Erik is joined on this episode by Rebecca Kaden (@rebeccak46), investor at Union Square Ventures, Nikhil Basu Trivedi (@nbt), VC at Shasta Ventures, and Jonathan Yoni Regev (@jyonni), CEO and co-founder of The Farmer’s Dog.

They talk about where we are in the evolution of the consumer packaged goods space. Rebecca explains why this is a unique moment where consumers are eager to try new things from new brands. They discuss the three types of defensibility in a CPG startup and Nikhil points out that it’s difficult to figure out whether a business model can really be defensible at such an early stage.

Jonathan explains what they’re trying to do a The Farmer’s Dog and Rebecca and Nikhil talk about why they love the pets space for new investments, including some of the unique forces at play in the pet landscape.

They also talk about communities that have sprung up around certain CPG brands and how communities could be the future of both CPG and consumer social. They discuss the potential for another huge horizontal community like Snap or Instagram to emerge and what they would be looking for in “the next Instagram.”

We apologize for the quality of Jonathan’s audio.

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Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.