Ep.134/ KNOWN
How fusing art, science, and entrepreneurship is reshaping ecommerce marketing with Known Agency’s President Ross Martin
Ross Martin, President of Known Agency and General Partner of Lunch Partners, joins Mariah Parsons, Host of Retention Chronicles and Head of Marketing at Malomo, to discuss his journey in marketing. Known, an integrated agency ranked third by Ad Age combines research, creativity, and innovation, working with clients like Shake Shack and TikTok. Ross highlighted their unique approach, such as using AI to identify relevant Reddit conversations for Shake Shack. He also shared insights from Lunch Partners, emphasizing the importance of resilience and heart in founders. Ross praised Mikmak for connecting legacy brands with social commerce, showcasing the power of AI and consumer intelligence in driving business outcomes.
Episode Timestamp:
1:56 Ross Martin's Background and Early Career
5:55 Marketing Insights and Innovative Strategies
6:41 Known Agency's Origins and Capabilities
24:26 Challenges and Opportunities in the Agency World
26:06 Lunch Partners Venture Fund
31:20 Investment Thesis and Founder Traits
36:43 Innovative Campaigns and Collaborations
41:15 Ecommerce Innovations and Future Opportunities
Ep.134
ROSS MARTIN
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
brands, yearbook, company, ecommerce operations, industry, ecommerce marketing practices, founders, business, betting, shake shack, ecommerce email marketing agency, work, reddit, st jude, best ecommerce podcast, space, learn, product, thesis, partners
SPEAKERS
Ross Martin, Mariah Parsons
Mariah Parsons 00:05
Greetings and welcome to retention. Chronicles, the podcast with learnings from expert e commerce brands and partners. I'm your host. Mariah Parsons, if you're here, you're either on a quest for E commerce enlightenment or you accidentally click the wrong link. Either way, I am thrilled you stumbled into our corner of the internet, and I hope you'll stick around. We've got pearls of wisdom for everyone, whether you're running a multi million dollar business or simply just starting out on your entrepreneurial journey. Before we unleash the brilliance of today's guests, let's give a shout out to our podcast sponsor, malomo. Malomo is so much more than just another Shopify app, their post purchase wizards, making beautiful and branded order tracking smoother than a jazz solo. So our amazing founders, like our guests, can keep their customers happy and up to date while they track their orders. So hit that subscribe button like it'll increase your LTV overnight and go listen to our other episodes@gomolomo.com that's G O M, a, l o m, o.com Get ready for insights, chuckles and perhaps a profound realization or two with this newest episode of retention Chronicles. You Hello everyone, and welcome back to retention Chronicles. I'm so excited for our episode here today, Ross, thank you so much for joining me. I am so excited to dive into the deep, deep, deep, deep questions that we have today, and I know it's going to be a lot of fun. So if you could please introduce yourself to our audience, tell us a little about you, and then we will dive into how we met and some of our questions for today. Um,
Ross Martin 01:50
thanks, Mariah. I'm a big fan of your podcast, so I feel honored to be part of it. Um, I've listened to so many episodes and learned so much from your other guests, so I can only hope that those tuning in can learn a little bit of something for me well, so my name is Ross Martin. I'm the president of an integrated agency called known, happy to talk about that a little bit. And I'm also the co founder and general partner of a venture fund called Lunch partners. And somehow these two things coexist.
Mariah Parsons 02:25
Yeah, that's usually how how it goes. I feel like a lot of people find themselves in some areas that coexist and help each other and are very symbiotic. So let's start with how did you first you know before known and before launch partners? What kind of, I guess, tickled your fancy when you're trying to figure out, what industry do I want to be in? You're very active in a lot of different facets of life, and, like we hinted at, their symbiotic so we'll get into how you know you you landed at where you currently are. But take us back a little bit further. Of you know what? What kind of sparked your interest in in this area,
Ross Martin 03:03
I think that there are two things that have sort of animated my journey, if you will. The first is that I've always been fascinated with how you convince people to care about something, or even be aware first and then about it. Yeah, and I, I remember just this is I never ever talk about this because it seems kind of small and old and stupid. But I remember, like, trying to sell my high school yearbook to parents at like, whatever it was, back to school night or whatever, and you're trying to convince all of these parents of seniors to buy a yearbook, which obviously they're all going to buy in high school, right for their kids graduating. But I was fixated on trying to sell each family like, two or maybe three yearbooks.
Mariah Parsons 03:56
Interesting.
Ross Martin 03:58
I don't know why that was, like, the challenge I gave myself, and I think it was because it felt unreasonable, right? Like there's no reason why a family needs more than one yearbook. It you just need the one. But there were a couple of tactics that I started to use or try, and that's when I realized, like, you could test and learn your way into marketing success. That was a very early age for me. I was probably like, 16 years old, and trying to figure out, you know, if I could separate the mom and the dad, then I could sell to each of them, but they wouldn't know that the other bought it was one like slimy trick that that doesn't feel that doesn't feel honorable, but I definitely did that. Probably
Mariah Parsons 04:41
tougher too with businesses, where usually you have to get multiple people in the room, for sure, for
Ross Martin 04:47
sure, that doesn't really work that well in business. And then the second thing I remember trying to do, it's so funny, like, I think on your podcast, Mariah, you have a way of getting people to talk about stuff they've never talked about. It's
Mariah Parsons 04:58
my pride and joy. So if. Thank you.
Ross Martin 05:01
So the other was like, I was like, oh, okay, you know you definitely want to get one for your kid who's graduating, but then they're gonna, like, take that yearbook with them, and don't you as parents, want to have one for your family? Because you know your kids probably gonna lose it. And so that was a successful tactic, right there. And then the third was, like, intergenerational. It was, don't you want to get one for like, grandma and grandpa and and then the fourth, which was less successful, probably was, don't you want to invest in the senior class that worked so hard for this? Though, even though you don't need two or three yearbooks, your your dollar contribution is going to go a really long way for these students to defray the cost that they already sort of incurred by making the yearbook. So it was like, it's a donation, really, and you might get two or three yearbooks. Charitable act. Charitable act. You want to feel like a good person tonight, on back to school night for your kid. Do you want your kid to be proud of you? Do you want your spouse to think you're a good person, and I
Mariah Parsons 06:01
so this becomes a moral judgment,
Ross Martin 06:05
exactly. So I started to think about like issues of identity and the impression you make on another person in a sales environment, and how do you get people to consider a purchase? That's pretty illogical. I don't know. I mean. And then also, like, realizing that your products only, your marketing, is only as good as the product that you're selling. Or is it right? Like, could your Could you do a better job of marketing than the team did in making the product itself and all these things? Like, I don't think I realized that was marketing and sales and advertising at the time, but now lucky back on it. I'm like, Oh, I was like, really playing with some shit there and, and like, the value of that one time purchase for like, $22 or whatever. That seems expensive, by the way, what would you pay for a yearbook? I don't know. Yeah, I
Mariah Parsons 06:54
feel it well. So we actually got yearbooks for free, which is, this is, so this is a fun experiment to think about selling them. And I loved all the different versions that you gave. They're pretty good ones, especially
Ross Martin 07:03
now, if I would do it right, like, there would be a whole CRM, and I would think that you're actually not buying a yearbook, but you're subscribing to the future of the class and like group and like all the updates you get every year. And it's just recurring revenue. And I would just think about that in a compounding way. And like, now we're getting into retention, rewards and loyalty and all right up our alley. So, like, I don't know, like, the power of the high school yearbook as a case study and a lesson for a marketer isn't one I thought about until, actually, like, recently, when I was, you know, thinking about coming on your podcast.
Mariah Parsons 07:36
So yeah, no, I love it. I feel like the like, example of this for me right now, in E commerce, or just retail, on the brand side of things, is liquid death. Where they Right? Like the product is not right. It's water. It's, I don't actually know where they source the water from there you go, yep. And so it's like one of it's the most basic need that we all need. But their marketing is so powerful that they, you know, they, they're crushing it and so kind of one of those real world examples of your yearbook, yeah,
Ross Martin 08:11
if you could package air like that, you know, I think that's next. That's the uncharted territory. Can you do for air, what they did for water or ground I don't know. The other thing that I think has always inspired me on my journey is, and I didn't really have language around this until just a couple years ago. But just the one of the beautiful things about marketing is that when it's done really, really well. Quite often, marketers are using some kind of tool or platform in a way that it wasn't designed to be used.
Mariah Parsons 08:52
Okay, going to that a little bit further. Yeah. So,
Ross Martin 08:55
like, I'll give you a reference to, like, a fantastic ad from 20 or 30 years ago, 30 years ago from Pepsi fighting back against Coca Cola, right? And all of us in marketing study those kinds of epic, you know, never ending battles between those two brands and other brands like them. And there was a stat that came out that Coca Cola was totally crushing Pepsi sales, like they were beating them like more than two to one for a period of time in the US and so Pepsi. Pepsi, did you know, pushed out this spot that was so risky you couldn't do it today because the protagonist in the spot was like, eight or nine years old, and you can't put an eight or nine year old kid today in a soda commercial. But they did right time that wasn't like nobody realized how bad that would be. But they they had this kid who was eight or nine years old. He, he sort of walks up to a soda machine and he puts a bunch of. Quarters in, and a coke can comes out. So you're like, Oh, we're in a coke commercial. And then he does it again, and another he hits coke again, and another coat comes out. Now he's got two Coke cans. And you're like, cool, it's a coke commercial. He puts the coke cans down on the ground, shoulder width apart, and then he takes more money out of his pocket. He steps up on top of those cans so that he can reach the Pepsi button higher up. Because all he really wants is to get up to where the Pepsi button is and get the Pepsi and he's willing to, like, step on two Coke cans to get to the Pepsi. And then he takes the Pepsi can, opens it up, drinks it, walks away, and leaves the coke cans on the ground because he didn't really ever need them. And so, like, that's an amazing example of using your competitor's product in a way that obviously was not intended to use that is, like, humiliating for them. And you don't even have to say anything, you know, just like mic drop, and there's no word, no words. And so it's like the power of using something in a way that it it wasn't intended. And when I look back at my career, most of the jobs I've had, like, usually, were invented, so nobody had them before me. And then if there was a job description, I read it like on day one and never looked at it again. And so I don't think I've ever been operating within the bounds of anything like and I think that you know that can go off the rails and you can be undisciplined. I'm not undisciplined, but I definitely believe that, um, that the things that are the tools that are at our disposal and the platforms upon which we get to activate were not designed to only be used the way they were initially meant. And so I'm, I'm a big believer in looking at things in a way where sort of break them and put them together in a different in a different way. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 12:00
I love that. I've definitely, now that you've talked through kind of the series of the Pepsi out, I've definitely, I've seen that in, like, some case study, right? Like some someone breaking it down somewhere. And it is, it is great. How much can be said with little, you know, little words are little, little context, right? And it can be a message that is delivered unanimously to many different audiences. So let's, let's bring it back from this, that tangent, because I love it, and tell us about those you know how you kind of got to the jobs that you could break some stuff and then put it back together. So let's talk about known first, and then we can go into launch partners.
Ross Martin 12:45
Yeah. So, so known is an integrated agency, Ad Age number three agency in the world. What Ad Age said about known is that it may be the ultimate example of a full service agency that's awesome, awesome with you from them. It was great and a real honor to get that feedback. And then Digiday wrote that known is an Iron Man suit of data and creativity. These are great ways of talking about what we built. Known was born in this version of itself in 2020 when we combined three different companies, a research and data science and engineering company, a creative agency and production company and a brand strategy and business innovation firm, and we put those three together, they were already working together very well, but we removed any structural impediments and built an operating system that was unified and really differentiated from competitors in the space. There's a lot of agencies out there in the world, sure, some of them are listening to this podcast, and it's, it's sort of a wild west situation in this in the agency world right now, and we just felt like we had a differentiated set of offerings and a different business model than everybody else, and it was unique enough that we could go out there and try and slay some dragons and and so that's what we went out to do, and, and that's worked like really well. So we've got amazing clients. We've been able to do some work that I think is really profound and innovative. And I think we've been able to show that when you bring science and technology and creativity together in 2024 you can do things that sort of defy gravity. And I think we've been able to do that time and take time again with clients like Shake Shack, tick tock Memorial, Sloan Kettering, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and I think that's like the most fun thing I could think to do in the world right now is to try and try and push this industry forward, to. New levels of invention and innovation.
Mariah Parsons 15:02
Yeah, it's great, because your repertoire is so expansive across industries. Feel like a lot of the times, agencies will stay focused, like, specifically, I see a lot of E com specific agencies, right, just because of the industry that I'm in. So it's interesting to see that you can kind of span all, like, like, all different industries, all different facets, and still be being able to break, you know, the specific industry that they're in, um, but have it be a little bit, yeah,
Ross Martin 15:34
not that moral. One is like that. It's audacious and a little bit irresponsible to think that you can be best in class, in every class. So, like, there's a bunch of stuff that we're not great at yet. Um, and then there, then, you know, with our our core capabilities, for example, creative, we go up against the best, legendary agencies in the world. And you're like, wow, like, we're head to head with widening Kennedy. We're head to head with 72 and sunny. We're head to head with Joker five. And you're like, shit, like, how are we going to do against the best of the best? And I can imagine nothing more fun than challenging yourself to compete with the best of the best. And then on the media side, media planning, buying and optimization. Same thing, you know, we're relatively a subscale player. Even though we're a mid sized media operation, we're competing against the biggest media agencies and holding companies in the world. They're mostly publicly traded companies, you know, and and so like, when you're going up against all these guys and you're trying to span, you know, pretty much the full range of marketing capabilities. What you're saying is we want to be best in class, in every class, and there's just no way to do that. So some things you just aren't the best at. The other thing is that, when we started, the companies that came together have a real history of being leaders in marketing work for technology companies and entertainment companies. That's where we made our mark, marketing for entertainment companies. We've launched eight of the last 12 streaming services. There's no movie studio, television network or streamer that we haven't worked with. And then on the tech side, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, meta, Tiktok, Intuit, etc, all of them. And there's a lot of pride here in that. And then what we've been able to achieve and learn in both of those worlds, but to really be, you know, achieving the potential here, we knew that we needed to move into categories where we didn't have experience, and certainly didn't have the same kind of expertise as our competitors. And what's been really cool to watch over the last four and a half years is how we've moved into health care, education, hospitality, even, financial services and sports and like you know, being able to apply what you learn from one category to the next. And now we operate in 15 different business verticals. So we're working in most of the industries that you would find in the world, and what you pick up from each of those experiences sort of just makes you better every day. What you're trying to
Mariah Parsons 18:28
do, yeah, of course, and to bleeds into the other industries that you're working in, right? Like, there's, there's different ideas that you can see of, okay, this is how they're actually doing it, and that hasn't really reached, quote, unquote, the norms of, say, tech or the entertainment industry, but you know, healthcare, FinTech, they're, they're focusing their energy on this, like, is there something there that you can pull in and then that can be innovative, innovative in the space that you're bringing it into? So there's a lot of, I don't think anyone would disagree that there's a lot of pros and cons to trying to service different industries and trying to understand just the the unique qualifiers of each each one. Because, yes, you'll never be best in class, absolutely unanimously, right? That's why it's the wild wild west in in different service industries and different that's why we have so many e commerce brands. That's why we have so many businesses that can, you know, coexist, because they all have their different pros and cons about them, like you'll never be able to just get a uniform platform. That's why, you know, leaders like Google, they're being challenged and AI, you know, right? There's, there's just, there's never going to stop being innovators in the space, which I find is, is a very fun spot to sit in, especially when observing their marketing. For all the, you know, all the differences and whatnot.
Ross Martin 19:47
I would to add to that, I think this is something that comes up on your podcast a lot, that, you know, people may say, you know, I'm an E commerce agency, or an E commerce expert, or, you know. Right? But I think your generation and you yourself, I don't think you think of yourselves as position players like you're not sort of limiting yourself to use a sports metaphor in a way where you're saying, Well, I'm a second base, second base, right? You know, you're an athlete, and so if you're marketing today, like the tools that are accessible and available to you. All you're really limited by is your imagination and maybe your drive and ambition and but if you, if you're entering marketing today, you can, it's sort of your responsibility to be dangerous in a lot of areas and be able to flex into spaces that, you know, you're like, I don't know if I know anything about that. Well, pretty quickly you can, you know. And so this happens all the time with known, where we're asked, Do we do something? And our answer is always like, we'll get back to you for like, most of the time, you're like, I don't know that anyone's ever done that before. And that's where shit gets really exciting, because you're challenging yourself to be the first you know, like nobody thought when we started working with our client, Jared isaacman, at this company called shift four, that he would say, Hey, I just bought the first four tickets on The first all civilian mission from SpaceX to outer space. Can you help me create a space program that will raise millions of dollars, or hundreds of millions of dollars for St Jude like no one like, you know, when I called my wife after Jared said that to us like she was like, what? Like, you're
Mariah Parsons 21:41
gonna you have to do a double take. And you're like, What did I just hear?
Ross Martin 21:43
I thought Jared runs like a payments processing company. Yes, he does. Also he wants to start a civilian space program to benefit St Jude. And you're like, Have we ever done that before? No, nobody had. There's no space agencies. Yeah. We were like, Well, fuck yeah, let's be a space awesome. You know how to do this? So let's go do it. And then, you know, we launched a Super Bowl campaign looking for people to fly with him into outer space. And then we turned we started filming everything we were doing because we couldn't believe we were even doing it. And we turned it into a five part real time documentary series on the first all civilian mission to outer space, which landed on Netflix, went to number one around the world, and helped Jared raise two $50 million for St Jude. And just today, on the day we're recording this, Jared and his team just went up on their second mission, and it's a really risky mission. They're going to conduct the first SpaceX spacewalk in a radiation field going up further than any human beings, gone up since 1970 and so you're like, we like, aren't you guys a advertising and marketing agency? It's like, we get to do these things in this in these industries, right? That are unprecedented, unpredicted. And then you're like, Well, how? And then you you figure it out. As long as, as long as you have great people around you, that's the thing,
Mariah Parsons 23:06
yeah, too, that, like, my eyes are bugging outside my head, because I'm like, that is just such a crazy, crazy experience to be able to work on that project. And what a great idea, too, right? Of like, using the power of novelty, I'll call it in this of like, there's just something new that you're trying to do and using it for a good cause. Like, I think it, I when I think about the relatability of it, of like, Why does someone do what they want to do? Is because it corresponds with their belief. Like, people are going to raise money for something that they believe in, like, St Jude, it's also a very recognizable name, and so to tie it with something that you all can make and have it be marketable. Of, okay, not just we're having this initiative, this amazing initiative, that's going to do a lot of philanthropic, you know, achieve a lot of philanthropic goals, but you can also hit those business or those marketing goals of like, how can we raise awareness? And they can work in tandem, tandem with each other, which is so, so cool. And then you all get to work on, work on a pretty innovative project. I'll call it, which we've been blessed
Ross Martin 24:13
like we've been we've been blessed to have innovative clients who want to be challenged in that way. And not everybody does, you know, which is fine, but I think, like you know, and that that innovation is not always creative innovation, you know. It might be consumer intelligence innovation or prediction, or any, any, any kind of media innovation. And I'll give you another example. Last year, we launched a Super Bowl campaign for a new streaming service, and it's a local streaming service, so that what they do is they take hundreds of local TV stations and make them available for free on this service. And it's a really interesting model how they're doing it, but you can't, like, launch a campaign like we would for Netflix or Amazon or Hulu, for something like that. So. What we did was we launched the large to introduce this. It's called zeem. To introduce zeem, we launched the largest national Super Bowl campaign ever, executed locally, addressably and simultaneously, so in hundreds of markets. You had John Stamos looking during the Super Bowl spot, looking at you going, hello Las Vegas. Hello reading Pennsylvania. Hello Miami. Hundreds of variations of this, using the stamina of John Stamos and a lot of AI and we were able to create hundreds of versions or iterations of a campaign and then traffic them all at the same time. So no matter where you're watching, you thought we were just talking
Mariah Parsons 25:43
to you, cool, awesome. And
Ross Martin 25:45
we did that at half the price and then half the time that it would take to do a traditional Super Bowl spot, which we do all the time as well. But this was like an example of using something that wasn't like local TV is not set up to do what I just told you, no edit is set up to do what I just told you. So there's so much shit that you have to break to be able to, like, even achieve what I just said. But our teams realized it was worth the effort, because nobody had ever done that before, and it was the right strategic solution for the client. And that's what I'm saying, is like, the most exciting part of what we do, yeah, yeah.
Mariah Parsons 26:21
That's awesome. So how does this all bleed into venture capital and then trying to also, like, break that industry? I would love to get your take on it.
Ross Martin 26:29
Yeah. So lunch partners really happened because, um, these are all LPS investors who were in the same boat that I was in, which is, you know, you've, you've sort of reached a level in your industry where people know that you know enough to be dangerous, and they want you to invest in their company, right? And so you're like, Okay, I'll do that. And I, and I was investing on my own in a pretty uneducated, unsophisticated way when I was younger, and the first or second investment that I made, those were, like, really accidentally successful. So one of them was a company that ended up called Virgin mega that sold after a year, to Nike, and the leader of that company, Ron Ferris became really one of the most innovative executives in the history of Nike, especially when it comes to e commerce. And he built the sneakers app that everyone uses, which is just a brilliant, brilliant app. And if you ask me, some of the best work Nike's ever done is the E commerce platform that sneakers is that Ron created. So like, I was like, oh shit. Like, I'm pretty good at investing. And then I, like, messed up three or four times in a row and bet on the wrong dog. And I was like, me, I'm not so committed enough.
Mariah Parsons 27:48
Learned lesson you got lucky on the first try.
Ross Martin 27:51
Yeah? Like, the worst thing to do is, like, show up in Las Vegas and, like, win your first bet, because then you think you're good, yeah, right? And, like,
Mariah Parsons 27:59
the mentality, for sure, the confidence.
Ross Martin 28:02
So losing a bunch, you know, not enough that it was dangerous, but, like, not good, sort of forced me to reconsider my approach. And I went to a whole bunch of other peers in the industry, other CMOS, other CEOs, and I said, are you doing what I'm doing? They're all like, oh my god, same thing, same thing. I got lucky a couple times. I still want to keep doing it, but, you know, I'm not informed as an investor. I'm not seeing enough deal flow. So I don't have the pattern recognition in each industry to determine really, what's the right way to go in anything. I don't have the ability on my own to diligence any of these deals, and then I don't have enough follow on capital to keep investing in the companies that are successful, so I keep my my equity in the business and so and I don't get diluted. And so I went to a bunch of people, I said, you guys, and everybody's like, Yeah, same boat. And I said, All right, like, what if we did something together where we're like, 25% less stupid, and everyone sounds pretty good. So sounds like a good percent. Yeah. So like 17 of us, they're they're all like, ballers in their industries, got together and said, like, let's put our money together. More importantly, let's put our deal flow and our intelligence and our networks together, and let's make like, a bunch of bets on founders and ideas that we can support uniquely in ways that maybe other VCs can't. So we're not like, dumb money, we're like, we're like, strategic dollars, you know. And so in each and every investment, you know, we we looked like, we looked at the founders, and we looked at the space and the opportunity, and said, like, can we help these people be more successful? And if the answer was Yeah, then, like, we went for it, you know, and we've done that 15 times. And you know, when you and I met, you saw some of those founders, and they're just crushing it, and they really are, and they are, and they're like, it's an incredibly diverse. Scoop of founders, which I'm very proud of, and they're teaching us, like, I think, you know, there have been a bunch of articles about them and like, how lunch partners as a fund has helped them. I would say it's kind of the other way around, like, like, we're all operating these businesses. But you know, when you, when you step back and you, you look at like someone who's in the early stages of founding a company. I, you know, it's, it's not only profoundly inspiring to see the work and the fortitude that is required, but also to like, you know, study the decision making process and learn from how they're navigating a pretty complex set of variables. And I would say I've learned as much. I've learned more from our founders than I've taught them. I
Mariah Parsons 30:49
love that. I love that lot of gratitude there, and I can hear it in your voice. And I think this would be interesting. And I know I had questions for you about brand, but I'm totally throwing wrench in our plans because I am sitting here realizing that we haven't had, really anyone who, at least that I can recall in the past two seconds that I've thought about this, anyone who is currently investing in founders. And I would love to know with that, you know that book of 15 that you've been able to learn from, what has kind of caught your eye, of like, okay, now I know someone comes to me with a pitch, like a founder comes to me with a pitch and says, you know, I have this product. This is what you know, this is what I believe in. XYZ. There's our pitch deck. Have you? Do you have anything that's concise, that you could or not even concise, but that you could share with our audience? Because I know there's a lot of founders in different stages who would at some point or other, probably be looking for an investment in their in their brand. So I think it would be a really, really advantageous conversation to have, if you can, you know, share like, Okay, this is something I've learned is super important and resonates with me as an investor, versus, you know, these things that I once thought were important probably aren't anymore. Or blah, blah, blah,
Ross Martin 32:01
every fund has a thesis, right? And so, you know, like I look at my friend Joe Marchese human ventures, and you know his thesis with Heather Hartnett, who runs it, is really to focus on those brands and businesses that are trying to capture and leverage human attention in new ways that's really interesting. And if you study the way he and they have the attention economy, you can make some really interesting bets. There we have our our set of theses that really sort of frame up the kinds of companies we've been looking for and make it easy for us to sort of quickly say no if we're presented something that doesn't fit that thesis. Because I think, like, the responsibility you have as a venture capitalist is to, like, give an honest, authentic, real quick answer as fast as you can, because the last thing you want to do is waste a founder's time. It's so the worst thing you could do. So we have our thesis. It's on our website, launchpartners.co, but I think if you're asking, like, what's something that I would share that I've learned that's really common. It's a common theme among the most successful and inspiring founders that we work with and you can you can sometimes spot this, if you're lucky, early on is knowing that whatever you're being pitched is definitely not where this company is going to end up, right? So like every single business we invested in has pivoted two or three or more times over the course of two or three or four years. And how could they not? Because look at the macroeconomic forces acting upon every one of them in every category, and look at the global and geopolitical uncertainty and chaos in some parts of the world. Look at the disruptions to the supply chain that they've had to overcome, and look at the introduction of new technologies that make it sometimes easier and sometimes harder to compete. And so each and every one of them has shown this like not just perseverance, but resilience and heart right? Be the smartest person in the world. If you don't have heart, and you don't, you don't have the ability to recognize for yourself, like, when, when you need to actually, like, face it and make a change, then, like, you're just not going to be able to survive, let alone thrive in in, in business today, and so, like, there's, there's a real human conversation that has to happen also. And I know this is kind of a tricky thing to articulate. Each and every one of our founders, they seem to have this light inside them. They their eyes twinkle. And it's not because they're like dreaming. It's because there's something really. Really, really special about the best founders in the world. There's something in them that they maybe were born with. I don't know where you look at them, and they're like, I don't know, like, 50 to 70% shinier than everybody else, or maybe more alive. And you're like, it's just inspiring, even before they start laying out their vision. And I always Jenny Sequoyah. Jenny Sequoyah, you know. And of course, like in our fund, there are, like, really good numbers people who will then, like, go do the math and decide, like, is this a good idea or not? But in terms of the people who have caught my attention over the years as an independent investor and as the leader of lunch partners, they've all had some special glow that you can't really
Mariah Parsons 35:45
quantify. Yeah, yeah, that's a special I you know, it's a special moment to share, if just like the and I've had that with, obviously, outside of a VC relationship, but you just, and I think every, every listener knows of like, you just see someone with who's passionate, and you're like, I get it right, whether it's even a musician or someone like someone else in the space that you've come across at some point where that you know that they're in the space that they're supposed to be in, and they're they're trekking towards, you know, the the path that they were meant to take.
Ross Martin 36:16
You're not betting you like you don't. You can't bet on a company like you're betting on a person at this level, you know, early stage businesses, you're betting on some human beings, yeah, and you're betting that they are going to have what it takes to make it through whatever hardships they're going to encounter. And no matter how successful any of us look, we are all working through something, right? Yeah, yeah.
Mariah Parsons 36:43
I love that we have about 10 minutes left or so. And I would love to get your take on, because you've had so many great, you know, partnerships, collaborations, campaigns that you've been able to work on. And I would love to hear your opinion of just what have been some that have stuck out. Give us a little bit of context. And then, why? Why? You know, you're still thinking about it here on a on a Tuesday.
Ross Martin 37:05
Um, I really like what we're doing right now with Shake Shack and Reddit. I think it's really interesting and cool. And for the um, especially the E commerce brands that are really passionate about this podcast so known, has an AI tool with a funny name. It's called the Big labotsky. Love it. Big labotski can do things. It doesn't replace human beings. It just does things that we as human beings can't do because of the sheer scale and magnitude and complexity of a, let's say, an opportunity or a problem. So in this case, we were looking for ways to enter, for Shake Shack, to enter relevant conversations at the right time and in the right way, with the right people to talk about hormone free chicken sandwiches available on Sundays. It's a very specific thing. Yeah, very specific. And so you're like, Well, where do we find those conversations on the web, and how do we enter them? Like, because there has to be a way to do that. And so we used the big labotski to scour the entirety of Reddit. I'm talking the entirety of Reddit. That's a lot a human task, right? So, and we told the model what we were looking for. Like, you know, specifically, these would be the indicators, but also like teach us what might be the indicators that were missing. And so the big lebotzky was able to identify the exact right subreddits and the exact right moments for us to introduce a message from Shake Shack that would feel feel authentic and relevant and not like an intrusion, and it felt like maybe you're the brand is adding value to the conversation and to the community, not trying to sell you something and take something away from you. And so that worked, you know. And not only did it drive preference for shake Shack's chicken sandwiches on Sundays. It also It drove sales, um in a way that now in 2024 you can measure, and that attribution is something you can see. And so I feel like that kind of collaboration between human and machine, um between, like, a really innovative brand and product, like Shake Shack and a really fascinating like organic platform like Reddit, I think those things together, kind of like that just works, and we get that right. That's really what I was talking about earlier of art and science and technology coming to. Other to, like, really drive a business outcome, but also to unlock value for consumers who may not have even ever tried one of those things before. But if you tried a chicken sandwich hormone chicken hormone free chicken sandwich from Shake Shack, you know, that's damn good, so that was worth it.
Mariah Parsons 40:16
Yeah, it's it's so interesting too, because it makes some a project that would probably otherwise be deemed unaccomplishable, or, you know, just kind of shooting for the stars and our space metaphor of this episode of Just like you to deep dive into Reddit, that is a task that would take a lot of human resources. And so, you know, any other team that doesn't have AI or doesn't have that, and they could be minimal, who could dedicate time and resources to doing that, and like timing it out and putting, you know, specific time allotments just to understand what is, what is even being published on there, to make something that is seemingly unaccomplishable, unaccomplishable, and make it accomplishable by having the AI. I think the AI tools is so powerful. Yeah,
Ross Martin 41:13
that's exactly right. Mariah, the other thing I would say, that's a known example. If I were to answer that question from a lunch partners venture perspective, I would say, like watching what mikmak is doing in E commerce. So we were early investors in mikmak, and I don't know if you've met their founder and CEO, Rachel tipograph, but she's a visionary in E commerce, and what she's been able to do connecting legacy brands and products, especially CPG, with social commerce communities, new understanding of like an anticipation or prediction of consumer behaviors, she's been able to sort of engineer outcomes for brands that, like you would think, would have no idea what they're doing in commerce, like these, some of them, some of those brands that they've they've found success with. I won't name them specifically, but like, been around for quite a long time, and you see associated them with, like innovation, but in the right hands of an of an E commerce leader like Mick Mac and a pioneering visionary like Rachel tipograph, she's been able to engineer like, some crazy ass, like, you know, outcomes and collaborations. And I would encourage your listeners to, like, check out Mick, Mack,
Mariah Parsons 42:35
yeah, yeah. No, that's awesome. I love that recommendation. I feel like too. It's very close to even if, like, I, I'm not a Reddit user, I'm not very active on Reddit, but I relate it to social media and the timed responses, or just, you know, the the intention that a lot of brands put into their social media comments and responding to people and interacting with them. And you know, if you can have that, if you can, if you can dedicate just a little bit of time, it doesn't have to be too, too much, but if you can do that and connect with your people in that way, then it goes above and beyond. And it's kind of similar to that Reddit example of like, you can introduce something at the right time or at the right place and really understand who you're talking to and what they want to get out of the platform that they're on, and then just kind of leave a little nugget, and then see what happens. And it can blow up into this huge, you know, this huge wave, or huge campaign, or huge, you know, brand awareness campaign. Well,
Ross Martin 43:34
you're 100% right. And I also like, I think about, sort of all the fast twitch, the fast twitch nature of E commerce, right? Everyone's looking for that last touch attribution and where to credit the marketing for it and all that. But the way I think about like E commerce is it's just filled with social experiments that are going on 24/7 that you can learn from as you get signals back, and then you can generate new hypotheses about why that happened, right? Why did these people at on that day go by that thing? What was it that made them do that? What? And could I try and do it again, or what made them not do anything on Thursdays? Why is that not happening? And how can I apply that learning to everything else and I'm that I'm doing, and so I feel like there's this consumer intelligence loop that comes with the advanced analytics associated with E commerce that are making, you know, newer brands that have greater flexibility or alacrity, more opportunistic, right? And because they can move quickly and respond to what they're seeing and learning in a way that bigger older brands that are sort of still traditionally, moving traditional in traditional ways, can you? Can you can outrun and like, just run circles around your competitors. And I think some of the brands that you focused on and talked about on previous episodes. Citizens are doing that.
Mariah Parsons 45:00
Yeah, and there's a necessity too. That is, if you're smaller, you have to be able to be, you know, cunning and quick and capitalize on these different ways, or on these different social commerce ideas, because that's what's going to get you in, in the ballpark, at least of the competitors that have had the market share before, so I will, I will add that, but I will wrap us up, because I know you have a very busy schedule, and it has been an absolute pleasure to have you on here, Ross. So thank you for making the time.
Ross Martin 45:29
Thank you. I love this podcast, Mariah, I hope you keep going, because I'm learning a lot from you. Thank
Mariah Parsons 45:33
you. I very much appreciate your phrase.
