“And I started a process being capital gave me a handful of search firms to go talk to. I talked to four or five of them. I didn't want, I didn't hire any of them. And I decided I'm going to go run the process myself. And bank capital was like, that is a mistake. You should not do it. You should hire these professionals to go do it.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Davis Smith
Opinion
Smith: Female investors understand purpose in business better than male investors
“I really believe that women better understood and understand purpose in business than men did.”
Davis SmithDec 15, 2023▶ 31:57Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Smith: Founders can build great businesses without torching work-life balance
“Yes, you can have balance and you can still build an extremely efficient and great business that's doing great work. You don't have to put in a 120 hours a week, a hundred hours a week and not have any balance. And torch, you know, family relationships and eve…”
Davis SmithDec 15, 2023▶ 46:48Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Smith: Patagonia erred by keeping all equity with founder Yvon Chouinard
“I think the one thing that I'd love to do better though than what I've seen Patagonia do and this is coming from someone with deep admiration for Yvonne Chouinard and for Patagonia. I guess if there was a criticism I'd have is why after 40 years was he the onl…”
Davis SmithDec 15, 2023▶ 54:57Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Smith: Consumers will not buy products solely for social good
“People that's wonderful, but people are not going to buy, buy your product because you're doing good in the world. You need to first create a great product. And he was absolutely right. So I really do think that's first, like you have to go build a great produ…”
Davis SmithDec 15, 2023▶ 18:42Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Smith relinquished Cotopaxi CEO title to recruit Damien Huang
“The only problem is he wanted to be CEO. He didn't want to be president. He didn't want to be my right hand. And I had some other options that were really great right hands that would have been happy being president forever. And at the end of the day, I did, I…”
Davis SmithDec 15, 2023▶ 53:32Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
PredictionOpen · timeframe Dec 2026
Smith: Cotopaxi will build employee wealth rather than join a foundation
“And I actually think it's a win for Cotabaxi to, like, I don't want to give the company away to a foundation. I actually want to create something that can create wealth for many people within our organization, and that can allow them to go pass on this to thei…”
Davis SmithDec 15, 2023▶ 55:26Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.