Carter Reum: Investor in 14 Unicorns, Founder of M13
Carter Reum traces his path from Goldman Sachs investment banker to entrepreneur, building Veev Spirits with his brother Courtney into one of the fastest-growing independent spirit brands in the U.S. before selling it. He describes that decade-long grind, which started with delivering product out of the back of their car, as the business school that made him an investor who has 'been in their shoes,' and explains how it led the brothers to found M13, a $1.3 billion VC firm whose inaugural fund backed 14 companies that became unicorns, including Ring, Lyft, ClassPass, and Matterport.
Reum lays out M13's differentiated, operator-heavy model, where a 'propulsion team' of best-in-class operators outnumbers the investing team three to one and has logged thousands of hours helping portfolio founders execute. He shares his philosophy of incremental progress, his reliance on pattern recognition built from reviewing roughly 20,000 pitch decks, and his caution that AI pits scrappy innovators against data-rich tech giants. He closes by reflecting on his marriage to Paris Hilton, her transformation from underestimated entrepreneur into the force behind the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, and his hope that his legacy is as a husband and father.
“Most people look at a startup up and to the right and they go, wow, what a huge success. What they don't realize is the way you usually get from here to up in the right, it looks more like an EKG, up and down, up and down, up and down.”
“What I talk about at M13 all the time is how do we get 1% better every day? And if you do that, by the end of the year, you're 37 times better.”
“You have to have a microscope in one eye and a telescope in the other. The microscope is to get whatever you need done in the here and now. The telescope is to keep looking out.”
Key takeaways
- 00:08:46Reum and his brother built Veev out of the back of their car until it was stocked in Nobu, Walmart, TGI Fridays, Disney, cruise ships, and Virgin America before they sold it.
- 00:11:14He argues that most successful startups don't go straight up and to the right but look more like an EKG, and that you just have to win on more days than you lose.
- 00:13:55His core operating mantra at M13 is getting 1% better every day, which compounds to being about 37 times better by year's end.
- 00:15:39M13 runs three times as many people on its operator-led 'propulsion team' as on its investing team, with six of the firm's twelve partners dedicated to helping portfolio companies rather than picking deals.
- 00:33:12Reum estimates he has looked at roughly 20,000 pitch decks over eight years to train the subconscious pattern recognition he relies on as a seed and Series A investor.
- 00:36:38He believes every company must use AI to either unlock new features or gain productivity, warning that the biggest risk is innovators battling data-rich tech giants.
- 00:45:08Paris Hilton went through a 12-week legislative incubator called Rise to learn how to pass a law, then spent three years and dozens of trips to DC advocating for the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act.
- 00:53:14Asked about his legacy, Reum says he hopes to be remembered as an amazing husband and father, echoing how people described his late father not for his success but for being a good human being.
Chapters
- 00:00:00Intro + Teaser
- 00:06:32Start: He built Veev... Out of His Car Trunk
- 00:10:07The Lie Behind Every “Overnight Success” You’ve Ever Heard
- 00:13:20The One Startup Rule That Saved Me From Losing Everything
- 00:15:15We Didn’t Start Another Company—We Hacked Venture Capital
- 00:17:44The Part of M13 No Other VC Wants You to Know About
- 00:22:44We Only Back Founders with This One Rare Trait
- 00:27:24Gut Instinct Isn’t Magic—It’s Data You Don’t Know You Have
- 00:30:29The Superpower That Separates Unicorn Founders From the Rest
- 00:33:18What I Learned After Reading 20,000 Pitch Decks
- 00:34:57Why We Walked Away From DTC—Even at the Top
- 00:35:19Everyone’s Talking About AI—They’re Missing the Bigger Shift
- 00:45:21They Doubted Paris Hilton… Then She Changed U.S. Law
- 00:49:25Paris Hilton Wasn’t Just Early—She Was First
- 00:51:29Behind the Sparkle: How Paris Became a Real-World Warrior
