Why This Investor Is Skeptical of Celebrity Brands But Still Backs Them | Deborah Benton

Deborah Benton is the founder and Managing Partner of Willow Growth Partners, an emerging growth consumer fund that has backed some of the most successful celebrity- and creator-founded brands in the market, including Katy Perry's De Soi, Gal Gadot's Goodles, and Molly Sims' YSE Beauty. She spent most of her career as an operator in consumer brands before launching Willow in 2020. The gap she saw was simple: there were no early stage consumer brand funds providing seed capital, so the only option was tech-oriented funds that underwrote and valued consumer brands exactly like tech companies. That led to destruction of value and unfortunate outcomes for phenomenal brands. Willow was built to fix that. Deborah is sufficiently skeptical of celebrity brands, and appropriately so. When a celebrity or creator is involved, she spends a lot of time diligencing their role, their motivation, their expectations, and whether the relationship between the operating team and the talent actually makes sense. Because at the end of the day, the brand has to stand on its own two feet. A creator can move a deal from yes to no just as easily as they can move it from no to yes. She breaks down why celebriites with massive platforms like Katy Perry are better for awareness while smaller creators like Amber Fillerup are better for conversion, why she passes on pre-launch brands raising at 50 to 100 million dollar valuations, and why the most common reason celebrity brands fail is because the hard conversations never happen upfront. She explains: Why Mr. Beast being front and center in Feastables is fundamentally different from Gal Gadot staying behind the scenes at Goodles Why Hailey Bieber built Rhode to a billion dollar exit on DTC only before ever launching in Sephora Why talent can open retail doors but the product alone determines whether those doors stay open Why she tells some celebrities not to raise outside capital at all and to keep it as a lifestyle business Why the brand has to stand on its own two feet regardless of who the celebrity is Her number one advice for investors evaluating celebrity brands: be very disciplined and diligence the relationship Chapters: Chapters

00:00:00 Introduction: Debra Benton and Willow Growth Partners 00:00:28 The Gap in Consumer Brand Investing: Why Willow Was Born 00:03:30 Investment Thesis: Emerging Growth and Everyday Wellness 00:04:22 The Qualitative and Quantitative Framework 00:09:01 The Celebrity Brand Reality: Appropriately Skeptical 00:09:49 Diligencing Celebrity Founders: Alignment is Everything 00:11:43 The Most Common Reasons for Saying No 00:13:06 Why Celebrities Make These Mistakes: Education and Advisors 00:14:52 Celebrities vs Creators: Different Superpowers 00:16:15 Brand Positioning: When to Put the Celebrity Front and Center 00:17:52 The Timing Question: Day One vs After Product-Market Fit 00:19:40 Managing Expectations: The Haley Bieber Effect 00:21:13 Valuation Discipline: Passing on 50-100 Million Pre-Revenue Deals 00:22:59 The Retail Advantage: Opening Doors vs Selling Through 00:25:15 What's Needed for the Next Generation of Celebrity Brands 00:26:20 What's Next for Willow: Food Innovation and Women's Health 00:28:59 Final Advice: Be Disciplined and Optimistically Cautious

HotStart VC Subscribe to the HotStart VC newsletter: https://hotstart.beehiiv.com/ Become a HotStart Angel and co-invest with us in celebrity-founded brands starting from $5,000: https://www.hotstart.vc/hotstart-angels/ Check out our fund: https://www.hotstart.vc/ Scott van den Berg LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-van-den-berg-22b534150/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scottvandenberg_/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@scottvandenberg_ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@scottvandenbergvc Deborah Benton Willow Growth Partners: https://willowgrowth.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debenton/ HotStart VC is a fund that exclusively invests in brands founded by celebrities and creators. We're the go-to platform for celebrities and creators launching brands, providing capital, strategic support, and the infrastructure to scale.