890 Ana Rosenstein: Founder & CEO of Amante 1530

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0:45Kara Goldin:Stop piecing your software together. Go to odoo.com slash Karagolden. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash Kara Golden to learn more. I am unwilling to give up. That I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Golden Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time.

1:33Kara Goldin:Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Let's go. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to The Kira Golden Show. Today's guest is Anna Rosenstein, founder and CEO of Amanti 1530. A modern Italian aperitivo that's bringing a fresh perspective to one of Italy's most iconic categories. And made in Rome with renowned winemaker and bottled at the historic distillery, which we will chat a lot more about, was created to offer a more balanced alternative, less sweet than Aperol and less bitter than Campari and crafted with 25 % less sugar than Aperol. And just a few years, the brand has expanded into eight countries, earned best brand of 2025 at WSWA and is proving that even categories dominated by legacy players still have room for innovation.

2:36Kara Goldin:I cannot wait to hear more from Anna about how Amante 1530 is doing and growing and scaling, and it's so, so exciting. So welcome, Anna. So nice to meet you. So good to meet you as well. So for listeners just discovering Amante 1530, how do you describe the brand today and what makes it different from other aperitivos on the shelf? So I'll rewind a little bit. I always describe the concept as I wanted to create sort of the next great modern heritage brand. I wanted to create something that looked like it had sat on the back bar for generations alongside all of those sort of established liquor brands that you see when you walk into any great bar in the world.

3:20and I wanted something. I saw the explosion of the Aperol Spritz. I saw how Campari Group, which owns both Aperol and Campari, had done such an extraordinary job of really building up this category. And I thought that there was something, that there was room for something that was a little bit more sophisticated, right? The thing that you graduate to. So Aperol is an extraordinary brand and product, but I wanted something that was a little bit less sweet, a little bit less sugary, that, you know, someone who had graduated from Aperol might advance to. So I wanted a more elegant, sophisticated aperitivo that was made from all ingredients you could pronounce, would make a better spritz, but that the liquid was so good that you would want to drink it on the rocks.

4:0250 % of our consumers just drink a Montaneater on the rocks because the liquid's that good, which isn't the case for so many aperitivos in our category. But I wanted the liquid to truly stand on its own. So that's how I think about it.

4:14Kara Goldin:So you spent years on the investing side of things, and this is your first company that you founded? No. So I went straight into venture capital after college and did consumer investing, consumer tech investing at a firm called Betaworks that was building and investing in companies. I was on the investment side. Then I went to Harvard Business School. Then I left. I graduated from business school, I worked at RRE Ventures, and I built a company that RRE incubated in the wellness space, wound that down as the pandemic was starting, and then went back to RRE for a bit, and then started Amante two and a half years ago.

4:53Kara Goldin:This episode of The Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Skylight. I want to let you in on a little secret. It's called Skylight. We all have so much going on, and sometimes just keeping everyone on the same page feels like a job in in itself. That's why I love the idea behind Skylight. It brings your family's chores together by syncing with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and more. You can easily keep track of events, grocery lists, and chores. Color code each family member, and the task feature encourages kids to build healthy routines and independence. It really takes the guesswork and a lot of the daily reminders out of staying organized.

5:35Kara Goldin:And if you're not 100 % thrilled within four months, you can return it for a full refund. No questions asked. Families are better when they're working together. Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners$30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to myskylight.com slash Kara Golden. Go to myskylight.com slash Kara Golden for$30 off your 15-inch calendar. That's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T dot com slash Kara Golden. This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey, everyone, Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business, not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected.

6:37Kara Goldin:I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice-to-have, it's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time. That's why AT &T Business matters. AT &T Business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. How did you decide that this was the space that you really wanted to jump into?

7:29My dream since I was like 15 years old was to one day sell a company to Bernard Arnault. I have this obsession with the future of luxury, with LVMH, like it is, all I want to do is sell him a brand of mine. And so when this idea sort of came about, I literally was sitting in Italy and looked around and saw millions of spritzes on every table. And it was this light bulb moment of the world didn't look like this 10 years ago. And hang on a second. There's one player in this space that people know of, right? You have lots of other aperitivos, but most people don't know what they are. You think of a spritz, you think Aperol.

8:03And I thought that there was room for an additional brand, right? I'm not looking to wipe out the incumbent. I never will. It's an extraordinary legacy brand. But I had seen what happened in gin, in tequila, right? when I was in high school, there was nothing besides Jose Cuervo. And then Casamigos came in and it was like, hang on a second, there are other things that can be tequila. And I thought that it was so interesting that this category had never really had someone do that. And so that's how the idea came about. And then I realized like I could create a luxury brand that, you know, when I thought about the name, the liquid, the bottle, I could maybe create something that one day LVMH might want.

8:44Mm-hmm. Which is almost like a mortifying thing to admit, but that was my motivation.

8:49Kara Goldin:So what's something you thought you understood as an investor that turned out to be completely different as an operator? Oh, that's such a good question. No one's ever asked me that. So it's interesting. I was actually giving someone career advice yesterday and they're on the investing side and they're super young. And I said, you know, I think if you want to stay in investing long-term, you need to go operate for a bit. Because you need to understand what it's like on the other side of the table. And when I first started InVenture at 22 years old, I was one of those arrogant people who thought, I can be on the investing side my whole life and I don't need to operate.

9:25I know what I'm doing. I know how to identify a great company and a great founder. And I remember I got advice from an investor who was a mentor of mine. And he said exactly that to me. He was like, it's really arrogant that you think you can tell founders what to do and how to run their companies and who to hire and what to manufacture and when, when you've never done it yourself. How dare you? And that was the best advice anyone ever gave for me. And so as I look at, you know, all of the decisions I made when I was on the investment side, I didn't have an appreciation for how hard it was. I didn't have an appreciation for how hard it is to raise capital, what it is to manage a supply chain, to grow out a team, how to ship cargo around the world, how to open up new countries.

10:12You just don't have an appreciation for it unless you've done it. And so it's so interesting to me that there are all of these people who have invested their whole life and tell founders every day what to do when they don't have real world experience. And I never would have known that had I could not come to the other.

10:27Kara Goldin:This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey, everyone. Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business. Not the highlight reel. the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice-to-have, it's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time.

11:11Kara Goldin:That's why AT &T Business matters. AT &T Business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Skylight. I want to let you in on a little secret. It's called Skylight. We all have so much going on and sometimes just keeping everyone on the same page feels like a job in and itself. That's why I love the idea behind Skylight. It brings your family's chores together by syncing with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and more.

11:59Kara Goldin:You can easily keep track of events, grocery lists, and chores. Color code each family member, and the task feature encourages kids to build healthy routines and independence. It really takes the guesswork and a lot of the daily reminders out of staying organized. And if you're not 100 % thrilled within in four months, you can return it for a full refund. No questions asked. Families are better when they're working together. Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners$30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to myskylight.com slash Kara Golden. Go to myskylight.com slash Kara Golden for$30 off your 15-inch calendar.

12:47Kara Goldin:That's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T dot com slash Kara Golden. Now, it's so, so true. So most people think of the Spritz, you mentioned this a bit, but as kind of maybe a single brand category or a two brand category, why did you believe there was room and demand for a third option? I mean, it's one thing to think one day I'm going to sell my company off to one of the largest luxury companies, platforms in the world. But it's another to actually think that there's room for my idea. And was there data that showed this? Was there, was it gut? I mean, what was it that made you think, okay, I can go do this and it's going to be a success?

13:42So a little bit of both. It started off with gut. When I first sort of had this epiphany that, hang on a second, this category has exploded, I started thinking about why do I not like a spritz? I've never liked it. I had tried an Aperol spritz. It was never something that I wanted to order in a bar. And I started to think about why. I've never been someone who loves super sweet things. When I was a kid, I used to eat lemons with salt on them. And so a spritz was never something that I gravitated to. And as I started talking just sort of anecdotally to people that I knew, it turned out a lot of people felt like the existing products on the market were too sweet for them.

14:24And I thought, hang on a second, if I feel that way, and I found a lot of other people who feel that way, maybe there's room for something that is a little bit more refined and a little less sugary. And then I worked with, before, you know, we sort of hit go, I hired this woman who does consumer research in alcohol, but she was extraordinary. And she put together this massive document for us that basically confirmed everything I just said, which is, you know, there are tons of people who love a sugary spritz, right? The American flavor profile is what it is. But there's also a lot of people who only drink it because it's sort of aesthetically pleasing because everybody else orders them and they would actually love something that is a little bit more pared back and is maybe a little bit more bitter than Aperol, maybe a little bit less bitter than Campari, sort of sits in between and feels a bit more sophisticated.

15:16And so it was when the research matched my hunch that I felt like it was a good

15:23Kara Goldin:This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey everyone, Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business. Not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice to have. It's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time.

16:07Kara Goldin:That's why AT &T business matters. AT &T business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. This episode of The Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Skylight. I want to let you in on a little secret. It's called Skylight. We all have so much going on and sometimes just keeping everyone on the same page feels like a job in and itself. That's why I love the idea behind Skylight. It brings your family's chores together by syncing with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and more.

16:55Kara Goldin:You can easily keep track of events, grocery lists, and chores. Color code each family member, and the task feature encourages kids to build healthy routines and independence. It really takes the guesswork and a lot of the daily reminders out of staying organized. And if you're not 100 % thrilled within four months, you can return it for a full refund. No questions asked. Families are better when they're working together. Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners$30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to myskylight.com slash Kara Golden. Go to myskylight.com slash Kara Golden for$30 off your 15-inch calendar.

17:43Kara Goldin:That's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T dot com slash Kara Golden. Pursue it. So you chose to make Amanti entirely in Rome, working with renowned winemakers and historic distillery. Why was that authentically so important instead of simply creating an Italian-inspired product? Like, why do you think that Italy as a country has just really kind of seals the deal, I guess, for Amante? I felt like for me to create an aperitivo that I was going to make in upstate New York would be sort of blasphemous to the category, right? You can't make a tequila outside of Mexico. You can't make bourbon outside of Kentucky.

18:32an aperitivo should be made in Italy. It's an Italian product. It needs to be made there. And I wanted it to be made in a place that understood how to make these things really well. I wanted to work with the best. I wanted to work with experts. And so it was not just the liquid and the ingredients that I wanted sourced in Italy. It's every component of the bottle. We don't even use Chinese glass. Every component, cap, glass bottle, paper label, everything is made in Rome, which was so important to me. It also ended up being more economically efficient. But I wanted to stay true to the category and to what I wanted the brand to be.

19:07And I wanted it to be rooted in sort of Italian heritage. And I also wanted the Italians to adopt it as their own. I didn't want to be an American who came in and thought she could do this better. I wanted to work with Italians who could help me make the best product in the world.

19:21Kara Goldin:Great products don't always become great brands. And I know you're very focused on creating an incredible brand in the category. What have you learned about building desire and not just awareness for a premium product that maybe is different than what you invested in before? Like, what does it take to really grow a brand in a premium category? So I think premium categories, particularly in alcohol are a bit different than sort of your typical D to C because you want to use a different type of marketing engine. In our category, the most important people, the people I need to convert are bartenders, right?

20:09Because when you walk into a bar or you're in a restaurant and you order a spritz, if it's an account that we've already convinced, hey, we want to be the house spritz. We want to be every spritz that you make is going to be a monte instead. But what if it's not? I want to be the bartender's favorite. So when you order a spritz or you order a Negroni, they say, can we make you something that we think you'll like better? Try it with a monte instead. And so the bartenders are really the tastemakers, the influencers. And so rather than doing subway ads, rather than doing billboards, rather than, you know, doing a typical influencer campaign, I needed to get every world-renowned bartender on board.

20:49So our entire sales force, because we have our own sales force in addition to our distributors, they are all ex-bartenders. And that's super important to me because they're going to be the people who ultimately influence the consumer. I think then you have sort of the typical things that apply to any consumer brand, having the best bottle. But again, the bottle needs to be beloved by bartenders. So when I was building the brand, I spent about six months interviewing bartenders around the world. And talking to them about the bottles they loved, the products they loved, and why. And what I learned is the one thing bartenders hate more than anything is a short squat bottle.

21:31Because when you try to pick up a bottle of Patron, it's clunky, it slips out of your hand. And if you're a bartender at happy hour, that drives you crazy. So you're not going to push the product because you don't want to work with it. They really hate anything with a cork because that's annoying. You want a screw top. You want something that can fit one of those speed pourers. You want something with a long neck because you can grab the neck really easily. You want the circumference of the bottle to be the size of the average hand, which is what we did, so that you can wrap your hand around it really easily.

22:02The ridging looks beautiful to a consumer on the back bar, but it also gives it grip for the bartender. So when I hand a bartender a bottle, and I usually know when like a bartender notices that I did all of these things, and then I point it out to them and they're like, no one considers us. And that's crazy to me because they're the influencers. They're who matter.

22:22Kara Goldin:Yeah. This episode of The Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Skylight. I want to let you in on a little secret. It's called Skylight. We all have so much going on, and sometimes just keeping everyone on the same page feels like a job in and itself. That's why I love the idea behind Skylight. It brings your family's chores together by syncing with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and more. You can easily keep track of events, grocery lists, and chores. Color code each family member and the task feature encourages kids to build healthy routines and independence. It really takes the guesswork and a lot of the daily reminders out of staying organized.

23:04Kara Goldin:And if you're not 100 % thrilled within four months, you can return it for a full refund. No questions asked. Families are better when they're working together. Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners$30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to myskylight.com slash Kara Golden. Go to myskylight.com slash Kara Golden for$30 off your 15-inch calendar. That's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T dot com slash Kara Golden. in. This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey everyone, Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business, not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected.

24:06Kara Goldin:I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice to have. It's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time. That's why AT &T business matters. AT &T business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. So, so interesting. So I love what you've done with your packaging and the bottle.

24:57Kara Goldin:And I love, thanks so much for that explanation, because I think that it's so, so true. I mean, that's what's going to ultimately define some of the success, not only that, but also making what's inside the bottle, obviously, as terrific as you have. You decided to not just remain in, or I should say, start and grow in the U.S., but now you're outside of the U.S. in multiple countries. I think you said eight countries now. I believe that's what you said. But talk to me about that decision on sort of moving fairly quickly into multiple countries around the world. So that was a crazy decision. I always tell people that if one of my founders back when I was in venture told me they had gone into eight countries in two and a half years, I would have fired them.

25:50So the decision was sort of an accident. I liken our decision to entering. I think I talked about this with someone the other day. I liken it to dating or to being courted. Here are the numbers we can we think we can achieve. Here's the pricing structure. Are you interested? So we only enter a new country if someone comes to us because there's already demand in that market. So it's like I need a distributor to court me and to come to me. Otherwise, I'm not entering that country because I don't want to. It'll cost me too much. Right. I the marketing, it would require what you have to spend to get a distributor to take you on.

26:26But if they want us, that's awesome. So that's how we've made that decision, because it ends up not being so capital intensive. And some of our biggest markets like Australia is a massive market for us. a distributor contacted us. I think it was within our first six months of launching. And a distributor contacted us and said, hey, I was in Rome. I tried the product. I fell in love with it. We think we can really crush it in this market. And we're now in every BWS and Dan Murphy in Australia, which is the equivalent of like being in every gas station in America. That's how wide reaching they are.