Read on Twitter
Today @drinkhaus is one year old. What a ride. A huge, heartfelt thanks to all of you who have been a part of the journey so far. <3
Some fun stories from pre-launch and year one:
1) We had the idea for Haus when our daughter was three months old. I had to bring her to most of my first VC pitches, and I got my first "yes" with a baby in my lap. (Thanks @combinevc!)
2) I also managed to meet some of the biggest assholes on the planet while fundraising. Men who are deeply triggered by women with confidence and domain expertise and their main goal is to try and humiliate you for an hour. They're babies. If you ever want names, DM me. :)
3) Gin Lane originally said no to us. This makes sense now, as they were secretly starting @patternbrands. Me, being stubborn, got to work on finding another way in. I eventually got a phone call with @emmettshine while he was walking his dog and convinced him to take us on.
Here's us the day that Gin Lane said yes to us: https://twitter.com/helena/status/1211819368117604352
4) We had exactly zero dollars to give Gin Lane when we signed. We just hoped we could figure it out. That said, as soon as we signed, people started to take us more seriously. We'd manage to raise just enough each month to pay each Gin Lane invoice up until launch.
5) Our original bottle designs were beautiful, but we changed them at the very last minute. Right at deadline, we got word from the decorator that our original bottle designs weren't going to work with the glass we chose.
Coincidentally, I had a dream the night before that our bottles were solid matte white with a large clear logotype. I asked @kelseylim to design it and the decorator approved it. It went into production the next day, just in time for launch.
6) Two nights before launch, our equipment broke and ruined thousands of gallons of our first batch of Haus. We lost abt $20k of product, which felt world-ending at the time. Woody stayed up all night making a new batch + we still managed to get product to customers on time.
7) We managed to find a bug on Shopify that no one will likely ever find again, where we accidentally refunded over 50k to our customers AFTER they received the product. A nightmare.
There was nothing we could do on the backend. The money was gone. So we emailed those customers, one by one, kindly asking them if they'd pay us again. Everyone was cooperative and it ended up being a bit of a bonding experience with our early community.
That's just a few moments. There are more stories that are a little too salacious to share now. I'll save them for further down the road. Long story short, learn to appreciate the good and the bad moments as you build. Both make for good stories later. :)
