Katherine Power has a latest perch to seek out, mentor and spend money on the subsequent big thing in the buyer sector. 

The serial entrepreneur joined seed-to-growth enterprise capital firm Greycroft as partner and is leading its early-stage consumer product investments.

It’s a post that connects Power together with her long-time investing partner Dana Settle, who’s cofounder and managing partner at Greycroft. It’s also a gig that plays to her strengths and background. 

Power has been operating for years on the intersection of consumer products and what’s next.

She cofounded Who What Wear in 2006 and used that have to launch Versed Skincare and minimalist beauty brand Merit and likewise has teamed with Cameron Diaz to create the organic wine brand Avaline. 

Settle — in a technique or one other — has been involved each step of the best way. 

Now the 2 are working shoulder to shoulder and looking out to place the playbook Power developed to work at latest brands which are just starting out, but have big expectations.  

Power, in a joint interview with Settle, told WWD that she’s trying to not only spend money on fresh latest corporations, but to assist founders “put strategy around that first $1 million to $3 million of capital that they’re taking in and helping them to grasp the right way to spend it in the correct way.

“It’s first understanding your staffing needs, your management needs, after which it’s really taking a look at the margin profile of the business and, ‘Do now we have the chance to expand that margin? And the way can we get there?’ Then recognizing, is that this a business that has a possibility to construct a meaningful direct-to-consumer business, one which is sensible to speculate in, or is it more of a wholesale-driven business? And while you’re capable of answer that query, that’s a fork within the road.”

From a customer acquisition perspective, she said businesses should generally look to interrupt even with their first sale and, in the event that they can’t, they probably don’t have the unit economics to support major d-to-c investments. 

“We like our businesses to at all times have some kind of a direct-to- consumer component,” Power said. “We predict it’s necessary from a knowledge perspective to give you the chance to talk on to your customer, tell a story, but we also think there’s huge opportunity in Amazon, which is one other channel that’s somewhere between wholesale and direct-to-consumer and works higher for products in certain categories.”

Power is looking in the wonder and private care market, but said it’s going to take a “very unique standpoint” to pique her interest given how saturated the market has turn into. Food, beverage, baby and pet care are other sectors on the radar as well. 

“We search for brands that we predict are enduring that may turn into household names,” she said. “We search for businesses with high repeat rates, so subscription-like characteristics, even when it’s not a subscription.”

Apparel may very well be a tougher sell, but not inconceivable. 

“If there was something with an actual unfair advantage, let’s say in the provision chain or the best way that an organization’s capable of market the apparel, we’d definitely take a take a look at that,” she said. 

Settle added that, “What we search for in apparel can be much like what we’d search for in any category. So there needs to be a really high gross margin sort of a brand that has the power to actually endure and typically would have something really special about it.”

Clearly Settle sees something special in her long association with Power. 

“I feel really we’re just sort of doubling down on what we’ve done, but doing it even higher,” said Settle, noting that Power would give you the chance to “go to that next logical stage of her profession —  mentoring young founders and really helping them get off the bottom in the correct way.

“What now we have identified is that that’s just an area where there’s not loads of institutional capital really there to support founders in the buyer product space at that earliest stage,” she said.