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All the ideas of the big companies begin with a problem. For Jo Weinand, the problem was that he loved Nesquik but hated how he made her feel.
“I grew up addict to things,” she says. “But once I started reading tags, I realized that I shouldn’t drink it anymore.”
Trapped inside Canada’s covid confiners, Weinand got bored enough to search Google how to make her own milk. She threw anacardos, cocoa powder, dates and water in her vitamix and waited for something half decent. “I didn’t expect it to work or,” he recalls. But a sip changed everything.
What happened next is a wild start story that combines poker, milk with chocolate, stars energy and a new son of reality show. She breakd down in the last episode of One Day with Jon Beer.
From Vitamix to Vegas
Weinand was already the owner of a restaurant, so he bottled the milk based on anacardos, hit a sticker that said “nut milk”, and put some on the shelf. “I didn’t know what to expect,” she says. “We just print some labels and continue making more lots.”
They exhausted almost immediately.
“The most great thing was to see adult men enter, see chocolate milk on the shelf, turn it on and simply take it,” she says. “And most of them are the typical milk drinkers.”
Other retailers began asking where they were getting the product. That’s when the bulb is lowered. “I thought, that’s fine, we could be here.”
Climbing a new product was a challenge. The shelf life was just a week, and Weinand could not find a copacadero willing to assume them. After a year of dead ends, it was close to giving up.
Then he went to Las Vegas.
About the Brunch, he told some friends about the milk he had been doing. It turned out that they had just launched a risk fund for CPG companies. “I knew them from the poker. I had no idea to do that,” she says.
They invested $ 500,000 to a limit of $ 5 million, just although she had no prototype.
Related: Looking for VC funds? Be sure to have the answers to these 5 questions
Influential power
Weinand’s husband taught him how to play poker, and they would get friends with professionals over the years. One of them was Phil Hellmuth, one of the most important names of the game.
When Weinand told him about Nutcase Milk, they tested some and entered everything, becoming an investor. Then, he said: “You need to talk to Ninja.”
For the uninitiated, Ninja is an icon of games with millions of followers and a personal brand based on clean energy, huge contraction currents and a loyal fan base of generation Z.
Weinand sent him samples. “He tried and said:” I am inside, “he recalls. The two joined the milk with chocolate, the Pokémon and the health.” Hello, I wanted to promote something for which I could feel really good. “
She made it co -founder.
Then Steve Aoki came. Weinand sent the edm icon samples of the new Nutcase strawberry flavor, now a cult favorite. “He tried chocolate and didn’t love him,” she says. “But strawberry? He said:” This is my jam. “
Hey, he also joined the team.
Related: Do not collaborate with any influencer; Here we show you how to make sure you choose the correct
X marks the place
With Ninja and Aoki on board, the opportunities shot, including Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, the appearance of Weinand in a new reality show that is transmitted on the platform.
“It is a docuseries that follow our starting trip, but spectators can invest in the company while the program is transmitted,” explains Weinand. “He is a Like Shark Tank boy meets the apprentice, but with a turn.”
The first episode falls on May 6 in X, with a final in June that culminates in a crowdfunding campaign of capital broadcast live. “We have a live waiting list right now. If you get there, you will have early access.”
The Nutcase team will be the “poster child” of the new series. “They wanted a female founder, a CPG brand, a company directed by the creator, we verified all the boxes.”
Don’t call it luck
If all this sounds too easy, Weinand is fast to say that the story did not start with Ninja, Vegas or a reality show.
“I’ve been doing this for more than a decade,” she says. “This network, this credibility: it was built long before the nut. And there is also a fight in the leg. The beverage industry is difficult. We have made mistakes. We have been drained. Not all are rainbow.”
The difference this time is the team that surrounds it. “The best part of the construction of this business is the people I can know and share this trip,” says Weinand. “The party does not make sense only at the end.”
