Brian O'Malley

Who they are

Brian O'Malley is Managing Partner at Forerunner Ventures — VC investor who co-founded AtlantiCO2, a carbon removal startup in Brazil, and BEO Kombucha, an alcoholic kombucha brand in Amsterdam.

Person

Brian joined Forerunner Ventures in 2018, when the firm had just closed a $360M fund — tripling its prior fund size — and was roughly eight years old. He came from Accel, and before that Battery Ventures, tracing a path through established institutional venture from the start. The through-line is consumer investing: his board engagements span Away, Dollar Shave Club, Hotel Tonight, and Serena & Lily — brands that reshaped how people travel, groom, stay, and decorate. He's talked publicly about the 'empowerment economy' thesis — the idea that digitally native companies hand economic agency directly to consumers and creators — and more recently about AI-native services as the next phase of that shift. Alongside the VC track, he founded two companies: AtlantiCO2, a carbon removal startup based in Brazil, and BEO Kombucha, an alcoholic kombucha brand. Possibly — he's based in Amsterdam, which would make his consumer lens genuinely transatlantic.

Network

No direct edge data is available from the network probe. His named portfolio touchpoints — Away, Dollar Shave Club, Hotel Tonight, Serena & Lily — place him in the orbit of consumer brand founders and operators who built direct-to-consumer businesses in the 2010s. His podcast appearances on Acquired and The Consumer VC suggest he runs in a circuit of consumer-focused investors and fund managers.

How they likely show up

Moved from Battery Ventures to Accel to Forerunner — each a more consumer-specific mandate → shows deliberate sharpening of focus over time, not opportunistic job-hopping.
Portfolio spans Away (travel), Dollar Shave Club (grooming), Hotel Tonight (hospitality), Serena & Lily (home) → bets across many consumer categories, suggesting he evaluates brand and distribution logic more than vertical expertise.
Founded AtlantiCO2 (carbon removal, Brazil) and BEO Kombucha (Amsterdam) alongside a full-time GP role → high agency, personally tests the founder experience he's supposed to fund.
Appeared on Acquired and The Consumer VC to articulate the 'empowerment economy' thesis → comfortable mapping a macro framework publicly, likely responds well to big-picture framing before getting into deal specifics.
Possibly based in Amsterdam while partnering at a San Francisco-anchored firm → probably operates asynchronously and prizes clear, written communication over constant face time.

Conversation tips

→ Come with a specific consumer brand or business model you think fits his 'empowerment economy' frame — he'll engage harder with a concrete example than a trend name.
→ Reference his Acquired episode on consumer investing in 2022 — it signals you've done the work and he'll likely pick up exactly where that conversation left off.
→ Ask about the founder side projects (AtlantiCO2, BEO Kombucha) — he crossed the line from investor to operator and that experience is distinctive enough that he almost certainly has strong opinions on what he learned.
→ Don't treat AI as a separate topic — he's already folded AI-native services into his consumer thesis, so frame any AI discussion through that lens rather than as a standalone subject.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on BEO Kombucha — he built an alcoholic kombucha brand in Amsterdam alongside his GP role, which is an unusual move for a consumer investor and signals he wanted skin in the game, not just pattern-matching from the sidelines.
Reference the 'empowerment economy' framing from his Consumer VC podcast appearance — it's his named thesis, and asking how it's evolved since 2022 (especially with AI-native services entering the picture) gives him room to update you in real time.
Bring up the Forerunner $360M fund close that coincided with his arrival in 2018 — joining at a moment of that scale is a specific context, and asking what the firm's ambitions were then versus now opens a natural arc.

Discovery questions

You've talked about AI-native services as the next phase of the empowerment economy — which part of the consumer stack do you think AI rewires first, distribution or the product itself?
You founded AtlantiCO2 and BEO Kombucha while actively investing — what did going through early-stage company building change about how you evaluate founders?
The portfolio companies you've named — Away, Dollar Shave Club, Hotel Tonight — were all DTC breakouts from a specific era. How do you think about backing the next wave of consumer brands when that playbook is now widely understood?

Avoid

Don't pitch a B2B SaaS business or frame a consumer play in pure enterprise terms — his entire public thesis, portfolio, and personal ventures are oriented around consumer empowerment, and a B2B frame will signal you haven't done basic research.

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