Cole Zucker

ZuVi Investments 

Joint family office focused on low mid market private equity, angel investing, and real estate.

Managing Partner

Member - Santa Monica Chapter

Hey Hero Labs

Acquired by Sanctuary Ventures January 2022

Co-Founder

GREEN CREATIVE

Provides LED lighting products to North America.

Co-CEO & Co-Founder

Everbright Engineering

VP of Sales

Entrepreneur with a running addiction. I co-founded GREEN CREATIVE, a commercial grade LED lighting company in 2010 with Guillaume Vidal while living in Shanghai. We bootstrapped the business from $0 - $60m+/year in sales within 7 years, ultimately selling the company to a PE fund. 

As the Co-CEO, we oversaw every aspect of the business, from manufacturing, product development, sales, and distribution. We made every mistake under the sun,  but somehow failed our way to success. 

Currently an active investor, I focus on low mid market PE and real estate.

Dutch bike company VanMoof reported an 80% drop in damages to their deliveries by making one simple design change.

In 2015 they began shipping bikes to the USA. The only problem was that a lot of them were arriving damaged.

It was annoying for the customers and expensive for the company. 

So they made their packaging look like one for a TV to stop careless couriers damaging their deliveries.

Result - 80% drop in damages! 

A great example of using design thinking to solve a business problem. 

H/T Pritish Krishna Panda

Investor & Entrepreneur | Founded, Scaled, and Sold 2 companies

Joe Rogan got 2,000,000,000 podcast downloads last year and Spotify paid him $200 million.

How did Joe become so popular?

-> Relatability - Joe Rogan comes off as a curious everyday frat bro who enjoys learning.

He never tries to one up or appear smarter than his guests. 

Joe appeals to everyone and in doing so, his potential listener pool is massive. 

-> An Early Adopter - Rogan has recorded over 2,000 podcasts averaging 2.5 hours each since 2009. 

That is 5,000+ hours of recorded interviews. 

Those reps allow Joe to create a show that he knows will be enjoyed by listeners. 

Do you listen to Joe Rogan? What do you think of his show?

H/T Chris Hladczuk

Scott Painter just purchased $400m worth of Tesla cars for his new start up!

Given his storied track record, will he succeed? 

In 2004 Scott started TrueCar, a negotiation free way to buy used cars.

The company was valued at $1B when it went public in 2014. 

Scott was so bullish on the company he kept buying shares on the way up. 

Unfortunately, car dealers started suing TrueCar. 
 
The stock tanked.

And because Scott had borrowed money to purchase his stock, he went broke. 

Scott resigned as CEO. 

The following week, Scott started Fair. com, a flexible car leasing service.  

The company reached $650M in revenue before going bankrupt due to a broken business model. 

Scott is back with a start up called Autonomy. 

They are enabling consumers to rent a Tesla  just as easy as subscribing to Netflix. 

Is the third time the charm?

The founder of Netscape was a self-described loser at 38.

How did James Clark, the co-founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape, myCFO, and Healtheon take the extraordinary leap in his career from a 38 year old unsuccessful college professor to a successful co-founder? :

“One day I was sitting at home and, I remember having the thought ‘You can dig this hole as deep as you want to dig it.’ I remember thinking ‘My God, I’m going to spend the rest of my life in this hole.’ 

You can reach these points in life when you say, ‘Damn, I’ve reached some sort of dead-end here. And you descend into chaos. All those years you thought you were achieving something. And you achieved nothing. I was thirty-eight years old. I’d just been fired. My second wife had just left me. I had somehow messed up. I developed this maniacal passion for wanting to achieve something.”

One of my favorite quotes is the best time to start was 20 years ago. 

The second best time to start is today. 

And as you can see by James' inspirational story, it's never too late to start.

I had spent most of my savings on a one way ticket to Shanghai. 

It was evening when I arrived and the streets were buzzing. Bright lights and signs with large Chinese characters hung everywhere. 

I was 23 and had moved to China in search of a job. 

All I knew was that China was the future and Shanghai was the epicenter. 

For the first 3 months, I stayed at a $10/night hostel and immediately started attending networking events throughout the city.

I was determined to find a job and create a life for myself.

And guess what, it all worked out.

Motion is more important than direction.

Try steering a bike when it's not moving forward. Yeah, it's hard.

Had I waited around to figure out my life, I may still be living at my parents house.

Why does Colonel Sanders look so old in every photo?

It's because he started his fast food chain KFC only after reaching the age of 65!

On top of that, Sanders was rejected 1,009 times before his recipe was accepted by a restaurant willing to franchise. 

You are never too old to start!

Intercom was a side hustle that developed into a multi-billion dollar business. 

The founders first developed it to communicate with the users of their existing app, Exceptional.

Eventually, the founders Eoghan McCabe and Des Traynor shut Exceptional down.

They doubled down on Intercom—developing tools for their new support and sales platform.

Today, Intercom does $300M/yr in revenue.  

Sometimes product market fit hits you where you least expect it.

Nearly $10 trillion of business assets will be transferred over the next decade. 

Why?

Baby boomer entrepreneurs will be forced to sell or liquidate their businesses as they retire. 

Of the >4 million companies in the US owned by a boomer, 85% are expected to sell or shutdown in the next decade.

Most do not have a legacy plan so their options are limited. 

This coming silver tsunami will unlock lots of opportunity.

How will you take advantage?

Sometimes a short cut is the fastest way to make a journey longer

Every time we took a short cut while building Green Creative...

It ended up blowing up in our face.

From choosing the cheapest and simplest accounting setup.

To going with the 3PL carrier who could integrate us the fastest. 

There were countless times we should have stopped and identified the best solution, not the cheapest or the fastest to implement. 

What experiences have you had where the short cut turned out to be a much longer road?

The largest food manufacturer in China is not Chinese. 

How did General Mills quietly become #1?

First of all, General Mills was a very early entrant into China, arriving 40 years ago. 

But most important, they immediately hyper-localized...

Most Chinese don't know it's a foreign brand!

Focusing on foods specific to the Chinese consumer and positioning themselves as a domestic brand. 

But their hyper-growth started only after a major blizzard seized up China's supply chain in 2007. 

It was during Chinese New Year and most of the domestic food manufacturers were unable to get their products onto retail shelves due to terrible road conditions across the country.

Because General Mills had made significant investments in the domestic supply chain, they had no issues getting their products directly to the Chinese consumer during the most important holiday of the year.

Chinese greatly appreciated the brand for this and as a result, sales began to skyrocket.

Winc did $75m in sales last year but just filed for bankruptcy

How did this subscription box wine upstart fail?

First of all, the wine industry is extremely cutthroat and difficult to scale. 

Winc was able to differentiate because they have access to lots of consumer data and can see customers spending history. 

They took this information and used it to predict what wines customers will buy in the future, and then build those products.

They outsourced production to a small batch manufacturing company. 

This allowed them to focus on marketing and launching brands. 

Great idea...but where did they go wrong?

The business was unprofitable due to low gross margins and high operating expenses. 

To counteract their losses, they raised a mountain of debt. 

They tried to diversify away from D2C into retail but weren’t successful. 

In the end, time ran out on Winc and they were forced to file Chapter 11.

The question will be...in 2023, how many more DTC brands will suffer the same fate? 

H/T Jake Schmidt

Check out the prices of goods from 1985. 

Which item surprised you the most?

H/T - Hero Dividend

A friend of mine sold his company last year.

But deeply regretted it the moment the deal closed!  

He ended up selling way below his target price.

You might be wondering how that happened but it's really common. 

Selling a company while managing a business is exhausting. 

For my friend, his performance began to slow.  

And the PE fund lowered their offer. 

My friend felt deal fatigue. 

The idea of starting the process again was too painful. 

And as soon as the money was wired, my friend began to instantly regret. 

The amount of money he received was much lower than his target.

Exhaustion plus the pressure from his deal team forced him into making a regrettable decision. 

Don't be like my friend.

Below is a free version of a flow of funds calculator.

You can use it to calculate how much you will make when you sell your company. 

Create a minimum sale target and make sure to start a sales process only after you know you will exceed the number.

https://lnkd.in/gmaJVVhq

Learn about Gagan Biyani's exciting entrepreneurial journey in the latest version of A Lightbulb Moment.

Gagan Biyani is the co-founder and CEO of Maven, former co-founder and President at Udemy, and former co-founder of Sprig. As a serial entrepreneur, G

Open article: Gagan Biyani, CEO & Co-founder, MAVEN - Disrupting the Education Space by Cole Zucker

Gagan Biyani, CEO & Co-founder, MAVEN - Disrupting the Education Space

There Are Four Possible Outcomes for Every Business....

The Four Biz Outcomes

Bing search’s primary use case is to find it’s competitor’s product.

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Sometimes knowing when NOT to sell is more important.

It's better to wait if you are dealing with the following issues.

When NOT to Sell

Bill Gates should be a trillionaire. 

But he didn’t diamond hand his Microsoft shares.  

Now, he is worth 90% less. 

Don't feel bad...

He has over $100b and is planning to give it all away. 

But sometimes, diversifying away from your core strengths is actually a detriment.

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