Cristina Nuñez (True Beauty Ventures) - How to invest in beauty and personal care brands

The Consumer VC: Venture Capital I B2C Startups I Commerce | Early-Stage Investing I Brands

Our guest today is Cristina Nuñez, Co-founder and General Partner of True Beauty Ventures. Some of their investments include Maude, Crown Affair, and K18. Today’s episode focuses on how to invest and build a beauty and personal care brand. Without further ado, here’s Cristina.

Some of the questions I ask her:

1. Why start a fund only focused on beauty and personal care?
2. What do you look for? Does a company have to be omnichannel from day 1 in order for you to be interested? How do you think about this intersection of influencer x brand
3. What makes great packaging great that pops in retail?
4. What’s amazing about beauty and personal care products from an investor's perspective?
5. How do you make DTC work as a beauty and personal care?
6. What are some of the trends that you get excited by?
7. How do you think about added value?
8. What’s the initial check size do you underwrite?
9. What does differentiated distribution mean to you?
10. What does product innovation mean to you? Does the product need to have product innovation in order for you to invest?
11. What’s the case for having a vertically focused fund? What’s the long term goal?
12. What do generalist/non-vertically exclusive funds tend to not understand about your category?
    1. Realized that people take care of themselves
13. What has worked in the beauty and what doesn’t work in beauty?
14. What has to be right in order for you to invest?
15. Why a concentrated portfolio?
16. What’s one thing you would change about VC?
17. What’s one book that inspired you professionally and one book that inspired you personally?
18. What’s one piece of advice for founders?