Our guest today is Cristina Nuñez, Co-founder and General Partner of True Beauty Ventures. Some of their investments include Maude, Crown Affair, and K18. Today’s episode focuses on how to invest and build a beauty and personal care brand. Without further ado, here’s Cristina.
Some of the questions I ask her:
- Why start a fund only focused on beauty and personal care?
- What do you look for? Does a company have to be omnichannel from day 1 in order for you to be interested? How do you think about this intersection of influencer x brand
- What makes great packaging great that pops in retail?
- What’s amazing about beauty and personal care products from an investor's perspective?
- How do you make DTC work as a beauty and personal care?
- What are some of the trends that you get excited by?
- How do you think about added value?
- What’s the initial check size do you underwrite?
- What does differentiated distribution mean to you?
- What does product innovation mean to you? Does the product need to have product innovation in order for you to invest?
- What’s the case for having a vertically focused fund? What’s the long term goal?
- What do generalist/non-vertically exclusive funds tend to not understand about your category?
- Realized that people take care of themselves
- What has worked in the beauty and what doesn’t work in beauty?
- What has to be right in order for you to invest?
- Why a concentrated portfolio?
- What’s one thing you would change about VC?
- What’s one book that inspired you professionally and one book that inspired you personally?
- What’s one piece of advice for founders?