Welcome to the Community Call Podcast.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, here with my co-hosts, Monica Watress and Mike Schneider.
If you're enjoying the show, please follow and review us on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice.
So I had the pleasure of chatting with one of our favorite community members, Alan Skolnick of Datefic.
He is always such a lovely person to chat with.
And we were talking, of course, about the Datefic product itself.
Monica, you're a marathon runner.
Is this something you would or do consume on long runs?
Totally.
I would consume that on a long run because it's a quick carbohydrate hit and it's easy to digest, so it's easy on the gut.
Yeah, that's like ideal.
Also, because dates are lower glycemic, I would expect it would release a slow, steady energy versus something that just makes you crash after 30 minutes.
That makes perfect sense.
And Mike, you do a lot of athletic activities, including running and other things.
Would you do this?
Is this something you would do?
Running and podcasting.
Running and punching.
For sure.
Let's see.
Well, I want to taste it and see.
Oh, it's really, really tasty.
It's like the inside of a date newton.
Wait, date newton?
Is that a thing?
No, but-
A fig newton.
It's like a date newton.
She made it up.
Melissa does that.
Oh, I would love that.
Yeah, let's make-
The ginger's awesome.
I want that at half time.
The cinnamon is delightful.
Cinnamon too, huh?
Let's go for it.
It's like toothpaste.
Oh, it's so tasty.
He was talking about how, you can certainly use them for athletic activities.
Isn't it so tasty?
The cinnamon is even better than ginger in a strange turn of events.
I like the ginger too.
What else is, what's the orange one?
Try the, this is the original one.
So you could just try it with nothing.
Try it with nothing.
And then here's the-
Cause we gotta do the full flight, Monica.
We gotta do, we have to do the date fix flight.
And here's the orange blossom.
Orange blossom.
Right?
I don't know about that one.
Oh yeah.
All of these are fantastic.
Monica, we're gonna have to send you some of these.
And you were just talking about the glycemic index.
Alan, I have a mouthful of date paste.
Alan was talking about how they have a low glycemic index.
So that got me curious about what the glycemic index of other sorts of sweets and sweeteners are.
And I mean, it's a little bit all over the place, depending on what kind of honey and that kind of thing.
But I looked at Healthline.
I love this.
Isn't it so good?
Yeah, and wouldn't-
You gotta try this, Monica.
Yeah, we gotta send you some.
I'm ordering some after we finish this up.
It's delightful.
It's really good.
You could also put it, like he said, on ice cream, yogurt.
Yeah, I put this on everything.
Yeah.
Ooh, you know what I would like to do?
Match this up with one of those almond butter packets and squeeze them both into my mouth at the same time.
I don't know if I can read all these ingredients.
Okay, ready?
Dates, orange blossom water.
Dates, orange blossom water, cinnamon.
It's really confusing.
Dates, orange blossom water, tumeric.
Tumeric, oh, this is tumeric, yummy.
Oh yeah, the tumeric.
This is dates, orange blossom water and ginger.
So tasty.
Yeah, well done.
Yeah, well done, Alan.
But like I was mentioning, honey I found had a glycemic index of 58, maple syrup was 54, table sugar was 65.
And dates are between 44 and 53, depending on what kind of date it is.
But that's significantly less.
Very impressive.
What if it's a first date?
I was trying to get there with a joke about dates.
I was gonna say a hot date, but do you think a first date has a lower glycemic index than a second date?
Or a hot date?
Or a higher glycemic index?
I feel like the hotter it gets, the higher the glycemic.
Yeah, I think the higher it is, it becomes a bad date.
Yeah, right, right.
You just feel a little shaky and then you need to pass out.
Where did the blind date fit into this?
Where does fear fit?
How do you blind a date?
Do you like cover it in chocolate or peanut butter or something?
You're full of great ideas when it comes to dates, Melissa.
Between the date Newtons and the chocolate covered dates.
Right, I mean, I got nothing.
I ran out of good date puns or ideas.
The person who has the most amazing date puns is Amanda Sainz.
Oh, I'm sure she does.
She is the best.
All right, Amanda.
Well, she has great puns in general.
She's like the mistress of puns.
All right, Amanda.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
She is like, she is the master of puns, Amanda.
I'm sure she's great, but I like to think of myself as the master of puns.
Let's get you two together.
Is this a date pun showdown?
Oh my gosh, we need that.
Let's make this happen.
We have a date with Amanda.
Yeah, instead of like a dance off, it's like a date pun off.
Community call?
Community call, next on Community Call.
Sure, why not?
Well, I don't know if dates are nature's gummy or not, but Monica, again, you and I were talking, and you were talking a little bit about your health and wellness table that you sit at, and that thing is stocked with gummies, is that right?
So I have a supplement drawer.
My work desk, and it's filled with gummies.
And I have a little show and tell here.
So we've got mushroom gummies that are intended for focus.
Plant people.
I like how they came in to focus.
She put it in front of the camera.
We couldn't see it, and it said, focus.
It's meant to be good for focus, energy, cognition and ideation.
And it's got Lion's Mane, Cordyceps, B6, B12 and green tea.
Obviously, we've had none of that.
I know, I know.
Yeah, I know, I know, I know.
I also take these every day, Groons, daily.
They are like, I don't know, it claims to be comprehensive nutrition.
It's got whole foods, veggies and fruits, vitamins, minerals, adaptogens, antioxidants, gut health and more.
It just tastes like fruit snacks or gummy bears.
But you feel better about them because they're good for you, right?
I don't know.
I don't know if they work.
I don't really know how efficacious they are, but they are delicious.
So it's a nice little treat after mealtime.
Is there any caffeine in either of those?
No caffeine in those, but I also have energy gummies in my drawer of wonders.
Of course you do.
Let's see the energy gummies.
Well, okay, so I think I went through the energy gummies already, but these are the sleep gummies from the same brand, Soltox, and they contain reishi mushrooms, reishi mushrooms, soothing botanicals.
Soltox, it sounds like it's intoxicating your soul.
Is that supposed to be a good way or toxic for your soul?
It must be good tox.
Must be.
I mean, obviously it's supposed to be a good kind of toxing.
Detox, soltox, okay.
It also sort of sounds like a podcast or a series about deep tox that come right from the soul.
Speaking of gummies that are energy gummies, I still like honey stingers.
I always keep those in my bag, but I would consider replacing those with deep tox.
I like that.
I picked up these Koss gummies from Home Goods, no less.
They have B vitamins and caffeine in here.
I feel like, you and I were talking about this, Monica, I feel like you, do you wanna try one of these?
It has 15 milligrams of caffeine in that one.
I feel like you can sort of taste the, I don't know if it's the caffeine or the B vitamins or both, but it doesn't exactly taste like something that's a treat, but it doesn't taste overly medicinal, which I kind of appreciate.
We'll have to get Mike's opinion here.
So the caffeine is from green coffee beans.
Oh my.
No.
No.
What are the flavor notes that are getting you to stamp your feet?
I mean, I wasn't expecting the terpene bomb to happen, but I mean, there's this like lemon.
It's like, okay, natural lemon flavor.
Yeah, there's lots of weird flavor in here.
Yeah.
Citric acid, natural orange color, natural lemon flavor.
There's also ashwagandha, rhodiola, and the caffeine is from green coffee beans.
I feel like people say that the green coffee beans are clean caffeine.
Why are we insinuating the green coffee beans are cleaner than roasted coffee beans?
What's that all about?
I think that they're comparing it to synthetic caffeine.
That's the difference.
So I think regular coffee is clean.
I think that whenever you see caffeine in formulation, sometimes it's a synthetic version.
And that's why.
There wasn't a chance I was gonna stop drinking regular coffee.
No.
Oh yeah, no.
Same here.
No.
It's the OG energy drink.
It really is, and it's so delicious.
But Monica, that makes perfect sense that that's the case.
And then I also brought these Oku gummies.
I chatted with Carolyn Hamlett at Expo West.
Have you tried these?
These are really tasty.
I'm scared now after you gave me those Coase gummies.
Here, this is going to set your palate right.
Those have more caffeine.
In five, there are 60 milligrams of caffeine.
So that sort of seems like a gummy that has the main focus.
The main place you get focused is caffeine.
They're tasty, right?
I'm a little nervous about Mike's caffeine intake between the gummies and all of the lattes that he drinks.
I haven't had an afternoon latte, so don't worry.
Probably won't.
Those I think are really tasty.
These taste much better.
Yeah, right?
These taste much better.
I mean, like if you put these next to these, these are the best candy you've ever had.
Yeah, they're pretty good though.
They're pretty tasty.
I like the grape.
There is like a little bit of tea taste and some definitely get some goji.
Yeah, it's really, really tasty.
It's good, coconutty.
Well, when I think of folks who need endless energy and focus, I certainly think of entrepreneurs, especially when they're trying to secure investment, which can be certainly a draining and difficult process.
This community call came from a question in our Slack community posted by Ruth Berhane-Williams of Erity.
Erity, she wanted to know how to find angel investors.
If you have a question that you're trying to figure out the answer to, if there's a challenge you want help with, join us in our Slack community, slack.bevnet.com.
Ask us a question and who knows, maybe we can turn it into a community call.
So that's what happened with this community call.
Ruth wanted to know how to find angel investors, especially if your community isn't stacked with people who can provide financial support.
So we brought in Nicole Bruno of No Bread and Gefen Skolnick of Coplet Coffee, both angel investors with CPG backgrounds to help Ruth find out how to find them, what kinds of partnerships they're looking for and best practices for pitching.
Please enjoy.
Today, we are digging into a question that came up in our Slack community, which you can all join at slack.bevnet.com.
Please do.
From Ruth Berhane-Williams, founder of Arity about how to connect with angel investors.
Ruth wrote that Arity is in need of financial support to keep growing the business.
She's at a stage of growth that founders often tap friends and family for funding.
But what do you do when you have a community that can help you with all of the love and support, but perhaps don't have the resources to help with capital?
So that brought us to the question of how to track down angel investors.
They can be even trickier to find than other investment avenues because angel investors come in all shapes and sizes, can be low profile and harder to find.
So we brought in some angel investors to give us the inside scoop.
We have Nicole Bruno, founder of the No Bread Influencer Platform and an investor in Three Wishes, Dough and Better Brand.
We also brought in Gefen Skolnick, founder of Couplet Coffee and investor in Fly by Jing, Unspun, Ghost Town Oats, and formerly was in Venture Capital at Contrary Capital and a scout for multiple early stage funds.
Thank you all so much for joining us.
I really appreciate your time and your information on this topic.
Why don't we start off by hearing from our guest, Nicole Bruno.
Again, thank you so much for joining.
Could you give us a little bit of background on what your history has been and how you came to Angel Investing?
Sure.
My name is Nicole Bruno.
I just got married, so it's like interesting hearing my new last name, I have to get used to it.
I am the influencer behind the blog No Bread.
I started that blog in 2014, and it's all things gluten-free health and wellness.
My background before that was I worked in equities at JPMorgan, and I was often involved in the IPO road shows.
So I always had this interest in how to bring companies to market.
In about 2000, around 2019, 2020, I realized the power of all these companies that were working with me on my influencer platform, how cool if instead of paying me, I paid them and got involved in these companies that I really believed in from the ground up.
So around 2020, I made my first investment into Three Wishes.
I invested into a fund called Constellation Capital.
And from there, I really just saw the trend of the better for you, like the second coming of it, and started investing in several companies then.
And I've kind of run my angel portfolio as if I'm my own little venture firm.
I invest in several consumer-based companies.
I branch into beverage.
I look outside into the greater women's health and tech markets.
Yeah, and I run SPVs for brands and I really just love helping brands from the bottom up.
That's something we certainly have in common.
And we are again thrilled to have you here and have your expertise in talking about this topic.
Gefen Skolnick, please tell us a little bit about your background.
This is a topic you are very familiar with.
Hi, guys.
I'm Gefen Pranandrashihar.
I formerly was in tech.
Currently, I'm the founder of a venture-backed coffee brand called Couplet Coffee.
And Angel Invest on the side, Scout for a couple funds on the side.
And yeah, I got my start into entrepreneurship in the tech world.
Went from being a software engineer to a product manager to then dabbling in venture capital.
Started in college and then just kept going afterwards.
And yeah, my whole thing was that I knew that I wanted to do something entrepreneurial.
Probably was going to be in tech because I had a computer science degree and was really passionate about that.
And because I built products and owned products at places like Tesla and Hulu, I transferred a lot of that same skill set to building couplet and learning more about consumer goods and really dove in yet still took my time at the same time.
Right now, I'm scouting for a social impact fund called Bonebo who has been invested in couplet three times, which is awesome.
And as well as Backstage Capital, used to scout for them for a while.
One of my biggest things over the years was that I was really interested in getting more women and minority founders, queer founders money to build businesses as well as immigrants and things of that nature.
So yeah, and now I've written a couple of different pieces about alternative ways to get funding other than just angel investing, just because I know that a lot of it is a relationship game and a lot of people starting companies from my spheres don't necessarily have the funds or the bandwidth, the relationships of people who have a lot of money to invest, so to chat more.
Your perspective as an entrepreneur yourself and investor will be very valuable.
So thank you again for joining.
Ruth, great to have you here.
And thanks again for bringing up this topic and being the impetus for this show.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about Arati, how it came to be and where you are right now with the brand?
Yeah, thank you so much, Melissa, for just putting all of this together.
As you mentioned, my name is Ruth Berhane-Williams and I am the founder of Arati, the first all-female, all-minority-owned spiced iced tea beverage company that was created with my family's century-old recipe.
Our spice blends are a powerful differentiator for us.
We still use the same nostalgic spices that my great-grandmother used, which is really meeting the high demands of conscious consumers like we have today.
We really pride ourselves on bringing consumers back to the basics.
I've often tagged airy tea as really just being pure, simple and spiced brewed.
Right now, we have three skews, spiced original, spiced lemon and spiced raspberry, all of which are lightly sweetened, naturally lower calorie.
And for those who check the back of the ingredient label, just like I do, don't worry.
Even a kindergartner can read our ingredient books.
Right now, airy tea is at a point where we've gained the validation and continue to really be open for more of that feedback from consumers.
We've received both wonderful and constructive feedback.
And we're really just taking in all of that renewed input and pouring it back into our next production run to target my local area here in the DMV and really just saturate the space in hopes to going back to the idea and planning for another national rollout.
I feel truly blessed to have survived so far the competitive CPG space, but I really believe that it'll just continue to improve over time with the right people in our corner.
Just one last day.
I think every team was really birthed out of my semi deep passion for supporting organizations providing a second chance for refugees in the US.
And you guys can read more about my story on the website, but as an immigrant myself, I witnessed my parents start resilience firsthand moving here to the US, which is really kind of the driving force for me to assisting organizations in facilitating access to education, employment, or even learning the English language skill for immigrants to really help them navigate through the space a little bit easier than what we had to when we came to the US.
You know, ARI-TEA is really just a way for me to not only uphold these organizations, but also the sweet memories of me waking up to the very distinct fragrances of my mother crushing and steeping the spices while telling stories of our move from from Eritrea to the US.
Ruth, thank you so much for that.
I'm gonna hand the floor over to you in just a minute.
But before I do that, I'd love to ask Nicole and Gefen, if you have any questions for Ruth before we get into it.
Well, I think it would be really nice to hear kind of your elevator pitch.
You're like two sentence of what your company is, because I think it's so beautiful that there's a whole heritage component to it and a family history behind it is.
But what is your product?
I think it'll be helpful for the listeners as we go into the Q&A.
Yeah, so as mentioned before, Aerie Tea is a spiced iced tea beverage, which is really just encompassing my great, great grandmother and all the other 105 years of our spices really being bottled for retailers.
I was able to have an opportunity to recreate this thing that I grew up with.
We use a spices like cardamom, cinnamon, I mean, just a whole slew of spices to really elevate the black tea.
Because in my culture, we really use spices as a way to drink iced tea or hot tea, as opposed to just black tea and sugar like they do here.
And so it is also, I think, one of the bigger things with Aerie tea, because one of the biggest questions, honestly, that people ask me is like, well, what's so different from the rest of it?
And to be honest, it just comes back down to the simplistic ingredients that we use, but it very much, I mean, it's bursting with flavor, it's bursting with culture, and it's very much grounded in history and our mission behind it.
And then I'll just ask real quick, I was just curious in terms of like the skews themselves, I'm actually very, I'm a tea snob, love tea, I also, cardamom is not enough things.
I'm curious if your sort of like angle in terms of getting it on shelf and your retailer pitch is, this is just something, a flavor profile, that's really good, that's not really been introduced and is not common on the shelves, like that's our big differentiator.
Or do you also have like a better for you or like a functional benefit or something like that?
It sounds like it's mainly, there's a story, there's a soul behind this and then also just tastes really good and not what people are used to.
Ingredients are just great, but just, it tastes good.
I guess I'm curious about like the positioning of it.
Yeah, I mean, and yes, that has been, that has been the selling points.
I think a lot of times people are, looking for that power wow factor and our spices are that.
And I think a lot of times, we are so saturated with all of these new natural ingredients, which is great, but our position is we're really just pure and simple, right?
Like when you look at the ingredient list, you're not gonna look at ashawanda, like you're not gonna find all of these like random new ingredients that you're starting to see in these spaces where we're really just taking the simplicity and once again, capturing it in that bottle.
You know, one of my goals with Aerie Tea is really not to ruin the beauty of it.
And in our, you know, my culture, there is just this very simple stance around you don't need a lot to make it good.
And that's what we have.
Simple, beautiful, spiced, fragrant, and the other wow factor obviously is that we are just actually healthy and it's not because we did anything to it, it's just the ingredients that we use.
Well, Ruth, you've given us a little bit more background on Arity.
Thank you for that.
So now I'm gonna hand the floor over to you.
I know you have a number of questions for Nicole and Gefen.
So please go ahead.
When I was obviously talking to Melissa, some of the questions that came up, one of the top questions was like, what exactly are the key factors that investors are looking for when considering investing specifically in a CPG company outside of sales?
I can start with that.
So when I look at a company, there's so many different kinds of investors.
I can only truly speak for myself.
And I think that's why it's awesome that Gefen and I are both here.
So I'm sure we have completely different perspectives.
I always say, I have a friend who I co-invest with and she'll always source out of, she has this great eye for like product market fit.
And then I like numbers.
So it kind of depends on what you as an investor, like what my goal is for my fund.
Certain things that I look for across the board is the founder first.
Does the founder get it?
Is there passion?
Is this their everything?
Is this their child?
Is this, do they see the runway?
Do they have the plan?
I always like, a lot of times when you get that initial deck and a founder could be preceded super early and they say, well, we're gonna be in target by year two or this by year three.
A lot of times founders don't know that, but I like to see that they have the vision for it.
As I've learned with angel investing, everything takes longer.
So I'm not gonna judge the founder if they don't get there by year two, but I wanna see that they have a grasp on trajectory.
They have a grasp on margins.
They know that when they raise at this point, it's gonna bring margins down here.
That's why it's a little bit more expensive.
Now I just like hearing the passion and the understanding of a founder.
And then second for me, I'll just touch on my two main things, is product disruption.
What are we replacing?
Is this just another tea?
Is it just another cookie?
Or are we disrupting a market?
And so for me, between founder and then is the product disruptive?
It stands out in some capacity that hasn't been done before or is going to completely change the landscape of this industry.
That's something I look for.
And yeah, there's a lot of overlap for sure.
I guess for me, I have always been more of an investor on like a pretty early stage, both when I was at a fund and as an angel.
It's changed for me quite a bit, I have to say, just because I think I was like taught certain theses and certain markets and certain industries and certain verticals, even just within CPG, like, oh, maybe don't want to look at that for the next couple of years because there's been a lot of down taking people's interest or it's been super saturated for the past few years.
But I think sometimes I like zoom out of that in terms of like the conversations I have with other investors on like the macro market sort of side of it.
And it's, as Nicole said, actually, to be honest, most of the time are really just investing in the founder because for me, when people wrote their first checks into couplet, couplet didn't have a website.
I was in college and transitioning out of working at Tesla and I had just kind of put out things into the world really fast and learned really fast.
And I was sort of just building it in public.
And so the reason why people wrote their first checks into me, the first ever check in a couplet was actually the founder of Away.
She DM me on Twitter and was like, why aren't you doing this full time?
And I was like, you're wild, I need to get a salary.
So probably gonna go work at Tesla first and see what happens.
And she ended up inspiring me to do it full time, but it was really just because she saw something in me where she had invested in like 50 plus founders at that point and sort of knew if someone was extremely passionate about something, was gonna work at it every day, even if things don't go the same way that you thought at the beginning.
So just kind of like seeing that early hustle in someone is really, really important.
But also like how, I think for me, ever since I'd started asking the questions on the other side of the table as an investor, the main things were like, how deeply have you thought about your market?
How deeply have you thought about your positioning?
How deeply have you thought about the first four years, the first year, what's gonna happen if you get kicked out of Target?
Like what's gonna happen if DTC didn't work out the way that it did?
I thought Cuplet was gonna be made mostly a DTC brand and we mostly are doing food service now, working with big tech offices and killing it in retail.
And I literally have only started truly knowing about that space the past year and a half.
But before then, we were on a different path.
It's just kind of like what I would wanna know.
One is how do you navigate all of the ebbs and flows and the changes and also how deeply have you thought about financially, do you know what it takes to get into Target?
Do you know how it takes to get into this natural grocer?
Have you thought about doing food service?
Does it make sense for your margins?
Do you know your margins really well?
Are you nimble enough to know other co-packers in case yours screws you over, right?
It's just like all these different things that I think about or have to think about as a founder in the same industry.
How much have you thought about it?
Those are the sort of things that I would ask, but those are sort of like after I've already determined that I'm personally excited about the thing you're putting out into the world, because I know it's gonna mold and be different, because I literally went through changes myself over the past two years of couplets.
So yeah, it's kind of just touching the surface.
It goes a bit deeper than that for me, but that's kind of the core that I look at.
How should someone like myself or obviously another newer entrepreneur sort of bridge the potential between or bridge the potential relationship with someone like yourself or with an investor who doesn't necessarily have the networking connections or they didn't get that DM asking them why they're not doing it full-time?
As it pertains to finding your investors and networking and like how to, if you don't have a network of invest, is your question like if you don't have a network of investors to turn to like how to find that first group of people who believe in you?
Yeah.
I would say there's so many different avenues.
It depends where you are with your product.
Like if you've brought it to market in any capacity, even if it's just to share it with people, you know, the biggest and best investors are going to be the natural fans of a product.
My dad has this saying that I lived my life by, and it's like not even really a saying, but it works.
It just always asks one more question.
And I would always like, you know, we would be together at a store and then he would ask this like one question that you're so awkward, why'd you ask that?
But then he would get like, you know, this like life-changing experience and it's always from, like just don't be bashful, just ask the question.
So, you know, those, that first group of people who first try your product and love it, ask them.
If you're on LinkedIn, companies in the similar space, if you click like, if you go onto LinkedIn and click DOE, which is a company I'm an investor in, you click people, you'll see all the other people who have tagged themselves as an investor of DOE.
So I would look at like-minded companies to yours or companies in your space, it could be the greater beverage category.
Click on their profiles.
And if you think that they could be a good investor for you, why not shoot them a DM?
But, and also like there's a way to cold DM or cold message someone.
If you say, like I get DMs where it's like, hi, I want you to invest in my thing.
Like I'm not gonna respond.
But if it's like, hey, I saw that you're an investor in X, Y and Z.
I really feel like you would like my product or I really feel like connected to you in this capacity, would love to just take 20 minutes of your time.
I'm like, wow, like I do that.
So I so respect you asking me and I'm gonna take that call.
And then the thing with networking and finding your investors is everyone, the seven degree game, like everyone knows someone.
So if you and I meet and it's not a fit for me, I know 10 people who it is a fit for and I will pass it on and they know 10 people.
So the networking component, whether you know people or not, you find that one person who takes your phone call and it goes from there.
But yeah, I say stock LinkedIn, like, you know, BevNET, all these community resources are all like-minded people and everyone knows one other person to help.
Yeah, I think that's a big part of the game and I think the way I, if I went backwards in time, there's a couple different things, like one, I would absolutely go on LinkedIn and probably scrape a list of at least 500 people that you're gonna reach out to, because a lot of people are gonna say no or be uninterested or not be deploying capital currently right now, just because of status of CPG investing.
So I would at least start with a group of 500 people, but I would also make sure that that group of 500 people, like is, they've invested in something where, hmm, like for instance, if someone's invested in like a fish wife or an omsom, a lot of the time, like those same investors are kind of understand the weirdness, quirkiness, differentiable factor of couplet, you know, like they get that things can look different in different categories.
So like I would sort of put those people on my list and I would also be really systematic about it where like I would have, and I can send you this on LinkedIn.
I know we just connected on there.
Like there's this air table investor CRM where you can just really live update and put, have you emailed someone?
Where did the conversation go?
And just kind of like put them in different categories and prioritize or deprioritize conversations.
But to be honest with you, a lot of the game, like a lot of the sauce of like raising money has really been on Twitter these days.
Like I probably raised everything off of Twitter, but it was truly because of a lot of the intros that came from my first like five investors.
Then people started talking about it.
Cause a lot of the time, like let's say you reached out to about a hundred, let's say like three to four people wrote small checks.
I would really make those three to four people work really hard to either talk about how they invested in it publicly and gained some interest.
Cause people like to trust that their friends or people they respect have invested in something.
There have also been people who, because of like a certain investor, investing cause of their name, right?
They have a certain level of respect or certain number of connections.
Like when Jen tweeted about Couplet and other investors who were in tech, were GPs of tech funds who have invested in Couplet because they couldn't through their fund.
Enough people looking at someone else talking about it will generate inbound for you, especially for people who are actively looking to invest in companies at an early stage or within a similar category to someone.
So I would really like numbers game, put out 200 messages really systematically.
I would tailor the pitch, even the like 250 character LinkedIn DM to something like personal because me included, I get a very wild amount of DMs on Twitter as well as on LinkedIn and other platforms.
So literally one point of differentiation is just tailoring it so easy.
If it takes the extra 10 seconds per message, it's so worth it.
I would really focus on getting those first three to four and making them work for it, making them post about it and getting them, almost mandating them to giving you five intros and just keep rolling the ball from there because it's a lot easier once you have a little bit of momentum.
And then another thing that I would note is the more leverage you have, the better.
So we haven't really gotten into this.
It'd be awesome if you could share, I guess, if you're open to it, like, where you are now.
Like, is there a door count that's exciting?
Is there a velocity to share that's exciting?
Is there like an owned audience somewhere, a big email list that you gather?
Like, is there some sort of thing that people are like, oh, cool, I think if they like had a production run that I would give them money for, like they could probably get, you know, it sold out pretty fast because of insert like thing here.
But yeah, it just, I would create as much leverage as possible before having those conversations for sure.
Cause a lot of more people are wanting to invest in something that is like right at the beginning of the curve versus like we haven't started yet.
Like they're like, oh, they're about to take off.
Let me invest now.
Let me not wait till it's too late.
And they won't even need my money anymore.
So.
Thank you for sharing.
Just going based off of what you guys shared about the previous investments that you guys have made.
Were there or are there any specific like trends or niches within the CPG sort of like sector that you feel like right now currently are attracting more investors than ever?
So hard to say because I think 2023 into 2024 has spooked a lot of investors.
I think there was this like hot market in like 2019 to 2020.
I was like, let's throw darts at everything.
Like it was hot.
And then there was this shift where you no longer, it used to be like a consumer company wanted to hit 30 million in revenue, sell for some random 10X multiple.
Didn't matter if they were profitable.
It was like the wild, wild west a little bit and that it's completely corrected.
So, it used to be that this was a hot category.
This was a hot category.
I have a thesis right now on the non-alcohol category, but I don't think that there's like a, I think there's a lot of conservatism going on right now and a correction of what venture funds look for.
Now I would say it's based on like your profitability and cashflow and hitting way higher than 30 million for the larger VCs.
So, I don't see that like explosive niche that all investors are like dying to get in on right now.
I think everyone has caution across the board.
So, it's a little bit more company specific.
I would agree with that.
I think very early on, I was pretty skeptical of like the venture model, especially in consumer brands, just because I didn't really understand why.
You know, if given X amount of money, you could probably reach a certain top line, right?
Like it's just pretty math.
Like, but I just seem like nobody seems to care about people's monthly burn was really crazy, but at all costs, it was kind of like grow at all costs, grow at all costs.
And then all of a sudden, crazy market correction came.
And like now people care about profitability.
Now when looking at DTC brands, investors are going to be like, are you first order profitable?
Is your customer acquisition something that makes sense?
We're not just going to trust you on your lifetime value of your customer.
Like you probably need some hard data of a couple of years to talk about it.
Like it's not like little willy nilly, yeah, I think we can acquire a customer for $10 and boom, we'll go to the moon after that.
So I think people are really going to take a harder look and it takes probably not growing as fast as they originally expected brands to grow.
But people are going to be very excited if you're able to tell them, I have these really awesome terms with my co-packer.
And we negotiated that because they're really, they think that we have a really awesome product.
They've potentially even invested in us as a brand because they really believe in it.
And because of that, I'm able to actually not use a lot of my equity money to then service like these regions and doors in retail because we're super cash efficient.
Like the more cash efficient you are, I think people are just gonna be excited about it.
Cause like, I'm just gonna assume the product tastes great.
Like everything down to like the packaging, everything like works makes sense in terms of putting it on a shelf.
And the sexier part will be, how are you differentiating yourself as an actual brand?
Cause a lot of people can spend lots of money to get on shelves, but are you staying on shelves?
Are people excited about it?
Are people posting about it after they buy it on the shelf?
You know, like how are you doing in comparison to your peers sitting next to you on that shelf, et cetera?
Are you, are the buyers, you know, look static?
Like, are you getting these random free promos here and there cause people are just loving it?
Like all these random little things, but cause yeah, it is kind of, it's not easy, but with the right amount of money, a lot of people can sort of show vanity metrics or show vanity top line.
But yeah, if you have like that secret sauce, like, oh yeah, we're actually, per like case, we make a lot more money than our peers because of this.
You know what I mean?
It's just kind of those things, cash efficiency is going to be really important now.
I thought I could touch on something real quick.
Gefen just made a touch on something that was a great point was that a lot of times in terms of searching for investors, beer or beverage, the can manufacture, the manufacturing invests in brands.
And I've seen that a lot and that's a, it's the biggest vote of confidence that they want to be a company that's producing you wants to be involved with you.
I've seen that on several occasions and also, then you can structure deals with them about getting great costs of goods.
So you can find your, as it pertains to finding investors, you can find them truly everywhere.
There's another, what I love hearing too, when I'm talking to a brand, if they're saying, I'm gonna throw companies out there.
But if you're a beverage company and they're like, the former CEO of Pepsi is an investor, or the former doesn't even have to be that big, this three-time beverage founder is an investor.
And that's more in the category we can talk about, like strategic investors.
But I think that was a great point to hit on, where the people who are producing you, the person who did your branding, what if they wanna be involved?
Because they see the vision.
It's a great vote of confidence, and then you can get great rates in what you're producing.
So just playing off what you were talking about, differentiating yourself from peers and branding, like what role does branding and packaging play in sort of just like capturing an investor's attention?
I took a meeting this morning and I have this thesis of something I think is good in the product world right now.
And my angel investor friend who I was on a Zoom with sent me this company and go, oh, look at this, they're kind of doing that.
I pulled it up and I was like, oh, horrible branding.
Okay, but like, I like what they're doing.
So branding can always be fixed.
It's like the iPhone came out version one, now we're at version 15.
So it's expensive to rebranding.
You do it when the time is right.
Does it make me be like, ew, no, no.
But then I actually put more attention to will the product better be good?
So it does give a negative vibe, but I'm not gonna base a decision off of it.
That can be fixed when we get the capital in time.
And I do think it's very important for a product that is going to be on a shelf to stand out.
I think, and again, everyone's gonna have a different opinion.
I like a very clean look using bold colors to stand out, have each flavor be a different bold color.
Someone else might like ton of graphic to stand out.
So branding is so personal to you.
And then even if I don't like the branding, but I hear the background of why it became the branding, I'm like, oh, that plays into your story.
I get it.
Now I see it.
So it'll never turn me off, but it's definitely something that every brand I've invested in, I think has rebranded their product.
Even the ones where I'm like, why'd they do that?
It was so good.
So I wouldn't fall on that sword.
Like it can be fixed and start with something that's true to you, work with a branding expert, get opinions from friends.
But yeah, Gefen, as someone who has a company, I'm curious to hear your take too.
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on that, I have to say, because, and I'll just show our coffee bag.
It's like a very shiny, like if you put it on a shelf, it will stand out like across.
If you can tell, like it has a shine on it and holographic nature to it.
And then when the light hits it at different angles in the store, like you will literally see it from other aisles and that was by design.
So if someone has like real intentionality with how they look on a shelf, or for me, it's because it's eye catching.
No one else in coffee has this type of packaging.
It's been the reason why people get abnormally excited about a coffee brand.
I'd been in the coffee space for like, now it's been 10 years and I had never seen anyone get like actually viscerally excited about like the brand and the extension of other things that we've done around it because the first thing they saw was something really weird and different and they knew that the rest of the brand presence would adhere to that.
And I spent 7K on my branding versus like, I'm friends with a lot of the people in the branding space now.
I was not then, I did not know the market then.
I just kind of knew that I was either gonna spend 150K plus probably more these days and equity to like get cool, sexy DTC branding or I could get scrappy and it took me seven months versus taking other people like six weeks to like find the right fit and iterate through a bunch of different iterations of the branding.
But I think from an investor standpoint, I don't know, from my standpoint personally, actually, like I just think it really, just because my brand has really like, we won all these random awards and we like get pretty easy shelf placements and like because of the fact that it's so differentiated.
So as long as you demonstrate in my opinion, even if you end up doing a rebrand or something, everyone changes things throughout the years anyways, that there's something that you really thought about if why is someone going to pick this up?
Like is there, are they seeing the right things they need to see in terms of the text and the hierarchical text and the colors or it's all these random little things.
Like, did you just think about it?
Even if it's not the final version, like how deeply did you think about it?
Because I don't know, I'm personally a huge branding person now and I'm really into it.
And even if it means positioning slash outside of it, visually speaking, like on a shelf, in a set, have you really thought about the alternatives and what your same target customer is gonna pick up?
Why are they gonna pick up yours instead?
If you have like an answer for that, then that's great.
I think that's just how I think about it.
Have you thought about the set of like the iced teas and the places where you wanna place your iced tea specifically?
Have you like maybe put it on the shelf?
Like I've put mine at Air1 and be like, oh my God, it's gonna crush here because these coffees versus mine, oh my God, this is the perfect customer.
This is why, blah, blah, blah.
So yeah, think about it in terms of the set.
Sometimes you don't wanna stray too much form factor wise.
Sometimes you do.
You never know.
Just depends on the diligence on the set.
Can you guys share any successful strategies of any CPG company that you guys might have worked with that effectively attracted your investment in the past where you were just like, I heard from you guys once and like, oh, you guys don't have to talk anymore, I'm here for it.
Yeah, I mean, there's one company in particular.
So again, by background, my blog is No Bread, and it was all things gluten-free.
No Bread was my little catchy phrase of how to say I was gluten-free when I was awkward.
And I always toyed with the idea of coming out with my own brand, something in the low carb world, something in the gluten-free bread world, it played into No Bread, it'd be a perfect fit.
And then I met a company called Better Brand, who was a food tech company, they created an enzyme that when you add it to the classic ingredients of a bagel and infuse it with protein and stripped carbohydrates.
So taking my interests, what I thought I would do one day, but I never wanted to be a founder.
But then I met someone who is, you know, living in my head, creating the thing that I think is genius.
I was like, oh my God, and the round was closed.
And I was like, well, open it.
Like, you know, so that's an example where that brand met an investor who, that was my passion.
So in that case, I was like begging, I was like, I want in on this.
So this, I get it, I see it.
I actually, I met the founder.
I was like, you get it, you see it.
You're a better founder than I would ever be.
So I want in.
So I would say those moments for me exist when it takes passion and I don't want to be a founder and I meet the person that has that passion but wants to be a founder.
That's just one example.
And then other than that, I would say if there was, like I really went in for a while on two sectors, the non-alcohol market and women's health, because I was like crazy passionate about both.
And then I took the bagel, the better brand situation happened.
I wasn't even doing a thesis on it.
I just met the owner, the founder, and I was like, okay, I want in.
But the other two, I've been, I worked for like a year on each, searching all companies that fell into those umbrellas because that was the thesis I had and I wanted to find whoever the best was in each market.
So, as it pertains to you, if you find that beverage enthusiast, that tea enthusiast, that person, that person is going to be extremely more excited than anybody, but that would be for me, the companies I was most excited about.
They fit this passion I had.
I guess my example probably is Fly by Jing.
I DM'd Jing in 2020 when I was a wee lad.
Just didn't know anything.
And just was a huge fan of what she had done and how she had done it so efficiently and how she was so different than everything I'd seen.
Like, no big fundraising announcements.
It just kind of seemed like she hustled her way to create a community and started with Kickstarter versus, you know, that's also a really good option, right?
Like, she literally started and kicked off this insanely massive company these days.
Like, this is the size of her company versus, you know, in the timeframe that she's gotten it there has been wild to see.
Like, when we first met, like months after becoming friends, she was like, yeah, we just hit our first 2.5 million.
But she makes that in days now.
You know what I mean?
And that was what, four years ago.
But the reason why it was an instant yes for me, like one, we had just been friends.
I had been hearing about how smart she was about different things.
Like she wasn't doing what everyone else was doing when they said that they were doing it.
Like she got really smart about how she was raising future money.
Her burn was extremely low.
She really like took her time on each step and also invests a lot of time, energy, money into branding the customer journey, both in store and online.
And always invests just kind of in the right things.
And even if she's made mistakes, it's like not been big enough to like hurt the company and the trajectory and has a really great instinct and is really resourceful.
And I think that was an easy, yes, obviously I'd wanted to invest in her for a while and then I did.
And they continue to just crush it.
And yeah, it was the more I stay in touch with people, both in an investor and a founder, especially now that I'm in a bunch of founder ecosystems and host dinners and stuff, all these things, you get to hear on a founder to founder level, that's just my secret thing is it's awesome.
I get to like listen and then I can either connect them to funds that I'm working with or to people running SPVs that I'm working with and be like, hey, I've known this person for a year now.
Now they're gonna be raising.
You need to get in on this before anyone else does and be one of the first checks in because I've seen literally how smart they are in their thinking and just regular founder conversations that we have.
Ruth, you've asked some fantastic questions and questions that I'm sure so many other founders have as well.
After hearing the responses that Nicole and Gefen have given, what are your thoughts?
Do you have any next steps in mind based on all of the information they shared?
I understand this is in real time, so I don't wanna put you on the spot.
No, no, it's okay.
Melissa, first, I just really want to say how appreciative I am of you and just having this opportunity to partner with all of our friends over at BevNET.
I mean, I feel like this is such an incredible opportunity to, you know, just for emerging brands like Arity, to kind of navigate the complex world of securing an angel investor or finding other ways to, you know, get investing.
And one thing I really hope that people are able to walk away with, or early stage brands is really just understanding that it's more than just finding the financial backing.
It's, I've learned more about like, just finding kind of the perfect match, someone who could, you know, provide invaluable guidance, you know, industry connections, like I was talking about, and also, you know, just to some degree, provide some form of mentorship.
And for me right now, I mean, just taking this all in, honestly, I have a checkpoint in my head and I could just share with you Gefen, I'm already thinking about reaching out to be founder of Flyby Chain, just because of her ability to kind of strategically take a customer through the journey.
And just that little piece, I'm like, man, I gotta learn more about them.
But also for me, one of the wonderful things, Melissa, after our last call, I actually was connected with someone in the industry, a gentleman who's kind of been there, done that.
And I have a really great mentor in place right now, who is kind of helping me kind of fold hand in certain areas to really help me understand the magnitude of this space, specifically ICE-T.
So I am grateful for that, I'm excited for that.
And I'm for sure gonna be listening back to this and writing down my notes so that I could put out a list of tasks to kind of execute.
Well, that sounds like some serious progress already.
I would like to thank all three of you so much for joining Ruth Berhane-Williams, founder of ARI-T.
Thank you so much for having the question in the first place and driving this conversation.
Nicole Bruno and Gefen Skolnick, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and being so generous with your time and your knowledge.
That concludes another episode of the Community Call Podcast.
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