Thread by @ryan_caldbeck

Thanks @ewiesen

1/ The pt was VCs are paid to ramp up on new & hyper complicated products/industry dynamics. Drones is an ex. If they can ramp up there- they can ramp up on beauty. Agree the 2 are very different. But beauty isn’t harder, just different.

https://twitter.com/ewiesen/status/1018264076214927360

2/ I called out Hims as a pretty clear example where some VCs say they “don’t understand beauty” then made an exception because clearly they can just relate to Hims (my little joke). :)

Hims is a beauty co.

Hims would say their key levers are the same as a typical beauty co.

3/ Here is the frustration from beauty founders like this one: a) intellectual laziness of the VC that says “I just don’t understand beauty” (as if they aren’t paid to ramp up on new industries constantly).....

4/ ....b) the weak integrity demonstrated when an investor wont just be straight w/ a CEO and say “I don’t find this interesting” (very different than “I don’t understand it”).

5/ When you say “male VCs don’t understand” the dynamics in beauty, I ask: Why are male VCs able to understand industries that didn’t exist [5-10] years ago but they cant ramp up on beauty?

6/ I agree with your quote here in the WSJ that VCs can fall too much into a trap of using their own heuristics.

I believe one of those heuristics is that male VCs cant understand the dynamics in beauty.

wsj.com/articles/ventu…