Last fall 4AM’s business bank account hit its lowest point ever. At one point, the company had just $469 left. This month, the brand is launching in 1,750 Target stores nationwide after closing a $4M seed round led by CAVU Consumer Partners. Not bad for a company selling makeup wipes, or what the founders now refer to as skincare wipes, a category most of beauty had largely written off.
But this is not really a story about wipes. It is a story about what investors actually fund now, and it is not always scale or the obvious metrics. While most founders are still trying to force themselves into traditional VC frameworks and optimize for arbitrary milestones, the smartest consumer investors are increasingly looking for something much harder to quantify but impossible to ignore: momentum.
And 4AM had the kind of momentum investors were scared to miss. That’s why I invested $25,000 without picking up the phone.
Here’s their story.
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