Stolen rum co-founder on scaling consumer products brands in the US
PLUS: Exciting offer for Caffeine readers, Outset Ventures close growth Fund II and hi-tech awards winners announced.
Good morning startup land,
Happy Tuesday!
It is an absolutely stuffed newsey today, including a special offer for Caffeine subs from our friends at Notion, so I will waste no time with waffle at the top and just get into it. Starting with some lessons on scaling from a legend - Jamie Duff.
But as always, keep your stories, subs and updates coming. Got a press release, startup story, resource or founder you’d love to connect with the Caffeine audience? Drop me a line to finn@caffeinedaily.co
Finn and the Caffeine team
Scaling consumer products brands in the US: DTC lessons from Bodewell’s P&G exit and other businesses - Jamie Duff
Jamie Duff (a Kiwi, now living in the US) was the co-founder of Stolen Rum; his second venture, DTC medicated skincare company, Bodewell, was sold to P&G in 2021/2022. Jamie also had a stint at Jack Abraham’s VC fund, Atomic, and has consulted to PE, VC and corporates for growth strategies across marketing, brand and product innovation. Today we are going to share some of his insights and lessons for both early-stage founders & teams, and executives, tackling high growth in the challenging landscape of consumer products.
1. Strategy:
Be clear with asking “why?” - and make sure the customer is at the centre of the why
I’ve too often seen business strategy plans that are either over-complicated, unfit for the stage of the business (e.g. based on traditional big business strategic principles), or that lack salient market and customer insights. For everything you do tactically that costs money & time, you could ask:
What problem are you solving? It might be rational, or emotional
Where are your customers? Not who you think they should be (“personas”), but who they are in reality (data is essential here to answer this)
How will you reach those people?What message will you tell them?
How does all this fit into an overall plan?
You’ll need to create feedback loops for flexibility on your plan - and be prepared to be wrong with your hypotheses. Be obsessed with data.You might be learning, and scaling in parallel
Depending on the stage of the business, you might need to be both testing, and scaling in parallel. This is important to understand, especially insofar as financial KPIs are concerned. You might need to bifurcate test $, and growth $.
Paid subscribers can read the full article here.
Scaling consumer products brands in the US: DTC lessons from Bodewell’s P&G exit and other businesses
Scaling consumer products brands in the US: DTC lessons from Bodewell’s P&G exit and other businesses - Jamie Duff
Outset Ventures Closes $41.5m Growth Fund II: We love to hear some good news on the deep tech front and now Outset Ventures has announced the $41.5m final close of Fund II.
Created to back New Zealand startups working on fundamental scientific and engineering advancements, Fund II saw more than 150 investors from NZ and further abroad.
“New Zealand deep tech founders have always been fixing seemingly possible problems, against all odds. The difference now is we have investment vehicles like Fund II to ensure that these ideas can be supported from the start, and as they scale,” said Outset Ventures’ General Partner, Angus Blair.
“This substantial close, several times larger than our previous fund, is a vote of confidence not only in our portfolio performance to date, but in the depth of technical talent emerging here. Whether it’s in alternative energies, or the new space race, we aren’t flying under the radar anymore. New Zealand is becoming a deeptech hub that competes with global companies tackling the biggest challenges.”
Rocket Lab Founder and Outset alumni Sir Peter Beck added: “Outset began as a garage for tinkerers. Today it’s a 5,000 sqm campus with labs, containment rooms and engineering workshops, and its names Rocket Lab amongst its alumni. Fund II keeps that momentum alive as we support the next generation of superstar startups.”
Before closing, Fund II has already begun investing in a handful of the country’s most important growing companies, from pre-seed to Series A.
The fund’s first five investments – OpenStar Technologies, Ternary Kinetics, E‑Leviate, Zincovery and Kelvius – have already raised close to $70m over their lifetime.
Congratulations to all hi-tech awards winners: I wasn’t at the hi-tech awards on Friday but I hear from reliable sources that the sold out TSB Area hosted an absolute banger of a 30th anniversary celebration. Congratulations to SYOS Aerospace for taking out top prize, to Peter Beck for being named 2025 Flying Kiwi and to MindHIve Global and The Village Goldsmith for taking out two categories.
Few of the winners below but a full list is available here.
PwC Hi-Tech Company of the Year
Winner: SYOS AerospaceNZX Most Innovative Hi-Tech Creative Technology Solution
Winner: The Village GoldsmithBraemac Most Innovative Hi-Tech Manufacturer of the Year
Winner: The Village GoldsmithNZTE Most Innovative Hi-Tech Agritech Solution
Winner: Mindhive GlobalPunakaiki Hi-Tech Start-up Company of the Year
Winner: Mindhive GlobalASX Hi-Tech Emerging Company of the Year
Winner: Projectworks
Highly Commended: Calocurb
Survey Finds most Kiwis fear job loss to AI but are using it anyway: Interest piece over in Herald this morning with a slightly worrying if not unsurprising finding. According to a survey of a thousand Kiwis from market research firm Perceptive on behalf of One NZ showed 65% of respondents feared job losses but 77% were using the tools anyway. There was also a clear difference in age cohorts, with 90 of 18-34 year old’s using AI compared to only 60 in the 55+ cohort. Read the full story here.
Caffeine is excited to partner this month with the team at Notion. We use it to organise our workflow and honestly, it’s the only thing that keeps Finn on task and Georgia sane.
Caffeine’s mission is to connect founders with the tools and resources to succeed and some of the most successful startups in the world are run on Notion.
Better yet, Notion is offering Caffeine readers a full 6 months of Notion business on the house. Once you’ve signed up, read on to hear exactly how one of our favourite startups uses Notion to stay nimble and scale smarter.
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Join startups like Tracksuit, Kami, Halter & Ideally and get:
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How Ideally uses Notion to move fast, stay aligned, and scale smarter
At Ideally, speed and clarity aren’t just nice to have, they’re essential. As a growing startup across multiple time zones, the team needs to make decisions quickly, communicate clearly, and stay deeply connected across product, sales, customer success, and beyond.
That’s where Notion comes in.
Notion isn’t just a workspace - it’s the operating system for how Ideally works, thinks, and shares. From day one, the team embedded it at the core of their workflows, using it as a single source of truth for projects, people, and priorities.
Unlike traditional orgs where knowledge gets siloed and workflows splinter across tools, Ideally brings everything into one place. A new hire can find their onboarding checklist, a PM can update the roadmap, and a salesperson can search for a market insight - all without leaving Notion.
A central source of truth for a fast-growing team
As Ideally scales its team, product, and customer base, the need to keep everyone aligned and informed has only grown. That’s why the company made an early decision to adopt Notion as its central workspace, used across functions for everything from onboarding to product development.
From the beginning, Notion served not only as a tool for organising information but also as a knowledge-sharing culture enabler. With features like powerful search, custom databases, and now Notion AI, the platform plays a key role in how Ideally moves fast without losing track of what matters.
“If I need to check our travel policy or a past roadmap decision, I just type it in and it’s there instantly. It’s like having a personal assistant that never forgets.” - Joshua Nu’u-Steele, Co-Founder & CRO at Ideally.
Check out the full case study below
How Ideally moves fast, stays aligned, and scales smarter
How Ideally uses Notion to move fast, stay aligned, and scale smarter
‘Prompt theory’ AI generated short sends internet into existential spiral: Incase you haven’t had your daily dose of AI nightmare fuel yet, check out this short clip generated completely with Google’s latest AI video generation tool. When a friend first sent this to me I genuinely thought it was a joke and then slowly grew more frightened.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Want to get in touch with a news tip, bit of feedback or just to chat? Email hello@caffeinedaily.co