Cafeteria: Putting our finger (back) on the pulse of culture x technology
Teens are a paradox. They are one of the most powerful forces shaping culture and the economy, but they’re often left out of the conversation. Companies are desperate to hear what they have to say but have no reliable way to listen. Historical attempts to capture their sentiments all suffer from the same problem: how can you respond to trends that move faster than the time it takes to observe and report on them?
That’s why Rishi Malhotra and his team have built Cafeteria, a platform that connects brands directly with the teens who shape them—and they’re doing it in a way that feels refreshingly different. Teens get to share their insights with brands they love (and earn for their time), while companies gain a better understanding of what the next generation actually wants. It’s real, raw, and invaluable information—collected at the source, in real time—that influences the way companies approach everything from product development to marketing.
Cafeteria meets teens where they are: “Tables,” their version of focus groups, are asynchronous, anonymous to brands, and text or voice-note based for users. Those insights are collected into “Albums,” live dashboards where brands can dive deeper into the forces driving their business. By giving teens a platform to influence the brands they care about, Cafeteria is fostering a new kind of dialogue between consumers and companies. It’s creating a space where young voices are not just heard, but valued and compensated.
Rishi is the kind of founder we love—in fact, he’s the kind of founder everyone loves: one who scales a business (JioSaavn) to a $1B+ exit and then says “let’s do it again.” He’s brought a wonderful repeat founding team along with him to reshape market research for an elusive segment, and align the needs of brands with the interests of the teens they are trying to reach.
There’s alignment for Collab as well, not just as an investment opportunity poised to reshape culture for the better, but also as a return to the kind of investments that capture the zeitgeist and define their respective moments: Reddit, Kickstarter, and Lyft, to name a few of our earliest successes. We have always been at home with technology that shapes and responds to culture, so we’re happy to be playing in this sandbox again with Cafeteria.
We are excited to be leading this $3m seed round alongside Imaginary Ventures, Bertelsmann, and Guy Oseary.