Ben Braverman and I went to a women’s college. Not at the same time (I’m older), and after it went coed. But Vassar itself is a small school, so that plus its liberal arts focus means you don’t find many of us in Bay Area tech. Ben and I started to hang out because of the Vassar connection and then even more so because he was just so darn helpful. His experience at Flexport; his pay-it-forward nature; and his friendly user interface, made his a desirable angel/advisor for startups. So I wasn’t totally surprised when he shared moving from operating to venture capital. And I was glad to hear it was at a new firm of his own co-creation. Saga says they’re a ‘return to tradition’ and the trio of founding Managing Partners are committed to the craft and to one another. Excited to share more about Ben via Five Questions.

Hunter Walk: Flexport was a life-changing experience which of course in hindsight seems like a ‘no brainer’ job to take but I know at the start of things, it’s not always so clear. How did you originally get introduced to the startup and do you recall how you thought about the ‘pros and cons’ at the time?

Ben Braverman: There were no cons! I met Ryan at Duboce Park (we both had giant dogs). The few times in life when you meet an n of 1 person obsessed with a worthy quest, it’s genuinely obvious what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to join the mission and I did exactly that. Side note: really smart people get obsessed with the wrong quests all the time (see model trains or social discovery apps).

HW: As Flexport grew and created a leadership team, how did you decide about promoting from within versus hiring from the outside? Was it case by case for each individual role? Or was there a different framework/circumstances which influenced how you made the decision? And in the event you hired from outside, did existing high performers chafe at being ‘topped?’

BB: We built flexport during a somewhat dogmatic period and the new ‘founder mode’ trend is a reaction to that time in history. Lots of clever people told us there were fixed rules for span of control (aka number of direct reports/manager) – Jensen and his 60 direct reports hadn’t conquered the world yet. With lots of managers, you feel pressure to bring in ‘managers of managers’ from the outside.

Outside leadership is a series of paradoxes. The existing team always accepts them if the new leader is world class and the company is thriving. And yet, you’re also almost always better off just promoting someone from within – context and speed trump experience in most cases, for most startups. The second paradox though, is that we had a number of exceptional people leave the company too early because they were leveled too high, too fast. This was actually much more common than someone leaving because they were leveled (unless their new boss was an idiot). Balance in all things, I suppose. 

HW: Did you ‘stay longer than you imagined you would’ or ‘leave before you were necessarily ready’ (even if it ended up being the right decision)?’ What was it like giving up your email address, so to speak? It can be very intoxicating to be at a high profile startup knowing that your identity kinda gets the rub of success along with the company.

BB: I actually thought I’d stay at Flexport my entire career. It’s an endless market (I’m a sales guy at the end of the day, remember) and you’re fixed squarely at the center of global commerce. You can’t imagine a more interesting window into global politics than leading a global transportation business. Unions, tariffs, geopolitics, the world’s largest ships and aircraft supplying the world with every conceivable good. It doesn’t get much better. Even the hurricanes in the American south are  potentially related to global shipping – the poorly designed new sulfur regulations are likely increasing global warming and fueling hurricanes because we’re allowing the fleet to pump sulfur into the oceans instead of into the air in the name of progress.

Giving up the email address has tactically been quite a pain in the ass. I was so proud of Flexport that I used the email address to sign up for everything. Recently had to cancel HBO MAX as a result. There was no reason to use my corporate email address to watch the Sopranos other than that I just liked seeing it every day. 

HW: I know from experiences within the Homebrew portfolio that you were doing some angel investing already, as well being very generous with your time as a formal/informal advisor to founders. Were you intentionally road testing whether you wanted to try venture capital before forming Saga, or was it more casual than that?

BB: My first angel investment ever was the Flexport seed. I also got advisory shares. This is the equivalent of going on a 7 figure run on your first trip to Las Vegas. I had a completely unrealistic expectation of my picking ability and assumed I’d be able to 100x my money in a few years. It hasn’t quite worked out that way but I did learn that I don’t get tired of meeting founders. My late Uncle Richard used to buy lottery tickets next door to a convent in Boston. He’d see the same nun buying tickets every week. He asked her, ‘you don’t seem particularly financially motivated – why do you play the lottery?’. She said ‘I’m here, talking to you. Look at all the fun I’m having for a dollar!’ That’s sort of how I feel about investing in startups at this point, except that I very much also do care about the outcomes.

HW: Saga has three GPs, essentially three cofounders. What you feel like you needed to be 100% sure of about these relationships before formalizing the commitment, versus things that you might not be absolutely sure about until you’re actually in business together (but you figured would work themselves out). Maybe put differently, is choosing cofounders for a venture fund more or less similar to choosing cofounders for a startup?

BB: Vibes. Max is the common thread – he and I and he and Thomson were friends for years. When he brought the 3 of us together, it just felt right. It was fun from the jump and never felt like work, even in the midst of doing hard things together. If you want a more objective answer for why the partnership works so well, we’re extremely different from each other and bring totally different skills to the partnership. There’s never a moment where it’s unclear who is supposed to do what to move the ball forward for Saga and our partners. In that way, very similar to a great CEO/CTO partnership in a startup. The big difference is that an investment firm makes a lot more sense to run as a partnership whereas the great startups often look at lot more like benevolent dictatorships.

Thanks Ben! See you on some cap tables!

The best podcasts are conversations which take you places you weren’t necessarily planning to go. My chat recently with Molly O’Shea of Sourcery (great newsletter, you should subscribe) covered more than I was expecting!

This short clip is pretty self explanatory. I’ll never be on the Forbes Midas List (one of the annual ‘rankings’ of venture capital performance). Why?

1. Satya and I have always believed that it’s not consistent with our firm’s culture to do deal attribution (who gets credit for what), or to submit private company data from our portfolio to a 3rd party outside of what we share with our firm’s investors.
2. We’re no longer eligible since we are primarily using our own capital. But the snippet above has a brief, funny story about how we learned we were now disqualified.

I’m a Sanzo drinker. I’m also a Sanzo angel investor. The order is important because I fell in love with the product before I even knew about the company, and the hustle of its founder/CEO Sandro Roco. Over the last few years he’s been a diligent company-builder, brand steward, and community leader. Watching the boom/bust cycle of DTC brands that were running on just the sugar high of venture dollars has given me even more appreciation for those who, yes, require investment capital along the way, but are playing the long game. Here are Five Questions with Sandro.

Hunter Walk: Backstory time! Tell us a bit about Sanzo and how it was founded?

Sandro Roco: I had the idea for Sanzo in 2018. I was working at a venture-backed apparel startup for 4 years and saw the power of building digitally-native brands through Facebook and Instagram (TikTok was still nascent).

Living in New York City and finding pockets of other Asian Americans, I grew to appreciate my own identity as an Asian American. Crazy Rich Asians became the No. 1 film at the box office that year. BTS, the K-pop group, was going on a nationwide tour where they were literally selling out football stadiums.

At the same time, 2018 was the summer of LaCroix and other flavored sparkling water brands across a larger $45 billion carbonated soft drink category that has been in decline in the U.S. as consumers reduce their sugary soda intake. The big thing I noticed, though, was that across all brands it would just be the same lemon, lime, grapefruit and mixed berry flavors and so I felt like there was room.

That said, I knew nothing about this industry. A lot of consumer goods entrepreneurs either worked at Procter & Gamble or Coca-Cola or Unilever.  So getting into the industry was a bit of a process. I would go into specialty and natural food stores in New York City and look at the other independently owned and smaller brands and just cold-Instagram DM or cold-LinkedIn message the founders. Oftentimes the people behind the Instagram accounts were literally the founders.

Through this process, I was able to piece together bits of information, like where to manufacture products and which distributors to work with. Over the course of 18 months, I built up an initial knowledge set as I was developing the underlying thesis for the brand. It was very much a gradual process of getting 1% better each day.

HW: What’s something you believed about the beverage business, or consumers, when you started which turned out to be completely wrong. How/when did you realize it?

SR: So many to choose from! With my previous experience in DTC, there is/was an underlying assumption that growth resembles a “hockey stick”. In tech, there are many reasons why this dynamic exists, but the world of physical goods is not quite as exponential/logarithmic.

In truth, if it’s going well, the curve is more like a step function because a lot of the growth comes from gains in retail distribution (think launching in Whole Foods or Target, which only happens 1x-2x / year).

It may seem academic, but living it means building a business much differently. It has required a balance of aggressiveness and patience, managing cash flow, building fundraising processes around these distribution gains and many more things that I’ve had to get better at over time.

HW: Sanzo was founded, and thrived, through a time where traditional venture capital firms got excited about – and then became more disillusioned – with DTC brands. What was it like seeing some folks raise tens of millions of dollars, and where has your financing mostly come from?

SR: One of the things I loved about beverage was that because it was more retail distribution focused, it was not as subject to Meta’s algorithmic whims as other categories. And how in many ways, once you reached scale, you could build a brand and business for the long-term (think Coca-Cola as the ultimate example).

From a financing perspective, to borrow from Peter Thiel I believe there is now more clarity between those who invest in and operate in the “bits” space vs. the “atoms” space.

One is not necessarily “better” or “worse” than the other, but I think the era where founders and investors blurred these lines created unrealistic expectations and in some cases, incentivized bad behavior. So in many ways, I think it’s healthier for everyone that the lines have been re-drawn.

As for Sanzo, we’ve been fortunate to have the support early on of incredible angel investors (like Hunter Walk!) who believe in our mission of bridging cultures.  And more recently, we’ve attracted strategic capital that has either 1) experience building the brands in this space or 2) the ability to help us accelerate distribution and revenue gains.

To the former, Convivialite Ventures, the venture arm of Pernod-Ricard, the 2nd largest wine and spirits seller in the world, has invested in multiple rounds. To the latter, the venture arms of DJ Steve Aoki and actor Simu Liu co-led our most recent round and both Steve and Simu have been extremely helpful behind the scenes as we build more distribution.

HW: You’ve done some collaborations – for example, comarketing with Disney, and a Jeremy Lin limited edition flavor. How do you evaluate whether these can help Sanzo or just become distractions? Are there common asks from brands, influencers or celebrities which you say ‘no’ to right away?

SR: It may seem counterintuitive, but each partnership for better or worse has really been bespoke. But among all collaborations, we have a couple specific guidelines:

1. First and foremost, the partnership has to authentically fit the brand and pass the “eye test”. If it doesn’t pass the eye test, consumers generally can cut through the BS and any numbers you’ve run just won’t end up netting out.
2. We don’t “pay to play”. We’ve found the types of prospective partners who mandate this tend to propose very cookie-cutter types of partnerships, which just end up becoming ineffective.
3. There has to be a strategic value either in the way of bringing in a new audience or being additive to our retail distribution strategy.

HW: Sanzo prides itself on ‘Asian-inspired flavors’ – when you’re drawing from your own heritage and celebrating other regional fruits, how do you navigate marketing to consumers from those cultures versus trying to reach and educate non-Asian people? Especially staying away from stereotypes that perhaps the average American expects to see when they hear “Asian-inspired?”

SR: Honestly, it’s a process that requires intentionality and constant conversation across our entire team that ultimately shows up everywhere in our company from our retail distribution strategy (we are merchandised in the sparkling beverage aisle vs. the international goods aisle) to social media, PR and partnerships.

As people and culture evolves, so does Sanzo’s place in it. But if we do it correctly, I think it’s the secret sauce of the capital B “Brand”,  and it’s ultimately what I love about building a brand. And I’m proud that our team, especially our marketing team, indexes highly in cultural dexterity to deliver on that brand.

That said, perhaps the best way we benchmark our progress is through our first and third-party studies which have found that in just the last month, 70% of Sanzo consumers are not Asian or Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI).

While we want to pay proper homage to our heritage and authentic background as an Asian-owned brand (I am FIlipino American), Sanzo is at its best when we serve as a bridge across cultures for both AAPI and non-AAPI.

Thanks Sandro! You can find Sanzo at many local supermarkets, corner stores or order directly.

Sunday reads for you from a too hot SF

Why Is the Loneliness Epidemic So Hard to Cure [Matthew Shaer/New York Times] – The Loneliness Epidemic as a cultural trend stared pre-COVID but the pandemic mirrored the effects of a weightlifter shooting HGH – immediate and noticeable difference in mass. Put me in the camp that believes many societal issues including drug abuse, mental illness, and political radicalism are being fueled by isolation. Physical, spiritual and economic loneliness.

The New Gods of Weather Can Make Rain on Demand—or So They Want You to Believe [Amit Katwala/Wired] – Some folks believe that we’re so far gone on climate change that ultimately the only/easiest way to save ourselves is through climate engineering. My uninformed opinion is that we need to do both sides of the coin – work to modify the practices which cause disproportionate harm ongoing but also assume we’re going to have to science the shit out of it. Of course this brings out hucksters too.

Are Bookstores Just a Waste of Space? [Louis Menand/The New Yorker] – HUSH NOW. We have two rules in our family:

1. Whenever you enter a bookstore, buy something
2. Enter every bookstore

The Future of Autonomous Agents [Yohei Nakajima/Untapped Capital] – Agentic tech is one of my favorite discussions within AI right now, so I’ll lap up any interesting POVs.

Enjoy!