Featured on Startup CPG Podcast: OpenSky Ventures

Springdale Ventures has backed Feastables, Goodles, Tone, Khloud, and The Absorption Company. But they're not a celebrity fund. That's what makes this conversation different. Genevieve G. Gilbreath just joined me on the HotStart VC Podcast to break down how she evaluates celebrity and creator-founded brands as an early-stage consumer investor. Genevieve is a General Partner at Springdale Ventures, an early-stage consumer fund. Her portfolio includes some of the most successful celebrity-founded brands in the market: Feastables by MrBeast, Goodles with Gal Gadot, The Absorption Company with Nikki Reed and Ian Somerhalder, and many more. Her thesis: celebrity and creator founders aren't the business model. They're the accelerator. The best investments still require great operators, authentic product-market fit, and a brand that can stand on its own without relying solely on fame. She backs celebrity brands when the fundamentals are there, not because of the fame. She's passed on plenty along the way. Genevieve breaks down how she performs due diligence on celebrity brands differently than traditional consumer investments, why cap table structure can kill a deal before it starts, and what most investors get wrong when evaluating celebrity founders. Her number one piece of advice for investors: don't let the fame distract you from the fundamentals. Want to watch the full episode? Comment SPRINGDALE and I'll DM it to you.

The Soapbox team have crunched the Q1 numbers. We tracked 222 public VC funding rounds in the UK. Who were the busiest investors in the quarter? Here's the podium by deal count: 1. Entrepreneurs First 2. SFC Capital =3. Seedcamp, Haatch, Fuel Ventures 🚀 Check out all 220+ Q1 fundraises on the Soapbox platform. Hit 𝗩𝗶𝘀𝗶𝘁 𝗺𝘆 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 to find companies, investors, jobs and more.

Most early AI companies aren’t short on ideas, they’re short on clarity in the first 6–12 months. Nothing wrong there. It's just part of early stage exploration — and the inherent excitement of it. This conversation on Fund/Build/Scale gets into what that phase actually looks like: figuring out what to build, who it’s for, and what’s signal vs. noise when nothing is fully working yet. Our Partner, Puneet Agarwal, and Co-founder of Gather, Mayank M., go deep on: what Gather was trying to prove early on how that changed once they started building how conviction forms before traction shows up and the kinds of experiments that move things forward without burning time or capital Worth a listen when the episode drops.

Thanks very much to True Ventures Managing Partner Puneet Agarwal and Gather CEO/Co-founder Mayank M. for joining me on Fund/Build/Scale! We talked about what launching an AI-first startup actually looks like in the first 6–12 months, when you’re still trying to figure out what to build, who it’s for, and whether any of it works. We also got into: - what Gather was trying to prove early - what changed once they started building - how investor conviction forms before there’s real traction - experiments founders can run without burning months (or capital) No trend-chasing or thought leadership, just a conversation about how decisions actually get made when you don’t have any clean answers yet. Subscribe to the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter for the full breakdown + episode when it drops: 👉🏾 https://lnkd.in/g3iUhD8z

Genevieve Gilbreath built a $100M venture fund not in spite of her winding path through art, anthropology, yoga, and supplements, but precisely because of it. After starting college at 16 and navigating a non-linear career that took her from academia to teaching yoga and running a B2B herbal export business from the back of a rickshaw in India, she gained a boots-on-the-ground masterclass in the consumer products world. When she transitioned to the U.S. retail market, she faced the steep learning curve of raising capital and scaling a brand firsthand, eventually selling her business and moving into angel investing and ecosystem building with Naturally Austin. Recognizing a "missing middle" in funding where brands with $1–3M in revenue were ignored by major funds, she co-founded Springdale Ventures in 2019 to provide strategic, operator-led capital. Today, with roughly $100M AUM and a portfolio featuring breakout brands like Goodles, Caraway, and BeatBox Beverages, Genevieve proves that a "non-traditional" background—rooted in cultural intuition, empathy, and grit—is often the ultimate competitive advantage for a world-class investor. Learn how to find the intersection between your passion and entrepreneurship: bit.ly/48qb3eY

Everyone likes a clean slate, especially the co-founders of a cleaning products company. That’s what the co-founders of Branch Basics, Allison Evans, Kelly Love and Marilee Nelson gave themselves, though they knew it was a risk. They shuttered their startup in December 2015 — right after achieving $2 million in annual revenue for the first time — and kept it closed for a year and a half. Fast-forward to 2023, the company brought in nearly $34 million in gross sales, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Here's why the co-founders hit pause for 18 months, and how the risk paid off.

Nader Amiri - نادر أميري and Ahmad Shamieh understand CPG as they've seen it all. The operational support has been a game-changer for us. From sharpening our unit economics to helping us think through distribution and scale, they bring clarity when things are messy and push you when it matters the most. Would recommend them just for this!

We just closed our first fund... and this is personal as I move from corporate to founder to investor. What a ride so far! and excited about every day more & more. Homegrown Ventures Fund I: US$22.8M. MENA's first venture fund built for CPG. +14% oversubscribed. It took us 2 years. Over 500 conversations with LPs with an over 10% conversion rate. Notably, several "no"s turned to yes! When Ahmad Shamieh and I started, we never imagined we'd be sitting on the other side of the table.... I'm proud(!) of partnering with Ahmad in this journey... whose patience, operational excellence, and drive make us better every day! After building brands, launching companies, and watching incredible MENA CPG founders get overlooked... We knew someone had to build the fund we wished existed. Today, it exists. Fund I is deployed so far across 5 portfolio companies already proving the thesis: purpose-driven consumer brands... Bambuyu, Plaay, Gramiyaa, Tarwi Foods, PawPots... & the amazing founders behind them: Sahar Karoubi, Rashi Chowdhary, Mohamed Yaseen, Sibi Manivannan, Naveenrajamaran RL, Catarina Gorgulho, Jad KARAM, Jimmy El-Hajj, Eng We're just getting started... Thank you to everyone who believed in us before we had a track record: our LPs for their belief, our venture partners for their support, our portfolio founders for the hustle, and Adeo Ressi, Mike S., Myrto Lalacos, Connor Sattely, Neal Strickberger, Kerri Leathers Izunagbara and the entire VC Lab for giving us the launchpad. If you're building a consumer brand in this region, we want to hear from you.

AngelList to angel investor Ben Zises (Founder & GP, SuperAngel.Fund): "You have a disproportionate amount of companies that are performing." Ben: "Until my strategy stops working, I'm just gonna stick with it." Watch the clip to see the ONE THING Ben looks for in a pitch deck, and tune in to our full conversation below for how Ben went from building his own startup to becoming one of the earliest checks behind standout consumer brands.

Our first Capital and Craft webinar went down with a blast. Yesterday John Radford was joined by Oli Hammond of Fuel Ventures 🚀 for the first session of our new series. 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲. If you want a VC intro, don't cold email. Go connect with other successful founders. That was just one of the harsh realities we covered in a packed 45 minutes. A few other takeaways: ➡️ How to be the "Chosen One": Out of 4,000 opportunities Fuel sees a year, how do you actually stand out? ➡️ Founder-led Sales: Why you can't outsource the early hustle. ➡️ The Valuation Trap: Why you should never value your own business when you’re out raising. 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 & 𝗖𝗿𝗮𝗳𝘁? Our team at Tappable has been building startups and scale-ups for 15 years. We know the "Craft" side and how to build! The logic, the architecture, and the execution. But we also know that "Capital" is what fuels it. We’re running these monthly sessions to deliver real value back to the community. We want to help you raise smarter and build products that actually scale. Next Month: We’re switching focus to Product. How to build high-utility software that doesn't fall apart the moment you hit more than 100 users. Link to the full episode with Oli in the comments. 👇 #CapitalAndCraft #Founders #VentureCapital #StartupGrowth #Tappable