Bonus: Jordan Odinsky (Ground Up) - Cult Brands, Launch Strategies and the Importance of Celebrating The Failures

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

My guest today is Jordan Odinsky, investor and head of platform at Ground Up Ventures. GroupUp is an early stage venture capital firm investing in pre-seed and seed stage startups in the United States and Israel. Some of their investments include Fast, Shapeshift Gaming, and Neighborhood Goods. In this episode, we discuss cult brands and unique product launches.

I highly recommend following Jordan on Twitter @jordanodinsky You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

Links to Jordan's articles mentioned: The Value of a Velvet Rope: Effects of Hype and Exclusivity on Launch Strategies and Cult Wars: The Making of a Cult Brand

On this episode you will learn:

1. If a brand wants to use scarcity and waiting lists as a strategy, how should they first go about finding their early adopters? How are brands taking advantage of mimetic theory
2. On the surface, how does he define a Cult Brand? When a brand is picking their enemy, what are traits that the enemy has to have? How should a startup think about defining the enemy? How he thinks about the balancing act of why people "feel most like themselves when they are part of a group, but the initial drive to join a cult is to discover and clarify one’s individualism". If a brand is experiencing high organic growth and engagement from customers, is that early signs that they have a cult brand?
3. As an investor, does he think a company that has high organic growth as a cult brand? What's the principal reason why a cult brand might fail or a brand would never get into cult status? Does he come across early opportunities that he believes will develop into cult brands? His focus at Groundup. One thing he would change when it came to venture capital What's one piece of advice for founders?