Twenty Six. / Contributor Twenty: Mark Chou, Bradhurst Ventures
On Resilience over Efficiency, Understanding Regional Cultures, and Mastering the Instagram Medium.
Hey, everybody. As we go onto the next set of Le Cinq editions, this latest one is a real treat for me to share with you all. It’s by a person who’s seen an incredible in company (Away) grow from the ground up. I’ve worked with him, call him a friend, and keep learning so many things from him as he journeys into the early-stage investor world.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the incredibly talented and wise Mr. Mark Chou.
Enjoy!
Mark Chou is the founder of Bradhurst Ventures, which partners with early stage consumer brands through investing, advising, and operational execution – a company he founded after joining Away as its third employee and leading functions ranging from marketing to digital to international.
A fun fact: He loves vintage watches, menswear, and Auburn football, and lives in New York City with his beautiful wife and daughter. Find him on Instagram.
What are you currently working on?
After joining Away a month post-launch and working there for four years, I left the company at the end of March to start Bradhurst Ventures, a new firm I've launched that focuses on consulting for early stage consumer brands (and investing and advisory as well). It's definitely an interesting time to be leaving behind a steady paycheck in the midst of a pandemic, but in the conversations I've been having over the past month or two, there's a greater need than ever for companies to look critically at their full-time hiring budgets.
That provides an opportunity for fractional senior operators to help continue pushing businesses forward, at a fraction of the fully-loaded costs of hiring executives on a full-time basis.
What are you currently excited about?
The current pandemic has created many new challenges to solve and also accelerated changes in consumer and company behavior, many of which I believe will be positive shifts in the long-term. A new focus on resilience rather than just efficiency will make supply chains stronger, and in a world that better understands the value of remote work, a shift in hiring philosophy from optimizing for a local max for your talent pool (say, +/- 50 miles from HQ) to a global max (perhaps anywhere in the world) will create more geographically resilient employee bases while also creating more opportunity for those outside "tier 1" cities.
Those who are thoughtfully addressing or adapting to the challenges of our new environment will be exciting to watch.
What’s a story or article that you're currently thinking about?
In our current polarized political environment, I can't help but point people to Colin Woodard's American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America whenever people on either side of the aisle are frustrated because they can't understand how someone else could think they way they do – particularly when that person lives in a completely different area of the country.
Woodard does a fantastic job explaining how the different areas of the United States developed cultures based on the types of immigrants settling those areas (e.g., The Left Coast, Yankeedom, New France, Deep South, or New Amsterdam, in Woodard’s terms). I think it's such an eye-opening read because I think it helps you understand how people and the way they think are the products of their regional culture, and how those (often conflicting) regional cultures also came to be.
What’s a product you’re currently obsessed with?
One of my favorite podcasts is Blamo!, a fashion and menswear-focused one hosted by Jeremy Kirkland, who I first met on Twitter nearly a decade ago. We're currently partway Blamo's seventh season, and as I'm starting up my own company, it's been inspiring to hear the stories of people who pursued their own entrepreneurial pursuits, from Sid Mashburn and Todd Snyder to Jack Carlson of Rowing Blazers, a company I started advising a few years ago after being introduced through Blamo!.
Wild Card: What’s an item you can’t shake your mind off of?
Matt Hranek and Yolanda Edwards, creators of Wm Brown Magazine and Yolo Journal, respectively, have launched two of my favorite print magazines – seemingly an anachronistic pursuit not so long ago, but now offering the type of physical experience that so many of us crave in a digitally-dominated world.
With that said, both Matt and Yolanda are also masters of the Instagram medium, and they've been creating amazing content, from a tutorial on making the best Negroni at home to imaginary Italian road trips – much appreciated in the midst of our current isolated existences.
~ C O L O P H O N ~
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