In The Money: eCommerce, DTC, and CPG
Episodes
Why Growth Breaks Consumer Brands And How to Finance Through It
04 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What happens to your cash when you land a purchase order from Target, Walmart, or Costco?Ben Brachot, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Dwight Fundi...
The Hardware Startup Building the Operating System for Families
26 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What if the best family technology isn't the most powerful one, it's the most purposeful one?Mei Lin Ng, Co-Founder and CEO of Hearth Display,...
$50M in Revenue With Just 7 Employees and The Minimum Viable Company
20 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What does it actually look like to build a mid-eight figure consumer brand with seven people and zero venture capital?Alex Schinasi, Co-Founder and Pr...
Building an Apparel Brand Without Inventory
13 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when a made-to-order brand tries to sell custom shirts online and discovers that guys won't do homework before buying clothes?Kirk Ke...
The $5M PO Problem and How Retail Can Break Your Brand
06 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What does it actually take to get a brand onto a retail shelf, and keep it there?Erin Wall spent nearly a decade as a buyer and merchant at Target bef...
What 100+ Amazon Brands Taught Him, And What He Built Next
30 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when a top Amazon operator walks away from a great agency business to try to help dogs live longer, healthier lives?Jonathan Willbanks, F...
Why European Brands Scale Differently
22 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What’s the difference between a great European consumer founder and a great American one? A lot more than you’d think.Sam Kaplan returns to In The...
Apparel Is Not a Venture Business
15 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What does it actually take to build a durable apparel brand in 2026?Matt Scanlan, Co-Founder of Naadam, joins In The Money to break down the real econ...
Founder Quality Is Still the Gate
09 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Building a consumer brand looks very different depending on where you start.Jeremy Evans of Era Ventures joins In The Money to break down how they inv...
Why Unit Economics Are the Real Signal of Product-Market Fit
01 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Revenue is not product-market fit. Unit economics are.Connor Ryan of Bridge joins In The Money to break down how they underwrite seed-stage consumer b...
From TV Weatherman to Consumer Founder
22 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when a national TV weatherman decides most umbrellas are junk and builds a better one?Rick Reichmuth, Chief Meteorologist at FOX and Foun...
Distribution Is the Moat, How Freestyle Diapers is Winning
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Freestyle pivoted twice before it found real velocity.Russ Wallace joins In The Money to break down how his seven-figure brand that wasn’t quite cli...
From Crickets to Customers: Creating a New Pet Food Market
09 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Chickens are now the third-most popular pet in America and almost no one in tech or venture is paying attention.Sean Warner, Co-Founder of Grubbly Far...
The K-Shaped Economy and the New Rules of Consumer Investing
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Can premium consumer brands still scale in a K-shaped economy even if they never reach most Americans?In this episode of In The Money, Tyler Morgan of...
How Better Forecasting Became Branch's Best Funding Round
25 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Branch almost died in March 2020. A $4M B2B pipeline collapsed to $30K in ten days, and the company had to reinvent itself overnight.In this episode, ...
Velocity Over Vanity: How to Really Evaluate Food Brands
18 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Food is capital-intensive, margin-compressed, and brutally hard, so why do some investors still believe it’s one of the most underfunded opportuniti...
The Hard Truth About Growth When the Wind Isn’t at Your Back
11 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Is growth a marketing problem or a market problem?Isaac Mertens, founder of Flux Footwear, joins In The Money for one of the most honest operator conv...
Capital, Category Creation & Where Smart Money Is Moving in Consumer
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How do you actually underwrite early-stage consumer when the data is thin, capital is tighter, and durability matters more than hype?Lori Cashman, Fou...
Greg Davidson on Capital Discipline, Channel Strategy & Scaling Smarter
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How did two non-parents build one of the most design-forward, community-trusted baby brands in America and then blow the doors off retail with a 43-SK...
The New Consumer Landscape: Capital Cycles, Moats & Market Reality
21 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What actually makes a consumer brand break out and stay durable in a world where attention spans are collapsing and CAC is chaos?Shamin Walsh has spen...
Bootstrapped, Profitable, and Growing, Bushbalm’s Playbook for Sustainable Success
14 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of In The Money, we sit down with David Gaylord, Co-Founder & CEO of Bushbalm, one of the fastest-growing skincare brands in North...
Inside the Playbook: Financing DTC and CPG Brands Through Rosenthal’s Asset-Based Lending Lens
07 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of In The Money, we sit down with Andrew Barone at Rosenthal & Rosenthal, one of the leading privately held asset-based lenders. A...
From Fads to Foundations: Amanda Schutzbank on the New Era of Consumer Investing
30 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I sit down with Amanda Schutzbank, Co-Founder and General Partner at Willow Growth Partners, one of the most thesis-driven and discip...
From Frozen Bread to Fresh Profits: The Wildgrain Playbook for Lean, Durable Growth
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How Wildgrain Built a Profitable, High 8-Figure Food Brand With Just 18 EmployeesIn this episode, I sit down with Ismail Salhi, co-founder & CEO o...
From Frozen Bread to Fresh Profits: The Wildgrain Playbook for Lean, Durable Growth
23 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How Wildgrain Built a Profitable, High 8-Figure Food Brand With Just 18 EmployeesIn this episode, I sit down with Ismail Salhi, co-founder & CEO o...
Focus, Moats, and the New Consumer Playbook with Drew Skolnik of KarpReilly
16 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The consumer investing landscape has shifted and few people have a better view of that evolution than Drew Skolnik, Partner at KarpReilly, one of the ...
From Red Antler to Habitat: Building the Next Generation of Consumer Venture
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when one of the most iconic brand-building agencies in the world spins out its own venture capital business?In this episode, I sit down w...
Every Point of Profit Cuts into Health: Kevin Lee on Scaling Immi Without Compromise
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin Lee, co-founder of Immi, joins In The Money to talk about how he and his co-founder took one of the world’s most iconic comfort foods, instant...
From Overlevered to Profitable: How &Collar Turned Debt into Discipline
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of In The Money, we sit down with Ben Perkins, Founder of &Collar, the fast-growing direct-to-consumer menswear brand known for re...
Global eCommerce After De Minimis: Passport CEO on Tariffs and the Future of Cross-Border Brands
19 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I sit down with Alex Yancher, Co-founder and CEO of Passport Global, the logistics platform powering cross-border commerce for some o...
From $0 to Mid–Eight Figures: Vital Plus and the Discipline Behind Explosive Growth
12 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I sit down with Cam Mehr, Founder of Vital Plus, one of the fastest-scaling wellness hardware brands redefining the cold plunge categ...
Building Beyond Basics: Brian Berger on Scaling Mack Weldon in the New DTC Era
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Berger, Founder and CEO of Mack Weldon, joins the podcast to share the story of building one of the most recognized DTC menswear brands.In this ...
Cracking the Ecommerce Equation, Jay Wright on Scaling DTC Brands Without the Black Box
28 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I sit down with Jay Wright, Founder of Ecommerce Equation, to talk about scaling eCommerce brands in today’s environment. Jay share...
Inside True Beauty Ventures: What It Really Takes to Raise Capital in Beauty Wellness
23 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I sit down with Caroline Weintraub of True Beauty Ventures, one of the most respected specialist investors in the beauty and wellness...
From Doris Dev to Canopy: Building Beauty’s Most Innovative Hardware Brand
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I sit down with Justin Seidenfeld, Co-founder and CEO of Canopy, the beauty-meets-wellness hardware brand redefining humidifiers, sho...
From Dang Foods to Sherwood Partners: Lessons in Building, Falling, and Restructuring Consumer Brands
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I sit down with Andrew Kitirattragarn, Founder of Dang Foods and now a restructuring expert at Sherwood Partners. Andrew’s story is...
Inside the Process of Raising from a Consumer Brand Fund
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I sit down with Mollye Santulli, Investor at Springdale Ventures, an early-stage VC firm focused on backing the next generation of co...
Tactics to Get Unstuck as a Mid-7-Figure Brand
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Brad Plock of WRK Marketing shares the frameworks and playbooks he uses to help brands get unstuck and scale sustainably. We talk abo...
Navigating Fashionization and Deprescriptionization in Health and Wellness
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Allie Egan, founder and CEO of Veracity, is rethinking what the future of consumer health looks like.In this episode, we dive into:Why Veracity pivote...
Building of a Digitally-Native Omnichannel CPG Hold Co
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Josh Williams is the co-founder and CEO of Very Great, the company behind design-led consumer brands like W&P, Wild One, and Courant. In this epis...
Building Both a Living Product Moat and Brand Equity
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I chat with Josh Armstrong, Founder of We The Wild, the plant care brand taking root across Target, independent retail, across both t...
Why Better Product, Not Better Marketing, Wins in CPG
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when you actually listen to 1,000+ customers before scaling a brand?In this episode, Black Wolf Co-Founder Sam Lewkowict shares how he tu...
Cutting Down to Find Product-Market-Fit and Doubling Down on Winners
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I sit down with Hudson Davis-Ross, co-founder of Plant People, to unpack how the brand went from a COVID-era collapse to one of the f...
From DTC Drift to Focused, Profitable Growth with Italian Sneakers, Brand DNA, and Doing Less, Better.
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Wichert, co-founder of Koio, joins the show to share the full story behind Koio’s transformation — from overextended DTC brand to lean, focu...
Leveraging Fandom and Community to Avoid the Meta Hamster-Wheel
06 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What if you built a breakout apparel brand without relying on Meta ads?Connor Hitchcock did just that with Homefield, a cult-loved collegiate brand no...
Navigating Investors Seed to Growth, Credit to Equity in CPG
29 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on In The Money, I sat down with Asher Hochberg, Partner at Rootspring Ventures and former GP at CircleUp, to break down the state of early-...
Building a Career in CPG as Founder, Investor, Executive, Acquirer with Matt Jung
21 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this week’s In the Money podcast, we chat with Matt Jung, CEO of Goodonya, about his multifaceted career in the CPG world—from his early days a...
Crawl, Walk, Run of CPG Growth with Anna Whiteman
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We sat down with Anna Whiteman of Coefficient Capital to unpack how institutional investors are thinking in 2025.Key takeaways:Venture funding starts ...
Brands, Creators, Agencies, and AI with Shwinnabego
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this wide-ranging conversation, Ashwin shares hot takes on the real economics of agencies vs. eCommerce brands. He argues that software is ultimate...
The Power of Brand Focus and Niche Markets with Rob Fraser
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From Socks to Scale: How Outway Doubled Revenue and Cracked U.S. GrowthRob Fraser, founder of Outway, joined In the Money to break down how a $20 sock...
Why Product Focus Wins In the Long Run with Connor Wilson
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Connor Wilson, Co-Founder and CEO of Thursday Boot, joins us to share how the brand grew from a lean DTC startup into a long-lasting, multi-category ...
How to Increase LTV and Exit Value on DTC
18 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dave Rekuc joins In the Money to share how Bambu Earth scaled 30x post-acquisition—not by chasing growth at all costs, but by prioritizing revenue q...
How to Win Beverage, DTC and Online
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of In the Money, Fan Bi sits down with Debbie Way Mullin, founder of Copper Cow Coffee, to talk about building a CPG brand in a volati...
Do eCommerce HoldCos Work
04 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, I’m joined by Kelcey Lehrich, CEO of 365 Holdings, to talk about what actually works in DTC today and how real operators are surviving in...