Rachel ten Brink talks E-Commerce and Retail

This week on ‘The Angel Next Door,’ Marcia Dawood sits down with Rachel ten Brink. Rachel co-founded her company Scentbird and raised $29 million first from angels and then venture funds including Y Combinator. She has now started her own venture capital company, Red Bike Capital.

In this episode Rachel gives us her best advice on how entrepreneurs can get their first customers and their first investment. She also talks all about direct to consumer businesses vs retail and how “85% of transactions are still happening in retail, which means even with all the growth over the past year, only 15% of e-commerce businesses are direct to consumer only.” Rachel also shares how secondhand shopping is forecasted to grow 11 times faster than regular retail and tells us all about the “3:1 gold standard.”

There is so much to unpack in this episode! Marcia and Rachel also go over commonly misused acronyms like D2C, DNVB, CPG, CAQ, and LTV.

See their definitions below:

D2C: Direct to Consumer

DNVB: Digitally Native Brands

CPG: Consumer Packaged Goods

CAC: Cost of Customer Acquisition

LTV: Lifetime Value

If you are a business owner in the e-commerce or retail space or are looking to become an investor to one, this is an episode you are going to want to take notes on! Rachel also gives tips for pitching to investors, how to speak in their terms and advice to anyone that would like to try angel investing for the first time.

Tune in to learn more!