Daniel Galati

“Like there's so many more dimensions to making an investment decision other than you know, are we going to hit these short term metrics, which by the way, I've been a founder. There are ways to game that anyway.”

“I think having a point of a differentiated point of view on how to get the product to the consumer, like is the thing that matters here. Cause I think you've, you do actually do have a pretty innovative product. I just worry that you kind of get lost in the no…”

“I didn't hear anything coming out of the pitch that, Said, hey, there is voracious demand here from consumers, a small group of consumers. I walked away feeling like, yeah, consumers like it, but they don't, it's not obvious to me that they absolutely love it.”

“Just at a high level, I think more than product innovation, more than technology innovation, business model innovation is like the true value creator in like in tech, right? And in, in business more generally.”

“I would argue that your progressive beaconing technology is actually way more powerful in like, you know, any other vertical besides the one that you've chosen.”

“So if you're raising 700 K on a fifteen million dollar valuation, it's just not going to get us the, you know, the VC ownership that we need to move the needle. And so, so despite What I said about you being an absolutely compelling founder just for those reas…”

“Almost all of our successful portfolio companies have started with a really deep founder pain point, a really personal founder pain point. And that doesn't guarantee success, but I think it's kind of a necessary condition, right?”

“I really believe in the product and I really believe in the roadmap. I just, I don't see the business that, that comes out of it, so I'm going to pass as well.”

“And for me, where I ultimately kind of got tripped up was this just kind of doing the math around like the number of salons and revenue per salon, and how do we get to be a really big two-sided marketplace versus kind of a smaller, more niche two-sided marketp…”

“It's like the old venture capital rule. It's like you gotta be 10 times better, 10 times cheaper. And I just feel like your business doesn't meet that grade. I don't think it's so much better that the average customer will kind of migrate to you in droves.”

“I think what we often see is in beverages and food, you get kind of these halo, you know, hero stories that kind of bring up an entire category, right? So like, I think the coconut water category is a really interesting one where like, you know, you couldn't s…”

“And I think, you know, when we talk about margins and distribution, like, their distribution innovation was, we're going to forget about the shelf space, and we're going to go straight to You know, next to the cash register. And so the innovation there was, yo…”

“So my first meeting was Daniel Galati, super nice guy. I went to meet with him in the Comcast offices. I totally did not do a good job without meeting with him and it's okay. I mean, it was like one of my first meetings and I actually walked out and I said, yo…”

“Retail US retail is like this big elephant and I feel like this channel is like an ant. So I just feel like the easy way out for these brands and for most brands and retailers is to kind of say, Hey, this is like less than one percent, less than half a percent…”

“You know, I think the only way to make money in VC is to take a non-consensus view that turns out to be right.”