Bill Shufelt, founder of Athletic Brewing, successfully raised $225M from top-tier investors. This episode delves into the strategies and challenges.
Bill Shufelt, founder of Athletic Brewing, successfully raised $225M from top-tier investors. This episode delves into the strategies and challenges of securing significant funding for a manufacturing-heavy business, emphasizing disciplined investors and strategic scaling.
as I was 29 I was about to get married I was looking out at the future of my life and things that mattered to me my family my health my career progress I realized alcohol wasn't serving and was probably holding back a lot of those things and the second I put alcohol off to the side it was like the biggest life hack I'd ever [Music] discovered all righty hello hello everyone and welcome to the dealmaker show so today we have a Founder that you know is is is an amazing company I'm a big big fan my fridge is full of uh his beers that him and his team you know have been putting together and and what a remarkable story you know very inspiring you know the way that you know they've thought about scaling manufacturing you know building uh financing I mean all of the above I think that the episode today is going to be very inspiring also the way that they've dealt with all types of economic
cycles that have been coming their way so brace yourself for what's coming what a conversation that we have ahead of us so without further Ado let's welcome our guest today Bill scheld welcome to the show oh thank you so much for having me cheers it's excited to be here thank you for the kind words on our beers also I mean Mega Fun Mega fun so it's gonna be exciting to to chat about it today so Bill tell us H give us a walk through Memory Lane how is life growing up for you in Connecticut you know I had had a great childhood it was uh pretty straightforward a great great family uh great Community a small community um and grew up loving the outdoors loving Sports I was always in motion you know my calendar was always full I did every activity Under the Sun played at a minimum three Sports year round seriously but usually that was six to eight Sports and generally just loved being in
motion playing Outdoors sports but yeah grew up in a town that was like very Finance or oriented we just outside New York City and I left that town basically for college thinking Finance Finance finance and that was kind of the life I was on and why Finance you know was it just because you were just surrounded by a bunch of investment bankers and private equities and and so forth or how did the whole Finance you know idea come to you it it was really almost the default path um you know we definitely we came from a wealthy Town my family was definitely not wealthy we like definitely pretty Thrifty but um you know we had a really nice childhood but a lot of the people I saw doing the best in our town were in finance and so that's kind of what I aspired to was I attributed that to success and um so and also I found finance and investing really intellectually interesting I've always been a
math science person and so I I kind of went to college with that track in mind and then at Middlebury which was a great educational experience and great athletic experience um the companies that came to interview people at Middlebury for the best jobs in my mind were also Finance people so finance companies so it was you know Goldman Leman Morgan Stanley Bank of America everyone so that was definitely the track I was on and did Finance through college 10 years New York City out of that and it was it was a great start to the career I loved sharpening my sword if you will in the financial field so it was a good start well I mean you ended up in 72 you know 72 Steve Cohen you know one of the probably most successful hedge fund guys you know and and one of the top firms I mean now they're obviously doing a bunch of stuff around startups and things like that but how do you end up there and
and what was the experience too of being there because I've also heard that the culture in point72 is quite competitive as well yeah um honestly it's a perfect fit for me I'm I'm an extremely competitive person my default mode is on and like if I'm like I of course I can relax but like my like my favored state of motion is moving and like being on and so it I can't say enough good things about 72 I um so I started in the financial world at night Capital Group which I had a really good professor at Middlebury who like helped me think through what I was actually really interested in finance and I really zoomed in on trading and I loved the concept of trading and like I loved how fastpaced it was and he said like he when I was like interviewing at firms Knight was one of those firms and he actually said he's like I know it's not like the biggest headline firm but that might be an awesome
spot for you to like like learn the craft of trading it's like as pure a trading shop as there was the firms evolved over time but at that point in the early 2000s like it was pure trading NASDAQ like and so it was a great seven years at night and worked with amazing people and then through there I built relationships with people at sa and learned job opening I got my CFA and I started to move up the investment ladder there and 72 was exactly where I wanted to be it was like at the top of the investment process it was high turnover a lot of trading very intellectually challenging and the way Steve built that firm and attracted Talent it was the smartest collection of people I will ever be in a room with the intensity all day was great it was as merit-based an organization as you can so if you show up and you are prepared and you get it done day and day out like it was as Merit based and
opportunity driven as you could ask for so I had a great experience there and um you know it goes right to the person with his name on the door he was in that seat every day and the reason it's known as a competitive environment is because he is literally in the middle of the room eating people for breakfast because he is on and I really respect how he shows up for work every day and drives the organization forward and it's a really talented group of people around so I loved my time there and thought I would never leave so I guess say from a leadership and team building perspective what would be your three biggest takeaways from your time at0 72 yeah so even like so in that 12 years of Finance I I had a I was very fortunate both really good leaders and very mediocre leaders and I learned equally as much from both and uh I did take away that a merit based opportunity driven culture is
probably the most important thing like of course people love the soft nice edges of culture but like at the end of the day there's nothing more fulfilling than like than having opportunity and feeling good about like the work you're driving forward so um I took a lot of those Merit based and opportunity driven elements um is definitely one and then uh especially at both night and 72 so my one of my original bosses at night Capital group uh guy named Joe really believed in my potential and kept like reinforcing that in me and giving me more and more opportunity and that carried through at 72 um with my boss there Jeff who really believed in my potential also and kept encouraging me I've taken that to athletic and given people a ton of opportunity and believed in them and people who run with opportunity cover a lot of ground and Advance really quickly within the walls of athletic also so
then so then tell us two about you know what happened you know with stopping you know drinking you know because two years ago that say basically what happened and how that all I mean you did that for lifestyle reasons but that kind of like triggered this rocket ship that you're writing now so so how did the whole origins of the athletic you know come to mind yeah so in the early 2000s when I was entering the financial field like it was a badge of honor to be hung over to be out and like people are at steak dinners happy hours everything four nights a week and it was a very boozy Wall Street culture and I saw that shifting dramatically towards a very performance culture over the 10 12 years I was in finance and towards the end of that it became as like more aspirational and more respected to like like ask a contact on Wall Street hey rather than like a steak dinner would you want to meet
at Barry's boot camp in the morning or something and um so there was definitely this shift going on and I had a similar shift in my life as I was 29 I was about to get married I was looking out at the future of my life and things mattered to me my family my health my career progress um like some really big bucket items I realized alcohol wasn't serving and was probably holding back a lot of those things and so I put alcohol to the side and of course I was drinking too much from time to time like most people in their 20s do and the second I put alcohol off to the side it was like the biggest life hack I'd ever discovered I was extremely sharp every day at work it was like this virtuous cycle of things in my life better sleep better eating better performance better relationships um and it all just kind of built on itself and like I found myself falling in love with distance running and
like I used to just…