YouSaid · the spoken record

Adam Pritzker

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24
first
2019-03-15
most recent
2019-03-15
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1
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podcast

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  1. “And venture capital since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Coolies form more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world, with 50 plus years working with VCs, they help VCs form and manage funds to make investments and handle the myriad of issues that arise through a fund's lifetime. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VC-bed companies going public, simply head over to cooley.com and also go to cooliego.com. As always, I so appreciate all your support and I cannot wait to bring you a phenomenal set of episodes next week.”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Had on this very podcast, and you can read one of my favorite guides on scaling engineering organizations and many more on Stripe.com forward slash 20VC. That's T-W-E-N-T-Y-V-C. And speaking of pillars of your organization, Intercom offers a new and better way to acquire, engage, and retain customers. They've built a suite of messaging first products from chatbots to a totally reimagined business messenger that modern internet businesses use to accelerate growth across the customer lifecycle from acquisition to engagement and support. Over the past eight years, they've totally reimagined what a business messenger can be, which is way more than simply live chat. Today, Intercomm is used by the world's most forward-thinking companies. Check this out, including 84% of Y Combinator companies that use a messaging or live chat tool use Intercom, they now have over 300,000 customers, including larger companies like New Relic, Atlassian and Shopify, and smaller companies like Airtable and Coda. Then finally, I've always been a big history man, and so I wanted to talk about Coolie. The global law firm built around”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “What a guest, and what can I say? Super excited to see the next few years for assemble brands. And if you'd like to see more from Adam, then you can find him on Twitter at Adam Pritzker. Likewise, it'd be fantastic to welcome you behind the scenes here at the 20-minute VC. You can do that on Instagram at hstebbings 1996 with 2Bs. It'd be great to see you there. But before we leave you today, a lot of what we do on the 20 minute VC is talk to experts, pick the brains of founders and investors who tell us which trends to watch out for, offer tips on fundraising and teach us how to excel at any company stage. There's no playbook for building a great business, but we can certainly learn from people who've done it before. Beyond listening to this podcast and talking to mentors and advisors in your own network, it's important to have resources you can turn to when you're tackling a new challenge. Stripe has built those resources for you. Whether you'd like to learn how to run a pricing experiment or build a knockout landing page, Stripe gives you the information you need to start, run and scale a technology company. Their guides are often written by or feature people like Elag Gill, whom we've actually”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “But Adam, it's been so much fun. As I said, Scott told me it would be wonderful to have you on the show. It's more than lived up to expectations. So thank you so much for joining me today.”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Finally, tell me, what was the most recent investment from assembled brands and why did you get so excited to about that project and brand?”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “You're making a lot of money. I mean, again, it's all relative, but I would think the latter approach is probably a more prudent one I totally agree. And I think people so often forget the elements of dilution and just how eight rounds of venture funding can leave you with four or five percent. So totally with you on that element. I do though want to move into my favorite element, Adam. You've listened to the show before, the quick fire round. So I'm going to say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts. About 60 seconds per one, are you ready to roll? I'm flying to the West Coast next week. What should I read on the way and why?”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I would say you probably need to restructure your cap table at some point. Absolutely. It's a super interesting thing that I think we will see or not if it plays out over the next few years with a number of these brands. But I do have to ask one final thing and kind of with my VC hat on, we've seen a lot of M&A exits from the brand space with the lights of your bonn bosses, your birch boxes. A lot of them considerably smaller than traditional VC requirements in terms of exits. Do you think we will see these mega venture returns in the space or do you think we'll continue to see much, much smaller, much more niche exits as we have done so far? Definitely the latter. The media happens to like to cover the former. So there are amazing exceptions to the rule and those are just wonderful stories. I think the reality is those are again exceptions to the rule. These smaller exits, you know, if you own 70 or 80% of your company and you financed working capital properly.”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Again, you said VC is not the right asset class to underwrite small brands. So again, why is that and what's the kind of core thinking behind this? And that one that I'm super interested by given the last few years, what advice would you give to a founder who's taken VC money as a brand and now is realizing that they maybe can't reach the growth heights that their VCs have set them? That's a really difficult situation to be in. Again, I think in certain categories venture works really well. But overall, no, I don't think VC is the right source of funding for capital intensive businesses which have a cast cycle in which you incur costs before you generate revenue or in which you incur greater costs as you scale your inventory. You really need working capital. And that's what assembled brands provides. So if you take inventure capital and you've needed working capital, what's happened is you've taken on an enormous amount of dilution and you're going to really disappoint the venture capitalist and their limited partners. So, I mean, you can't really go back in time.”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “The industry used to be straightforward. You made samples, showed them to stores, you got purchase orders from those stores, you used those purchase orders as collateral to get money from the bank, made the goods, you sold them in the store, rinse and repeat. With the introduction of e-commerce distribution, the business got more complicated because you're adding channels. So as you add channels distribution becomes more fragmented, the technologies you need to stitch together are more fragmented. Your marketing channels are more fragmented. You've got to do. So what's really needed and what's being built is the software and systems to link all of the parts of the supply chain together seamlessly. And as that happens, there will be more and more niche brands selling to a global consumer base immediately. And it's getting easier and it's getting cheaper every day. Totally agree. And kind of another reason almost maybe to push back on VC dollars. I do have to also, in terms of kind of the VC dollars themselves,”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Few years of micro influencers, Adam? Well, I think that speaks to what I was saying before about how things are getting increasingly niche. You know, people really want that sense of discovery, a sense of intimacy, and a sense of refinement. So the more intimate and refined that influencer is, the more interested people are going to be in discovering that influencer who might match those niche desires of the consumer. So I think, again, this longer tail of brands, of influencers is going to get longer. Totally agree. And I'm super excited for it. I have to say. But I do want to, before we move into the quick firearm, discuss two elements that we've slightly touched upon but not delved into being kind of fundraising and infrastructure. If we start on the latter with the infrastructure element, when we chatted before you said to me that infrastructure to power emerging or niche brands is broken, you gave me so many cliffhangers before this. What did you mean by this kind of broken infrastructure? Well, I would say it's getting better.”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Like to discover indie bands. They like to share that with friends. They like to go to small venues as opposed to some giant outdoor arena. Now, there's a giant outdoor arena too, but I think people would rather see that same band in a smaller venue and therefore that band would play a number of shows at a smaller venue to meet the needs of the customer. And so I think what Instagram like Spotify does is empower that social discovery. And the best sign that a brand is doing well is what I guess I would call organic referral. So it's people are seeing the content. They're commenting on the content and they're sharing the content organically. Totally. And I think Halo Top actually is an incredible example of that where they absolutely nailed that with their ice cream, which is one of my favorites. I hasten to add, I do have to ask though. I'm absolutely fascinated by the kind of the rise of micro-influences and often the much better follower efficiency that they have than maybe some of the much bigger influences. How do you be the name?”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Distribution today, which is Instagram in many brands' cases. When we chatted before, I love this analogy that you gave me. You said Instagram is the new QVC. Too tempting. What did you mean by that, Adam? Yeah, Instagram, I'm as bullish as ever. I mean, I think it's up to marketers to figure out how to best leverage Instagram looking at the product and connecting with influencers, but it's an incredible channel for social discovery of niche products. I consider Instagram, as I think many do e-commerce platform. I totally agree with you there. Can I ask one that I struggle on myself actually when I look at kind of Instagram pages? What is it that attracts you, excites you, engages you, that you find a really positive indication or symbol of the company's meaning and embodiment, so to speak? I think, you know, obvious metrics like engagement with the Instagram pose themselves. But I think what is so amazing about Instagram is that it really speaks to this new cohort of consumers. I kind of liken it to music, which is people today.”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Look at the business on a regular basis and know when to cut growth. And you want to be aggressive, but not stupid. You can measure demand. And once assembled Brands is finance your business, we can look at those underlying metrics on an hourly basis and tell you how you can safely grow and how much capital you need to do it or whether you need to cut. Again, I have to ask, how does one know when to cut growth? Is it when kind of conversion rates are not converting like they did before? Is it when there's a loss of customer quality or customer service? How do you think about the right time to maybe have more conservative growth mindsets? Yeah, I mean, it's when your costs remain the same, but maybe your revenue dips. So you get squeezed and, you know, maybe you've got too many people on staff, maybe you're doing too much product development and R&D. And there are a number of different things in which your costs stay the same, but the revenue you're generating goes down for whatever reason. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we can't discuss distribution channels without speaking about the Holy Ghost.”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Marketing spend per skew and optimize their business that way because there really are right numbers. Another, and I'm sorry for playing devil's advocate here, Adam, I promise you you can get off the stand soon. Another big concern, though, is for me, those that maybe do really go aggressive on social and online channels is kind of saturation rates of marketing channels once that low-hanging fruit has already been attained. Often companies burn money inefficiently on channels that essentially tapped out. How do you think about kind of saturation rate of marketing channels and approach it today? It's a great question. I mean, I would say brands don't have to grow forever. They can get to 30 or 40 million in revenue and generate profit, which is why they're not great VC investments, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve capital. The biggest mistake I see is one founders fail to realize this and grow at all costs by overspending on marketing channel in excess of the first sale or worse the lifetime value of the customer. That's literally lighting money on fire. You have to”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I have to ask, this is too interesting for me. How do you think about pricing when number crunching on their data? How does one address the topic of pricing given kind of all the differing inputs that you have in terms of data?”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “So I love that, but I am going to push back on you, Adam, because it, as I said, it's one of my biggest passion points and concerns. And it's the element of kind of a lack of free and open distribution today for smaller brands with large incumbents, often big gaming companies, and then also big retailers who are able to spend big, especially on kind of ad channels, be it your social channels, and really kind of push the message there. Am I right to be concerned by this kind of lack of free and open distribution? I mean, how do you think about it?”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “No, I think that makes total sense. I do want to kind of move one layer beneath though. So probably my biggest nerdy passion point, which is the channels that these brands distribute through. We started to touch on kind of the changing consumer there with the shift to millennial and the distribution channel obviously changes as a result. So first, how does the shift in consumer spend to millennial shift the fundamental distribution channel usage of brands and retail today, do you think?”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “See, I'm totally with you there again in terms of many brands being a misfit for the venture community. I do automatically think though, what makes one brand a brilliant fit and has that kind of high intensity of growth versus one which maybe doesn't have such high intensity of growth and isn't able to meet that VC consumer expectation. What is the difference between the two, Adam?”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “I mean, there's so much media on Pat now, and it's like a kid in a candy shop that I have to resist in terms of the financing element because we are going to touch on it later. I do have to ask, as we said, stay on the macro and the fragmentation maybe of consumer preferences into these more niche brands. We have Alex Tousing at Light. Forming of retail. I'm super interested. How do you respond to that? And maybe where do you see the growth of retail over the next decade? Is it this kind of incredibly fragmented niche brand experience? How do you view that?”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “You make your way into the world of startups, and what was that realization for really the broken nature of brands today and the start of assembled brands?”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “The myriad of issues that arise through a fund's lifetime. So, to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public, simply head over to cooley.com and also go to cooleygo.com. But without further ado, I'm now very excited to hand over to Adam Pritzker, chairman and CEO at Assembled Brands.”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Suite of messaging first products that would help make internet business personal. Fast forward to today, and Intercom has built a platform and suite of messaging first products that help internet businesses accelerate growth across the customer lifecycle from acquisition to engagement and support. And you can convert more website visitors onboard new signups to become active customers and then support your customers in a really personal way. What's more, you can do this all at scale with their powerful automation technology and over the past eight years, they've totally reimagined what a business messenger can be, which is way more than simply live chat and more than 30,000 businesses, including New Relic, Atlassian and Shopify, use Intercom to connect with a billion people worldwide. And finally, I've always been a big history man, and so I want to talk about Coolie. The global law firm built around startups and venture capital since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Coolie's form more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world, with 50 plus years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments, and”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Brains have founders and investors who tell us which trends to watch out for offer tips on fundraising and teach us how to excel at any company stage. There's no playbook for building a great business, but we can certainly learn from people who've done it before. Beyond listening to this podcast and talking to mentors and advisors in your own network, it's important to have resources you can turn to when you're tackling a new challenge. Stripe has built those resources for you. Whether you'd like to learn how to run a pricing experiment or build a knockout landing page, Stripe gives you the information you need to start, run and scale a technology company. Their guides are often written by or feature people like Elad Gill, whom we've actually had on this very podcast, and you can read one of my favorite guides on scaling engineering organizations and many more on stripe.com forward slash 20 VC. That's TWENTYVC. And speaking of incredible products, Intercom was founded in 2011 by four startup veterans who were simply frustrated by the lack of visibility they had into their customers at their previous ventures. They set out to build”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “We are back for Founders Friday here on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings at H. Stebbings 1996 with 2Bs on Instagram. And today we're back in the world of consumer. And I have to say I just love what our guest today is building. And I think it's such an interesting model. And so with that, I'm so excited to welcome Adam Pritzker. Adam is the chairman and CEO at Assembled Brands, a holding company providing working capital and financial services to emerging brands. As for Adam, he's also the co-founder of General Assembly, where during his tenure, prior to its acquisition by a deco group, he served as chief creative officer, chief product officer, and chairman, and famous entrepreneurial endeavors. Adam was featured in Forbes 30 under 30, Vanity Fair's the next establishment, and Inc. magazine's 30 under 30. And I do also want to say a huge thank you to Scott Bellsky, Edgar Leard Oakri and Mimi Chun for the fantastic question suggestions today. I really do so appreciate that. A lot of what we do on the 20 minute VC is talk to experts, pick the”

    2019-03-15 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source