My guest today is Mike Ghaffary who is a partner at Canvas Ventures, a firm that specializes on leading Series A. Some of their investments include Flyhomes, Nubrakes, and Zola. This is Mike’s second time on Consumer VC and is our first second time guest. His first appearance we went deep on how to evaluate and invest in marketplace businesses. On this episode, we discuss what is the next big thing in consumer after the iPhone? Is it web3, metaverse, remote work applications or something completely different?
Questions I ask Mike:
When we spoke a couple of months ago, you mentioned how this is the perfect entrepreneurial landscape for B2B. What did you mean by that?
We've now had the iPhone for 14 years, which has been the platform (coupled with android) for consumer technology. What are the options for the next consumer platform as you see it? Who are the candidates?
There's lots of chatter about web 3 and how web 2 companies need to become web 3 companies in order to survive. What does that mean? What do you think about?
If web 3 / blockchain technology does become the future, what has to also hold true or needs to happen?
VR was hot a few years ago and then quickly crashed and burned. Now VR is back as an interesting market to VCs. What has changed?
What do you make of Facebook changing to Meta and how do you believe the metaverse means?Is it going to be similar to the open web where you have companies that build parts to it but there is no one owner of it?I discussed with Rui Ma how in China, livestreaming is a very powerful way to market your brand and is a multi-billion acquisition channel but it only happened because Alibaba introduced it on Taobao and user adoption became widespread as a result. This is early, but with Facebook changing to Meta, are we in the beginnings of a similiar inflection point where one of the incumbents is going to make metaverse/VR technology more widespread as a result?
When you think about the next paradigm shift as an investor since it's still uncertain, how then do you think about current opportunities?Is this why it's easier to stay in B2B currently until the next platform arrives?
Meanwhile, we've also seen new consumer marketplace businesses that have been built that are the same business models from 10-15 years ago. Do you think new marketplace businesses can still be successful?
Is there any theories of the next consumer technological shift you don't believe?
Since you sit at Series A, since there is alot of excitement and high valuations, do you ever consider going earlier
What was your favorite book that you read this past year?
What's one piece of advice for consumer founders during these times?