Framework
Incubate-and-install: hand a vetted business to an operator-CEO
Justin Mares's model for new ventures (e.g. Surely non-alcoholic wine): he generates and validates the idea, lines up supply chain and investors, then recruits an operator-CEO who walks into a ready-made company taking equity upside but a salary instead of the usual founder risk.
“I incubated the idea, had everything lined up, validated that it was big, brought investors, uh, and basically was like, hey man, if you want to be a founder and CEO, you can just walk into this role. You take zero healthcare, zero salary risk, uh, and you're, you're good. Like, you're a founder, you have a ton of upside, you're this operating CEO, we have investors lined up, it's a big opportunity.”
Steal thisDe-risk the founder role by incubating and validating the idea yourself, then recruit an operator-CEO to run it for equity plus salary.
Idea
First clean-label non-alcoholic wine brand in a wide-open category
Justin Mares launched Surely after noticing the non-alcoholic boom (Bud Light bought 3 Super Bowl spots, including Bud Zero) had produced good NA beers and spirits but nothing in wine. He built the first clean-label, high-quality non-alcoholic wine brand to fill the gap.
“we saw like a ton of really good non-alcoholic beers, some really good like non-alcoholic spirits options. And nothing in the wine category. And so we decided to build the first clean label, really high quality, nonalcoholic wine brand and wine company hired like real winemaking talent and the like.”
Steal thisWhen a category is booming, find the one product format nobody has built yet and own it as the first clean, high-quality brand.
Fact
Turn $100K and 20 hours/week into $10M of DTC equity value
Shaan does the math on Justin's non-alcoholic wine model: a DTC brand can sell for roughly 1x revenue, so $100K of capital and ~20 hours/week for a year to spin up a $10M-revenue brand effectively converts into ~$10M of equity value.
“A DTC brand like that can sell for like 1x revenue, let's say. So you could turn $100K investment and let's call it even 20 hours a week for a year to spin it up to— you turned $100K into basically, you know, $10 million worth of total equity value in terms of the company in that case. I don't even think it'll take 6 years. I think that's 2 years.”
Steal thisTreat a DTC brand as an equity play: small capital plus part-time effort to a few million in revenue can convert to ~1x-revenue equity value.