Pets, Fashion AI, and Activist Pressure

🐾 The Pet Care Arms Race

Modern Animal just raised $46M (led by Addition, True Ventures, and Upfront Ventures), scaling to 27 clinics and a revenue run rate north of $100M. The thesis? That tech-enabled, membership-based vet care can transform a $30B+ market.

But Modern Animal isn’t alone:

• Southern Veterinary Partners + Mission Veterinary Partners merged into a 750+ clinic platform valued at $8.6B (Silver Lake + Shore Capital backed).

• Small Door Veterinary raised $55M to expand beyond the East Coast.

• Sploot raised $40M from L Catterton for design-forward vet clinics.

• UK’s Creature Comforts raised £7M for its hybrid tech + clinic model.

Capital markets takeaway:

• Scale players (SVP + MVP) are consolidating into billion-dollar networks.

• Challenger startups are building consumer-first experiences with membership and tech.

• Even early-stage is funded, whitespace is global.

The race is on: will the winners be mega-platforms, or membership-first challengers that own the consumer relationship?

👖 Fashion AI with Famous Backers

Phoebe Gates (yes, Bill Gates’ daughter) just raised $8M for her shopping AI app, Phia, alongside co-founder Sophia Kianni. Backers include Kleiner Perkins, Kris Jenner, Sara Blakely, and Sheryl Sandberg.

Key stats:

• 500k+ users within months of launch

• 300M+ indexed fashion & resale items

Competitive context:

• Honey (PayPal) owns coupon automation.

• Ibotta & Fetch dominate cashback.

• Rakuten and RetailMeNot have affiliate-driven shopping locked.

Phia’s wedge? Fashion + resale, positioned less as a coupon scraper and more as a “should I buy this?” advisor; factoring in resale values, price comparisons, and deal discovery.

The question: is there room for another shopping assistant, or is Phia’s differentiation enough to carve out a category of its own?

🍼 Carter’s Becomes an Activist Target

Children’s apparel giant Carter’s woke up to an activist hedge fund, Roseman Wagner Wealth Management (RWWM), quietly amassing a 17% stake (~$180M invested). Carter’s responded with a poison pill.

Why? Carter’s trades at 0.6× revenue and 7× EBITDA, a discount to recent brand/IP comps:

• Champion → ABG at 0.7× revenue

• Reebok → ABG at ~1× revenue

• Dickies → Bluestar at 0.9× revenue

Brand platforms like ABG, WHP, and Bluestar don’t care about mall traffic, they buy consumer mindshare, strip cost structures, and monetize through licensing.

Takeaway: If Carter’s brand/IP is under-monetized, its equity story looks very different under a licensing lens than in public markets. Proxy fight, sale, or licensing pivot — Carter’s is now in play.🎙️ Podcast: Caroline Weintraub on The 5 P’s of Beauty Investing

🎙️ Podcast Highlight: Breaking Through Growth Plateaus

This week, I sat down with Jay Wright (Founder of Ecommerce Equation), who has worked with thousands of brands and overseen $500M+ in annual ad spend. His frameworks for mid-7-figure brands stuck on growth are brutally pragmatic:

• Instrument first: Split new vs. repeat revenue, MER vs. CAC, and cohort payback windows.

• Creative with intent: Tag by pillars, personas, and angles; build congruent landers like “5 reasons why [persona] is switching to [product].”

• Retention that scales: Meta ads to lapsed customers can double repeat revenue.

• AI as a floor-raiser: Use it for variants and congruency scoring; focus your human time on big creative bets.

• Play the long game: The leap from $150K → $700K/month or $1M → $15M never came from one magic ad, but from disciplined systems.

If you’re stuck on growth, this episode is a blueprint for getting unstuck the right way.

🎧 Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify.

That’s it for this week.
If you liked this issue, forward to a friend who obsesses over brand strategy, capital flows, or exit timing.

In the Money – following the flow of capital in consumer

P.S. We love talking to brands interested in exiting in the next 3-18 months. If you know of any brands interested in exiting, or any firms trying to help port cos manage turnarounds, we'd love to share a POV.

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