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When Brynn Putnam sold her last company, Mirror, to Lululemon for $500 million at the start of the pandemic, it seemed to the editor like she had sold the smart fitness company too soon.
Instead, the timing proved exquisite. The at-home fitness craze has collapsed almost as suddenly as it peaked during the first year of lockdowns. Meanwhile, after a year as general manager at Lululemon, Putnam had new operational insights, a big win up her sleeve, and a new idea that she has since turned into a new company that she will launch publicly in 2025.
Enterprising company Lerer Hippo She’s already participated in a highly competitive seed round for that stealthy startup — the company led the Mirror’s $3 million seed round years ago, too — and on Wednesday night in New York, she sat down with both Lerer Hippeau managing partner Ben Lerer and Putnam to talk about what she’s building. We also talked about a broader recovery that’s finally happening in consumer tech — some of it being led by founders who led the last wave of successful consumer startups.
Below are excerpts from that chat, lightly edited for length. You can also watch the full interview below.
Ben Lerer when writing that first check:
When we invested (in Mirror), Brynn had a very compelling but very unusual demo, which was basically like a two-way mirror with a computer screen behind it to show you what the mirror would look like if they were able to raise tens of millions of dollars to actually produce something like this. . And really interestingly, she designed a contraption that she owned (a proprietary line of gyms at the time), like her own version of a Pilates reformer, and when we saw that, it was clear that Brynn wasn’t just a clever business builder who built a brand. Good gym brand for herself but she was also an inventor. . Brain won us over too quickly, and we may have seemed crazy for a few years, but eventually it became less crazy.
Bryn Putnam talks about selling the Mirror just four years after its founding:
We were not for sale. We weren’t looking for an acquirer. We’ve just started. But we’ve had a long-term partnership with Lululemon. I’ve been working with them in my gyms for about a decade, and we’ve been spending a lot of time with them, creating content and doing exciting events with them, and it felt right for us to be able to really mirror homes around the world with speed and certainty. We really felt like this was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.
As for whether Lerer participated in advice on this sale, he said:
I had an opinion about it. Look, venturing is a funny business because of the law of power and the idea that you’re supposed to do these hits and you’re going to suffer a bunch of losses but your big wins are going to change the whole world. I believe in the law of power, but I also believe that adventure sometimes loses sight of making basic, good, sound business decisions. There are some general truths in business, such as: sell when others are greedy, and buy when others are fearful. You don’t always have to keep coming back to the casino again and again. In this case, when Brian came and said, “Hey, I’ve got this offer, and I’m really thinking about taking it,” I said, “Yes, I should do this for you.” This is amazing to us. And if you’re getting pushback from other people (like later-stage investors on a different cost basis), I’m happy to try to be helpful, but frankly, you’re a lot tougher and more powerful than you or me. I will take care of this. But it was the right decision. For a year or two after that, I think Brain probably got some people second guessing it, and now I think people are seeing the arc of the whole category and realizing it was just a totally brilliant move.
Putnam went on to work as an executive at Lululemon, which he later became He threw in the towel On the mirror:
An investor I admire. . .He told me at the time that I should be generous and learn that for the life of your company, you are selling your company. You sell it in small pieces, or you sell it in larger pieces, but you’re always selling your business, and the best thing you can do, once you’ve made the decision to sell, is to really learn as much as you can from this business that you’ve chosen to sell to and try to approach something with purpose in this new role. And that’s what I did. I learned an incredible amount in the year I was there, and it was incredibly interesting. But I think at the end of the day, when you go from being a founder and CEO to GM of a division, that’s a pretty big change, and for some people, that’s appropriate. For me, this was not the case. I’m really building.
Putnam talks about why she decided to develop her new startup:
When I left Lululemon, I was at a different point in my life. I went from being pregnant to having two kids, and really taking stock of what was important to me at that point. The mirror was very much about me. It was my mindset and my performance, and it was about making yourself better. In that next phase, my life revolved more around my family, friends, relationships, and those things I found important. I was really struggling to find quality time with my loved ones the same way I grew up – you know, we’d sit around the table and have a meal, play backgammon, and look into each other’s faces. For my kids who grew up glued to iPads or smartphones, the experience of having fun was much more difficult.
So I started to really think, how can I take what I’ve learned in the mirror and apply those lessons to the gaming class? How can I use technology to build better social relationships and connections? This is what I am working on now. It’s a new consumer hardware company, but in gaming rather than fitness, it’s really geared toward how we spend time together face-to-face, where technology isn’t an experience but actually an enabler for building better relationships.
When asked if her new product is intended for children (or if it fits in a person’s pocket or is worn on their face), Putnam replied:
It’s for everyone. It is for friends and families spending time together. It is not a children’s company, although we hope you will engage with your children. It’s not an educational company, although we hope people find it interesting, strategic and innovative, but it’s really about using technology to connect people together. (Here Lehrer announced that he had sworn an oath to secrecy before Putnam.)
Putnam spoke about the intersection of AI, hardware, and software that is suddenly top of mind for founders and investors:
I believe we are about to enter the golden age of hardware. All the VCs here will be very excited to invest in hardware founders soon, and hopefully (because) some things will happen. The iPhone has been around for 17 years, and we haven’t really seen a mainstream consumer hardware success story since Oculus. I think there is an opportunity in the market for something new. A lot of the core components of these technologies have become more mature and therefore more affordable, so the ability to build display technologies, in our case, is possible now in a way that it wasn’t 10 years ago. It is clear that artificial intelligence opens the door to how we interact with our devices. It is normal for there to be new devices on the market. You know, we’re betting on the idea of not having another PC, but a new shared device in the home, which is what we did with Mirror, and what we’re doing again here. The idea of having a piece of technology that helps bring your home and family together is where we think the future is headed.
Regarding not focusing so much on the technical specifications of the devices but more on the overall experience being created, Putnam said:
I recently learned about Nintendo’s design philosophy. They have this concept that they use “withering” technology with lateral thinking. So the idea is to use mature, affordable and more readily available technologies while creating an interesting experience around them, and that’s what we did with Mirror. They were rather commodity devices. It was not a frontier technology. (And that’s) what we’re doing again now.
On bringing family and friends together as an investment topic (here, this editor pitched Bonobos co-founder Andy Dunn’s new company, piewhich focuses on bringing people together offline), Lerer said:
I’m invested (in pie)! Look, I have young children and I face the same challenges that all my friends do and everyone else does: We’re all hopelessly addicted to these devices, and at a high level, we’re interested in alternatives to that addiction and new forms of entertainment or opportunities to get people off screens or out into the world. We recently closed a (related) yet-to-be-announced deal at an application layer AI company in the travel space that I’m very excited about. And just us Announce a deal Last week at another automotive application company in the aftermarket, which is actually the largest spending area for hobbyists in the U.S.
Finding ways to tap into people’s emotions is always a good bet in the consumer space.
About the feeling that “consumer” as a category is on the move again – including thanks to a new category A $500 million fund It was announced last week by well-known consumer-focused firm Forerunner Ventures, with Lerer saying:
As a fund, we’re founder first, but we’re also New York first, and (with) the first generations (founders) of New York in early 2010, there was a lot of consumer, a lot of media, a lot of direct-to-consumer commerce. And there were some trends that really drove that. You had the rise of the iPhone and the App Store. You had the explosion of social media and the opportunity arbitrage ad ecosystem to attract customers faster than ever before. The rise of Shopify may also have created a great time to start building a consumer business with your imagination wide open.
Over the past four, five, or six years, there have been very few big technology changes that inspire people to do anything that doesn’t seem incremental. And I think AI is that catalyst right now. We’re seeing a high-quality group of founders saying, “It’s time to get back into the fold.” There are things that are possible today that weren’t possible six months ago or a year ago, and the slope is very steep now in terms of using your imagination. So I’m more passionate about the consumer than I have been in a long time, which is really exciting for me because this is my passion. You’ve built a consumer business. I love investing in consumer founders, and it’s been pretty bad the last few years, quite frankly.
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