In The Money: eCommerce, DTC, and CPG

A podcast about the real economics of ecommerce, DTC, and CPG. Hosted by Fan Bi, In The Money features honest convos with the people building, growing, and investing in modern consumer brands.

In The Money: eCommerce, DTC, and CPG is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 65 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts In The Money: eCommerce, DTC, and CPG, a business show with 65 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #66

  Brand Is Not Branding, And Other Mistakes in Consumer

  Aug 18, 202640 minS1

  What's the difference between brand and branding and why is confusing the two one of the most expensive mistakes a consumer founder can make? Rick Desai, Managing Partner at Listen Ventures, joins In The Money to break down the investing philosophy behind one of the most concentrated consumer portfolios in venture. Listen manages $130 million across four funds, backs just twelve brands per fund, and has been behind some of the most recognizable outcomes in modern consumer, Calm, now valued at over $2 billion, and Factor, which HelloFresh acquired for $277 million after Listen backed it from inception to exit. Rick also teaches entrepreneurship and digital marketing at Kellogg, and what he's seeing across the portfolio right now is shaping some of the sharpest perspectives on brand, TikTok, AI, and what separates consumer companies that last from ones that just had a great launch. We cover: Brand versus branding: why they're not the same thing and why the confusion is so expensive Why brand is internal before it's external and what that actually means in practice Customer service as a brand signal, not a cost center Why the best founders don't seek risk, they mitigate it Scrappiness as the thing you have to protect most aggressively as you scale Why TikTok is the new Facebook circa 2014, and what the arbitrage window actually looks like If you're not AIing everything right now, you're already behind: what Rick means and where to start Inside the Listen Ventures model: twelve brands per fund, up to $5M per check, capital plus creative under one roof The Factor story: what Listen saw at inception and how the brand was built to a $277M exit What Rick looks for at the moment of change: new trends, new frontiers, new channels Lessons from Calm on category creation and staying power What founder psychology reveals about which companies succeed at very close range What Listen is looking for in new investments heading into the back half of 2026 If you're a consumer founder, operator, or investor trying to understand what actually builds durable customer love, this episode is one of the clearest frameworks you'll hear.

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  Episode #65

  Finding White Space and Scaling to 8-Figures in a Crowded Homewares Category

  Aug 12, 202634 minS1

  What does it actually cost to hold an uncompromising product standard in premium homeware? Joe Parenteau, Co-Founder and CEO of Fable, joins In The Money to break down how a former accountant with no design background built one of North America's most design-forward homeware brands, and why they've walked away from roughly 30% of supplier relationships mid-development rather than ship a product that didn't meet standard. Fable designs in Vancouver and crafts through family-owned artisan makers in Portugal, Belgium, and Japan. Dinnerware, glassware, flatware, and rugs built around a thesis the rest of the industry ignores: you shouldn't have to choose between beautiful and durable. Full wool rugs that are machine washable. Glassware elegant enough for a dinner party and tough enough for a Tuesday night. B Corp certified, backed by Listen Ventures, True, Sandpiper, and Techstars. We cover: How a Bench Accounting operations director ended up building a premium homeware brand The founding insight: why buying quality home goods was so frustrating it became a business Designing in Vancouver, crafting in Portugal: how the supply chain came together Seven manufacturers across seven materials and what it takes to manage that complexity Why Fable has fired roughly 30% of suppliers mid-development, and why Joe would do it again The premium-but-durable white space: form and function as the category gap everyone else walked past Building taste into a fully remote, flat organization The marketing team of one: how Fable runs lean Why Joe would think twice before joining Techstars as a DTC company and what accelerators actually offer consumer brands The path to profitability: thirty incremental operational improvements, not one big unlock Negotiating shipping rates down and the unglamorous work that actually moves margin Balancing an uncompromising product standard against next quarter's revenue number Retail expansion, new categories, and what's next for Fable If you're building a premium consumer brand, managing a complex multi-country supply chain, or trying to figure out what quality actually costs, this episode is an honest look at the decisions most founders never talk about publicly.

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  Episode #64

  Reaching Eight Figures by Doing the Unscalable Things First

  Jul 30, 202637 minS1

  Sahand Dilmaghani, Founder and CEO of Terra Cafe, joins In The Money to tell one of the more quietly impressive origin stories in consumer hardware, a founder who spent months recording conversations with strangers in retail stores, carried espresso machines door to door across New York City, and built a relationship with a Chinese manufacturer just weeks before the world shut down during COVID. Terra Cafe makes premium automatic bean-to-cup espresso machines, 400-plus moving parts, a hardware-plus-consumables ecosystem, and a customer base where nearly half are converting directly from a pod machine to a $2,000 device. The category had been full of machines nobody could explain, priced anywhere from $1,200 to $6,000, with no brand making the transition from pods feel accessible. Sahand saw the missing link. He spent three years building the product to fill it. We cover: Why Sahand moved to New York, lived on one meal a day, and carried espresso machines door to door before spending a dollar on ads Recording conversations with strangers in retail stores and how that unscalable customer research shaped every marketing message Terra Cafe has ever run Building a manufacturer relationship in China just weeks before COVID shut the world down and how he maintained it for three years without a single visit The bean-to-cup category: why it's been misunderstood, undermarketed, and wide open for a brand that could make it accessible Hardware plus consumables: how the economics of a recurring revenue model change everything about how you think about CAC and LTV Why nearly half of Terra Cafe customers are converting from pod machines and what that means for category sizing The $2,000 considered purchase: how to nurture leads, overcome objections, and convert customers who take months to decide Scaling to eight figures while staying obsessively close to the customer at every stage The marketing stack that's working: what channels are driving acquisition and why If you're building a hardware brand, a considered-purchase DTC business, or anything where the customer research phase is the most important thing you'll ever do, this episode is one of the most honest accounts of what that actually looks like in practice.

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  In The Money: eCommerce, DTC, and CPG

  Engineering Adult Friendships to a Billion Dollar Business

  Jul 21, 202631 min

  What happens when a former consumer brand founder gets tired of the working capital grind, spots a broken format in adult recreational sports leagues, and decides to engineer the conditions for adults to actually make new friends? Tommy Flaim, Founder of Silly Pickles, joins In The Money to break down one of the more unexpected growth stories in the consumer space, a pickleball league that started as a side hustle managed on Microsoft Excel, hit a waitlist of over a thousand players in its first few seasons, and is now in 75 metro areas across the US, Canada, and Australia doing $6 million in run rate on just $750K raised. We cover: Why adult recreational sports leagues have a broken format and the dynamic ladder system Tommy built to fix it How to engineer a social outcome: skill-based matchups, repeat exposure, happy hours, and the magic of a great local host Why 50% of Silly Pickles players have never played in another adult rec league and 30% had never even played pickleball before their first night The bottom 90% thesis: why most competitors target washed-up athletes and why Tommy is going after everyone else How Silly Pickles went from one Chicago bar to 75 metro areas with a decentralized hub-and-spoke model Brand partnerships: Waterboy, an alcohol brand, an iced tea brand and why Silly Pickles is becoming one of the most interesting IRL activation platforms in consumer What CPG brands get wrong about IRL activations and the two ingredients that make the difference between a great event and a forgettable one The non-technical founder's guide to building software: the agency route, the tradeoffs, and why Tommy chose the most expensive option on purpose The math to a billion: 200 metro areas, 10 sports, $500K per metro area per sport Pickleball as the wedge and what comes next as they layer on volleyball and additional sports Lessons from his consumer apparel brand: what he'd do differently and why he's now a little jaded about inventory-based businesses The holy trinity for consumer founders: brand, community, differentiated product, and catching a wave before incumbents catch up Why TikTok is still the most important platform for consumer businesses and what to do if you're not good at it yet If you're building a consumer brand, thinking about IRL community as a channel, or trying to understand what catching a category wave actually looks like from the inside this episode is packed with hard-won lessons from a founder who's done it twice.

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  Episode #61

  We Thought It Could Be a Modest $10M Business. We Were Very Wrong.

  Jul 14, 202636 minS1

  What does it look like to send 25 to 30 cold emails to a founder you've never met because you believe in a product so much you're willing to bet your career on it? Kieran Mathew, CEO of Equip Foods, joins In The Money to break down one of the more unconventional origin stories in better-for-you supplements, an operator who joined an existing business, took over day-to-day functions from the founder, and helped scale it from low seven figures to well into eight on a growth model that barely touched Meta spend. Equip makes animal-based protein products built around one standard: real food ingredients, nothing the brand wouldn't stand behind completely. No fillers. No shortcuts. A product built for a customer who reads labels and doesn't forgive compromises. We cover: Why Kieran sent 25-30 emails to founder Anthony Gustin before getting a response and what he said to finally get one What it actually looks like to join a business as an operator-partner rather than a founder How to take over day-to-day operations from a founder without breaking what's already working The affiliate flywheel: how Equip built a roster of thousands of partners who became genuine evangelists for the brand How affiliate seeding trained the algorithm before a dollar of Meta spend and what that did to ROAS when they finally turned it on Why beef protein is having its moment and how whey margin compression is accelerating the category shift The animal-based consumer: who they are, what they believe, and why they're more loyal than almost any other supplement customer What Equip would do differently in paid if they were starting the channel from scratch today Org structure evolution: why the team design that worked at $3M doesn't work at $15M and what needs to change How Equip thinks about SKU expansion without losing the brand clarity that made them Retention, subscription, and what actually drives LTV in the supplement category If you're building in supplements, better-for-you CPG, or thinking about how to join an existing business as an operator rather than start from scratch, this episode is one of the most useful conversations I've had on the pod this year.

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