Cobalt Co Funding (2026)

[00:00] Hey, folks. My guest today is Elle Black, a serial entrepreneur. She launched her first company during her junior year of college and then built and sold her second company by early thirties. Today, she's building cobalt.co, which helps creators connect to vetted suppliers. Elle, you ready to take us to top? [00:14] >> Let's do this. [00:15] Alright. Do you have some horror story here? Why is helping creators find good suppliers important to you? [00:20] >> Oh my gosh. I have so many horror stories. Actually, just ask anyone who's ever tried to launch their own product. And I'm talking about things as easy as candles, jewelry, etcetera, etcetera. There are so many brilliant ideas that creators have. Getting them out of their head seems to be the easy part, right? Everybody has Figma, everyone can spin up a design. The hardest part is finding a supplier or a manufacturer that actually one, wants to work [00:46] >> with you and two, can actually make your product and three, is not in China. And so that's the problem that Cobalt is solving. We're bringing manufacturers and suppliers from The US, Canada and LatAm to one place, vetting them and making it easy for anyone with an idea to launch their product by working directly with suppliers. [01:06] I want to make candles that smell like coffee, so I don't have to drink as much coffee Who to preserve my would you recommend that I use right now? [01:13] >> Well, have, so we have over 2,500 suppliers in the platform. And when a creator wants to do that, it's very easy to search for supplier based off of all of your unique requirements. So what we learned about creators, and quite frankly, about the world that we wanna create is that who makes your products really matter? And so as we're vetting our suppliers, we're pretty picky about who we let in. We like suppliers that have humane working [01:40] >> conditions that are in The US, that are vegan, that are organic, that are supply chain transparent, that are family run, that are proven, that have unique products that aren't just another product that you're going to find on Amazon. And so, really, how you find the right supplier for your coffee scented candle, we've really made it easy for the creator to decide how much they care about those factors. And then sort and find and connect and chat [02:09] >> and order samples and get your product made all in one place. [02:12] Interesting. Okay. So it was obviously a marketplace motion. You just mentioned 2,500 suppliers. What does it mean? Like, is it a lot of work for a supplier to get onboarded? And if it's not, like, do you convince them to get onboarded when you don't have a lot of volume yet coming from creators? [02:23] >> Oh, I don't great question. So what's unique about Cobalt is that we offer low MOQ suppliers. MOQ is the thing to know that's minimum order quantity. And that's really the question that everybody asks. Okay, I want to launch a product. How many do I have to buy in my first run? And low MOQ suppliers are pretty hard to find. And so, we've done the hard part of aggregating all of these suppliers, negotiating price points, negotiating terms, [02:48] >> getting them into the platform and offering low MOQs for creators. And so, low MOQs are to the order of 25, right? You wanna do a custom CBD bath bomb, you can do 25 at, you know, $7.50 a bath bomb. It's completely drop ship end to end fulfillment. You never touch the product. You actually work directly through the platform with the supplier to get the product delivered, to get the product made, and it goes [03:14] >> directly to your customers. All without leaving your house. [03:17] How many creators are signed up to date? [03:19] >> Yeah. So what's fun about Cobalt is we're still in this like waiting period. Right? And we're we're still building all of the infrastructure. We have over 77 waitlisted creators. We're slowly getting people off the waitlist. And, know, for everybody who emails me every day, I'll get to you, I promise. But just like to show people how easy it is to actually launch your own brand. That's really the magic of what we're doing at Cobalt. [03:46] When did you start coding this, Elle? When did you start getting all this together? What year? [03:50] >> We started doing it actually right before COVID. [03:55] Okay. So like '20, late twenty nineteen ish? [03:57] >> Late twenty nineteen. Yep. [03:58] Interesting. [03:59] >> And then of course COVID happened and we got lucky. Cobalt got lucky because of everything that happened with COVID. What ended up happening is suppliers that used to not be willing to work with, you know, smaller brands, creators, because trade shows aren't happening, because market isn't happening, because of supply chain problems in China, all of a sudden suppliers are totally willing to work with lower MOQs. And so, we're again aggregating all those suppliers, doing the heavy [04:31] >> lifting, doing the research, doing the vetting, doing the negotiating on pricing, doing the contracting pieces, all the stuff that's really hard and makes it impossible for anyone to get started doing their own product. We did all that for you. And we're putting it right into the platform to connect directly with the suppliers. [04:45] Got it. So I totally understand the product. I wanna understand how you're building now today. So it sounds like your pre revenue, when is launch? When do you get your first paying customer? [04:52] >> Well, so yeah, great question. So we've been having paying customers, it's just not in an open marketplace where anyone can do it. So we're vetting our customers and making sure that we can make them successful. [05:04] Okay, how many customers do you have today? [05:07] >> We over the last year, we've done over 177 product launches. [05:11] Oh, wow. Across how many creators? [05:14] >> 177. [05:15] Oh, it's one to one. [05:17] >> Yeah. Well, right now it is. Yeah. [05:19] Interesting. Why don't mean, if if you do one with one creator, don't they wanna come back and do another one a month later? [05:25] >> They yes. You are exactly right. They do. [05:28] But why is it a one to one ratio? Why why haven't creators used you more than once over the past twelve Oh, no. [05:32] >> No. No. No. No. So sorry. I thought you said how many customers do you have? So we've done a 177 customers that have launched their first product. 36% of them have launched a second product. And of that 36%, another 80% have done three or more. [05:46] Oh, got it. You said a 177 product launches. Was not got it. Got it. How many how many product launches over the past year? [05:54] >> Oh, boy. I'd have to I I know the percentages in the funnel. I'd have to go back and get you. [05:59] What was Just don't name the creator, but I'm just curious. What was like the best, if you can share, what was like the best selling thing? Is it a bath bomb? A CBD bath bomb? [06:06] >> You know, it's sort of it's sort of defend This is what's fun about this conversation. It depends on how you define best selling. Do you define it based off of quantity or do you Yes. Define Let's use quantity. Well, let's let me let me pressure test that with you. Right? Because what we actually really care about is that the creators and the emerging brands are capturing as much brand value as possible. [06:29] But how do you measure that outcome on? [06:31] >> Based off of how much the creator can sell the product for. [06:34] Okay. So, what's Okay. So, let's do that. What's the highest price point thing you've sold? [06:39] >> For a product? We've sold products that were up Well, creators have sold products that have come out of the platform for up to $150 and products that they sourced for 30% of that. Can do [06:50] the Oh, math interesting. On Yeah. [06:51] >> Yeah. So, that's what I mean, right? The example that we like to give here because it's easy to understand is Jenner, right? Kylie Jenner has a baby. What does she do? She launches a baby product line that has a bubble bath in it. [07:05] Is Kylie a customer? [07:07] >> No, she's not a And if she was, I couldn't tell you. [07:13] >> But she launches this, it's basically essentially the same product as Johnson and Johnson, you know, the bestselling Johnson and Johnson baby bubble bath. It's the same amount, six ounces, but it has her name, her brand and a little bit of a different fragrance on it. Otherwise, the formulation is nearly identical And she can sell out in twenty four hours and sell it for 2.5 X more than Johnson and Johnson sells it for. That's the future. And [07:37] >> that's what we're doing. So, you talk about, when you talk about like where is the value? You know, in my mind, it's the fact that Kylie Jenner can sell out this product for two and a half more than Johnson and Johnson can. [07:47] I understand it. Yeah. Trust me, the reason we had you on, I get the space. Like, I love the space. I just wanna understand like how you are going to win the space. Right? So talk to me a little bit about how what you think your revenue model is here. How do you make money? [07:59] >> Oh, our suppliers. So it's free for creators to use and the suppliers pay an 8% transaction fee. [08:06] Okay. Interesting. What does that mean? [08:08] >> Okay. [08:10] So they pay 8%. So if I let's stick with my coffee candle example. If you find that supplier and I'm gonna pay that supplier $10 to make one coffee candle, you're gonna make two you're gonna make, what is that, 20¢ on that $10 sale or that purchase? [08:25] >> Yeah. This goes back to the minimum order quantity, right? So, the minimum order quantity is, let's for easy numbers, let's say it's a thousand dollars, right? So, a creator is gonna place an order for a thousand dollars in the platform. That order is gonna go to the supplier and the supplier is gonna pay us $80 because we gave them a customer. [08:47] Got it. Okay, cool. So, that makes perfect sense. Talk to me about how you funded the business. Have you bootstrapped or you decided to raise? [08:54] >> Oh, yeah. We're venture backed. [08:56] Okay. That means you're giving up equity. So dilution is not a fun thing. So why'd you decide to raise? [09:01] >> Why did we decide to raise? Well, this is a venture scale product. Yeah. [09:07] Raising capital means you're giving up equity. Ownership is the most important thing anywhere. So, there's got to be a great strategic reason you decide to raise. That's what I'm trying to dig here and understand. [09:15] >> Well, I mean, it depends on how you look at it, right? Strategically, there are certain products that are right for venture, a product where you need to grow really fast and there's gonna be a clear winner in the market and you need a lot of money to get there really fast, is a venture scale business, and that's where Cobalt fits. To get all of those suppliers onboarded and to build the back end infrastructure of a marketplace [09:42] >> that's complex like this, you couldn't actually bootstrap it. So it is a venture scale product. And for that reason, we opted to do venture. [09:50] Okay. And how much did you decide to raise? [09:54] >> Well, I mean, that's a great question. We're doing a seed round and we're still in our seed round, so we don't quite know what that's gonna look like yet. [10:02] Oh, I see. I see. Okay, cool. Yeah, there's a lot of people right now that are sort of letting their seed rounds roll because if you find more strategic people, you want to be able to let them in quickly. [10:10] >> Yeah. Cool. [10:12] Okay. So, so you're raising capital. Now, are you sole founder here or do you have co founders? [10:17] >> I have a co founder. [10:18] Okay. How did you guys get together? How'd you meet? [10:21] >> Well, we're in San Francisco and we're in the tech space. We're both serial entrepreneurs and we've done a bunch of startups previously. And we came together through the space through networking and knowing people in the space. [10:35] Okay. And so, you're doing these, you've done these 177 product launches, or sorry, customers that have launched many products to date. When do you think you'll open up the thing where it's sort of a push button, touch people When? Without [10:46] >> Service? Self-service? [10:48] Yeah. When is that going to open up? [10:50] >> Yeah. Q1 of twenty twenty two. [10:53] Okay. And what is left to do before you can open that up? Is it something on the supply side, the back end you have to keep building? [11:00] >> Yeah, so if you think about a product that's comparable to Cobalt, it's easy to think about Amazon, right? In order for Amazon to scale, they had to put all the infrastructure for the stores. And so, each seller on Amazon has a seller store, they have all the infrastructure that they have to create, they can set up their seller store, they add their products, they add their SKUs, they do all of that. That's all of the tools [11:19] >> that we're building right now on the supplier side. [11:22] As you get to the point where you can release that self-service in Q1, at some point you want to say, you know what, we don't want to raise more money at this current round because it becomes very dilutive. It looks like based off Crunchbase, you guys have raised 2,800,000 to date. What would you cap that at? Like, would you stop it at 3,000,000 no matter what, or would you let it keep rolling for however, you know, [11:40] however long? [11:41] >> Well, where we are in the business, the way venture works is we're just getting to the end of our seed round. And when you get to seed, sort of like, seed is considered, you're trying to find product market fit. Once you have product market fit and you can show scalable, repeatable, you understand the economics of the business model, and it's really easy to understand how to grow and scale next, then you go to an A round [12:03] >> or a growth round. [12:04] Elle, sorry, we feature some of the top SaaS founders in the world on, Amit from Gong was on right just before you had a 100,000,000 run rate and he's raised $500,000,000. My audience totally understands what it means to raise capital. What I'm understanding specifically is how you're managing dilution with your co founder and your pre seed round. [12:20] >> I don't understand what you're what what are you asking me? Are you asking me how the cap table is structured? What do [12:25] you I'm asking you how you personally think about preserving your ownership in a business that you think can be really big. [12:32] >> I mean, look, everybody has a different perspective on this. I think that my job as a founder at this stage is actually to prove the market, get the economics right, and build a really big business based off of a really big opportunity. I'm personally not focused on preserving my equity. And actually, I'm doing the opposite. I'm focused on creating as much value for my investors as possible. And that's what I'm focused on. When it comes to [13:01] >> preserving equity, it just depends on how you want to look at it and what your goal is. When I look at how I'm building Cobalt, which is very different way than a lot of other people, and there are many ways to do it. You know, I believe if you build a really big business and you make a lot of people a lot of money, then everybody wins. And that's actually in my worldview. And even that's why [13:21] >> we're building Cobalt. So more people have more opportunities to make themselves entrepreneurs and to win really big. So I don't sit there and think about how can Elle can preserve the most equity in startup. Think about how can I create a million millionaires? How can I create, you know, 10x returns for my investors, and then help a whole new breed of entrepreneurs create 10x returns and have financial freedom? [13:41] I love that vision. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book? [13:46] >> Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl. [13:48] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [13:54] >> Well, I'm kind of a nerd and I love all of the startup CEOs. And so I've been following everything that's happening. Who am I into? I'm into retail brands. So I'm really looking at a lot of those, but I can't think of any particular CEO that I'm following or studying right now. [14:11] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Cobalt? [14:16] >> Oh, Canva. [14:18] Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night? [14:21] >> Oh, I think about this often actually. It's funny you should ask. So my sleep schedule waxes and wanes, and I actually say it like that. On short sleep nights, do four to six, and then I have like longer sleep nights where I need eight to ten. And it really depends on what I need to do the next day to actually figure out my wax and wane sleep schedule. [14:39] All right, and situation, married single kiddos? [14:43] >> I'm married. I got married during COVID and Oh, congrats. Thanks. [14:47] Any kids or no? [14:49] >> Yeah. We have a he my husband has a daughter, a 17 year old daughter. And so I have a stepdaughter. [14:53] Oh, very. That's so cool. Okay. And do you mind me asking how old you are? [14:56] >> Yeah, no, not at all. I'm 39. [14:58] Okay. Take and the reason I ask is take us back to your twenty year old self. What's something you wish you knew? [15:03] >> Oh, I have this very funny story about a lot of things that put me on different trajectories when I was right at that age. And the advice that I would give my 20 year old self is actually the same advice I'd give everybody every day, which is it's going to turn out better than you imagine, just keep going. [15:19] Guys, there you have it. Cobalt.co wants to help hundreds of thousands of people create millions for themselves launching their own products by making this very easy to understand your supply chain, find people that treat their workers ethically, build your own products quickly with very small minimum order values, which is what all of us care about when we're getting started to minimize risk. She has over 2,500 suppliers on the platform and over 77 creators on her [15:40] wait list, but she's already done 177 launches with creators over the past twelve months to test this space. The highest product selling through the space, $150. We love that. That's brand value as she talked about it. They raised $2,800,000 to scale this thing today, Looking to grow big in the next twelve months. Elle, thanks for taking us to the top. [15:55] >> Yeah. No. It was perfect. Nathan, you nailed that. One [16:00] more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on three hungry buyers. They try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday one p. [16:25] M. Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at two p. M. Central to make sure you don't miss any of that. Make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an [16:46] acquisition, a big fundraise, big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are [17:08] saying. Sign up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode. If you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. [17:28] We got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.