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Hey friends,
Today’s episode is with Jared Stein, co-founder and Partner of Monogram Capital. Monogram invests across consumer, but unlike most firms in the space, it backs the factories, ingredient suppliers, and service businesses underneath the brands as much as the brands themselves. Olipop, Archer, and Chewy sit in the same portfolio as a 330,000 square foot aseptic beverage plant the firm built from the ground up. Last year they closed their third fund at $350m
We get into how Monogram found Olipop when it was doing a million dollars in revenue, why co-manufacturers often know a brand is working before the syndicated data does, what happened when the team behind Mountain Top signed $800 million in long-term customer contracts before anyone broke ground, and why Jared is contrarian on asset-heavy businesses at a moment when most investors have gone the other way.
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Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:13 Business lessons from his dad's auto parts store
3:13 Learning what ownership really means
4:30 What happened after his dad's business sold
6:56 Founder-led vs. hired CEO
10:36 From Goldman Sachs to private equity
12:04 Why consumer and retail
13:46 Monogram's thematic investing approach
16:44 When a "keto" callout becomes a risk
18:30 Should brands call out GLP-1?
19:44 Sales and marketing edge vs. product and ops edge
21:59 First movers vs. fast followers
25:03 Vertical integration vs. co-manufacturing
28:41 How manufacturers surface brand opportunities
31:19 How Monogram found Olipop early
31:47 Choosing between the brand and the factory
33:55 Building Mountaintop from scratch
38:39 How manufacturing paybacks work
40:28 How long Monogram holds its investments
42:17 Categories that look good on paper
44:01 What Chewy taught him about e-commerce
48:20 The sector he's watching: specialty ingredients
49:33 Getting to know founders before investing
51:33 Why specialty ingredients
53:15 His contrarian bet on asset-heavy businesses
54:41 The valuation gap in co-manufacturers
56:20 What breaks first when capital and founders aren't aligned
57:49 Book recommendations
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💡Have ideas for guests? Email mike@theconsumervc.com
