Ashish Manchharam’s Post

Focus can mislead you! Tomorrow may not be better than today! NOW is the time to scale & grow! One of the most confusing pieces of advice I’ve taken is focus on a single geography. Advice can be so confusion, misleading and detrimental to your business. Yes, it is our responsibility as founders to take the hinges and resposivility for our mistake and this one I hone! You do want focus! Question is not whether to focus but until when to focus! Have a clear plan of focused actions - build up the business, have a product market fit, have a roll out plan … but isn’t that arbitrary? When is that until by? When is a good time to unleash your inner growth! Here is a timeline of what happened in CHEFIN: 2015-June - idea 💡 phase, 7 friends brainstorm over the idea. 4 consequently become the founders and 3 early stage advisors / contributors. 2015-Dec first customers roll in, literally 6m down the track we have got idea-market fit! 2016-Mar - team split, disagreement over management practices & direction, 2 remain. 2016-Nov - FoodTech hackathon - new team of 4 is formed. 2017-May - CHEFIN hits product market fit for innovator segment, 2018-Feb - team splits, 2 founders remain - early stage team elevated to founding team, 2018-Nov - First round raised from a bunch of Angels & small VCs, new team on-boarded, business scaling 300% yoy, 2018-Dec - Launch in Melbourne & Brisbane (officially), 2019-Feb - Sydney testing of Pop-up concept with Retro Space, HiddenVenues & Blue Oasis, 2019-Sep - pop up concept test completed, knowledge bank build and product folded, 2019-Oct - business re-structured, team cut and Platform v5 launched with a cashflow positive operational model, 2020-March - COVID19 closures, CHEFIN™ launched across Australia - into Adelaide, Hobart, Launceston, Gold Coast, Canberra, Newcastle, NSW Central & South Coasts! 2021 - write off year 2022 started the ground work for an USA 🇺🇸 expansion and set up New Zealand, Auckland in particular. 2023 Hong Kong 🇭🇰 was live, together with New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. Groundwork was done for San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, Houston, Austin, Denver, Mobile & and few other markets across 🇺🇸! 2024 we are heading into Brazil 🇧🇷 and Singapore 🇸🇬. With a few other decisions & plans happening in parallel. What I’ve learned is scaling is the best teacher! I never thought software needs to be set for multiple time zones, or each currency would require a different workflow due to business registrations & taxation! But hey that’s the things you learn from experience! Taken on a global insurance police was a game changer as well. And working out phone numbers & addresses - wow, was that not a challenge we saw at first! The reality is that the hardest thing in scaling is your mindset! Unlocking your fear from entering a new market and getting out of your comfort zone! Follow for REAL experiences from a REAL entrepreneur! I scale my startup globally.

In 2023, we saw over 650 pitch decks. We invested in 6 companies. Here is a “building in public” summary of 2023: 1) The most popular industries (of pitch decks received) we saw were: - Wellbeing (mainly stress management and employee wellbeing), and Carbon Calculator/environmental data based products. - We saw around 60 of these businesses (9% of total deals). We haven’t invested in one yet. 2) We invested into 6 businesses: - We aimed to invest in 10, but only managed 6. - We found our extremely thorough discovery processes (we spent an average of 122 days doing DD with the companies we invested into) and niche thesis, limited the amount of companies we had 100% conviction on. - We invested into CakeDrop, Oya Kitchens, EDITORIELLE, UJJI 🏆 , Naurt and Tidal Cleaning Services. 3) The main reasons we chose not to invest were: - Founder fit - Lack of demand validation/product market fit - We couldn’t agree on valuation 4) We’re raising money again ! - We are raising £6 million, closing in Q1 2024, to invest into more companies and follow on into our existing portfolio. - We only started raising again recently, and we’re making progress (we have over £3m in commitments) but it’s tough out there ! - In November, (for example) I had 8 investor meetings, 50% the proposition wasn’t quite right for them, and the other 50% were very engaged and we’re still talking. - Our target LP’s are Family Offices, and HNW’s - we want our investors to get involved in our portfolio companies too, which is a big part of our ecosystem. 5) We’re relatively happy with the gender balance in our investments in 2023, but there’s always more we can do: - 2 of our investments are female-founded. - 1 is male-female founded - 3 are male-founded. 6) We shifted from ideation deals to revenue generating very early on: - We initially hunted for ideation stage startups, but found the valuations for these companies were the same, or similar as companies that have offline product/services that can be digitised. - Offline to online companies became our main goal. Essentially, starting with product market fit (AKA revenue), but just without the tech piece - which we bring. 7) Our thesis stayed pretty “niche”: - We’re looking for offline businesses that we can digitise, or early “scrappy” MVP’s that we can industrialise with our tech and product teams. - We don’t want businesses that need to exit for £100m for anyone to make money from the deal. We’re not hunting for unicorns, instead we’re very happy with tortoises. - The more niche and “unsexy” the business, the better. We get really excited about these opportunities, and feel there’s enormous value in the economy waiting to be unlocked. —--- Last year was an interesting year for the startup world ! But, my overriding feeling is of optimism for 2024 and beyond. The talent we have in the UK, and the ecosystem is going from strength to strength. Yes, it’s difficult out there - but there’s enormous opportunity too !

To fellow founders and brands - we're here to help. 💪🏼 While we're deep into building our next venture, we recognize the unique nature of what we're building affords us the opportunity to dedicate time to support the right clients and brands. For context, our team has supported over 100 clients and brands, designing and commercializing hundreds of products across nearly every category and service. The diversity of problems we've solved, the relationships we've built, bring immense value to the table. We're creatives at heart and dynamic operators by discipline. We're built for speed on all things go-to-market. Our unique, open book approach ensures every decision you make leads to the intended results. Every consideration affects every pillar of your business, don't forget it. If you need an experienced team to advise (and/or execute) on go-to-market strategy, including brand, creative development, product design, storytelling, customer acquisition and retention, e-commerce, retail strategy (or why you shouldn't), and operations - drop us a line. Similarly, if you're raising capital, preparing for M&A - we've done it all too often. We've been in your shoes and fully understanding the implications of timing and strategy of these decisions. Lean on us. We’d love to explore how we can work together and have fun doing it, together. #BusinessGrowth #BrandStrategy #GoToMarket #ProductDesign #CustomerExperience #DirectToConsumer #Retail #Operations #Consulting #M&A #startup #raisingcapital #ventures #consumergoods #cpg Mavrics™

You will get better early employees by offering more equity. It’s a main theme I hear from candidates disregarding early stage startups for early hire roles.

KEY INSIGHTS ▪ With less capital available among investors, founders have to find new ways to convince private equity and venture capital firms of their value propositions. ▪ Ensuring a pitch is tailored to each investors’ check size and investment strategy will give businesses a leg-up. ▪ Many founders trip up by focussing on superfluous factors like social media hype when pitching and not understanding key business metrics such as unit economics. There’s one thing Ariel Ohana, managing partner of investment firm Ohana & Co., definitely doesn’t need to hear a brand pitch: the size of the beauty market. “[People include] that the beauty industry is worth $27 billion. The global market size is not going to make your company successful. As a beauty investor, I know that, and I’ve already looked at 100 other beauty brands,” he said. 2024′s funding climate is an entirely different beast to that of the post-pandemic boom when valuations soared high, checks were hefty and investors were generally flush with cash. In 2022, beauty companies raised $1.6 billion in venture capital and private equity, per data from capital markets company PitchBook. By 2023, that figure had slumped to $493 million. Read the full story below by BoF's Daniela Morosini #Beauty

Can we pay early / key employees more in equity?   These numbers coming out of Carta feel low to me. There is also nuance by sector, which this is not capturing.   Tough not to think this is a result of recent crazy valuations and pressure on Founders to “sell the dream” to early employees of $Big exits. But when alot of these startups fail or get recapped, early employees get nothing, Founders *generally* get nothing, and early investors maybe get their pref back plus a little bit.   I think emphasizing the equitization of key employees is critical to the growth of the ecosystem in the future and the flywheel turning more sustainably.   Especially in an industry like consumer, where $B exits are less likely, we need to be even more thoughtful about appropriate incentives.   One way to come at this with data: Look at the performance and outcome of startups that pay their early employees more equity (multiples more) vs. less.   #d2c #entrepreneurship #ecommerce #founders #brands

Where does value lie? I think about this a lot in the context of EmergeOne and the fractional CFO work we do. It gives us huge insight into what's going on 'under the hood' in fast growth venture tech startups and the question of 'value' is always top of mind. In your venture, you have to ask yourself where you are driving the value. It could be from any of the following (which in itself is non-exhuastive). ➡️ Your people. ➡️ Your tech. ➡️ Your knowledge. ➡️ Your partnerships. ➡️ Your leverage. ➡️ Your capital. ➡️ Your processes. ➡️ Your equipment. ➡️ Your data. ➡️ Your supply chain. ➡️ Your community. ➡️ Your brand. Exceptional businesses leverage various elements of this, let's take Apple as an example. Apple is known for hiring the best people in the industry and that went right to the top with Steve Jobs being iconic in the industry. It is clearly known well for the tech that it has built, though moreso the hardware than the software for a long time, its knowledge of design aesthetic is what propelled its products to such meteroic success which in turn fuelled both the community of Apple consumers as well as the company's brand. The partnerships it has created (373 of them apparently with Salesforce being the largest) obviously augment their offering and the control over their supply chain has meant they have been able to build high end products at low cost. I think you get it - the list goes on and on. By leveraging all of these aspects, it has been able to capture a much larger share of the market than its competitors, even as an avid Samsung Galaxy user for years, I would not say that the community and brand are anywhere near as strong as Apple's. But when you are a small startup it is clearly incredibly difficult to try and deal with all these elements, so my advice is always to focus on one initially and get the flywheel of value running with that in the first instance. Diluting attention across multiple value drivers may mean you don't get a strong result in any of them, focussing allows you to really build an early edge in one or maybe two of them from where you can continue to build. If you were to think about your business today, where does your value lie? For us at EmergeOne, it is clearly our people, our knowledge and our brand and my focus is always to amplify and maximise all of these areas. What about you?

Nice feature, WWD! Thanks Kathryn Hopkins & Jenny B. Fine for highlighting our Consumer VC Benchmarks: Seed-to-Series A report, covering Beauty & Personal Care trends and outlooks! 💼💄 “In our view, generalist VCs are missing out and consumer specialists are clearly bullish. Of the consumer product categories, beauty and personal care is a bright spot and an area with significant opportunity: attractive valuations and strong exit price — buy low, sell high as they say. It is the category most favored by early-stage consumer VCs we spoke with for this reason and continuing demand by strategics to grow through.” - Diana Melencio, General Partner at XRC Ventures Missed the memo? Beauty is booming! 💥 Despite market turbulence, beauty investments are on the rise, offering lucrative opportunities for savvy investors. Check out the WWD article: https://lnkd.in/ecqQY8E9 And, download our full report: https://lnkd.in/eRTuef3r #InvestmentBoom #BeautyRenaissance

In these current times, SMEs face a myriad of obstacles from AI to hybrid workplaces to securing funding to protecting brand reputation. I contributed my thoughts to this Business Journals Leadership Trust article about risk management and safe guarding your business. #Q5Advisory #riskmanagement #SmallBusinessChallenges #Entrepreneurship

Did you know that the top-10 beauty & personal care brands capture ~60% of the global market? Our analysis of 122 US beauty and personal care players reveals a surge in D2C and indie brands significantly bolstering the contract manufacturing segment. However, although specialized players opt for an omnichannel strategy, generalist e-retailers like Amazon dominate digital sales channels. PE-led interest has been significant, with >55% of the identified assets being sponsor-backed. Herein, investors are attracted to the emergence of high-growth D2C brands coupled with the industry's resilient nature and attractive margins. However, competition due to low regulatory requirements and ever-changing customer preferences, act as a key detractor. Advent International, Altos Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital, Blackstone, The Carlyle Group, Cerberus Capital Management, Comcast Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, Eurazeo, Felix Capital, Fifth Wall, Five Points Capital, Forerunner, General Atlantic, Goldman Sachs, Gryphon Investors, Index Ventures, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, L Catterton, Lerer Hippeau, Lightbank, Lightspeed, MaC Venture Capital, Maveron, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Norwest Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Soma Capital, Summit Partners, Thrive Capital, TPG and Y Combinator are currently invested in the US beauty & personal care market. Interested? Read our full report: https://lnkd.in/g7HxBz4g #privateequity #venturecapital #beauty #personalcare #d2c #ecommerce