Brian O’Malley

So you've been really investing in and around consumer for two decades.

What lessons have you learned about consumer tech and how to invest in space?

These markets are just so much bigger than they are in other categories.

So the biggest thing is that the startups that we're investing in are ultimately solving everyday needs for millions of Americans.

And so there's usually some catalyst that creates this opportunity.

It might be some underlying foundational new technology.

It might be some change in the business model.

Sometimes it's even cultural or regulatory that opens up the opportunities.

But I think people have misnomers about these businesses.

There's a general assumption that to play in a consumer space, these businesses are fads or that they're capital intensive.

I mean, you're solving people's everyday needs to ultimately create a recurring use case that drives real long term value.

And if you look back to a company like Google, as an early example, they raised their series A of $25 million.

So it's a very large A for the time, but they never really raised another round after that until they were already profitable.

If you look at a company in my portfolio named Fora, which is one of the first AI-powered services companies to reach a billion dollars in transactional volume, they recently raised a Series C from Thrive, but they hadn't even touched the Series B dollars yet.

So I think there's this general understanding from the whole Zerp era that these companies are capital intensive and that they're ultimately more product-driven versus technology-driven.

Mike Moritz famously coined this term specifically for his consumer, the seven deadly sins.

So you have like Uber Eats and DoorDash for gluttony.

You have Instagram for vanity.

To what extent do you feel that that's true today, 2025?

There's definitely lower hanging fruit when you're when you're solving for the seven deadly sins.