Carlos Ventura Jr.

Advice for consumer brands raising later stage rounds: Valuation may be more about your investor’s target return and view of exit value than revenue / ebitda multiples Remember that in CPG there are few exits over $500m Knowing this, most private investors want to underwrite $200-500m exits and don’t want to earn less than 2x That means raising at $150m pre-money in most categories will be very hard Set your expectations right before you go out to raise, you don’t want a busted process Often the solution is insiders who want to increase ownership / exposure if even if means <2x on last money in

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Darden Restaurants recently reported its quarterly results, showcasing resilience amidst a challenging environment. While Olive Garden faced a decline in same-store sales for the second consecutive quarter, Darden's overall performance remained steady, with earnings per share surpassing expectations at $2.65 and revenue reaching $2.96 billion. Looking forward to fiscal 2025, Darden projects a promising outlook with expected earnings per share between $9.40 and $9.60 and anticipated net sales of $11.8 billion to $11.9 billion. The company's LongHorn Steakhouse segment notably reported a 4% increase in same-store sales, underscoring Darden's effective management and operational strength. With plans to invest $550 million to $600 million in capital expenditures, Darden is poised to enhance its offerings and maintain its competitive edge in the market. Read More Here: https://lnkd.in/eFgDC97p #hospitality #restaurants #technology #innovation Branded Hospitality Ventures Angelo Fama Jr. John Espy Dave George Daryl L. Cunningham Lisa McDowell Robert Anderson Ali Charri

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Boards of Directors – How Relevant To The Business Is The Board? In 2014, activist investor Starboard Value successfully replaced all 12 directors on the board of Darden Restaurants. The following shows the Darden incumbent board at the time of Starboard's proxy fight, Starboard’s value creation plan initiatives, the Starboard director nominees and the before and after performance (revenue, EBITDA, EBITDA margin and stock price). Note especially the direct relevance of each Starboard nominee to the industry or some aspect of the value creation plan. How often do you see this level of relevance on public company boards?

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This week Mikal Ventures brings you a 4-week breakdown of the non-US capital market with an emphasis on the Mikal verticals. Over the 4-week period ending May 29, a total of 1,545 new companies were added, with 101,688 companies included in the non-US Health Tech, Med Tech, Fin Tech, AI Tech, and Ed Tech verticals. The non-US AI Tech saw the greatest percentage growth in new companies for the period, weighing in at a notable 27%, nearly two times the overall vertical average of 15%. The non-US Heath Tech vertical led the group in transactions. Non-US Med Tech vertical lead in both SEC Filings and news articles. Mikal Ventures publishes these stats on a rolling 4-week basis to provide a perspective on how the verticals and new startups move through time. We hope you find them informative and thought-provoking. VC Investors are always adjusting their "Play Book" with a variety of options for investing. Mikal Ventures is one of those alternatives, offering curated solutions to real world problems. Reach out if you have questions on how we can be of assistance and bookmark https://mikalventures.com/ for additional insights and information.

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To all #founders and #entrepreneurs out there, our intro meetings are conversational and easy going. Feel free to message me to setup a call. Learn what Pioneera Ventures can do for you!

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The face you make when you realize that you have become pretty good at sourcing off-market opportunities and have private equity and family office investors ready to back you, but you don’t have enough talent to take advantage of those opportunities. With that said, if you know of anyone in the commercial bakery, dry cleaning, food distribution, or commercial laundry space who is looking for board and/or C-level opportunities, please let me know. #boardadvisor #clevel #executives #commercialbakery #commerciallaundry #drycleaning #fooddistribution #privateequity #investmentbanking

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I'm crowdsourcing a better investor database for Boston area capital because founders and VCs shouldn't have to pay Pitchbook and Crunchbase for a basic directory. A few months ago, I assembled a list of emerging managers in the New England region and was surprised that this hadn't been done before. I've also had founders repeatedly ask me, "Who invests in ____?" and I don't exactly know. I put together an initial list of about 90 firms, angel groups, family offices, and accelerators. While the list isn't perfect, it's a start. If you're a founder, investor, or community member, take a moment to help make this data just 1% better. I'll keep the editing permissions open as long as everyone stays friendly and civil. https://lnkd.in/gFt6bZPp 186 Ventures .406 Ventures 3CC | Third Culture Capital AlleyCorp DeepTech Argon Ventures Athenian VC Baukunst Blindspot Ventures Branch Venture Group Broom Ventures C10 Labs Companyon Ventures Cybernetix Ventures Encoded Ventures Equal Opportunity Ventures First Star Ventures One Way Ventures NextView Ventures Raiz Capital Hyperplane Glasswing Ventures Techstars Boston Accelerator MassChallenge Innospark Ventures New North Ventures Underscore VC York IE

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Ibotta, Inc., a platform that helps CPG brands deliver promotions to millions of consumers went public today, and you probably didn't hear about it. My guess as to why? It hasn't raised money from any big-name VC firms with big marketing teams. Ibotta was started 12 years ago after Bryan Leach saw someone take a photo of a receipt for an expense report and realized there were tons of interesting data contained in that picture that was going to waste. Fast forward 13 years and Ibotta is a profitable, fast-growing business helping over 2,400 of the most notable brands like Kraft Heinz, General Mills, and Unilever. They touch over 91% of US households... Ibotta offers shoppers cash-back on in-store purchases funded by its advertisers, while also collecting all sorts of valuable data like cart makeup and much much more. They've paid out over $1.8B to consumers over the course of the company Quick 2023 Numbers: Revenue: $320M (+52%) Gross Margin: 86% (best in class despite not being traditional "SaaS") Net Income Margin: 12% (a quick turn around from a $50m loss in 2022) Adjusted EBIDTA Margin: 26% In 2022, they inked a MASSIVE partnership with Walmart that made up for a huge amount of 2023 growth via 3rd Party revenue. As a part of that deal, Walmart also owns a significant amount of the company There are some fun case studies in the S1 showing off some hot up-and-coming brands as well including poppi and Chomps. When you dig deeper, one of the more concerning parts of the business is the revenue concentration inside of Walmart, but with their significant ownership %, it's unlikely they go anywhere. Seed investors paid $0.74.share and it's going public at $88/share so that's a pretty good day at the office. Excited to see how this trades!

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This week Mikal Ventures brings you a 4-week breakdown of the US capital market with an emphasis on the Mikal verticals. Over the 4-week period ending April 15, just over 900 new companies were added, with 94,109 companies included in the US Health Tech, Med Tech, Fin Tech, AI Tech, and Ed Tech verticals. AI Tech again saw the greatest percentage of growth in new companies and transactions, weighing in at over double the vertical averages for the period. The US Fin Tech vertical again led the way in SEC Filings and news articles. Mikal Ventures publishes these stats on a rolling 4-week basis to provide a perspective on how the verticals and new startups move through time. We hope you find them informative and thought-provoking. VC Investors are always adjusting their "Play Book" with a variety of options for investing. Mikal Ventures is one of those alternatives, offering curated solutions to real world problems. Reach out if you have questions on how we can be of assistance and bookmark https://mikalventures.com/ for additional insights and information.

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Speed of learning is one of the most important founder attributes — and sometimes that means getting support to move faster. I’ve seen folks like Carol do just this and unblock founders and their early growth. It’s powerful to ask for help!

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The state of venture capital is wild right now. We are witnessing a surge of innovation across the spectrum: - Funds merging - VC doing PE - PE doing VC - Secondary funds - Buyout funds - Spin-out funds - Debt funds - Continuation funds - Infrastructure funds - GP turnover - Hard Tech surging - Family Office uptick

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NY friends! Please come see me at Tech Day on my panel discussing the future of the NY tech ecosystem and what I hope to bring to it!

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Such an excellent conversation this week. For those in venture capital, this is a must listen. https://lnkd.in/gQUgM8q9

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Here’s a question investors are often asked: When evaluating early stage companies, how much time do you spend on due diligence around future exits? It’s not surprising we hear this question a lot. Also not surprising: it’s got a wide range of answers depending on the firm. Some don’t spend much time here at all. Others make it a point to put meaningful time in as part of their process. Our current thinking: take the time to do the work on public market comps. At Alpaca VC, we spend significant time understanding how public market investors will  realistically value a business based on margin profile, product, business model & TAM. In short, we want to know: how will this company be valued at scale when we get taken out? Yes, we can acknowledge that the journey toward exit is a windy road and that there may be pivots along the way, but there are still public market companies that have a business model similar to the early stage company you're evaluating. And you can always look at gross profit multiples if you think the margin profile will change over time. So we still do the work on the comps. Quantitative metrics we look at when making the comparison to public market comps include EBITDA multiple, revenue multiple, Gross Profit multiple or all of the above. As part of this process, it’s also important to factor in the public market company’s year-over-year revenue growth as this will also significantly impact the multiple it trades at. Simple example: if you have two public market companies with similar business models and similar margin profiles, but one's growing 100% year over year, and one's growing 50% year over year, then obviously the DCF (discounted cash flow) analysis is going to spit out a very different valuation for the one that's growing faster. Why this matters: When you take all of that information into account as you evaluate an early stage business, you can begin to create a realistic picture of how this company will be valued in the public markets at exit - or how an acquirer will value the company for an acquisition. Strategic acquirers may, of course, pay a premium, but we won’t underwrite for that. This allows us, for example, to form conviction around valuation based on revenue and gross profit predictions. If we think they can do $100M of revenue five years from now, we use this diligence process to form a thesis about whether the characteristics above (product, margin, business model, etc.) will cause the company to be valued at $200M vs. $500M vs. $1B at exit. Curious how other early stage investors think about underwriting an exit and how much time they’re spending on public market comps even though these companies are in their infancy.

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🌶 Hot take: The mandate that CPG founders MUST build to $100M+ in sales to be an attractive M&A candidate for a strategic is misleading. For *many* this thinking can drive the wrong behavior. Behaviors that we saw in the 2021 ZIRP environment. Even if strategics are buying bigger and less often, great outcomes can and are occurring for highly profitable businesses that don’t cross $100M. 🧠 Logic: CPG founders are often anchored on a common long-term KPI: reaching $100M in sales. Even if this is what investors are underwriting, it’s the wrong way to think about what CPG scale means. I spent ~5 years within the finance/strategy organizations of PepsiCo, Danone, and AB InBev. No one is sitting around with a radar detector for brands that reach a specific sales threshold. Strategics split their organizations into sectors and subsectors (categories and subcategories) typically based off geography and product category. 1/ Big CPGs aim to build strategic portfolios (organically and inorganically) within their subsectors of focus that are constantly evolving to meet consumer needs 2/ Big CPGs are trying to drive organic top / bottom line growth by executing an optimal resource allocation strategy BUT they are also competing for MARKET SHARE. When they assess inorganic acceleration opportunities for their portfolios (aka M&A/JVs), they look for emerging or “emerged” brands in subcategories of interest that are: 1️⃣ Sizable enough to drive a MATERIAL MARKET SHARE gain or deceleration of MARKET SHARE loss immediately or in the future. 2️⃣ Profitable/cash-flow generative enough to be accretive or in line with an internal profitability/cash flow benchmark. Ideally the target is highly incremental to the CPG’s existing portfolio of brands with room for further growth in a variety of distribution channels. What defines material market share for an emerging brand? In my opinion anywhere between 0.5-2%+ (no right answer). ESPECIALLY IN PERSONAL CARE in which we’ve seen some brands recently bought for an est. >5x revenue (K18 Hair, Dr. Barbara Sturm), clipping $50-$75M with great margins could equate to a $300M+ exit (the “average successful exit” in CPG). In the $110B soft drinks space (Statista), crossing $100M (just 0.1% share) might not be enough (Oli/Poppi) Main point: build a profitable business that captures material market share of your category, not necessarily a $100M+ business… BUT hopefully, you find yourself doing BOTH 🚀 And one watch out for founders (hopefully not new news): If you’re a later stage company that is on track to achieve a share position in your category that would position you as an “attractive” M&A target for a strategic be extremely vigilant of the terms surrounding any new growth capital. Waiting too long to sell can be a painful mistake but even more painful is when your new PE partner mandates a pathway to 3x MOIC to approve a liquidation event and you’re far from leaping that hurdle.

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Building and supporting companies within the #VentureStudio model puts our team in direct communication with a lot of #founders. This is among my favorite things about working at the 9point8 Collective. After a handful of calls with early-stage founders today, I began to think about the things I appreciate about them. The list includes more than the three qualities I’ve listed below, but these ones really stand out to me: ↗ Optimism. It's a hard world, y'all. Founders see challenges as opportunity. What an awesome quality in a human being. It makes me want to be around them. 💪 Grit. Nothing worth accomplishing comes easily. Founders get this. They accept that failure is on the critical path to success and they push through it. 🏃‍♀️ Hustle. With scarce resources, founders create lasting value, fast. They put superhuman effort forward to make that happen, building a vision into reality. It’s inspiring. Venture Studios celebrate all of the above and provide critical support to #startups and their leaders - when they need it the absolute most. This is a big part of why I love the model - and my job - so much. What qualities do you admire in founders and #entrepreneurs? Neal Ghosh Blair Merlino Evan Allen

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If a basketball player drop kicks a ball during play, people wouldn't blame basketball for not allowing kicking...they'd question the players understanding. Founders (Players) can hate the VC fundraising (Game). Blaming Opaque processes or Nepo style allocation, but quite often these are excuses not the reason. The misspent energy of founding teams chasing the same Midas list everyone else has or simply not having a business appropriate for Venture rails; means they are setting themselves up for failure. There are well over 10,000 funds out there, with many interested at the early stage. And yes we do need a better way to raise relevance which is a core mission of OpenRound; but even if you could click a button and have a termsheet pop up to you (be nice wouldn't it?)...would you know the demands that cash is coming with? VC's are playing a version of the same game founders are, they have investors (LP's) who make up the fund, a VC needs to pick winners to return that fund with a multiple attached. So Founders need to think before signing a termsheet, not just the terms in front of them, what will they need to achieve to return the whole fund as a value back to that VC. Because thats the unspoken pressure that adds noise to all decisions as you scale. Founders need a better experience - that is without doubt. But founders need to know what they are signing up for before spending weeks kicking balls in the wrong sport. and now...this (IFYKYK) #Tuesdaytake #fundraising #investorrelations

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This week Mikal Ventures brings you a 4-week breakdown of the non-US capital market with an emphasis on the Mikal verticals. Over the 4-week period ending May 29, a total of 1,545 new companies were added, with 101,688 companies included in the non-US Health Tech, Med Tech, Fin Tech, AI Tech, and Ed Tech verticals. The non-US AI Tech saw the greatest percentage growth in new companies for the period, weighing in at a notable 27%, nearly two times the overall vertical average of 15%. The non-US Heath Tech vertical led the group in transactions. Non-US Med Tech vertical lead in both SEC Filings and news articles. Mikal Ventures publishes these stats on a rolling 4-week basis to provide a perspective on how the verticals and new startups move through time. We hope you find them informative and thought-provoking. VC Investors are always adjusting their "Play Book" with a variety of options for investing. Mikal Ventures is one of those alternatives, offering curated solutions to real world problems. Reach out if you have questions on how we can be of assistance and bookmark https://mikalventures.com/ for additional insights and information.

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As lenders to late and growth-stage companies, we're often asked: “What exactly do you look for in potential borrowers?" In my 30 years of experience working in the venture ecosystem, I’ve seen what qualifies some businesses to get the financing they need. Here is what we typically look for: ✔ Proven Business Model: Those with validated product-market fit, recurring revenue streams, and predictable cash flow are typically less risky and more likely to succeed in repaying their debt obligations. ✔ Stable and Diverse Customer Base: Borrowers with a stable and diverse customer base demonstrate a reduction in concentration risk and lower dependency on a single revenue source. ✔ Strong Management Team: At Runway, we look for entrepreneurs with a track record of success, industry expertise, and a clear ability to execute a business plan. A strong management team signals confidence to the lender that the business will be able to navigate challenges and drive business growth. ✔ Capital Efficiency: Startups that have effectively managed their capital resources, are clear on how the funding will be used, have minimized burn rate, and achieved meaningful milestones are strong candidates to utilize debt financing. ✔ Equity Backing: Previous equity financing by an established VC can provide additional validation of a company’s business model, market opportunity, and growth prospects. ✔ Exit Strategy: Those with a clear path to profitability and viable exit (such as through an initial public offering or strategic acquisition) provide assurance that the debt will be repaid in a timely manner. If you’re thinking about how to grow your business, and exploring debt as an option, keep this in mind!

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