Source: Newcomer
The consumer venture space is consolidating around founders with existing distribution, brand recognition, or unfair advantages—not just product ideas. Lightspeed's Faraz Fatemi and peers say the category survives, but at a fraction of previous deployment levels and with much higher bars for defensibility. Betting on consumer appeal alone no longer works. This determines which founders get funded (celebrity, operator-turned-founder, platform natives) and which don't, making category selection far less relevant than founder pedigree.