Welcome back to another episode of The Express Checkout Podcast!
This week, we’re sitting down with wildly impressive Tristan Walker, who built and sold Walker & Company (the parent company behind Bevel) to Procter & Gamble. He also sits on the board of Shake Shack and recently joined Collaborative Fund to help launch Collab Holdings—a private equity arm built for consumer brands that don’t fit the traditional VC/PE playbook. He also runs Heirloom Leathercraft, a trade school and atelier bringing fine handcraft back to America.
He walks us through building Bevel from a personal shaving problem to a national brand, the difficult decision to sell to P&G, and why he now believes most founders shouldn’t take VC money in the first place. We also dig into what makes a CPG brand “durable,” why Gen Z is increasingly skeptical of private equity, and whether AI can ever replicate intuition. 👀 Let’s go!
The breakdown:
0:00 - Intro + Tristan’s background and new role
3:42 - Building Bevel: from personal problem to national brand
6:35 - The P&G acquisition and life after
11:45 - Launching Collab Holdings
20:27 - What makes a durable CPG brand
27:48 - Good brands, bad capital, and the true cost of VC money
35:16 - Heirloom Leathercraft and bringing fine handcraft back to America
42:30 - Outro
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