Here’s Why We Just Did
We don’t typically make multiple investments in quick succession.
Our approach has always been deliberate — focused on a small number of high-conviction positions where we believe we have a real edge around access, pricing, and distribution.
So when we make two investments in a short period, it’s because we’re seeing something shift.
The Evolution of Consumer
Consumer investing has gone through three distinct phases:
- Product & Brand (2000s–mid 2010s)
Great product and strong brand drove outcomes. Companies like Warby Parker, Glossier and Allbirds defined this era.
- Distribution (mid 2010s–early 2020s)
Audience became the unlock — social platforms, influencers and celebrity accelerated growth and lowered customer acquisition costs. Platforms like Gymshark, Prime and Skims benefited from this shift.
- What We’re Seeing Now
The next phase is emerging.
The platforms that win are combining product and distribution with control — not just capturing demand, but increasingly owning the systems and inputs that drive it.
Two Investments That Define This Moment
We’ve recently made two investments that sit on either side of this evolution.
KOTCHA
The Next Generation of Running Apps
Kotcha is not another fitness app.
It is a performance-led platform built alongside Eliud Kipchoge — the most dominant endurance athlete of his generation, and the only runner in history to break the two-hour marathon barrier.
This is not influencer-led distribution. It is authority-led distribution.
Most fitness platforms are built on paid acquisition, content, and lightweight engagement. Kotcha is being built as a performance network — combining coaching, data, and community into a system designed for repeat use and long-term retention.
Early signals are unusually strong:
- millions of kilometers tracked globally within months of launch
- tens of thousands of users across multiple geographies in the first months
- greater than 20% week-over-week growth in early markets
- scaling faster than many of the most successful consumer apps did at a comparable stage
Running itself is a category with meaningful tailwinds:
- over 150 million active runners globally
- race participation has more than doubled over the last six years
- run club participation grew by approximately 59% in 2024 alone
- a highly engaged audience with strong purchasing power (roughly half earning over $100k annually)
Kotcha is not aiming to be a feature — it is being built as a platform and a real community that scales.
We partnered with the team before a formal round existed, at a point where the opportunity was not yet widely available. There are several major announcements ahead that we expect to materially accelerate growth.
Get the app here or follow their journey on Instagram.
FRUITSCOUT
AI Infrastructure for Consumer Supply Chains
If Kotcha is about capturing demand, FruitScout is about controlling what drives it.
FruitScout is an AI-driven platform powering the supply chains behind modern consumer brands — using data and machine learning to forecast key agricultural inputs such as agave, cacao, grapes and berries with a level of precision that has historically not existed in agriculture.
Agriculture remains one of the largest undigitized parts of the global supply chain. Today, production decisions are still often based on incomplete or delayed information, leading to meaningful inefficiencies.
FruitScout changes that.
By combining computer vision, proprietary data, and machine learning, it turns agricultural production into a measurable, optimizable system — rather than an unpredictable input.
The company is expanding beyond its initial wedge of agave into more than 12 crop categories, and is working with leading global producers across multiple regions.
Today, approximately 25% of celebrity-driven brands are concentrated in food and beverage — a category where supply constraints directly impact growth and margin.
At the same time, many of the largest consumer brands in these categories are already vertically integrated, controlling their own production and inputs.
This is where FruitScout sits — as a control layer within that ecosystem.
It enables:
- predictive visibility into supply
- embedded infrastructure within operations
- improved consistency and margin control as brands scale
We partnered at a stage where we could maintain disciplined entry and selective allocation in what is becoming an increasingly competitive space.
Why This Matters
These are not two unrelated investments.
They represent two sides of the same opportunity:
- Kotcha captures demand through authentic, embedded distribution
- FruitScout controls the inputs that drive that demand
Together, they reflect how we are building Fund II: not just backing brands, but investing across the systems that power them.
Where We Are Now
What’s most interesting to us is not just these two companies, but what they represent.
We are seeing early signals of a new category of consumer platforms emerging — built on authentic distribution, reinforced by real-world communities, and increasingly underpinned by owned infrastructure and supply.
This is where we believe the next generation of outsized outcomes will come from.
As we continue to build out this tranche, we remain focused on a small number of high-conviction positions and are selective in how we shape the core of the portfolio.