How Do You Find Angel Investors? Perfecting the Pitch and Collaboration to Give Your Business Wings.

[Music] Welcome to the community called podcast. I am Melissa Travers, director of community here at Bevnet and Naush. Here with my co-host Monaco Watchress 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 Schollnick of date-fake. He is always such a lovely person to chat with. And we were talking, of course, about the date-fix product itself. Monaco, 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 kind of makes you crash after 30 minutes. That makes perfect sense. And Mike, you do a lot of sort of athletic activities, including running and other things. Would you do this? Is this something you would do? Running and podcasting and bunching. Oh, I'm bunching. 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 fake Newton. It's like a date Newton. She made it up. Yeah. Also does that. I would love that. I can't be a thing. Okay, yeah. Let's make it. The ginger is awesome. I want that a half time. The cinnamon is delightful. Cinnamon too, huh? Let's go for it. Here we go. It's like too big. 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 trend of events. I like the ginger too. What's the orange one? This is the original one. So you could just try it with nothing. Try with nothing. And then here's the full flight. 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 going to have to send you some of these. And you were just talking about the glycemic index. 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 health line. I love this. Isn't it so good? Yeah, and wouldn't you got to try this Monica? Yeah, we got to send you some. I'm ordering some after we finish this up. It's delightful. And really good. You could also put it like he said on ice cream, yogurt. Yeah, I put some everything. Yeah. Ooh, you know what I like to do? Match this up with one of those like 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 good. It's really good for the dates, orange blossom water, turmeric, turmeric. Oh, this is turmeric. Oh, yummy. Oh, yeah, the turmeric. 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 how to 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. It's going to say a hot date. But do you think of 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 hot 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 is it the blind date thinning to this? Oh, yes. We're just fear fit. How do you blind a date 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 cover dates. Right? I mean, I mean, I got nothing. I ran out of good date puns. The person who has the most amazing date puns is Amanda Saints. Oh, I'm sure she does. She is the best. All right. Well, she has great puns in general. She's like the the mistress of puns. All right. Amanda. 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 to have this happen. Let's make this happen. I can 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. I don't know if dates or 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 said at and it's that thing is stocked with gummies. Is that right? So I have a supplement drawer at 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. They went into focus. She put it in front of the camera and we couldn't see it and then it's a focus. It's meant to be good for focus, energy cognition and ideation and it's got lines main cordicep, b6, b12 and green tea. Obviously we've had none of that. 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. It's a nice little treat after a meal time. Is there any caffeine in either of those? No caffeine in those. But I also have energy gummies in my drawer of one person. Of course you do. Let's see the energy gummies. Well, act. Okay. So I think I went through the energy gummies already, but these are the sleep gummies from the same brand, Soul Talks. And they contain Rachy mushrooms. Rachy mushrooms soothing botanicals. Soul Talks. It sounds like it's intoxicating your soul. Is it supposed to be good way or toxic for your soul? It must be good talks. It must be. I mean, obviously, it's supposed to be a good kind of taxing detox. Detoxing. It also sort of sounds like a podcast or a series about deep talks 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 the effects. I like that. I picked up these costs gummies from home goods. No less. They have B vitamins and caffeine in here. I feel like this, you and I were talking about this Monica. I feel like you do want to try one of these. Sure. 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. What are you? 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. Citric acid, natural orange color, natural lemon flavor. There's also ashwagand or rodeola 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 going to stop drinking regular coffee. No, 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 that's the case. And then I also brought these Okugumi's. I chatted with Carolyn Hamlet at Expo West. Have you tried these? These are really tasty. I'm scared now after you gave me those coves gummies. Here, this is this is going to set your palette right. Those have more caffeine in five. There are 60 milligrams of caffeine. So that sort of seems like a gummy that has a the main focus. The main place you got focus is caffeine. They're tasty. 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? They 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 are 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. Coconut-y. 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 Brahan Williams, a variety. 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. 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. We brought in Cole Bruno of No Bread and Geffen's Skullnick 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. Thanks, Bestie. Today we are digging into a question that came up in our Slack community, which you can all join. It's Slack.bevnet.com. Please do. From Ruth Brahan 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 of founders, often tap friends and family for funding. 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? 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. 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, Doe and Better Brand. We also brought in Geffen Skolnick, founder of Couplet Coffee, and investor in Flyby Jing, Fun, Spun, Ghost Town Oats, and formerly was in venture capital, a 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. It's 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. I always had this interest in how to bring companies to market. In about 2019-2020, I realized the power of all these companies that were working with me on my influencer platform, how cool it's 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 kind of run my angel portfolio as if I'm my own little venture firm. I invest in several consumer-based companies. I've branched into beverage. I look outside into the greater women's health and tech markets. Yeah, and I've always 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. Geffen Skolnik, please tell us a little bit about your background. This is a topic you are very familiar with. Yeah, hi guys, I'm Geffen. Brian, I'm just she heard. I formerly wasn't tech. Currently I'm the founder of a venture-backed coffee brand called Cuplet Coffee. And Angel invests on the side, scouts for a couple of 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 skull set to building a couple of things and learning more about consumer goods. And really Dove in yet still took my time at the same time. Right now I'm scanning for a social impact fund called Bumbio, who has been invested in a couple of three times, which is awesome. And as well as backstage capital, I used to scout for them for a while when 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 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 of bandwidth, the relationships of people who have a lot of money to invest. So to chat more. Your perspective is 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 Arity, 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 Brahan Williams and I am the founder of ARIT, the first all female all minority owned spice ice tea beverage company that was created with my family centred old recipe. Our spice blends are a powerful differentiator for us. We still use the same miscellaneous spices that my great-grandmother used, which is really meeting the high demands of conscious consumers like me today. We've really pride ourselves on bringing consumers back to the basics. We have often tagged ARIT as really just being pure, simple and spice bird. Right now we have three skews, spice the original, spice the lemon and the spice raspberry, all of which are likely sweetened, naturally lower calorie and for those who check the back of the gradient label just like I do, don't worry. Even a kindergarten can create our ingredient bliss. Right now ARIT 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, employing 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 they'll just continue to improve over time with the right people in our corner. Just one last day, ARIT was really birthed out of my semi-deep passion for supporting organizations providing a second chance for refugees in the US. You guys can read more about my story on the website, but as an immigrant myself, I would use my parents, start from resilience, first hand, 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. ARIT 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 ARIT to the US. Thank you so much for that. I'm going to hand the floor over to you in just a minute, but before I do that, I'd love to ask Nicole and Geffen, 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 sentences 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 it. to the Q&A. - Yeah, so as mentioned before, ARIT 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 spiced like cardamom cinnamon, I mean, just a full slew of spices to really elevate the black tea. 'Cause 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 ARIT 'cause 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's 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 the scoos themselves, I'm actually very, I'm a T-snob, lefty. I also cardamom is not enough things. I am curious if you're 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 their story, there's a soul behind this and then also just tastes really good and not what people are used to. And 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 the selling point. I think a lot of times people are, you know, looking for that power wow factor and our spices are that. And I think a lot of times, you know, we are so saturated with all of these new natural ingredients, which is great. What 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 Airti 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, spice, 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 Airti. 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 in Geffen. So please go ahead. - When I was obviously talking to Melissa, some of the questions that came up, one of the tough 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, you know, 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 Geffen and I are both here because 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, 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 their passion? Is this their everything? Is this their child? Is this, you know, do they see the runway? Do they have the plan? I always like, you know, a lot of times when you get that initial deck and a founder could be preceded super early and they say, well, we're going to 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 going to judge the founder if they don't get there by year two, but I want to 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 going to 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 it 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, you know, 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 out of 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 thesis 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-taken 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 markets sort of side of it. And it's, as Nicole said, it actually, to be honest, the most of the time, are really just investing in the founder because for me, when people wrote their first checks into a couple of it, didn't have a website. I was in college and transitioning and kind 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 checking a couple of it was actually the founder of a way. She DMed me on Twitter and was like, why aren't you doing this full time? And I was like, your 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 been investing, you know, 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, like 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, you know, the first four years, the first year, what's gonna happen if you get kicked out of target, like what's gonna happen if D to C didn't work out the way that it did. I thought couple, it was gonna be mostly a D to C brand and we mostly are doing food service. Now working with big tech offices and, you know, 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 want to 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 like no 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? Like 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 investors, 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, you know, 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 is this saying that I live my life by and it's like not even really his 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 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 on to LinkedIn and click Doh, which is a company I'm an investor and you click people, you'll see all the other people who have tagged themselves as an investor of Doh. So I would look at like-minded, you know, companies to yours or companies in your space could be the greater beverage category, click on their profiles and if they if you think that they could be in 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 it could if you say like I get DMs where it's like, 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 connected to you in this capacity would love to just, you know, take 20-hours 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 me and it's not a fit for me, I know 10 people who it is a fit for and I will pass along 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 at least start with a group of 500 people but I would also make sure that that group of 500 people like is you invested in something where, hmm, like for instance, if someone's invested in like a fishwife 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, you do prioritize 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, it was truly because of a lot of the intros that came from my first like five investors. Then people started talking about it because a lot of the time like let's say you reached out to about 100, 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 gain some interest because people like to trust that their friends or people their respect have invested in something. There have also been people who because of like a certain investor investing because of their name, but 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 in 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. Because 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 used to be like a consumer company wanted to hit 30 million in revenue. So for some random 10x multiple didn't matter if they were profitable. It's like the wild wild west a little bit and that it's completely corrected. So you know 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 in a correction of what venture funds look for. Now I would say it's based on like your profitability and cash flow 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. But I just seemed like nobody seemed to care about people's monthly burn was really crazy but it all cost. It was kind of like grow it all cost, grow it all costs and then all of a sudden crazy market correction came and like now people care about profitability. Now when looking at D to C brands, investors are going to be like are you first sort of 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 a couple of years to talk about it. Like it's not like little willy nilly. Yeah, I think we can apply our 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 as 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 going to be excited about it. I'm just going to assume the product tastes great. Like everything down to like the packaging everything like works make sense in terms of you know putting it on a shelf. And this sexier part will be how are you differentiating yourself as an actual brand? Because a lot of people can spend lots of money to get on shelves. But are you staying on shelves or people excited about it or 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, etc. Are you? Are the buyers, you know, like static? Like are you getting these random free promos here and there because people are just loving it. Like all these random little things but because 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 a 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 find the touches that they were quick, Devin just made a touch on something that was a great point was that a lot of times in terms of searching for investors, fear of 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 it on several occasions and And also, you know, 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 going to 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 those are great point to hit on where the people who are producing you, the person who did your branding, what if they want to 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, you know, 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 they were, I have this, you know, thesis of something I think is good in product world right now. And they're my, you know, angel investor friend who I was on the zoom with sent me this company go, oh, look at this. They're kind of doing that. I pulled it up and I was like, a 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, right version 15. So it's expensive to rebrand and you do when the time is right. Does it make me be like, you know, no, but then it, I actually put more attention to all the product better be good. So it does give a negative vibe, but I know I'm not going to base a decision off of it. Like 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. And I think, you know, and again, this is everyone's going to have a different opinion. Like 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. I now I see it. So it'll never turn me off, but it could, it's definitely something that. Every brand I've invested in, I think has rebranded their product. Even the ones are I'm like, why did they do that? It was so good. So I wouldn't, you know, fall in 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, get the nice someone who has a company and curious here. You're take two. 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 going to spend 150K plus probably more these days and equity to like get cool sexy D to C 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 re 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 they're they seeing the right things they need to see in terms of the text and the hierarchal text and the colors are it's all these random little things like do 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 going to pick up why are they going to 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 ice teas and the places where you want to place your ice tea specifically? Have you like maybe put it on the shelf like I put mine at air wanting to be like oh my god it's going to crush here because these coffees versus mine and I got this is the perfect customer. This is why blah blah blah. So yeah think about it in terms of the set. Because you don't want to straight 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 like I'm here for you know. 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 the gluten free bread world played into no bread would 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 the bagel and infuse it with protein and stripped carbohydrates. So taking my interest 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 I want in on this to 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 and 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 a thesis I had and I wanted to find whoever the best was in each market so you know as a person to you if you find that beverage enthusiast that tea enthusiast that person you know that that person is going to be extremely more excited than anybody but that would be for me you know the company's I was most excited about they fit this like passion I had I guess my example probably is fly by Jane I am Jane 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 it's just so different than everything I'd seen like you know no big fundraising announcements it just kind of seemed like she hustled her way to create a community and like started with Kickstarter versus you know 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 time from 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 two first 2.5 million but she makes that 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 just been friends I've been hearing about how smart she was about different things like she wasn't doing whatever one 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 invest 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 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 I did and you know 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 and 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 and they're 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 Geffen 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. You know Melissa, first I just really wanna ask and appreciative I am of you and just having this opportunity to partner with all of our friends over at Bethnet. I mean, I feel like this is such an incredible opportunity to just for emerging brands like Ariete to kind of navigate the complex world of securing an angel investor or finding other ways to 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 a 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 Geffen, I'm already thinking about reaching out to the founder of Black White Chain just because of her ability to kind of strategically take a customer through the journey. And just that, just that little piece, I'm like, man, I got to learn more about them. But also for me, one of the wonderful things most 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 both hand in certain areas to really help me understand the magnitude of this space, specifically I see. So I am grateful for that. I'm excited for that. And I'm for sure going to be listening back to this and writing down my notes so that I could put out a list of tasks 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 Brayne Williams founder of RET, thank you so much for having the question in the first place and driving this conversation. Nicole Bruno and Geffen Skolnek, 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. If you've enjoyed this show, please give us a review and follow us on Apple podcasts or your listening platform of choice. To join community call live on zoom, go to bevnet.com/communitycall to see what's coming up in register for upcoming shows. And don't forget to join our bevnet, nosh, and brewbound Slack community at slack.bevnet.com.