How Sommer Ray Is Disrupting the RTD Space With Tempted | Yoni Bierig, Co-Founder

16:40Yoni Bierig:You know, it sounds cool in theory as a seven year old to drive a car, right? Because I loved Lamborghinis when I was seven. But let's be honest, if I drove a Lamborghini at seven years old, I'm probably crashing. So you don't want that high speed. You don't want any of that. So I think as a brand, we need to be grounded. And so it is very frustrating to know that we can do some national things. But I think, you know, the more we learn, the more we realize that's the right thing to do. And there are markets where we'll open that have no connection to summer. We just recently opened Nebraska as a market and it's terrifically successful early on.

17:12Yoni Bierig:And we're seeing a lot of success there and we're seeing a lot of opportunity within these markets that a lot of brands don't pay attention to. And so there's different aspects to it. But I think, you know, it's super exciting to be able to understand that this is really what builds me as a person, like teaches you patience, it teaches you a lot of different things in life. So it's very applicable to everything.

17:30Sommer Ray:And you yourself also quite post a lot of content about the good, bad and ugly of building this company, which I think is very enjoyable. You mainly post it on LinkedIn. So for anyone listening to this, I can definitely recommend connecting with Joni. I'll put his link in the description. Could you kind of talk to me about the thought process behind that? Why have you been able to do that? Or why do you want to do that? And how has that also been able to help you as a company?

17:53Yoni Bierig:Yeah, I mean, that's something that's super important for me, I think, as an entrepreneur and being on LinkedIn, and I think I want to start getting on X as well. But just being on LinkedIn and whatnot, I always used to see how amazing every single company on there is doing, how great everything's going. It's almost like social media in general, but more specifically for business. And I'm thinking to myself as a founder, like, man, like, what am I doing wrong? Like, everyone's making these million dollar deals and this and that. And I'm having a hard day. Like my day was tough. I didn't get this today.

18:24Yoni Bierig:And I told myself like, you know, I think there's people out there that are like me. And I think, let me just take a shot in the dark and post some of the struggles along with the successes to show people that it's okay to struggle, to show people that it's okay to have these days where you don't know what you're doing, that to have these days where it's a complete disaster. And then to show them that because of that, you learn. And then the next day, something actually good happens out of it. And so I told myself, I think one thing that people lack is transparency in everything. And so the more transparency you have, I think the more authentic supporters you can gain rather than people who are just supporting you because you're succeeding.

18:59Yoni Bierig:It's people who are supporting you because you're real. And so to me, it's like I was going to post this regardless whether I got one like zero likes or 100 million likes, I was going to post what I went through that day. And I told myself I was going to post every single day except for the weekends because no one's working on the weekends. I am, but they aren't. So I don't want to do that. And it's almost how I post every single day. And for the main point of a it's for myself. I mean, I like to post it. I think it's important. It's almost like a journal for me. So when I look back and we get to a certain point, I'm gonna look back at those days.

19:27Yoni Bierig:And I'm gonna be like, wow, this is cool. It's a public journal for me. It's something that even if it affects one person as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as anybody, they see that content. And they're like, wow, that's inspiring or it helped them get through a hard day. Like to me, that's kind of, that's the goal. And if it hits and even affects one person, I think I did my job. And so it's really important to me. And it has, it has, you know, you asked what, what have the benefits been or what, you know, has been, you know, because of this. And I've gotten many messages from people saying that it's helped them through certain things and that it's motivating to them.

19:59Yoni Bierig:And they're a part of this story now. And now they're also some of my super customers where they'll buy a product, They'll review for me. They'll tell me things. They'll be honest. And that's something I did because I was authentic, not because I was telling everybody, hey, look, I succeeded in this today. Hey, look, I did this today. Hey, did this? People need to understand that in business, the failures are even more important than your successes. Until you're a hundred million dollar company, those failures are what's going to get you there. Like you can't think that everything's going to go smoothly unless you're the luckiest person in the world.

20:30Yoni Bierig:You're going to have days where the whole company is in shambles. there's everything's at risk and you're going to have to understand how to navigate that and I think it's important on social media that people actually apply that to what they share because there is going to be an entrepreneur who's or a could be a would be or could be or should be entrepreneur that's going to see that content and think that he's failing because he doesn't see that success all the time that people are posting and it's important for that person to be able to see that that's not true so to me it's been a really key part of what we're building it's the same identity that we have as a brand is we're doing this with you guys we're doing it with everybody we're building it in public and the transparency is there and hopefully as a result people will trust us people will be loyal to us and you know we'll see where that is to take us

21:16Sommer Ray:but that's kind of how we feel about it before we continue i wanted to share something quickly at hotstart pc we exclusively invest in brands founded by celebrities and creators think selena gomez jake paul katie perry if you are an accredited investor and want to co-invest alongside side us we just launched hot start angels allowing you to invest in the same companies we back starting at just 5k per deal interested sign up at hotstart.vc slash angels or via the link in the descriptions accredited investors only and now back to the episode yeah no i particularly love it because so many times when i talk about like a celebrity brand being successful my whole comment section is about like yeah of course it's successful because the celebrity has 20 million followers what did you expect and i would be like that's not like the case for every skims fenty and feastables there's hundreds of failures so i really actually enjoy that you yeah just give a transparent view of what it is like building a company and you still have the same problem as any other brand and you're just open about it and it also helps you potentially subconsciously pitch like investors retailers partners future employees um so yeah i think you're doing an amazing job this is obviously not the first brand founded by a celebrity or creator.

22:27Sommer Ray:So many brands are now nowadays being launched by celebrities and creators. Are there any that you kind of take inspiration from?

22:33Yoni Bierig:Yeah, I mean, well, just to rewind for a minute, like, it really doesn't matter how big the celebrity, look at Messi's last brand. I mean, it does not matter how big the celebrity is, you need to build a business that's sustainable, scalable, and that the margins make sense. Like those things are important. And I think a lot of people see Messi behind a product and automatically assume that's a billion dollar business. But unfortunately, his 300 or 600 million followers did not equal success for that company. And so that's just to that point. But there are some brands, like you mentioned, that are very inspiring.

23:03Yoni Bierig:And I can probably list a handful. I'll start with a competitor of ours, Long Drink. I think that's Miles Teller. I met him actually a couple, like two years back. And that's an inspiring product because it's very good. And just the way that they've built their business on simplicity and differentiation is really important. and then obviously product placement and then you know a few other products that are celebrity based that are inspiring to me i would say definitely skims i think was something that i mean i think that was built to be bigger than a celebrity which is really the key you want that to happen you want your business to be built beyond your celebrity and so and any celebrity that is too selfish to think that you shouldn't be working with they should want their business to be bigger than them and to be able to sustain on autopilot without them.

23:49Yoni Bierig:And I think that's what Skims did. And there's other brands that are very similar to that. And so it is very volatile. It's not an automatic success to work with celebrities. It's absolutely not. And I think actually, probably at this point, it's probably even harder because it's very easy to get caught up in that whole celebrity sort of world to think that you're succeeding, even as a founder, to think you're succeeding because you have a celebrity. So I think it's even harder these days to do that. But for the ones, the few ones that do it correctly and know how to actually work with their celebrity, it's a recipe for success.

24:20Yoni Bierig:But like I said, it's not the easiest recipe to, it's basically like so easy to mess up. It's so easy to succeed. It's, that's why it's volatile. But there are really cool brands doing really cool things. Happy Dad's killing it. A lot of these different brands are killing it. There's so many of them. It's at this point, it's almost impossible to pinpoint. And you're in it. I know. So I'm sure you see like so many new ones every single day. And it's almost like not again, you know, but at the same time, like some of these really work. So it's really interesting. I never thought I'd be doing it, but it's really interesting.

24:50Yoni Bierig:It's really volatile, which makes it fun because, you know, on your end, on the investment side, it's almost like, you know, you have to really be able to understand which one's the one. Because when you do have the one, the multipliers are there.

25:03Sommer Ray:Yeah. And that's why I always say that kind of I'm a student of the market. I've been really studying all these types of companies. And to your point, I think that there is a lot of skepticism about celebrity-founded brands right now. And that's why the bar for new ones is actually higher. Because so many people have tried the celebrity brand. They're so disappointed by it. And they're like, whenever they see a next one, they're like, oh, sure, that's going to be a terrible product as well. So I think that you're spot on. You mentioned the Finnish long drink from Miles Teller and then also Skins by Kim Kardashian.

25:32Sommer Ray:I think those two kind of also showcase a different type of strategy where a lot of people had no idea that Malz Teller was involved in the Finnish long drink versus with Skims. Kim Kardashian is often front and center in the marketing. How do you kind of decide when and how summer should appear in the marketing and storytelling versus letting the brand and product speak for themselves?

25:53Yoni Bierig:I'm a massive proponent of letting the product speak for itself regardless. list. I think the celebrity should be the fuel to the fire, but not the actual fire. I think the brand needs to be there. People need to like, we really in the first days of our, you know, inception, we didn't even really post summer on our page. We kind of built the brand around the product around the what it is, the differentiation of it. And then slowly, we started to introduce her to propel it. I want the product to be the ship. And I want my celebrity, my partner to be the fuel. I don't necessarily think that your celebrity is the ship.

26:29Yoni Bierig:I think that's, there's so many aspects to it and I'm sure you know about it, but let's, let's kind of rewind. Let's say you do have the product and your product is directly tied to your celebrity and it's everything. Now let's think about real things that are applicable. Well, what happens if there's something that like, let's say your celebrity gets arrested or let's say there's an accusation or this, what happens to your business? So you need to be able to protect your business. You need to be able to protect your brand. And that's something that the celebrity needs to be cognizant and compliant with.

26:58Yoni Bierig:Like you can't have a celebrity that has too much ego where it's like, no, my face needs to be on everything. That puts your product at complete risk. And so you need to be able to build a product that's bigger than anybody. It has to be like that. And so, you know, to us, it's really important that we build a product that people would want regardless of whether we had a celebrity. And I think we did that. And so that's kind of what's really important is that there are times where people want our product and then I tell them who's like that Summer is my co-founder and that she's a big part of this and and they're like what and then it makes it even better so it's like you want that you want people to want the product prior to then be excited because people that they're that they like are behind it I mean you know Summer's amazing about just being humble so it really helps us like she's amazing at just knowing that the bigger picture is what's important we're all in this together and she's I mean I couldn't have asked for a better partner to work with she's been amazing and so it's like you know dream come true for me as a child and as an adult

27:50Sommer Ray:yeah and what has also been your experience like raising capital for the company because you have been talking to a lot of investors like what is their perspective on the whole celebrity component like do they tend to see it as a risk a moat both yeah so i think you know you mentioned it that a

28:05Yoni Bierig:lot of times people see a celebrity company and they're like oh again you know like and they have that like bad taste in their mouth you know maybe a firm invested in another product that didn't succeed. And so I always feel like I have this uphill battle that I need to like, kind of just like beat prior to even telling them about my business. So you know, speaking to investors, it's not always easy with celebrities or without celebrities. It's not always easy. I've been doing this for eight to 10 years now. It's not easy. But it is something that you know, I learned from every single conversation, we have talked to many investors.

28:33Yoni Bierig:And I think the biggest thing is, I think the more time that passes, the more the numbers can start to talk for themselves. And so people will always, you know, judge you on your claims and your projections. But once the numbers are starting to produce themselves, I think that claim becomes more strong. And so I think that's kind of our thesis is like, let's survive right now and do all the numbers that we're doing and continue to do them until somebody sees the numbers. And they're like, I want in on these numbers without even knowing what the product is. You know, that to me is important. We want to be really analytical with it.

29:05Yoni Bierig:Do I think that, you know, do I think it needs to be that way? No, I think the way investment and VCs work these days are a bit twisted. And here I can get pretty controversial here, but my goal is to exit this company for a large sum of money and then start to become a VC in the way I think VCs should be. And I think a lot of the times VCs are stuck on their 100X and they're stuck on certain values that don't necessarily make sense and that they miss a lot of deals. But on the flip side, it hurts a lot of potential current and future entrepreneurs because they're a lot of the times turned down or turned away from deals that because they don't have a million dollars in revenue or 10 million dollars in revenue.

29:43Yoni Bierig:And I'm like, listen, like as a VC, you're taught to kind of evaluate not just the numbers, but you're also taught to evaluate the founder, the marketing, the product itself. And I think a lot of the times that goes kind of missing. And I think people are like, oh, well, you don't have a million dollars in revenue. I don't care. And I'm like, well, then I don't know why you're a VC. I think at that point, you should just be private equity. And so it's like, I think the VC space has turned into private equity almost. And now it's like, what entrepreneurs do now. And so it's really important, I think, to find investors that really believe in you.

30:13Yoni Bierig:It's the type of thing that motivates me, like, you know, anybody who invests in my product, I feel almost a sense of like obligation. Well, not almost, I feel obligation to make sure that I kill it for them. Because these are people that are putting their own dollar, their money in believing in me and us and in the product. And I know how hard it is to raise capital these days. I'm speaking from firsthand experience. And so to me, it's like the investors that do come on board right now are the investors that are going to make a lot of money at the end of it. You know, that's how I feel. And it's like the problem with like, you know, for somebody who's listening to this and trying to raise capital, my advice to them would be just keep pushing, like, don't let a no, a 10 no's, 100 no's, or every no bring you down.

30:52Yoni Bierig:It doesn't necessarily mean that you can't do it. Now, listen, if the people are all saying know for the same reason, you should probably evaluate that reason. Yeah. And you should always sharpen your skill set. You should always learn from every single conversation. You should always take into account what they're saying and you should always, you know, prepare yourself for every conversation, know your numbers, know your product by heart. But at the same time, don't let that discourage you because a lot of times these investors haven't built their own brand and they don't know what it's like.

31:18Yoni Bierig:And they are, they come from private equity. They come from banking. They come from finance where all they know is to read numbers, but not necessarily to read the other things that are definitely, definitely tied to building a business. So I think the biggest thing, you know, I definitely rambled there because it's something that I always wanted to say. But I definitely think there's a lot of flaws within, you know, the current investment ecosystem. And I'm really hoping that I can be one of the people that either changes it or sees the change in my time. And so super important to me, super passionate about it.

31:48Yoni Bierig:And I will say the last thing to anyone listening as an entrepreneur, like if someone's not willing to invest in your product, find a way. Like whether it is selling your car, selling, because I've done all of these things, every single thing I'm about to say, selling your car, driving for Uber, driving for DoorDash, making every dollar that will keep the lights on. And big thing that I put on my LinkedIn that most people probably don't even see or skip over, but I write this thing, survive until you thrive. I don't know if that's something that anyone else has said, but it's something that I say every single day.

32:18Yoni Bierig:You have to do anything you can to survive because the longer you survive, the less competition there'll be, the more you'll learn and the better chance you'll have to actually thrive. And so that's kind of my response to that.

32:29Sommer Ray:Yeah, I love it. I love the passion for it. I'm curious, like what is next for Tempted and what is something that you're most excited about?

32:35Yoni Bierig:Yeah, we're working on a few different SKUs. We're working on really cool partnerships, building out the distribution right now. We want it to be everywhere. A lot of cool campaigns that we're working on. There's so many things coming up for Tempted. I think, you know, me being the ADHD excited young puppy. I want everything to happen right away, but it's all coming in time, one thing after the other. And it's good because it makes our investors happy to see things every week, you know, new things. And so a lot of things are coming. I think the biggest thing and the most glaring thing is you'll start to see the product everywhere you go if you're in the areas that we're in.

33:07Yoni Bierig:So I think just that distribution being picked up. We have a lot of conversations with big distributors, big partners that are definitely going to help, you know, move the needle for us. So that's kind of what's coming. I'm super excited. Like we have something that I think will change the way the industry works, whether it's wine, whether it's the label, whether it's a product that actually tastes good, and whether it's the higher ABV aspect, or whether it's the can that looks unique and has picturesque sort of components to where people want to take pictures of it. So we're excited. I think we're building something that that's going to be big.

33:38Sommer Ray:Yeah. Last question on my end. What were your number one advice for operators, founders or people that are thinking about launching a brand together with a celebrity as a co-founder?

33:47Yoni Bierig:Yeah, to tie in the celebrity aspect, I think the biggest thing is focus. That's that would be my word. If it were just advice in general, that wouldn't be it. But with in regards to having a celebrity partner, focus, you want to be able to focus on what's important. Don't lose sight of the goal by getting too excited by social media or by fame or by any of those big numbers that you'll see. Focus on the goal, focus on the product, focus on the the marketing, focus on the distribution, focus on your cogs, make sure you're not paying too much, focus on your margins, focus on your team. And when you do that, and you have a celebrity, it's only going to make it better.

34:22Yoni Bierig:But if you're focusing on your celebrity, and you're forgetting about all those things that I mentioned prior, you're in trouble. And I think you know that really well. So it's like focus, just focus, keep your head down, don't get too excited, lock in on the product, lock in on your team, build a good team around you, make sure that your celebrity is focused as well. If you have that word, and the product is good, because I'm assuming the product is going to be good. If it's not good, it's not good. I don't have to tell you. But if it's good, and your marketing is good, and you do everything in a focused manner, and you're patient, you have a good chance.

34:52Yoni Bierig:But if you don't, just like I said, it's a kid driving a Lamborghini, you might look nice driving it. But the second you get going, and you're in high speed, and you don't have long enough feet to stop it, it's gonna be a high speed crash. No one wants that. So that's kind of my advice. Focus is key. Ioni, thank you so much for coming on. For sure. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

35:10Sommer Ray:Thank you for listening to the Hot Start VC podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe and leave a rating or review. It really helps us grow. You can also subscribe to our newsletter at hotstart.vc for more breakdowns on how celebrities and creators build billion dollar brands. Thanks again for tuning in and we will see you in the next episode.