Consumer technology is making a comeback, and consumer innovators like Brynn Putnam are making a comeback.

When Brynn Putnam sold her last company, Mirror, to Lululemon for $500 million at the beginning of the pandemic, it looked to this editor that she would sell the fitness company soon.

Instead, the timing proved wise. The home improvement craze crashed almost as suddenly as it peaked in that first year of the shutdown. Meanwhile, after a year as CEO at Lululemon, Putnam had a new job description, a big win under his belt, and a new vision that has since become a new company that will go public in 2025.

Venture firm Lerer Hippeau has already participated in a highly competitive seed round for that crafty startup — the firm led Mirror’s $3 million seed round a year ago, too — and on Wednesday night in New York, I sat down with Lerer Hippeau managing partner Ben . Lerer and Putnam will talk about what they are building. We also talked about the extensive innovation happening at the consumer technology end – some of it led by the innovators who led the last wave of successful consumer startups.

The following are excerpts from that interview, slightly edited for length. You can also watch the full interview below.

Ben Lerer on writing that first check:

When we invest [in Mirror]Brynn had a very convincing but janky demo, which was basically a two-way mirror with a computer screen on the back to show you what the mirror would look like if he could raise the tens of millions of dollars to actually produce such a thing. Interestingly enough, he had designed a contraption of his own [own line of boutique gyms at the time]like his own version of a pilates trainer, and when we saw it, it became clear that Brynn was not only a smart business builder who had built a great gym brand but he was also an inventor. . .Brynn overcame us very, very quickly, and we probably looked crazy for a few years, but eventually we slowed down.

Brynn Putnam on selling the Mirror just four years after founding it:

We were not for sale. We didn’t want a finder. We really just launched. But we’ve had a long-term relationship with Lululemon. I’ve been working with them at my gyms for over a decade, and we’ve been spending a lot of time with them, creating content and doing fun events with them, and it just felt right for us to be able to take Beka into homes around the world with speed and confidence. We really felt that this was an opportunity that we could not pass up.

Regarding whether Lerer weighed in with advice on that sale, he said:

I had an idea about it. Look, business is a funny business because of the law of power and the idea that you have to take these moonshots and you will lose a lot but your big win will change the whole world. I believe in the law of power, but I also think that sometimes business loses sight of basic, good, rational business decision-making. And there are general truths in business, such as: sell when others are greedy, and buy when others are afraid. You don’t always have to keep coming back to the casino again and again and again. This time, when Brynn came and said, ‘Hey, I got this gift, I’m really thinking about taking it,’ I said, ‘Yeah, you have to do this; this is amazing to us. And if you get pushback from other people [like later-stage investors with a different cost basis]I’m happy to try to be helpful, but frankly, you’re stronger and stronger than I am and you’ll take care of this.’ But it was the right decision. For a year or two after that, I think Brynn probably got people second-guessing it, and now I think people are seeing the arc of the whole episode and realizing it was a great move.

Putnam for working after that as an exec at Lululemon, who later threw in the towel at the Mirror.:

The investor I admire. . .he told me then that I should be kind and learn, that throughout the life of your company, you are selling your company. You sell it in small pieces, or you sell it in big pieces, but you are always selling your company, and the best thing you can do, if you have decided to sell it, is to really learn as much as you can in this business that you have chosen to sell and try to face something with purpose in this new role. And that’s what I did. And I learned an incredible amount in the year I was there, and it was incredibly interesting. But I think ultimately, when you go from being a founder and CEO to being a successful general manager of a division, it’s a very big change, and for some people, it’s equal. And for me, it wasn’t. I’m actually a builder.

Putnam on what led him to develop his new startup:

When I left Lululemon, I was actually in a different phase of my life. I went from being pregnant to having two children, and really, I just looked at what was important to me at that time. The mirror spoke volumes for me. It was my thinking, my work, it was about making yours better. During that next phase, my life was more about my family and my friends and my relationships and those things that I found important. I really struggled to find quality time with my loved ones as I grew up – you know, we would sit at the table and eat, play a board game, look at each other’s faces. For my children who grew up glued to iPads or smartphones, the experience of quality time was very difficult.

So I started thinking, how can I take what I learned at the Mirror and apply those lessons to the acting stage? How can I use technology to build better social relationships and communication? And that’s what I’m working on now. It is a new company of consumer hardware, but in the field of play instead of fitness, which really aims at how we spend time together face to face, where technology is not an experience but actually allows building better relationships.

Asked if it’s for kids (or fits in a person’s pocket, or wears it on their face), Putnam said:

For everyone. For friends and families spending time together. It is not a children’s company, although we hope you will join in with your children. It’s not an education company, although we hope people find it interesting and strategic and creative, but it’s about using technology to connect people to each other. (Here Lerer announced that he had been sworn to secrecy by Putnam.)

Putnam on the intersection of AI with hardware and software that seems to be top of mind for founders and investors all of a sudden:

I think we’re about to enter a golden age of hardware. All the VCs here will be more than happy to invest in hardware founders soon, hopefully [because a] few things happen. The iPhone came out 17 years ago, and we haven’t had a consumer hardware success story since Oculus. I think there is an opportunity in the market for something new. Many of the main components of this technology are very mature and therefore affordable, so being able to build, in our case, display technology, is possible now in a way that was not the case 10 years ago. And of course AI opens the door to how we interact with our devices. So naturally, there will be new devices in the market. You know, we’re not betting on this idea of ​​not being another personal computer but a new shared device at home, which is what we did with Mirror, and what we’re doing here. This idea that there will be a piece of technology that helps bring your house and family together is where we think the future is headed.

By focusing less on the technical specifications of the hardware and more on the overall experience, Putnam said:

I recently learned about Nintendo’s design philosophy. They have this idea that they are using ‘dead’ technology with marginal thinking. So the concept is using mature, affordable, readily available technology but creating an exciting experience around them, and that’s what we did with Mirror. It was commodity hardware. It wasn’t frontier tech. Again [that’s] what we are doing now.

On bringing family and friends together as an investment theme (here, this editor featured Bonobos founder Andy Dunn’s new company, Pie, which focuses on bringing people together offline), Lerer said:

I am a financier [in Pie]! Look, I have young children and I have the same challenges that all my friends have and everyone has: we are all hopelessly addicted to these devices, and at the highest level, we are interested in alternatives to that habit and new formats of entertainment or opportunities to get people out of the screens or out into the world. Recently we did a [related] a yet-to-be-announced deal with an application-layer AI company in the travel space that I’m very excited about. And we just announced a deal this past week with another software layer company in the aftermarket automotive space, which is actually a huge hobbyist space in the US.

Finding ways to tap into things people love is always a good bet in the consumer space.

With a sense that the consumer is making a comeback — including thanks to a new $500 million fund announced last week by well-known consumer-focused firm Forerunner Ventures, Lerer said:

As a fund, we’re founders first, but we’re New York first, too [with] first of all [founder] generations of New York in the early 2010s, there were more consumers, more media, more direct in the consumer trade. And there were a few trends that really drove that. You had the rise of the iPhone and the App Store. You have an exploding social media and opportunity arbitrage ad ecosystem to capture customers faster than ever. Perhaps the rise of Shopify has created a good time to build consumer businesses with a wide open mind.

In the last four, five, six years, there’s been very little in the way of big technological changes that encourage people to do anything that doesn’t feel like growth. And I think AI is the most exciting thing right now. We’re seeing a group of very high quality founders saying, ‘Now’s the time to get back in the pool.’ There are things that are possible today that weren’t possible six months ago or a year ago, and the stakes are high right now in terms of using your imagination. So I’m happier with the buyers than I’ve been in a long time, which makes me really happy because that’s my passion. I built a consumer business. I love investing in consumer startups, and it’s been pretty bad over the last few years, frankly.