Issue #13: Michael Axman and Jake Fleshner

In a world where everyone is talking about AI, there is one thing AI can’t replace. Genuine human connection and community. Especially in the consumer space, community has become a major differentiator for emerging CPG brands. I had the pleasure of chatting with Michael Axman and Jake Fleshner, the co-founders of The Nucleus Network and its venture arm, Nucleus Ventures, about how brands should think about community, what they look for when investing in consumer founders, and where they see retail heading. Thank you so much for joining, Michael and Jake!

This is the thirteenth conversation in an ongoing series with movers and shakers in the retail industry. Is there anyone you want to hear from? Please be sure to drop their names 👇

The following conversation has been lightly edited for context and clarity.

Michael Axman: Jake and I are the Co-Founders of The Nucleus Network. A bit about my background, I worked at an early-stage growth startup in the music, travel, and entertainment space in LA for about five years. We partnered with artists like Justin Bieber and J Balvin. That was a really fun experience because I was employee number 30 on the US team, and after half a decade, there were 700 people globally. I got to see what it was like being on a rocket ship of a startup, going from one to 100.

I always knew I wanted to start my own thing, so I ended up starting a startup consulting agency where I would help companies with growth, partnerships, events, and fundraising. [I] then parlayed that into what is now The Nucleus Network with Jake.

Jake Fleshner: I'm from LA, born and raised. LA is the best city in the world. I know you're both New Yorkers, but I will maintain that LA is the best city in the world. I went to the University of Michigan. Go Blue! I started a company there called Space Trade, which was a way for local businesses to cross-promote each other.

From there, I spun that out and worked for Gary Vaynerchuk while I was in school. I helped on the sports media and sports agency side, as well as the broader media side of what Vayner was doing. I learned all about day trading attention. Right after that, I worked for a guy named David Meltzer, where I was his right-hand man for close to five years. I ran our revenue and partnerships. From there, Michael and I decided to start The Nucleus Network. We're now three years into the business, and it's been amazing to see it evolve into all that we've been able to do. It's super fun to start a company like this.

JF: In today's day and age, 2026, AI is what most people talk about all the time. The thing that AI will never be able to do is create community. You're still going to need to meet people face to face, human to human. Especially when it comes to consumer [businesses], I always say you can't make AI helmets, and you can't make AI pickles. You just can't do it. We're very big on bringing those two things into real life. We do that through events, and we do that through connecting people through warm introductions.

Our whole thought process at Nucleus is that warm introductions will always be stronger than cold outbound. If we're introducing two of our friends, they're way more likely to like each other, become friends, and eventually do business together. That's the whole reason we built The Nucleus Network.

MA: On the brand side, and just in general, the word community means different things to different people. Community could be events or experiences. Community could be a place, a physical third space you go to and hang out. Community could be a sense of belonging to a cohort or group of people that share a commonality with you. The way we think about community at Nucleus is trying to pull on all of those things. It includes experiences and events, introductions, and a group of people who are like-minded. As Jake mentioned, [we're] leaning into community because it's something that AI is not able to replace.

From a brand perspective, community is the moat for a lot of the companies that we invest in or come across. That is the differentiator. They lean into community, and they have almost a cult-like following. That helps them with velocity on the shelves, with their social following, or any of the above. That's what separates the great brands from the others.

MA: Nucleus Ventures is the VC arm of The Nucleus Network. To be completely transparent, we started it by accident. It was never intentional. When Jake and I started The Nucleus Network, we wanted to build a brand based on the fact that your network is your net worth. People talk about how it's not what you know, it's who you know. We wanted to not only build a brand, but be able to monetize that.

What we found by making introductions for people was that we had a crazy deal flow engine. If you start making thousands of introductions for others, they're intrinsically motivated to start making introductions for you as well. Our team at Nucleus was speaking to 400 or 500 founders a month, so we incubated Nucleus Ventures as a way to invest in what we saw as the top 1% of founders and help them with introductions and events.

That's part of our diligence process. Everyone has their own checklist, thesis, and mandate. We try to reverse ours a little bit. A lot of investors talk about being value-add, and most of them are, which is great. We fully support that. For us, we actually prove it before making an investment. If someone is starting a company, Jake, myself, and the whole Nucleus team will get in the weeds with them and connect them to potential customers, talent, partners, or co-investors. We'll gather signal and feedback from those people to build conviction on whether or not we should make an investment. That's a bit of a contrarian approach. Plus, if we've proven we can help them by making introductions first and foremost, why wouldn't we then invest in that business and continue making those intros to keep adding value post-capital?

JF: I want to add one more thing to what Ax was saying. Noah, I know you've been on both the investor side and the brand side, so you've seen both sides. It takes a certain eye to see which brands are going to be the next evolution of where the world is going, and you need both the investor lens and the brand lens.

It's interesting when we think about our LPs. We're not a fund; we do deal-by-deal. Some of our LPs are brand owners, and they want to reinvest the money that they've spent long, hard hours earning into other brands and companies. That's why we personally like CPG and the consumer side. We think there's a little bit less competition, and people are way friendlier. They'll even invest in other brands that aren't trying to take the same market share, but that are similar to their thesis and scope.

MF: As for where we see the world going, Ax and I think pretty similarly. Social and attention are extremely important, especially in consumer. Historically, you needed to spend a lot of money on billboards, TV ads, and everything else to be out there. Now, you can own your own distribution. If you build your own Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok, become your own brand, and people are actually following you with a cult-like following, that's all you really need nowadays. We look for that on the early side in consumer because you don't need to spend as much money getting to the right people.

Also, a lot of the products from these big monopolies aren't that healthy for you, and health has become such a staple in today's day and age. Ax and I are both very health-focused. Fun fact: Ax is fully addicted to saunas. We fully believe the next stage of consumer will be this better-for-you, healthy landscape. We're always looking for that, mixed with an emphasis on social media.

MA: I'll answer the first part, which brings it full circle. In the beginning, you asked about community and how that manifests. It could be events, a social following, or a commonality among a group of people. Especially in our early-stage consumer investments, we want to make sure as many of those boxes are checked as possible. There are a lot of brands, and we can name two: Good Girl Snacks and Drizzy, which had an almost cult-like following prior to launch.

Of course, the product has to be amazing. That's the case for any investment or product that's going to succeed. But what stands out, and what prevents somebody else from doing the same thing, is that community and cult-like following. The thing a lot of the consumer founders we invest in do well is build a community before they need it. It's like when you tell a founder to raise capital before they need it, so they're at a point of leverage. These founders are posting online, whether they're building in public, doing product sampling, or hitting the circuit to get their name and product out there. They're doing it early, and it makes the investment so much more compelling because they already have a waitlist, a social following, or POs from retailers because of the work they've done upfront, as opposed to doing it retroactively. That's worked well for our portfolio, our founders, and our investors.

This is more of a broad-strokes answer, but something we see founders mess up on a bit more, especially early-stage consumer founders, is spending time on the wrong things. There's so much you need to do to get your product on shelves or in the hands of consumers that a lot of the other tasks you think you need to do are just noise. You don't know that until you try. What we try to do as founders and investors is lead by example and say: Here are some mistakes other founders in your shoes have made, and here's why it's important you don't make them. This isn't worth spending your time on. Let's focus all of our time, effort, energy, and resources on getting the product on the shelf, building the community, and growing from there.

JF: It's extremely interesting. We've made over 12,000 warm intros over the last three years, so we've been able to see a lot of patterns. More importantly, I've seen how founders interact with each other when we make these intros. The most successful are the ones that answer quickly. It doesn't need to be, "Let's get on a call." It can be, "I'm looking into this." The ones who are most open-minded are doing the best, especially nowadays.

Consumer founders in particular want to get their product out to as many people as possible, so they're not going to ask too many questions. They just want to get the word out as much as they can. At the same time, they're very protective of their time when they need to be. When an intro comes through us, they want to talk to the people we're introducing them to, but there are so many distractions nowadays. There's always going to be a new service provider or a new event trying to pitch you. When they're minimally distracted, that's when they're really succeeding.

MA: The answer depends on the retailer. If you're Drizzy or Good Girl Snacks and you're trying to get in front of Walmart versus Erewhon versus Sprouts versus Whole Foods, it's a very different conversation. It's a very different ICP; the end customer walking those aisles looks totally different. As Jake mentioned, you have to be open-minded and a bit nimble there.

It all comes back to what we talked about at the beginning. If you're a brand with community, whatever that looks like (a social following, early signs of traction from consumers, or a thriving group of people excited for the product to launch), that is enough to make a retailer say wow, because they're seeing so many different products. Their job is to pick the right products to put on the shelves to please their consumers. How are they supposed to know that? Let the consumer tell you. If the consumer is already asking for it and it's overwhelmingly in demand, it makes the retailer's job much easier, and that's how you bridge the gap.

Different brands go after different demographics, but if you're going for scale, you want to appeal to the masses. Having that sense of community, whether it's a social following or consumers who are head over heels for your product before it launches, makes that connection a lot easier for both the retailer and the brand.

JF: Adding to that, I always give the example of a good friend of mine, Jake Karls [of Mid-Day Squares]. They do such a good job of bringing on new retailers. When they launched in Costco Canada, they spent three days in a row at Costco for as long as it was open, sampling and doing live streams. They became the number one selling chocolate in all of Costco within three days. Retailers want to see that you're providing value back to them. You're spending time on them, and they feel as special as they make you feel.

MA: I love that question, and I love the name. Noah, I can say with confidence that retail has never been more alive, so much so that we're not only investing in brands, but we're starting to invest in the retailers themselves. We have some announcements coming soon. Across the country, on both coasts and beyond, we're investing in the distribution partners carrying these brands, because that's how much we believe in the future of retail. It's becoming a third space, whether it's a hospitality-oriented space or an innovative take on an existing industry or retailer. We're starting to invest in those concepts directly, almost as a one-to-many, because of how much we believe in that space. Retail has never been more alive.

JF: Retail is definitely not dead. Retail is very alive, as Ax said. People are always going to want to go shopping. Going to Erewhon or one of these locations is part of your day-to-day, part of your weekend. I think it's just the beginning. There are these power players, and there are going to continue to be more of them. You're starting to see it in some of the bigger cities, and you're going to see a lot more of it in smaller cities. Retail is definitely not dead.

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