The Startup CPG Podcast

Ashley Hartman
One of the lessons I've learned is probably how growth can conceal fragility for a long period of time. A company can add a lot of doors, customers or revenue, but really that tapers over a lot of things that are not as strong under the hood once you start digging. So I am very skeptical when I hear about broad distribution right out of the gate. What I really want to see is what is the velocity, the repeat, the margin, the cash conversion that's going to make you capital efficient and durable over the long period of time. The last that we want is a founder to just be deploying capital for the sake of deploying capital because you're going to end up failing as a company and you're going to go under and then that's not a great outcome for anybody.

00:58
Hannah Dittman
Hey everyone.

00:59
Hannah Dittman
I'm Hannah Dittman, Operations and Finance host of the Startup CPG podcast and today I'm really excited to be joined by Ashley Hartman, Managing Partner at Bluestein Ventures. Ashley brings experience from both sides of the table as an investor and operator, giving her a deep understanding of not only what makes a business compelling on paper, but what the execution behind closed doors actually looks like. Bluestein Ventures is an early stage firm born out of a heritage family office. Focused on the future of food and high growth consumer brands, Ashley partners with founders across their verticals with a highly hands on approach to company building. In this episode, we break down the four areas Ashley focuses on during diligence. What makes a founder stand out and why those traits matter so much after the investment is made.

01:46
Hannah Dittman
We also discuss what the first 90 days post investment looks like, the difference between family offices and other institutional investors, and how founders should think about when to fundraise and why they need the capital in the first place. Ashley also shares examples of Bluestein's work alongside its portfolio companies and what true investor founder partnership looks like in practice. Ashley highlights multiple fundraising frameworks that are founder notebook gold. So go grab a pen or your AI agent and enjoy. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Hannah and today I'm excited to be here for an investor spotlight with Ashley Hartman of Bluestein Ventures. Ashley, welcome to the show.

02:32
Ashley Hartman
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

02:35
Hannah Dittman
I'm excited to chat with you today too. I'd love to kick us straight into a brief background of yourself and your path that led you to Bluestein.

02:43
Ashley Hartman
Happy to. So I certainly didn't grow up thinking I would become a venture capitalist, but I came here Through a combination of analytics and operating experience. I started my career in finance at NIRA Economic Consulting, which really was a great training to break down complicated markets and separate stories from evidence. And then I led strategy and operations at my family's manufacturing business which was in windows and doors, helping drive growth and expansion, which gave me really good hands on appreciation for what it means to actually build and scale and operate a business. And then it was really fun to see where Bluestein could bring those two sides together where I can use my analytical toolkit and financial analysis, but bring an operator's mind and bias toward action.

03:33
Ashley Hartman
So today I'm managing partner, co managing partner with my partner Andrew Bluestein and I help lead both our investment strategy and the firm and have made over 40 investments over my career and just love working with founders and helping them move from this big idea to really durable business.

03:51
Hannah Dittman
Awesome. You have a super awesome background and the experience that you've had on the operating side, I'm sure informs so much of what you're doing on the investing side and giving you that empathetic lens that you bringing to the founders that you're meeting with. I'd love to understand a little bit more of Bluestein's positioning in the market, your criteria stage, average check size and mandate differentiation and all the things that make you interesting and that founders want to know about your firm.

04:18
Ashley Hartman
Bluestein Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm and we invest in modern well being at the intersection of culture, science and technology. We started the firm in 2014 as the investment arm of family Office, the Bluestein Family Office and then it evolved into an independent family backed firm. So we're currently investing out of our third fund, which is actually our first fund with outside capital though it's still anchored by the Bluestein family and our stages. So we invest primarily seed through Series A and our initial check sizes are 500k to 2 million. We look across the supply chain in modern wellbeing and nutrition. So we invest in high growth consumer brands which is most relevant to you guys, Digital innovation and also frontier technology.

05:05
Ashley Hartman
And what connects the portfolio is just this consumer who's becoming more proactive, informed and demanding about their health, which is really exciting and it's happening across the value chain in the industry. And then you asked about differentiation and a core part of our differentiation is our specialization. We've spent 12 years focused on this market, exclusively investing in over 50 companies in this space. So every company ends up sharpening the lens for the next one where we learn what retail Trends and velocity looks like where we can push on health and innovation. We understand deeply how long enterprise sales take and what a strong supply chain looks like. So that accumulated judgment is really enables us to recognize opportunities earlier and it also enables us to be the most useful to our portfolio companies once they come into the Bluestein family.

05:59
Hannah Dittman
Very well said and great perspective that you're thinking about the market with and bringing to. I love the focus areas. I'd love to double click on the idea of a family office that you mentioned. Could you explain a little bit more about what's a family office? What does that entail in terms of the way you operate in the investing world? Are working alongside founders? Are you different in any way from a traditional venture capital firm? What would the implications be if I was a founder who was getting an investment from you all?

06:29
Ashley Hartman
Yeah, no, that's a great question. A lot of these words and terminologies can be opaque. I'd say one nuance with family offices is when you've seen one family office and all of them operate in very, very different ways. So when were operating exclusively as a family office, were naturally what you would expect is a bit more patient with our capital on return profiles, company building, et cetera. And so I think that does differ a bit from a venture capital fund which obviously operates on a certain timeline. However, we have since spun out of a family office, so we are a dedicated venture capital fund and we do operate on that timeline and operate like a traditional VC fund which is designed for a lot of uncertainty at the earliest stages and also power law outcomes.

07:19
Ashley Hartman
And so we like to think we are still patient in that we invest at the seed stage and we understand growth is not linear. But at the end of the day we do have to return capital and then have a significant return to our own investors and we have to keep that in mind. And I'd say secondly, when you take money from a family office, it's that's a fantastic opportunity because family offices are, as I mentioned, very relationship and partnership driven and long term minded. But if you take a family office capital alongside venture capital, you are ultimately on the venture capital timeline, not necessarily on the family office timeline. So if that makes sense, you kind of have to think about the investor syndicate, not just the one single investor that you have on my cap table.

08:05
Hannah Dittman
I love that you pointed that out. The constricting or the constraining factor is going to be whoever has the most accelerated timeline or whatever the outlying need will be you need to accommodate and think through that.

08:17
Ashley Hartman
Very well said.

08:18
Hannah Dittman
Yes, very well explained. And I think a really helpful breakdown between all the different classes of investment firms that are out there and I think also probably informs a lot of the ways that you guys think about deals in the process of diligence and evaluation, coming from the heritage of a family office, even though you've gone down a little bit more of a traditional VC path now. Speaking of, I'd love to understand what you typically look for in a diligence process. What's an overview of what the steps in that process is like for you all and what type of deals fit those profiles the best?

08:51
Ashley Hartman
Great question. Because there's a lot behind the hood of what we do. So our diligence is structured really around one question and that's what are the few things that we have to believe for this company to have an outsized outcome? And that process usually takes roughly six to eight weeks when a founder comes in the door and then runs through the entire process. And we think about things around a few key areas. The first thing we do is we take a step back and we say, okay, let's think about the founder, the vision, why now? And the initial traction that this company has. So those are the kind of first things that we just high level think about and talk about as a team. And then if we want to go deeper, we think very deeply around building a scorecard across four areas.

09:41
Ashley Hartman
First is the vision. So what is the problem you are solving and is there a credible path to create long term value? And why is that path open Now? The second piece is, okay, what is the playbook you're bringing to this market that's going to make you successful? Does the product work? Is it exceptional? How is it sold? What does traction really mean and how do the unit economics look today and how do they improve with scale? And then the third piece is obviously the team. We call it the engine. Is this the team that's going to be able to build and can they recruit and do they have the right partners around the table, whether that's in source or outsource partners? And then the last piece we look at are the terms.

10:24
Ashley Hartman
Does this price and structure create alignment and an attractive outcome for everybody? And that's a key part of what we need to evaluate. It's not just about how good is this business, it's what does our return profile look like. And there are a lot of implications to putting a check into a company than just, okay, we think the product is phenomenal, which Might be great, but it's necessary but not sufficient. So that's how we kind of like work through our process and those are the key areas that we dig into.

10:51
Hannah Dittman
Ashley, I love the way you laid that out and I think it is so clear and easy to understand for the founders that maybe don't even know where to start thinking about presenting their business or some of the things that an investor might need to see. I think just thinking through it in those big picture buckets and then narrowing down, drilling down to ultimately the deepest layer, which is the detailed metrics and KPIs that drive a lot of those insights and vision and strategic thought is super helpful when you're thinking through fundamentals and KPIs as you're alluding to traction and thinking through what makes a business strong from a metric standpoint.

11:30
Hannah Dittman
What are the target benchmarks or the areas of focus that you're really double clicking on the most or that you really want or need founders to get right in the diligence process for you to feel high enough conviction to get involved?

11:43
Ashley Hartman
Yeah, there isn't really one KPI that reveals everything because we invest across the supply chain. It really can vary depending on category and where a company sits and what their route to market is, whether it's retail or direct to consumer or some other path that they've chosen. So it can just vary enormously. But if we're talking about cpg, what I really want to dig into and there's no right number for us to look at that's going to be a yes or a no. But the key areas that I think every founder should be targeting in their mind on having this dashboard in their head of where they should have their numbers cold is net revenue by channel and by sku, gross margin and contribution margin, retail velocity and same store sales or kind of your net LTV to cac.

12:34
Ashley Hartman
If you're a direct to consumer brand and really around what are those key numbers that show that your product is working and it's turning into not just first purchase but repeat and really customer love.

12:49
Hannah Dittman
I love how crisp you break down these questions. You're such direct awesome answers and I think it's so easy to understand. I love the way you walked through the piano a little bit there to highlight when you're thinking about founder evaluation and you're mentioning the engine and thinking through some of that stuff. What are the traits or the characteristics of that engine that help answer that question for you? Is this the team that's going to be able to Build this or is this the right team for this company?

13:19
Ashley Hartman
I love this question because it really does come down to the founder. This is who we're partnering with and getting into bed with for many, many years. So we have to think very deeply about are we the right fit together. And so I tend to look for founders with this unicorn combination of vision and operations and it's really hard to find. You'll find founders that are very high level, very visionary and then you'll find other founders that are super in the weeds and super tactical. But finding that marriage is so important. And so that is what high level look for when we're talking about what is the founder that I think is going to be successful. To give you one example, one of our portfolio companies was a company called Vive Organic, which is a two ounce immunity boosting wellness shot.

14:07
Ashley Hartman
Wyatt Tabman is an incredible entrepreneur. During the diligence process he could share the high level vision of how he was going to create the shot category, why now and what was the problem he was solving and how the product was just designed to like create this category that he was going to build in retail around shots which really didn't have many products in that set when he started the brand. And then he would get tactical and he would know every number and he would know the retail velocity or the dollar productivity per square inch of the product on shelf. And so that kind of like rare combination is really what gets me excited. And and then there's some traits that kind of I would layer on top of that. It's really this product and consumer obsession.

14:55
Ashley Hartman
They really understand what problem they're solving in the consumer's life and they are so obsessed with improving and optimizing the product they're offering. Then it's do they have clarity? Can they explain this insight, the wedge in the market and what are the priorities? The third trait I definitely look for is intellectual honesty. Are they self aware, they know what they don't know, they know where they want to solve, what they want to solve and what they have today. And then I certainly look for someone who has, I would say maybe a low ego, but high standards. They want to build strong people around them, don't need to be the smartest person in the room, are coachable, but really have that high bar for anybody that they bring on the team.

15:41
Hannah Dittman
It's such a hard thing for founders to be all of those things. But I think as you're outlaying all of the different characteristics, you can think through why each one of them is so important when you think about the future of a company journey throughout the time that you're going to be an investment partner with them. And this idea of marrying the operations view and the vision view is really important. And I think one of the hardest things to be able to bounce back and forth in every decision that you're making in every execution plan of what does this mean from a very granular, tactical perspective, how do we get this done? All the little minutia and the details and then the big picture thinking of driving the boat wherever you're going and making sure that it's all aligned with what you're thinking.

16:27
Hannah Dittman
And I think in that bucket, people often focus a lot on company vision and mission and product vision and all those things. But I would also add to that layer understanding the big picture vision and concept of scaling a brand with an investment partner and the big picture of what that actually means for a company journey. Because I think that is sometimes something that founders are surprised by when they get involved with an investment partner. Could you maybe shed a little bit of light on what you think that journey post investment is typically like? Obviously, this varies by each individual investment. But what growth or scale or milestones need to be hit post investment for the investment to be successful for you all?

17:13
Ashley Hartman
Yeah, I mean, you said that really well. I touch on maybe a couple of areas. I mean, one is a founder to be successful in their capital raise should have very clear milestones for what they want to achieve. When they take capital in the door and have that North Star and think backward, it's like, okay, this is where I want to be in 24 months. Now here's the amount of capital that I want to take in so that I can go achieve that. And so I think that sets the journey there. And so for us, once we have that roadmap, when we invest, we want to sit down and say, okay, how do we go get there? How do we go help you do that?

17:50
Ashley Hartman
So, like, let's sit down and actually strategy plan and think about what's required to get to the next stage and the next milestone. But we need to take those milestones together. That certain milestone is going to depend on what stage the company's at, where they started, where they're going. And so I'd say that's one piece of things. And then the second piece is we are really early stage investors. So we invest between seed and Series A and we know a lot can go wrong. And so growth is not linear and we don't expect it to be. And we understand that sometimes companies need to actually take a step back to go forward. We have two companies this year, for example, I'll keep them anonymous. One needed to rebuild their marketing function from the ground up.

18:33
Ashley Hartman
And so they were very conscious around, okay, how do we minimize capital deployment this year so that we can actually rebuild this function so that we can set the right infrastructure and foundation to then accelerate going forward. And the second company needed to do a lot more work around their product, SKU development and also their brand. And so they also took a step back to go forward. And like, is this year 2026 where we think the revenue was going to be when we invested? Absolutely not. But because both founders were intentional about what they were doing and really conservative with capital and disciplined about how they were going to build the company, we are very comfortable with that.

19:19
Ashley Hartman
So even though the milestones aren't hit, we understand what the journey and how it's going to where we want the journey to go once they've set the right foundation. The last that we want is a founder to just be deploying capital for the sake of deploying capital because you're going to end up failing as a company and you're going to go under and then that's not a great outcome for anybody.

19:39
Hannah Dittman
Ashley, I love that you highlighted that. I think it just shows what a great investment partner you all are for the portfolio companies you're working with. I think a lot of times founders have this big fear of working alongside an investor and answering to someone and someone cracking the whip or being harsh with them or being in a board meeting and be angry with them if things aren't going to plan. And I think showcasing that, hey, it's not always up and to the right. There's a big picture vision here that needs to get achieved and you understand the nuance and the difficulties and the complexities of operations, which a lot of investors don't.

20:18
Hannah Dittman
I think just showcase what an important thing it is for a founder to pick the right investment partner and really understand what their own business strengths and weaknesses are and the kind of investor they want alongside them as they navigate through some of those things a hundred percent.

20:34
Ashley Hartman
But we do need a founder who wants to be transparent and really own up to things when they aren't going right. And we're okay with that. But I think sometimes founders, as you mentioned, are a bit wary of doing that and being almost they want to paint this like really positive picture which isn't stuff hits the fan in early stage and we Understand that. And I wish that founders also understood that they can confide in their investors and really use them as resources and partners along this journey. Because one of our core values at Bluestein is challenge and support. And we are going to support you. But there's some element of challenge, too. We want to push you.

21:15
Ashley Hartman
We want to think about how do we push things forward and dig in and really uncover what's not going right, which isn't totally comfortable for everybody.

21:25
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. And I think it's the same thing as when you're working internal to a company and the C suite team, for instance, you kind of all need to, like, push on each other's thinking to get the best decisions and outcomes at the end of the day. And I think as long as you have a really firm belief that you and your investor are playing on the same team and really aligned with the same goal, some of that push comes through a different lens than maybe feeling that it's a little bit more adversarial. Truthfully, I have a lot of empathy for founders. Of course I advocate for integrity and intellectual honesty, no doubt about that.

21:58
Hannah Dittman
But I also understand that the fundraising process and the hubris and the dynamics that a lot of founders feel a lot of pressure to lean into to have a successful fundraise isn't necessarily the exact same skill set or dynamics that's then required post investment to work with. Ideal thought partnership with the same investment partner that you were just in this other process with.

22:24
Ashley Hartman
Yeah, you make a great point. You kind of have to switch from sales mode to partner mode, and like, those are two different lanes.

22:30
Hannah Dittman
And that's hard. And to your point earlier, just goes to show, like, founders have to be able to put on so many different hats at the drop of a dime and really be able to succeed post investment. A lot of times investors will have something they call a 90 day plan or the boots on the ground, the first things that need to get accomplished in an investment. Could you maybe shed a little light on what exactly the first 90 days might look like with a new investment partner and how a founder can be thinking about that and preparing for that, as many are currently fundraising right now.

23:04
Ashley Hartman
Yeah, every company is custom because we can add value in different ways in different companies. What we like to do once we make the investment, though, is sit down with the founder and really go through, as I mentioned, the milestones and the strategy and what we want to achieve, and then we understand holistically what the picture is and where we can push and help along the way. It's really just about getting alignment on. Like, okay, what is your plan? Let's break it down. How do we get there? What should we expect from each other? And then it's about setting up a proper cadence of how do we connect. Usually it's monthly, could be a little bit less, a little bit more. Sometimes I'm texting a founder every day.

23:44
Ashley Hartman
Sometimes it picks up when you have a fundraise dies down a little bit once that fundraise is over and your head's down. So it's really about getting alignment and then using the metrics to guide the conversation going forward. So it's like making sure we have the right alignment, making sure we have the right metrics that we're all tracking and looking against. And then how do we go dig in and help? Whether it's introducing you to the right partner, the right outsource partner, help you recruit, introduce you to other investors, it's really about where can we add value uniquely?

24:19
Hannah Dittman
Very helpful context. It's a little bit of almost like an onboarding process in some ways and setting the relationship up for success. Earlier you mentioned seed in Series A, that a lot of times the stages of investment can be pretty ambiguous and different investors define them in different ways. Sometimes it's hard for founders to wrap their heads around where exactly they sit. For you all, what do you typically define as seed or Series A?

24:44
Ashley Hartman
Yeah, again these terms are little ambiguous, so I appreciate your clarifying. So we classify seed through Series A as early stage and really slightly before product market fit. And that can be a wide range of things. We've done a series A that's been a company that is doing $20 million of revenue and we've done a pre seed that's pre launch. So it really does depend on where the company is in their life cycle. And what we look for is really what are the proof points of early adoption that we can then think about. Okay. We think this is going to translate into the mainstream consumer and there's no hard and fast rule. But typically we don't invest under maybe a million dollar run rate and maybe the latest we've gone is around a 20ish run rate or trailing.

25:42
Ashley Hartman
So like that's a very wide range. But it really just depends on where the company sits and where they are in their journey and how much capital they're raising.

25:50
Hannah Dittman
Very helpful. Are there any consumer trends or categories of interest outside of stage focus that you guys are particularly focused on right now?

25:58
Ashley Hartman
Well, we do love thinking about innovation, which is why we're in this space, which is the most fun part, I'd say we don't invest in particular trends per se, but we do invest at a high level in, I'd say market forces. And the market forces that we are thinking through now and deeply convicted in one is health is identity. Consumers are increasingly making choices about food, sleep, fitness, mental health and longevity as really a core part of who they are, not just something they consume. And it's become almost a cultural good, which is like so exciting and fascinating that like this is how consumers are choosing to express themselves. Second, biology is becoming both measurable and modifiable. You've got diagnostics and continuous data and that can really tell you what's going on with your body, which is so exciting.

26:54
Ashley Hartman
And then on the other side you've got GLP1s and other food that can really modify your body in a way that we haven't seen before, which is also enabling this. And then the third is AI is becoming a discovery and a transaction layer. And so it's changing how consumers are finding products, it's changing how brands are earning trust, it's changing how care is navigated because I can put all my data into ChatGPT or Claude and get a personal readout for me. So that's incredibly exciting and it's moving the industry forward at a pace that we haven't seen before. So we're looking for where these forces create new behavior and defensible businesses. It's not really just what is the key trend that's driving the industry to.

27:41
Hannah Dittman
So well said and I love the term market force. I think a great way to say that and it's so true. A lot of people are allergic to trends or don't want to be trend hopping or trend chasing and I think that makes a lot of sense. I think waiting for a quote unquote trend to become a behavioral shift or a market force as you're saying, makes a ton of sense. Especially when you think about the hold periods that an investment firm needs to be thinking about in the long term potential and success of a brand. You've had a long career so far, Ashley, in a lot of different spaces in consumer and have seen a lot of different things.

28:14
Hannah Dittman
I'd love to ask you, reflecting on your career and investments, are there any lessons you've learned or compelling anecdotes that you think others or other founders could learn from?

28:26
Ashley Hartman
We're wrong a lot, so we always have lessons learned. I think one of the lessons I've learned is probably how growth can conceal fragility for a long period of time. A company can add a lot of doors, customers or revenue, but really that papers over a lot of things that are not as strong under the hood once you start digging. Maybe their unit economics aren't very strong and they're losing money on every transaction. Maybe the repeat isn't there and it's concealed because they keep adding doors and it looks better than it is. Or maybe their working capital cycle is just deteriorating underneath it all. Or their co packer is not producing at the quality that it was before. So I am very skeptical when I hear about broad distribution right out of the gate.

29:17
Ashley Hartman
What I really want to see is what is the velocity, the repeat, the margin, that cash conversion that's going to make you capital efficient and durable over the long period of time. So that's one lesson I've learned. The second lesson is a core piece of what we look for investment, and I don't think I mentioned this earlier, is capital efficiency. It's incredibly important in the consumer space for various reasons that I probably won't go into right now because I don't want to go on a full long tangent, but it's really not something to address. Only when markets get hard you have to have that operating discipline from day one and I think scarcity and I think discipline comes from having constraints and that a little bit of a scarcity mindset.

30:03
Ashley Hartman
When you give a founder too much capital, they often deploy it in ways that aren't efficient and effective. So those are probably the two lessons that I think are just incredibly important for my career.

30:14
Hannah Dittman
I think very well said and definitely good food for thought and it makes a ton of sense and something that founders hopefully can highlight in their future conversations and as they go through a diligence process to be able to show their thinking through some of these things proactively or maybe have some strength there. I'd love to pivot us into a Slack case study question. As you know, startup CPG has the largest Slack community in the industry with now over four 40,000 members. I'd love to pull a question directly from our channel and have you answer it as a case study for any founder that might have a similar question. Today's question is when does a founder know they are ready to fundraise?

30:51
Ashley Hartman
Such a good question. So probably the obvious answer is you got to fundraise when you need capital. I think that's necessary but not sufficient. So I'd probably add that you should fundraise when you know the capital has A specific job to do. And when you put that capital work in completing that job, your company is going to be meaningfully more valuable and less risky. So I'd probably say, okay, think about what can you go to market and say you've proven to the investor? We've proven X, so we are now raising Y to go do Z.

31:25
Ashley Hartman
And so once Z is, maybe we have this one product and we've gotten this really strong early adopter direct to consumer, and now we're raising a certain amount of capital to go attack a certain channel or a certain retailer and we are going to go penetrate that, prove maybe it's X amount of revenue. And then once we unlock that, then the next stage of the company becomes possible. So I want that money to be put to good use. And so you first need enough evidence for the investor to underwrite the plan, whether you have maybe some really good consumer pull, some really strong unit economics, a clear use of funds and this core engaged emerging team. And then now I want to put capital behind you to go prove out what you say you're going to do.

32:15
Ashley Hartman
So that's probably how I think about it. And I know I said in the beginning you got to raise capital when you need it, but you have to think about timing very deeply because you have to raise before fundraising becomes an emergency. This process can take 4 to 12 months, sometimes longer. So you have to prepare while you have leverage. And if your capital in the bank is healthy, you've got leverage. If you don't, you're really in a tough spot.

32:43
Hannah Dittman
So well said. I love that answer and I think it's such a crisp, clear way, like all of your other answers today, for founders to really take some actionable advice and to think through how they might answer that formula or that question in their own business and be thinking through things in a specific way. And that's the crux of the pitch in a lot of ways. And thinking through the narrative or the fundraising narrative, you'll hear that a lot of times and I think a big part, if not the main part, is what you're trying to unlock with the capital that you're asking for and what that step function change in your business then becomes and how it's part of the process of getting to this long term vision that you have for the business overall.

33:23
Hannah Dittman
Well, Ashley, I could ask you all the questions. You are a wealth of knowledge and I loved our chat today. For any founders that might want to get in touch with you and continue the conversation. What's the best way for them to reach you. And second part of my question is do you have any advice or current opportunities for those interested in joining the Bluestein team or investing in general?

33:45
Ashley Hartman
Yeah. So if you want to reach me, just feel free to shoot me an email. You can email me directly ashleyluesteinventures.com A warm intro is always welcome but not required. So feel free to reach out at any time. And then we currently are a small, core, mighty team. We don't have any openings right now, which is sad. I wish I could add to our team, but I think it's great to think about the venture world and think about how you get in because we all need more brilliant minds and we need really good partners to help our companies bring it forward.

34:19
Ashley Hartman
I think probably my one piece of advice would be develop a point of view before you think about trying to get into the space and really have I think the two things that I look for in anyone thinking about venture specifically in our space around kind of well being or CPG is one a deep passion for the space. There's so many opportunities in venture that like you just shouldn't be in the space unless you have like this deep burning passion for the consumer. And what we do. Just like we ask our founders to do, we have to have that same obsession. And then secondly, just a very strong hustle. Prove what you can do and really be active and proactive and search for opportunities where you can find them.

35:02
Hannah Dittman
Well, thank you so much for all the words of wisdom, the insights, the anecdotes, your thoughts and your perspectives. I think this is a ton of well thought through and hard won insights that you've provided us with today. So Ashley, I can't say enough and thank you so much. It's so clear what an empathetic and thoughtful investor you are. I'm sure the portfolio companies you're working with feel very lucky to have you as a partner. So thank you for joining us today.

35:26
Ashley Hartman
Well, thank you so much to you and Startup CPG for everything that you do. The community you've created is phenomenal and incredible and such an important resource to all of the founders building in our space.

35:37
Hannah Dittman
Thank you. We're excited you're a part of it. Well friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in cpg. And if you love this podcast, you'll love our Slack community even more. Here at Startup cpg, we're a community of brands and experts and you should join sign up @startupcpg.com you'll then get an invite to our online Slack community of over 35,000 All Star CPG members, hear about amazing events near you and all our special opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands and more. It's a free community, so what are you waiting for? I'll catch you on the next episode and I'll see you on the Slack.