Mike Jones, managing director of California-based Science Ventures, led a panel discussion on consumer trends at NVNG Investment Advisors’ recent +Venture North event in Milwaukee. Jones and his team have helped launch a number of consumer brands, including Dollar Shave Club and Liquid Death. Before the panel, Jones shared insights on his approach to investing.
“I’ll take as many board seats as I can possibly buy through the journey. I will try to push all other external forces away. I do not want my founders distracted by bad advice and bad board members.”
“We target old, tired sectors. We look for old businesses where they’ve been selling the same thing for 50 years. We go and talk to Walmart, I ask them, ‘What’s boring? What are you not moving on? Who do you not like working with? Who’s your least favorite bill you pay every month?’ I want to go after that sector.”
“We want feelings. We want emotions. We want things that stand out. I’m not looking for things that are 10% better. I’m looking for things that are 200% different. I want half price. I want two-x price. I want to challenge you. When you look at Liquid Death on a shelf and it says it’s a healthy beverage, I want your brain to break a little and be like, how is that healthy? It says ‘Death’ on the can. I’ve got to challenge you to stand out, right? Nothing a little bit better is working right now. You need major better.”
“If we can’t launch it direct to consumer, if we can’t launch it online, we have no interest. Full stop. I want a million dollars a month before I even talk to a retailer.”
“If you’re a startup with me and we’re measuring the goal of your startup as daily app downloads, number of transactions in the marketplace, sales through Amazon, sales through TikTok, I want that data coming into my inbox daily to understand the trajectory. The reason being is I need to learn what’s working and not … if I get the updated quarterly at a board meeting, I’m learning slow. It’s not helpful.”
“When we start a company, we’ll come up with a concept, the founder will pitch us; within about a month we’ll basically find ways to smoke test it against consumer receptiveness. So, I’m looking for really, really fast ways to know whether it’s something I want to spend the next seven to 10 years of my life with the founder building. Our goal is to shut stuff down within three months, under a quarter million dollars of spend if it ends up not working and if it works, our goal is to deploy a hundred million-plus to the business, get it to scale, take it public, sell to a big strategic.”
