The Person You Marry Decides Your Wealth! (How She Turned Divorce Into A $500M Empire) Courtney Reum

22:07First couple pretty good. A little bit of seasoning. Yeah. Overall, these are pretty good ingredients. You know, it's not like the cleanest, but I don't know if you can make a chip like this perfectly clean. I think it's got good ingredients. Can I tell you something? I am going to go on record and say that I think this will be the second most successful Kardashian brand beyond Skims. Cloud. Cloud. I think Cloud will be the second most successful Kardashian brand after Skims for a few reasons. I think Khloe did this entire brand perfectly. Like protein, whether you like it or not, is projected to hit 120.42 billion by 2030.

22:52Obviously, we're talking all about GLP-1s right now. People are looking for protein. They're losing muscle mass if they are on a GLP-1. So like increasing your protein intake is huge. The packaging is inviting. The ingredients are friendly. And Chloe is known for having fun, like having snacks. This is a brand that feels like it brought her to life. and when I think about celebrity brands it's all about fit right and to me Khloe fits with the packaging she fits with the product she fits with the marketing whether or not she's disclosed being on a GLP one which I believe she hasn't so we don't know if she is or is not but the Kardashians have been so associated with their body and with like also food just being on keeping up with their Kardashians and I think that this brand is going to hit the mass market the same way that Skims did.

23:39So I'm going on record predicting that this is actually going to be the second most successful Cordellito brand. That's actually a small claim. Yeah. Especially because now at GLP One, someone could eat the cloud and then put on their Skims, their synergies. There you go. They can share these, a little cross-branding. So now, I'm not going to tell you the celebrity of this one yet. I want you to give me your thoughts on the next chip that we have. One thing I will never do is let my team burn out, Which happens when someone is stretching themselves across a full-time job and trying to become an expert in something new.

24:13But I also recognize that with HSR, there are skills that could 100 % change our trajectory as a business that we just haven't mastered internally, like generative engine optimization, no-code engineering, AI-native expertise. FiberPro, our sponsor, has been the best solution for this because their talent is expert level and vetted. So you're not just getting anyone, you're getting someone who is really, really, really good at what they do. They can come in, work on a project, and deliver to a very high standard. And Fiverr Pro's hiring experts will source and manage your freelancers for you. All you have to do is pick from a pool of exceptional talent.

24:56Your team stays focused on what they do best, and you don't lose momentum trying to figure out something new from scratch. So if you're building or growing a company, Fiverr Pro is worth looking into. Visit pro.fiverr.com to learn more. Okay, so I'm going to conceal the top so you can't open that. Okay. You can maybe see it on the back, but don't look at the very bottom, okay? So this is another chip. Okay. So packaging, ingredients, what are we thinking? You know, if I just looked at this one, I would say it looks more like a traditional chip company, right? It says kettle cooked, hot honey barbecue.

25:36It looks like chips that I've had before. Ingredients on the back. A lot of stuff you see. Born in the USA, made to crunch. Again, pretty good, although compared to cloud, there might be one or two ingredients I don't love in here, like a maltodextrin. And you know, the general rule is if you can't pronounce it, you probably shouldn't be ingesting it. But pretty good ingredients in here too. Like, I don't think that's where they're going to lose out. So now looking at the packaging. And this, you know, obviously feels much more masculine than Khloe's, right? So looking at the packaging, what celebrity do you see as the co-founder of this brand?

26:10Definitely a male. And do you think you have a guess at who it is? I think I've seen the packaging. So on shelf, as you know, I like to roam the aisles. So I think I have a guess. We'll say it on three. Am I guessing the brand or the celebrity? The celebrity. Okay. So one, two, three. Glenn Powell. Oh, you're so good. No, you know, I know Glenn a little bit. I love Glenn, so shout out to Glenn, but yeah. Looking at the two shitbags, you have to pick one to invest into, one that's going to be more successful. Which one are you investing into? I think, as you said, probably Cloud, because they seem to really know their consumer.

26:44It has a point of view. You can know nothing else about the brand. Smash Kitchen, I think, started exclusively in Walmart. Not in a bad way, but this feels very much like a male, you know, focus packaging and it feels like a Walmart brand, which is great, which is different. But I think if I did one, I would go with Chloe's. Okay. Chloe, let us into your round. I'm so obsessed that we just did that. You can enjoy the chips if you'd like. But I think it just goes to show a little bit about your thinking when you're thinking about investing. So try to take us through a framework now for what we just did.

27:15You get pitched a Fit & Bev brand. They're like, I need Courtney Riem on my cap table. what is your framework for looking at it people obviously just thought in action now can you distill it down a little bit into what you actually look for to put an investment into something food and beverage food and beverage i know well enough that i have a couple mantras do you know one of my mantras for food is it delicious nutritious and convenient yeah i've been saying that for over 10 years and even though i do less than food and beverage you know we don't do it through m13 anymore, but we still do a lot personally, some together, some through our family office.

27:51It's amazing how in 15 years that mantra hasn't changed because there are other products that succeed that are not those three. But for everything I look at, because I like things like healthier drinks, snack sticks, chips, whatever it is, they have to be delicious, nutritious, and convenient. It sounds so simple, but if you go analyze the 100 most successful food and beverage brands of the last whatever. There's a couple outliers and pretty much other than that, all of them need to hit all those filters. If you hit two of the three filters, it's one filter, one out of the three, forget it. Two out of the three, there's a slim chance, but it's really got to hit all three to be a greens fee.

28:31Was your first angel investment after you had sold your alcohol brand? I think it was after we had started V for sure. I don't think it was after we had sold it because you know, Viva is kind of a tale of two stories, so to speak, in that let's say it was a seven, eight year journey. I think the first like four or five years, it was just heads down trying to build anything. Things are harder to scale, then slower, less information. By the way, we're selling an alcohol in a bottle. So there's no pivoting to a software or something. It's not even pivoting to a non-alcoholic brand. It is the product is the product.

29:04So it was probably the last two or three years of Veve, we started doing some angel investing. And I truthfully could not even tell you what the first one was. They kind of comes in waves, but it was a lot of smaller personal checks. So it was everything from consumer internet stuff like Pinterest and Lyft and Coinbase to other food and beverage brands like Covita, which eventually sold to Pepsi. So some of both of those, and we were kind of playing both those worlds, living in both those worlds. And then the D to C direct to consumer boom kind of came and the celebrity stuff. So we were kind of funneled into a lot of that naturally.

29:39This is why I think it's so important to have this conversation because you hit on a few things like being an expert in something is leveraging your expertise to like make good investment decisions. And I think a lot of women specifically that are listening to this don't think of themselves as like good at finance or good at investing because that's what we've been told our whole life. But like even to your point of the chip brand, right, it's like 85 percent of consumer spend is held by women. They are the ones at Target. They are the ones at Walmart purchasing. They are going to be more drawn to the Chloe packaging than they are the Smash Kitchens packaging in my perspective.

30:12So winning over that female consumer is so important for every single brand. And a lot of females feel like, well, I don't know anything about investing. I don't know this, but like if you're a consumer, I fundamentally believe that consumer investing is something that you at least can have a curiosity to develop. So I guess for someone that's listening to this, that is like, you know what, like I maybe want to put an angel investment check in this year. Like, what are the red flags that is an absolute like do not touch that deal? And what are some green flags that they can get curious about and start probing when they're meeting with founders?

30:46Well, this is probably not the answer you wanted, but I think what I always tell people first is if you had a little pool of money, I would always, no matter how small the pool is, I would chop it up into a couple versus just doing one. The chances of doing one and hitting it, it's actually worse if you get it right because then you think you know what you're doing. Whereas, you know, even now at M13, when we have like a core fund, usually for almost regardless of the fund size, our core portfolio would be like something like 30 to 40 positions. And the studies have shown that if even if you're an angel investor writing $1 ,000 checks,$10 ,000 checks, you need enough things thrown against the wall, enough shots on goal, whatever metaphor you want.

31:29Maybe you don't need 30, but you need more than five. So I think you need to first lay out your strategy and whatever it is. If you said, I have$100 ,000, I'm going to put in to 15 things. If I have$10 ,000, but I'm going to put them into smaller checks and you do crowdfunding. So I think you need enough of those because just don't fall in love with your idea because the chances are that it's not just the only one good idea. So that's the first thing. After that, I think it's especially if you're new and you're looking at products, it's this double-edged sword of going, I like this product, so I should invest in it.

32:03And sometimes I have learned the hard way so many times. Oh, I like this product. I would actually buy this product and put it on my face or eat it or whatever, but it will not make a good investment. And that's the hard thing to start to learn. But I think just having a genuine interest in something will make you go further in your research, will make you go further in your word of mouth and sharing with your friends. And, you know, it depends what the product is, but like, let's just say it's something totally different. It's not a celebrity backed brand. You find some slightly obscure skincare product that you love and your friends don't really know just by using it, comparing it to other things, seeing your results and telling 10 friends who are all slightly mavens and connectors to quote Malcolm Gladwell, you could actually make a big impact on that brand.

32:49I mean, it's the law of the few, right? Like to get HSR going, you didn't have millions of followers. You didn't even have hundreds of thousands. You didn't even have tens of thousands. If you start with a thousand, honestly, even a hundred diehard evangelists, you'll get pretty far and you'll learn so much. And so that's where I think you can make a difference, even if you're a small investor and you get involved. What are some immediate red flags when you see a pitch? I hate just kind of generic stats on market size and everything else versus like, okay, but the addressable market can't be all women, right?

33:23I mean, that's a big addressable market, but there's no point of view there. These days, I think products where it's like not everything is meant to be an AI product. There's probably not AI going in these chips. So don't tell me it's like chipcompany.ai because that's not really believable. Do better things where you convince people you really understand your data. You know, one of my philosophies from our book is know whether you're a sailboat or speedboat. So people trying to do too much too early without focus and focusing on the wrong things. In the beginning, it should be so much about what you learn and probably a lot of qualitative stuff and less quantitative stuff.

33:59but the minute you're forced to try to like ramp up sales too early when you haven't really nailed it before you scale it as we like to say that's when you're in trouble so like trying to go too fast i think from a founder point of view there's so much that can be said about founders but i think we live in the world of like i just love founders who know what they're good at know what they're not good at know how to assemble the rest of the team are really transparent about their blind spots not the days of kind of like megalomaniac founders who say they have no weaknesses and just like run through walls and figure out later because it just doesn't work like that for the most part.

34:31There's a difference between grit and resilience and thinking you have no blind spots, right? What is the most effective pitch and founder that you have personally ever seen? Aside from me wanting to be your girlfriend. That one was hard to beat. You know, to pick one that comes to mind, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, who I truthfully don't know well, but we were lucky enough to put in a little bit of money to Coinbase at a Series A, 15 million valuation, sat next to him at a dinner party, so to speak, spent a few minutes talking to him. And you have to remember this is like 2015, 2016. He's like talking about a digital currency and a marketplace.

35:14He's like telling me about a marketplace for a digital currency that I don't understand. And maybe he was just confusing enough that I believed he was a futurist, but something made me feel like he had the it factor combined with like just enough kind of forward thinking. But he also seemed to have a roadmap how he'd get to the adoption. And I couldn't quite put all the pieces together, but it felt like there was there was something there. So you invested based off gut? I wouldn't say off of gut, but that's one of those situations where there's nothing you can diligence. It wasn't really it wasn't the marketplace wasn't really live yet.

35:50Again, go back to 2015, I don't think anyone really like, short of the Winklevosses and a few other people, no one was really talking about Bitcoin or crypto or understood what it was. So gut would be an understatement, but I was going on, I think more than gut, it was some pattern recognition that was sometimes hard to articulate. But for example, if he's talking about stuff of how banks are at the future and they're not serving people, and there should be some more transparent and secure way of currency and storing value, because what is money? What is the paper money? It's a store of value.

36:23There must be a better way to store that value with technology. I was like, that does make sense. And there's a little more to it, but he was obviously compelling. So that's one of your unicorns. You have 15. What are the common characteristics of those 15 founders that have become billion-dollar companies? All top-notch founders, for sure. What does that mean? It means that I would always, you know, listen, if we knew who is the top-notch founders, then it would be easier to invest. So you don't really know till you get into bed with them, so to speak. And you know, these are, if you're lucky, five, seven, eight year marriages, but could easily be 10, 12, 15 year marriages.

36:59But I think most astute investors would now agree with me that, yeah, you don't know before you invest, but you start to get a pretty good sense within months, certainly within a year or two, you're like, okay, even if the business isn't going that well, you're like, this is the type of person who will figure it out. They will, they will I mean I think pivots and all that have gotten overhyped but like they will figure it out and so I think some of the soft skills that there's no way to that I know of to really test for the grit and the resilience and the the willing something I don't think you can will something to exit you can't will something to be a unicorn but you can will something to get pretty far along and I've I've watched a lot of founders who had good companies but just didn't want it badly enough didn't couldn't inspire people internally couldn't inspire people to give more capital.

37:44And I was like, with a different leader that was more inspiring, or just a little more grit, they could have, they could have raised the money and gotten there. So I think, I think it's that. And then I think with the rest of the founders, I think, you know, there's just, there's just so many people out there who, I think all the founders, what they really have is the ability to kind of be myopic, you know, nearsighted and farsighted. As you know, I love the phrase, have a microscope in one eye and a telescope in the other eye. And it is so hard when you're building something because there's so much microscopic stuff.

38:19You have to be in the details. You have to, you know, when I was at Goldman Sachs, we were like, you have to be able to do every job from the janitor up to the CEO. And that was great about the learning. Sometimes you felt the lowest lows and sometimes you're like, I'm way over my skis. So you have to keep the microscope to be in the weeds and everything that's happening. And then you have to have a telescope to make sure you can pick your head up and look on the horizon and go, but I see where we're going. Like I see that we're charted due north while still keeping an eye on every little wave that's coming your way.

38:46So you met me like pretty much at very early stages of HSR. Would you say that I've willed it into existence? A lot of times a founder, I see them will something that's not getting traction, that's not feeling sticky, that's not going how they thought. That's when you have to kind of like will it to the next level. I wouldn't use the word will for you because I think I've seen a lot of positive proof points right from the start with HSR. And even when I met you, more like you've manifested it into existence. But I think a lot of people want to come on a journey with you from the start. And so I think you've shown a lot of grit and resilience, but you've also had something from the start that's resonating with people.

39:26I think it's interesting to bring that up because we, in this world, think a lot about the founder archetype, right? And I would say I didn't have the background, I guess, that would lead people to assume that I could build something of note. So didn't go to Columbia, didn't go to Harvard, didn't work at Goldman Sachs, all things that you did. And even when I was starting it, I didn't have the follower count of millions of followers like a lot of celebrities do. So I think about my unfair advantage and it was being like very vulnerable and very OK with showing the highs and showing the lows in like a true fashion.

40:04But I'm interested to hear from you now. Now, do you think that it is more important to have a high follower count or the resume virtues of Columbia, Harvard, Goldman Sachs to start a successful consumer brand today? Those are the only two choices. Only two options. Those are the only two options. I think certainly a high follower count because of the things you've mentioned. Going to Columbia probably doesn't help you start a consumer brand. Going to Harvard, well, that's business school, may or may not, a little more than undergrad. and working at Goldman Sachs probably works against you. So high follower count, but I would trade those for what you had, which was some stickiness, right?

40:43So to go back to my qualitative versus quantitative, the quantitative would be high follower count, have millions of followers. The qualitative would be, oh, you're getting really good engagement or it's like not even how many people are commenting, but it's like what they're commenting. Are they like rabid for more? Are they loving this? And that's what you had. So those are important proof points. If the brand was going to go like this, maybe a high follower count, but in the world of a J curve where it goes, and now you figure it out, shoot up the J curve. You had a lot of good points here in order to start to accelerate what you've been doing.

41:19And I'm so proud of you. Olivia, do you think that an MBA in today's world is valuable and will capture attention? Like, think about now being M13. $2 billion you are investing. An MBA graduate is applying. Does that command more of your attention for a potential hire? It does because, you know, again, if you go to a big firm, we keep using Golan, but McKinsey or any other firm, they actually are in charge of training you. We're not in charge of training you. Like we don't really have the time or the energy or the resources to train you. I mean, of course, I can train you on our specific thesis or what we're looking for in a deal or how to write the memos that we do for our investment committee.

42:04But I mean, like really train you, right? Like you don't come to M13 to get a background in corporate finance. You already need that. So I think, one, I wouldn't view it as like MBA or not. I'd view it as like all these other things. Like, do you need any of the any one thing? No, but I think if you haven't worked at a top tier firm like a Goldman or McKinsey and you don't have an MBA and something else, then it's, you know, that could be three strikes. Whereas I think if you have one of those to your question point, I'm not sure you need three different things like that. You need one of those things that shows me you've worked in a high pressure environment.

42:38You've know how to work hard. You've gotten some training for someone who's much better equipped to do it than I am. So it's those things. but I would still say to go on the MBA, the way it was described to me and an informational thing that I still love is if you view your career on a 40-year spectrum or however long you plan on work in 35, 40, 50 years, if you view your career on a 40, 50-year spectrum and you could do something for two years that would enhance the other 38, wouldn't you do it? And I think it's changed, but I still think that still generally holds because today you want to be an entrepreneur and you don't see the immediate value in it.

43:17tomorrow you're doing something totally different and it never hurts to kind of have that. But easy for me to say, because as I said, I didn't feel like I was really taking a risk. And I totally get that the opportunity cost, meaning it costs you probably order a magnitude of half a million, depending on loans and everything else to get an MBA. And then you have the opportunity cost of lost wages. So that's probably, you know, closer to a million dollar swing one way or another. It's an investment in yourself. That's a risk and a bet on yourself one way or another in terms of what you want to do.

43:47Do you think that

43:52the prestige associated with investment banking exists the same way it did when you were in investment banking today? No, absolutely not. I think there's so many stats to look at, but it's like, well, first off, I started Goldman Sachs in 2002, 2003. If you were there in 1998, when Goldman Sachs went public, that was the last of the prestigious banks to go public. If you were a pre-IPO partner at Goldman, minimum a partner made$100 million. And that's$100 million in 1998. So imagine what that is now. That's like half a billion if you did halfway decent with your investing. So that was what the bar was to be a partner at Goldman in 1998.

44:32Now, obviously, I was nowhere near a partner. I was a low person on the totem pole. But it's different now because Goldman then had less than 10 ,000 employees. Today, They have over 100 ,000. Now, it's over 15 years ago, but that's still incredible growth. So it used to be like, oh, if you worked at Goldman Sachs, someone's like, oh, you work at Goldman Sachs. Now it's just a much bigger place, has its tentacles and a lot more things. And when I was there, like I said, Goldman battled whoever, Morgan Stanley or McKinsey for talent. It didn't battle startups. Now Goldman battles startups. And Goldman offers some things a startup can't offer, and a startup offers some things Goldman can't.

45:09And whether you say startup or whether you say go work at a VC, if you go work at Kleiner Perkins or Sequoia or M13, we have some things that we offer that Goldman can't and Goldman has things that offer that we can't. But I think it's much more, the playing field is much more leveled. So we're no longer going to have the fight where if our kids want to go into investment banking and I'm like, absolutely not, you're not going to fight me on that. The short answer is no. The longer answer is, to bring it back to everything we talked about, Goldman for me was great option value. I think after two weeks of training, truly, they voted on who is most likely to quit after another two weeks.

45:44I think I won near unanimously in an analyst class of like 100 people. I think I voted for myself, too. And then here I am that I did roughly five years, which, you know, most people do two years of banking, maybe three. So for me, it was great option value while I figured out what I wanted to do and some good training and pretty good pay and make great connections. And as you know, I lived in a few countries around the world. So that was great option value, even though I never saw it as my medium, much less long-term thing. So from that point of view, I would always recommend it as like a broad base.

46:14But absolutely, if someone doesn't have a desire, it doesn't seem, you know, if they don't have an affinity for numbers, it's going to be hard to be an investment banker. Have you ever created a piece of content that's ready to go live? You've written the caption, But instead of hitting publish, your finger just hovers. And then you don't. You just don't put it live. Well, I've done that more times than I can count. When I first started posting content, I found publishing to be the worst part. But through the years of posting every single day, I learned that if you're waiting to feel confident enough before you start posting, then you're going to be waiting forever.

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48:12How do you get a job in venture capital? See, the rules have changed because it used to be you didn't even hire anyone that didn't work at, that probably did some banking or maybe some consulting or maybe even some private equity or hedge fund. Now, now people are taking, you know, people right out of undergrad. So it just depends on the person, but you've seen a lot of the cold emails I get, and it's still hard to get your attention from a cold email. But I mean, I'm getting sent things by 19 year olds who are sending me their portfolio, who have sent or sending me something they vibe coded or sending me their idea that's already raised$5 million and they can't get a legal drink of alcohol.

48:50So it's not one thing, but it's kind of the whole package and just seeing that someone has a real appetite for either building companies or really just understanding how things are built. And that could be from an entrepreneurial lens or an investor. And so people are just doing it. They're just getting so much info and experience at such a younger age that it's really not an experience thing. It's really not age thing. It's it's a, you know, an aptitude thing. I'm so glad I never applied to M13 because I don't think we would be married if I had. But I definitely really wanted to work in venture capital when I was working in entertainment.

49:26I just like wasn't ever an opportunity for me. Like no one really returned my job applications. I just like wasn't the ideal candidate, I guess. And so I really started angel investing as a way to like, OK, I'm going to build my own portfolio. No one's going to hire me. I'm going to do this myself. But it's so interesting because I was always applying for jobs that I was not qualified for at all. But you on your job descriptions have this written into every single one of your venture capital roles. Research shows that while men apply to jobs when they meet an average of 60 % of the criteria, women and other marginalized folks tend to only apply to jobs when they check every box.

50:04So if you have what it takes but don't necessarily meet every single point on the job description, please still get in touch. We'd love to chat and learn more about what you want to do next in your career. Why did you guys put that on your job descriptions? You know, shout out to Matt Hoffman, our head of people and culture. And I think exactly what it says, right? I think it's hard to answer some of your questions because it isn't a one size fits all. But this is, you know, an age where it's an attention economy thing. And some people lean in, some people lean out. But I think it's exactly what we said like a lot of the most talented people might not realize how talented they are someone like you it's it's like you could get a job at any venture firm but it's more just about the right fit and the right thing of harnessing your skills or where you want to spend your time and what they need so it's just really important because you know the stats better than I do but still too few dollars are going to women in venture I think there's been progress on hiring.

51:04It's still not enough, but it is about perception, right? Per that, a lot of guys think, oh, I'm 80 % qualified, and in their mind, they're 100, and then other women are 80 % qualified, and in their mind, they're 60%. So they kind of go the other way. And so we just want to be more inclusive because a lot of our best hires have come from people who didn't necessarily think they were qualified. Well, that's why I'm so excited about what we're building with now doing some investing together, which there's lots more to come on that. Yes, it's been fun, though. We've made our first few investments.

51:32Yeah. Into female founders. Into female founders. Absolutely. So to wrap up for today, we're going to do some rapid fire. Okay. Can I put my glass on for rapid fire? Okay. I meant to put them on earlier for the intellectual look, but okay. Okay. What is the last thing you put on our credit card? On our credit card. I should be asking you, what's the last thing you put on our credit card, right? That's really the question. Because it's always like a little bit like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're going to get at the end of the month where I'm like, I did that. I'm like, oh, that must be Maggie.

52:03Okay. The last thing I put on the credit card was a bunch of Amazon packages. That's not interesting. Try again. No, it was. Okay. Well, let's be more interested in. I know how it goes. What's the last most expensive thing you put on our credit cards? Our trip to Africa. Our trip to Africa. Yeah. That definitely qualifies. That was a doozy. Safari ain't cheap, people, but it's a great life experience. Spend your money on experiences, not things, kids. What is your favorite news? newsletter that isn't HSR. I love Morning Brew and I love something like Axios, but I think Axios is extended into lots of other stuff.

52:37And so, you know, it's a little trickier. I really love my information diet because I always, as you know, take things in and out based on either what's non-overlapping. So it's like there's a newsletter called Fit Insider that I love because it's my favorite one for like health and wellness. But if I can only pick one, I'm not sure I can read a newsletter on health and wellness because I want something more broad based. Well, this is my favorite use case of AI. So I would get probably 10 to 15 newsletters a day. I don't like to be on my phone in the morning. And so when I would get to my office, I would just be so overwhelmed by having 15 newsletters to go through after I've already worked out, whatever.

53:14I would ask Claude to send me all of the duplicative articles that had come out and then send me from every single newsletter one headline that the other one had missed and a summary of that story. And so now I don't even read the newsletters. I literally just read my Claude summary in the morning. and then I told it, if there's a story that you think is worth reading, please let me know in what newsletter it comes from. And now it just pulls directly from Claude. It doesn't hurt the newsletters, by the way, because Claude, I believe, is still opening them. Like, I'm still a subscriber, but I just don't personally have the time to go through that anymore.

53:47I think it's great. It depends why you do it. You know, I think, like, there's a reason that TLDR exists and there's a reason that everything can't be TLDR because not everything's meant to be distilled down or else no one will read a book because you read a book to get a broader swath and like real meaning and to integrate into your own thoughts. So I try to read a lot of short form, less long form, I have to be in the right mood, but a lot of medium form. So sometimes I don't want just the headline because I want to have the chance to go deeper, which sounds like you're still getting. But I also like some of my morning rituals of standing in front of red lights and reading a newsletter, hanging upside down and reading a newsletter.

54:22So I actually have the specific ones mapped out. It's better to, as you know, I'm always rushing. So signs, it's good to not rush and try to slowly synthesize. And other times you have to move with urgency. What's your favorite investment that you've ever made? Chops, of course. We did every day. What's the worst investment you've ever made? I'm not going to name names, but I think the worst investments I've ever made is when I invested in either people or things that I didn't actually understand. And I think too many times people get swept up in the buzz of something or whatever, and they don't really...

55:00When I stick to things I know or things I'm passionate about or things I could learn about, I've done exceptionally well. When I've gone too far outside of that bullseye, I've gotten smoked. like equities in China got smoked. I didn't really know China. I didn't really know equities in China. For a while it did really well and then regulation killed it. But I think the analogy that I love is one of the best baseball hitters ever. They show this grid of where, of what the batting average was in every little area of the strike zone. And the takeaway was that in this area where he felt comfortable, he was one, this is Ted Williams, one of, if not the greatest hitters of all time.

55:39When he started to swing at pitches outside of this area where he liked it, there were some parts where he was like a very average player. And so for me, it's like sticking to what I know or what I understand and what I like. And of course, we all acquire new things. But when I start to get a little bit too, I don't really know that, but yeah, that sounds good. Or this guy seems great. Or my friend's doing it. Or this firm's doing it. That's usually when I get smoked. What is your proudest accolade? You. True. Really? Yeah, because I, you know, everything gets you to a point, but I really think that whatever accolade I pick, the irony is I don't want to be an accolade because I was so focused on all the resume virtues for too long that I don't want to be a resume virtue.

56:21I want it to be something someone feels or says about me. But I think the best is yet to come. Love you. You can only invest in one for the rest of your life. Food and Bev, wellness, AI. Probably wellness, just because I think I actually know food and beverage really well, but it's constrained in some ways. Wellness could have a component of AI and it could harness like a much bigger, like I want to do things that could help millions of people, right? That's why we've started things like Life Force, where it could hopefully be an intervention and bring something that was like a concierge medicine thing to 10 ,000 people and then 100 ,000 people and then a million and maybe tens of millions.

57:03I want things like that that could like do well by doing good. And so I think I would pick something in wellness that I feel like could have a lot of scalability. What's your most successful investment personally? We've been lucky. We've had, you know, could count on one hand, but almost two hands, things that have been 100X or more. We've had, I think, about five things that fit into that and a couple that hopefully are coming soon. I do think as a multiple, Coinbase was our biggest one. I think it was about a thousand extra money. From a dinner. From a dinner and a little chat. But yeah, sometimes better to be lucky than good.

57:39But I think there's so many things that are kind of overblown about when people are successful and underplayed when they're successful too, which is that, yeah, I would never say that I understood everything Coinbase was doing, but I understood enough to feel like there was something there. And then I can tell you, you know you've seen a different side of me in the last couple years because I don't think I chase as much and although I work hard it's not like I 10 years ago my brother and I were out every single night meeting people doing things whatever and as I like to say there's there's you know the intersection of luck and opportunity whatever it is but I can tell you we did not so sit home in our underwear hoping that lucky things happen we went out there and like you know the quote I like from Rumi life is a dance between making it happen and letting it happen I don't know how much we let it happen back then, but we sure tried to make it happen every single night and like, you know, 15 hours a day.

58:32And so I believe that that was not luck in the sense that we made it happen and made all these investments that opened doors to other things. I made this statement saying that consumer brands are completely wasting their time pitching to VCs if they're under a million dollars in revenue and to go after family offices. You have a family office? One, can you break down what a family office is? And two, why are family offices better for consumer brands to be pitching to you right now than a venture capital fund? You know, you said a million. I actually think it's probably more like 10 million than a million in order of zeros.

59:10But I think it's also that, you know, the minute you take venture money, you're on it. You know, the clock's ticking, right? My IRR has started by the time I wired you money for your thing. And what is an IRR? Internal rate of return, but whatever it is, the return on capital you need, any term you use, the minute I send you money as an investor, that clock is now ticking. In general, a family office, although of course they want to make money and they're not a charity, at least those kinds of investments, they don't have to have the money back ASAP or they can be a little more patient. Maybe the family office made their money in a consumer product and you'd be value add.

59:47Most venture capitalists are not going to be value add with a consumer product. There's some exceptions. I think that's the main distinction. And then I would also argue that I personally believe when someone says I'm a consumer venture capitalist for a consumer, when consumer means different things, but what they really mean is that there's some kind of like these days, it used to be like you were a consumer internet investor, Pinterest, Lyft, whatever stuff like that, that we were in. Now it probably means you're a consumer facing AI investor, maybe a consumer, a wellness AI platform. But there's no such thing really as a consumer brands venture firm, in my opinion.

1:00:24I think that there's consumer brand private equity though. Sure, which is really different because consumer venture means I'm going to invest in you at a venture stage and look for a venture return, which means you need to have explosive growth, not necessarily profits. But that's really different than consumer private equity. and by private equity, generally speaking, they will not give you money unless there's already some cash flow. So that's a really different kind of business. It could be a four wall thing. It could be clinics. It could be studios if it was a fitness thing, that sort of thing.

1:00:54And that's really different. So there is absolutely consumer private equity. I'm not sure I think there should be consumer venture the way we're talking about consumer brands, because what the venture firm needs and what the consumer brand needs are kind of diametrically opposed. So what is a family office? Family members, or it could be a single family office. It could be your husband and wife. It could be brothers or partners, sisters, whatever the case may be, who have amassed a certain amount of money. There's no minimum amount of money. Call yourself a family office. I've heard some people call themselves family offices, and they're very small and some that are very big.

1:01:30But it started to be a real institutional asset class. I don't have all the stats, but family offices are growing at such a rapid rate that basically means, one, I think they're relevant to a lot of sectors of the economy, but two, in general, I think it means that you've set up some kind of operation to actually institutionalize what you're doing. So in the case of us, my brother and I, and now you, we have kind of like a four or five person family office team. Someone's kind of more ahead of investing, someone's kind of more operations, different functions like that. And it gives us flexibility to look at things we wouldn't look at for M13 or other things we know well or other passions lie.

1:02:07And as I said before, I think the best thing about a family office usually is, okay, if this is a third generation business with 32 constituents and shareholders and everyone wants a dividend, that investing process can be hard. Right now, ours is pretty easy. I want to invest in something, I do it. My brother wants to invest in something, you want to invest in something, we're doing it separately. It's a more manageable process with a lot of flexibility in terms of stage, sector, check size. How does someone reach family offices to get investment for their company? There are lots of family office conferences now.

1:02:39So like anything, you can crash parties, you can do whatever. But there's family offices that are really under the radar. But a lot more family offices are what I call branded or public or, as my mom used to say, in the phone book. But you know what I mean? You can find their information. So I don't know, however you'd cold email a VC, you can cold email a family office. But I would generally say our family office, although we see a ton of deals, we see fewer deals than we see at M13. And a little more likely that some type of interesting cold email actually gets seen, if not answered, from a family office than a VC.

1:03:13That's my gut. Courtney Ream, thank you so much for coming on HotSmart Rich. Where can people find you? I think they should just email you and they can find you at this point, that's the best route. Really just through you, I'm just trying to be Mr. HSR. Which, by the way, was a nickname that the community came up with and we are obsessed with. Yeah. I am ready to retire lucky number three. Actually, let's do this right now. How can they find me? I want, by the time this airs, to have an address, an email address. What's your URL? At HotSmartRich. I want an email that says Chairman at HotSmartRich.

1:03:47And if you need something, especially if it's hsr related email me people chairman at hs at hot smart rich.com yeah we're done we're done love you i love you too