Opinion
Amoruso: Most consumer businesses are not actually venture scalable
“Consumer isn't something that I really wanted to focus on, even though that's my background, I don't think that for the most part, consumer businesses are venture scalable”
Disclosure
Amoruso gave a portfolio startup direct access to her LinkedIn DMs
“One of my portfolio companies, I just gave them carte blanche access to my LinkedIn DMs, and they will reach out to people that I am like tangentially connected to, and say, as me, and be like, hey, I love what you're doing with such and such beauty company, s…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Index Ventures preferred holding Nasty Gal at cost over a down round
“Index preferred to hold nasty gal at cost than do a down round.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Amoruso predicts portfolio company Agree.com will eventually replace DocuSign
“And they're like, you know, they're a company that's going to replace DocuSign.”
Opinion
Women in 'Founder Mode' face a double standard for directness
“I think they're, you know, what we get into here is this double standard where if you're in founder mode as a woman, I mean, I was just talking to my friends about this last night, and they work At a crypto startup, and they do experience that. They're conside…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Aug 2030
Amoruso predicts Sergey Brin will be the world's first trillionaire
“You know, Sergey Brin was just on the All In podcast and talking about, you know, he jumped back into Google and is kind of all in on AI and, you know, he's like one of the smartest people I know. So I would, my bet would be Sergey.”
Insight
Peak branding is when customers adopt a brand as their identity
“The peak thing you can do as a brand is have someone who's your customer or reader, you know, girl boss ended up becoming a media company after it was a book and a Netflix series, start a sentence With I am and put your brand name at the end.”
Insight
Modern B2B software companies must present themselves like consumer brands
“The way software companies need to present themselves today is as a consumer business because they're not, like, people aren't Doing, like, outreach sales one-to-one in the same ways that they were, and there's so much more competition.”
Insight
Victory laps and massive press coverage do not build businesses
“As a founder who really did go on a victory lap and do, you know, the, you know, the huge press thing, It didn't make a huge impact on the business. It ended up putting me front and center, which is an amazing asset and something that, you know, I utilize with…”
Disclosure
Amoruso caps Trust Fund's size specifically to avoid building a team
“I would ideally not have a team. I think my ambition for the size of the fund, you know, for a fund to, for example, is capped at, you know, the kind of LP I need, you know, I want to manage and the size of the team I would need to build to support that fund”
Disclosure
Amoruso used SEC Rule 506(c) to accept LPs at $2,500
“So I raised in public, which is something called a five oh six C, which means that I can solicit and fundraise publicly, which you typically can't do. So I was able to, you know, bring on LPs with checks as small as 2500 dollars, And, you know, people who othe…”
Disclosure
Trust Fund is a $5M vehicle with zero institutional investors
“I don't have institutional investors. It's like a just over five million dollar fund.”
Disclosure
Trust Fund's LPs include David Sacks, Chris Dixon, and Anthony Noto
“And it's like Jason Calacanis and David Sacks. Chris Dixon, and Andrew Chen, and Rob Hayes, and like, you know, Josh Ellman, and you know, like, Anthony Noto, I'm the CEO at SoFi, so it's, I was, it's like real heavy hitters”
Assertion Supported
Nasty Gal reached over $100M in revenue before its bankruptcy
“Nasty Gal reached over a hundred million dollars in revenue, and while it didn't work out in the end, like, that's really significant”
Disclosure
Amoruso invested in Liquid Death at a $50M post-money valuation
“I got into liquid death at fifty million post and you know, public.com at like a hundred.”
Assertion Supported
Amoruso bootstrapped Nasty Gal to $28M revenue, retaining 80% ownership
“I bootstrapped Nasty Gal to twenty-eight million dollars in revenue. I didn't need investors. And I did it because, like, okay, I had a three hundred and fifty million dollar valuation. You know, I raised, the first money in was out of a growth fund. So I owne…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Amoruso secured TechCrunch coverage for portfolio companies via Twitter DMs
“You know, two of my companies, I did cold outreach to TechCrunch editors, and I was like, hey, you know, on a Twitter DM, and was like, there's a company fundraising, let me know if you want to talk to them about a fundraise announcement. They don't even do a …”
Disclosure
Amoruso reopened Toothio's seed round months after it originally closed
“Toothio I saw announced in, I think Axios, and Kraft had led their seed round, and I reached out to Jeff Fleur, who led the deal, and was like, hey, can you make an intro? And it was like, The deal was closed, like, three months prior, and I was like, hey, you…”
Sophia Amoruso