In this episode of Retaili$tic, venture capitalist Brent Murri discusses the rapid evolution of technology, focusing on AI, supply chain automation, and the future of physical and digital commerce. This episode offers insights into how startups and investors can stay ahead in a fast-changing landscape.
Key topics
Chapters
00:00 Navigating the Information Overload in Venture Capital
02:17 The Importance of Testing and Building in Tech
04:52 The Shift Towards a Builder Culture
07:36 Evaluating Build vs. Buy in Technology Investments
10:10 The Role of Interns in Modern Organizations
13:01 The Future of AI in Supply Chain and Logistics
15:42 The Ripple Effects of AI on the Physical World
18:12 Challenges in Supply Chain Automation
20:55 Complexities of Robotics in Warehousing
25:30 Automation and Workforce Dynamics
26:49 The Impact of GLP-1 on Consumer Behavior
31:03 Healthcare Innovations and Continuous Care
33:49 Investing in a Changing Landscape
37:33 The Future of Shopping and Agentic Commerce
41:06 Lightning Round Insights
Philip Moore (00:00)
Welcome to Retaili$tic with Deborah Weinswig, brought to you by Coresight Research. In this episode, Deborah welcomes venture capitalist Brent Murri to discuss the rapid evolution of technology and how to leverage it for strategic advantage.
Brent shares insights on the impact of AI and physical supply chains and the importance of a builder mindset across industries. But before we hear from Deborah and Brent, a quick word from Corsight Research.
Dana (00:30)
Coresight Research serves the retail community with timely research on consumer shopping behavior, trends across every retail vertical, financial outlooks for industry leaders, and the latest breakthroughs in retail technology. We also develop and maintain proprietary data resources, conduct technology assessments, provide strategic consulting, facilitate leadership communities, conduct seminars and conferences. This week our premium subscribers will see a behind the scenes look at Shoptalk Europe.
Visit us at coresight.com to subscribe and gain access to these reports and over 8,000 other reports, webinars, videos, and data banks.
Deborah Weinswig (01:07)
Brent, thanks so much for joining Retaili$tic today. We're excited to have you.
Brent (01:10)
Thank you, Deborah. Excited for the chat?
Deborah Weinswig (01:12)
let's take a big step back and look at kind of what's happening in venture today. It's I mean, I guess where I'd love to start is how are you staying on top of everything that's happening? Because as I was talking to a startup yesterday, he's like at two AM I'm talking to folks in Silicon Valley and they're coding all this stuff and he's like, I'm just trying to stay up with what they're doing. So so how do you stay on top of everything these days?
Brent (01:36)
So great question. I mean, we are we are in an era of information overload and innovation seems to be happening at an increasing rate, right? The the things that are coming just tend to to one up each other e every you know, every few weeks. so I do a lot of reading, you know, I block off
A lot on my calendar, especially in the mornings when my mind is fresh and weekends, when you know I'm not so distracted and bogged down by the day-to-day. and so I'm reading a lot. podcasts on my commute, I do that a lot, and so I stay up to date. And then I just spend a lot of my time talking to operators. and so whether I'm investing in commerce, I'm talking to a lot of brands, ⁓ I'm spending a lot of time in in AI in the physical world, and so
Talking with a lot of warehouse operators, 3PL operators to understand what they're seeing. And so it's a mix of a lot of reading, sort of secondary research, and then primary research of talking to the operators and implementing the technology. And then just a lot of hands-on keyboard. You know, I need a lot to test a lot of the things that I'm trying to invest in to see what's changed. And it's it's very hard to have a perspective on something if you're just looking at that one thing, but if you can compare.
Compare it against the 10 other tools that you have previously used, then it gives you just a much better perspective. But I have no you know, I've been doing this for about 10 years, and I have noticed even in the last six months, you know, a fire hose approach of you just have to be on your toes and and on your game a lot better because you know the pace of innovation is happening so fast. And while that
is scary in some regard. ⁓ it is such an exciting time and such an exciting, you know, thing that when when you use some of these magical platforms and it just changes the whole way you work, it it it is a magical moment. And so it's a very exciting time to invest, but also, you know, you need to you need to stay ahead of innovation.
Deborah Weinswig (03:29)
It it's so interesting. I mean, so much of what you said. So I'm I think I mentioned to you I'm I'm literally not traveling the whole month of June. And what I found, let's say for the first five months of this year, that I started to do a lot more building, which I really enjoy. And so I've got like a Mac studio and just the the whole gamut. And the reason I mention this is there are so many new startups, and I mean new like in the last twelve months, by definition new.
And I'm talking to them, I'm understanding kind of like what they built, how they built, why they built it, but going back to like testing it, we've actually started in some cases, like we'll wall off part of like what we do to try and actually test on ourselves first. And we've never done that before. And so because it goes back to how do I how do I really know that what
what they're saying, and it's not that it's just kind of like what the actual outcome is, because especially if if I'm talking to a technical founder, right, I I code and everything, but I don't have a technical education. I just want to make sure that what is being said is what's actually happening. Many cases it's better, right? Because you know, the builds are happening so quickly. But how are you can you talk about like this idea around like testing? Because right, we spent a lot of time in logistics with three PLs, a lot of time with retailers and brands.
And I find this is the biggest challenge that they're facing right now.
Brent (04:52)
Yeah. so we have you know, we actually just went through this exercise as a firm. ⁓ we do have an internal tech team that is is very good and they are ⁓ staying at the forefront and helping us adopt. ⁓ but we just had you know a a pretty big meeting as a firm ⁓ where we sort of walked away with this mantra of everyone's a builder. and so I think historically, you know, it first came up with the companies that we've been talking to.
potential investments where they talk about you know these are the bottlenecks that used to exist. You used to have marketing that that handed off design to or or how handed off an idea to a designer and then they would have to wait for the queue for engineers to code it in and you know make it a reality on their website. And now sort of everyone's a There is no longer that bottleneck. It's the same at a venture firm. You know historically when we wanted to implement a change, we would send it to our tech team
It would go through a queue, we would iterate with them. But we walked away with this mantra very recently of everyone's a builder at thirteen. And certainly we have to be consistent across the firm to be all using the same thing. But if we want to test out a new process, ⁓ if we want to engage with Claude Code or Codex or Cursor and build something, we can do that and we have the power to do that, and then we share it with each other. And there needs to be that, you know, absolute level of of collaboration.
But it is very necessary for us to test things and allow everyone at the firm to be a builder and that's what we're starting to see in in the the companies we invest in. You know, whether it's a a commerce enablement, you know, ⁓ agentic first approach, ⁓ a consumer brand that they're selling to, everyone is starting to become a builder and it's very, very fun to see.
Deborah Weinswig (06:30)
Yeah, you bring up a really important point. you know, we started our AI council in August of twenty three, so I can't believe we're almost closing in on three full years of these for the first year, like 18 months, we met twice a month and now we meet once a month, but completely closed door, ⁓ C-suite. we're having conversations that have truly changed how I think about things. And in our last meeting, ⁓ an executive asked the question, right? Like she was asking all of us, build or buy. And
It it was a a really it was a really interesting discussion and I how how are you thinking about that right now from a tech perspective and how are you infusing that into you know your portfolio?
Brent (07:11)
Yeah. Man, it's such a it's such a great question. ⁓ because we are y you probably see this internally yourself. it the the models continue to one up each other and I I think twelve months ago it was it was pretty clear open AI was was the leader, everyone was using them. I think
you know, three months ago it was pretty clear it was the opposite. Anthropic had taken over, you know, cowork was being used by a lot of the business folks and and Cloud Code had taken over. and now you know with releases it might be slightly different. I I th I still think you know Anthropic has has a good lead, but know, as everyone's been building, they see the power of these models and they see the power of the applications they can build from them and and the the change that it's made in the organization. at the same time
We are all collectively as venture firms ⁓ investing in companies that are not open AI and anthropic. Of course, a lot of VCs are and they still are, and they're pumping money into those those those companies, which is great, but the all the other investments that are being made, they're being made in hopes that people will buy and not necessarily build, in in some circumstances. And so we are approaching everything with that lens and you know, if I'm gonna make this investment in an AI application.
I really have to be sure that it's not just gonna provide a wrapper and and ⁓ a cost markup to the customer, but they in reality need something like that. and so we look for proprietary moats that that that the companies have that we're investing in. you know a great example, one investment that that we made you know about a year ago and they just raised a follow-on round is business called Cord.
And Cord Commerce provides the ⁓ context layer for consumer brands ⁓ to run their operations. And when we started out with Cord, Anthropic, OpenAI, they weren't really on the the competitive landscape, you know, yet. Like, yes, you could clot code, a lot of functionality, but everyone sort of knew knew that you needed a little bit more business context.
But I would say over the last three months, the conversation has come up more as as Cord has been selling into e-commerce startups. You know, they say, kind of like you, like, ⁓ we're starting to build this ourselves. And so we've been doubling down on you know, what is defensible about Cord. And it turns out that having really deep context on a company is not something easily vibe coded. And it takes a ton of expertise on the back end to enrich data, to ingest it the right way.
To model on top of it. And the way we talk about it internally is AI provides an infinite number of interns. And that is fantastic, right? You can have an intern doing every task imaginable. But if you don't have deep context and memory on what the AI is doing, it's like hiring an intern without that few months of deep training that interns need.
Interns can come in and do a ton of output, but if they don't have the training, they won't have the context and they'll do a ton of work that that doesn't really deliver the end results. And so when you have a context layer like Cord, it provides your interns with that ability to train and understand, what are the unique business functions that CoreSight has that other research firms and you know and implementation companies don't
you know, jargon that you use internally, systems and processes that you've refined over the last several years to make you truly great at what you do. And so that's where we've been able to find and we go head to head with, you know, a a a technologist that is saying, I'm building this internally. Then we test out the results, you know, one by one. And they say, okay, query the data, ⁓ ask it something, and then make it give it as suggested to you. And time and time again, it turns out that, you know, that the the layer with with deep enriched context produces
Deborah Weinswig (10:48)
Okay.
Brent (10:54)
What a experienced operator would produce instead of an intern that just started yesterday and can get you the job done very quickly, but it it doesn't really provide quality output. So those are some of the things, you know, I'm giving a specific example of one of our companies, but one of the you know big things we look for is is what is that you know proprietary moat that they have, whether it's data or a context layer or something like that, that ⁓ they're they're gonna have defensibility against the the large LLMs.
Deborah Weinswig (11:22)
I think that's a great example. And and I I was smiling because this whole idea around interns, I've I've been with a lot of executives in the last few weeks and they've all said that first of all, I I've never heard of ⁓ so many high school interns. I was actually at a more in the medical field two nights ago, a research dinner, and this it was Columbia University and they had two high school interns
And they were talking about, and I've heard this, like this is like I feel like this is the theme of the last seven days, if you will, how these high school interns are starting to really and I find like it's almost high school interns like sophomore and high school, the sophomore in college right now, whatever that age window, is that they because first of all, they're they're still very humble and they're they're asking like such great questions and trying things that I find that they're
Their value, I mean, and most most of these are unpaid interns, so you can't even look at like an ROI, although ROI on your time that you're teaching them, but they're having right an exponential impact on organizations. And so it's really interesting. We have our I think we have five interns this summer, and we have our first ever high school intern. And what's fascinating is we kind of we do a whole matching process, but we actually have a whole agentic team. And that's where he wanted to work. And they interviewed him, they're like, this is amazing. And
And so just kind of this idea as well of, how are you almost changing your organization's thought process at a faster rate and who's doing that for you? mean, it's interesting no matter any of us do, like we we need that kind of almost I think that the questions as opposed to someone telling you.
When people ask you questions, I feel like you you change in a different way. So how how are you finding right and I know that that wasn't the point of your last but it but it it brought up this idea that's been like it's actually just been the back of my mind. I'm like, why, why na like, why now are we really leaning into kind of this this younger talent and why are they having such a big impact on all of us?
Brent (13:07)
Yeah.
Yeah. It's a great question. I mean, there is a a corollary to what's happened in the enterprise world, right? It used ten years ago you hired IBM, or this is more twenty years ago, you hired IBM because no one ever got fired for hiring IBM, right? It it's the trusted sort and it's been around for decades and and you go with tenure.
Right, and and it's this hierarchy. And and even ten years ago, you know, you go with the the biggest SaaS company because you're not gonna get fired for implementing the biggest SaaS company. It's it's the most trusted source. And now when you're looking at the enterprise level, companies are doing this build right and and they're dropping their trusted SaaS
they've been using for 10 years and democratizing the right to do the job to whatever technology does the job the best. And so I see that in in talent wars now too. It's not about tenure. It's not about you know experience in the field. Those are all helpful if you can also do things most efficiently. And so we used to, you know, our evolution 10 years ago when we were hiring at the firm, we looked for our interns, we looked for MBA hire
that had experience in the field. they they could come in and and sort of have that maturity level to do to do the job ⁓ well. And it's not saying that we don't do that anymore, but that's not exclusively what we're looking at anymore. And we we didn't hire anyone high school yet. We'll we'll we'll probably get there, but we we used to rarely focus on undergrads because we're looking for that level of maturity. But this year we have a couple undergrads coming in.
19, 20 year olds, and we found that the number one indicator of success of who's gonna do well at M13 is a high sense of agency. and sort of breaking down those barriers and and democratizing the ability to build because they're they're close to AI, they're AI literate, they have a high sense of agency, they want to get things done for the sake of getting done, getting it done, and where they lack in experience.
⁓ they have that grit and tenacity to you know see things through the end. And so agency is is definitely where we focus mostly when we're hiring. But yeah, we're seeing in the enterprise world and and again in in the you know talent wars, man, things get or people are getting younger and younger because they have that high sense of urgency and they really want to build some really great solutions.
Deborah Weinswig (15:33)
Yeah, it's it's interesting. there's been, I would say, a lot of opportunities that have presented themselves in the in twenty-six around ⁓ companies that we can either help others with in terms of due diligence, we can invest in ourselves, et cetera. And I'm finding is that the process of almost
Brent (15:53)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (15:54)
review and due diligence, right? In some cases it's sped up and in others it's slowed down. But the way that we even think about putting things into buckets, if you will, like the the buckets are changing. And so as you think about physical AI, the lot of where where we're spending our time right now, where do you think we are and and what is let's I mean maybe like next six or twelve months, because I just we're so much farther ahead than where I thought we would be.
How are you looking just six to twelve months out?
Brent (16:22)
Yeah, we're i this is I'm I'm glad you brought this up because we ⁓
In in venture you're always trying to look into the future and and not only what's happening in technology, but the ripple effects that technology has for for years to come. And so, the best example was the in the last technology wave before AI, you had the mobile and cloud wave. And this was kind of the the twenty tens.
The iPhone came out 2007, and that was big technology wave that allowed for the mobile and the cloud era. But it wasn't really until the mid-2010s that that started to take off. And the first ripple effect was the mobile app ecosystem. And you had for the first time all of these mobile apps that were consuming a large part of our days, both in work and fun and entertainment.
And then from there, you know, the the next ripple effect were sort of the new economies that that birthed. because you could have a taxi sort of on your your phone through Uber, this whole concept of the gig economy started to take off. And the the major ripple effect was
Now all of sudden 1099 and contractors were a major part of the workforce. and that's just something that you really wouldn't have predicted ⁓ in 2007 when the iPhone came out, but these are the reverberations. And and so we we we think about right now with LLMs, that is the technology wave, and it's gonna be the largest that's ever been in history. So what are the ripple effects ⁓ that are coming gonna come out of it? And you know, one thing that we're thinking about now is AI in the physical world.
you know, i if if you've gone to warehouses, 3 PLs, logistics centers, sort of like the the the services industry of our economy for the last several years, especially in Amazon, a lot of things have been automated, right? You have sort of sorting systems, you go to a lot of these facilities and there's machines running around. but autonomy has never been you know able to be produced in a in a quality way because you know th the you just didn't have
The LLM systems that you do today. But now, you know, thanks to a lot power of LLMs, you have robots that are able to make autonomous movements and human-like movements with either five fingers or two, whatever it is, but they can do a lot of jobs that a human can in a warehouse. And so you're starting to see this wild adoption inside of the US manufacturing and
supply chain industry of operators, and when I say operators, you know, warehouse, logistics, three PLs, ⁓ that want to be on the forefront. They don't want to be left behind. They see what Amazon has done over the last five years and in really turning their warehouses and you know next generation type of fulfillment centers. And so now you're seeing that in you know play out in the physical world with 3 PLs. And so you know we just see like the LLM is is the next tr technology wave and what are the reverberations and the ripple effects that are going occur.
You're gonna see a lot more adoption in the physical world and and ⁓ robotics is is an area we're spending a ton of time in, specifically in the supply chain sector, because it seems to be an area where ⁓ operators in that field really want to invest in the next you know 10 years of of ⁓ operational efficiencies, because you can finally get to very, very good margins when you have you know robotics working alongside humans.
to maximize output and throughput of of these facilities. So it's a really fun area to invest in. Just yesterday I was in you know visiting a couple of these both robotics and some of their customers, the logistics providers, and it's just a very fun thing to see in you know technology taking over the physical world.
Deborah Weinswig (19:49)
obviously I've spent the most of my past decade and a half career in supply chain logistics and just that the I I I I have to be honest, I think I thought by this point we would be further ahead of where we are. yeah, because as I started to walk around, at at Liam Fung and just
you know, see pervasive manual labor. I mean, we're talking faxes and and, fairly manual work. And then because of the manual aspect, if we think about it on fit, which I want to talk about as well, but right like so if someone was physically cutting something, somebody in the same factory, could cut something inside the line, on the line, or just outside the line.
So you would literally have genes is where I think about it, like coming out of the same factory, same lines, but people like literally like hand cutting, in in different ways. And so I just and then right we would see a lot of rejects, et cetera, and and a lot of kind of rework being done that was that you know, I would see on the factory floor that was quite expensive.
And then as we as we move forward and we started to work with some some drone companies, more kind of trying to look at in a warehouse setting, Like trying to better understand, the flow of goods. And so we're still, right, if we and I'm not I'm talking outside of the US, right? More of a global, opportunity to, you know, digitize, digitalize supply chain. Like I like I felt like we were sexy for like two months in 2020. Like eight.
Brent (21:14)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (21:15)
Even pinpoint, it was like mid-April to mid-June. And then it kind of like fell away because it's so of all, I think the investment opportunity is immense. Because it is such in some ways, it's such a difficult problem to solve, whether it's people being resistant or just like really connecting from raw material to consumer. that that's how I define, right? Until it's in the consumer's hands, that's that's how I I personally define supply chain. Like
Brent (21:39)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (21:40)
all of the touch points and then just making sure that the the accuracy right they're doing these like digital I I'm on the board of AFA the the whole like digital passports but it's it's immense. So I I've spent a ton of time in like LiDAR and other right like sensing technologies, right, which you know that that because there's there's so much going back to for me, the big change was in January of twenty six this year.
At CS, the CEO of Lenovo had on stage the COs of AD, Qualcomm, Intel, and NVIDIA in one keynote at the sphere, and literally of a three-hour keynote, it was truly transformational. Talked about how he believes that the biggest impact will be on supply chain. And in how that kind of comes together, I think remains to be seen.
But to me it was kind of almost like the demarcation, right? Like we've all tried all of these things, but now as you pointed out, right, we have LLMs and with having all the chip companies on stage, right? We have the compute because I think part of it, I mean, like I was building rendering farms in like 2016, right? I mean, we didn't have the compute power. So if you pull all this together, because it goes back to there's so many different slices of the pie and it's so complex, where do you think about starting? Like where's the biggest problem to solve?
Brent (22:45)
Yeah.
Yeah. ⁓ man. Great question. let's see. I wish I had a crystal ball. no, we've been taking it, you know, I always like to to bring in analogies and I think i because when we first started looking at robotics, I had some of the same thought as you. Well, I I I've been investing for a long time and ⁓ you know, one of our portfolio companies that just announced an an acquisition, they were acquired, is a company called Passport. And Passport
you know, helps US based brands, consumer brands go international. and they started in 2019 and you know, just ended up having an exit. And over the last several they've been building a lot of really interesting solutions for US based brands that wanna go international. It started with shipping logistics, but then, you know
expanded to duty and tax cut calculation, customer returns, reverse logistics, even marketing inside of those countries where you're trying to ship product and you know when we invested in 2019 going into 2020 there's a lot of talk about autonomy ⁓ in their network right then their network being sort of the logistics providers that were helping fulfill that package and I was thinking you know in twenty twenty twenty twenty one
Wow, a lot of people are investing in robotics, and it just seems like everyone's gonna do what Amazon has already done and and automate a lot of their processes. But when you you actually get into it it's sort of like the the digital application of LLMs. You know, you know, several years ago it it became really easy to do a research project on on anthropic or or open AI, right? You type in a question, it would pump you out a research report. But then the harder thing is
Providing context on a business, you know, helping take that research and and you know coordinate tasks, right, and and code. And there's a lot more ⁓ expertise and complicated solutions that go into the next of AI. Well it's the same with with ⁓ AI in the physical world. Like when you actually go to a factory floor and you or you go to a you know 3PL or a warehouse.
You see a lot of things that have been automated, you know, for several years. sorting a box to go, you know, left or right on the conveyor belt, closing a package and putting tape on it. Like these are things that that simple robotics, not even autonomous or or LLM power, needs to do. to your point, some of the more complex tasks need an immense amount of data and training data to be able to get good enough to that they're better than a human.
I mean one hundred percent success rate where they have run times that are multiple shifts, two or three shifts, something that a human can't like a human can't plug in for eight hours a day, like one shift and just be on for you know all those not even lacking a single minute in the eight hour stretch. and so my point is when you go to a lot of these factory floors, like we were just at somewhere yesterday, but you know, a lot of these boxes you you don't
appreciate how complicated it is to fold some of these boxes. Right? Like some of the boxes you you get on your doorstep. The Amazon package is the easiest, but a lot of these D2C boxes have these like 100 types of folds here and there, and you're watching the machine do it, and you're thinking to yourself, I couldn't even do that with five fingers unless I was like really, really trained on this. But you you you understand the thousands and thousands of hours that are fed into the LLM.
To allow a robot to have that exact type of specificity that a human would have after thousands and thousands of hours of doing that. And so my my my broad point here is it gets really complicated inside of a warehouse. It's not just you know a simple sorting something on a conveyor belt. There are a lot of complex human tasks, and that's why there's a lot of humans right now in in the warehouses. but over time, with immense amount of training data that is only made possible through powerful LLMs, you can actually produce that outcome.
⁓ at scale. And and I think that's where I get excited is like the complex intricacies of of the US supply chain, you're starting to see, you know, the power of LMs with immense amount of pre-training and post-training data be able to produce the output that we've seen, you know, for for a number of years with humans. But now you have somebody that doesn't call in at eight AM and say, you know, I'm sick or I'm out or, you know, warehouses are are are famous for having like fifty percent turnover every single year.
for you know hourly wage workers and now you can have something that that's you know a lot more b dependable.
Deborah Weinswig (27:09)
Yeah, I mean it's it's interesting because you know I spent many years in China and right we had fully automated warehouses and right like you would walk into a million square foot facility and there's like three people there. So I mean truly highly automated. And what was interesting is the and right, as you said, I mean I I think 50% turnover might might even be a a low number because these jobs are so first of all, there's like injuries, you're walking on
concrete, right, it it's a very physically taxing job. And so what we saw is right, like some of these folks end up moving into like the knowledge economy and and and how that started to change organizations, right? Because when people have like from a contextual perspective, understand all of these processes and then they can help right like it was like the example you gave in terms of like research versus contextualizing I think was excellent because okay
Now someone understands all of this, how do we take right, like going back to raw material sourcing all the way to the consumer? And because right now there are so many different talking gibber jabber right to each other, it it's it's still there's so much, I think, lost revenue, if you will. And then you mentioned it before, right? Like the reverse logistics piece, which I think is going to get worse before it gets better.
Brent (28:21)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (28:29)
which we can talk about because of GLP one and and what do we think are the, if you will, the, you know, we like I look at it, we've got right, the whole kind of Gen AI, agentic, you know, to AGI at some point, right? We've got that changing. And then we've got this massive thing happening in healthcare, health and wellness with GLP one. That's there's a lot I'm seeing unbelievable change.
From from both and right, of course there's a lot of other things happening. With GLP one, the number one thing I see, right, is people are changing size and we're seeing an uptick in returns. How are you thinking about the impact of GLP one on either your portfolio companies or on consumer industry at large? And what do you think are maybe some of the the near term and long term either impacts or opportunities?
Brent (29:15)
Yeah, mean, everyone saw the the headlines where ⁓ you know GLP ones were starting to have an effect on airlines, right? And and fuel costs were going down because the the weight of the airplane was lighter. Right. And that's just something that was really fascinating to read that first time.
You know, we think and then ⁓ the the impact on food in the snack and beverage industry, you know, plummeting sales from from some of the the unhealthy type of of you know treats that you've been used to. I we we've seen the impact on on a few levels. I think one is consumer, right? Things have been trending, more health and wellness, sort a companion type of snack if you're taking a a GLP one.
⁓ you know, groons had in an incredible rise, ⁓ you know, in a matter of three years, you know, selling for over a billion dollars. but you're you're just starting to see this move towards companion snacks for you know when s somebody is on a a GLP one. you know you need to get your nutrients in, you need to get your protein, your macros in, and so there has been a move there, you know, David
protein. A lot of these are are just like complementary to the the rise of of GLP ones. I think we're we we start to see something on the the health and wellness side. You know, we have a a a very large ⁓ healthcare practice at thirteen and you know it's been it's been really interesting to see the ⁓ the the push towards continuous care. and so we have y you know GLP ones have come up and now peptides are sort of the next frontier and we're we're
We're all gonna see what happens there. but that has been in response to you know, some of the largest downstream burdens on the US healthcare system is, you know, the the cost associated with obesity and chronic conditions, right? It it it doesn't just show up when when you're you're diagnosed, but for years and years to come, insurance is paying out for the cost associated with.
you know, some of these these larger ⁓ impact chronic conditions. And so if you can stop that earlier on in somebody's life, it it it offsets a ton of costs later on. And that's why healthcare and insurance is is willing to pay for a lot of these, you know, GLP one treatments because they know they're doing that, you know, cost analysis internally
understand that that it is something they should pay for right now. But we're seeing the move towards in the healthcare system, the move towards this this push towards continuous not just about reaction when you're going into your doctor's office, but it's the whole lifestyle of of prevention. You know, if if you get on a GLP1, ⁓ are you gonna stay on that forever when you get off of it? How do you continue that life cycle of of preventative care so that you're not always going to the doctor to get treated.
But you can go to the doctor to check in on on you know how well you're doing in in preventing a chronic condition or something like diabetes or obesity. and so we have seen a push, you know, on the consumer brand side, it's kinda fun to see the the the snack brands that are coming up, but also on the healthcare side, this this push towards continuous and then, you know, the the the last piece is using AI to to really optimize that, to to you know, track different signals from your your body.
Deborah Weinswig (32:14)
Well, and of course I we've always ⁓ had a foot in healthcare and a foot in the consumer and and I think like you kind of meet in the middle around health and wellness, if you will. And it's interesting, right? They used to call it, you know, compliance and now it's adherence. And this idea, right, that the the consumer is making the decisions. But I I think the biggest difference between, compliance adherence and, you know, how however we think about that in the past versus
Brent (32:22)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (32:39)
Right with with other drug and other ⁓ kind of diagnoses, is that with with GLP one, right, it's almost the immediacy, you don't take within a week you see a difference. And some of these other that you take that are that are long term, don't necessarily see that, impact so quickly. And so I I think that number one, we're going to see greater kind of compliance.
Number two, what we're seeing in the data, is that it's often taken for, whether it's A1C, pre-diabetic, diabetic, etc., but that it's now positively impacting a lot of other diagnoses. And so this idea that maybe over time, right, the consumer is more as you mentioned, focusing on
whether it's prevention or adherence. And then what can they do now? Because they're their their mind is free to focus on other things. And right. And they can they can be much more proactive in taking care of themselves in in kind of like how they spend their their leisure time. just there's all of these other areas of impact that that we've seen, right? Where
Consumption is down, but people as they change size, right? I think that, well, yes, of course, returns are up, but I I personally think and what we saw in the fourth quarter in apparel was unbelievable. And the the physical traffic into retail has I mean, you talk to any mall owner, I was just at ICSC. I mean, people are just gobsmacked. And and what's happening in physical real estate. And it goes back to right, people are trying new brands. You want to try the product on.
and so there's there's all these I mean there's a lot of really I mean outside of FMCG, right? And I think what we're seeing there is right going back to we're seeing new brands, I think we're gonna see a lot of acquisitions and we're also seeing new products that are very protein laden, that are that are coming to market. But but if you think about right, this this fact that we have and I agree with you, peptides are next, ⁓ or he in it next in a
Brent (34:35)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (34:38)
Let's just call it in a and as it develops into a more of more of like kind of GLP one, right? Kind of you go to the doctor's office and that's more in their their kind of, you know, toolbox. How how do you think this this change in the consumer psyche combined with how they're spending their their leisure time where where does that kind of if we look at the end of twenty seven, which I think is gonna look very different than where we are right now?
Brent (34:44)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (35:04)
How does that impact how you think about investing, right? Because you're investing for the longer term. It's to me it's it's the most complex but also most interesting it's ever been. So how do you take all that, right? Like which is out in the future and bring it back to today? Because so much of it is is really way more unknown than what we've seen in the past.
Brent (35:09)
Yeah.
Yeah. our our internal mantra, you know we talk to a lot of founders about this too, is ⁓ as an investor and a founder, you sort of have to have a microscope in one eye and a telescope in the other. Right? You have to be incredibly in tune with with what's happening today and and be very analytical, but at the same time understand that today is not gonna be the same five years from now.
and so there are some you know key truths that that we think about, what what's going to last, what's going to and you hit on a couple points that that that's interesting. I think with with the healthcare, you know, the adherence is a really important piece. And some things that we've found in our healthcare portfolio is if you can really nail a B2B to C approach,
It is so much more valuable for for a consumer acquisition and retention. and what I mean by that is you have a lot of D2C brands that sell GLP ones or health and wellness, and it's up to the consumer to maintain adherence to that. And you know, whether can they continue to subscribe or churn, you sort of have to continue to market to them and and you know, you know, show that that your product is valuable with versus a B2B to C approach, you're you're selling to a provider.
Deborah Weinswig (36:27)
Yeah, yeah.
Brent (36:35)
that is then selling on your behalf to the consumer. And if my doctor is prescribing something and setting up follow-ups and making sure that I'm trying to adhere to this thing and it's for my health, I'm much more likely not to churn from that. And so we've we've ⁓ loved investing over the years in B2B to C approaches because it to your point on adherence, it really ups the level of retention ⁓ with some of these consumer products. And that's have been been a very, very good and and efficient acquisition strategy for us.
and then the other thing yeah, right.
Deborah Weinswig (37:04)
No, I d I think that's a that's an excellent point and just one that, you know, we we should think about as we're kind of like moving forward.
Brent (37:10)
Yeah. And then the other part is ⁓ on on physical, physical retail. I I think it's you know, even now as I'm I spend a lot of time talking to agenda commerce founders ⁓ and and brands that are looking to get much more into agenda commerce and you know there's just a an article posted the other day that online traffic has now reached a tipping point where agents are accessing web pages ⁓ at a higher rate than humans. So
More than fifty percent of website traffic is now being done by agents or bots, which is the first time in history that's happened. that proportion it's just gonna continue to get more, you know, it'll be sixty percent and seventy percent the agents will be will be browsing the internet a lot more than humans in the near term. and I'm very, very excited about Agentic Commerce. I'm very excited about in the future, you know, putting my telescope on.
I'm gonna provision an agent to do purchases on my behalf. I'm gonna provision a shopping agent that knows me very, very intimately, that asks my personal shopper ⁓ to get things for me. And, you know, I I can be kept in the loop, but it'll do a lot of it autonomously. I I do not believe that that is going to be a hundred percent of purchases. I think there's you know, I've I've talked a lot about this in the past, but there's innately human aspects of shopping that we can't discount.
And part of it is physical retail. Like at the end of the day, humans like to go shopping in physical retail. And that is never gonna change. I don't see an oasis in five years from now where we're in pods just having things delivered to our doorstep. No, that you know, discounts a lot of human attributes like social, wanting to go on a treasure hunt, entertainment, you know, passing a day at the mall, that th these things are always going to be very, very human, ⁓ even online browsing.
Like sometimes I actually do want to go to the website. and so I don't believe in the death of the website because humans just want to browse. And even after a long week of work, sometimes it's a coping mechanism, right? Scrolling through and and and doing your your online shopping. And so I do believe even w that I'm immensely excited about the future of agentic commerce, it's only going to increase the value of in-person in human-directed e-commerce shopping. And so
I'm very, very long-term bullish about the the human in the loop of of shopping because it's just such a human behavior to want to shop.
Deborah Weinswig (39:22)
No, it's interesting. We ⁓ just hosted a webinar this week with the CPO from Resolve and we did a a very, very detailed look at the size of the agentic market.
And right, if you use the terms whether it's orchestrated, inspired, you know, kind of what that looks like. And so it it was unbelievable just kind of how how big is big. And we came up with slightly under a trillion dollars by the year 2030, because it goes back to right, if if you're even right, like on a website searching and you're like, okay, I'd I'd like to think about it this way, right? Like most likely that that kind of
Brent (39:47)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (40:05)
Assistance, right, is being done agentically now. And I think that the consumer expects an increasingly frictionless experience, which once again is almost kind of by definition agentic. And what I think we're going to start to see is more, you know, bopus, which is why like RFID and whatever is very important, because making sure you know what inventory you have that you can actually sell. And so I I think this idea around
A lot of the discovery and a lot of the kind of shopping journey may be done agents, Will go into the stores, Because there's and a lot of this will be kind of put together for us. But we want to look at the the color, the fit, et cetera. And you also want that, human aspect of, you know, what do you think? How does this look? It's and I I feel like we're
In this, and right, we've seen that in grocery, right? I think that's best example, Where we've seen, there's I I do think the estimates were that I mean, my gosh, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was like, 50% of grocery is going to be done online. And even before the pandemic, we were in the low single digits, right? Now we're in like the low double, like the low teens, because people still want to go. mean, it's it's interesting, we do a lot, you know.
Brent (41:06)
Totally.
Deborah Weinswig (41:18)
from an ethnographic research perspective, right? Like when you watch people shop, right, it's it's even different how they they explain it themselves, right? Like I think we don't often understand even ourselves how we're shopping, let alone how the consumer is.
Brent (41:30)
Yeah, I mean it i i it's a great example. I think online shopping and specifically grocery just spiked during COVID out of necessity. And I think it got at its highs, it was like in the high twenty percent or something like that. but y you know, as excited as I am and as much of I've as I've invested over my career in commerce solutions, it's still only twenty percent of all of you know in the United States. So
E-commerce, roughly 20% is done online and 80% is done in a physical store. and just shows you, like to your point, the power, the staying power of going somewhere, shopping in person. and it's not just about convenience. If it were about convenience, it would all be online, but that's not all that shopping is. We don't just want the most convenient path. That's one aspect of shopping. There's a lot of others that actually in person is is the ideal way to do it.
Deborah Weinswig (42:22)
I think that's that's a great point. All right. So we we get to my favorite point of this podcast, which is a little less formal in our lightning round. And so we have lots of questions for Brent, as many of you do as I'm sure as well. So we'll we'll we'll we'll move through these quickly. And if you want to pass, just say pass and we'll go on. All right, number one, most underrated consumer brand today.
Brent (42:41)
I would say Google. It was kind of left for dead a few years ago, OpenAI anthropic, but the staying power, the distribution, all of the different assets across search and YouTube. It just has ultimate staying power and and it's still the verb, even though you know there's others that are coming around it.
Deborah Weinswig (42:56)
I love that. number two, most overhyped technology trend.
Brent (43:00)
Ooh, man, I might get in trouble saying this, but agentic commerce, kinda going back to the the thing we were talking about. That the I guess let's be more specific. The death of the website.
Deborah Weinswig (43:08)
Yeah, I like that. ⁓ number three, one startup category you wish you saw more of.
Brent (43:13)
AI in the physical world. solutions for supply chain, logistics providers, I think it's the next wave and and I wanna talk to everyone in the category.
Deborah Weinswig (43:21)
Favorite AI tool you use personally?
Brent (43:23)
it's gotta be anthropic. Claude, personal use, business use, but everything from scheduling to researching to doing tasks that you know our analysts were doing twelve months ago, it's doing for us every day.
Deborah Weinswig (43:35)
А он буквей entrepreneur should read.
Brent (43:37)
I think it's called setting the table by by Danny Meyer. It was the the biggest takeaway a lot of people can do things great, you know, a lot of restaurants can can serve the same type of food, but hospitality is key and the way somebody feels leaving your restaurant or the conversation with you or the meeting with you, ⁓ goes a long way.
Deborah Weinswig (43:40)
I know I know exact yep, I know ex a great book.
It's it's funny, I have to comment there and just give a shout out to Rick Darling. So when we spun out of Lee and Fung he said, You should sleep with your phone because if a client calls, you want to pick it up no matter what time it is, day or night. And he's like, one of the most important things. And so I think he I'm I'm forever grateful he taught me that very early. A company you admire that is not in your portfolio.
Brent (44:21)
Pass. I I'm only I'm only talking about my portfolio.
Deborah Weinswig (44:23)
⁓
good. Okay. ⁓ biggest mistake founders make when pitching investors.
Brent (44:29)
Not spending enough time on them. you know, earlier earlier stage you're making a bet on the team, and talking about your superpowers doesn't come naturally to everybody because you know, some people don't like to hype themselves up, but not spend enough time on the team and themselves.
Deborah Weinswig (44:31)
I agree.
the next trillion dollar company will be built around what?
Brent (44:47)
Physical economy, AI in the physical world.
Deborah Weinswig (44:48)
Yeah.
coffee meeting or Zoom meeting?
Brent (44:51)
Coffee every time.
Deborah Weinswig (44:53)
What is the one thing the venture industry gets wrong?
Brent (44:55)
I even how high valuations are getting, if you look at the best successes in venture, everyone always underestimated the outcome of those successes. and so I think you know, we're always talk about the downside and that's great, but I think sometimes we fall into is underestimating the potential upside of of an and I think that's a a mistake a lot of people make. It's it's not not enough risk sometimes.
Deborah Weinswig (45:18)
Agreed. And last kind of lightning round question and then we have a final. Fill in the blank, the future belongs to companies that
Brent (45:25)
that are AI native.
Deborah Weinswig (45:26)
I agree with you. All right. So this is our last question for you. And thank you so much. This was so enjoyable. You spend your time looking for what's next. What is one trend, technology or shift that every CEO, retailer, and brand leader should be paying attention to right now that they are not?
Brent (45:40)
I do I I've given a common answer, but I do think LLMs are are an incredible powerful point as it relates to the physical world in a physical economy now. And so, you know, we've we've been focusing on a lot of digital applications to date, and the next five years will surely be AI applications in the physical world. and and that's an area that I'm I'm extremely excited about.
Deborah Weinswig (46:01)
Great. Thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.
Brent (46:04)
Thank you, Deborah.
Philip Moore (46:04)
Thanks, Deborah, and thank you for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode of Retaili$tic, please check out our full catalog of interviews with retail industry leaders, and tune in next Tuesday for another great conversation. Have a wonderful week.