The Startup CPG Podcast

In this Founder Fundraising Journey episode, host Hannah Dittman sits down with Ryan Raish, founder of Fave, a first-to-market certified organic powdered drink mix bringing nostalgic flavors back to the category without artificial colors, flavors, or excess sugar.


Ryan has spent nearly two decades in CPG, working his way from grassroots demos at Guayaki to building out the West Coast for Honest Tea, a 10-year run at Popchips, and stints at Super Coffee and Chloe's Fruit Pops. The idea for Fave came to him in a grocery store aisle, watching his five-year-old beg for Kool-Aid loaded with artificial dye and 40+ grams of sugar, and realizing there was no "better-for-you" option in the massive, non-functional powdered drink mix category.


Hannah and Ryan dig into the two-year R&D process he self-funded before ever asking for capital, how a chance conversation with Popchips founder Keith Belling turned into his first advisor and investor, how retailer feedback shaped the product before a single dollar was raised, and the real differences between pitching investors and pitching retail buyers.


Listen in as they discuss:

  • Ryan's 20-year path through CPG, from grassroots demos at Guayaki to a decade at Popchips
  • The grocery store moment with his kids that sparked the idea for Fave
  • Why he spent nearly two years self-funding R&D before ever asking for outside capital
  • How Popchips founder Keith Belling turned into his first investor and advisor
  • How early retailer feedback from Target shaped Fave's formulation before fundraising even began
  • The pre-seed round born from a happy hour conversation at Expo West with Angel Group
  • How retailer validation (Thrive Market, QVC, Sprouts) built the case for a full seed round
  • The key differences between pitching investors and pitching retail buyers, and where they overlap
  • Ryan's advice on building investor relationships well before you actually need the capital


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Creators and Guests

Host
Hannah Dittman
Operations and Finance Correspondent at Startup CPG

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

Ryan Raish
Before I asked for capital, it was all about getting that validation and knowing that I had something that was going to work. And my conversation wasn't, give me $100,000, like invest in this. It was, do you want to join the team as an investor and grow this company with me? I have something that's tangible and ready to go and if you believe me and the product and where we can take this, then like, this is a good opportunity. I think also once I was able to establish the right valuation on those early rounds, that made it lucrative for folks to come in and a little less risky. That made it easier too to just close the deal.

00:51
Hannah Dittman
Hey everybody, I'm Hannah Dittman, Operations and Finance host of the Startup CPG podcast and today I'm joined by Ryan Raish, founder of Fave, for another insightful founder fundraising journey episode. Fave is not only delicious, it's modernizing the powdered drink mix category with nostalgic flavors, organic ingredients, less sugar, and no artificial colors or flavors. After years spent helping build and scale consumer brands. Inspired by a trip with his kids to the grocery store, Ryan stepped into the founder seat himself to create a better for you flavor first take on a familiar household staple, delicious drink mixes. In this episode, Ryan walks us through Fave's fundraising journey and from how he financed the earliest days to raising outside capital and thinking about future growth.

01:40
Hannah Dittman
We talk about the biggest challenges and surprises of fundraising, lessons from what went right and wrong, how it compared to retailer feedback, and how you build the confidence to publicly ask people to invest in your business. Whether you're preparing to raise, interested in the stories of how businesses get built, or simply trying to understand what fundraising actually looks like from the founder's side, this episode is packed with practical lessons. Go grab some Fave, give it a mix and enjoy alongside a great founder fundraising episode. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Hannah and today we're back for an awesome Founder Fundraising Journey episode with Ryan Raish of Fave. Ryan, welcome to the show.

02:25
Ryan Raish
Thank you so much Hannah for having me. Excited to be here and share my story.

02:28
Hannah Dittman
We're super excited to have you here. I'm a big fan of your brand and excited to learn a little bit more about it. I'd love to dive straight in with a brief background of your career and the path and journey that led you to Faith.

02:40
Ryan Raish
Yeah, I think I have an interesting story compared to a lot of first time founders in the industry right now in the fact that I've actually been in the industry for a good 20 years and starting a company was objective of mine that I always wanted to do, but I never knew if I'd actually do it. So 22 years ago I was graduating college, I had just got this great six figure job wearing a suit and tie and I thought that was everything. And my uncle actually worked for Guayaqui at the time, this was 20 years ago, and they were just selling like gourds and loose leaf tea and nobody knew what yerba mate was and he'd asked me to join this event down at the beach and pass out product and I came and joined it for the weekend and I loved it.

03:21
Ryan Raish
And then he was like, hey, would you want to do a demo at a grocery store for us next weekend? And I was like, sure, I'll give it a shot. And it was in a little natural Jimbo's market here in San Diego. And I loved it. Like I loved the community, I loved the retail, I love just aspect of like giving somebody something good and sharing that story. And about two weeks later I did an office space move and just quit that other job on a Friday afternoon and started making 10 bucks an hour doing demos for Guayaqi. I quit it all and I was like, I just really enjoyed the industry. I didn't know much at the time, but I knew I was having fun doing it.

03:58
Ryan Raish
So I spent about a year and a half, two years with Guayaqu and then I was actually approached by a guy that's a mentor of mine now to come over to Honest Tea when they were building out the west US So I spent two years with Honest Tea when they were building moving from the glass line to the pet line and building out Honest Kids. I spent a good two years there. When Coca Cola bought it, that was my cue to kind of leave and myself and a handful of us on the team over there went to Popchips actually and I spent 10 years at Popchips. This was my opportunity to sell from local retailers all the way up to global Costco and convenience and food service and really touched all the parts of the business over that good 10 year career.

04:38
Ryan Raish
After that I went to a brand Super Coffee for about two years and then Chloe's Fruit Pops for another three to four years. And while I was at Chloe's, that's when the opportunity for fave fell into my lap and I started to pursue it. But yeah, I've been in CPG almost my entire working career and yeah, I enjoy it. I think a lot of people get scared off after that amount of time to actually want to start their own company here. But I had criteria always in the back of my mind. If I ever found that opportunity, I would pursue it. I didn't think I would, but I did. And that was my cue to start Fave.

05:14
Hannah Dittman
Wow. Such an impressive resume. You probably have learned so many things that are helping you navigate this journey now. I just think when you compare and contrast to a founder who first experience in CPG is their own business versus someone who's been burned by the fire many times before and knows what to avoid, I'm sure it's a completely different dance. Still challenging, I'm sure in so many ways. But I'm sure your background has been immensely helpful in a number of ways as well. Fave is an awesome company, awesome brand. I'm excited to dig into it for any unfortunate listeners who are unfamiliar with your brand. Could you go ahead and give us a company overview and what you guys are all about and what you're bringing into the world?

06:00
Ryan Raish
Yeah. So Fave is first to market certified organic powder drink mix. That's flavor first. We're not a niche wellness or functional hydration brand. We are targeting that nostalgic classic category of drink mixes that we all grew up with, right? The flavor forward, the lemonades, fruit punches, the tangs, things like that. We've seen the category evolve into very functional space in powdered drinks, but the legacy brands have remained the same for decades and decades, and I'm bringing a clean, modern version of those products to market.

06:37
Hannah Dittman
I love it. And it's so true. There's all these incumbents sitting in so many different places that are just bopping along undisturbed. And it's also very true that things have gone so functional and almost like hyper claimed. There's so much packed into so many products sometimes these days, and I think having a simple offering sometimes cuts through the noise in itself. Just because everyone else is trying so hard to be so many other nutritional or functional things. I'd love to understand the story a little bit more about Fave and what got you into it. Obviously you said you spent a lot of time in the space, you were working at Chloe's, you were thinking maybe something would fit the criteria of something that you might want to pursue.

07:23
Hannah Dittman
How did this all come together and what was the really founding story in the early days of how this all got started?

07:29
Ryan Raish
Yeah, super fun story again. I'd always want to start my own company, but all the brands that I've worked for weren't those hyper functional Brands at all. They're very flavor forward driven. I was always the belief that function drives trial, but flavor drives repeat purchase. And that's really what you need to like win in this industry. All the functions, they go through transitions and they evolve and you come and go, but flavor has always stayed the same. So for me, I always wanted to launch a brand that was flavor forward. And I wanted a product and a brand that was a first to market disruptor with a big legacy category. And I didn't think there was a part of a grocery store left to ever do that. So my hopes were low.

08:08
Ryan Raish
I also wanted a product that was omnichannel and cross generational and all these things that I really wanted. And I was like, I don't know if we'll ever find that. I'm at the grocery store about two and a half years ago with my three kids. They were five, three and two at the time, walking down the aisle and my five year old grabs a big tub of Kool Aid right off the bottom shelf there with the guy on it and he's like, dad, I have to have this. Like, buy this for us. And I'm like, you don't even know what this is. Like, this could be anything. But the character caught his attention. Just thought back to my childhood and my brothers and we drank Kool Aid and Country Time lemonade and all that stuff.

08:40
Ryan Raish
And I thought about it for a second, but then I turned the label over and was like, holy smokes. Like this is still so bad. Like the artificial colors are just something we really try to keep out of our household. And it's just loaded with those 40 plus grams of sugar and artificial ingredients. Way too many things in the label. So I made the parenting mistake of saying no in a grocery store and that turned into a full on meltdown. They it, they didn't know what it was. The trick is you're supposed to say yes and then just put on a shelf somewhere else and not buy it. I didn't do that. So while they're having a meltdown, I took a step back and was like, all right, there's gotta be a better option here for us.

09:16
Ryan Raish
And really what there was is these nostalgic classic brands that we just mentioned and this massive white space which goes straight up to functional products after that and price points are significantly higher. And I didn't want any of that. My kids didn't need that. We're not ultra marathon runners. We don't need that much sodium. Like we really just wanted something refreshing and Something that tastes good. And there wasn't that option. And that got my mind working. We had to run to a sprouts after that and I was like, I'll get you guys something there. And that's when I realized this category didn't even exist in the natural channel. It was nowhere to be found. So that was kind of my aha moment. I had a friend that worked at spins.

09:52
Ryan Raish
I got my hands on some data and realized this is a non functional billion dollar mass moolo category and non existent in the natural channel. And what a cool opportunity to build a category and create a better for you disruptor brand. And that was my inspiration. Start doing it.

10:09
Hannah Dittman
I love the way you're thinking about things and positioning and it does sound like a huge opportunity. Sometimes when you're thinking about things like that, you're like, how in the world is this even possible? But all it takes is the person to lean in and say I'm going to go pursue this and not get trapped up in the trend chasing of a lot of other things that are going on or all the things that get hyped up in someone who has a real authentic story like yours. Once you've got the idea and you were like ready to pursue it, what was the funding journey like and the operations journey? How did you think about actually going about building tactically this business and how did that story unfold?

10:50
Ryan Raish
So I think this is the part of like the founder journey for me that's completely new. This is where I'm in the same space as anybody new getting into the industry. I was not an operations guy, I was not on the finance teams. I hadn't been involved in fundraising projects. So that was all new to me. I've seen a lot of brands come and go. I've seen a lot of people raise capital on an idea and they raise it and they burn it all on the idea and it actually never makes it to market. I took my time with it. It was about a two year journey of me doing the R and D by myself, finding the commands, the suppliers. I worked with an agency to kind of help with the packaging and naming and went through a lot of versions.

11:27
Ryan Raish
I did hundreds of panel tests, formal and informal, like by myself, to really know, like is there a need state for this? Right? Like are people gonna buy this product? And is it for kids, is it for adults, is it for the family? Like really needed to know that this was gonna work. But raising capital is a big deal to ask somebody for money. And for me it specifically was So I didn't wanna raise any money until I was like 99% sure that like we had something here and that I can take a product that's ready to go to market or as close as I could possibly get it. And then it. From there it was. It wasn't a conversation to ask investors to put money into the company.

12:07
Ryan Raish
And so they want to put money into a company that's going to grow and do they want to grow? With me, it was how I led those conversations and structured those. So it was an interesting process, but I think having a product that was ready to go and investors were able to see what I had put into it to get to that point, how long the whole process took, built their confidence and kind of like streamlined some of the conversations for sure. Early on, I think fun story was I actually had gone to Keith Belling, who was the founder of popchips. I hadn't talked to him in three or four years and we casually kept in touch over the years. But I brought him a rough intro deck and I was like, hey, I would love to just show you this.

12:44
Ryan Raish
And he started with like, look, I don't invest or advise really for anyone that's ever worked for Pop Chips or my other brands. It's like working with family and it's something that I don't necessarily do. And I was like, I appreciate that even more. What I really was hoping was that he would say, this is a crazy idea, don't do it, turn the other way and just take your loss and go. But the conversation went a completely different direction and he was like, you actually own the trademark to fave. You have the organic certifications, you have all this, you've done all this. And he was like, this is a phenomenal white space. Like, I want in, I'm going to invest, I want to advise and I want to help you. And there's no turning back from there.

13:19
Ryan Raish
So that's really where the whole journey started and got us going. So fun. Full 360 story of my career and advisor support.

13:26
Hannah Dittman
That's so incredible to have such an impressive mentor that you have a history with and a lot of experience with that you look up to and obviously trusted their leadership at one point and to get them so excited and passionate about what you're doing. I'm sure that was like a huge gust of wind in your sails and a huge confidence boost.

13:44
Ryan Raish
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where I know how hard it is though. So I was like, gosh, like all Right. Like we have to do it now.

13:50
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. You almost know too much. When I think that's the hard thing. There's always like a pro and a con to every different experience. I think the con of having a lot of industry experience is, you know, all the ways it could go wrong. You know how hard things actually are. You're so caught up in a lot of the best practices and things like that you lose a little bit of the founder naivete that allows you to kind of just like run forward blind before it catches up with you.

14:16
Ryan Raish
I was cautious enough to wait like two years before doing that. I kept an eye on the catego and the opportunity and yeah, I really had to make sure because I know how risky this industry is.

14:26
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. And I think in consumer people don't realize how long the R and D phase can actually take, especially for starting something from scratch. I think especially investors that don't have as much experience with the like true 0 to 1 phase sometimes don't realize all the pre work that goes into something like that. Especially in a company like yours that's flavor driven or you really want to get that right. You're really oriented towards repeat purchases that can take time. And especially when you're not coming from like a big institutional organization that has things ready to go or willing to go through a stock catalog or anything like that. So you got an advisor in and you got someone that was important and eagerly excited. In the early days of your company, did you ever think to pursue retailer conversations before those investor type conversations?

15:17
Hannah Dittman
If you did, what happened and if you did not, why did you make that decision?

15:21
Ryan Raish
Yeah, I actually did. When I was at Chloe's, I was working with a great broker and they, one of the reps kind of knew what I was doing and she was like, we need to get this in front of Target, like just get their feedback for it. And the category manager at Target at the time, it's changed since then, but she had a lot of feedback. My product changed with some of their feedback on some of our sweeteners, our sugar count and really kind of getting their perspective on where we would sit on shelf in store and those sort of things. So that was even before my initial meetings with my first advisor. So yeah, there was some retailer support there for sure. I would say we probably had at least four good conversations that kind of helped evolve where the product hit.

15:59
Ryan Raish
And then there was also some changes last minute where there was supply chain issues. We got more information on some of the cogs, on pricing. We had with some ingredients and we had to shift some of those as well and then actually go back and be like now what do you think? And luckily like again we took our sweet time and made sure it was right. But yes, retailer feedback was a really big piece of it for sure.

16:19
Hannah Dittman
At what point did you get other investors involved and do your first inventory run? What was the true go to market experience like for you in both senses of the words? I guess.

16:29
Ryan Raish
Yeah, yeah. So were very far along the path. I had samples from our co men at the time and they actually just packing these little plastic tubes and I was at Expo west and I knew Chris Robb from the Angel Group from previous years when he was running his dirty hands business and stuff. And I knew what the angel was and kind of what they were doing. But I had reached out said hey, I'd love to just meet up real quick and just show you this idea. And we met I think at the Marriott. There was a handful of the Angel Group folks there as well. This was happy hour time. So everyone was having drinks and we sat down and they're like make us samples, let's see what this is all about. And we made some Fave right there.

17:05
Ryan Raish
And a handful of people were like this is really cool. We see what you're there. Like let's kind of evolve that conversation. And that's what kind of led and it took another six to eight months but that's what led us into our pre seed round and working with the Angel Group on a small pre seed round that was led by I guess you could say led by them and some of their group and then also a handful of other just industry CPG founders and people that have been in the space. I've been very like focused on keeping the cap table structured with folks that know the industry. Some early learnings where it's just getting conversations with investors that don't understand the space and they were comparing it to tech or whatnot. I'm like this business does not happen overnight. It takes time.

17:49
Ryan Raish
Like we have to have patience. And that was some really early learnings with me and then with Angel Group and some other people is to really stay focused on people this early on that know what we're doing. But yeah, it all started at the Marriott at Expo West Happy Hour where I think a lot of great things happen for brands. So yeah, it's fun.

18:05
Hannah Dittman
That's so exciting and a way to leverage so much of your industry contacts and experience as well knowing to build in front of people that whose opinions you respect and go from there. What has the rest of the fundraising and resource building process been like from where you started to where you're at today? Have you completed just that one round of funding or was there another one after that? And how big have you built the team over time as you've scaled that funding as well?

18:31
Ryan Raish
Yeah, so that led into our pre seed round. It was a small like $250,000 round. It was my introduction to really having those investor conversations, how to build a structured cap table, valuations, like all of those sort of tools. I used that round to do our initial production run, which we had learning curves on that as well. Like you've got to have some cash to buy yourself some space on errors there. We fixed that and then we really took you finished product at that point out to retail. We launched nationally with Thrive Market. We give them a first to market exclusive. This was an opportunity for us to start testing our backend 3pls and supply chain operations. We turned on Amazon in February after the exclusive end. I went on QVC twice. Actually sold out both times. Really fun.

19:20
Ryan Raish
It was very validating that we had a product that was. A lot of people think it's for kids, but QVC shoppers aren't for kids necessarily. So really just Proof is a cross generational product and I used all of that to validate that. Like we had proof here. And that's when I got a national authorization to launch at Sprouts a couple months ago. So I used all of that to lead us into an actual seed round which we started right around Expo west and we closed it about a month ago. So that was a full million dollar seed round that was actually led by Angel Group's venture fund called Supernatural Ventures. They started it and helped lead the way. So it was really using those early relationships and showing that like the funds that I had were working.

20:04
Ryan Raish
We proved concept and we're able to grow a business with it. And I think that's really what just kind of like snowballed it. And you got to keep proving the success and using each round to validate a story, to create the next story. That's what we did. So yeah, we're off and running right now in terms of the team. Very, very lean. It's myself and I have one person that's full time on my team. Her name's Jen. We actually met 15 years ago at Popchips. She was the like Southern California marketing sort of manager and we've stayed in touch over the years and in that timeframe she's worked for a handful of other CPG brands and moved more to the operational side of the business.

20:42
Ryan Raish
So she's been a big asset in helping just make everything come to life and be an asset to myself and the team. So it's just the two of us. Luckily, we're a product that doesn't involve building out national DSD networks and things like that. We're very E Com focused and direct retail, so we don't need that complex of a team at the moment, but plans to grow, that's for sure.

21:04
Hannah Dittman
Ryan, so impressive and congrats on closing your recent round. Really impressed with how much you've accomplished, scaled and gotten through with such a lean team. And also just the way that you've really structured your thinking, your narrative, your storytelling and the way you're approaching business in such a thoughtful way. Your experience and your wisdom clearly comes through in the way that you think, thought through the rollout and kind of building of your business. And I'm sure a lot of learnings to share with other founders as they're thinking of their early days and how they can apply this knowledge to what they're doing. I'd love to ask you a couple of questions as you were going through two things at the same time.

21:46
Ryan Raish
Yeah.

21:47
Hannah Dittman
You were going through fundraising and you were also talking to retailers. How did those experiences compare and contrast and which one did you find more challenging as you were going through them?

21:57
Ryan Raish
Thinking back to what I even just said, all of it sounds easier than it was. It's like, still not an easy process.

22:01
Hannah Dittman
Not lost on me. I'm sure that was the fight of your life.

22:05
Ryan Raish
Yes. Not an easy process. A lot of learnings for sure. I think talking to retailers, investors is the same thing. You're still selling the, you know, to a retailer, you're selling a product and the white space and margins and all that. And investors want to know the exact same thing. Just the additional part with the investors is they want to know, how big can this go? How long is it going to take? Where can we take it? What does the future look like? So you're kind of having the same conversation twice with the retailers. Again, this is a billion dollar mulu category and it doesn't exist in the natural channel. So there were two completely different conversations with retailers and those conversations were completely different as well.

22:41
Ryan Raish
The conversation with Sprouts is like, how do we develop a partnership and actually build a category here? How do we create a new section of their grocery store? Where does this go? We don't Belong next to the functional wellness set. Because when you look at conventional retailers, it's a whole different set. And how do we create that versus conversations with Kroger and things like that? They know where we're going to go. They see the white space. They see the opportunity to bring an organic item to shelf. So all those conversations were learning curves along the way for us, no matter how we looked at it. And those conversations have all evolved a lot in the last couple weeks. Even actually, like the story just keeps pivoting.

23:18
Ryan Raish
I think with all the conversations is really about keeping an open mind, not saying it's my way or the highway and this is exactly how we're going to do it. Like you've got to be able to pivot and be flexible with how things are going to go because you can put pen to paper and really hope that happens. And like it's not going to happen. Like things are going to change, opportunities are going to come up, investors are going to have their inputs and things like that. You've got to be open to it. But also like knowing really what I want, how I see it, and just educating the retailers and investors of like how I see this working has kind of just evolved us to where we are.

23:52
Ryan Raish
So yeah, a lot of the conversations are the same, but you have to adapt to the nos, the maybes, the yeses, and see where it just keeps going. But every day was different for sure.

24:02
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. Ryan, even in this conversation, I think something that stands out to me a lot in the way that you're communicating is how clear and thought through your positioning and your narrative storytelling is as it relates to your brand. The elevator pitch, if you will. You know, and I think the point you made where this has been something that you've really refined and honed in through a lot of different lenses and conversations, I think is really interesting and helpful for other founders out there. I think that can be a really intimidating thing of where to start and how to think about your business.

24:35
Hannah Dittman
Not from the weeds level view of all the things you're executing, but being able to roll yourself up and think about it from the perspective of an invest or a sprouts or a retail buyer and what's going to get them to kind of see the same vision that you're seeing. And I think you have that really tight and a really concise way to get the aha moment to people really quick.

24:54
Ryan Raish
Yeah, no, it was fun. I think just thinking a little bit further on that too is the investors really want to know that you Know your business too, right? Everything from your contribution margins by channel. Like, are we going to be investing our business into E Com because we make more money there? Should we start there or should we approach food service or whatnot? So all of those sort of things, like just really understanding the financials and your operations, your logistics, there's so many line items that are unexpected and trying to find all those before you can really do the math and price your product to where it needs to be. Also, I think was a conversation that retailers and investors both really wanted.

25:31
Hannah Dittman
What do you think some of the big challenges or obstacles of those conversations were and how did you overcome them or what lessons learned do you have from experiencing that?

25:42
Ryan Raish
Yeah, for me, the fundraising part was probably the biggest learnings has as I'd been selling other products for years. So I knew what to expect or how to kind of approach those and didn't set my expectations high on the investor side though, Like I wanted those wins, I thought I needed all of those wins. So I took things different personally than I would have from a retailer. Some of the biggest learnings from the seed round to the pre seed round and seed round is really getting investors that again, know the space. But when somebody tells you, like I'd rather get a hard no than a maybe, the hard nos are usually because the investor's thesis is a larger check size or it's too early in the round or whatever it may be. And there was a reason for that.

26:23
Ryan Raish
No, the maybes are the ones that I found to be very distracting and you really kind of had to chase them down or just come back at a later time. But I think managing the time on those and like how much energy is spent versus selling the product or marketing and all that other stuff. So I think the biggest learnings for me was just how to manage that time with the investors and get the ball rolling. There's a handful of folks that would commit and then you still had to chase them down for quite a few weeks to even get the check. And that's not like unnormal. It's totally normal from what I've heard from a lot of other people and doing it myself. But I think with all that is just how do you manage the time?

27:00
Ryan Raish
There's only so many hours in a day. You want to be efficient with everything you're doing. And those partners as well. So that was probably the biggest learnings is time management for sure.

27:10
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. And you've got three kids, you've got a whole life.

27:13
Ryan Raish
Yeah, I almost forgot about them. For a second here. Yes.

27:16
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, you got two jobs and a third being a dad. But yeah, no, I think that's really helpful and I think every single founder would agree. It's persistence and overcoming the rejections and the mental battle of emotionally regulating yourself can be a big challenge in that process. If you could stand on a soapbox, which I guess you kind of are right now, and give other founders any advice as they kind of think about going out to fundraiser, what they might need to have prepared or things that you would wish you did differently. If you could go back and do it all again, what advice would you give to the other founders out there that are pursuing this?

27:52
Ryan Raish
I think the first thing is to really know your business, your product, the back end of your business, your commands and operations. You can have a great idea, but if you can't get it to market, you can't scale like, you're going to burn a lot of capital once you raise it and you have to do it again. Again. Not being a finance or accounting guy, understanding how a cap table like really works and dilution schedules and option pools and finding the legal partners to kind of help you get through that and. Or some advisor that doesn't charge you, what lawyers do, that's a whole different thing too. But just understanding those pieces of it will really help you tell your story.

28:31
Ryan Raish
Getting that retailer authorization or validation early on too, letting them know that like there is a need state for your product and if it's not a retail, like being able to launch it online and showing that like your systems are in place, you can actually produce product and do those things for me, made conversations a lot easier if I could go back and do it again. Probably a handful of things. I think maybe some of the cap table learnings early on how you validate your valuation and structure that maybe we made it too lucrative, maybe we didn't. I'm happy with where it all ended up though. Like we're not in a bad spot. I had a valuation that was lucrative for investors to come on this early.

29:12
Ryan Raish
I've done this as a solo founder, so I'm not splitting ownership multiple ways and it leaves a lot of extra room to kind of get those right investors early on, maybe I would have moved a little bit quicker on things too. I think I was a little too naive like you talked about early on. Like I, I overthought it when I knew I had something. I probably could have moved a little bit sooner. But yeah, live and learn, they're all things I would say luckily enough like probably didn't make any major mistakes yet. Fingers crossed we're watching those things. But overall I think it's gone pretty smoothly considering it's how challenging this industry is for sure.

29:46
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. And you know it's easy to grass is greener or hindsight things that it could have unfolded in so many different ways. One last question before we move on to a slack question is we spent a lot of time speaking about the past and the journey, but I'd love to know a little bit more about the future of Fave and what you're the most excited for. Looking forward, do you think there will be another fundraise? What milestones are you really working towards right now with your current investment partners and where do you see the brand going in its next chapter?

30:16
Ryan Raish
Great question. Fave is really the start of like a flavor first platform. We can go in a lot of different directions. That's one of the reasons why I didn't go down a specific path targeting a niche audience. We can go in multiple categories. So I'm really excited to do that. We do have some fun innovation that's pretty much ready to go. Actively working on a retail partner to launch that and kind of strategically tie all that together. That's going to come most likely with our next fundraising round which at this point and I don't know yet. Right. Will we be moving beyond another safe round? Will we actually go through a proper Series A and do all those sort of things? I think with the right larger retail partner in the need state for more capital, we will need to raise more crazy.

30:59
Ryan Raish
But million dollars does not take you very far here. Even with a very lean team and cash flow and payments from distributor, all those things take a lot of time. Even your storage fees, all that stuff really just starts compounding. So we will need to raise more money. I'm assuming probably the goal with our million dollar round was to buy a good 12 to 15 months and we're on the trajectory to do that. So all of that's good to go the next round. Yeah, Midsummer next year. I think my learnings is so far too is that you need to develop these relationships before you need them. You need to have the conversations before you need to start having them. So actively working through that right now and starting to see those conversations.

31:38
Ryan Raish
And for me to get to that next level it's really locking down the right retail partner. We have a great DTC product, we can ship our products lightweight, we got a two year shelf life. Like all these great things we can Grow our business online with partners like Thrive and Amazon and do all those things. I don't want to be stuck there though. I've sold retail my whole life. Like I want to build this brand in retail. So finding that right retail partner. We're in a handful of discussions with a few of them right now and kind of making that right decision. Do we launch it with our current SKUs? Do we bring them innovation?

32:09
Ryan Raish
Does that tie with a larger fundraising round which listening to numerous of your other episodes as well, it's like those bigger investment rounds come with that retailer because you truly need it. So the focus right now is just staying diligent with our cash that we have and focus and making sure like it's being put to work in the right places to get to that next level and story for sure. I'm excited about innovation. I'm excited about different platforms we're looking at. I don't want to share any of those right now, but we can go a lot of ways. There's some retailers that have brought some ideas forward to us and a lot of this stays within the same space, some of it within the same category, within the same co man. And we can go in any direction, which is super fun.

32:46
Ryan Raish
Not a lot of people can do that.

32:48
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, you can even be on airplanes. I mean, it's so versatile what you're building and exciting. I have full belief that you guys will be taking over the entire category pretty soon. I'd love to pivot over to a Slack case study question. As you know, Startup CPG has the largest Slack community in the industry with now over 40,000 members. I love to pull a question directly from our channel and have you answer it as a case study for any founders that might have a similar question. Today's question is how do you build the confidence to publicly ask for money for your business?

33:21
Ryan Raish
Great question. It was hard to do. I think I mentioned earlier, like asking for capital is very tricky. I didn't go after friends and family because the risk of failure was too much on me. I put most of it on myself. I didn't have trust funds to lean on. Like this was me consulting and doing other jobs and putting all this together at the same time. For me, before I asked for capital, it was all about getting that validation and knowing that I had something that was going to work. And my conversation wasn't, give me a hundred thousand dollars, like invest in this. It was, do you want to join the team as an investor and grow this company with me? I have something that's tangible and ready to go.

34:02
Ryan Raish
And if you believe in me and the product and where we can take this, then, like, this is a good opportunity. I think also, once I was able to establish the right valuation on those early rounds, that made it. It's lucrative for folks to come in and a little less risky. That made it easier, too, to just close the deal. And the right investors knew that, and the ones that passed on us at the time, some of them came back the next round. So for me, it was. I just needed to know I had something that, like, I believed in 100%. It was a product that I would serve my own family and my own kids. And I wanted my investors to know that and to believe in that as well.

34:39
Ryan Raish
And once we had the retailer validation, like, that's when I really got the confidence to say, look, like there's demand for this, and it's not just an idea. Like, I'm ready to go. And it's probably one of the things that when you asked if I could go back, I wish I would have started sooner. I think I held myself back on asking some of that early, too. Honestly, I was nervous about it. It's tricky to do that. Some people are great at it, and I've admired some of them, and I've got some great advice from some of them. But it really turned into some conversations where it was a hard no, like, I didn't do it right, and I learned from those. And now it's just, go for it.

35:11
Ryan Raish
Like, at this point, like, once you feel good about it and the investors feel the momentum and they see what's happening, it makes the conversation a little bit easier. But I think just being very confident in what you have and what you're doing and that, you know, your business, that gave me the confidence to just be, like, you in or you out, because we're really doing this now.

35:30
Hannah Dittman
I think that was so real and well said. Ryan and I have a lot of empathy, and I'm sure a lot of people listening do, too. I think that's a hurdle that every founder comes across, and I think it's kind of one of those things you're like, okay, do I sell you a ticket to the plane that I think I'm gonna build? Do I sell you the ticket to the plane that's sitting on the ground? And it's like, it's a lot easier to sell a ticket when you know the plane is already flying and you're.

35:54
Ryan Raish
Like, okay, we're taking off.

35:56
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, we'll get you somewhere at least.

35:58
Ryan Raish
Yeah, yeah.

35:59
Hannah Dittman
But having the hubris and the ability to get through that to that point, I'm sure is nerve wracking and internal battle that a lot of other founders face too. Well, Ryan, this has been such an amazing chat. You're such a wealth of knowledge. I have a lot of respect for you as a founder and a lot of admiration for what you're building and what you're doing and how you're going about doing it. For any founders or investors that might want to reach out to you, follow along on your journey or get in touch and learn more about Fave, what's the best way for them to do so?

36:27
Hannah Dittman
And second part of my question, do you have any opportunities for anyone that might be interested in joining your team or any advice for any founders that are not yet founders that are thinking about doing so?

36:38
Ryan Raish
Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best bet right now. You can try to reach me Ryan, at Fave Mixes. The email is kind of piling up pretty quickly here, but LinkedIn is definitely the best way to go. You can actually learn quite a bit more about what we're doing. I'm posting stories and learnings and all that kind of stuff on there as well, so you get some insights of where we're at in terms of the team right now. We're probably a good like five to six months from needing some help just with the way everything's structured at the moment. But everyone that's looking for jobs, trust me, I've. You've reached out. I've seen it.

37:09
Ryan Raish
There's the inbound is definitely a real thing and it doesn't hurt to get a resume in the system for sure because we will be building out especially with some authorizations and things we have coming on early next year or later this year. So yeah, reach out well, definitely.

37:23
Hannah Dittman
Everyone follow along. Go grab yourself some fave, you won't be sad to try. It's super good, super nostalgic and huge fan of the product and the brand. So thank you so much Ryan for your time today.

37:34
Ryan Raish
Yeah, really fun opportunity. Thank you.

37:37
Hannah Dittman
Well friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in cpg. And if you love this podcast, you'll love our Slack community even more. Here at Startup cpg, we're a community of brands and experts and you should join. Sign up @startupcpg.com you'll then get an invite to our online Slack community of over 35,000 All Star CPG members. Hear about amazing events near you and all our special opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands and more. It's a free community. So what are you waiting for? I'll catch you on the next episode and I'll see you on the slack.