Hot Smart Rich with Maggie Sellers Reum - The Person You Marry Decides Your Wealth! (How She Turned Divorce Into A $500M Empire) Courtney Reum

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

How to invest, build wealth, and spot winning brands early - according to a $2B fund manager!  Courtney Reum (investor, founder… and my husband!) breaks down how he actually decides what’s worth investing in and the mistakes most people make with money. From Khloe Kardashian’s Khloud protein chips to the $500M BuzzBallz story, we get into what makes a consumer brand take off and what quietly kills it. If you’ve ever wanted to start investing, build real wealth, or understand how these brands actually win - this is for you! Timestamps: 00:01:37 Investing Expert… And My Husband 00:03:11 The $500M BuzzBallz Divorce Story 00:06:34 Can You Build This Brand? 00:07:36 Why I Waited To Start A Brand 00:09:32 When To Start Your Business 00:11:37 How Smart Investors Judge Risk 00:13:17 Why Celebrities Are Investing 00:16:55 Do Brands Need Celebrities? 00:18:19 Khloe Kardashian’s Khloud Review 00:22:57 Fiverr Ad 00:24:07 Smash Kitchen Chips Review 00:25:59 My Food Brand Framework 00:29:23 Red Flags In Investing 00:33:30 The Coinbase Investment Story 00:35:25 Traits Of Billionaire Founders 00:37:42 Maggie’s HSR Founder Edge 00:38:47 Followers Or Resume Virtues? 00:40:16 Is An MBA Worth It? 00:42:40 Is Goldman Still Prestigious? 00:45:13 Stan Ad 00:46:16 How To Get Into VC 00:47:59 Why Women Apply Less For Jobs 00:49:39 Rapid Fire Investing Advice 00:49:55 Last Credit Card Purchase 00:50:29 Spend On Experiences Instead 00:50:51 Best Newsletter Right Now 00:51:09 Using AI For Newsletters 00:52:46 Worst Investment Mistakes 00:54:25 My Proudest Accolade 00:54:47 Food, Wellness Or AI? 00:55:25 My Biggest Investment Win 00:56:43 Why Brands Need Family Offices 00:59:11 What Is A Family Office? 01:00:40 How To Reach Family Offices 01:01:16 Mr HSR’s New Email ⸻ Sponsors: Fiverr - If you are scaling a business, then you need to visit https://pro.fiverr.com Stan - Learn more at https://stanley.stan.store?ref=maggie_sellers&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=youtube ⸻ Follow Courtney Reum: www.instagram.com/courtneyreum Find out more about M13 Venture Capital: www.m13.co ⸻ Hot Smart Rich: Your Business & Culture Gossip For ambitious women wanting to own the room, gain power, and build wealth. Subscribe to the Hot Smart Rich newsletter: https://hotsmartrich.com/subscribe  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hotsmartrich/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hotsmartrich Maggie Sellers Reum: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maggiesellersreum/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maggiesellersreum LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sellersmaggie/ Locker: https://www.wantlocker.com/users/maggiesellers ShopMy: https://shopmy.us/maggiesellers Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/maggiesellers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Tellus Online Security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean hack season? Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms. But I've got Tellus Online Security. It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud so I can stress less during tax season, or any season.

Plan started just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. I am going to go on record and say that Cloud will be the second most successful Kardashian brand after skims. I've cooked. I've cooked. Do you think that every founder nowadays needs to have a celebrity face to be competitive in the landscape?

I believe the most important financial decision that you will make is who you decide to marry. So excited to have you come on today. Can we have some fun? Why not? You have $2 billion under management, 300 angel investments, 15 unicorns. A lot of founders come to you and they're like, I want a formula. And I didn't go to Columbia, Harvard, didn't work at Goldman Sachs,

all things that you did. Do you think that it is more important to have a high follower count or the resume virtues to start a successful consumer brand today? It's really not an experienced thing. It's really not age thing. It's an aptitude thing.

We're going to do some rapid fire. What are the common characteristics of founders that have become a billion dollar companies? How does someone know if it's the right time to start their business? What is your proudest athlete? Hi, Angels.

Did you know that's a strong? to our channel is free. And it's the simplest way that you can support our show and help us grow. If you do this, we can bring you even more of the content and the guests that you love. All you have to do is just hit the subscribe button below. So please, if you wouldn't mind, subscribe to the channel. And thank you. In case you missed it, you're allowed to be hot, smart, and rich.

So let's get into it. Courtney Ream, are you ready to get hot, smart rich? I don't see why not. How do you feel? I feel great. It's great to be back, but so much has changed since the last time I was here, the podcast is so much bigger and everything. So I feel a little pressure. I mean, I wore my HSR red shirt.

I wore my lucky Superman undies, but that's a different story. Oh, you like to see it. You want to see my Superman undies? No, no. I'm saying. Oh, okay, the Burgundy. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, I don't think we can show that.

You've come on twice, actually three times. And pretty much every single time we've talked about dating, relationships, love. Partly because I believe that, like, the most important financial decision that you will make is who you decide to marry. But there's so much more to your story. And I think people were so excited to have you come on today because I don't talk about everything you've done enough. You have $2 billion under management. You have started and sold numerous brands. You have a family office.

You have 300 angel investments. you have 15 unicorns. So to not have you come on and speak about entrepreneurship, investing, business, money, power would be such a disservice to this community. How do you feel digging into your professional background? As you know, I mean, I like to talk about it in bits and pieces. These days, I don't really like to talk about it in totality for lots of different reasons. So I really talk about the business side these days.

but if there's anyone I would want to talk about with, of course it's you, my little wifie. We're going to drink this episode. Okay. Which is interesting because I don't really drink, as you know, but okay. I know, but I think this is because, so have you heard of this company? I've heard of it. I've seen the packaging because it stands out. So the reason I bring this up, they are doing a limited edition for the World Cup that's coming out.

But this company was actually invented by a 47-year-old teacher from Texas. The 47-year-old part sounded like it was going to be me. Who needed to make money. money fast. She was about to get a divorce and was terrified of becoming homeless. Marely Kick invented this when she was a high school teacher not making enough money to survive and wanted to put her two sons through college. So she came up with this idea on a hot afternoon while marking homework. She chose booze because it thrives in good times and thrives even more in bad times. She decided to make a cocktail that came in a plastic container rather than glass and was a

inspired by the shape of a snow globe that she saw when she was in Sweden. It has grown to become one of the best-selling single-serve pre-mixed cocktails. And in 2022, the company was bought for an estimated $500 million deal. Oh my gosh. Which made kick the 89th richest self-made woman in the U.S. Because she had no investors. No investors. So cheers. Okay. I don't know. Let's try this. Oh, it's pretty good. I can see where the buzz part comes from the buzz balls, yeah. This is not your typical founder.

47 years old, going through a divorce, financially strained, doesn't have the background, doesn't have any connections, no operations, and every single card in her deck was stacked against her. Yet she is the 89th richest self-made woman in America now from this cocktail. Be honest. if you had been pitched this, based on her background, based on this product, like, would you have invested it? For M13, no, because this isn't what we do. But even just me as a, you know, putting my consumer hat on, I think it's a really important skill to learn the differentiation between, oh, I like this product. I would use it, but it wouldn't make a good investment.

Conversely, this isn't a product that would relate to me, but I can see how it would resonate and be sticky with it. other people, which is what I think this fits under. So for me, it's like, you know, the packaging is obviously kind of catchy and tidy. I think I've seen them because when they come, they come stacked. Obviously, you know, I hate the plastic. I know too much about ingredient labeling. So when it says premium tequila and vodka with natural flavors, when it says with natural flavors, they don't have to actually be natural and certified color is just that's all the dyes and all the things that are illegal in every country except for the U.S. But there's a market for it. The people who are drinking fireball, the people are drinking White Claw.

I see how this could be like a novelty for sure. I just don't know if it would have staying power and I don't know who bought it, but good for her and congrats. It's just so interesting because I think a lot of the time when you're an investor, a lot of founders come to you and they're like, I want a formula. Like, I want to be able to do X to do Y to get the result of Z. And I think it's interesting to think about the founder profile because a lot of people that are listening to this, like don't have the resume virtues. who maybe don't have the expertise. Like, what do you think that someone listening to this can do to build a product the same way that the Buzz Balls founder has?

It's hard to know because I don't know the whole rest of her story. But she must have had some insights or working thesis that she had, right? She thought, okay, single serves are in, right? Maybe she looked at something like a white claw and said, oh, people are looking at smaller format. They're looking at aluminum because I can't tell if this is like aluminum. No, it's not insulated on the inside, which is surprisingly. surprising because, you know, an aluminum cam when it's cold, it keeps a cold that generally tastes better. So I think, I think she probably went simply in her own experience, just like

a teacher also invented emergency, kind of the first hydration packs, and it just came from the teacher saying I was feeling dehydrated. There was no way to get my vitamins. I'm just going to put it in this pack and powder. And she probably wanted something that was like fun to have with her girlfriends or felt celebratory or just a little bit of like a treat yourself and came up with this. So the first brand that you started after Goldman Sachs was an alcohol. And it was something that you always wanted to do. You always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but you didn't actually take the plunge until after a very long period of time.

Why did you wait so long? I didn't intentionally wait long, but I think I waited a little while because, you know, we're all influenced by our friend group and our little circles and the other concentric circles. So every single person that I was friends with and worked with in New York City at the time pretty much worked down Wall Street in some shape or form. So like when you said entrepreneur, people didn't know what it meant. I mean, literally when I told somebody, this is a swear, true story, when I told someone at Colbin Sachs, I was leaving to be an entrepreneur, they looked at me and they're like, like, what do you mean? You're going to like be like a snowboard instructor or something? I was like, no, I think I'm going to actually

start something. They're like, oh, wow, that's interesting. And that's like not so long ago. It's like 20-ish years ago. Nobody in my circle is talking about being an entrepreneur. And now, you know, it's like entrepreneur with a capital E. So I think one, people weren't doing it. And then two, I do think I need a couple years to just like understand the world a little more, certainly working in someplace like Goldman Sachs is great, but you understand it through a certain lens of like corporate finance or strategy. You don't really get the softer side of building a brand, the marketing, the positioning. And that's the part that I liked and thought I'd be good at.

But truly, I had no experience because when I went to start a spirits brand, much like, I don't know how she went about it, but maybe she went like, looked at, you read like quarterly and annual reports from spirits companies, you look where there's white spaces in the market. And so from like an analytical point of view, this category or what I did, kind of something like vodka-esque made a ton of sense, how you actually build it, hand-to-hand combat, word of mouth, account by account, is so much harder and so much different than you can ever read in a research report. And that's the difference, you know.

So then how does someone know if it's the right time? to start their business? I don't think there's ever a right time because, you know, when we wrote a book called Shortcut Your Startup, one of the first chapters was get in the trenches and investigate. And it's this fine line between, I would say, 90-something percent of people don't do enough research before they go to start a business. Yet if you actually did the commensurate part, you would probably see how hard almost every category is these days, and you might not do it. So it's that fine line. But I think you have to do enough to kind of understand where the white space is, what the problem is, where the positioning is, but not do so much. I think entrepreneurship for

people, a lot of people, it starts to be like an intuition of like now is the time for the product. Like the most important thing that I think people miss is, let's say you're starting a product, it's the right product at the right time in the right context. And so you pretty much have to get all three of those right. What did your dad tell you when you told them you wanted to be an entrepreneur? He didn't really say yes or no. He just kind of looked at me, kind of nodded, and said, Well, of course we'll support you, but just to take a quick inventory, this is, you know, I'm like 25 years old. He said, you have no real money, no real skill set, and no real context to speak of in the general scheme of things. He's like, people have done it with less, but that's what you're up against.

So if you think you're the next Bill Gates and, you know, he dropped out of Harvard and started Microsoft, great. If it's anything else, you might want to think about getting a little bit of one or more of those things. after a few years of Goldman Sachs, I felt like I had enough or some experience to give it a go. And I think, you know, risk is a relative thing. In my mind, it was like, okay, if this doesn't work, I could probably go back to someplace like a Goldman Sachs. Or I could go to business school or I could, you know, my, I think there's people who take real risk if you're, you know, a single parent and put all your life savings into this. That wasn't quite my story. and so I felt like, although, of course, it's risky, I had good fault back plans, and that made it a little more, it felt manageable.

Let's talk about risk a little bit because one of your favorite sayings that you always tell me is option value. Can you talk a little bit about evaluating risk and when you say to me think about your option value? What does that mean? I think, again, this is a sign that really came from my parents, so full credit to them, but is they would always say like, you don't have to know what you want to do, but why not keep your options open? And I think sometimes nowadays people want to keep their options open just to keep their options open. But other people now have put in different terms. I think people like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, I think, you know, Mark Zuckerberg made famous the go fast and break things right. And I think that worked for a while.

Then people are like, that doesn't seem quite right. And I think it was Jeff Bezos maybe amended to say, yeah, that works if something's a two-way door, meaning you can make this decision go through the door. But if you don't like it, you can come back out the door the other way. I think I think of it generally in that one way or two-way doors. If it's a two-way door, like meaning I could decide to take this path, but if I don't like it, there's probably a way to retrench or whatever. That's still maybe a big decision. The biggest decisions are I walk through the other door and that door shuts

and that door will no longer be open to go back. Maybe new doors will open, but you can't go back to the other. So I think a one-way door is really different than a reversible or two-way door or a door that opens and you know leads to other things. That's the trick, I think, of risk and option value. And so I think my parents really instilled sometimes it's better to know what you don't want to do to a point. And then why not keep stepping through doors, especially if you know it can lead to other opportunities or different combinations and permutations. So when you decided to launch an alcohol brand, you left Goldman Sachs.

Everyone thought you were absolutely crazy. You were one of the first entrepreneurs that had left the Goldman Sachs floor and was like going to go and do your own thing. people thought you were crazy, whereas nowadays, entrepreneurship is super glamorized. And what is even more glamorized is investing. Why are we seeing so many celebrities become investors? I think it's a few things. I think, well, I guess let's just say investing in general versus entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship can be a great way to, in success, amass a ton of wealth or a concentrated amount of wealth off one thing, right?

I worked on Under Armour's IPO when I was at Goldman. Kevin Plank the founder, you know, made billions off one thing. But most of us don't start an Under Armour. So what happens then is you maybe are involved with different things. You invest in a few things. And even if you didn't have that one grand slam, if you had a bunch of good investments in totality that that could make up for it or even be more. So I think you've seen that a lot of celebrities have been involved with brands. And we can talk about a bunch of at least a few that have been successful, a bunch that haven't been, and I think maybe some of these celebrities now realize, wow, it's really hard to be the face of it. It's really hard to be the co-founder. It's really hard

to actually do the work, whereas investing alongside other really talented people in some role, an investor, advisor, maybe even founding partner, that's a different unlock. And I think, in general, it's why Tony Robbins wrote a book about managing your money. Even if you made some money, if you don't actually know how to manage it, you probably won't end up in a great place. So he wrote a book saying, I want to help people meet their dreams, but if I don't then tell you, give you some sense how to invest your money, you're not going to be able to kind of live off those dreams, so to speak. I think a lot of celebrities are realizing celebrity is a great thing to get into a company or be able to use that for some strategic benefit, and so it's a win-win.

Who do you think is doing that really well? There's a company that we're the lead investor in called Arena Club that I love. Derek Jeter is co-founder of it. And I actually knew Derek a little bit before. He actually, along with Simon Schuster, co-published our book, Shortcut Your Startup. We had a lot of mutual friends. So I've known of Derek for a while. And then he owned the Florida Marlins.

Now he's co-founder of this. I'm really impressed with Derek because he's obviously an iconic legendary athlete. But when I'm in meetings with him and with him, he's so great about asking questions. He doesn't need to eat up all the oxygen. When he has something to say, he says it. And other than that, he's a really great listener. and I think more celebrities are turning to that where they say, I can add value, but I'm going also not kind of overstep and be like that dictatorial founder, lead investor.

So I think he's a great one doing it that. The other one that comes in mind as a pure play investor is someone we both know, Alex Paul from the chain smokers. They have a fund called Mantis. And I think they've been really smart. The way I'd paraphrase what they've done is they've raised now, I think, three or four funds. I believe they're doing well, but they try and invest alongside top-tier investors, hopefully like us, like an M-13, and people have been doing it longer, Sequoia and Drescent, and they say,

hey, we're not trying to lead the round. We're trying to come in alongside of you, be shoulder to shoulder or maybe, you know, 1A, 1B, and we can add some strategic value, which they really can. And in the time I spent talking to Alex about it, even though we're more social friends, I think they're great about getting access to deals and kind of knowing where they're strong and knowing where they have to leverage other relationships and who wouldn't want them in their deal, especially if it's a product that could benefit from, you know,

someone like their awareness. Do you think that every founder nowadays either needs to have a celebrity face like Derek Jeter as a co-founder or a celebrity investor like an Alex Paul to be competitive in the landscape? Absolutely not. I think the celebrity endorsement thing, if you go back to like the 70s and Marlboro Man and different things

or Bill Murray and Lost in Translation, depending on the, the moment, they could be totally in vogue, they could be totally out of vogue, but I think what used to be endorsements is now like celebrity founders or founding partners or something that's more integrated. And I think the biggest thing that worries me still is that if you flip it the other way and go, what gets an exit, if you bring in too big a celebrity from the start with little exception, maybe the Kardashians, which I still think is unproven, even though there's been some good value built, at least on paper, what happens because the acquirer goes, well, it's hard

for me to know what's attributable to the quality of this product and the stickiness, what's attributable to the people who follow this celebrity, and how do you peel back that onion? And so in the best case scenario, even when they buy the brand, if I was the acquirer in whatever category, beauty, food, whatever, I would not do a deal without having that celebrity stay on unless I was sure about their kind of attribution. to sales or stickiness. Can we have some fun? Why not?

Okay. Let's do it. So you've cooked. I've cooked. You've cooked. So we have two different celebrity brands here today. We're going to do a little taste test. Okay.

We're going to see which one of you like more. And then I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the products. Okay. Okay. I can't pinpoint this flavor. It's unique. It's very zesty, but something I can't quite pinpoint. Okay.

Try the other one. Okay. you are officially tasting chips that have not yet reached the market yet. They will be by the time this comes out, but we have unreleased cloud protein chips from Chloe Kardashian, which we did a little taste review last time on Chloe's popcorn, and you loved it. So I'm interested if you can talk a little bit about Chloe Kardashian, her protein chips, what you just tasted, and then looking a little bit at like the packaging, the ingredients, what your perspective is on this brand.

And which one did I try? Did I try Sweet Heat or Nacho here? You tried Sweet Heat. Cool. So I'm going to try a nacho one. Yeah. First off, Floyd, thanks for sending these. They didn't give me any other food here in the green room, aka my house.

But I'll start by saying I like the nacho better than the sweet heat. I think the packaging is pretty good. You know, when you look at like a brand hierarchy, it's like what you're, jumps out to, you know, the name, but just protein chips, right? So someone might be like, oh, I like chips, but what does protein chips mean? That's the seven grams right there. Nacho, a recognizable flavor. You know, I think the sweet heat to me tastes different than a chip I'm used to. So I think it's a combination that a protein chip and what's in it tastes a little different than what I associate with like a Super Bowl eating chip that I'm used to. And then I think

the sweet heat's a little different. So I probably like that one a little less, although I didn't mind it. But I actually really like the nach. I think what people want, though, especially now is the reason you eat something that's a little bit indulgent like this is like she's trying to take something that was indulgent and make it healthier. So it has to taste enough like the original things that people are used to that taste that you know works, the sweet salty, that's the sweet heat, the amami or something like nacho that people love. And now we have to make them better ingredients. So I think this is pretty good. And how are the ingredients? Okay. Well, I like the front, whole grain. It's interesting the front says whole grain, but then it says gluten-free, non-GMO, non-ceal.

off. All right, Chloe, this is where I could get messy here. Let's go to the ingredients. First couple, pretty good. A little bit of seasoning. Yeah. Overall, there's a pretty good ingredients. You know, it's not like the cleanness, but I don't know if you can make a chip like this perfectly clean. I think it's got good ingredients. Can I tell you something? I am going to go on record and say that I think this will be the second most successful Kardashian brand beyond skims. Cloud. Cloud. I think Cloud will be the second most successful Kardashian. Baskian brand after skims for a few reasons. I think Chloe did this entire brand perfectly. Like protein, whether you like it or not, is projected to hit 120.42 billion by 2030.

Obviously, we're talking all about GLP1s right now. People are looking for protein. They're losing muscle mass if they are on a GLP1. So like increasing your protein intake is huge. The packaging is inviting. The ingredients are friendly. Chloe is known for having fun, like having snacks. This is a brand that feels like it brought her to life. And when I think about celebrity brands, it's all about fit, right? And to me, Chloe fits with the packaging. She fits with the product.

She fits with the marketing. Whether or not she's disclosed being on a GLP1, which I believe she hasn't. So we don't know if she is or is not. But the Kardashians have been so associated with their body and with like also food, just being on keeping up with our Kardashians. And I think that this brand is going to hit the mass market the same way that skims did. So I'm going on record predicting

that this is actually going to be the second most successful Cardinals. A small claim. Yeah. Especially because now at GOP 1, someone could eat the cloud and then put on their skims, their synergies.

There you go. They can share these are a little cross-branding. So now I'm not going to tell you the celebrity of this one yet. I want you to give me your thoughts on the next chip that we have. One thing I will never do is let my team burn out, which happens when someone is stretching themselves across a full-time job and trying to become an expert in something new. But I also recognize that with HSR, there are skills that could 100% change our trajectory as a business that we just haven't mastered internally, like generative engine optimization, no code engineering, AI-native expertise. Fiber Pro our sponsor has been the best solution for this because their talent is expert level and vetted.

So you're not just getting anyone, you're getting someone who is really, really, really good at what they do. They can come in, work on a project, and deliver to a very high standard. And Fiverr pros hiring experts will source and manage your freelancers for you. All you have to do is pick from a pool of exceptional talent. Your team stays focused on what they do best, and you don't lose momentum trying to figure out something new from scratch. So if you're building or growing a company, Fiverr Pro is worth looking into. Visit pro.fiber.com to learn more. Okay. So I'm going to conceal the top, so you can't open that.

Okay. You can maybe see it on the back, but don't look at the very bottom, okay? So this is another chip. Okay. So packaging, ingredients. What are we thinking? You know, if I just looked at this one, I would say it looks more like a traditional chip company, right? It says kettle cooked, hot honey barbecue.

It looks like chips that I've had before. Ingredients on the back. A lot of stuff you see. Born in the USA, made to crunch. Again, pretty good, although compared to cloud, there might be one or two ingredients I don't love in here, like a multidextrin. And, you know, the general rule is if you can't pronounce it, you probably shouldn't be ingesting it. But pretty good ingredients in here, too. Like, I don't think that's where they're going to lose out.

So now, looking at the packaging. And this, this, you know, obviously feels much more masculine than Chloe's, right? So looking at the packaging, what celebrity do you see as the co-founder of this brand? Definitely a male. And do you think you have a guess at who it is? I think I've seen the packaging. So on shelf, as you know, I like to roam the aisles. So I think I have a guess.

We'll say it on three. Am I guessing the brand or the celebrity? The celebrity. Okay. So one, two, three. Glenn Powell. Oh, you're so good. No, you know, I know Glenn a little bit.

I love Glenn, so shout out to Glenn, but yeah. Looking at the two shipbags, you have to pick one to invest into, one that's going to be more successful. Which one are you investing into? I think, as you said, probably cloud because they seem to really know their consumer. It has a point of view. You could know nothing else about the brand. Smash Kitchen, I think, starting exclusively in Walmart. Not in a bad way, but this feels very much like a male, you know, focus packaging.

And it feels like a Walmart brand. which is great, which is different. But I think if I did one, I would go with Chloe's. Okay, Chloe, let us into your round. I'm so obsessed that we just did that. You can enjoy the chips if you'd like. But I think it just goes to show a little bit about your thinking when you're thinking about investing.

So try to take us through a framework now for what we just did. You get pitched a fit and Bev brand. They're like, I need Courtney Ring on my cap table. What is your framework for looking at it? People obviously just sought an action. Now can you distill it down a little bit? into what you actually look for to put an investment into something. Food and Bev. Food and beverage, I know well enough that I have a couple mantras. Do you know one of my

mantras for fruit? Is it delicious, nutritious, and convenient? Yeah. I've been saying that for over 10 years. And even though I do less than food and beverage, you know, we don't do it through M13 anymore, but we still do a lot personally, some together, some through our family office. It's amazing how in 15 years that mantra hasn't changed because there are other products that succeed that are not those three, but for everything I look at, because I like things like healthier drinks, snacks, sticks, chips, whatever it is, they have to be delicious, nutritious, and convenient. If it's, it sounds so simple, but if you go analyze the 100 most successful food and beverage brands of the last whatever, there's a couple outliers. And pretty much other than that,

all of them need to hit all those filters. If you hit two of the three filters, it's one filter, one out of the three, forget it. Two out of the three. there's a slim chance, but it's really got to hit all three to be a Greens fee. Was your first angel investment after you had sold your alcohol brand? I think it was after we had started VEV for sure. I don't think it was after we had sold it because, you know, VIV is kind of a tale of two stories, so to speak, and that, let's say it was a seven, eight year journey. I think the first like four or five years, it was just heads down trying to build anything.

Things are harder to scale, then slower, less information. by the way, we're selling an alcohol in a bottle, so there's no pivoting to a software or something. It's not even pivoting to a non-alcoholic brand. It is the product is the product. So it was probably the last two or three years of Veeve. We started doing some angel investing, and I truthfully could not even tell you what the first one was.

They kind of comes in waves, but it was a lot of smaller personal checks. So it was everything from consumer internet stuff like Pinterest and Lyft and Coinbase to other food and beverage brands like Kavito, which eventually sold to Pepsi. So some of both of those. And we were kind of playing both those worlds, living in both those worlds. And then the D to C direct to consumer boom kind of came and the celebrity stuff.

So we were kind of funneled into a lot of that naturally. This is why I think it's so important to have this conversation because you head on a few things. Like being an expert in something is leveraging your expertise to like make good investment decisions. And I think a lot of women specifically that are listening to this don't think of themselves as like good at finance or good at investing because that's what we've been told our whole. life. But like even to your point of the chip brand, right? It's like 85% of consumer spend is held by women. They are the ones at Target. They are the ones at Walmart purchasing. They are going to be more drawn to the Chloe packaging than they are the Smash Kitchens packaging in my perspective. So winning over that female consumer is so important for every single brand. And a lot of females

feel like, well, I don't know anything about investing. I don't know this. But like if you're a consumer, I fundamentally believe that consumer investing is something that you at least can have a curiosity to develop. So I guess for someone that's listening to this, that is like, you know what, like, I maybe want to put an angel investment check in this year. Like, what are the red flags that is an absolute, like, do not touch that deal? And what are some green flags that they can get curious about and start probing when they're meeting with founders? Well, this is probably not the answer you wanted, but I think what I always tell people first is if you had a little pool of money, I would always, no matter how small the pool is, I would chop it up into a couple versus just doing

one. The chances of doing one and hitting it, it's actually worse if you get it right, because then you think you know what you're doing, whereas, you know, even now at M13, when we have like a core fund, usually for almost regardless of the fund size, our core portfolio would be like something like 30 to 40 positions. And the studies have shown that if even if you're an angel investor, writing $1,000 checks, $10,000 checks, you need enough things thrown against a wall, enough shots on goal, whatever metaphor you want. Maybe you don't need 30, but you need more than five. So I think you need to first lay out your strategy and whatever it is. If you said, I have $100,000 I'm going to put in to 15 things. If I have $10,000, but I'm going to put them

into smaller checks and you do crowdfunding. So I think you need enough of those because just don't fall in love with your idea because the chances are that it's not just the only one good idea. So that's the first thing. After that, I think it's especially if you're new and you're looking at products, it's this double-edged sort of going, I like this product so I should invest in it. And sometimes I have learned the hard way so many times, oh, I like this product. I would actually buy this product and put it on my face or eat it or whatever, but it will not make a good investment. And that's the hard thing to start to learn. But I think just having a genuine interest in something will make you go further in your research, will make you go further in your word of mouth

and sharing with your friends. And it depends what the product is. But like, let's just say it's something totally different. It's not a celebrity-backed brand. You find some slightly obscure skincare product that you love. And your friends don't really know. Just by using it, comparing it to other things, seeing your results, and telling 10 friends who are all slightly mavens and connectors to quote Malcolm Gladwell, you could actually make a big impact on that brand. I mean, it's the law of the few, right? Like to get HSR going, you didn't have millions of followers. You didn't even have hundreds of thousands.

You didn't even have tens of thousands. If you start with a thousand, honestly, even a hundred diehard evangelist, you'll get pretty far. And you'll learn so much. And so that's where I think you can make a difference, even if you're, you're a small investor and you get involved. What are some immediate red flags when you see a pitch? I hate just kind of generic stats on market size and everything else versus like, okay, but the addressable market can't be all women, right?

I mean, that's a big addressable market, but there's no point of view there. These days, I think products where it's like not everything is meant to be an AI product, there's probably not AI going in these chips. So don't tell me it's like chip company.a.i because that's not really believable. Do better things where you convince people, you really understand your data. You know, one of my philosophies from our book is know whether you're a sailboat or speedboat. So people trying to do too much too early without focus and focusing on the wrong things.

In the beginning, it should be so much about what you learn and probably a lot of qualitative stuff and less quantitative stuff. But the minute you're forced to try to like ramp up sales too early when you haven't really nailed it before you scale it, as we like to say, that's when you're in trouble. so like trying to go too fast. I think from a founder point of view, there's so much it can be said about founders, but I think we live in the world of like, I just love founders who know what they're good at, know what they're not good at,

know how to assemble the rest of the team, are really transparent about their blind spots, not the days of kind of like megalomaniac founders who say they have no weaknesses and just like run through walls and figure out later because it just doesn't work like that for the most part. There's a difference between grid and resilience and thinking you have no blind spots, right?

What is the most effective pitch and founder that you have personally ever seen, aside from me wanting to be your girlfriend. That one was hard to beat. You know, to pick one that comes to mind, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, who I truthfully don't know well, but we were lucky enough to put in a little bit of money to Coinbase at a $15 million valuation, sat next who made a dinner party, so to speak, spent a few minutes talking to him. And, you know, you have to remember this is like 2015, 20, 20,

he's like talking about a digital currency and a marketplace. He's like telling me about a marketplace for a digital currency that I don't understand. And maybe he was just confusing enough that I believed he was a futurist. But I something made me feel like he had the it factor combined with like just enough kind of forward thinking. But he also seemed to have a roadmap how he'd get to the adoption. And I couldn't quite put all the pieces together. but it felt like there was there was something there. So you invested based off gut?

I wouldn't say off of gut, but that's one of those situations where there's nothing you can diligence. It wasn't really, the marketplace wasn't really live yet. Again, go back to 2015, I don't think anyone really like short of the Winkle vases and a few other people. No one was really talking about Bitcoin or crypto, understood what it was. So I was, gut would be an understatement, but I was going on, I think more than gut, it was some pattern recognition that was sometimes hard to articulate.

But for example, if he's talking about stuff of how banks are at the future and they're not serving people and there should be some more transparent and secure way of currency and storing value, because what is money? What is the paper money? It's a store of value. There must be a better way to store that value with technology. I was like, that does make sense. And there's a little more to it, but he was obviously compelling.

So that's one of your unicorns. You have 15. What are the common characteristics of those 15, founders that have become billion dollar companies? All top-notch founders for sure. What does that mean? It means that I would always, you know, listen, if we knew who is the top-notch founders, then it would be easier to invest so you don't really know until you get into bed with them, so to speak. And, you know, these are, if you're lucky, five, seven, eight-year marriages, but it could easily be 10, 12, 15-year marriages. But I think most astute investors would now agree

with me that yeah, you don't know before you invest, but you start to get a pretty good sense within months. Certainly within a year or two, you're like, okay, even if the business isn't going that well, you're like, this is the type of person who will figure it out. They will, I mean, I think pivots and all that have gotten overhyped, but like they will figure it out. And so I think some of the soft skills that there's no way to, that I know of to really test for, the grit and the resilience and the willing something. I don't think you can will something to exit. You can't will something to be a unicorn, but you can will something to get pretty far along. And I've watched a lot of founders who had good companies, but just didn't want it badly enough,

didn't, couldn't inspire people internally, couldn't inspire people to give more capital. And I was like, with the different leader that was more inspiring or just a little more grit, they could have, they could have raised the money and gotten there. So I think, I think it's that. And then I think with the rest of the founders, I think, you know, there's just, there's just so many people out there who, I think all the founders, what they really have is the ability to kind of be myopic, you know, near sight and far sighted. As you know, I love the phrase, have a microscope in one eye and a telescope in the other eye. And it is so hard when you're building something because there's so much microscopic stuff. You have to be in the details. You have to, you know,

when I was at Goldman Sachs, we were like, you have to be able to do every job from the janitor up to the CEO. And that was great about the learning. Sometimes you felt the lowest lows. And sometimes you're like, I'm way over my skis. So you have to keep the microscope to be in the weeds and everything that's happening. And then you have to have a telescope to make sure you can pick your head up and look on the horizon and go, but I see where we're going. Like I see that we're charted due north while still keeping an eye on every little wave that's coming your way. So you met me like pretty much at very early stages of ages are. Would you say that I've willed it into existence?

A lot of times a founder, I see them will something that's not getting traction, that's not feeling sticky, that's not going to how they thought, that's when you have to kind of like will it to the next level. I won't use the word will for you because I think I've seen a lot of positive proof points right from the start with HSR. And even when I met you, more like you've manifested it into existence. But I think a lot of people want to come on a journey with you from the start. And so I think you've shown a lot of grit and resilience, but you've also had something from the start that's resonating with people. I think it's interesting to bring that up because we, in this, world think a lot about the founder archetype, right? And I would say I didn't have the

background, I guess, that would lead people to assume that I could build something of note. So didn't go to Columbia, didn't go to Harvard, didn't work at Goldman Sachs, all things that you did. And even when I was starting it, I didn't have the follower count of millions of followers, like a lot of celebrities do. So I think about my unfair advantage and it was being like very vulnerable and very okay with showing the highs and showing the lows in like a true fashion. But I'm interested to hear from you now. Do you think that it is more important to have a high follower account or the resume virtues of Columbia, Harvard, Goldman Sachs to start a successful consumer brand today? Those are the only two choices? Only two options. Those are only two options.

I think certainly a high follower account because of the things you've mentioned, going to Columbia probably doesn't help you start a consumer brand. Going to Harvard, well, that's business school, may or may not, a little more than undergrad. And working at Goldman Sachs probably works against you. So high follower account, but I would trade those for what you had, which was some stickiness, right?

So to go back to my qualitative versus quantitative, the quantitative would be high follower account, have millions of followers. The qualitative would be, oh, you're getting really good engagement, or it's like not even how many people, are commenting, but it's like what they're commenting. Are they like rabid for more? Are they loving this? And that's what you had. So those are important proof points. If the brand was going to go like this,

maybe a high follower account, but in the world of a J curve where it goes do-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And now you figure it out, shoot up the J-curve. You had a lot of good points here in order to start to accelerate what you've been doing. And I'm so proud of you. Love you. Do you think that an MBA in today's world is valuable and will capture attention? like think about now being M13. $2 billion you are investing. An MBA graduate is applying. Does that command more of your attention for potential hire?

It does because, you know, again, if you go to a big firm, we keep using Golden, but McKinsey or any other firm, they actually are in charge of training you. We're not in charge of training you. Like we don't really have the time or the energy or the resource. sources to train you. I mean, of course, I can train you on our specific thesis or what we're looking for in a deal or how to write the memos that we do for our investment committee. But I mean, like, really train you, right? Like, you don't come to M13 to get a background corporate finance.

You already need that. So I think, one, I wouldn't view it as like MBA or not. I'd view it as, like, all these other things. Like, do you need any of the, any one thing? No. But I think if you haven't worked at a top tier firm, like a Goldman or McKinsey, and you don't have an MBA and something else, then it's, you know, that could be three strikes. Whereas I think if you have one of those to your question point, I'm not sure you need three different things like that. You need one of those things that shows me you've worked in a high pressure environment. You've know how to work hard. You've gotten some training for someone who's what much better equipped to do it than I am. So it's those things. But I would still say to go on the MBA, the way it was described to me and the informational

thing that I still love is if you view your career on a 40-year spectrum or however long you plan work in 35, 40, 50 years, if you view your career on a 40, 50-year spectrum and you could do something for two years that would enhance the other 38 once you do it, and I think it's changed, but I still think that still generally holds. Because today you want to be an entrepreneur and you don't see the immediate value in it. Tomorrow you're doing something totally different and it never hurts to kind of have that. But easy for me to say, because as I said, I didn't feel like I was really taking a risk. And I totally get that the opportunity cost, meaning it costs you probably order a magnitude to half a million, depending on loans and everything else to get an MBA. And then you have the opportunity cost of lost wages.

So that's probably, you know, closer to a million dollar swing way or one way or another. It's an investment in yourself. That's a risk and a bet on yourself one way or another in terms of what you want to do. Do you think that the prestige associated with investment banking exists the same way it did when you were in investment banking today? No, absolutely not. I think there's so many stats to look at, but it's like, well, first off, I started at Goldman Sachs in 2002, 2003. If you were there in 1998 when Goldman Sachs went public, that was the last of the prestigious banks to go public. If you were a pre-IPO partner at Goldman, minimum a partner made $100 million.

And that's $100 million in $1998. So imagine what that is now that's like half a billion if you did halfway decent with your investing. So that was what the bar was to be a partner at Goldman in 1998. Now, obviously, I was nowhere near a partner. I was a low person on the totem pole. But it's different now because Goldman then had less than 10,000 employees. Today they have over 100,000.

Now, it's over 15 years ago, but that's still incredible growth. So it used to be like, oh, if you worked at Goldman's at, someone's like, oh, you're working Goldman Sachs. Now it's just a much bigger place, has its tentacles and a lot more things. And when I was there, like I said, Goldman battled whoever, Morgan Stanley or McKinsey for talent, it didn't battle startups. Now Goldman battle startups. And Goldman offers some things a startup can offer and a startup offers some things, and whether you say startup or whether you say go work at a VC, if you go work at Kleiner Perkins or Sequoia or M13, we have some things that we offer the Goldman can and

Goldman has things offered that we can't. But I think it's much more, the playing field is much more leveled. So we're no longer going to have the fight where if our kids want to go into an investment banking and I'm like, absolutely not, you're not going to fight me on that. The short answer is no. The longer answer is to bring it back to everything we talked about. Goldman, for me, was great option value. I think after two weeks of training, truly, they voted on who is most likely to quit after another two weeks. I think I won near unanimously. an analyst class of like 100 people, I think I voted for myself too. And then here I am that I did roughly five years, which most people do two years of banking,

maybe three. So for me, it was great option value while I figured out what I wanted to do and some good training and pretty good pay and make great connections. And as you know, I lived in a few countries around the world. So that was great option value, even though I never saw it as my medium, much less long-term thing. So from that point of view, I would always recommend it as like a broad base. But absolutely if someone doesn't have a desire, it doesn't seem.

You know, if they don't have an affinity for numbers, it's going to be hard to be an investment banker. Have you ever created a piece of content that's ready to go live? You've written the caption. But instead of hitting publish, your finger just hovers. And then you don't. You just don't put it live. While I've done that, more times than I can count. When I first started posting content, I found publishing to be the worst part.

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stanley. You can learn more at stanley. dot stan dot store. Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime.

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See, the rules have changed, because it used to be you didn't even hire anyone that didn't work at, they probably did some banking or maybe some consulting or maybe even some private equity or hedge fund. Now people are taking, you know, people right out of undergrad. So it just depends on the person, but you've seen a lot of the cold emails I get. And it's still hard to get your attention from a cold email. But, I mean, I'm getting sent things by 9. 19 year olds who are sending me their portfolio who have sent are sending me something they vibe coded or sending me their idea that's already, you know, raised $5 million and they, they can't

get a legal drink of alcohol. So it's not one thing, but it's kind of the whole package and just seeing that someone has a real appetite for like either building companies or really just understanding how things are built. And that could be from an entrepreneurial lens or an investor. And so people are just doing it, they're just getting so much info and experience at such a younger age that it's really not an experienced thing. It's really not age thing. It's, it's a, you know, an aptitude thing. I'm so glad I never applied to M13 because I don't think we would be married if I had. But I definitely really wanted to work in venture capital when I was working in entertainment. I just like wasn't ever an opportunity for me. Like no one really

returned my job applications. I just like wasn't the idea. I just like wasn't. I. deal candidate, I guess. And so I really started angel investing as a way to like, okay, I'm going to build my own portfolio. No one's going to hire me. I'm going to do this myself. But it's so interesting because I was always applying for jobs that I was not qualified for at all. But you on your job descriptions have this written into every single one of your venture capital roles. Research shows that while men apply to jobs when they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other marginalized folks tend to only apply to jobs and they check every box. So if you have what it takes, but don't necessarily meet every single point on the job description, please still get in touch.

We'd love to chat and learn more about what you want to do next in your career. Why did you guys put that on your job descriptions? You know, shout out to Matt Hoffman, our head of people and culture. And I think exactly what it says, right? I think it's hard to answer some of your questions because it isn't a one-size-fits-all. But this is, you know, an age where it's an attention economy thing. and some people lean in, some people lean out. But I think it's exactly what we said.

Like a lot of the most talented people might not realize how talented are. Someone like you, it's like you could get a job at any venture firm, but it's more just about the right fit and the right thing of harnessing your skills or where you want to spend your time and what they need. So it's just really important because, you know, the stats better than I do, but still two few dollars

are going to women in venture. I think there's been progress. on hiring, it's still not enough, but, you know, it is about perception, right? Per that, a lot of guys think, oh, I'm 80% qualified, and in their mind, they're 100, and then other women are 80% qualified, and in their mind, they're 60%. So they kind of go the other way. And so we just want to be more inclusive because a lot of our best hires have come from people who didn't necessarily think they were qualified. Well, that's why I'm so excited about what we're building with now doing some investing together, which there's lots more to come on that. Yes, it's been fun, though. We've made our

first few investments. Yeah, into female founders. into female founders, absolutely. So to wrap up for today, we're going to do some rapid fire. Okay, can I put my glass on for rapid fire? Yeah. Okay, I meant to put them on earlier for the intellectual look, but okay. Okay. What is the last thing you put on our credit card?

I know our credit free. I should be asking you, what's the last thing you put on our credit card, right? That's really the question because it's always like a little bit like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're going to get at the end of the month where I'm like, I did that. I'm like, oh, that must be Maggie. Okay. The last thing I put on the credit card was a bunch of Amazon packages. That's not interesting. Try again.

No, it was. Okay, well, let's be more interested in. I know how it goes. What's the last most expensive thing you put on our credit cards? Our trip to Africa. Our trip to Africa, yeah. That definitely qualifies. That was a doozy.

Safari ain't cheap people, but it's a great life experience. Spend your money on experiences, not things, kids. What is your favorite newsletter that is an HSR? I love Morning Brew, and I love something like Axios, but I think Axios is extended into lots of other stuff. And so, you know, it's a little trickier. I really love my information diet because I always, as you know, take things in and out based on either what's non-overlapping. So it's like there's a newsletter called Fit Insider that I love because it's my favorite one for like health and wellness. But if that's the, if I can only pick one, I'm not sure I can read newsletter on health and wellness because I want something more broad-based.

Well, this is my favorite use case of AI. So I would get probably 10 to 15 newsletters a day. I don't like to be on my phone in the morning. And so when I would get to my office, I would just be so overwhelmed by having 15 newsletters to go through after I've already worked out, whatever. I would ask Claude to send me

all of the duplicative articles that had come out and then send me from every single newsletter one headline that the other one had missed and a summary of that story. And so now I don't even read the newsletters. I literally just read my Claude summary in the morning. And then I told it, If there's a story that you think is worth reading, please let me know and what newsletter it comes from.

And now it just pulls directly from Claude. It doesn't hurt the newsletters, by the way, because Claude, I believe, is still opening them. Like, I'm still a subscriber. But I just don't personally have the time to go through that anymore. I think it's great. It depends why you do it. You know, I think, like, there's a reason that TLDR exists and there's a reason that everything can't be TLDR because not everything is meant to be distilled down or else no one to read a book because you read a book to get a broader swath and, like, real means. meaning and to integrate into your own thoughts. So I try to read a lot of short form, less long

form, I have to be in the right move, but a lot of medium form. So sometimes I don't want just the headline because I want to have the chance to go deeper, which sounds like you're still getting. But I also like some of my morning rituals of standing in front of red lights and reading a newsletter, hanging upside down and reading a newsletter. So I actually have the specific ones mapped out. And it's better to, as you know, I'm always rushing. So science it's good to not rush and try to slowly synthesize, and other times you have to move with urgency. What's your favorite investment that you've ever made?

Chops, of course. We did every day. What's the worst investment you've ever made? I'm not going to name names, but I think the worst investments I've ever made is when I invested in either people or things that I didn't actually understand. I think too many times people get swept up

in the buzz of something or whatever, they don't really, when I stick to things I know or things I'm passionate about or things I could learn about, I've done exceptionally well. When I've gone too far outside of that bull's eye, I've gotten smoked. Like equities in China got smoked. I didn't really know China. I didn't really know equities in China. For a while, it did really well and then regulation killed it. But I think the analogy that I love is one of the best baseball hitters ever. They show this grid of what the batting average was in every little area of the strike zone.

And the takeaway was that in this area where he felt comfortable, he was one, this is Ted Williams, one of if not the greatest hitters of all time. When he started to swing at pitches outside of this area where he liked it, there were some parts where he was like a very average player.

And so for me, it's like sticking to what I know or what I understand and what I like. And of course we all acquire new things, but when I start to get a little bit to, I don't really know that, but yeah, that sounds good, or this guy seems great, or my friend's doing it, or this firm's doing it, that's usually when I get smoked. What is your proudest accolade?

You. True. Really? Yeah, because I, you know, everything gets you to a point, but I really think that whatever accolade I pick, the irony is I don't want to be an accolade because I was so focused on all the resume virtues for too long that I don't want to be a resume virtue. I want it to be something someone feels or says about me. But I think the best is yet to come. Love you. You can only invest in one for the rest of your life.

Food and Bev. Wellness. AI. Probably wellness just because I think I actually know food and beverage really well, but it's constrained in some ways. Wellness could have a component of AI, and it could harness like a much bigger, like I want to do things that could help millions of people, right?

That's why we've started things like Lifeforce, where it could hopefully be an intervention and bring some. something that was like a concierge medicine thing to 10,000 people, and then 100,000 people, and then a million and maybe tens of millions. I want things like that that could like do well by doing good. And so I think I would pick something in wellness that I feel like could have a lot of scalability. What's your most successful investment personally? We've been lucky we've had, you know, could count on one hand, but almost two hands, things that have been 100 X or more. We've had, I think, about five things that fit into that

and a couple that hopefully are coming soon. I do think as a multiple Coinbase was our biggest one. I think it was about a thousand X or money. From a dinner. From a dinner and a little chat. But yeah, sometimes better to be lucky than good. But I think there's so many things that are kind of overblown about when people

are successful and underplayed when they're successful too, which is that, yeah, I would never say that I understood everything Coinbase was doing. But I understood enough to like feel like there was something there. and then I can tell you, you know, you've seen a different side of me in the last couple years because I don't think I chase as much. And although I work hard, it's not like I, 10 years ago, my brother and I were out every single night meeting people doing things, whatever. And as I like to say,

there's, you know, the intersection of luck and opportunity, whatever it is. But I can tell you, we did not so sit home in our underwear hoping that lucky things happen. We went out there and like, you know, the quote I like from Rumi, life is a dance between making it happen and letting it happen. I don't know how much we let it happen back then, but we sure tried to make it happen every single night and like, you know, 15 hours a day. And so I believe that that was not luck in the sense that we made it happen and made all these investments that opened doors to other things. I made this statement saying that consumer brands are completely wasting their time pitching to VCs if they're under a million dollars in revenue and to go after family offices. You have a family

office. One, can you break down one of family offices? And two, why are family offices better for consumer brands to be pitching to you right now than a venture capital fund? You know, you said a million. I actually think it's probably more like 10 million than a million in order of zeros. But I think it's also that, you know, the minute you take venture money, you're on it, you know, the clock's ticking, right? My IRA has started by the time I wired you money for your thing. And what is an IRA? Internal rate or return. But whatever it is, the return. The return. Turn on capital you need any term you use. The minute I send you money as an investor, that clock is now ticking. In general, a family office, although of course they want to make money and they're not a charity, at least those kind of investments, they don't have, they don't have to have the money back ASAP or they can be a little more patient. Maybe the family office made their money in a consumer product and you'd be value ad. Most venture capitalists are not going to be value ad with a consumer product. There's some exceptions. I think that's the the main distinction. And then I would also argue that I personally believe when someone says,

I'm a consumer venture capitalist for a consumer, consumer means different things, but what they really mean is that there's some kind of like these days, it used to be a, you were a consumer internet investor, Pinterest, Lyft, whatever, stuff like that that we were in. Now it probably means you're a consumer facing AI investor, maybe a consumer, a wellness AI platform. But there's no such thing really is a consumer brands venture, in my opinion. I think that there's consumer brand private equity, though. Sure, which is really different because consumer venture means I'm going to invest in you at a venture stage and look for a venture return, which means you have explosive growth and not

necessarily profits. But that's really different than consumer private equity. And by private equity, generally speaking, they will not give you money unless there's already some cash flow. So that's a really different kind of business. It could be a four-wall thing. It could be clinics. It could be studios if it was a fitness thing, that sort of thing.

And that's really different. So there is absolutely consumer private equity. I'm not sure I think there should be consumer venture the way we're talking about consumer brands because what the venture firm needs and what the consumer brand needs are kind of diametrically opposed. So what is a family office? Family members or it could be a single family office. It could be husband and wife. It could be brothers.

or a partner, sisters, whatever the case may be, who have amassed a certain amount of money. There's no minimum amount of money. Call yourself a family office. I've heard some people call themselves family offices, and then they're very small and some that are very big. But it started to be a real institutional asset class. I don't have all the stats. But family offices are growing such a rapid rate that basically means, one, I think they're relevant to a lot of sectors of the economy.

But two, in general, I think it means that you've set up some kind of operation to actually institutionalize what you're doing. So in the case of us, my brother and I, and now you, we have kind of like a four or five person family office team. Someone's kind of more head of investing. Someone's kind of more operations, you know, different functions like that. And it gives us flexibility to look at things we wouldn't look at for M13 or other things we know well or other passions lie. And as I said before, I think the best thing about a family office usually is, okay, if this is a third generation business with 32 constituents and shareholders and everyone wants a dividend, that investing process could be hard. Right now, ours is pretty easy. I want to invest in something. I do it. My brother wants to invest in something. You want to invest in something we're doing separately. It's a more manageable process with a lot of flexibility in terms of stage sector check size. How does someone reach family offices to get investment for their company?

There are lots of family office conferences now. So like anything, you can crash parties, you can do whatever. But there's family offices that are really under the radar. But a lot more family office. are what I call branded or public or, as my mom used to say, in the phone book. But you know what I mean? You can find their information. So I don't know however you'd call email a VC. You can cold email a family office. But I would generally say our family office, although we see a ton of deals, we see fewer deals and we see at M13.

And a little more likely that like some type of interesting cold email actually gets seen, if not answered from a family office, than a VC. That's my gut. Courtney Ream, thank you so much for coming on HotSmart Rich. Where can people find you? I think they should just email you and they can find you at this point. That's the best route. Really just through you, I'm just trying to be, you know, Mr. H.S.R.

Which, by the way, was a nickname that the community came up by then we were obsessed with. Yeah. I am ready to retire. Lucky Number 3. Actually, let's do this right now. How can they find me? I want, by the time this airs, to have an address, an email address. What's your URL at Hot Smart Rich?

I want an email that says chairman at Hot Smart Rich. And if you need something, especially if it's HSR-related, email me people, chairman at hs at hotsmartritch.com. We're done. We're done. Love you. I love you too, man.