Investor Spotlight: Hayden Williams, BrandProject

0:02All right, my friends. Over the next few months, we get to feature some of the amazing brands backed by Redwood Capital Partners. They are one of the leading funds in the space. You need to know about them, and you're going to hear about one of the brands in their consumer fund. So here we go. If you believe great food starts with great ingredients or you're just a hummus fan, you need to know about Little Sesame. They are on a mission to make the world's smoothest hummus using organic and regeneratively grown chickpeas from Montana and zero shortcuts. It's chef crafted, obsessively smooth, and made fresh in their own hummus factory right outside my hometown, Washington, D.C.

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1:09You have to figure out who is our customer? Is there some cohort of people who are obsessed with our product? Because without that, there's no point. And so you have to figure out who is our customer and really develop really explicit personas. Give them names. What do they do? What do they buy? And how do we market to them? because then everything should flow through that. So you can't have to succeed in retail. They really leaned into the kind of the beauty playbook as far as end caps and side caps and fixtures and clear callers. None of that stuff will work if you don't know who your consumer is.

1:43You need to be very explicitly messaging about what do they care about. Hey, everyone. I'm Hannah Dittman, operations and finance host of the Startup CPG podcast. And today I'm excited to be joined by Hayden Williams of Brand Project. Hayden is a partner behind Brand Project's distinctive approach to consumer investing, with a particular focus on backing brands pre-launch, often before there's a product, name, or even a fully formed company. Brand Project is known for leaning in early and partnering closely with founders to help shape not just the business, but the brand, consumer experience, and long-term vision from day one.

2:19Hayden brings a rare mix of empathy and conviction, with experience in the founder's seat, finance, and a long-standing focus on consumer investing. In this episode, we unpack the story of Wonderbelly, a brand project portfolio company that was just acquired by P &G. Hayden shares what drove conviction so early, including clear founder market fit, a strong problem solution in a timely category, and the opportunity to rethink and overlook space. We also dive into the pillars of prelaunch fundraising, the role of consumer psychology and world building, what company dynamics attract strategic interest, and what the investor-founder dynamic really looks like after the check clears.

2:55If you're a founder thinking about raising before launch, pressure testing your positioning, or curious how early investors evaluate ideas before traction exists, this conversation offers a practical look behind the curtain. Enjoy!

3:13Hey everybody, welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Hannah, and today I'm here with Hayden Williams, an investor from Brand Project. Hayden, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we're so excited to have you here today and to be chatting. I'd love to start off with getting a brief background of your career, the path that led you to Brand Project, and your title role and what you're doing there now. Yes, sure. So I grew up in a small town in Maine called Cape Elizabeth. Growing up, I was really into sales. So I sold dives door-to-door in high school. and college, I started a business selling ads to local businesses.

3:48And then out of school, my first job was in investment banking. And I had the good timing to graduate in June 2008. So at the height of the global financial crisis, which was three months after Bear Stearns collapsed and three months before Lehman Brothers went down. And I was in the financial institutions group covering banks specifically. So it was a crazy time to be covering banks. And but ultimately throughout that experience, I realized I wanted to try out building, not just advising. So after three and a half years in banking, I left to start a consumer tech company with one of my best friends.

4:22So we bootstrapped that business. So we moved in one bedroom apartment. We got bunk beds. We worked out of the NYU libraries. We did the whole thing. And ultimately that company was not successful, but certainly if nothing else, I bring some empathy into the investor role, knowing just how impossible it is to start a business. So after that, I transitioned into venture in a role at BBG Ventures, which at the time was investing in mostly consumer companies, all with at least one female founder. Their focus has since expanded a bit, but it's still run by Susan and Nisha and they were incredible mentors for me.

4:56Really showed me what it's like to be great partners of founders. And so that then brings me to Brand Project, where I've been for seven years. Our team is split between Toronto and New York. I'm here in New York in the city and we invest in consumer companies at their very early stages and happy to go as far into that as you'd like. Yeah, I would love to also get the firm overview and learn more about Brand Project and what you guys are focusing on there. Things like, you know, your mandate, differentiation, criteria, stage, check size, all the good stuff that can give us context for the rest of this conversation.

5:29Yes. So Brand Project was founded in 2013 and we've always focused on early stage, always focused on consumer and consumer to us, that's consumer products, consumer services, and consumer tech. And we really invest in companies as early as possible. So our typical check size ranges from one to 3 million. We'll invest across consumer, but we spend especially a lot of time in consumer health and wellness, especially back in founders who are modernizing and destigmatizing legacy categories. And as far as our biggest differentiation, I'd say it's how much we love pre-launch. So while we'll invest anywhere from pre-C to Series A, more than half of our investments have been in companies before they've launched.

6:12And that's what we love. So our team, we're former founders and former operators. So we can get pretty tactical and really help as extensions of the founding team in the early days, whether that's acting as a temporary CFO or CTO. And since we only invest in a couple of companies every year, that's why we have the bandwidth to lean in that way. Yeah, that's such helpful context. And it is a huge differentiator. I feel like a lot of people kind of cooled off of the pre-launch consumer category in general. Like, obviously, the market since COVID and after the recovery has been kind of like all over the place in consumer.

6:48It's been changing a lot. Funds coming in and out. Mandate's changing. LP's kind of putting pressure in certain areas. So I think it's awesome that you guys have really leaned in and stayed true to kind of your North Star and where you find your power lanes and focus. Really helpful context. And when you're saying early stage, that's not pre-launch. What kind of revenue sizes are you talking about in those cases? So I would say the largest companies that we've invested in were maybe they were going to do a couple million. And it would be typically in that first year where we would invest because, yeah, nothing's too early, but certainly plenty would be too late.

7:28We always prefer to get in as early as possible. So certainly we have invested in seed rounds and even a couple of Series A rounds where when we invested, maybe they were doing a couple hundred thousand dollars in monthly revenue. But that's really the exception for us typically as far earlier. Very helpful context. Yeah, so you guys really are on that kind of like really far end of the venture capital spectrum and super helpful to understand. You also had some really amazing news come out recently, Hayden, with the Wonderbelly acquisition. So congratulations. Very exciting for you all, I'm sure.

8:00I would love to kind of dive into understanding a little bit of that, the dynamics of that investment for you all and kind of use it as a case study to both shed some light on your firm and how you operate, but also some common questions that come up in fundraising and founder journeys. It would be awesome to kind of start with the initial pitch and investment dynamics, especially, you know, what was compelling and resonated and really helped you guys create conviction in the investment. I think oftentimes that is the first challenge founders fundraising start facing is crafting that narrative and how to think about going and embarking on this fundraising journey and how to communicate and what's important to communicate.

8:39So I'd love to start there. Yes, it's a great case study. It is topical and serendipitous as it was just publicly announced yesterday. And it just so happened that we had this conversation. Yeah, the universe wanted us to talk about this. I know, I know. But it is a great case study. And I have been just reflecting on it given it was just publicly announced yesterday. The transaction only went through at the beginning this month of Wonderbelly's sale to P &G. So yeah, so I first met Noah and Lucas, the founders. in October 2021. So at that time, they didn't have a product and they didn't even have a company name, but really loved their vision to create a modern, clean label digestive health brand, offering a full suite of medicine.

9:23So they planned on the roadmap, they would start with antacid, but then expand into gas and upset stomach relief, and really reimagining the products without the artificial dyes and talc or unnecessary additives that all the other products on the shelf had. So at the time, the company was called Ginger Health, which if you're looking at two pictures of Noah and Lucas, you'd understand they both have red hair. And then the placeholder name for the first product was Aunt Acid, which should tell you something about their sense of humor. Some creative branding minds. That's right. Right. So now if you look at the brand and you know, even just what I saw pre-launch of Ginger Health with two redheads who were launching Ontacid, they already had the makings to shake up pretty boring industry.

10:09At that pre-launch stage, there's not much to diligence. So we really focused on the team and the market. And so as far as the team, they're brothers, if I didn't mention. Really, the inspiration behind the brand was that Lucas was building around a problem that he'd been managing personally for years. And so as he's discussed publicly, he had past struggles with an eating disorder that left him with lasting permanent digestive damage that really made him reliant on antacids. But he hated at the products that he relied on. Coughed tums, really had dyes and all this artificial talc and stuff that had nothing to do with the efficacy.

10:46So he said, why is this here? I just want this to work. I don't need all this other stuff. And then Noah, his brother was a repeat founder who'd already taken a consumer product from idea to market. So they really had that founder market fit. And then on the market side, if you would walk through the aisle in retail back then, retail shelves were full of new flashy brands and beauty and personal care. But the gut health aisle really felt frozen in time. And probably our grandparents would have recognized it because not much had changed. So there'd been no formulation, innovation, no modern brand.

11:18So we really love the master brand potential because there wasn't a modern gut help brand, just a bunch of one-off products where the formulation hadn't changed in a long time. That's such helpful context. And I think you said that narrative in such a way that I feel like really highlights some core principles in really early stage investing that oftentimes investors bring up as the biggest conviction pillars they need, which is a problem, compelling problem solution, a market with like the right time to build, essentially. You know, you hear that a lot. And I think for founders, a lot of times that can be like, what does that actually mean?

11:55Like, do I go to a fortune teller? How do I know what's the right time? And I think the way you articulated it was really nice, which is there wasn't a lot of disruption on the aisle. Gut health was kind of in the peripheral learnings for a lot of people. It was becoming topical for a lot of people without a clear solution or better options that they could go access. People are kind of, as the founders were, making their Band-Aid homemade solutions because there wasn't something readily available. And oftentimes you're thinking too, I'm sure, in some capacity, if the founder has this problem, they can't be the only one.

12:30This must be a more broad problem and there will be some form of a customer base there. You also have referenced Tums, which is, I think, an amazing way to think as well, which is a lot of investors think in kind of a case study mindset. They need something to kind of anchor on to wrap their head around quickly how a brand is operating and what the scaling journey in the future might be like. I think as much as people would like to assume investors have crystal balls, they don't. But they have awesome pattern recognition and an ability to pull from a broad swath of information and kind of create frameworks and ecosystems to think in.

13:07And I think having those pillars of an aisle that was ready to be disrupted, a big incumbent brand that wasn't doing anything really innovative anymore, but had a big market share, founders with a compelling story, a good background, seasoned as well with a good problem solution, a mission that they were chasing. It makes sense. And in hindsight, I'm sure it's also easy to make sense. But even at the onset, you can see how that would make so much sense for an investor to get behind. Yeah, you would have written a check, right? How could you not? And we actually ended up wiring the money the same month that we met them.

13:41That was just how compelling it was that within weeks, we quickly kind of got up to speed and got conviction quickly. And so, yeah, it was we were very excited to be involved. Yeah. So let's double click on your involvement as an investor. So you're meeting them pre-product. They're telling you, we have an idea. We need money to get a product together or to get this really going. Obviously, the diligence was relatively quick, given it was more of an idea. and you kind of getting comfortable with that and them. What happens then? Like what was the ask and what was your involvement as an investor?

14:13And kind of walk me through the story of what the journey after the investment was like, what was the relationship like and how was the company growing and evolving over time? Yeah, sure. So very explicitly, they were raising on a safe. We wrote the largest check into that safe, which then closed it out. And then they had the money to start developing the product. So it was all about R &D and brand building because again, they didn't even have a name back then. And so even just in the first couple of months, and by the way, I should mention, so this was in October and the plan all along was to launch in June.

14:44And they were going to raise a round before launch, but it was unclear when that would happen. So immediately following investment, there was the R &D, they're developing the brand. And even just in those couple of months, they were doing everything that they said that they were going to do in such a way that we wanted to make sure that we led that seed round. And so actually in January, we then invested more capital into a seed round. And the idea for that was to have enough money to ultimately launch the brand, which happened, I believe, in June of 2022. So first couple of months were development, brand development, and then it was buying inventory.

15:20Then it was getting ready to launch D2C. So we launched in June and D2C launch is all about figuring out, do people care? Who cares? And let's find more of them, hopefully as cheaply as possible. So we found, as an example, that their core consumers keep female, with pregnant women being a meaningful driver of demand because they care deeply about clean ingredients and also had heightened heartburn. And then just overall, that D2C launch really validated that people wanted a medicine that worked, but it was cleaner. So after that and scaling D2C, then everyone understands that ultimately these types of products will be sold in retail, not D2C, because when you need them, you can't wait for a couple of days for the courier to come by.

16:04And so they did a really great job of executing the D2C to retail transition. And so they got a PO to launch, do an exclusive launch of Target. And so ahead of that launch of Target, they raised the seed extension, which we led and also bought in a great firm, the Venture Collective, who came in with us. And then it was into retail and then it was expanding into more doors and more SKUs and all that good stuff. This is like just a perfectly executed and planned company growth story. I mean, really just kind of like hitting all. No droplets. Yeah. I'm like, you're hitting. And the quick lead times, too.

16:41I'm like, you're hitting all the major milestones just at the right time. Like, I mean, wow, impressive. From the investor side, what was kind of your role and experience working alongside this company? I think and I'm asking because I think a lot of times founders have a lot of questions around that. What does it mean to bring on an investor to my company? What does that actually change for my day to day and my experience working with them? Is this my boss? Are we going to have weekly calls? Am I going to be able to make decisions? What was the actual working relationship like during this time and along this journey?

17:15Sure. So the way that we work with any individual company is completely depending on the company and their stage and the way that they would like to work with us. And, you know, as I think I mentioned, for some companies, we might be their temporary CFO or CTO and we could have weekly calls and all this stuff for a period of time. And then that could change. specifically here what they were really interested in because Noah had built a company before so he had lots of operational experience he'd raised money before but this was their first time in CPG and what Noah and Lucas are good about is soliciting feedback and perspectives and the decision is always theirs to make but this was their first time doing it and we've invested in many D2C brands that then transitioned into retail and so a lot of the way that we could be helpful I think we had monthly calls and then we would catch up in between that their direction was just giving perspective for what works, what doesn't work.

18:08How can we focus on making original mistakes and not repeating others? And which retailer should we choose? How do we get the best deal? And so we could just share perspectives from what worked and what didn't work with other companies, given we are so closely evolved with specifically consumer brands. And then a lot of work, a lot of help on fundraising. Again, for founders who are listening and looking at this great headline of the story, this was not an easy business to raise money for early on. Even every successive milestone, you know, it got easier, but it was tough. And so I guess founders should know that that was the case here.

18:41Even with you can wrap everything into the package of what a great story it was and up and to the right. But it was challenging for them as well. So, yeah, we were just being as supportive as we could. Yeah, I'm sure. even for investors raising their own funds from limited partners or going through things like asking people for big amounts of money is always hard no matter what the capacity is it is hard and it's emotionally taxing too it's a not a typical experience that many people have in other aspects of their life ever and so you're kind of thrown into like a very foreign objective with really high stakes and a lot of work needing to be going in alongside that and outside of that to keep everything going and to make headway there.

19:31So yeah, a lot of respect for all the founders out there hustling and working hard and getting it done and on their journey or thinking about getting into their journey. I don't think there's a single person who has ever said the line fundraising is easy. So I... It's not easy. It's not easy. It's not fun. Yeah. I think if I could recommend these to people, sell knives door to door. As I mentioned, I did that one summer. If you think that fundraising is uncomfortable, you know, knock on a stranger's door with a bag of knives and ask to be let in and tell them why they should buy your knives when they haven't probably thought about knives in years.

20:05I promise I'm not a serial killer. I'm just, it's here for the kitchen. Yeah. I had the pleasure of Girl Scout cookies. I think we're a lot more readily received. I do think the Girl Scout cookie route is a little bit easy. I think so. We'll be right back. Are 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.

20:42I 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. So if you want them to have a look, email them startupcpg at daybreak.agency and they'll do a free audit for you. Good luck, everyone.

21:02Okay, so they like went through quite the fundraising journey, obviously. You mentioned a couple of milestones that they hit along the way. Obviously, breaking into retail, I'm sure, was one of them. I'm sure getting the product launched and all of that was another one. You know, reflecting back now, especially that they had such a successful exit, and it kind of is like the picture-perfect ending for what you would hope for a CPG company. Like, a strategic exit is kind of like, in many people's minds, like the best outcome that you can get for you. What do you think were the most important milestones and pacing of those milestones along the way that help them be attractive target for a strategic exit?

21:42And maybe like, where were funds and proceeds used to help drive those milestones as well? Yeah. So you have to figure out who is our customer? Is there some cohort of people who are obsessed with our product? Because without that, there's no point. And so you have to figure out who is our customer and really develop really explicit personas. Give them names, give them? What do they do? What do they buy? And how do we market to them? Because then everything should flow through that. So you can't have to succeed in retail. They really leaned into that kind of the beauty playbook as far as end caps and side caps and fixtures and clear callers.

22:20None of that stuff will work if you don't know who your consumer is. You need to be very explicitly messaging about what do they care about? And so we knew why people were buying Wonder Ballets, because of what it didn't have in it versus what it had in it. And so then the packaging needs to explain that because the only way you'll be successful in retail is if your packaging is screaming this up. Because ultimately, you know, after the DTC launch and after your friends and family try it and give you pats in the back, you need strangers who are walking in an aisle to be arrested, to see something and stop in their tracks and to buy it when they're busy and they have heartburn and they were discomfort.

22:55There's a sea of Tums and there's a few Wonder Belly products here. They don't have time for you. and say, you really need to stand out. You only have a second. And it's all the work that leads up to that, the D to C, the branding, the talking to customers that really can lead to that ultimate outcome of having something that consumers love that can turn into a master brand because they love the cleaner antacid and now they love the cleaner version of Pepto-Bismol they have and now they love the cleaner version of GasX and there's trust. And really they were part of a conversation in gut health that the incumbents were not.

23:26And that was some of the white space there of. Gut health is something that would only be talked about behind closed doors. There's a stigma and while certainly everyone or many people are relying on these products, they're not talking about it. But Wonderbelly really started a conversation. And at the time, Tums, which again is like a hundred year old brand, I think they had 2000 Instagram followers, certainly no presence on TikTok or anything like that. But the opportunity to be part of this conversation, bring some humor and levity to it, that was something that it's going to be hard for a strategic to do that.