The VCs’ conversation. Trends 2023 in consumer tech and new commerce

6 min readFeb 2, 2023

a FaB (Fashion and beautytech community) meeting in Los Angeles.

A panel moderated by Idan Levy (WaterTowerVentures), with Gabriella Cambanis (Cassius), Kiyan Yazdi (CrossCutVentures), and Tram Lai. See their bios at the end of the article.

A meeting hosted by Odile Roujol (Fab ventures) and Camille Cabale, founders of Fab community: now 3800 subscribers to the newsletter (link https://www.beautytechcommunity.com/) and 15,000 founders and VCs have met in 19 chapters in L.A., SF, NYC, Miami, Austin, Paris, London, Shanghai, Seoul, …

In the room participating: in L.A. Richard Jun Bam Ventures, Jennifer Kranz Mucker Capital, Kelly Byrne Powerplant VC, Tanya Soman Carrot VC, Sarra Zayani Global Founders Capital, Jocelyne Florence Parallel, Ashleigh Barker investment banker, Linda Honan creative agency, Ariel Ohana investment banker, Mike Gelb The consumer VC podcast, Alexandra Levitt ex Snap incubator/now stealth mode, and Kunal Lunawat AgyaVentures SF, Claire Chang IgniteXL Palo Alto, and coming from France, Laurence Faguer customer insights.

As we can’t reveal everything of what was said in a small committee, let’s share a few quotes from the speakers.

The Quotes

“Funds and founders alike are finding themselves having to revert back to the fundamentals as the market corrects from loftier valuations of the last couple years. There’s strong evidence that these corrections have already taken place at the growth stage, while the seed-stage is still correcting (based on my personal experience and anecdotal data-sets)”.

Kiyan Yazdi

“We think 2023 will be one of the best fund vintages we have seen in a long time. The economic environment served as a shock to the system that put founders and investors alike in overdrive, resetting expectations for the better!”

‘We love founders who build businesses that pull the future forward and become the voice of their community and industry. Relentless drive and unwavering ambition.”

Gabriela Cambanis

“Recent market changes have created friction and challenges to growth. I see this as an opportunity to focus on business fundamentals and build a foundation for a company that is scalable and solves a mission critical problem.”

Idan Levy

Trends, spotted by Laurence Faguer linkedin.com/in/lfaguer :

“Very interesting to hear Gabriella Cambanis saying one of her area of interest for 2023 will be advertising, Search. How brands are going to navigate cookies-less and all what happened in the ad space?

Also that 2023 is really a year for brands to focus on «must-have» tech solutions (instead of « nice-to-have ») to increase sales.”

If you want to know more about the consumer VC’s ecosystem linkedin.com/in/mikegelb and theconsumervc.com (Podcast)

L.A. ecosystem:

“This is a vibrant ecosystem of ex-New Yorkers and ex-SFers who have kept their hustle and added a little sunshine to their stride.” Gabriella

“I have been #LongLA since the day I decided to move here. Proud to be part of this ecosystem that continues to flourish across different verticals and boasts the best talent base in the world.” Idan

“It’s always energizing to host a meeting with people being authentic in what they share. Los Angeles is definitely the place to be for founders in consumer tech. With the talent in tech, influence, growth, entertainment and content. With diverse influence from Asia and Latin America, and inclusive by DNA.”

Odile (French, having lived for 6 years in San Francisco, before becoming a Los Angeleno).

And more information about our fab guest speakers.

The BIOs

Idan Levy:

Idan is a Principal Investor at Watertower Ventures, joining the firm in 2018 as one of the first hires. He started his career in IT where he built a deep expertise in cloud infrastructure and worked with Fortune 500 enterprise clients on cutting-edge technology projects. During this time, he also launched a productivity platform business which continues to operate today. Idan’s passion for market innovation, start-ups and problem solving ultimately led him to Watertower Ventures where he contributes to all components of the business including sourcing investment opportunities, due diligence, internal operations, portfolio management and more.

linkedin.com/in/idanlevy1

https://www.watertowerventures.com/

Gabriella Cambanis:

Gabby is a partner at CASSIUS, a Seed fund focused on Consumer, Content and Commerce. Prior to Cassius, Gabby spent five years in Asset Management at Goldman Sachs and M&A Banking at Rothschild, and a year as first-hire and COO at Evereden, a personal care startup.

linkedin.com/in/gabriella-cambanis-80587a52

https://cassius.vc

Kiyan Yazdi:

Kiyan is an investor at Crosscut Ventures. Crosscut Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm in Los Angeles. The firm invests $1,000,000 to $3,500,000 in start-ups that have the potential to scale, disrupt, and build large markets. Crosscut is a catalyst for innovation, bringing decades of expertise in technology and entrepreneurship to help passionate founders build world-class companies. Founded in LA, the firm has been committed to powering the entrepreneurship community in southern California since 2008.

Prior to joining Crosscut, Kiyan spent five years as an investor at Mucker, an early stage venture capital firm in Santa Monica, California, where he sourced pre-seed to Series A investments like: Ordermark, Soapbox, Numerade, and FlavorCloud.

Before Mucker, Kiyan was member of the founding team at The Beard Club (f.k.a. Dollar Beard Club) where he helped build the company to over 70,000 monthly subscribers and $18 million in revenue in just 18 months.

Prior to The Beard Club, Kiyan worked in private equity, where he assessed standalone investment opportunities as well as strategic add-on acquisitions in the SaaS and enterprise software industries.

Kiyan received his B.S. in Business Administration with a dual-concentration in finance and entrepreneurship from USC’s Marshall School of Business.

linkedin.com/in/kyazdi

https://crosscut.vc/