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Josh Udashkin

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30
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2016-07-01
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2016-07-01
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1
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  1. “I think really for us it's continuing to build beautiful high quality products, but most of our roadmap is really around the mobile experience and really connecting with a travel experience that engages users of our product and provides them with all sorts of other information about where they're going and the airports that they're traveling through and the planes that they're getting on. I think that's really where we're going as a company.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Oh my dad, no question about it. My father is a multi-time entrepreneur. First call at the beginning of the day and at night, although he was in the meatpacking business, so nothing to do with making beautiful cases that connect to a mobile device, but in some cases business as business, building a team is building a team and making sure that your customers are happy is the same no matter kind of what you're doing.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “What would I do differently? I think I would, that's a tough one. I think I would probably have traveled to San Francisco more often. I think I spent a lot of time in New York because I was really focused on building a team here. I was spending a lot of time in Asia. And I don't think I really got to know many investors at the time outside of New York. And it just so happened that Rob Hayes from first round happened to have been in New York and that's really how we connected. When I go out to do this again, I'll probably spend more time on the West Coast.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I read business of fashion every day, really have always and even now more so. I'm very, very interested in the intersection of fashion and technology and all these products. And I think for me, even when I was out raising VC, we have quite a few people who are great retailers and have great retailing experience. And so I'm very, very interested in kind of industry and the intersection of both.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Really, really beautiful design, incredible retailing concept and just super useful products but that don't really sacrifice brand. Maybe Dyson would be a close second.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “It's always the one I'm currently reading, which is shoe dog, which is the story of the founder of Nike. It's just super interesting. All the passion and all the soap opera dramatics of building one of these great companies and you kind of live it live when you're trying to do it yourself. And so I like reading about it, at least you don't feel so alone sometimes.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Know it's well within my reach. I do it all the time. I cold email people all the time and kind of all walks of life people we want to work with creatively on video, on branding, on photography, and of course in VC. There are certain VCs who have awesome reputations and who've really been instrumental in businesses like mine and just like anything else if you want something you go get it. It doesn't necessarily always mean by the way that it's about capital it can be about getting advice or people who've been in the trenches and know what it's like to build one of these things. But warm intros are great but sometimes if you need to you have to just do what you have to do it gets easier after you've launched because then you're Googleable takes away some of the referencing problems but no I do both.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I think the first ones are hard because you're rolling in what you think is the most beautiful product and you say, how do you not see this? Because the industry in our case is $40 billion a year business globally. So it's not even really about creating, in our case, an opportunity or creating a new category like you'd see in the fitness wearables seven or eight years ago. It's really about diverting demand to something that, in your mind, is clearly superior, but you just kind of have to step away from it. And one of the great things is there are many great investors in many cities. And eventually, just like dating or anything else, you find your match.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, I think I built relationships over a considerable period of time, and I think I still do. I think sometimes that can be a negative thing because there's maybe no urgency. I think one of the things great fundraisers do is create this sense of urgency around a raise. I think one of the things that I tend to do well, which is crazy when you think about the fact that this is a case, is I'm super passionate about it. So I really do, like any founder, you know, but I gotten crazy about suitcases and how beautiful they can be and how useful they can be and how much they can change your travel experience and how having a great product really does lead to a better experience in kind of every sector of consumer. That can be kind of a negative thing sometimes when you're raising money because the more emotional you get about things when people inevitably say no to you it can it can hurt and you know sometimes you can say things you can regret”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Capital. And I think sometimes founders, especially first time founders like myself, you need to almost raise capital when you're ready to raise capital, which means you really have a plan and a prototype and you understand when you're going to launch. I wasn't ready to do that for almost a year.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “So it was actually quite long and it began long, long before I actually thought I was going to raise any money for this because it started as a much smaller idea. And I actually was introduced to Ben Lahrer because I was sitting at a wedding with one of his associates. And I just went in for meetings really to talk about what I was doing, but there was no hard ask. I was still in the prototyping phase, and I would say Ben quite smartly waited until I had a working prototype before taking the leap. And similar with first round, I really spent a lot of time with other hardware entrepreneurs and other entrepreneurs in e-commerce businesses and then was introduced to first round that way and kind of the whole thing came together last summer. But it was almost a year in the making of really just talking about the vision of the company and what the strategy was to get to launch before I even set any type of ask as far as”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “We actually raised a seed round about a year and change ago. It wasn't announced, and I guess that's where being a lawyer is actually quite convenient, so I didn't file any of the securities regulatory forms, so it never gets picked up by all of the tech crunch and all of these things. And for me, I view the VCs as great partners for me, or especially the ones that I have and great relationships, but celebrating raising money is not something I'm that into. And so I decided ultimately to stay stealth through our entire development, which is almost two years and not announce anything until we launch. So the round that was announced actually was over a year old. And so it was led by first round capital on Lair.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I think it could down the road. I think like any of this, you need to have enough units out in the world and really learn. I think one of the things we're really doing right now is listening. All of this is responsive to what customers want and don't want and how they use the app. And I think that's what we're going to be doing for the next as long as I can plan. But it's not hard to see how down the road that may happen.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Application, that's the customer experience of the future instead of having to dial 1888 and get somebody on the line and coordinate some type of return for us it's instant.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I mean, I really think that these are the products of the future. You really end up when everything works well, you end up with a superior physical product, you know, a superior bag or speaker or headphone or whatever it may be with a very highly engaging mobile experience, which prompts the user. We call our case a Trojan horse in a way because we see already that the engagement is very high with the app when people are traveling. And then you have this opportunity to continue to delight the customer with your brand and your service and provide all sorts of information in our case about travel or fitness if you're Fitbit or music recommendations if you're Sonos. You really have this great opportunity to continue to engage long after the purchase, which is something that really very few other physical products are able to deliver. And for me, I already see even around customer experience, you know, when you can communicate with your customer at the touch of a button on an app.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Actually, it works. I'm not the first person to have extreme challenges. We were going to launch our company in November and Have enough product that was made in time in order to hit holiday so then you kind of get forced into much post holidays. Have to have the means to be able to do that. So it's kind of a balancing act. That's really the hardest thing, I think.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Very hard when I was on my own with my own means and everything else. And then I think I got very lucky, I should say. So I ended up partnering up with some guys. Quirky about a year ago. And so I actually had an easier time around some of the prototyping and manufacturing. Our factory really is my first. Before I ever had VCs, I really went there to pitch, and my advice to entrepreneurs is do the sourcing work. And a lot of the things around VC will come. That are going to invest in building your prototypes. Coordinating the timing around And kind of when to hire and bring on all the various teams because you have, in my case, a mobile development happening Physical produce enough units and have the mobile application. Respond all Period of time and having enough capital at the time.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “It or don't understand hardware or building brands, you know, for me personally, I don't have that experience with working with any of them, but I tend to generally stay away even when I get a request for a meeting, don't really want to be their first foray into investing in a hardware company.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Think it's totally fair. You really have to have the stomach for it. I think when you look at a hardware business like Rayden and a number of the other ones, you look at multiple companies in one. So you have a luggage firm, you have an electronics firm, you have mobile development and firmware development. Then you have all the things around building a brand. Then you're a retailer, you're a distributor, you're a marketer, multiple companies that would have other Wrapped up in this entire value In one experience. And so VCs who are graded it definitely know that there's a huge opportunity there. We've seen some pretty good exits. Really”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “When you're building a marketing funnel, directing tons of traffic to your single website, selling anything, whether it's mattresses or luggage, Else. And so we really believe that we can partner up with other great Brick and mortar in 2017 who can help Our”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “First of all, Even to go back to your last question. Retail and physical retail. And I think the excitement for me is around building these FAO shorts or Disney style experiences where it feels exciting again to go into a store. There's been no reason to go into stores because the store Being online is actually more Into these Else it is on all the high streets of the world. So To create exciting retail display and retail experiences that are different. In New York, we hosted an event where we actually kept And we had 30 or 40 actors Might meet on a layover at an airport, and we had lots of people there. And I think there's just an opportunity to make going into stores exciting. And then just from a purely practical standpoint,”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “To consumer. I'm not Believer in the whole direct to consumer narrative in every single category. I think omnichannel retail for me. To tell a great story, so that's great, and then go very deep on the process. The interior, how it's going to work with the customer experience and the pairing moment and everything else. And I think that's the opportunity there. Into it by the end of the experience, the friction has been removed as far as the purchase.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I don't want to give them too many secrets on how to sell grade online, but I think one of the things that's interesting for us is because we're going with this. Plan. It's very easy for us to communicate kind of first and foremost our values as a brand and show the imagery, but then even Right now we make a single in the year, but we And I think that's what all the great”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “We're not any greatly designed products of high quality or anything else. And I think for me, it really started with what's the icon of design and how do I get consumers to really want to buy something that's as beautiful as it is functional. Kind of where it started as far as brand building, and then you layer onto it all of your digital imagery, your photography, your graphics. In a couple of weeks, and then it starts to become this immersive 365 degree thing. Hardware companies, and if whenever I talk to people starting these things who are so focused only on the product and getting it out the door and whatever it's going to be named that they forget that in order to build something you need to communicate your values and it needs to be exciting I mean it needs to be sexy”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “I think it's industrial design first. I was fortunate enough two years ago to have looked far and wide for great designers and it actually worked with some other people before, but I met Kenny Sweet, who had worked on the beats project. For a number of years, and we really vibed. I had this merchandising concept around a single product that was very stark and looked like Products that we've been buying today, and it was something you just didn't see in the The luggage business is kind of a Mr. Potato head business, I call it. The traditional brands, the companies take catalog parts from a number of different factories and then they put them together. Randomly designed cyborg shell, and then they spit it out to the consumer and they slash it. And maybe”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “That they float. They're so beautiful that we want you to see them from every angle. And then, you know, really showing the round trip, which is really what the circle denotes. And so as far as kind of the way we built the store, we were really thinking that we needed a place as a new brand for people to trust us. And I think that's one of the hardest things for e-commerce companies to do is to get people to place their trust in making a purchase from you if you're a new business.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Yeah, I think you need both, first of all, or at least even a pop-up version of both. I think it's very hard to build brand, which is first and foremost what we're up to here without some type of physical footprint or place for consumers to interact with you, you being even your retail associate and how they're trained and then your product and then the way you display your product. So kind of from the first ideation of Rayden, I knew that we needed to launch with some type of physical space. It's very difficult to communicate your brand values and also your product features only online. And so I worked with a guy who designs concert stage sets for people like Jay-Z and other artists in conceiving this coliseum of 365 Raiden bags that are floating around kind of this central display area. And even that was really meaningful in the sense of showing bags that are so light or cases that are so light.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Efficient store at that. And then I think simultaneously started to see these kind of unsexy categories really emerge. You know, the mattress boom of the last two years, and I happen to know some of the founders, those companies, where younger people are kind of reimagining industries that had not been looked at by anybody in 30, 40 years through great e-commerce experiences and also product innovation.”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “I think I saw a change twofold. I think I saw first and foremost a merchandising change. So I think we started to see that we had these power skews that really were selling 70% of the assortment. So we would make a couple of products. They would turn into bestsellers. And the best sellers were really carrying the entire business. And then, you know, when I looked across the landscape in other categories, you started to see this emerge around certain constructions. So I started to look at headphones and beats and wireless speakers and Sonos and then Fitbit. And you started to see these kind of monoconstruction industrial design products really kind of winning the day in a lot of categories, even in footwear, which was surprising. And then, of course, as you mentioned, you really saw the rise of the cannibalization of brick and mortar shopping by online shopping. We set at Aldo that aldo.com was our number one store by tenfold and very, very”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “So I was a very, very bad lawyer, Harry. I worked, so I'm actually a Canadian and I graduated from JDMBA in Toronto, and then I went to go work at a large hedge fund law firm in New York City, but I spent most of my days actually trolling the stores on Madison and 5th Avenue in New York and spending a lot of time in retail. And that led to an opportunity working with Aldo Group, the footwear company, where I spent two years traveling almost every single day to different markets building the Aldo brand and kind of through that experience saw a lot of luggage and travel products in the airports and carousels of the world and kind of came to the strange feeling why had nobody ever looked at this category there were very few great brands there are a couple of luxury products you know the merchandising seemed all over the place the pricing seemed all over the place and it was kind of this aha moment as strange as it may sound for a then 99 year old”

    2016-07-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source