The Truth About Consumer Investing with Forerunner Ventures Founder Kirsten Green

**Kirsten Green** (0:00)
One of the most challenging but the most exciting things right now is like, avoid getting caught up in like what things look like in the past tech cycle, and think about like if you started today with this brand new technology from ground up, how would you put it to practice? Like, what would the page look like? What would the experience look like?

**Dara Ladjevardian** (0:20)
The Library of Alexandria was an attempt to capture all human knowledge. Fire and war destroyed it. Today, we try again. Welcome to The Library of Minds, where you'll learn the frameworks and mental models of the world's greatest thinkers. When our conversation ends, yours begins. Each guest has created a digital mind on Delphi, that you can talk to anytime, anywhere.
I'm Dara Ladjevardian. Let's dive in. Everyone, very excited to have Kirsten Green here. She's the founder and managing partner at Forerunner Ventures, one of the most influential consumer investors of our time. Specifically, her fund's thesis is really around investing in businesses that capitalize on new consumer behaviors and psychology, and that's led to her being an investor in Dollar Shave Club, Glossier, Away, Chime, Fair, Hims and Hers, and many others. It's great to have you here.

**Kirsten Green** (1:21)
Thanks, Dara. Great to be here.
I was here early when you guys were just moving in, and there was a very few people, so it's awesome to see a full room today.

**Dara Ladjevardian** (1:29)
Well, we'd love to start off at the beginning. You have had a pretty non-linear career, and you also said you never sought out mentors. So I'm curious, what substituted mentorship in your life? You went from consulting to banking to starting a fund, what guided that path?

**Kirsten Green** (1:46)
Yeah, you know, I'm the one, I think, that has answered this question, saying I had a non-linear path. And I did, but I would say importantly, there's a through line through all of it. And the through line through all of it has just been my personal journey to grow up and evolve as a person. I think that if I had gone back and revisited myself as a young student or something, I wouldn't have imagined that I would be in the role that I'm in now. And maybe that's true for everybody, but I think for me, like that's been very active in my career is that I've been, or in my life, that I've been kind of constantly pushing myself to get to know myself better. And I think through that, following my curiosities and one experience or challenge leads you to another.
And so, that has looked like from the outside like a non-linear journey, but it's really been kind of all about sort of that path to get to know yourself better, to be able to live with more confidence. So, you know, the question of mentorship, I didn't, I, Forerunner has been my longest job. I do think my whole team is my mentor. I think all the founders I work with are, and I think that's kind of like life. Like, there's always an opportunity to learn in whatever environment you're in, whether you have somebody that you look up to that's kind of been there, done that, or, you know, just that you admire, or whether it's somebody who's challenging you in the moment and you're having a disagreement with, or whether it's somebody you're bringing up the, you know, kind of the ladder or the learning curve. I think those are all instances to learn and that's really what mentorship is. I think that I hope I serve as a mentor loosely defined to many people. I always find it like a little, I don't know really to do when you get this question that comes lately or more frequently, which is, will you be my mentor? I'm like, what is that? You know, I don't have office hours for that per se. I think that really depends on just your personal. That's one of the reasons why I love it. You know, so life is my mentor, and everybody that I've had the good fortune or the challenge of engaging with.

**Dara Ladjevardian** (4:20)
Yeah. So it seems like I read on your website, your biggest superpower is intuition, which kind of answers the question. You just have good intuition for choosing what to do. Was that intuition innate or, you know, were there bumps along the way that led to that intuition? How do people think about building intuition?

**Kirsten Green** (4:38)
I actually am working on my intuition every day still.

**Dara Ladjevardian** (4:42)
Okay. It's constantly evolving.

**Kirsten Green** (4:44)
I think that this is like the challenge, which is one of the great things about progressing through life is accumulating experiences and accumulating wisdom. But it's also one of the big risks. Because I think that, and particularly in the field that we're all working in, you really have to stay open-minded. You have to, I just was finishing our presentation for our annual Investor Day next week, and the last slide was, this is a time period that's about the courage of imagination.