Origins Fund's Salomon & Blaise on why consumer sector is the underdog in venture capital

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Origins Fund's Salomon & Blaise on why consumer sector is the underdog in venture capital

Tune in for an inspiring talk about the difficulty of consumer investing, focusing on derisking and taking binary bets in building the portfolio.

Oct 04, 2024

Transcript

Today, we welcome the amazing duo Salomon Aiach, co-founder & General Partner, and Blaise Matuidi, General Partner from Origins Fund.

Origins is a new type of venture capital fund backing legendary consumer founders with an unfair advantage from pre-seed to series A. They invest $100k to $500k in consumer tech startups and come with the power of influence of LP’s community and their 160,000,000 followers.

We invite you to listen to this discussion below for some inspiring stories; besides the actionable advice, you can have a sneak peek at the below.

Watch it here or add it to your episodes on Apple or Spotify 🎧 chapters for easy navigation available on the Spotify/Apple episode.

Join us for Expand North Star in Dubai - the world’s largest startup and investor connector event.

Discover the tech and investment opportunities fuelling growth across UAE, MENA, and APMEA regions at Expand North Star, inspired by GITEX GLOBAL, on 13-16 October 2024 at Dubai Harbour.

✍️ Show notes

We believe in giving you our guests' thinking directly and unaltered. Therefore, no changes, no AI, no nothing has been done to the following sections.

Blaise’s journey as an angel investor.

I was 27 years old, and for me, it was super important to think about what I could do after. As an athlete, especially if you are a soccer player when your active years come to an end, you realize your career has to change.

My father always told me, «You need to prepare yourself!»

I wanted to do something for my kids and try my best.

Why Blaise became the GP of a venture capital fund.

We always start from something, right?

I started as a business angel, and this is how I got the chance to meet some people, and one of my Partners now at Origin. We felt the desire to bring together both of our worlds, and I realized I can provide added-value to companies through social media, and help companies enhance their communication power. We, now represent an audience of 160M and our athletes are recognized worldwide.

I sport, I always liked that together we are stronger, and I think there is a huge value in connecting athletes with the business world.

Salomon on discipline and work ethic.

The life of an athlete looks glamorous from the outside. You go to a stadium, watch a game, then watch his lifestyle on Instagram, and everything looks glamorous.

But, it’s more than that, it’s about the work ethic those people have and the discipline to be the best.

For example, when we have a partner meeting at Origin, and Blaise is driving the team to what matters most. Our job is to invest, so if we haven’t seen new companies in December, we have to focus on that no matter what.

So, life can look glamorous from the outside, but deep down, it requires strong work ethic, discipline, and mental resilience to become the best.

Salomon on why the consumer sector is the underdog in the VC world.

A legendary VC told me that being a consumer investor is the best way to have a short career in the industry.

Consumer is really hard, and we are aware of that. That’s why we given the high-profile of our LPs, right now, we, and the entire team has an immense amount of pressure to not only return the money to our LPs, but returning a really high-value.

The way we structure our portfolio is to “derisk” what consumer means.

I just looked at a company today, who has crazy numbers in retention. But in the end I am asking myself what is this company gonna look like in 6-months or a year from now? It’s gonna be just another Clubhouse? It’s going to be another company in the market?

I think the consumer is very binary, and we’re building the portfolio by taking a risk on binary bets.

Join us for Expand North Star in Dubai - the world’s largest startup and investor connector event.

Discover the tech and investment opportunities fuelling growth across UAE, MENA, and APMEA regions at Expand North Star, inspired by GITEX GLOBAL, on 13-16 October 2024 at Dubai Harbour.

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