math doesn't math at that point.

14:14
Brian Folmer
Unless you're going to take on a lot of debt, which different story. Which maybe is not a good thing for some investors. But yeah, so there's like many mistakes like that where it's like just being realistic with your numbers and then also tossing out just again, it actually kind of always comes back to just being realistic, which is like we had, I saw a Decker founder say that they're building a $5 billion beverage brand, which I'm not to say that they can't do it. I mean, I'll Never be like Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank where you know, he tells the founder, you need to take this out back and shoot it.

14:42
Hannah Dittman
He's so mean.

14:43
Brian Folmer
I know I'll never be that mean. But like, it's just like, and trust me, we all want to invest in ambitious founders. But like, all right, $5 billion exit, like that's so rare. But hey, you know what, there have been large exits in the past. And so I'm not gonna say you can't do it, but the product was, in my opinion, wasn't extremely unique. And so now it's like, all right, what's the real story of how you're gonna get to this number? Which again, I keep saying this, just being realistic with your numbers and your plan and what's in the market and what, how fast can you actually move? And also just having a great deck because that's kind of the first touch point that you have typically with an investor is like, here's my deck.

15:22
Brian Folmer
And so they're really judging you quite hard as far as like how you present, how you think, what you think the future looks like? So I say just having a great deck is an awesome starting point.

15:31
Hannah Dittman
What makes a deck great to you? You know, if you were a founder and you were putting together what you perceive to be an A plus, what would it consist of and what would it be like?

15:41
Brian Folmer
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't have to be like super engineered or like, you know, hand it to a design agency and made looks ultra pret. You can do a lot with all the tools nowadays to make a pretty decent looking deck. But the biggest thing I would focus on is the why now? Question, which another way of maybe think about it is like, what's your big bet? Where if things Go right, the brand's going to do awesome. And then hopefully investors are going to make a lot of money by being a part of that journey. And so that's because typically when you bump into an investor, they have an idea of what the future is going to look like. You have an idea of what the future is going to look like.

16:17
Brian Folmer
But obviously, investors are always open to learning and changing their minds and everything. And so it's really important to have that crisp story of, here's where the world's headed, here's how we fit into that world, and this is why it makes sense for you to invest in what we're doing right now. Of course. Or every investor on the planet always says, investing in the team is super important, which it certainly is. And so. And there's really not a great answer for how to show yourself off in a deck. But I personally always say, give your background and your experience and like, the ways you. Maybe the previous jobs you had, like the change that you created moved our company from 2 million in revenue to 50 million in revenue and built out these teams.

16:57
Brian Folmer
But then also have, like a passion story in there as well. Because there are a lot of founders, I find that they just see an opportunity to make money and so they start building something. But there's so many dark times when you're building a brand where you're like, I should honestly give up right now. But if you really are passionate about what you're doing, you're going to keep going, you're going to get through those dark times. And so having that passion element to the slide, I think really helps with getting people to buy into, like, all right, this founder is in it for the long haul.

17:26
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, I think it's kind of like the two different founder archetypes of someone who is so pulled by an idea that it moves them into being a founder, versus someone who so desperately wants to be a founder that they craft an idea to be able to do so. And it's a lot harder. I know what the. The nights in the mornings can be like when things aren't going well or external things are happening or. Obviously, I don't think it's a surprise to literally anyone in the planet that being a founder comes with a lot of ups and a lot of lows.

17:58
Hannah Dittman
So, yeah, I think getting through those times when you didn't have, like, when the conviction was more about your role versus the conviction being about what it is that you're building and why you're building it, that can be a huge differentiation Shift kind of going back to what you were saying about deccs and what you think they need to comprise of. Do you have a tangible example from maybe someone in your portfolio or company that you thought did a stellar job of how they positioned some of those aspects that you were saying and what the kind of pitch and deck was like from them?

18:30
Brian Folmer
Yeah, I guess I would probably say our most recent investment, which was in Half Day iced tea. And yeah, the deck was look great, short and sweet, but hit the right points that investors care about. And I think they did a great job of kind of explaining the why now, which is I think fiber is going to be a huge story going forward. I mean, it already is, but I think it's going to be a bigger story over the next ten years and beyond. Because, yeah, gut health is so important to the rest of your body. And so and then the other thing I also, and this I always ask every founder is, of course they're going to fish and make it sound like whatever I'm building is like perfect or is, you know, is amazing.

19:06
Brian Folmer
But I always like to ask, like, what other people think. So specifically, like retail buyers, like, what are they saying, for example, because then the day they're the ones that dictate if you're going to be on shelf or not. And so. And their whole business is many products as possible. So I'm always curious what the retailers are thinking and why they may or may not be giving a brand a green light to jump in. Otherwise, yeah, Half Day had an awesome deck. It wasn't too short, it wasn't too long. And they had a great argument for why fiber is going to continue to be a big story.

19:33
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, I think that's really helpful. Color on the why Now? Because it puts it in really practical terms that investors aren't just betting on a specific company, they definitely are, but they're also betting on these kind of like broader market aspects and trends and external forces that are happening almost equally. Sometimes, as you know, it's like betting on the wave and betting on the surfer riding the wave. So kind of believing in that wave coming, I think helps people get a lot of conviction with what you're doing as well. And I think that's a great way to showcase that, reflecting kind of on your career and investments more broadly outside of just fundraising. What are some lessons learned or compelling anecdotes that you think other operators or even other investors might be able to learn from?

20:23
Brian Folmer
So one thing I certainly wish I knew now that I didn't know Back then was you always hear advice from investors, especially for advice to kind of up and coming people or people want to break in. The space is like, oh, just start by sharing deals. Every investor wants to turn over every rock. There's no question about that. However, and maybe this is the most important thing in vc. It's not money, it's your social capital. And so, for example, if someone shares with you 300 deals a year and then another person shares with you two deals a year, the person who shares 300 deals a year with you're more likely to skip over their email, not take any, you know, those deals as serious versus that person who shares two or three unbelievable deals that year.

21:04
Brian Folmer
You're not going to miss that email because you know, every single time they send you something, this is unbelievable. And that's essentially, I mean, the heart of social capital is at least part of the on the deal flow side of things are building a reputation is like, yes, you want to be helpful and share deals with other folks, but you don't want to overshare because then you kind of wear that out. You burn up your social capital, for example. And in that same vein, if Marc Andreessen says, this is a great company, I mean, a 16 is doing pretty well versus someone who just started out fresh out of college, they're an associate firm and they say this company's great, you're going to take Mark's word a lot more than maybe the new associate that just fresh out of college.

21:44
Brian Folmer
And yeah, that comes with just again, it's like the social capital is when you put your word on something, which maybe you don't put your word on a bunch of things, it becomes that much more impactful. And so, yeah, social capital is probably one of the most interesting parts of vc is just being very careful with what you share because it really does follow if molds how people or how other investors think of you. And that's so important because if I'm sending over a bunch of deals and they, oh, these are all great, it's like, all right, they can't all be great. But if I don't send that many deals, when I do say, like, this is a good company, you need to look at it, that's going to carry more weight. Because I don't say that as often.

22:18
Brian Folmer
Sorry, that was like a long answer. But it's really interesting. I'm actually going to write a newsletter on this because it's one of the interesting things that I didn't know and I just had to Learn as I go. I wish I knew back then.

22:27
Hannah Dittman
I think that's a great point and I feel like that extends almost everywhere too. Like, as a founder, a lot of times founders are asked to give warm intros to other people, and I'm sure they're thinking about it in a similar way too. Like, if I just blast every founder that asked me for a warm intro to another investor, what is that going to reflect on me as a founder and kind of like my headspace and my personal network? I think everyone wants to do a lot of favors in the CPG industry. Everyone is so friendly and they get it takes a village and how hard it can be to get some of these businesses to a place where they're off and running.

23:04
Hannah Dittman
But at the same time, I think everyone is also, you know, protective of their own networks in a way and wanting to, like you're saying, manage their social capital. So I think it's a great point and a great label for it as well. Makes a ton of sense. If I was a friend, a founder friend, coming to you, looking for a mentor chat, looking for a coffee chat and asking you, hey, I'm about to embark on a fundraise and go through a diligence process, what would kind of be the rundown that you would give me of what to expect and also the most critical pillars to have in place to be set up for success?

23:38
Brian Folmer
Well, obviously, yeah, have a deck, have a great. Why now? Have your term set if you can, and have like a number where, like, we're raising $1 million, not between 1 and 2 million. I think investors like to know where. I mean, you've already thought through where every penny is potentially going to go. So when you give a range, it's like, all right, why are you being wish wash year? Like, I want you to have a good grip on your numbers. And so, yeah, I would say just having your terms, obviously sometimes you want to start out fundraising where, like, we don't know what our valuation is, for example, and that's okay. You don't have to have that just right now.

24:10
Brian Folmer
You can kind of gather feedback from the market or from investors and then eventually land on a number, at least know how much you want to raise. And so otherwise, yeah, I'm always happy to jump on a call with any founder and give them my two cents to kind of walk them through the process. But these things do take a while and so be ready to. It's not going to happen overnight, that's for sure.

24:29
Hannah Dittman
I think it's like a Month, month. Long journey for most people, sometimes a lot longer than that, depending on the size of round and things that you're trying to get done, you know, you're talking about, know how much to ask for. If I don't really know anything about this, like pretend I'm coming in completely cold. Maybe I haven't even started a business yet, how do I think about how to figure out that number? Like if you were going to walk me through the process of how you would go about doing that, what questions am I asking myself? What analysis am I looking at? How am I understanding how much money I need? And the typical timeline that is actually supposed to last me in a fundraise process. Like, should I be thinking about this is Runway for a year?

25:12
Hannah Dittman
Should I be thinking about this is Runway for three years? What are people expecting out of a founder?

25:18
Brian Folmer
I mean, the first question I would ask that founder is have you talked to other founders, maybe similar spaces, because they're going to have the best advice. I mean they've gone through it, obviously started FirstLook, but that's a little bit different than starting a pure consumer brand. And so there's so much free information out there. I remember when Mike Gallup started the Consumer BC podcast, which is right around the time that I started FirstLook. I mean, I couldn't wait for him to drop the next episode because every single person he brings on is incredible. And you know, they're for the most part at least. He started out with, I think just investors and then he started adding founders in.

25:49
Brian Folmer
But that would be a good one, which is like literally listen to every single episode that he puts out, because those guests are unbelievable. And so that's where then you can kind of start to triangulate, you know, how much maybe we need a raise based on how much I've talked to other founders. And so that would be my first question to founders. Like what have the other founders you've spoken told you? And then we can kind of refine it from there. Obviously every different brands, different category, everything has a different strategy. Cause that's the interesting part too. If you know fundraising, there's the strategy of all right, we're going to raise, which typically you want to raise enough capital for 18 months of Runway and then starting at month 12, after you raise capital, that's when you kick off the next round.

26:29
Brian Folmer
So you gave yourself like a six month buffer before the next raise or before you basically run out of cash. But yeah, I would just say listening to other founders, I mean, they're going to have the best advice for you based on the industry you're building or the category you're building in.

26:43
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, I think that's a really great insight on the 18 month Runway. So you can kind of like map out. Okay, this much cash gets me to these goals or milestones that I've laid out for myself that ideally you and I as an investor have aligned on. And this is what you want to see. This is what I'm hoping to deliver. This is how much money I need for 18 months to get there. And then assuming I reach those milestones, I'll need to fundraise again to then get to these next bucket of milestones that we're reaching. So you're kind of really thinking about hitting your targets within almost like a 12 month timeframe after getting an investment. Check in and correct me if I'm wrong on that.

27:25
Brian Folmer
Yeah, no, that's spot on. Especially being thoughtful on how much you're raising too, because I mean, don't get me wrong, if you can raise more money than someone else, like, and it's not going to dilute you too much or raised your valuation too much so that the next fundraising round's difficult because now your next round's even higher. Get the money. But realistically, you want to raise enough where this is what the business needs. No more, no less. Certainly building a little bit of a buffer in there because you never know when things go sideways and you need a little bit of cushion. But yeah, I wouldn't raise too much beyond what you need because it just creates these kind of complications down the road sometimes. And sometimes it makes you a little bit lazy.

28:06
Brian Folmer
I mean, it's like, yeah, I always admire, there's a lot of artists out there where they became famous because they had this breakout song. But if you listen or learn their bio, before that it was they were sleeping on a friend's couch, they were literally eating like canned corn and they were just dead broke. And like back was against the wall. And that's when you really come to life. And sometimes when you raise too much money, you become too complacent, too creative. Part turns off in your brain. It's like, we'll just throw money at this. And I don't think that's always a good thing. And so raise enough, but not too much.

28:40
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, nothing like survival. They got a fire under your butt, that's for sure.

28:45
Brian Folmer
Exactly.

28:47
Hannah Dittman
That's really helpful and kind of a follow up question to this is going to be such a High level question that's going to have a million different answers. But in general, I guess if you kind of had to think through structuring this in a certain way, how many rounds of fundraising do you think a typical CPG brand needs to get through in the course of its lifetime before an exit? How many fundraising rounds should a founder anticipate getting through as they kind of chart out the future journey? Obviously it'll be very high level and plans always change, but in a first draft version, I guess.

29:23
Brian Folmer
So the question is very dependent on what category you're building in. Obviously, like beverage brands, they just need to keep plowing money into them. But luckily beverage is, you know, a huge market and so hopefully the exit justifies how much you needed a raise. But I would say, I mean you should anticipate obviously raising friends and family precede a seed and probably a Series A. And you may be able to get away with not raising after an A if you're in a category where you maybe have crazy high margins and so you don't need to keep taking in more outside capital. But I know there's, the pendulum has swung and certainly last over the last few years of like, oh, being profitable, which is great. I mean, then you can control your own destiny.

30:05
Brian Folmer
I'm in the camp where I'm not as worried if you're not profitable. Yes. I want to know if times get dark or hard, like, can you hopefully switch to profitability in a relatively short time and like weather out the storm? But the way I see it is you're raising venture capital dollars because there is an opportunity or a white space out there that you want to get to first. And when you get there first, you either land and expand or just dominate the area or category or the space and hopefully have an exit at that point. And so I want to take those VC dollars and help you move to that spot, that white space as quickly as possible. So you're the first one there. And that's, I mean that's the whole point of VC venture capital. And so profitability is great.

30:49
Brian Folmer
But if you need to raise a Series B, even though you don't maybe have to, but if there's an opportunity and it's not gonna hopefully dilute founders too much or previous investor cap table investors, like, but for the sake of like, we want to grow quicker, like, I personally think you should raise more if the opportunity is there.

31:06
Hannah Dittman
So no, I think that's helpful perspective and also kind of goes back to earlier points about understanding the investor that you're speaking with and asking questions because I feel like we said, it's a human business. Everyone has their own theses on things. Everyone has their own lessons learned and perspectives that influence how they operate as investors or the returns they're hoping to see, or all these other dynamics at play. So understanding how you want to run and operate your business, how your business is working and what investors are a good fit for the same mentality that you have around how that's all working, I, I think makes perfect sense.

31:42
Hannah Dittman
You don't want to be thinking like, oh yeah, I don't have to be profitable until year four and you're talking to an investor who's expecting you to be profitable year one and there's just like a total misalignment in expectations. And I can't imagine the board updates are gonna be very fun at that point. So I think that's really helpful. I'd love to take some time to get into a slack question. 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 founder with a similar question. The recent question is do I need to be in retail to fundraise? And I think they're referring to brick and mortar retail versus just being purely D2C.

32:23
Brian Folmer
Absolutely not. I mean you can learn so much from your customers and we as investors can see all right, is this something, you know, repeat purchase rate, for example? I always love the metric because you can kind of cheat the metric of the repeat purchase rate a little bit. Cause you know, you can dangle these deals in front of you. I always love it where how many consumers have bought the product? Maybe four times or more. But yeah, there's a lot you can learn from just DTC only starting out. And so obviously you're probably going to be a little bit earlier of a company and it would be nice to know like we're starting to maybe have some retailer conversations because again, I'm going to ask that question, what are the retailers saying? And so otherwise, yeah, absolutely not.

33:04
Brian Folmer
You don't have to be in retail to fundraise.

33:06
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, and I think that also probably goes back to like again, investor perspective too. Like I feel like people have different appetites depending on the stage focus they're focusing on. Like if you're talking to maybe a way later stage investor who leans in a little bit early but has a portfolio full of like power lane, brick and Mortar companies. It might be a little bit of a harder sell versus someone who's earlier and maybe willing to take a swing. But yeah, I feel like a lot of deals have gotten done that I've seen that were D2CPG businesses. So there's definitely the right fit out there somewhere.

33:41
Brian Folmer
Yeah, typically you're always going to be on the earlier side if you're not in retail yet because I mean there really isn't any brands nowadays that don't eventually get into retail, so. But you can race about being there yet.

33:53
Hannah Dittman
Very, very helpful and thanks for answering that. Brian. This has been such an amazing chat. You have such a wealth of knowledge. I'd love to leave everyone with a tangible way to apply this knowledge too. For founders that want to get in touch with you or maybe even jump into a FirstLook box, where can they find you or what is the best way for them to get in contact? And second question, for operators or others looking to transition into investing or maybe even working directly with you, what advice would you have for them?

34:22
Brian Folmer
Anyone can reach out to me, I'm just Brian at FirstLook VC. If you're trying to, if you're fundraising or thinking about fundraising, he wants to review what you're doing. You can always go on our website FirstLook VC and submit your deck there. Getting into VC question is a fun one because I didn't have like investment banking experience and I worked in corporate retail and so I would say accelerators are probably easier to get into than maybe like an established firm or certainly like a later stage firm as well. The most important part is if you apply to a firm that's small enough where they don't have a dedicated HR person when they are hiring a new position, someone on the team is basically stretching to handle that. You know, the interviews and just, you know, reviewing resumes, all that stuff.

35:06
Brian Folmer
And so it's really good to submit your resume through their website or wherever the link is for applying. But if you can try to figure out who at the firm is basically leading the charge on hiring and then just email them directly. And so I think that's how I got my job at XRC is I figured I was the program director who was doing the stretcher assignment to hire associate. And so yeah, I applied on the website, but I also just emailed her directly and I also made sure I used words such as quick learner. I get up speed very quick because at the end of the day, yeah, the program director is stretching to get this assignment done.

35:38
Brian Folmer
And so I wanted to make sure she knew, like, hopefully I'll be a great hire, but I'll get up to speed quick because that's exactly what these people want is so they can get back to worrying about what's normally on their plate. So yeah, it's maybe like a little hack to jump into VC is they don't have a dedicated HR person. Someone's stretching to do that assignment.

35:55
Hannah Dittman
You have such an entrepreneurial, enterprising muscle in you and the hustle's so evident in so many different ways. Great advice, Brian, and thank you so much for sharing all of your insights, nuggets and words of wisdom today. I think a lot of people are going to find so much of what you said helpful and hopefully get in touch with you about their own brands and maybe work alongside you one day as well. So thanks again for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

36:20
Brian Folmer
Yeah, thanks Anna.

36:23
Hannah Dittman
Well friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in cpg. And if you love this podcast, you'll love our Slack community even more. Here at Startup cpg, we're a community of brands and experts and you should join. Sign up @startupcpg.com you'll then get an invite to our online Slack community of over 35,000 All Star CPG members, hear about amazing events near you and all our special opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands and more. It's a free community. So what are you waiting for? I'll catch you on the next episode and I'll see you on the Slack.