Consumer brand strategy without the gloss.
Consumer VC follows founders and investors through the operating details behind consumer businesses. Food, beauty, retail, coffee, ice cream, and venture math all get treated as practical problems, not trend pieces.
PRESS PLAY
Consumer VC is a conversation-led show about the consumer companies people actually buy from and the capital trying to back them. Its center of gravity is practical. Episodes often begin with a big question: whether early-stage consumer venture is broken, whether consumer can still produce power-law returns, or why better-for-you food has become harder to scale. Then the show narrows. Guests are asked to explain what happened inside the category, the company, the fund, or the channel. That structure gives the show its value. It is not just interested in why a brand is exciting; it wants to know how the economics work after the excitement fades. Retail deductions, invalid fees, Amazon and Target recovery, manufacturing capacity, and grocery velocity sit next to brand love, emotional innovation, and consumer behavior. The mix is unusually grounded. A coffee conversation can become a lesson in reinventing entrenched categories. An ice cream story can become a case study in vertical integration, clean ingredients, national retail, and the strain of too much demand. A poker-to-DTC founder story becomes a discussion about discipline, risk control, testing, and rebuilding systems while the business is moving. Investor episodes bring a sharper lens. Fund structure, carry, angel investing, exits, beauty multiples, portfolio post-mortems, and the changing risk of getting in earlier all get treated as live strategic questions. The show is strongest when it slows down inside a specific business problem. It gives founders and consumer investors a way to hear how experienced operators think under pressure, especially in food, beauty, wellness, retail, and household categories.
Made for: Built for founders, early-stage investors, and operators working in consumer categories such as food, beauty, wellness, retail, household goods, and commerce technology. It suits listeners who want fundraising context tied to operating reality.
What sets it apart: The show pairs investor judgment with close attention to category mechanics: retail deductions, manufacturing constraints, fund incentives, exit math, and brand positioning. It stays concrete where many consumer startup conversations stay promotional.
Consumer VC takes a look into early-stage consumer investing and venture capital. If you are interested in learning about consumer trends, have a b2c business and interested in learning about the fundraising process at the early stage, you have come to the right place. Mike interviews some of the top venture capitalists in the world that focus on B2C and consumer type companies or have a deep track record investing in these categories such as marketplaces, SaaS, social, CPG and non-tech subscription. Mike also interviews founders that are building some of the most disruptive consumer facing companies in the world. The conversation usually includes the insight the founder discovered, fundrais…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Consumer VC makes the business machinery behind familiar products unusually legible through detailed interviews with investors and company builders.
Consumer VC follows the decisions that turn everyday products into scalable businesses. Mike Gallup interviews investors and company builders with an eye for the hinge points: why a brand entered a category, when retail traction changes the risk calculation, and how…
An ice cream factory hits capacity, and suddenly your brand daydream needs a production plan.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A childhood ice cream obsession becomes a practical lesson in factories, product expansion, and demand.
Alec Jaffe's route from a freezer stocked with ice cream to the CEO seat at Alex's Ice Cream gives this episode a clear business spine. The conversation tracks his early decision to learn the craft, then moves into sustainable regenerative dairy, A2 protein dairy, and the…
A grounded look at how retail fees, errors, and disputes can quietly drain brand revenue.
Retail's costs begin well before a product reaches the shelf. Akash Raju traces that pressure through the deductions retailers and distributors take from brands, from fees and promotions to compliance and supply-chain problems.
A grounded case for why beauty investors may back brands earlier when waiting does not make the risk safer.
Consumer VC brings a practical investor's eye to the beauty-exit story, with True Beauty Ventures co-founder Rich Gerstin laying out why the category can reward conviction before a brand has landed a retail partner.
A clear-eyed tour of European venture's capital plumbing, with AI kept in its proper place.
Consumer VC maps European startup friction through the machinery around companies: where venture capital comes from, how cross-border investing changed after Brexit, and why maturing ecosystems have made the UK a little less dominant than it once was.
Craig Dubitsky argues that consumer brands matter most when people feel invited to join them, not just buy them.
Consumer VC follows Craig Dubitsky as he makes the case for emotional innovation in consumer brands. He starts with categories often shaped by fear or shame, then pushes toward a warmer goal: building things people want to join, not merely products they purchase.
A sharp, practical look at beverage investing, better-for-you trends, and the chemistry of backing founders.
Consumer venture investing is framed here through the questions that make a beverage bet understandable: what "better for you" means now, how younger consumers read that promise, and why some founders seem easier to back than others.
Frontier technology, seen at civilizational scale.
Water tech, with teeth and numbers.
Southern startups, capital, and conviction.
Loose, opinionated hallway talk about AI products and craft.
Entrepreneur Craig Dubitsky, founder of Hello and co-founder of Happy Coffee, explains his philosophy of building disruptive consumer brands.
Gail Becker, founder of Caulipower, discusses building a $100 million CPG brand in three years by selling cauliflower pizzas and the challenges of scaling retail distribution.
Mike Gelb interviews Ken Sadowsky, known as the Beverage Whisperer, about his early involvement with Vita Coco and Vitamin Water, which sold for $4.1 billion.
Manica Blain discusses whether early-stage consumer venture capital is broken, sharing insights from her experience founding Campfire Capital and Top Knot Ventures.
Entrepreneur Craig Dubitsky discusses his approach to building beloved consumer brands by focusing on emotional innovation rather than fear and shame.
Former professional poker player Brian Tate discusses his transition from high-stakes poker to building the fast-growing DTC food brand Oats Overnight.
Investor Tyler Mayoras discusses the challenges of scaling 'better-for-you' food brands and the shift in CPG acquisition criteria.
Michael Duda discusses why consumer startups can still generate power law returns despite recent VC skepticism.
Alec Jaffe says Culture Cup went live on April 7 and immediately triggered Whole Foods DMs, TikTok traction, and sold-out shelves.
Akash Raju says retail has "100 to 200 different types of fees" and brands can lose up to "20% to 30% of revenue."
Rich Gersten says beauty brands that stall at $2M-$3M often matter less than brands that launch much earlier.
Joe Seager-Dupuis describes Consumer VC’s focus on consumer brands and consumer technology, then explains why True backs pre-seed to Series A companies with up to $2 million checks.
Mike Gelb interviews Ashley Hartman and Andrew Bluestein of Bluestein Ventures about their $45M fund, investing in food tech and consumer brands, and lessons from Foxtrot.
Amrit Richmond discusses what makes a brand acquisition-worthy, emphasizing the importance of a strong founding team that can handle early-stage tasks like designing ads and packaging, understanding industry basics, and leveraging past advertising experience.
Ben Lerer discusses selling Group Nine Media to Vox Media, the evolution of New York's startup ecosystem, and his approach to venture capital.
Fan Bi discusses his journey from founding a men's fashion brand to acquiring and turning around VC-backed e-commerce brands through his company Hedgehog.