Founder Feature: Kun Yang of Pricklee

0:02Are you going to crush it on Amazon this year? It's such an important channel, but it's so hard to do alone and most agencies are a total ripoff. We can't afford$5 ,000 a month and a commission on our sales. They just don't get it. That's why I love our partners at Daybreak. They are full service, meaning they do the creative work, the listings, the logistics, and of course, all the ads, all with the most reasonable retainer out there. I work with them personally. I'm so grateful we have such a good partner to recommend out to you, our community. They do evaluate your product first to see if it might be a fit.

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0:52We were just so blown away by just how much of a negative health impact these artificial sweeteners had, which were rampant, right? Because zero sugar was everywhere. That and all the stuff that was coming out about dyes. And we were just like, oh, my goodness, like this data is pretty compelling. like we need to take our backgrounds and come in and do something about it right especially because we were starting to think about our own families and so i guess this was pretty on brand for us we just took that scientific method into our strategy and we just wanted to test and learn our way into ultimately achieving product market fit before we really raised institutional capital and hit that acceleration button so we just were really really fixated on this like idea of making sure that we were offering a product and delivering a core product that really met the consumer zeitgeist that solved a real problem for families and that customers were just loving and organically coming back to again and again and again and taking that scientific approach to it so that once we nailed it, we knew that we could then start to really hit the gas.

1:50Hey everybody, this is Caitlin Bricker, Managing Editor at Startup CPG. We are back with another founder feature. Today I'm chatting with Quan Yang, co-founder of Prickly, a natural hydration drink powered by prickly pear with no artificial dyes, no artificial sugars, and no plastic. Quan and I are cracking open the brand new prickly 2.0 cans live on the podcast, and we're talking about the journey from launching in Boston in 2021, hey Massachusetts, to achieving product market fit, why natural hydration is having its moment right now, and why being a family-focused brand is working in their favor in more ways than one.

2:28Oh, and there might be a few new flavor announcements happening in here too. As always, enjoy. And in the meantime, I'll be sipping on the rest of my Prickly.

2:42Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin, and today I'm here with Quan Yang, founder of Prickly. Quan, welcome to the show. Glad to be here, Caitlin. Really glad to have you because we have some exciting news coming from Prickly. So A, we want to introduce your news to our audience. And B, we want to get anybody who's not familiar with Prickly familiar ASAP. So can you tell us very succinctly what is Prickly? Yeah, no, super excited. Yeah, so Prickly, it's a natural hydration drink. It's packed with antioxidants, electrolytes, and vitamin C. It's filled with sugar and powered by some very delicious fruits called Prickly Pears.

3:21And it's meant to challenge the status quo, replace legacy artificial hydration drinks that are you know loaded with artificial sugars artificial dyes and packaged in plastic music to my ears all right should we do a big reveal because i'm thirsty absolutely that's what we're here for i have in front of me new prickly cans we've got the og prickly pear we have the tropical mango and ginger and we also have wild strawberry and hibiscus. I'm going to crack an OG, personally. You got to start with the OG. You know, whenever I'm in California, I always see prickly pear like on the side of the road, growing in people's yards.

4:03It's that looks just like this, growing on the cactus. I've never eaten one fresh. Is that even possible? It is possible. You know, they actually grow like a billion pounds of that fruit a year, which is insane. It's like a super undercommercialized fruit. The supply chain is amazing, but it's a delicious fruit. And it's kind of challenging sometimes to eat. And that's why you have a drink, right? We do all the hard stuff for you. Just get to enjoy. So tell us, it's delicious, by the way. Thank you. Besides your gorgeous new packaging, what else is going on in the prickly world that you want to share with us?

4:36This is an incredible inflection point. And we're actually really excited to be able to reveal this with Startup CPG because, you know, you and I were chatting about this right before the call to So, Startup CPG has been such an incredible partner in our journey from the very, very beginning of when we started Prickly to this really moment where we've kind of achieved product market fit. So, yeah, 2.0 is really a culmination of all of our learnings for the last four and a half years to reach this moment where we're able to really kind of maximize the potential of what Prickly is and what it can be and ultimately achieve our mission, right, and maximize our mission, which is simple.

5:10We want to help families build healthier hydration habits naturally. And we feel like with all the work learning and product formulation, positioning improvement that we've done, we're able to just scale it in a way that can reach as much of as many households as possible and really realize as much of our mission as possible as well. And correct me if I'm wrong, Prickley's been in business for four years now. We launched 2021 and we launched up in Boston, you know, and it's been quite, quite a journey. A lot of incredible learnings. I think the first week we launched, we got an email from Shark Tank to apply and stuff.

5:41So we thought we were on the right track right off the bat. But yeah, I mean, it was just one of many things and just a ton of growth, a ton of learnings and a ton of just trial and error in that process and to get to this point, which really feels like the beginning of this foundation that we've kind of built that we're really excited about and has already started to perform really well for us. So we're excited about what the future holds. And I think it says a lot knowing that you launched in 2021. I mean, it feels like the pandemic was so long ago, yet in some ways it kind of feels like it's still here.

6:13I mean, was it ever announced that it was over? But your brand is still here. So cheers to that. Absolutely. Better than ever, too. I know. Pardon my go. I know that you were part of our section at Expo West in 2025 and we're running it back, doing it again in 2026. What did you achieve in 2025 at Intersection at Expo West? And what are you looking forward to in 2026? Yeah, so last year at the Startup CPG Expo West section, I mean, it was incredible. I mean, it was such a great culmination of brands. And again, this year as well, Startup CPG has done a great job of pulling just the right audience of folks that knows what it takes to build emerging brands and knows how to support and champion them from buyers to investors to partners, retailers, everybody.

6:59Right. And so we have the same spot. We're in the corner booth in this year's section as well. And we just had such a great experience last year, kind of building the initial sort of intro to Prickly to the trade world, if you will, at Expo West for the first time. We learned a lot from that experience and built some incredible relationships, not just from an investment standpoint and from a retail standpoint, but we've brought on team members from that first Expo West that are now influential to how we've kind of grown the last 10 months and how we've built to this sort of Prickly 2.0 moment, if you will.

7:29and so it feels like a full circle moment because it's like this is now the culmination of all the the seeds that were planted in that first Expo West event and now we get to debut 2.0 officially right to the world and show what we've been kind of silently working on for the last 10-12 months we're just really excited to be able to do that and also debut a couple special things that people haven't even really heard about yet so it's going to be an exciting oh cliffhanger I feel special being able to have these cans in front of me right now your brand was one of the first brands that i tasted when i was at expo west last year because it was my first expo west with startup cpg i remember the light blue which it seems like is in the past now maybe maybe we'll see yeah oh okay okay well i'm really excited to see where 2026 is going to take you with the new branding with the new formulations.

8:25I'm seeing you got some really great call outs on your can. Antioxidants and electrolytes. Electrolytes, I feel like are always so hot. People are always evolving with them, discovering new ways to ingress them. Totally. No caffeine. That's a big one. I feel like we see caffeine everywhere or energy boosters. Some of us, like myself, I don't drink caffeine. I don't want the caffeine. And it is hard to find RTDs that don't have caffeine and no bubbles. Yeah. So, you know, so much of that, again, you think about the learnings that we've kind of taken in over the last few years. I mean, we start our careers in health care.

9:05We're pharmacists. And so actually the most important lesson we learned in that process was just like the best medicines in life are actually the health habits that you develop from a pretty early age. And so you're talking about 2021 when we launched, but at that time we were starting to build our own families. And as we start to build our families, we kind of looked around and we're like, wow, all the drinks that are still dominating our grocery aisles are still the same, you know, legacy options that we grew up with. They're loaded with artificial sugars, artificial dyes, packaged in plastic.

9:32And we're trying to think, how do we build for the next generation, not just next generation, even ourselves? I mean, we had seen the impact of sort of growing up with like the options that we kind of were raised with and how that impacted even what we craved and what we're looking for sometimes when we're stressed or when we're thirsty. And so we wanted to just create a better option, right? We just believe that there totally could be a better option out there. And so that's kind of what led to a lot of it. And so you're calling out some of the things that I think in the last four years, as we started to really hone in on, you know, what families are looking for young families like ours, and also not just for the families, but for your loved ones, for your friends, for your parents, like, what would you give your own family and friends, right?

10:11And we wanted to create a product that really serviced that. And so the call outs, as you can see, are really intentional about speaking to that target market, if you will. And your ingredient list is so minimal, too, which I think consumers are really looking for these days. A, because sometimes there's stuff that we can't pronounce that might even be good for us. But B, it's just you're not losing my attention here. I just have to take a glance and I'm like, OK, get it. Got it. Good. Yeah, I think I think there's so many amazing products in the CPG world and it's hard to find a lane. Right. And when you do find a lane, I think just being true and authentic to that lane and for us solving our own problems was a good start, you know, and just kind of focusing on this is what we do.

10:52This is what we're focused on. We're focused on natural hydration. We're focused on replacing all the plastic bottled artificial hydration drinks. I mean, that's all we do and that's all we service. and we're really focused on that mission kind of gives us a lot of I guess confidence in what we're building it gives us a clear direction of where we're headed and also who we're speaking to and you know let's also celebrate all the other amazing products out there that are maybe champion other functional benefits and lanes that are separate from ours too. I do really love the fact that you're building this with your family in mind you know this listeners are probably going to know this too I'm also a mom my daughter's current rotation is just straight up water and milk jubilees to be exact but it is nice to have an option there for when she needs to throw something else in her rotation it's not a juice but it is it has that nice like refreshing flavor without all the added sugar in it i would feel comfortable giving this to my daughter if she wanted to toss something else in her rotation yeah actually it's funny team prickly we're all girl dads and so just so happens right but yeah i have a four and two year old and it's really powerful to create product in a brand that you see your own kids consuming.

12:03You know, toddlers can't lie, right? We know that as parents, right? And so just to see them kind of consuming it the way that they do and just kind of reflecting on, man, when I was that age, what was I drinking, right? And, you know, again, Prickly is not a kid's drink or exclusively a kid's drink, but we wanted to make it inclusive of just the way that families built because these were, we were these consumers, right? And we want to solve these problems for ourselves. And it just so happens that it's a product and a brand that just truly resonates with a very, very wide breadth of audiences, but ultimately solves a real problem, right?

12:33And helps us replace something that, you know, otherwise we would have given them elsewise, right? And so for us just seeing that firsthand and seeing it be a solution for our own families was probably the first and most validating metric for ourselves to know that, hey, look, like if this works for us, like, I'm sure there's others that this would be a really, really good addition or replacement in their rotation. So yeah, it's been a really cool journey to see that firsthand. The kids are definitely a huge validator, for sure. For sure. Like you said, they cannot lie, they are not going to be able to give us a poker face if they taste it and hate it.

13:09You are gonna know. Yeah, no, absolutely. My kids especially. And you've touched on this too, you do have a science background. So tell me more about your background and how that plays into the formulation at Prickly, because I think that makes you an outlier because a lot of people don't have that background. So Mo and I were actually both pharmacists. We both got our doctors of pharmacy and we met up in Boston to do our fellowships. And so we kind of were raised in this like scientific method, train of thought, which is like test, iterate and improve, test, iterate, improve and just keep learning from the data that was coming in without ego.

13:43Right. You can't just have ego when it comes to building brand. And as we've seen. But what really kind of connected us on this issue was back in 2019, we were actually living with this other room of ours that was studying in heart health. And we just saw like the impact of this huge study that came out, the Framingham Heart Study, which was like this massive data set that came out and looked at the impact of artificial sweeteners, health illness, and just how and compared it to like even regular sugar. And we were just so blown away by just how much of a negative health impact these artificial sweeteners had, which were rampant, right?

14:15Because zero sugar was everywhere. That and all the stuff So it's coming out about dyes. And we're just like, oh, my goodness, like this data is pretty compelling. Like we need to take our backgrounds and come in and kind of do something about it. Right. Especially because we were starting to think about our own families. And so this was pretty on brand for us. We just took that scientific method into our strategy and we just wanted to test and learn our way into ultimately achieving product market fit. Before we really raised institutional capital and hit that acceleration button as it pertains to distribution, scaling brand awareness.

14:44because we just knew that once you started to really spend against that funnel, if it was a leaky funnel, like it would just become more and more expensive and more challenging and really hard to kind of patch it up as you went. Right. So we just were really, really fixated on this, like idea of making sure that we were offering a product and delivering a core product that really met the consumer zeitgeist, you know, that solved a real problem for families. You know, Customers were just loving and organically coming back to again and again and again and taking that scientific approach to it so that once we nailed it, we knew that we could then start to really hit the gas and go because the foundation would be so solid.

15:23And that's exactly where we are right now. We're just really thankful to the amazing team and partners and investors and friends and family that support us to even get to this point because getting to this point was by no means easy. very, very challenges, as I'm sure every brand founder out there is experiencing. So to be able to get there is really validating for us. And we're just excited about being able to take that same mentality and continue moving forward as the landscape continues to change as well. We'll be right back. Friends, did you know that a party has been going on this whole time with 35 ,000 people and you're invited?

15:58It's our startup CPG Slack. You hear about it all the time on here. And if you haven't yet joined in, this is your moment. Take out your phone, type in startupcpg.com and then click to join our community. You'll be at the party. You'll hear about all our events. You'll get in front of buyers, investors, brands, whatever's most important to you. We have such big plans ahead, but you got to be in the community to hear about all of it. See you on the Slack.

16:30any specific challenges come to mind when you think back on your four-year journey so far yeah maybe every single challenge right we've lived it all we used to talk joke about how it felt like we were building you know it's like kind of sisyphus this the greek legend of pushing this boulder uphill over and over and over again exactly when it comes to just education right Starting out actually with a cactus water positioning for Prickly was great because it actually gave us this differentiation that we needed that retailers were looking for. It got us into key accounts like Sprouts, Whole Foods, and HEB.

17:01That's kind of where we just kept testing and testing, improving formulation, adjusting positioning, and ultimately just trying to realize the greatest potential for our brand as possible. Yeah, that journey kind of led us to the most important challenge, which was like the education, right? And that in and of itself kind of led us to Prickly Natural Hydration, this evolution of our brand, because not only is it our best formula yet, but just based on so much customer feedback and data, repositioning to lead with natural hydration as opposed to the Prickly Pear and Greening itself is something that has just enabled us to really realize our mission.

17:35just a greater scale than I think we could have ever imagined. But that in of itself, that core challenge of being able to just communicate the benefit of natural hydration without having to go through this dialogue of prickly pear was probably the single greatest challenge when we kind of look back and realize like that was the most important thing to solve before we started to really press go on everything else as well. That makes a lot of sense. And I am curious. I know we have other founders who are listening to the podcast, but we also have consumers, we have retailers, we have those buyers, we have distributors listening.

18:08Why would somebody want to grab a prickly versus a competitor product? For me, the first thing that pops to mind, for example, is coconut water. Everyone talks about coconut water when it comes to electrolytes and hydration. Why would I want to choose a prickly over a coconut water? I actually think coconut water did a fantastic job to establish the demand for natural hydration. You know, and I think even for us, we were so enamored with that case study, right? You know, coconut water is an industry that continues to grow year over year. But there's a couple limitations, right, that we saw. One was just the amount of investment that went into the category of marketing coconut water as opposed to the brands that really led this moment.

18:48And you still kind of hear today people talk about the category, not the brand itself. But for us, coconut water as a movement really validated the consumer demand that, hey, we want a natural format of hydration, right? And there was a huge growing population of consumers, the same people that are drinking the Better For You versions of soda and energy that we've seen boom in the last five to 10 years, right? And so hydration just seems to be the next obvious space in which it's better for you formula starts to take shape. And, you know, we just happen to be able to put our hands up and say like, hey, this isn't necessarily to say, hey, don't drink coconut water.

19:20It's like drink all these natural hydration products, including Prickly. You know, coconut water is a great product. We love coconut water. Prickly is also a great product. And ultimately what we're doing together as this like natural hydration category is we're replacing all these legacy artificial hydration products that are typically packaged in plastic bottles. I mean, just think about every hydration drink you could think of, right? They're all in plastic bottles. They all have these artificial, you know, dyes, they have artificial sugars. And you're thinking, if we can just move the general population just a few degrees to this, like, sure, like, it's just something that tastes just as good, right, without any of these artificial ingredients.

19:54And that, you know, young audiences, older audiences, everyone can consume on an everyday basis. I mean, we've really succeeded in just changing the way that these health habits are shaped. And so for us, when we think about it, I don't think it has to be an either or. I think coconut is a great product. It offers a lot of similar benefits as prickly, natural electrolytes, natural antioxidants. It's lower in sugar. Prickly is lower in sugar than even that. But if we see somebody drinking these products instead of these artificial formats that we all know and these that we all grew up with, we're happy campers.

20:25And we think that we're all playing a part in that broader mission of just helping families build a better set of hydration habits overall in a natural way that's really good insight and as i'm drinking this too i realize that coconut water is a very polarizing product i have heard some people say that it tastes like dish water to them or just it's like not it's not something that they would ever want to drink again this is so versatile like i mean it's probably like anti-hydration but you could put this in a cocktail if you wanted to mocktails for sure like it's not this does not have a polarizing flavor to me it's very subtle but in a very good way this is something like is crushable i'm on camera so i'm not gonna like have a prickly mukbang right now but no judgment no judgment but i really like how versatile it is and i like how you're saying it's not an either or scenario and i do like that you're really honing in on this hydration conversation because it is so important.

21:24For example, I read this book called Quenched. I don't remember the author's names at this point. Have you ever heard of this book? I haven't. I have to look into it. They were talking about how important hydration is for the brain specifically because it can help with degenerative diseases, Alzheimer's, dementia, etc. If you keep your brain moist and hydrated, also with bouncing back from traumatic brain injuries. They used football players as a great example. There were football players that they did studies on who were able to bounce back from their brain injuries easier and faster after having a hydrated brain versus people who did end up getting these TBs, TBIs, and could not bounce back as quickly because they weren't as hydrated.

22:11Yeah, I mean, you bring up brain health, but like, it's kind of crazy how much research has gone into that. Even the Framingham Heart Study that I'm referencing, I mean, they looked at 10 years of following 2000 patients and compared one group consuming artificial sweeteners every day, just one drink a day versus a full sugar drink, not water, like a full sugar drink. And they found after 10 years, this is a cross-functional study, but they found that the group that was consuming artificial sweeteners had a 3X increased risk of stroke and dementia. And I was like, wait a second, I'm drinking a diet, insert XYZ, every single day at work.

22:44And it was just one of those like, I'm drinking a sport drink zero, right? And it was just like one of those things where it was like, oh my gosh, like, how are we still here? You know? And I think American maximalism is always built on this idea of like, sugar was the enemy. So let's go all the way to zero. But like, let's take a step back and see what the impact of this really, really was. And moderation is still key. And so in our product, we have natural sugars, we have real fruit, we have agave, and it's half the sugar of, you know, said coconut water or a quarter of a Gatorade or a soda.

23:14But when you really kind of think about it from the perspective of like, us as parents, or just as a consumer, and you're like, okay, after your kid goes to soccer or dance class or like, you know, you see your friends come over for a party, right? Or your parents come over and you're like, here's an option A and it's like you got a prickly in hand and here's like what you would have had, right? In that moment, you're kind of like, there's a little bit of a common sense element of it. It's like, we don't have to, you know, cure cancer to make a really big difference from a health among the standpoint.

23:43I think just making that a couple degrees of separation where we can really move the needle forward and just help people get off of these like legacy things that we've just been addicted to since we were kids is a huge shift. Because now I think about scaling that 20 years down the line when my daughters are older, like they're not going to be craving the things that I kind of still crave, right? And I have to work at to kind of omit in my diet. So a lot of those things, to your point, become front and center in how we think about just like the changing landscape as well. And to your point, all like the different data that are coming out about the impact of these ingredients like dyes and artificial sweeteners are health right and it is good to see you going back to the basics in a lot of senses because it's a can it's not plastic and the ingredients again are so simple like you had mentioned to me previously the beverages that we would have drank in our childhood i'm thinking of the 90s you mentioned this neon colors is what comes to mind i just get like shocked when i see things on the shelf like jones soda before i was drinking that like the sour apple or i don't even know like blue raspberry it is literally electric looking the fact that i was drinking that and didn't short circuit is amazing to me i think at some point though in america we kind of lost the plot there right because it wasn't like drinks started out that way and actually even when you go to like other countries like these these drinks don't look like that right and they don't taste like that so you're kind of like at some point we lost the plot and I don't know when it happened but it came so obvious that I'll give you a crazy story I mean we were just starting to launch prickly and we were looking for a co-packer and we went to Arizona because you know land of the prickly pear why not like it just seemed like a great place to to look and we called up a co-packer and they're like wow yeah we love prickly pears like i mean they're everywhere we'd love to make your product like what's in it we're like well you know we use real fruit and and before we even said another word they're like wait did you say real fruit and they're like yeah we only make artificial drinks here and i was like i just can't believe a human being said that right in the conversation but then i thought more about it and i was like this has so been so normalized that you know for the last 10 20 whatever years that's all they made there wasn't really a counterpoint to like hey there's actually a better option here and it's you know maybe not a bunch of artificial chemicals right and it's prickly surprise and amongst other things right and so it was like to me it was just like a pretty cool wake-up call in that moment i'm like okay wow there's like a really really interesting moment and i think actually the last four or five years shaped this moment that we're having because you know soda was first soda was always the biggest category there's a reason why coke and Pepsi, own the Gatorades and Powerades and body arms of the world, right?