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Bill Shufelt is the Founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing, the craft brewer that created the non-alcohol beer market in the US.
Bill takes us inside the early days of starting the company, including realizing there was an opportunity to make non-alcoholic beer, finding a co-founder, struggling to find early investors, building multiple breweries, and getting into Whole Foods before launching. Our conversation is a case study on creating a new market - I hope you enjoy.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Preview
(04:10) Becoming the #1 beer in Whole Foods
(05:54) The history of non-alcoholic beer
(10:41) Why an outsider had to create this new category
(15:34) Health benefits of avoiding alcohol
(17:51) Turner tries the beer
(22:49) Bill’s wife pushing him to start Athletic Brewing
(26:38) Writing a 96 page white paper on non-alcoholic beer
(28:42) Quitting his job to start six months of research and networking
(30:21) Meeting the perfect co-founder after 100’s of meetings
(32:34) Putting his life savings into a warehouse and brewing equipment
(33:04) The importance of setting company values early on
(34:23) Brewing the first beer in Gatorade jugs
(36:16) Selling the first bottles to retailers
(37:42) Explosive growth in 2019
(39:39) Why new products and D2C helped them scale so fast
(40:39) Using TikTok to sell-out new product launches in 30 seconds
(42:00) The value of doing early customer service himself
(44:45) Getting to 61% market share in non-alcoholic beer
(46:10) Struggling to raise the first angel round
(48:34) Using consistent investor updates to easily raise the Seed, Series A, and Series B
(50:47) Transitioning to institutional capital for its Series C
(52:33) Betting on a new category to expand market size
(55:44) Information access is enabling healthier consumer behavior
(58:11) Bill’s early strategy for marketing the product
(1:01:43) The importance of over communicating with your investors
(1:03:44) Why retailers like Athletic Brewing’s unique omni channel approach
(1:06:16) How building its own breweries and supply chain enabled its unique strategy and better margins at scale
(1:09:04) Getting into Whole Foods before launching
(1:11:31) Doing unscaleable things over and over again
(1:13:50) Why entrepreneurship is a long game
(1:14:22) Most of Athletic’s new products come from the team
Check out Athletic Brewing: https://athleticbrewing.com/
Where to find Bill:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-shufelt-650059138
Where to find Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
