consumer-investing
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Kimmy Scotti Built Her Investing Compass Before She Had a Fund
Before Neon, Kimmy Scotti learned venture capital by making things: jewelry, media, prescription savings and skincare. Her career is a study in following the useful clue, especially when it points somewhere unexpected.
Andrew Abraham Built Orgain by Listening to the Shelf
Before Orgain reached more than 100,000 stores, its founder answered the phones, improvised an org chart with family names and watched an early batch turn stubbornly solid. His useful talent was never pretending the first plan was sacred.
Daniel Broukhim Put the Gift Bag on a Balance Sheet
FabFitFun began as a newsletter, found its business model in the event gift bag, and grew by treating surprise as an operating system. Daniel Broukhim’s career is a study in pivots, partnership, and the unglamorous math behind a delightful box.
The Venture Firm That Refuses to Rush the Clock
Most venture funds are built around an expiration date. Cue Ball Capital is built around the opposite idea: give good people, useful products and durable companies the time they actually need.
The $11 Billion Firm Built on a Buyout of Its Old Boss
MidOcean Partners started by buying a $1.8 billion private-equity business from Deutsche Bank. Two decades later, its three-part platform shows how a focused middle-market investor can become a capital shop without trying to become everything to everyone.
Norwest Built a 65-Year Venture Firm Around One Unfashionable Idea: Range
In a market built on specialization, Norwest sells breadth: one global fund, checks from $1 million to $200 million, and an operator bench designed to show up only when invited.
The Investors Who Put a Creative Agency Inside the Fund
CAVU Consumer Partners does not stop at writing checks. Its operator-investor model helped turn a farmer's-market vinegar drink into Poppi - and made brand design, distribution and talent part of the investment product.
Monica Desai Weiss
Monica Desai Weiss is the Chief Business Officer of Manifest OS, the New York startup building an AI-native law firm model that raised a $60M Series A in April 2026 at a $750M valuation. A former bond trader at JPMorgan, she ran Operations & Strategy at Blockchain.com, then spent years as a Principal at Kleiner Perkins backing fintech, crypto and consumer companies including Settle, Propel and Nova Credit. She is also a writer whose 'Bits' essays dissected the early DeFi and NFT waves.
Peter Blackwood
Peter Blackwood is a Partner on the Capital Network team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he leads the Consumer vertical and manages the firm's global investor, corporate strategic, and advisory relationships for consumer and gaming companies. A former investment banker with over 15 years in the technology sector - spanning SoundView Technology Group, Janney Montgomery Scott, and JMP Securities - Blackwood brings deep capital markets expertise to a16z portfolio companies navigating equity raises, debt financing, and strategic partnerships. He is co-author of a16z's widely-read '16 Commandments of Raising Equity in a Challenging Market' and joined the board of gaming platform Overwolf following a16z's $75M Series D investment. Off-hours, he chases trout on rivers.
Nicole Quinn
Nicole Quinn is a Managing Partner at Connect Ventures and former General Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, where she spent a decade building one of Silicon Valley's most distinctive consumer investing portfolios. A former British 100-meter sprinter who traded the track for Wall Street, Quinn worked on the Facebook and Groupon IPOs at Morgan Stanley before pivoting to venture capital. Known as the 'Celebrity Whisperer,' she's backed Lady Gaga's Haus Labs, Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop, and companies like Calm, Cameo, and Rothy's. With a mathematics degree from York University and an MBA from Stanford, Quinn combines analytical rigor with an athlete's competitive drive and a certified coach's empathy for founders navigating the long game of company building.
Kirsten Green
Kirsten Green is the founder and managing partner of Forerunner Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm with nearly $3 billion in AUM that made early bets on Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, Glossier, Bonobos, and Chime. A former equity research analyst who walked mall parking lots every Friday counting shopping bags, Green built Forerunner over a decade of SPV investments before raising her first institutional fund in 2012. Her consumer-first thesis - that following where people spend their time and money reveals where the economy is heading - has made her one of the most recognized venture investors in the world, appearing on the Forbes Midas List and Forbes World's 100 Most Powerful Women consecutively since 2017.
Li Jin
Li Jin is a venture capitalist, writer, and creator who coined the term 'passion economy' and spent years investing in platforms that help individuals turn their passions into livelihoods. She served as a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), then founded Atelier Ventures, and later co-founded Variant Fund - raising over $450M to back web3 and ownership-driven platforms. An active creator herself, she writes 'Li's Newsletter' on Substack with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and co-hosted the Means of Creation podcast. In August 2024, she transitioned from General Partner to Advisor at Variant to pursue interests in education, innovation, and creative projects.