Joe Laresca

We were recording a podcast episode last week and the question came up: why do studios actually fail? I expected the conversation to land on bad venture selection. That's what most people point to. But three quieter patterns kept surfacing — and they're the ones that actually kill studios. Sequencing failure. Doing the right things in the wrong order. Raising before you have a track record. Hiring a full team before validating a single venture. Everything looks productive — you're shipping, hiring, raising. But the order is wrong, and the compounding works against you instead of for you. Incentive misalignment. The studio operator wants equity upside. The institutional sponsor wants de-risked innovation. The founder wants autonomy. None of those are wrong. They're just different objective functions in the same room. The misalignment doesn't surface in year one. It surfaces the first time someone has to make a hard call — and the people in the room realize they want different outcomes. The governance gap. Studios start lean, which is smart. Then they stay lean on governance, which is fatal. No kill criteria. No stage gates. No framework for when to double down or shut down. Death by accumulated decisions that nobody had the structure to stop. What stuck with me after that conversation: all three of these are invisible from the inside. Bad company selection is loud. These are silent. And by the time you feel them, they've been compounding for months.

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🚨 BREAKING: This is the deck Brex used to go from Series B → Series C Before Brex became a unicorn, this is how they framed the story. Clear. Focused. No theatrics. What the deck nails: 1️⃣ A problem legacy banks couldn’t solve 2️⃣ A data-driven underwriting moat, no personal guarantees 3️⃣ Traction and unit economics investors could trust 4️⃣ A roadmap that justified the Series C leap If you’re fundraising this year, this is the kind of deck worth studying line by line. Want more? I just shared 15 𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐍 𝐃𝐄𝐂𝐊𝐒, including Revolut, Figma, Wise, LinkedIn, Airbnb, and Tinder: https://lnkd.in/euKuZYPz

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Every #VentureStudio GP knows some portfolio bets won’t hit. That's expected - and it's one of the reasons studios are such a powerful vehicle for innovation. And while a venture's failure might be what's visible to the outsider, what keeps them up at night isn’t failure at the venture level — it’s failure at the systemic level within the studio. One bad entity design. One IP misstep. One governance gap. That’s how studio operations fall apart. We break down how to spot (and fix) these cracks before they turn into fault lines in our latest paper, "The GP Dilemma" - DM me and I'll send you a copy!

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Most early-stage founders I talk with spend 10x more time perfecting their liquid than building brand community. But as Chris Stephenson, co-founder and CEO of Madre Mezcal, discusses on Business of Drinks, the real unlock came from doing the opposite. Before Madre sold a single bottle, they spent a full year cultivating community and brand identity. The brand had 15,000 Instagram followers before anyone could even taste the product (!!). That patience paid off. Today, Madre leads the mezcal category in retail velocity — #1 for 42 of the past 45 months — outperforming much larger, corporate-backed competitors. The brand shows up daily, and this is no exaggeration: Madre is at 300+ events a year, and they’ve built a deep network of nano-influencers across music, art, and fashion. Why does this work? Because when your audience feels true connection, you don’t have to push the product; they’re already asking for it. And that kind of pull is what gets you off the shelf and into consumers’ hands. Key takeaway: Community creates demand — and demand drives velocity. Think beyond the liquid. Build a movement around the product first. #BusinessOfDrinks #BeverageIndustry #DrinksInnovation #BrandBuilding #CommunityMarketing #Velocity #Mezcal #StartupStrategy MADRE MEZCAL Business of Drinks Scott Rosenbaum Caroline Lamb

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Great overview of the Florida VC ecosystem 👇 What stands out is not just the ~$2.85B raised, but how distributed and specialized each region is becoming. • South Florida → crypto, fintech, LatAm access • Tampa Bay → strong early-stage pipeline • Orlando/Space Coast → deep tech, defense, space • North Florida → emerging operator-led funds Tax advantages help, but the real story is growing density of founders, angels, and operators building locally. Still early compared to SF and NY, which is the opportunity. Who are the next Florida-based funds or angels getting active?

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Getting into the VC-side of the game gets you introduced some jaw-dropping mechanics! The latest now in my notebook: Liquidation Preference. This got to be one of the worst clauses ever invented for founders and employees who don’t understand what they’re signing up for. Let me tell you a story that will make your blood boil. Early 2025. Divvy Homes, a rent-to-own startup, gets acquired by Brookfield Properties for $1 billion. The big B right, sounds like champagne and early retirement. Wrong. The founders got $0. The employees got $0. Even most of the VCs got $0. How the hell does that happen? Liquidation preference. Here’s how it works: in cases like this, they don’t just buy regular shares. They buy preferred shares with a liquidation preference - which means they get paid first when the company exits. A 1x liquidation preference means they get their money back before anyone else sees a cent. A 2x means they get double their investment back first. And it can go higher. Divvy raised over $700 million. They had debt on top of that. When the company sold for $1 billion, the money went like this: First, debt holders got paid. Then, preferred shareholders with their liquidation preferences. And lastly, transaction costs. By the time all that was done? Nothing left. The people who built the company for years walked away with absolutely nothing. Now, for the employees(!) - here is a big lesson: if you are considering joining a startup for equity, then ask about how much has been raised so far and at what terms.

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Creator Equity Pools Are the New Stock Options And the smartest brands are already building them. Derek Wolf just recruited 20 competing BBQ influencers as equity partners in FYR. Jake Paul assembled his "Avengers" for W. Both hit revenue milestones faster than any traditional influencer campaign could deliver. This isn't influencer marketing with better contracts. It's a fundamental shift in how consumer brands achieve market dominance. Silicon Valley perfected employee stock options. Google's early employees became millionaires. NVIDIA has 80% of employees as millionaires. They could retire tomorrow. Yet they stay and build. Because ownership changes everything. Now brands are applying this to creators. Instead of paying influencers for one-off posts, companies are creating Creator Stock Option Pools (CSOPs) - setting aside 10-15% of their equity to distribute among multiple creators. These creators become co-owners. Not spokespeople. Not ambassadors. Owners. The math changes everything: Traditional: Pay 20 creators $10K each = $200K for posts that disappear in 48 hours. CSOP: Give those same creators 0.5% equity each = 10% dilution for creators posting weekly for years. FYR onboarded 20 live-fire cooking creators. Combined reach: 40 million followers. Combined grilling experience: 350+ years. They're not competing anymore. They're co-owners building together. W recruited across categories: • Sean O'Malley → Combat sports • Ruby Rose → Women and Black community • Arcangel → Latin American markets • Livvy Dunne → Gen Z sports • Jutta Leerdam → European fitness Different audiences. Same cap table. P&G spends $8 billion on advertising. They're buying impressions. CSOP brands don't run ads. They activate owners. When FYR launches a product, 20 creators simultaneously create authentic content about why they helped design it. Try buying that authenticity with an ad budget. Traditional brands rent attention. CSOP brands buy loyalty through ownership. When you aggregate 20 creators under one cap table, you're not building a brand. You're building a media conglomerate that happens to sell products. In today's newsletter, I broke down the complete CSOP framework. https://lnkd.in/d7DD62ne

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SUJA LIFE PURSUING $1B VALUATION IN DUAL TRACK PROCESS A few months ago Paine Schwartz Partners owned Suja Life - the owner of brands like Suja Organic, Vive Organic, & Slice Soda - filed a draft S1 with the SEC to go public. Late last week, Axios reported that the platform is running a dual track process in which it is considering IPO as well as private M&A at a valuation of $1B. Oftentimes these S1s get filed as a way to ramp up pressure into the private M&A process where that is the true preferred route. That said, recent successful adjacent consumer IPOs including Once Upon a Farm & Buda Juice have breathed some life back into the public market for health-focused brands. The S-1 remains confidential with the SEC and no financial information has been disclosed - however based on recent comparable I would expect that the platform generates between 200-300m in top line sales.

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