Over the years, and especially in the toughest & earliest days of the Athletic Brewing Co. entrepreneurial journey, I took enormous inspiration from entrepreneurs out on the road ahead who have overcome long odds - and one of the main places I heard their stories was on How I Built This with Guy Raz. So, I'm thrilled to share that Guy Raz had me on the podcast recently to share the Athletic Brewing story. Thank you Guy and the HIBT team!
While the show naturally includes the first person "I" in the title, I do want to express huge thanks and gratitude to our Athletic teammates and everyone who's touched this journey so far. It is very much a story of how WE built this. It would have never happened at all without our co-founder John Walker, who is immensely talented and an even better person and collaborator, and so many others.
John and I often reflect with incredulity how amazingly talented so many of our teammates at Athletic are. In many instances, we just had amazing people knock on our door like they were dropped from the universe. From day one, we've been blessed with colleagues who pay little heed to job descriptions and run with any opportunities that present themselves. It's been a learning journey from day 1, and I couldn't imagine a better and more fun group of people to be on it with.
In a one hour episode, it's very tough to do justice to the road behind us, and I feel inclined to thank a few more essential contributors, in a very non-exhaustive list.
I want to shout out our friends at Fair Folk in Boston, especially Jon Casey, Kevin Cimo, and Sam Kelly, who graciously offered to work with us and were formative in helping me find my voice and our brand style. Friends who somehow believed even before we had beer - and then proceeded to star alongside me in our early advertising campaigns.
Also a huge thank you to our board and 66 angel investors who have supported this journey from far less exciting days. They've provided essential advice and counsel along a very wild time to be building and scaling a manufacturing business (Covid, rising interest rates, supply chain emergencies, etc). Thank you Timothy Barakett, Schwefel Harry, Alyssa Ferenz, Dylan Lissette, @Julian Steinberg, Heath Watkin, Justin Whitmore, Caroline Levy, Harrison DiGia.
And a shoutout to our friends at Winstate Sports & Entertainment (Christopher Bayly and team) who have literally traveled with us around the globe to all race finish lines and all sorts of sporting events trying to get beers in the hands of an ever-growing community.
It's fun to tell the first chapters in this format, and we look forward to the road ahead!
