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

New Consumer VC with Craig Dubitsky.

Craig's built brands in cleaning, oral care, lip balm, and now coffee.

Categories most people avoid because they're too boring or too competitive.

But with Hello, he asked: Why is every toothpaste box covered in extracted teeth and fear-based messaging?

Instead of "kills" and "eliminates," he chose one word. Hello.

And flipped the entire tone of the category.

Now he's doing it again with Happy Coffee, co-founded with Robert Downey Jr.

Not positioning coffee as fuel or ritual. As a delivery system for happiness.

And the mission goes deeper than marketing:
• Happy gave NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) equity
• Mental health resources on every package
• Direct partnership with the org, not just a donation

We also talk about how Craig met Downey, why he's a true co-founder (not a spokesperson), and how they built blends together across time zones while Downey was filming overseas.

This might be the longest interview I've ever done and grateful for Craig being so generous with his time.

BIG thanks to David Simnick on introducing me to Craig.

And thank you to our good friend at The Hidden Gems for sponsoring this episode!

The Hidden Gems connects founders with highly vetted, brand-beloved boutique agencies across media, creative, dev/design, events, social, and more — at preferred rates. They’ve supported brands like Dr. Squatch, Monster Energy, Gorilla Mind, FIGS, and Saatva.

Contact David Drexler to get started



Link in comments to the full interview 👇
Link in comments to the full interview 👇
Link in comments to the full interview 👇

#CPG #Consumer #Investing #venturecapital #coffee

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

I had a conversation yesterday that stuck with me.

A founder who just signed a term sheet for a line of credit.

After receiving seven term sheets total.

That’s seven different banks and alternative lenders.

All with different terms, covenants, and fine print.

Sounds like a good problem to have, right?

Not quite. Here's what they told me:
• Applying with and managing relationships with 7 different lenders simultaneously was a full-time job. 
• Negotiating back and forth on terms that all looked similar but weren't
• Reading through pages of fine print to spot the differences
• Trying to compare apples to apples when everything was slightly different
• Doing all of this while running the actual business 

The whole process took weeks and was absolutely brutal.

When I mentioned Bridge's platform, which streamlines the entire process, their response was immediate: 

"I wish I had known about this from the beginning." 

Because here's the thing. 

Raising debt isn't just about getting the money. 

It's about managing the process efficiently so you can stay focused on growing the business. 

That's why I'm excited to be part of Bridge. 

We get you competitive offers within 48 hours. 

And you can focus on building your company instead of juggling term sheets. 

Best part? 

The platform is 100% free to use. 

After I explained what Bridge does, this founder said exactly what I was thinking: "Why didn't I use you all in the first place?" 

If you're looking to raise debt, we have 500+ lenders on our platform and would love to help you run a competitive process.

P.S. All the lenders this founder received term sheets from are on our platform 🙂

👀

Excited for tomorrow's Consumer VC episode

Is the VC fund structure broken for early-stage consumer?

Manica Blain thinks it might be.

Manica's one of the OG consumer VCs.

She backed FIGS and Cotopaxi through her fund Campfire Capital, one of the earliest dedicated early-stage consumer funds.

Now she's moved to a completely different model.

On the latest episode, she gets candid about the structural problems she's seen from the inside.

A few things that stuck with me:
• SPVs sound flexible, but they come with real tradeoffs
• Slow brand growth is often a better signal than early viral spikes
• Management fees can quietly shift a fund's focus away from returns
• GP commit size changes how much skin an investor actually has in the game

She also talks about why she now invests through Top Knot using her own capital, works directly with founders as an operator and advisor, and why she thinks that model is a better partnership for consumer companies.

There's also a great bit on why she stopped investing in food and beverage entirely.

If you care about how early-stage consumer investing actually works, this one's worth your time.

The episode is also brought to you by The Hidden Gems!

There's a lot of BS in the Agency landscape. That's why Founders and Executives of brands both big and small trust: The Hidden Gems. 

They provide the most optimal boutique Agencies to conquer any brand goals with top quality and efficiency. Brands get preferred rates. Can't lose. They’re supporting the growth of incredible brands like Dr. Squatch, Monster Energy, Gorilla Mind, Saatva and many more. DM founder David Drexler to get started

Link to listen to the full episode in the comments 👇👇👇

#consumer #venturecapital #podcast #CPG #ConsumerVC

This is awesome. All brand founders should apply

We want to send you to the World Cup!!

Flights, hotel, transportation covered. Oh also - TWO tickets to our all-exclusive Glimpse suite at the game.  ⚽ 🔥🔥 

Here's how to enter to join us on June 18th in LA.
👉 Book a meeting with Glimpse and bring your brand's Founder, C-level, or VP+ Finance/Logistics/Ops leader
👉 If you are a brand's Founder, C-level, or VP+ Finance/Logistics/Ops leader, book a meeting with Glimpse
👉 Post on LinkedIn that you've entered and tag @Glimpse for a bonus entry

Link to enter in the comments. 🚀🚀

Rishi Sharma

Founder and Podcaster

I grew up in the security industry. My earliest memories are warehouse floors stacked with cameras and cable, ride-alongs with technicians, and customers trusting us to protect what mattered most.

That experience shaped how I lead today.

Over the years I helped scale a video surveillance company from a family business into a national brand, and we achieved a successful exit. It taught me how rare durable companies are and how important it is to protect the people and culture that make them work.

Today I run NextGen Live Security, focused on live video monitoring, security systems integration, and fire life safety. We build on the foundation I was raised in, combining disciplined operations with modern technology.

Security is changing fast. Customers expect seamless monitoring, smarter analytics, and faster service. The heart of the work has not changed. It is still about people who show up, respond quickly, and keep promises. Our job is to blend both worlds. The craftsmanship of legacy operators and the precision of AI driven systems.

We focus on practical improvements that compound over time. We train technicians to master tools that reduce false alarms and improve awareness. We simplify quote to cash workflows so every install, upgrade, and service visit runs smoother. We standardize checklists and feedback loops so quality stays consistent as we grow.

I have run P and Ls and managed field teams. I have learned that great systems do not replace good people. They amplify them.

This industry raised me and I am proud to keep building in it. If you operate an integration firm, manage a monitoring center, or lead security for a facility, I would love to trade ideas and compare what is working.

Email me at Rish@Nextgenlivesecurity.com

Mentor

The Founder Institute carefully recruits 20-40 Mentors per semester, and we typically only accept Mentors that have built or led technology businesses. Our Mentors lead the weekly training sessions, and their mandate is to help our participants by sharing their experience, outlining the latest tactics, and providing critical feedback. In addition, through the Founder Institute's Shared Liquidity Pool, Mentors are strongly incentivized to help our companies after Graduation, and many have become formal advisors to our Graduate companies.

Rishi S.

90% of "AI-powered" security is just marketing.

I'm speaking at ISC West 2026 to break down what's real.

Talk: "AI Monitoring — What's Hype and What's Not"

I've built, invested in, and acquired security companies. I've seen what AI actually delivers vs. what gets sold on a slide deck.

📍 Las Vegas | March 23–26

Register for 20% off SIA Education: https://lnkd.in/gbCP8isq
See you there.

From Video Surveillance Exit to NextGen Live Security | Helping Founders Transition with Care & Unlock Growth in Physical Security

Your sales team is busy.

But busy doing what?

I've watched reps make 50 calls a day in the security industry.
Tons of demos. Tons of proposals.

And still lose deals they should have won.
Not because the product was wrong.

Because they pitched features to someone who couldn't sign a check.
Here's what nobody trains sales teams on:

How businesses actually work.

Where budgets come from. Who controls the money. The difference between capital spend and operating spend.

Most reps are trained as order takers.
They wait for a request. Quote a price. Hope it closes.

That's not selling. That's clerking.

The best reps I've seen think like operators.
They ask: "Is this funded?"

They ask: "Who else needs to say yes?"
They ask: "Does this fit your capital plan or your monthly budget?"

That one question changes everything.

Because when you understand how money moves inside a company, you stop chasing bad deals.
Your pipeline gets cleaner. Your close rate goes up. Your forecast stops lying to you.

And here's the real shift:
Stop selling projects. Start selling recurring revenue.

The install isn't the finish line. It's the onboarding.

Train your team to think like business people — not product pushers.

Business literacy is the most underrated competitive advantage in sales.

What's the one thing you wish your sales team understood about how companies actually buy?

The biggest threat to your central station isn't competition.

It's your false alarm volume quietly burning out your best operators.

One central station VP recently said 80% of their outbound alarm calls go unanswered. I believe it. I spent years listening to operators dial number after number into voicemail. Same script. Same dead air. Same look on their face by hour six.

We treated it like weather. Just something you dealt with.

But here's what that "weather" actually costs you.

Your best operators quit inside three months because they spend entire shifts chasing noise instead of handling real emergencies.

Municipalities start issuing fines because your false dispatch rate is out of control.

Clients stop picking up because they've been conditioned to assume every call is another false alarm.

It's a flywheel spinning in the wrong direction.

The central stations getting ahead of this aren't hiring more people. They're using conversational AI to triage the noise before it ever reaches a human. 

False alarms get filtered. Systems get put on test. Dispatches happen without an operator playing phone tag for twenty minutes.

This isn't about replacing your team. It's about protecting them.

Every minute your best operator spends chasing a false alarm is a minute they're not on a real one.

AI doesn't make operators unnecessary. It makes the job survivable.

Google DeepMind just launched Project Genie, an AI that simulates physical environments with real-world physics in real time. Not video generation. Dynamic simulation.

Now apply that to security.

Today's monitoring stack:

• Motion triggers alert
• Human verifies
• Dispatch responds

Tomorrow's stack:

• AI models how a space normally behaves
• Detects deviation from environmental baseline
• Predicts risk before intrusion completes

Cameras don't go away. They become sensors feeding world models: AI systems that understand physics, movement patterns, and threat vectors for every space they monitor.

The margin shifts to whoever owns three things:

• The world model: environmental intelligence at scale
• The behavioral dataset: what "normal" looks like, building by building
• The intelligence layer: prediction over reaction

What shifts downstream:

• RMR compounds on intelligence, not camera counts
• Underwriting prices risk from behavioral data, not hardware density
• Consolidation rewards platforms with proprietary world models
• Margins expand when the moat is data and simulation, not install labor

Most security businesses still price on hardware and truck rolls. That model erodes when value migrates to the simulation layer.

Security is becoming a simulation industry. The question for every integrator, central station, and security leader:

Are you underwriting cameras, or the intelligence that makes them valuable?

What layer of the stack are you building on?

Most businesses are using AI to do the same work cheaper.

Faster proposals. Fewer callbacks. Leaner teams.

Real gains. But here is the problem: your competitor bought the same tools last Tuesday.

When everyone rows harder, nobody pulls ahead. Margins compress. The customer captures all the value.

The businesses I keep watching are doing something different. They are using AI to change what the customer is buying. Guarantees. Bundled outcomes. Pricing tied to results instead of hours.

That is not an efficiency play. That is a positioning play.

In this week's Mindful Capital, I break down the difference between rowing and sailing, why the market misprices efficiency, and where pricing power actually comes from.

If you are an owner running a service business, this one is for you.

#AI #SmallBusiness #PricingStrategy #EntrepreneurshipThroughAcquisition #MindfulCapital

You cut headcount. Automated proposals. Shaved two days off your quoting cycle. Then a prospect tells you they got a lower bid from the outfit down th

Open article: Sailing vs. Rowing: How AI Creates Pricing Power, Not Just Cost Savings by Rishi Sharma • 5 min read

Sailing vs. Rowing: How AI Creates Pricing Power, Not Just Cost Savings

True story from a security company I work with.

Customer calls in.
"Your cameras keep dropping offline. We're done."

$4,200 a month in RMR. Gone.

The team ran diagnostics.
Cameras were fine.
NVR was fine.
Software was fine.

The building's Wi-Fi was garbage.

They installed six IP cameras
and a cloud access control system
on a network held together
by an $80 consumer router
in a utility closet.

And nobody thought to check that
before the install.

This happens ALL the time.

We sell cloud-connected everything now.
IP cameras. Smart locks. Remote monitoring.
All of it running over networks
we never even look at.

One integrator I know started adding
a basic structured network install
to every single proposal.

Runs about $800 to $1,200 extra per job.
Customers barely push back on it.

Service calls dropped.
Churn dropped.
Margins went up.

Because the stuff they installed
actually worked the way it was supposed to.

If you're still treating the network
as "the customer's responsibility,"
I'd rethink that.

It's your name on the system
when it stops working.

#SecurityIntegration #PhysicalSecurity #RMR #SecurityBusiness #MindfulCapital

The security industry talks about RMR the way real estate talks about cap rates. Everyone knows the number. Few understand the mechanics underneath.

RMR is not a business model. It's a moat, if you build it right.

Most operators stop at contractual switching costs: multi-year agreements, monitoring contracts, maintenance terms. That's layer one. It gets you in the door but won't keep competitors out.

Layer two is operational. Manage credentials, firmware updates, compliance logs, remote diagnostics. Switching vendors now means real operational disruption, not just a contract penalty.

Layer three is data. Every incident, service call, and site record builds an intelligence edge your replacement won't have. The more you process, the harder you are to displace.

This is what separates a low-margin integrator from an infrastructure partner with real pricing power.

SDM reports the range of RMR models has never been broader: cloud, subscription, managed services. SIA's 2026 Megatrends puts AI-driven managed services at the top of the transformation list.

The risk: treating RMR as a billing cadence without building the workflow depth behind it.

Revenue recurs on a schedule. Moats hold because they're earned.

Pop quiz for security integrators:

When was the last time you updated firmware
on a customer's NVR?

Or changed the default password
on their IP cameras?

Or put their security devices
on a separate VLAN from the office network?

If you're being honest, the answer
for most companies is "never."

And that's a problem
that's about to get really expensive.

Every IP camera you install
is basically a small computer
sitting on someone's network.

Every cloud-connected door controller
is an access point.

Not just for people walking through the door.
For anyone on the internet.

We sell "security" for a living.
But most of us don't secure
the systems we install.

I think the next few years
are going to force this conversation.

Insurance carriers are already starting
to ask questions about connected devices.
Customers are going to expect
cyber hygiene as part of the package.
Not as a premium add-on. As standard.

The integrators who figure this out now
get to set the terms.

The ones who wait
get to explain to a customer
why their "secure" building
got breached through a camera
with the password still set to admin/admin.

Where does your company stand on this?
Honestly want to know.

#SecurityIndustry #Cybersecurity #PhysicalSecurity #VideoSurveillance #MindfulCapital

Most people in security services are chasing the big contract. The whale account. The game changing partnership.

I get it. We did the same thing in my family's business early on.

But the thing that actually got us onto the Inc. 5000 list multiple times wasn't one big win. It was a pile of small ones nobody wanted to talk about at dinner.

Shaving two minutes off a dispatch workflow. Fixing an onboarding checklist that hadn't been touched in five years. Replacing a chain of back-and-forth emails with one automation that ran while we slept.

None of it was exciting. All of it compounded.

One small fix saves a few hours a week. Roll that out across forty client sites, fifty weeks a year, and you're looking at thousands of dollars recovered from thin air. Stack ten of those fixes and suddenly your "boring" ops improvements are doing more for your margins than that whale account you spent six months chasing.

This is what I think about constantly now as we build NextGen Live Security. The gap between a good security company and a great one isn't vision or culture or some proprietary technology.

It's whether the team has the discipline to make the business 1% less clunky every single week. To actually fix the bottleneck instead of working around it for the fourth year in a row.

Compounding isn't magic. It's math. And most operators leave it on the table because the work isn't glamorous enough to post about.

Culture isn't a value on a wall.

It's what happens every Monday at 9am.

As an operator and investor in the security industry, I've talked to a lot of companies.

Alarm shops. Integrators. Monitoring centers.

The fast ones all have something in common.
It's not better techs. It's not more trucks.

It's rituals.

Named, repeatable habits the whole team knows by heart.

The best security companies I've observed do things like:

→ Monday morning standups. Review every open install, every stuck service ticket, every at-risk RMR account. Start the week knowing where the fires are.
→ Friday ride-alongs. Owners or managers ride with a tech once a month. You learn more in one truck ride than ten reports.
→ Weekly pipeline scrubs. Sales and ops in the same room. Kill the dead deals. Move the real ones forward.
→ Quarterly "what broke" reviews. Not blame sessions. Honest looks at what failed — a lost customer, a bad install, a missed renewal. Then fix the process so it doesn't happen again.

I learned this concept from Shishir Mehrotra.

He says you can judge a company by the quality of its rituals.
I believe that.

Because most companies have meetings.
Great companies have rituals.

One drains energy. The other compounds it.

The security companies that scale don't do it by accident.
They built the machine on purpose.

What's one ritual that keeps your team sharp?

I picked up John Malone's memoir expecting a standard business book.

It wrecked me in the best way.

Not because of the numbers (though taking a near-bankrupt company to a $48B exit is wild). But because the frameworks he used to build the largest cable empire in America map almost perfectly onto the security industry I work in every day.

Malone looked at a fragmented, subscription-driven, infrastructure-heavy industry and saw a compounding machine. He invented EBITDA. He built an acquisition flywheel. He turned distribution into leverage. He structured every deal so the downside was survivable and the upside was enormous.

The security industry is sitting on the same kind of opportunity right now.

I wrote a deep-dive for Mindful Capital breaking down the mental models from the book and how they apply to alarm dealers, central stations, and integrators.
If you're in the security space, or any fragmented recurring-revenue industry, I think this one's worth 15 minutes.

#MindfulCapital #SecurityIndustry #EntrepreneurshipThroughAcquisition #JohnMalone #AlarmIndustry

I just finished reading John Malone's memoir. The playbook he used to build the largest cable empire in American history maps almost perfectly onto th

Open article: What John Malone's Cable Empire Teaches Us About the Future of the Security Industry by Rishi Sharma • 16 min read

What John Malone's Cable Empire Teaches Us About the Future of the Security Industry

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