In The Money: eCommerce, DTC, and CPG

About In The Money: eCommerce, DTC, and CPG

A podcast about the real economics of ecommerce, DTC, and CPG. Hosted by Fan Bi, In The Money features honest convos with the people building, growing, and investing in modern consumer brands.

Publisher

In The Money: eCommerce, DTC, and CPG

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

4 May 2025

Latest episode

12 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

71 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   12 Oct 2026

   Three Years Stuck at $1.4M, Surviving Long Enough to Hit Mid-Eight Figures

   Three years stuck at $1.4 million in revenue. A warehouse and tech build that cost double the projections. A Stripe loan, a B2B check, and a family bridge loan landing back-to-back just to survive. Michael Robinov, Co-Founder and CEO of Farm to People, joins In The Money to tell one of the most honest bootstrapped stories in food, thirteen years building a Brooklyn-based online farmers market that delivers fresh, seasonal groceries from over 200 farms and producers within 300 miles of New York City to more than 13,000 customers across the tri-state. Today the business is at mid-eight figures, growing nearly 100% year over year and just announced its first outside capital ever, a $5 million round led by New Fare Partners, complete with a full New York Times feature. But this is the opposite of an overnight success story. We cover: Dropping out of NYU at twenty-one and paying himself $20K a year, for years The three years of stagnation at $1.4M and what kept him going through the doldrums Funding holiday inventory on zero-APR credit cards and the end-of-2019 ultimatum: if 2020 doesn't work, I made a mistake The pandemic surge: growing the modern CSA from 500 to 2,500 weekly customers while bidding against hospitals for refrigerated shipping containers Growing 500% in 2020 with a tiny team and becoming suddenly, unexpectedly profitable The 2021 over-investment: a new Bushwick warehouse and custom technology, both costing double projections The three checks that had to land back-to-back for the company to survive, Stripe Capital, a B2B deal, and a family bridge loan Why he went further into the darkness: customers kept reordering, and the retention told him the engine worked The growth unlock: fundamentals that were quietly there all along, plus a growth marketer and a $10K monthly ad budget Building the supply chain and technology that shortens the distance between regional farms and city kitchens The mission underneath it all: proving regional food systems can work The New Fare round, the new warehouse, and what's next down the Eastern Seaboard If you're a founder sitting in your own version of the $1.4M plateau and wondering whether to keep going, this episode is the most useful framework you'll hear: grit on top of good fundamentals builds a Farm to People. The retention and margins tell you which one you have.

2. 

   24 Sept 2026

   Vertically Integrated, Barely Any Ad Spend, 8-Figures of Scale: The Anti-Meal-Kit Playbook

   The meal delivery industry lost $20 billion last year. Feast & Fettle is profitable, growing 40%+, and just launched in Manhattan. Carlos Ventura, CEO of Feast & Fettle, joins In The Money to break down how a $200K personal chef service in Providence, Rhode Island became one of the only profitable players in the most capital-destructive category in consumer, through full vertical integration, patient family office capital, and an obsessive refusal to compromise on product. Carlos came from Goldman Sachs and Deliveroo with no plans to stay in food delivery. Then he tried the product, saw retention curves like nothing he'd ever seen, and joined as professional CEO alongside founder Maggie Mulvena Pearson. Five years later: 25x revenue growth, high single-digit EBITDA margins, and seventy sprinter vans covering the Northeast corridor. We cover: Why Carlos left Wall Street and what sold him on a $200K personal chef service The case for vertical integration: owning the kitchens, the vans, and the custom tech stack Why the asset-light playbook fails in hospitality, you're not delivering socks Recipe scaling: why going from 100 servings to 1,000 means starting from scratch $8-9M raised with 75% going to CapEx, and why those step-function investments were non-negotiable Marketing at just 5-6% of revenue: how product quality and word of mouth carry acquisition Members spending $2,000+ per year with 30-60 day payback, and why that was too conservative What Blue Apron and the meal kit graveyard got wrong: suspect contribution margin math and products nobody loved The K-shaped economy: skewing premium and why the middle is the worst place to be The habit activation rate: why three orders in 30 days predicts 400% higher retention The pre-launch playbook: hyper-local Meta down to the zip code level, 720 ad variants, all in-house The 70-van flywheel: why branded sprinters in affluent neighborhoods are a statistically significant acquisition channel The retail experiment they pulled out of, and the grocery partnership thesis that came from it AOV from $120 to $185: bundles, upper-tier plans, and building the ticket If you're building in food, operationally complex consumer, or any category where the playbook says stay asset light, this episode is the clearest counterargument you'll hear.

3. 

   16 Sept 2026

   80% New Customers Overnight: The Licensing Playbook Nobody in DTC Is Using

   What if your next customer acquisition channel isn't a platform, it's a licensing catalog? David Born, brand licensing consultant, joins In The Money to demystify one of the most overlooked growth levers available to consumer brands in the $5M to $30M range: licensing world-famous IP like John Deere, Peanuts, Disney, Batman, and Toy Story. The proof point that anchors the whole conversation: 80% of the customers who bought Everyman Jack's John Deere collection had never bought Everyman Jack before. We cover: How brand licensing actually works: royalty rates, minimum guarantees, marketing commitments, and territory restrictions The Everyman Jack x John Deere case study and why 80% net-new customers is the number that should make every DTC founder pay attention Why licensing functions as a customer acquisition channel borrowing trust instead of renting attention at rising CACs What IP actually costs at the $5-30M brand level — and how the economics pencil What makes a brand ready for licensing and the warning signs that a brand isn't Why licensing amplifies what's already there: it can make a good business better and a bad business worse How the big IP houses think, long innovation cycles, brand protection, and what they need to see from a partner Why the window for digitally-native brands is wide open right now, and why most founders don't know the door exists How to approach an IP holder when you're a $10 million brand, not Procter & Gamble Category fit: which IP works for which products, and how to think about audience overlap The Plum Deluxe example and what smaller brands can realistically access Common deal structure mistakes founders make in their first licensing negotiation If you're building a consumer brand and fighting rising acquisition costs, this episode opens up a channel most of your competitors have never seriously considered.

Who has been a guest on In The Money: eCommerce, DTC, and CPG

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Connor Hitchcock
• Asher Hochberg
• Matt Jung
• Anna Whiteman
• Ashwin 'Shwinnabego'

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

33,334

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Spotify

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 57 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

70

Social presence

0

YouTube

76

Engagement

32

Contact In The Money: eCommerce, DTC, and CPG

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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