I wanna be like Sammi Cohen when I grow up

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Sri Varre & Sammi Cohen
June 11, 2024

Adulting is truly kicking my ass. The number of people that have asked me if I am truly happy has been shocking. Mentally, I’ve spent so much time dissecting my personality, functionally freezing, thinking about how to build generational wealth, data-fying VC to be sexy, and understand why I’ve failed with my health, and how to truly become the “do it all girl.” Well, let me come clean. I’m not type A, suck at keeping up with a routine, and am only consistent with my friend, work, and family relationships. But after some further reflection (aka me staring at the Capitol building outside my window), I’ve had a pretty solid three and half months.

I went bowling at the White House, My brother visited me in DC (love him but I’m the force of fucking nature in this sibling duo), I visited friends in Montreal, saw my friend and mentor get not one but TWO sharks (Emma Grede and Mark Cuban) invest in her company, attempted to trapeze, finished Emily Henry’s Funny Story, spoke on a panel at GW, started my journey in becoming a solidcore girlie (an $88M business btw), spent so much quality time with my girlfriends, and even made a guy friend or two. So to answer the question, I’m content, practicing gratitude, and excited for this season of Bridgerton. Jk jk this new season of my life.

I’m majoring in becoming the 1% version of myself at work (‘brilliant jerk’ culture has got to go) and double minoring in building a routine and making new friends. Full version of my goals below (very serious about the first one):

🎾 Networking: rally with other singles’ and doubles’ players (aim for 50% Intimacy Return Rate (IRR))

📚️ Acquire Knowledge: Finish 20 book

🐻 Visit a national park (avoid investing in nature’s bear market)

🎶 Increase Happiness ROI: attend a concert, sporting event (a Challengers moment at the US Open anyone?), go to Iceland

✍️ Hone my thesis as a “Gen-Z expert in _________”

I don’t know what cadence this newsletter will come out in, but stick around cause it’s definitely going to be an eventful second half of 2024!

In the meantime, here are some ways you can support me:

📱watch this epic Architectural Digest home tour and what is private equity?
🤝 intros to your besties in DC
😇 intros to your fave female angels in their 20s and 30s (willing to get naked about their personal finances)
🌎️ volunteer opps focused on mental health, sports, entertainment (aka something like the Goldhouse Fellow program)

So honored to kick off this interview series with Sammi. She previously was the founder of a matcha company, a Berkeley Haas grad, currently the author of my new fave newsletter Social Currency, and literally the person you would want to stop on the street to talk about how peak millennials shaping a new economic era, Travis Kelce’s recent class action lawsuit (if anyone has an empty bottle of Clase Azule, PLEASE hit me up - need it as apartment decor lol), the beginning of the end of Revolve, or about starting the all-female version of All-In.

As a creator yourself, what advice would you give to someone trying to build their personal brand and figure out their niche?

If someone came to me trying to figure out what to build their brand around, I'd tell them to go back to - what do you literally Google in your free time? What things catch your eye in life, whether that's TV, social media, conversations with friends?

I always knew I was interested in business-related topics. My very first viral video was on Tracey Romulus, the Kardashians' behind-the-scenes person. That got close to 3 million views in a few weeks and I realized I was onto something.

However, I then fell down a rabbit hole of just trying to repeat that model and lost my thesis/North Star a bit. I would cover people I wasn't genuinely interested in but thought would get views. After about 6 months of that, I realized it wasn't fulfilling me.

So I took a step back and decided that if something feels relevant to me and I can come up with an interesting deep dive on it, I want to do it. Over the past year and a half before getting married, I did a lot of wedding-related content, because I was researching it anyway.

Now post-wedding, I'm sticking to what I'm most passionate about - the intersection of pop culture and business. That doesn't mean I can only talk about those exact things. I cover career, investing, money topics too. But if someone stopped me on the street, I'd be excited to dive deep on these subjects.

So in summary - figure out what really makes you excited. What do you find yourself Googling on your own time? What conversations with friends do you get really engaged in and can't stop talking about? Those are signs that you have a genuine passion for the topic. And your interest will be more sustainable, and therefore your content efforts more sustainable, if it's something you truly care about. You're busy, so the only way you'll make time for it is if you're really excited about it.

What are some of the biggest lessons you learned from starting and eventually winding down your matcha company?

Starting a business is truly the best way to learn - you gain 100x what you can learn in an MBA classroom. It forces you to develop skills across operations, marketing, sales that would take much longer otherwise.

One key lesson for me was that creating a tangible CPG product is very difficult to scale as a bootstrapped business today, unless you have significant VC funding behind you. You occasionally hear of viral TikTok successes, but those are few and far between.

Another lesson was the impact of momentum - both positive and negative. Getting featured in Forbes was really exciting and led to a flood of customer interest. But when you hit rough patches, it's hard to see how the business can continue to grow. Building a business is one of the most rewarding things you can do, but it's really hard.

I also learned about myself that I likely wouldn't go into the CPG space again without substantial funding. And any future business I build will probably be more educational and service-based.

What are some interesting consumer trends you're seeing from a business and social media perspective, especially with regard to millennials and Gen Z?

Millennials and Gen Z are in a unique space given how extremely online they are. We're seeing more young people going into different types of businesses and industries than were accessible before. Even with typically closed-off industries like venture capital, the level of accessibility young people have, to be educated about the space, is much higher. It used to be more of a black box, but now you have VCs building online presences on LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok.

We're also seeing people take businesses they launch and immediately go hard on promoting them on social media, whereas in the past you'd build a Facebook page but wouldn't create video content until years in. The virality aspect is much faster now.

Those are a couple top-of-mind trends, but I'm fascinated by how pop culture and business intersect with the way humans interact and build for the future. Folks like Scott Galloway have really interesting perspectives on this too.

What advice would you give young people in their 20s and 30s who are trying to build wealth, beyond the typical guidance around retirement accounts, emergency funds, etc.?

One thing I wish I did earlier in my 20s was go to the doctor and get some basic fertility hormone blood tests done (highly recommend reading Cofertility’s newest report: covers demand, motivation, shifts in women’s milestone moments). I didn't think to ask about it until I was 31 and discovered I have really low hormone levels that will make it harder to get pregnant. I'm healthy otherwise and had no idea. If I didn't have fertility benefits through work, I could have easily waited a few more years to look into this and been in a tougher position. So I now tell all my friends, even if you're not thinking about kids, it's an easy test that's helpful to get a baseline on.

From an investing perspective, I see a lot of beginner retail investor accounts on social media pushing individual stock picks. But if you're new to investing, I'd recommend starting with an ETF, mutual fund, or index fund that provides diversified exposure, rather than trying to pick the "best" individual stocks. Vehicles like VOO or QQQ are going to serve you much better long-term when you're just starting out.

Is angel investing something you're thinking about?

Angel investing would be the dream - to accumulate wealth and have a sub-segment of it go into angel investments. It's something I'm thinking about. However, my husband is a founder who has raised VC money, so we need to separate our risk a bit. Building my business is also in the tech space. So angel investing is probably a 5-10 year goal versus the first few years after this one. But if I had all the money in the world, I'd be angel investing up the wall.

What are your thoughts on pursuing an MBA?

Regarding MBAs, I went to Berkeley Haas which is one of the best for VC besides Stanford. About a fifth of my class's dream job was VC. But, only get an MBA if you want to gain new skills, network, or have a great experience - not just to get your dream job. The people who got the best ROI from MBAs were career-switchers who used it as a springboard.

What been on your current rotation (podcasts, books, or shows)?

For podcasts, I love Pivot with Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher, the All-In podcast, and Call Her Daddy.

A book I'm in the middle of is From the Ground Up by Howard Schultz about the growth of Starbucks. It's an oldie but fantastic.

I just watched Baby Reindeer on Netflix (if you want the real tea on the backstory listen to this recent Vox episode). It's wild, so prepare yourself if you watch it. Kind of a comedy but crazy.

Outside of work and being a creator, what's something most people probably don't know about you?

Fun one - I have a four month year old Yorkie named Charlie who's the light of my life.

I actually had a crippling fear of being online prior to my first post. Oh my god, crippling, like my heart was beating so fast.

I was so nervous before I posted my first one. I'm not one of those people who's a natural. I had to teach myself and learn and I was so awkward about it. I was so anxious and I think for me the only way I was able to trick myself into doing it was what I said earlier around if you post on TikTok and the video doesn't do well it naturally doesn't get pushed out to people so there's like almost no harm in putting something out there if it's not really seen.

So that was how I was able to get over that fear of doing it and what changed for me was once you get over that self-consciousness of putting yourself out there and letting people form whatever opinion they want, and some will be positive some will be negative, I think getting over that fear is like the most liberating thing I have done in like my recent history, truly.

I think for me, I really struggled with that and once you get to the other side, you're like, alright, I'm ready to post everything online.

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