Andrea Hippeau (Lerer Hippeau) - Investing in Pet Care, When a Digitally Native Brand Should Head Into Retail and Raising from Family Offices vs. VCs

Ferret is the first relationship intelligence tool for all business savvy investors to know, for the first time, who they can trust Head to [ferret.ai](http://ferret.ai/) using promo code: CONSUMERVC to jump to the top of the waitlist. Our guest today is [Andrea Hippeau](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-hippeau-64658227/), Partner at [Lerer Hippeau](https://www.lererhippeau.com/). Lerer Hippeau is a New York based early stage venture capital fund with some of their investments include Allbirds, Chubbies, Cotopaxi and Glossier. We discuss how to invest in pet products, measuring environmental and sustainability, and what makes a digitally native brand venture backable.  Some of the questions I ask Andrea: 1. What was your initial attraction to venture capital? 2. Difference between family office vs. venture capital? 3. What interests you in consumer brands? 4. How do you think about regulation? 5. How do you measure environmentally and sustainability? 6. In an era where you don't have those growth marketing arbitrage opportunities on FB and Google, what makes you excited about investing in brands today? 7. One of your areas of expertise is the pet space. How do you dissect such a large market?     1. What particular sub segments are you most fascinated by and growing?     2. What areas do you think are over saturated? 8. What were some of your biggest learnings during COVID? 9. I had on Ernest Schmitt from The Craftory who made the case that digitally native brands are hitting retail way to early. When do you think it's appropriate to go into retail? 10. Has Figs going public changed any of your perception of the scale relating to digitally native brands? 11. What are the typical gross margins, CAC/LTV ratio or pay back period you like to see in a company today? 12. What make a digitally native brand venture backable? 13. How do you analyze companies and figure out if a company has gotten past the noise and could be venture scalable? 14. As we (hopefully) come out of COVID soon, what questions are you asking yourself relating to how consumers are going to spend their time and money? 15. What's one thing you would change about venture capital? 16. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? 17. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders? 18. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?

Om Podcasten

The 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, fundraising strategy, and the pitch. This podcast also includes bonus episodes. Each bonus episode dives into a particular subject that might not have to due with the fundraise or venture capital, but still would be helpful to founders. For example, a bonus episode on brand strategy or how to construct a board of directors. All bonus episodes will be clearly labeled. For all episodes, please visit www.theconsumervc.com. For updates, you can follow @mikegelb on Twitter.