Opinion
Mares: Superior recreational drugs are driving the non-alcoholic beverage market boom
“I honestly think one of the reasons I'm bullish on the non-alc space is, like, we are getting to the point where there are just better drugs. Like, if people want to, you know, alter their state of consciousness, I'm seeing a lot more friends that are like, Op…”
Insight
Mares: Venture capital beats bootstrapping because elite talent is prohibitively expensive
“I think I will probably raise for most things that I do going forward or invest my own money just because, The caliber of the team that we were able to hire around us, like what we were doing on a shoestring budget versus what we could do after was just night …”
Assertion Supported
Mares: Male testosterone has declined by 50% over the last 40 years
“Male testosterone is down 50% over the last, like, 40 years.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mares predicts massive surge in public backlash against vegetable oils
“You know, five years from now, 10 years from now, a lot of people are going to be way more conscious about vegetable oils and the damage that they specifically, like, a compound called linoleic acid in there that, the damage that that does to, like, your infla…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mares: Kettle & Fire and Perfect Keto combined topped $100M in 2019
“I can say in 2019, like the two businesses combined did north of a hundred.”
Disclosure
Mares made $15K-$18K monthly via Airbnb arbitrage in San Francisco in 2013
“In 2013, we had, like, the number third, like, the third ranked Airbnb in San Francisco, and so we were we were, like, renting out either our living room most nights, or you know, over summers, we'd rent it out for, like, 15, 18 grand a month, and then we just…”
Disclosure
Mares acquired Shopify app FOMO for under $400K at $14K MRR
“A partner and I bought a Shopify app called FOMO. It was doing 14 K a month at the time we bought it. You know, we bought it. We paid less than 400.”
Disclosure
Mares acquired 85% of Shopify app FOMO with zero out-of-pocket capital
“We bought 85% of the business. We bought it and then we were basically like, we're going to buy this and pay you in monthly chunks for the next 20 months. And so every like month for 20 months, we use the revenue that we were making from FOMO to make our payme…”
Disclosure
Mares converted a 14-unit Las Vegas building to Airbnb, tripling cash flow
“We ended up doing this too with an apartment building in, in Vegas where we bought a 14 unit apartment building, could put it all on Airbnb basically like tripled the cashflow and then sold it. 18 months later for, you know, it's 70% more than what we paid.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mares estimates Hipcamp land rentals can generate 30% to 40% cash-on-cash returns
“So I was mainly modeling it from like a NOI basis which is net operating income, which is like a term that's used a lot in real estate. But basically I think that you could get like 30 to 40% cash on cash returns by following this strategy.”
Assertion Supported
Mares: Phthalates in plastics significantly damage human testosterone and endocrine systems
“The whole class of something called phthalates, which is P H T P T H L A T E S. That, that effectively have like a really Strong negative impact on one's testosterone, ones like endocrine and hormonal systems, and they're, that are in like everything.”
Insight
Mares: Credit card purchase history predicts dating compatibility better than Hinge
“I think that, like, where you spend your resources tells a lot about someone that a Hinge profile doesn't, and so I suspect if, like, you were to say, hey, we are matching the two of you up because you spend an absurd amount of your income at this, like, weird…”
Disclosure
Kettle & Fire employs one virtual assistant for every two full-time staff
“Like, we have basically one virtual assistant hire for every two people that we have that are on the team, and we give them, like, a training that's like, here's how to use virtual assistants, get all of the repetitive stuff off your plate”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mares: Perfect Keto hit $20,000 in monthly revenue in 45 days
“We thought it would take like a year or two to get to 20 grand a month, and we did it in the first like 45 days.”
Assertion Supported
Mares: Kettle & Fire's 2018 $16M round was half founder secondary
“So we raised sixteen million dollars in 2018 about half of that went to secondary, and the other half went to, like, actually putting money into the business.”
Disclosure
Shopify app FOMO now generates approximately $95,000 per month in revenue
“Now it does about 95 grand a month.”
Disclosure
Mares will take zero cash from incubated startup Surely Wines until exit
“A company I incubated Shirley wines, it's like a non-alcoholic wine company we launched earlier this year. I recruited, I like basically had the idea, tested it, validated it, lined up supply chain, hired in the operator the operator and CEO, he's taking a sal…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mares: Wearable Challenge filled 50-person cohorts monthly with zero marketing
“We have had with literally no marketing, you know, we've filled up 50 person cohorts every month since launching that in February.”
Disclosure
Mares invested around $100k to start Surely non-alcoholic wine
“So I put in a close to a hundred K to make this happen. And some portion of that was a loan that, that I got out just as like revenue started to come in, but yeah, it was about a hundred K to spin up.”
Disclosure
Mares has completely stepped away from day-to-day operations at Perfect Keto
“Some of these things like perfect keto, like I don't have a day to day role in it anymore, you know, so I like co-founded it, but I've completely stepped away.”
