Mike Gelb

Follow for insights on venture capital, consumer startups and tips on how to build your network // Looking To Learn? Head to 👉 theconsumervc.com

I didn’t grow up in venture.

My background was in the music industry - producing, promoting, and trying to make sense of creativity and business.

But something kept pulling me toward the world of startups. I was fascinated by how brands get built, funded, and scaled.

I didn’t know anyone in VC.

I just started asking questions.

The first few podcast episodes? Awkward.

I overdubbed my voice. 

I stuttered. 

But I kept showing up.

300+ episodes later, Consumer VC has become one of the most trusted platforms in the space - a home for real conversations between founders, investors, and operators who are shaping what we buy and why we buy it.

- 7.5K+ newsletter subscribers
- Listeners in 100+ countries
- Events in LA, NYC & Austin

I focus on what actually drives scale - from pre-seed to $500M+ in revenue and how people navigate the messy middle of brand-building.

If you’re building or backing something in CPG, wellness, retail, marketplaces, social or consumer tech - I’d love for you to be part of it.

Subscribe to the newsletter in the Featured section below. 👇

Venture Scout

A podcast serving founders and investors that want to learn how some of the top venture capitalists that invest in B2C businesses make investing decisions.

Past guests include:
Mark Gainey, Founder of Strava
Andy Dunn, Founder of Bonobos
Ariel Kaye, Founder of Parachute
Denise Woodard, Founder of Partake Foods
Nagraj Kashyap, Managing Partner at Softbank Investment Advisors' Vision Fund
Wayne Wu, General Partner at VMG
Mike Duda, Managing Partner at Bullish
Brendan Rogers, Co-founder of Wag! and 2am
Madeline Haydon, Founder of nut pods
Matteo Franceschetti, Founder of Eight Sleep
Bret Thomas, Founder of CAVU Venture Partners
Carter Reum, Founder of M13
Soraya Darabi, Founder of TMV
Elizabeth Yin, Founder of Hustle Fund
Ariana Thacker, Founding Partner of Conscience VC
Henri Pierre-Jacques, Founder of Harlem Capital
Greg Bettinelli, Partner at Upfront Ventures
Daniel Gluck, General Partner at Powerplant Ventures
Kiva Dickinson, Founder of Selva Ventures
Adelle Archer, Founder of Eterneva
Kanyi Maqubela, Founder of Kindred Ventures
Steve Hughes, Founder of Sunrise Strategic Partners
Seth Goldman, Founder of Honest Tea, Eat the Change and PLNT Burger
Spike Mendelsohn, Celebrity Chef & Founder of Eat the Change, PLNT Burger
Jesse Draper, Founder of Halogen Ventures
Nick Saltarelli, Founder of Mid-Day Squares
Charles Hudson, Founder of Precursor Ventures
Rick Desai, General Partner at Listen Ventures
Michele Romanow, Founder of Clearco
Mac the VC, Founder of Rarebreed
Michael Ronen, Founder of Branded
Jason Karp, Founder of Humanco, Hu Kitchen and Hu Chocolate
Jackie Fast, Founder of Sandbox Studios
Joe Kudla, Founder of Vouri
John Foraker, Founder of Once Upon a Farm
Kate Beardsley, Founder of Hannah Grey
Mike Ghaffary, General Partner at Canvas
Nisha Dua, Founder of BBG Ventures
Ben Sun, Founder of Primary Ventures
+ more

Ranked by Listen Notes as one of the top 1% most popular shows globally.

To learn more, head over to www.theconsumervc.com

Heading to Winter FancyFaire next week?

You'll spend 3 days walking the show floor.

But some of the best conversations happen before the badge scanning even starts.

That's why we're hosting "Rise, Roast, & Meet CPG" on Monday morning, January 12th.

Before the show floor opens.

A coffee meetup for brand founders, operators, investors, and industry experts.
It's a chance to connect with the CPG community before the chaos of the convention center begins.

Just a short walk from the venue.

Grab a coffee. Meet some great people. Then head to the show together.

Bridge is delighted to be partnering with Glimpse, ForceBrands, and Highline Brands to bring the ecosystem together.

If you're going to be there, come say hi.

RSVP Here – https://luma.com/ta52nqln

Dustin Cherry, Martin Forde, Merry Nebiyu, Matt Holden – I appreciate the partnership.

Stay classy San Diego.

Founder and Host of Consumer VC | 300+ Unfiltered Conversations with Top VCs & Founders | Building the #1 Community for Consumer Investors and Founders

Beyond Meat is now just "Beyond."

And they're launching a beverage.

Beyond Immerse drops January 2026.

Sparkling plant-based protein drinks. 20g pea protein. 7g fiber. 60-100 calories.

Three flavors: Peach Mango, Lemon Lime, Orange Tangerine.

Available DTC through their Beyond Test Kitchen platform.

This isn't random innovation.

The category that built Beyond is contracting.

So they rebranded mid-2025. Dropped "Meat" from the name.

The signal? We're not a meat alternative company anymore.

We're a plant-based protein company.

And the global functional beverage market is projected to hit $339.6 billion by 2030.

That's where the growth is.

Here's what I find interesting:

They're not abandoning their core. They're expanding the definition.

The rebrand came first. The product followed.

It gives them permission to play in new categories without confusing their 
identity.

The DTC launch through Test Kitchen is smart too.

Lower risk. Direct feedback. Build demand before retail.

Will it work?

That depends whether consumers see Beyond as credible outside meat 
alternatives.

And if the product is delicious.

It's hard because I still think of Beyond as Beyond Meat.

But I wanna try it.

The move is a big swing.

When your category shrinks, you either own a smaller pie or find a bigger table.

Beyond chose the bigger table.

But will it work?

Tyler Mayoras has been investing in food and beverage since the Boca Burger days.

And he's seen the category go through multiple cycles.

From early plant-based pioneers to today's better-for-you brands.

On last week's episode of Consumer VC, I chatted with Tyler, Managing Partner at Manna Tree, to talk about what's actually working in food and wellness investing right now.

Not the hype. The reality.

Manna Tree is a private equity investing in consumer health and wellness brands and was started in 2018. Some of their investments include Health-Ade, good culture, New Primal, Plant People, Vital Farms

Fund I (2020)
Size: $141.5 million

Fund II (2023)
Size: $390 million (including co-investment capital)


We covered:
• Which plant-based food brands lost consumer trust
• What "better-for-you" means to serious investors
• How ingredient labels matter more than marketing claims
• Why frozen is one of the hardest categories in grocery
• When brands should (and shouldn't) scale into mass retail
• Why profitability now trumps growth at all costs
• How strategic buyers think about M&A today
• Why they didn't invest in Olipop & their investment strategy

Tyler's been through enough boom-and-bust cycles to know what separates durable brands from flash-in-the-pan trends.

Tyler – Thank you again for your time & for coming to Austin to our summit last November. I appreciate all your support of Consumer VC

Link to the full episode in the comments 👇

#consumervc #consumer #CPG #wellness #venturecapital #privateequity #investing

Head of Partnerships @ Glimpse (AI Deductions for CPG)

I'm looking for some top weirdos to join the partnerships team at Glimpse this year. (5 days a week in-office in NYC) (no recruiters please)

In the short term I'm primarily looking for someone to cover the outsourced finance and accounting firms who are powering their trade/deductions services with Glimpse or otherwise reselling our services. This person needs to be a bit of a blend of sales, marketing, and account management. Revenue and license activation are the KPIs, not just relationship management. 

At some point in the next couple months I will also need someone to manage the more traditional ecosystem referral partnership stuff... connecting our clients and prospects with relevant partners as well as making sure our sales team have a steady flow of consumer brands to speak with. 

Glimpse is automating finance back office and recovering lost revenue for hundreds of cool (and even uncool) consumer brands you've seen on-shelf at the likes of Whole Foods, Target, or Walmart. 

Partnerships and ecosystem alliances have been major sources of growth for us over the past 1.5 years and I'm excited to add some folks to the squad. 

Please DM me if you know someone or are someone who would be a good fit. 

Pictured below: the aftermath of a killer partner kickoff event that Merry Nebiyu threw with The Accountrepreneur, LLC and Mimi Cheng's Dumplings a few months back.

Founder @ Growth Marketing Agency - Single Grain, Podcaster @ Marketing School + Leveling Up

Single Grain is a digital marketing agency focused on driving scalable and predictable revenue growth using Facebook advertising, Google Ads, YouTube advertising, SEO, video production and content marketing. 

We've worked with companies such as Amazon, Uber, Nordstrom and venture-backed startups to create and execute on custom-tailored growth strategies.






-> For those of you that are interesting in marketing and personal growth tips from top entrepreneurs, please visit http://www.levelingup.com for our free podcast. You'll hear from billionaires, authors, and other high performers.

-> For my daily marketing podcast, go listen to Marketing School at https://www.singlegrain.com/marketing-school-podcast



Skills:
SEO
Paid Search (Pay per click advertising)
Affiliate Marketing
Display Advertising
Mobile Advertising
Remarketing/Retargeting
Facebook Marketing
Video Advertising
Twitter Marketing
Google Analytics
Conversion Rate Optimization
Sales
Strategic Partnerships
Content Strategy/Development
Business Development
Social Media
Community Development
Operations
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate program management
Retargeting
Growth Hacking

Eric Siu ✓

$50K of copywriting. 15 minutes. One prompt.

That's what we did with Claude.

Rewrote my agency's homepage from scratch.

Friends rated the old copy 6/10.
New version? 9/10.

The prompt is stupidly simple: "Pull from the top 10 advertising practitioners in history. Score each rewrite 0-100. Don't stop until you hit 90%."

First attempt: 74%.
Final version: 94%.

The copy went from generic agency speak to lines like "The last agency you'll ever fire" and "The cost of mediocre marketing has doubled."

Same week, SEO team said 150 programmatic pages would take a week.

We did it in 20 minutes. $45,000 worth of work at an 8-9/10 level.

Then did 600 pages because why not.

Here's what I'm realizing: the work isn't disappearing. It's compressing.

Tasks that took a week now take an afternoon. Tasks that took a day now take 15 minutes.

We can no longer think about work as doing tasks.

If AI can do it at 90%, your job is to find the 10% that actually matters.

What's the 10% for you?

If “I’m good at ChatGPT” is your company’s AI strategy, you’re already falling behind.

AI proficiency alone at work isn't enough.  It's not just about tools or prompts.

It's about working up the stack - from tasks to strategy, judgment, and client relationships.

We've been driving Claude Code proficiency at Single Grain because we believe it's the future of work. 

Work is going to be more and more focused on strategic thinking and client relationships, not tasks. 

What we've been doing:

- 2-day full-day hackathons where people get into pods and build solutions that actually affect their day-to-day work
- Show and tell demos so ideas don't stay theoretical
- Weekly office hours to unblock people fast
- An internal Slack 'Claude Code help' channel where people can get help
- An 'AI working group channel' where people are sharing the latest news

Most importantly, we've made these mandatory. These take priority over all 'normal' work. That includes client work, sales work, etc.

Initially, I could tell there was resistance to this. Inertia is a very real thing in companies. As a leader, you must do everything to break this inertia. 

My wonderful team handled the logistics, and I just showed up to the show-and-tell section. Because of the initial inertia, I wasn't sure how the demos would turn out.

They turned out amazing. People were sharing real solutions that would save them hours of time each. People also started to connect the dots with their projects being able to combine with other teams' projects. I could see the wheels turning and, more importantly, I could see the excitement.

When demo day came, the results were undeniable:

- 3 hours per task saved on client reporting
- 12 hours per month saved per client on client strategy 
- An ROI calculator that quickly calculates how much revenue we'd drive per client based on the work that we'd do for them. This saved 5 hours per proposal.

But the bigger shift wasn’t the time savings.

People stopped seeing themselves as task executors.
They started seeing themselves as product builders, creating compounding leverage in service of our purpose: helping customers generate more customers.

This is where work is going.

Less execution.
More high-leverage thinking.
More exponential outcomes.

AI skill gaps are now knowledge debt.
The longer you wait to pay it down, the more interest you’ll owe.

I shared a short show-and-tell recap below so you can see how we approached it. This is just a starting point.

What’s one concrete way you’re making AI adoption real, not optional, inside your company?

AI transformation at Single Grain

Ranking in the Age of AI: The Playbook for 2026 and Beyond

The SEO content game is DEAD.
Or is it?

Most SEO teams are still optimizing for a world that doesn't exist anymore.

AI Overviews, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other answer engines are completely rewriting the rules of search. The marketers who aren't optimizing for these platforms are getting left behind.

The winners? They're building AI-first content systems, scaling without sacrificing quality, and driving real revenue in 2026 and beyond.

In this live session, I'm breaking down:
• If the SEO content game is dead
• Where to allocate your SEO budget today
• The new levers that actually move traffic and conversions in an AI-first world
• The exact playbook to show up in Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and more
• How to future-proof your SEO strategy with scalable systems + AI workflows
• Real examples of what's working (and what's dead)

If you're still relying on 2022 tactics, you'll be invisible in 2026.

Ranking in the Age of AI: The Playbook for 2026 and Beyond

Most teams are "good at ChatGPT."

Very few are actually using AI to change how the business runs.

I'm doing a livestream tomorrow (Weds at 9am PT 1/29/26) to break down exactly how operators are using Claude Code, Remotion, Manus, Moltbot (formerly Clawdbot) and agents to move faster than teams 10× their size.

Not theory. Not prompting tutorials. Here's what we're covering:

- Claude Code for internal tools and agents
- Building workflows that generate real revenue without engineers. We've cut 90+ hours monthly using these systems.
- Remotion for scaled content
- How teams are doubling output without doubling headcount.
- Manus-style agents replacing manual work
- Entire categories of tasks that used to require full-time hires.
- Where AI creates real leverage vs. where it's overhyped
- Most "AI implementations" are just expensive toys. I'll show you the difference.
- What roles break, what roles evolve

This is for founders, CEOs, marketing leaders, and anyone responsible for output or P&L.

If you're still asking "how do we use AI?" you're already behind. Let's fix that.

📅 Live + interactive with Q&A throughout

Link to register in comments.

What's the biggest workflow you've automated with AI so far?

Before the industrial age, 80-90% of people were farmers.

Now it's 2%.

There were 30 years of job displacement in between.

We're entering that transition period again.

But this time it's not about manual labor. It's about tasks vs purpose.

Think about it:

The job of an agency was never "run campaigns." It was driving revenue.

The job of a data analyst was never "make reports." It was surface insights.

The tasks were just the way we delivered the purpose.

Now the tasks are collapsing.

Last week, one person did:

$45K of programmatic SEO in 20 minutes
$50K of expert copywriting in 10 minutes (simulating Ogilvy, Cialdini, April Dunford)
156 unique pSEO pages generated in parallel

No handwritten coding was involved.

The strategic thinkers will thrive. The task-executors will struggle.

I broke down the key workflows in the slides below from the livestream I did earlier this week.

Everything you need is widely available. The true constraint is taste and agency.

taplio

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