Noah Friedman: Top Shelf Ventures

Joel Palathinkal chats with Noah Friedman about storytelling's influence on marketing and consumer behavior. Noah shares insights from his career and founding Top Shelf Ventures, focusing on people dynamics in business. They discuss whiskey trends, celebrity partnerships, and local craft beer appeal. Key topics include KPIs for beverage investments, health trends, and Ryan Reynolds' success with Aviation Gin. The episode also explores non-alcoholic beverages, THC, psychedelics, food science innovations, AI in healthcare, and alcohol industry regulations. Noah offers advice for emerging fund managers and shares final thoughts.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Sure.

(00:00):
The reality of this game, just like anything inmarketing, is it's about what does the customer
feel when they drink it and buy it.
Right?
What does it make them feel?
And a lot of that is storytelling.
It's a marketing exercise.
Welcome to The Investor, a podcast where I,Joel Palafinkel, your host, dives deep into the
minds of the world's most influentialinstitutional investors.

(00:24):
In each episode, we sit down with an investorto hear about their journeys and how global
markets are driving capital allocation.
So join us on this journey as we explore theseinsights.
Cool.
So we're live excited for this weekly episode.
I was out of the country last week, so excitedto kinda get back into this.

(00:47):
But I'm here with a really good friend, NoahNoah Friedman, and he's at Top Shelf Ventures.
So, you know, they focus on everythingbeverage, and he also runs an amazing community
called Uncharted.
Excited to go into detail into those twothings, but then just learn a little more about
your early life, your career, how you got intoinvesting and how you got into the beverage

(01:08):
space.
Why don't we start there?
Number one, welcome to the show.
Thanks for coming.
Thanks for being generous with your time toshare information about you and what you're
building.
But yeah, why don't we kind of just kick thingsoff and learn a little more about your early
career?
What did you study in your early days and kindof how you got into where you are now?

(01:31):
Yeah.
Well, thanks for having me again, Joel.
It's really cool to be here and I've seen theshow, cool to be on it as well.
And welcome back from vacation.
It sounds like it was epic, so I'm sureeveryone's happy to have you back.
Here's the short version of the story, and I'mhappy to dig into as much of this or as little
of this as you want to, but like you said, Irun Top Shelf.
I started it with my partner a few years ago.

(01:51):
I also run Uncharted, which is a founder andinvestor community with Michael Loeb.
Michael Loeb was an influential, still is aninfluential person in my sort of career
upbringing, if you will.
I was a aspiring, super ambitiousentrepreneurial type when I was in school.
I grew up in New York City and went to collegeundergrad at Boston University.
BU did not breed entrepreneurs, so I was, Iwould say, a bit different than most of other

(02:15):
people who were on the consulting or accountingtrack, And I was just hustling, frankly.
Mhmm.
I was fortunate enough to get invited to anentrepreneurial boot camp type thing that
happened over my spring break when I was asophomore.
The sponsor of that happened to be MichaelLoeb.
I looked up his career path and was like, thatguy's doing what I wanna do when I'm older.
And I was lucky enough to shake his hand andjust have a very brief exchange with him that

(02:38):
led to me having a meeting with him that led tohim saying, why don't you intern for me?
This is before they built out what is now aphenomenal internship program at Michael's
family office, but that was before all that.
And by the end of that summer, we were veryclose, kind of trading emails daily, if not
more frequently.
I was getting to work on deals that I had nobusiness working on when I was 16 or 17, and

(03:01):
fast forward, I ended up working very closelywith Michael throughout the rest of my junior
and senior years across his business, a numberof his deals on the investment side, operations
within his portfolio companies, just gettingthrown into the deep end of venture private
equity and the like, and by the time Igraduated, we were both close enough, he'd

(03:21):
built up enough trust, and I'd kind of built upenough of a track record and internal
confidence and skill set to, I would say,graduate into more of a junior executive role
out of school, helped them build and start acompany that just happened to be in the alcohol
space, in the booze business.
I knew nothing about the alcohol business otherthan being a somewhat active social person in

(03:41):
college, so drinking some alcohol in college, Ididn't know anything about the business side of
it, And I was fascinated getting deep into thisbusiness by not only how powerful and
ubiquitous it was, but also the history andjust, it felt like this beast of a business
that was right under everyone's nose thatnobody was talking about.
And so by nature of having to be the eventualCOO of this company, which I was when I was 24,

(04:03):
I had to learn everything and anything aboutthe booze business, and in doing that, like I
said, I got very close with a lot of verypowerful stakeholders within the alcohol
business, and more importantly, learned a lotof the nuances of how the business works, and
I'll cut to the chase of how it led to TopShelf, but after several years of helping build
that company, which ended up processing tens ofbillions of dollars of receipt level

(04:24):
transaction data from stores across thecountry, which in other words was showing us
exactly how consumers were buying booze overtime, what brands they were buying.
I started to see these stories play out ofbrand X launches in New York or Connecticut or
Michigan, what have you, and I saw their deckbecause I was in the scene, I was seeing how
these companies were raising capital, Most ofthem were raising money from friends or family.

(04:46):
Mhmm.
After a couple years, we'd see them start topop up in the data, sometimes even a couple
months, and they were going from raising moneyat very reasonable valuations to all of a
sudden, these brands were blowing up andcrushing it, and I just continued to see this
story play out of good fundamental businesseswhere number one, was seeing their data, number
two, they were growing quickly, and numberthree, they didn't have access to really good

(05:07):
strategic capital.
I had gotten pretty good at connecting brandswith the right people throughout the industry
just because I was in The States.
I was almost playing VC board member for brandsI was advising without even realizing it,
saying, oh, you're crushing it in this state.
You need to be in this state.
I know the retailer there.
You guys should chat, the whole nine yards.
I ended up beating my business partner, JasonSherman, who at the time was running AB InBev's

(05:29):
venture arm.
We got close over the next few years.
He built and sold his own tech company, andafter a while, we kind of both arrived at the
same conclusion that booze and really broadervice and highly regulated industries are a
remarkably lucrative, profitable anddramatically underserved asset class when it

(05:50):
comes to institutional capital.
Mhmm.
And we had the right skill sets, teams,personalities, all that to come together and
build something special.
And so in sort of mid twenty twenty one, we putour heads together and said, would it look like
to start a fund?
And we ended up doing a first close of topshelf in mid twenty twenty two.
So tell me about some of the learnings justreflecting back, you know, being a young

(06:10):
executive, right, being a COO at, you know, theage of, I think you said 24.
What were some of the biggest learnings justlooking back?
Because I mean, makes you grow up really fast,Most people that are a COO are probably in
their late 40s or 50s, depending on the type ofstartup that you join or established
conglomerate, especially the especially in thebeverage space, right?

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So what were some of the biggest learnings?
And then I think because I'm a data nerd myselfcoming from FinTech, what are some of the
learnings that you're allowed to share aboutlooking at the spend data, like the consumer
behavior?
Yeah.
Because I like to nerd out on that kind ofstuff, I'm sure there's people in the audience
that do too.
Totally.
Well, I'll start with the first question, whichwas what were some of the biggest learnings?
A total 180 and ridiculously steep learningcurve, not only learning how to actually run a

(07:00):
business and all the nuances of accounting andbookkeeping and all the things that you need to
do to run a tight ship properly, also scrapingour knees a million times on what it looks like
to both forecast revenue accurately, handleclient services, customer service, all the
things that go into making machine runproperly.
I'm very grateful that I had an opportunity toscrape my knees, get things wrong, course
correct, have good mentors around me that kindof showed me the ropes and just get to fail and

(07:24):
learn by doing, which eventually led me tohaving some semblance of how these things are
supposed to go.
Mhmm.
I think the people dynamics are remarkablyimportant in big organizations and small
organizations, startups.
I mean, talk about this a lot, but business atits core, certainly on the sales and marketing
side, but really even internally, it's so muchabout a people game, right?

(07:44):
It's so much about understanding what motivatespeople, whether that's the customer that you're
selling to or the internal team that you'retrying to keep and hold accountable.
The art of dealing with and motivating peopleis in parts, it's science and in other parts,
it's art, right?
Understanding what it is that says, all right,look, we are scaling this team, we are scaling
this business, the business is growing, there'sa whole bunch of fires happening at once.

(08:07):
What is the right way to skin the cat that cansolve for putting butts in seats that can do
the work necessary, paying a reasonable amountto keep them motivated, but also giving them
the right incentive plan to work even harder,not paying so much that you're underwater?
All those things are just like you kinda youcan read as many textbooks as you want and
watch as many podcasts as you want, but a lotof it is just like you kinda have to just see

(08:28):
it live.
Right?
Because there's a big difference betweenreading or watching a case study of, you know,
NVIDIA and how they hire people versus like,alright, I actually have a problem in the
business that I am responsible and accountableto the board for, and I need to solve that
thing with a human being unless I'm gonna justdo it myself, which at a certain point is
impossible.
How do I do that?
And it sounds easy and it sounds simple, and wecan go through a million at the different

(08:52):
hiring plans and incentive plans and put OKRsin place and hold them accountable and do check
ins and all that, but a lot of it is just likeyou gotta learn who people are, what motivates
them, how to deal with them, right?
So a
big part of it for me was learning how bothwith external clients and all the stakeholders
that we were doing business with, whether thatwas Diageo and Mohit Hennessey and really big
executives of publicly traded companies, orvery junior hires right out of school that

(09:16):
reported into me that I had to hold accountablebut also show the ropes.
It's just a really steep learning curve ofunderstanding the nuances of how people But at
the end of the day, business is people, right?
Especially once you get into the highest levelsof making decisions and allocating capital,
raising money, doing deals, so much of that isabout really looking people in the figurative

(09:37):
eye, understanding what motivates them,understanding what it's gonna take to get them.
It's negotiation, it's motivation, it's people.
And so I would say all of that went fromlearning it in a classroom to learning it on
the fly and doing it on a fairly big stageearly, and I'm grateful for it.
In terms of the data, your second question onthe booze side, it's an interesting one.

(09:58):
Anybody who understands CPG will follow alongwith the metrics I'm about to throw out, but
I'll give the very brief overview.
When you're looking at retail sales data, whenit comes to a product and how it sells through
a store, there's kind of a few key metrics thatare baseline for any brand to want to

(10:19):
understand and kind of need to have.
And in no particular order, that's like rate ofsale, sales through accounts, velocity, store
reorder rate.
And then there's some more nuance things likeadjacencies, what are you selling with, how
much do discounts affect things.
There's things like when you run a tasting inthe store, what's the lift generated by the
tasting, how much do you sell, how doesseasonality affect things.

(10:40):
And so all those kind of blend together and ifyou're sort of just a fairly sophisticated,
either analyst of data or in the business whereyou're an aggregator and analyzer and provider
of that data, you start to get a pretty goodsense for how all these things fit together.
There's a whole bunch more sophisticated thingsthat we don't have to go into at this point,
but the thing that was most powerful wasunderstanding how to benchmark both different

(11:02):
product categories and different brands tounderstand relative strength of each brand,
right?
I always give, I'm not gonna name the brandjust because I know this is live and I wanna
make sure I don't step on any wider but therewere many examples of, as we got into the, as
we were doing this, tequila was super hot,right?
Tequila was having its moment, around the sametime the business started to really pick up
steam was when Cluny sold Casamigos for abillion dollars, and so tequila, this broader

(11:27):
category became very much in the zeitgeist, andcertainly in the booze sector, everybody wanted
to know what's happening with tequila, and sojust using that as an example, we started to
get very clear and specific benchmarks likeokay, what does generally the category of
tequila look like in terms of how it moves tothe channel?
What does sales look like?
How often do stores reorder?
How many SKUs do they wanna carry?

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And then you start to get more nuanced of like,okay, on a brand by brand level, who sets the
ceiling and who's at the floor, right?
So if Casamigos is X, how are different brandsbenchmarking compared to Casamigos or Don Julio
or Patron or Acuerbo and how have those changedover time?
And you can start to weave the story as youtrack the data of like how have these brands
evolved over time and what's happening on astore by store, market by market, county by

(12:12):
county basis, what have you.
And so the thing, to bring this all fullcircle, that got me most excited about Top
Shelf and started trying to be an investor inthese brands, is we would start to see stories
of brands that were launching in local marketsthat were small boutique startup companies that

(12:32):
had very low budgets, certainly zero budgetcompared to Diageo, Pernod Riccardo, and
Hennessy, etcetera, that were in a local storeoutselling on a normalized basis some of these
big multi hundred million dollar brands.
So you start to do the math of like, what doesthat actually mean?
If you can actually trace back to let's justsay 15 stores in Connecticut and see how a new

(12:54):
product is outselling a national brand thateverybody's heard of in those stores, why is
that happening and what does it mean, right?
Is it because they're spending crazy money?
Probably not because they probably don't haveit.
Probably, if you really peel back the layersand go deep and do the right diligence, it can
and often does if you're lucky and if you finda diamond in the rough indicate that there is

(13:15):
something very unique and special about thatbrand and the way that it resonates with
consumers, right?
And so I started to see of 100, for example,new brand launches, you could find maybe one
out of 100, two out of 100, three out of 100that had these disproportionately high
velocities and retentions in their localmarket, right, which I always refer to this as
the bucket of like most brands launch and theyhave a leaky bucket.

(13:38):
They can get it on shelves but people won'treorder it.
So it's kind of just always like whack a moleof like patching these holes because the
thing's leaking.
Sometimes you find ones that are just reallystrong where they just outperform on this local
basis brands that have much bigger budgets, allthe resources in the world, and you can kind of
do the math as a venture investor, investor ingeneral, or entrepreneur and say, okay, if this

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thing I see here in this local market isoutperforming in this small subset of stores
that have different demographic psychographics,and it's kind of showing me that this brand
really has something, and it's worth $5,000,000at the time, you can zoom out and say, wow,
okay, if that brand goes from 15 stores to1,500 stores, it will certainly be worth more

(14:20):
than $5,000,000 and if it goes into 15,000stores, it will certainly be a lot worth a lot
more than that.
Mhmm.
Start to see how this all came together andyou're okay, I see how this story goes, I see
how these brands launch, I see what bad lookslike, good looks like, decent, great,
unbelievable, and super outlier, and it allkind of came together to say, look, if you can

(14:41):
start to find the real outliers in a marketthat doesn't have a lot of institutional
investors looking to allocate, there's somereal I hate to sound so cliche.
There's some real alpha there.
Mhmm.
So you know?
And then the company that you were supporting,is that was that, like, an analytics company?
Was it, a data retail analytics company?
Cool.
So it was a tech software company.

(15:02):
So that's really interesting.
There's a lot of granular data that you cananalyze.
One thing I'm curious about is just the idea ofperceived value.
So there could be mediocre products that aremarked at like a premium, maybe I'm assuming
and you're gonna verify this because I'm justguessing here.

(15:22):
Maybe because of the perceived story, thepackaging, the people that are behind it, you
know, add maybe a five x multiple on the valueof the product when it really when their peers
are probably, you know, much lower.
So I guess, is that accurate?
How do these brands improve the value?

(15:46):
And then I have a follow-up question afterthat.
I guess, if you're a new brand, you break out,you just decide to say, look, I wanna be a
luxury high end vodka brand.
How can I help people understand the value?
Yeah, it's a good question.
I have a couple answers.
There are unequivocally very different waysthat you can make alcohol and you can make any

(16:11):
luxury product, and there is certainly a bigspectrum in terms of the quality of
manufacturing that exists, right?
I'm gonna use the same example of luxuryfashion because I think that's a good example,
something everyone can get their heads aroundis like an LVMH sweater or LVMH handbag.
Objectively, it's probably better quality thansomething that sells for a hundred bucks,

(16:34):
right? Is
Is probably made with better leather, etcetera,than something that sells for less.
But the margin comes from the brand, right?
Why they can get away with charging that much.
It's the same with any luxury premium item.
It is all a spectrum to your point of perceivedvalue.
And so the truth in this is that a lot of thebrands you see on shelves in booze stores come

(17:00):
from similar types of background of where theproduct's being made, right?
There are massive manufacturers that makesimilar, it's honestly the same in automobiles
too, right?
Yeah.
Like
luxury, Honda and Lexus are very similar, orToyota and Lexus are very similar, it's just
about the perceived value and how it'smarketed.
Yeah.
There's definitely a spectrum of how good thebooze is and it generally tends to map to how

(17:22):
expensive it is.
Sure.
But the reality of this game, just likeanything in marketing, is it's about what does
the customer feel when they drink it and buyit, right?
What does it make them feel?
And a lot of that is storytelling.
It's a marketing exercise, right?
So there's definitely better quality things andpremium products will have higher quality goods
in them, but the spectrum of, you know, ahundred $50 bottle of tequila versus 50 versus

(17:47):
20, you know, you're gonna it should go in thatorder, but it doesn't always in terms
of Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, what I learned from some of our commonfriends, right, in New York is, you know, I I
heard some of these bigger brands like JimBeam, there's an underlying, I guess,
distiller, I guess, maybe you can unpack theindustry little better.
But from my understanding, there's like a lot,there's like a couple of big distiller players.

(18:09):
And then they partner with like Metallica orsomething and say, hey, Metallica is going to
launch their own whiskey.
But at the end, it's just maybe an iteration ofJim Beam at the end of the day.
So I think there's probably a business forthese distillers to kind of leverage their
manufacturing for like brands to kind of breakout and launch.
So can you talk about that industry a littlebit?
Because I know there's a lot of celebritiesthat have brands.

(18:32):
So maybe you can talk about Casamigos as oneexample, and then just kind of the whole the
whiskey industry as well.
Yeah.
Whiskey's a classic one, right?
Yeah.
Making very good whiskey is not easy.
There is a massive manufacturer and distillercalled MGP that is behind many of the whiskey
brands you see on shelves.
And if you are a celebrity or person who wantsto start their own whiskey brand, the general

(18:56):
strategy is to say, where are we going to tryto compete?
Are we gonna try to compete on havingobjectively a very differentiated liquid
because we're gonna distill it and age it in acertain way that no one else can compete with,
and it's different.
And we can tell a real story about why ours isdifferent for whiskey nerds, where whiskey
nerds are gonna understand, wow, Joel's the wayhe's doing this is distinctly different.

(19:17):
Sure.
You're gonna say, my advantage is in my routeto market and my ability to get people to buy
it off the shelves, which is generally wherepeople who launch alcohol brands think they can
win.
Right?
Yeah.
They have no idea.
Most people who launch in you know, GeorgeClooney was not actually in the agave fields.
Pete Diddy was not actually like harvesting anddoing all like, they're good at marketing.

(19:37):
That's what they do, respond to the noise.
Sure.
And so the question becomes where are gonna tryto compete?
So in the example of whiskey, most of the time,80% of the time, someone's looking to launch a
new whiskey, the easiest path to getting tomarket is gonna be to buy and rebottle MGP,
distill it and use their product because theyhave an engine that is designed to get you to

(19:59):
the starting line where you say, all right, MGPis gonna give us the juice, we're gonna put it
in this bottle, and Paul's gonna market it, andhe's gonna handle getting it to distributors
and getting it to retailers and gettingcustomers most importantly to buy it.
That's generally how these things tend to workmost and certainly startups are gonna be co
packed.
It's pretty rare that someone like, it's justexpensive, right?
Like if you wanna go to vineyard and start awine company, we could call five people and

(20:23):
have samples ready to be bought, bottled andsold tomorrow.
Like, we could have samples on your desktomorrow.
If we
want So they just buy, like, the liquidwholesale and then they just partner with a a
bottle creator that just designs their own logoand then they they just I guess the MGP is
happy because they just get a huge bulk order.
Yeah.
And they they probably get some additional dothey request, a revenue share or something like

(20:47):
that?
Or how does how does
it They usually sell it directly.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, to to be clear, though, this is notthis is very different from anything that
happens in most venture or private equitybacked businesses.
Yeah.
90% of the AI market is wrappers on top ofChatGPT.
ChatGPT, They all flow back to a couplecompanies that have accrued tremendous value in

(21:08):
Nvidia, ChatGPT, etcetera, where it's like thequestion is not, can someone find booze that
tastes good?
I think anybody can figure out what booze isgonna taste.
The question is how do you get it onto people'shome bars into their hands to get them to pick
it off the shelf?
That's the art, that's the science, that's thebrand.
And you see in the booze business, like themost wealth and the most money generally

(21:31):
accrues to those that are best at doing thatexact thing of saying, how do I get Joel in New
York to say, I'm a tequila fan, I'm gonna drinkCasamigos, right?
That is the art because that's where the marginis, right?
Sure.
So that's why Cludi made a billion and Diageospent hundreds of millions, billion to buy it
and why people spend lots of money onCasamigos, right?

(21:53):
The people who make Casamigos have donephenomenally well too, but the most wealth
accrual often, not always, but often tends tobe in those who are the best in getting that
brand.
That's why brands are so powerful.
Yeah.
And then what are some of the trends thatyou've been seeing with just the local brands?
I'm assuming even for me, right?
There's a bodega that's down the block for me.

(22:15):
And they have all these cool different craftbeers.
They get like 100 different cans and like thedesigns of the can sometimes kind of grab my
attention.
And I don't really care how much I'm assumingit tastes good, but I'll just kind of read the
packaging and kind of look at the design of thecan.
And I'm like, oh, I haven't tried this before.
It's a beer that's got some chocolate hints toit.

(22:36):
So I'm like, Oh, let me try it out.
And I'll try like a couple different ones.
And I kind of like the novelty of it just beinga different brand.
If there's some story behind it, like, Hey,there's a local brewer from Long Island City,
right?
I'm in Midtown East.
It's like, hey, this brewer is like rightacross the river.
Maybe you just kind of want to support thelocal entrepreneur.

(22:57):
But is that kind of the case?
Like what's causing like the virality or justkind of these products flying off the shelf in
the local markets?
And were you saying also the local marketsoutside of The US or is it like hyper local
markets in like Michigan and New York andJersey that you're seeing kind of fly off the
shelves more?
Yeah.
We don't know the international market nearlyas well as we know The US market.

(23:20):
Yeah.
Their strong suit.
There's a funny thing in the brand world whereit's just like any brand that's really popped
and crushed it, there is this je ne sais quoilightning in a bottle factor of just like, you
can reverse engineer and Monday morningquarterback all you want, all the things that
went right.
But oftentimes it is just like the perfectstorm happened at the perfect time.

(23:43):
It's why generally we're not in the business oftrying to start our own brands.
We're in the business of finding brands thatare working, buying large shares of the
business and helping them grow faster.
Because the reality is the zero to one gettingJoel to pick that bottle off the shelf versus
others is a remarkably difficult thing to do.
It takes the right combination of liquidmargin, execution, packaging, timing, what

(24:07):
market are you in, what subcategory did youchoose to go in, timing, all those things have
to kind of align perfectly for something topop.
I'll give you an example.
One of the gems in our portfolio is a premiumbox wine brand called Grazi.
And Steven, who's the founder, who is acertified pillar and an amazing operator, he is

(24:27):
not the first to think of the notion that itwould be really powerful to get customers to,
instead of spending $20 on a three liter box ofwine, spend $40 or $50 That's not a Steven
idea.
That idea's been tried before, and it's beenfailed many times.
Most brands have failed to launch, and Stevenran a phenomenal playbook.

(24:48):
He executed well.
He put a good package together.
He put great product together.
He launched it in the right markets.
He has a great team, and it just worked.
It is just absolutely blown up, and it is sortof inarguably the market leader in the premium
boxed wine segment and has kind of created anew category and re proved to the world that
customers are willing to spend real money onpremium boxed wine.

(25:08):
Now, if I had gone back, and honestly many aretrying to sort of steal the playbook and run
it, which I think is good for the category tobe clear, if I'd gone back and started Grazi at
the same time with the same concept with adifferent brand, I don't know that it would've
worked just as well.
Like, if could hit at the right time, and youknow, Credits just made it all hit the right

(25:29):
way.
So I think with any brand that really pops, youcan look at a Supreme, you can look at a kit,
you can look at all these things that crush instreetwear or anything, they just hit in the
right way and there's this resonance withconsumers that the best marketers, branders,
operators, strategists will just figure out andonce they catch the lightning, they blow it up.

(25:51):
So that finding and blowing up is the businessthat we're in.
We're in the business of looking for thatlightning and exploding it rather than spark it
ourselves, because we have kind of learned thatthat's better left to phenomenal entrepreneurs
who just have the vision for what these thingsshould be.
Yeah.
It's hard.
So as an investor, what are some of the KPIsthat you look for?

(26:14):
I'm assuming, obviously, it's capitalintensive, right?
So they need to have the supply chain, thelogistics.
They have to have the inventory.
Yeah.
So I guess what are some of the watch pointsthat you're careful about when you're kind of
diligencing these kind of investments?
Velocity and reorder rate tend to be the twomost important metrics for us.
Everything else kind of falls back from that.

(26:35):
I mean, we're obviously paying attention towhat category they're in, how strong the
founder is, but that kind of goes withoutsaying.
I think as a fundamental lever that we'relooking to see these brands pull, it is having
a deep understanding and proof point around thefact that their particular brand has
disproportionately high velocity compared toits category competitors and just what the

(26:58):
market dynamics are.
In no uncertain terms, that usually meansmeasuring and monitoring how quickly they're
selling through the points of distribution thatthey're in, what does the average look like,
what do the high points look like, what leverscan they pull to increase it, and how often are
those stores reordering.
Very easy to describe, remarkably hard to dowell.
Right?
Like, ask any CPG founder how hard it is togenerate sort of best in class top decile

(27:22):
velocity, and they're gonna, they'll talk yourear off for days because it is it is the hero
metric.
Right?
And the reason for that is that if you havehigh velocity and high retention, you can
generally solve for everything else.
Right?
If you put a product in store and it is justmoving off the shelf, you can solve for
optimizing supply chain.
You could have better operators come in andprofessionalize the operation.
You can fix all the things that may be tougher.

(27:43):
You can put it into more stores.
But if you have big distribution and lowvelocity, that's generally a tougher thing to
solve for.
Right?
That generally means an issue with the product.
Right?
It's the same in any consumer app, any b to bSaaS product.
If you've got incredible revenue as a baseline,but the churn is off the charts, probably short

(28:04):
that business.
Right?
Just because it means you're always gonna havea leaking bucket that you're always working to
refill.
The best business is achieve lift, and that'skinda what we're looking for is that lift is
Sure.
Velocity retention and efficiency.
Yeah.
No.
That's helpful.
So about maybe ten years ago, I feel likeMcDonald's started having, like, health forward
kinda menus.
Right?
So you got, like, salads and and I'm justguessing.

(28:26):
I'm assuming it's around, like, ten years ago.
Right?
2014 maybe.
But, you know, you know, and I'm assuming it'sjust to kind of cater to just the market
looking more health conscious.
So I normally do hard seltzer these days.
Right?
I don't do too much scotch unless I go back toJersey and I'm hanging out with all my family.
And, you know, they do you know, our ourcommunity, we do a lot of whiskey and scotch.

(28:47):
Right?
So I do it on occasion.
But I'm I'm wondering, are you seeing anytrends gearing in that direction where there's,
you know, maybe younger people that are kindamore into fitness?
And why don't they have a protein infused vodkaso you can jacked and still get a buzz?
I've seen a couple of those protein infuseddrinks.

(29:09):
They have them.
Okay.
I think they're out there.
I don't know, man.
To me, it's, I'm hard pressed to believe thatafter workout, the first thing I want is a
vodka, but I guess if the workout's hardenough, you never know.
Yeah, I think the health trend is real.
I think people are optimizing.
I am generally of the mind that a lot of theattention and hype that is going to this sober

(29:33):
curious movement is overstated at a moment intime.
I think there's very clear evidence of manythings related to health and how these things
go and how people behave being cyclical andbeing hype cycles.
It's not to say that they don't have merit andlongevity in them, but I think that consumers
have proven certainly during and on the postpeak and post COVID that people like novelty,

(29:59):
people like to try new things, and people tendto go back to the norm of how they behave for
thousands of years.
So there are certainly nuanced and moment intime evolutions towards health and health
conscious people, etcetera.
I have a strong sense and feeling that it's allgonna come back to the norm and the
equilibrium, But we'll see.

(30:22):
We'll see.
Yeah.
I mean, I you're I mean, I I think the samething with food.
I mean, there's if there's a wing and tacojoint, you know, that's still people are still
gonna be around the corner just trying to getsome wings and Shake Shack is always right?
I mean, and that's all fried food.
So I think people still want to try good food.
They probably try to balance it out.

(30:44):
But yeah, mean, I just personally, I just kindof like lighter drinks.
I just feel like it's less sugary.
Yeah, me too.
I do enjoy a nice scotch.
We're good company, good friends and stuff.
Then when you're looking at your investmentfocus, are there certain categories that you
like in the beverage space?

(31:04):
Are you pretty just agnostic and you just lookat of those same KPIs you mentioned?
Quantitative first, so pretty agnostic.
There's obviously moments in time based on thecycles where certain categories feel too
crowded and others feel remarkably attractive.
I think tequila is very crowded right now.
Yeah.
It's really hard for me to see a tequila brandand see a path for them to be capital efficient

(31:27):
to get to scale.
You almost have to assume they're just gonnaneed to raise crazy money and run a really
aggressive playbook to compete.
And even then, there's just so much money inthe space.
So it depends on what the nature of thecategory is.
I think boxed wine is interesting right now.
I think rum is interesting right now.
I think vodka's got room.
There's plenty in RTD.

(31:47):
Think prepackaged cocktails.
I think there's a lot of momentum and energyaround how do people actually consume occasion
based.
We just looked at a brand that's doing greentea shots, which is a big category where they
mix peach tops and whiskey and all this stuffand lime juice, and they provided, like, why
not prepackage that and sell it?
I think pickleback shots, I think flavoredwhiskeys.

(32:09):
But the reality, Joel, is that booze iscyclical.
Right?
Fifteen years ago, tequila was nowhere to befound in terms of most popular beverages.
Right?
And all of a sudden, now it is the thing todrink.
Now it's losing a little bit steam.
I have a suspicion rum is gonna have a momentonce consumers realize, hey.
It really isn't any more unhealthy than tequilaor vodka.
Beer has been on the down.

(32:30):
I have very publicly and consistently calledthat beer is in a bottom, and I think it's
gonna come back up.
I can already start to see evidence of that, sothe whole thing is cyclical, and I'm in the
business of just timing the runs in in anydirection.
So what what about, like, you know, what whatare your thoughts on just Ryan Reynolds and the
whole aviation gin thing?
I guess, what are your thoughts on gin as awhole?
Are there is there any, you know, ups or downswith with that category?

(32:55):
Yeah.
Mean, look, Ryan Reynolds is a phenomenalmarketer, and he's written a playbook that I
think Benny would be lucky to even execute 10%as well as he has.
So I know the story of the Ryan Reynolds deal.
I actually just wrote a tweet thread about it.
It is a phenomenal, phenomenal story.
They ran an incredible playbook.
People don't really know this, but he didn'tactually start Aviation.
Aviation was a local Oregon distillery that wasdoing decently well.

(33:17):
It was kind of big amongst Pacific NorthwestBartenders and a group of very sophisticated
and smart investors said, We want to dosomething in the gin category.
So they bought a majority share of aviation,paired it with Ryan Reynolds, came in as chief
creative director and co founder, andimmediately afterwards sales started to
explode.
Just took off, yeah.
Just took off, and it's been a hell of a story.

(33:40):
I am very confident that Reynolds will dosomething again in booze.
I expect we'll see that in the next year to twoor three that it comes out whenever his sort of
earn out's over with Diageo.
Ryan Reynolds' team, if you're listening, callme.
We should do it together.
Yeah, it's incredible what they've done.
Gin as a category, I've seen like four or fivegins launch in the last couple years.

(34:04):
They're all interesting ish.
I don't know that the market is that hot forgin right now.
Like I don't know that consumers are beggingfor it in a new way.
I think we might need to see a new wave happenbefore we see a lot of energy there.
But look, it's a huge I mean, that category isbillions a year, so there's clearly room in it.
I I just don't know that that's top of mind forus right now, but there's always gonna be room

(34:27):
in in big spirits categories.
Yeah.
So there's a question here.
What are your thoughts on I think this camefrom LinkedIn.
What are your thoughts on non alcoholicbeverages?
I think you talked about sober curious.
Yeah, mean, I heard a little bit about thatcoming up maybe last year and I haven't really
heard a lot of people talking about being sobercurious.
To your point, I felt like there was a hugetrend.

(34:48):
I gave up liquor I think during Lent orsomething like that.
For me, just a fun social thing that I do in acontrolled environment.
Is that something you'd even invest in as abeverage, like a non alcoholic beverage, or do
you like to just focus on the spirits?
Yeah, couple thoughts.

(35:10):
We have not yet done an investment in a pureplay non alc.
I'm not ruling it out.
I just don't fully understand the market for ityet.
I have a hunch that the ceiling for that marketis much lower and smaller than many people make
it out to be.

(35:30):
Now, I'll draw a distinction.
Beverages that have an effect on people,whether that's hemp derived THC or eventually
psychedelics, things like that, that actuallygive people a feeling, that I'm bullish on,
right?
The hemp derived THC market has had aremarkable run for the last couple of years.
There's some brands doing real revenue and theentire premise there is that people, if they're

(35:52):
looking to do something other than drinking,like it or not, the reality is that people want
something that's gonna make them feelsomething.
Just human nature.
Me, that is inarguable.
If there's a difference between the massiveconsumers and people who have substance abuse
problems, that's not what I'm talking about.
It's a wholly other category here.
Obviously, that has all its own nuances andnothing but respect for that entire world.

(36:15):
That's not what I'm talking about here.
I'm talking about the masses of people who justlike to be social and like to feel escapism and
social.
I think it's a huge part of the humanexperience.
I know it's a huge part of the humanexperience.
So non ALK, in terms of fake tequila orreplacement
tequila Mocktails.

(36:35):
Mocktails.
Like, I think mocktails make sense in onpremise I.
E.
Bars and restaurants for people who can helpwith less.
Yeah.
Whether or not people will continue to spend$15 on something that doesn't make them feel
buzzed, I don't know.
see.
I think it's good for the world if they do.
I just think it's a small market.
Yeah.
But I agree with you, man.
I think that after COVID, there was a wholebunch of energy and attention of people saying,

(37:01):
I'm gonna stop drinking because they drank likefish over COVID.
People really like to, and I understand why, Irespect it, really like to broadcast it.
It's a really easy thing to post on Twitter ortalk It's just like a nice common denominator
thing to publicly broadcast that you're gonnastop drinking.
I've heard a lot about it.
I haven't heard much about it recently.
It feels like people are back to their normsand whether that's good for their health or

(37:24):
not, I think it's good.
I think it means that they're living a wholewell balanced life.
So I'm generally of the mind that all of thistalk about drink less is generally just a proxy
for people in a phase of trying to figure outwhat it looks like to be healthy.
Yeah.
You make a good point.
Mean, there's so many dispensaries now, youknow, in New York and, you know, there's so

(37:45):
many more just, you know, across The US.
Right?
So it's just kind of a more widespreadaccepted, you know, channel right now.
So they've got gummy bears that have THC inthem.
So, you know, that's a sweet thing.
Right?
So I could see some type of, like, fruity shotthat, you know, is infused in that, in the
material, that substance to kinda get you thatfeeling.

(38:06):
What else do you think is kind of the nextgeneration thinking about, hey, the next
iteration?
Because we've got so many cycles, we've got somany beverages that have been in existence.
Like when you kind of think about food science,right?
Like what's kind of the next generation forbeverages?
I think the next big category that's not beer,wine, or spirits is most likely to be THC

(38:30):
infused beverages.
I think cannabis is objectively a massivemarket, which clearly has huge commercial
viability.
The current infrastructure for the commercialrollout has been quite cumbersome, to say the
least.
It's a bit of a cluster, and I think that for anumber of reasons, not the least of which is

(38:51):
the social dynamics, drinking marijuana orcannabis or THC is much more reasonable and
viable as a consumption mechanism than smokingit.
Smoking smells, you can't do it everywhere,it's very stigmatized, it affects other people,
it's like, I just give the example all the timeof like, Joel, if you and I went to have beers

(39:12):
in the city later today and we were like, youknow what, let's have some weed, and we whipped
out a joint, people would be like, woah, whatare you guys doing?
That is very forward, you guys are tooprofessional, you can't just be smoking weed on
the street.
But if you drank it, no one would even know norwould they care, right?
I think that's like a very fundamentaldifference that most are not seeming to grasp

(39:35):
where it's like drinking marijuana or drinkingTHC is not only viable and effective, but it's
becoming more and more available.
So there's an interesting regulatory landscapethat plays out over the course of the next like
three, six, twelve months where this new hempderived market, which I'm happy to talk more
about, we're gonna see where this lands.
If it lands where I think it should, I thinkthe hemp derived THC market's gonna continue to

(39:58):
explode, where you're gonna start to see inevery liquor store that can, you're gonna start
to see sections that are gonna be, it's notgonna be alcohol, it's gonna be cannabis,
right?
So I think that's probably the next big thingto fall, the next big opportunity in the space.
We're looking at it closely and likely to makea big play there.

(40:18):
I'm personally super bullish on psychedelics.
I believe in it.
I think it's really powerful.
I think it can have a profound impact forpeople from both the social and escapism way
and also health.
The benefits, I think, are very real.
The regulatory landscape, I just don'tunderstand it as well.
I think it's a little bit further off.
I'm watching it closely.
I'd like to make a move there.

(40:39):
It's just too far away for me right now tothink about how Top Shelf plays there in the
near term.
But I do think that's gonna have a real placein society as fringy than it is now in the next
five, ten years without Yeah.
I've seen, you know, I've seen trends in justthe investment space because, you know, we have
this fund accelerator.
Right?
So every cohort, we have around 35 funds.
So I had probably two summers ago, I had a waveof psychedelics funds come into our cohort.

(41:05):
Totally.
I've had Nick who runs No Sleep.
He was kind of the only beverage fund in ourcohort.
Then I had a whole wave of climate, right?
So I haven't seen the psychedelics investorskind of come back, at least into our cohort and
then just kind of in the ecosystem as much.
But I do think it's a very sophisticatedindustry.

(41:28):
And it's funny because I got like a coffee withone of the funds that came to New York and he
was just telling me like the just difference inNew York.
Like when you go to a psychedelics conferencein New York, it's literally like a life science
conference.
There's like, you know, very sophisticatedmedical doctors that are kind of talking about
the technology, and then that's completelydifferent from when you go to a conference in

(41:50):
Miami.
You know?
So it's definitely a different, differentinvestor, you know, ecosystem just in terms of
how they look at psychedelics.
But I think if you can kinda change the thematerial science of that into kind of a liquid
form, I think that's even more interesting.
Then I want to go into food science a littlemore.

(42:10):
I've spent some time with Sean O'Sullivan fromSOSV.
They invested in GLIF, which I believe is likesome type of lab grown technology to age the
whiskey.
So what are your thoughts on that in terms ofjust kind of new innovative food science
technologies to kinda create, you know,products without having to deal with time.

(42:31):
Right?
Space and The entrepreneur and geek in me wholoves this type of stuff wants to love
everything about that idea.
Yeah.
And the pragmatist in me who knows how thisindustry really works is unfortunately pretty

(42:51):
bearish.
There was a brand that I think went through YC,sorry, company that went through YC a few years
back that was attempting to do the same thingfor wine, and they built what I understood, I
never got to try it, but I understood it to bephenomenal technology that could take a 1982
Chateauneuf du Pape and recreate it in twoseconds in a lab, and it would taste the same.

(43:14):
Wow.
And that's a pretty cool proposition, But thechallenge with that is that the reason that a
1982 Chateau Neuf du Pape is valuable isbecause it's been aging for forty freaking
years.
That's why it's valuable and because it's thestory.
The consumer of something that is that valuableand rare doesn't care, ironically, they care
about the taste, but they really care about thestory and the narrative and the weight that

(43:35):
they hold in the bottle when they can tell thestory how it's been aged.
And I think the reality for the booze market isthat that's kind of how people behave, right?
So I think like, you know, Cliff is a very coolbrand and I think for them the reality is that
their material science component, just like anybrand has their marketing conceit, main book,
their main lever, for Casamigos it was Cluny,for Petronas, the history, for Bacardi, it's

(43:59):
the ramen.
Fact that like for every brand has their thingthat they lean into.
I think for Glif, it is that thing, right?
That is the thing, like their conceit, theiredge, their advantage is a marketing lever to
say we are made differently.
You should try this.
It's cool.
It's different.
The reality of whether or not people reallycare.
I don't know.
I mean, I would say too, there's the incumbentsthat come into play.

(44:22):
Would say I got two examples.
I mean, if you think about like the healthcareindustry, there's been technology out there
that can completely replace radiologists.
What do radiologists do?
They look at like a X-ray, and they see ifthere's spots on the X-ray, and that tells you
if you have cancer.
So now with AI and technology, there'splatforms that can completely do that.
I mean, they could also just be a greatcompanion to the radiologist.

(44:46):
They could also now give recommendations onlike the treatment.
But is the medical system going to forego allof those billable opportunities just for the
sake of just seamlessness and kind ofautomation?
Probably You know?
Maybe.
But but I think the big difference with thatone, though, Joel, is that that like, for me to

(45:09):
go get an x-ray or a scan and wanna knowwhether or not I have a risk of having anything
serious, that is solving a very specificproblem to me that is that's very core to me
and what I care about, right?
That is an issue.
Yeah.
Problem.
Sure.
In no uncertain terms of things, here's thescan, danger or no?
That's all I Do I have danger or do I need toknow about it, right?

(45:29):
I need to know about it if it's there.
Whether a doctor does that for me or an AI, aslong as I trust the outcome, it's kind of the
same.
Yeah.
Escapism is different, right?
Like you don't need to have a glass of winewith my friends.
To a certain extent, it tastes good, it's allit is, but like if you're an actual connoisseur
of these things, the artisanship matters,right?
That's
true because the problem that the booze issolving for you that you raise is like, I have

(45:53):
engagement and a desire to escape and connectwith this emotional experience of drinking this
thing.
And so the background of that matters.
Right?
How I got it, how it came to be thestorytelling.
Right?
This is this is more of a humanistic thingversus an acute problem Yeah.
I could solve.
You know what I mean?
I think that's a That's a good news.
But but, you know, I eat from the from theregulatory standpoint, aren't there these kind

(46:16):
of dinosaurs, like the liquor incumbents thatare trying to kinda control?
Like, I mean, it's not just like when you thinkabout like Purdue chicken, right?
It doesn't make sense.
You know, I'm sure Purdue and a lot of theselegacy chicken companies and even the energy
industry, the oil industry is not going to bealways promoting probably clean energy, right?
And same thing with like Purdue chicken, right?

(46:37):
If there's ways to lab grown chicken, it isprobably a great acquisition for Purdue, right?
So I'm just assuming, maybe you can unpack kindof the regulatory landscape with whiskey versus
kind of tequila.
And David Tao walked me through this a whileback and I forgot kind of how it works, but it
might be kind of interesting for the audienceto just kind of understand the legality of it.

(46:59):
I mean, can't just go out and create moonshine.
So what's kind of like the regulatory thingsyou gotta think about if you are a founder
trying to build a brand?
Yeah.
The booze business has a pretty complicated andoften misunderstood regulatory framework that

(47:19):
dates back to prohibition.
I'll give the very simple overview.
And if we wanna go more into the whiskey stuff,honestly, we should have David Tau on because
he's the master.
David Tau or Nate Ganna, these guys know asmuch as anybody about how all this works, but
I'll give the very simple version.
After prohibition, a series of state andfederal laws were put into place that govern
how alcohol can and cannot be sold.
It's called the three tier system and itmanifests not too differently than most

(47:43):
wholesale businesses where there's a retailer,a distributor, a manufacturer and a consumer,
where manufacturer sells to wholesaler,distributor who sells to retailer, sells to
consumer.
That's not uncommon as a framework for howbusiness is run.
What is uncommon is the fact that there ismandatory channels that it has to flow through.
Meaning at no point, Joel, could I actuallyjust make booze and sell it to you directly as

(48:07):
the customer.
It has to flow through those channels wheredistributors have to touch it and clear it.
Retailers have to touch and clear it, and thenit can get to customers.
So there's licensing and regulatoryrequirements at each step of the value chain
that are by federal and state governing bodiesacross the country, and those are the ones that
control how alcohol flows.
Now, it's not impossible to navigate.

(48:28):
This happens all the time.
There's thousands of alcohol brands that havefigured this out, but unlike if we wanna start
a food brand or a cosmetics brand, there's allsorts of things you have to go through, but
once you're there and licensed, you're kind offree and clear to just throw up a Shopify store
and start selling, right?
You just like that in Boots.
Have to have much more licenses, there's muchmore checks and balances and taxes and all
these things, and a lot of it is a frameworkthat's just been in place and will remain that

(48:52):
way for a while and that is post prohibitionera stuff.
What's the license that you need to have andhow much does that cost?
Like, let's say you wanna start your ownwhiskey brand or, you know, I mean, is it is it
different if you just wanna do a resell andjust kinda, you know, package it and sell
it or?
Correct.
You you can cope for and this is what a lot ofbrands will do.
They'll start by just using the license of thecopacker who manufacture.

(49:14):
The co man has a license to manufacture and tosell it, all the state and national things.
And then they'll often get an import license,but then they sell to the distributor who's
licensed to sell it in each state and then tothe retailer directly.
So the most important thing you generally haveto be aware of is, like, how do you get the
right licenses, etcetera, to get it made,whether that's you making it or often co

(49:35):
packing it, and then getting it to thedistributors directly.
Distributors are usually gonna have all theright license, etcetera.
And then the question is just, like, how do youget it to the shelves?
How much does it cost?
It's usually not that crazy.
You know, it's in the thousands or or orsomething of the sort plus renewals and all
that stuff.
What's more expensive is just, like, you oftenwanna have good lawyers to make sure you're not
violating any laws.

(49:56):
Yeah.
World just because there are a decent amount ofthem, and they're pretty serious.
But it's not, like you know, it's notimpossible to start a booze company.
It's just, like, people where people get caughtand in trouble if they don't understand that
it's different than most things, so they kindof scrape their knees without needing to.
Sure.
No.
That's helpful.
Well, we got about five minutes left.

(50:17):
I wanted to kinda talk about being an emergingfund manager.
And this has been really fun, by the way.
Yeah.
It's great.
I'm just coming off I'm just coming up with allthis off the top of my head, but but, you know,
just fun to just pretend you're having a conyou know, just a friendly conversation.
But, like, you know, just advice and learningsthat you have for new fund managers, maybe an
entrepreneur that wants to kinda start aninvestment firm.

(50:40):
You know, what are just kind of some of thebuilding blocks do you think the think people
should think about coming in from, you know,wanting to do it out to kind of day one, hey,
this is kind of how we're gonna think about ourthesis and then, you know, that path to get
into the first close.
Yeah.
There's a couple parts.
Number one, I think you have to have a veryclear sense of the core whys.

(51:05):
Right?
Why me or why us, meaning you and yourcofounder?
Why this?
Like, why this particular niche or thesis orindustry?
Why now?
And just a broader why that ties all thattogether.
Right?
Like, I I think in a zero interest rate world,we saw a lot of funds launch that launched
because they could, not because they should.
And I think that LPs, I've seen this live, arenow much more skeptical for good reason of

(51:27):
like, okay.
So you're asking me to give you capital forseven to ten years that's tied up, often blind
pool, and you're gonna put it into startups,why are you going to be so remarkably good at
that?
Why do you have disproportioned ability tonegotiate deals or get me into better deals,
protect that capital, and all that.
Most people may not have good answers for that.

(51:50):
Sometimes an answer that was good five yearsago is not as good anymore.
So I think people have to have a good sense ofthe why.
The second is you have to be a goodstoryteller.
Funds, just like companies, so much this isabout projecting a vision and telling a story
that is gonna get people excited.
LPs, brand founders, or company founders totake your money.
All the stakeholders that you wanna do to be avalue add investor, you're gonna have to get

(52:13):
them to believe in you and why you, and you'rereally trying to create a compounding machine.
That's really what a fund is, is say, I'm gonnatake in capital, put it to work, compound the
value of that capital, bring it into theecosystem that can help accelerate things.
And storytelling, you, is important, right, andgetting people to think about it.
I'd say those are the two most important thingsof, like, if you don't if you can't solve for

(52:35):
both of those from the foundation, you probablyhave some more work to do to get there.
Yeah.
But I think storytelling and the whys are gonnabe super important.
Yeah.
I appreciate your packaging that.
That was really helpful, and I'll I'll shareyou know, I don't know if anybody read the the
article from Fred Wilson about recycling, butthat was a great, short piece on just kind of
the concept of that.

(52:55):
So I'll ping that in the comments too because Ithought that was a great piece to think about
when you're kind of thinking about fun too andhopefully do well where you're able to recycle
and redeploy into doubling down on yourwinners.
Any you know, we got two minutes left.
Any other final pieces of advice for, you know,fund managers, people getting into the, you

(53:18):
know, into the spirits industry, or just lifeadvice as a whole Yeah.
As a professional?
I think my biggest life advice right now issurround yourself with people that motivate
you, inspire you and push you to be better.
I think that the idea that like you are theproduct of the people you spend the most time
with gets a lot of airtime.
I still think it's underrated.

(53:39):
Getting yourself into the right room, stayingin the right room, surrounding yourself with
people that level you up is a remarkablypowerful life force and life hack and I implore
everybody who wants to continue to remain in agrowth mindset to try to internalize that.
And the second thing is that outside of TopShelf, I run a business called Uncharted that
hosts and gathers remarkable founders andinvestors, and email me at

(54:04):
[e-mail] if you wanna meet inperson and potentially apply to attend an
Uncharted event.
Amazing.
Well, thank you so much, Noah.
Really appreciate it and
Great to see you as always.
Yeah.
Hope hope to catch up soon in person.
We'll get that beer in the city soon.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Well, I got something tomorrow.
I'll send you a link.
Hopefully, we get get some FaceTime at at somepoint.
So Sounds good, man.

(54:24):
Appreciate you.
Take care.
Yep.
Bye.