Baukunst Backs Waay from Primal Kitchen Co-founder Morgan Zanotti

Last year we invested in a new beverage company that we've been quietly excited about. This week, as they launch nationally in Target, we can finally share the story of how we partnered with Morgan Zanotti to back Waay.

Morgan is one of the most celebrated founders in natural foods. Her first major career milestone was leading marketing at the well-loved kombucha company KeVita. Then in 2015, she co-founded Primal Kitchen alongside Mark Sisson, the original voice of the paleo movement and one of the most influential figures in ancestral health. Their first product, avocado oil mayonnaise, sold out its first 18,000-unit run in a week, and only three years later with no outside capital, Kraft Heinz acquired Primal Kitchen for $200 million. Morgan stayed on as President of Primal for 5 years, stewarding the brand through a remarkably long and successful post-acquisition tenure.

Morgan brings the insights, operational excellence, and network she earned from these ventures to Waay. Primal Kitchen took two and a half years to commercialize its first product; Waay went from finalizing its formula to a national Whole Foods rollout in just six months.

Morgan is our first founder to reach out over TikTok, and we flew down to meet her in LA right away. Although she's an experienced founder, this was her first time raising venture capital, so we settled in for a process of getting to know each other over a few months. In the meantime, we ordered every protein beverage we could find and hosted a protein-tasting day at our studio. They were all chalky and unappetizing-except for the samples from Waay, which had a light texture and reminded us of our favorite soft drinks as a kid.

Waay sits at the intersection of two important trends in women's health. Protein is no longer just a bodybuilder's supplement, especially with GLP-1s putting protein top of mind for every-day Americans, and sparkling water has become the default drink of the millennial generation. Waay combines both trends, with 10 grams of protein, zero sugar, and a juicy sparkle. But how big could Waay get? We took a field trip to Erewhon to investigate.

Browsing the shelves, we saw colors, ingredients, and brand statements that seemed more at home in a medicine cabinet than a refrigerator. The drink aisle seems to be turning into a beauty aisle. Morgan saw that many of these brands aren't positioned for the mass market. While the first samples of Waay we tasted came in unmarked aluminum cans, Morgan aims to capture the market with a friendlier brand-your fizzy little overachiever. It's bright, it's colorful, and it helps you hit your protein targets.

Clear whey protein has been dominant in Europe for years, but the category is just beginning to grow in the United States. In emerging categories, it's all about backing the right founder. Through the process of getting to know Morgan we saw how deep her intuition for this category is, and how the reps she put in at KeVita and Primal Kitchen have turned her into one of the sharpest operators in the CPG.

By the time last summer rolled around, we had a great relationship with one another, and Baukunst led Waay's $3.5M pre-seed round. It's been a joy to get to know Morgan, and she's already become a great contributor to the Baukunst collective, leading a discussion on founder-life balance at our last annual conference.

Waay is now available nationally at Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Target, and online at Amazon. We're proud to be backing Morgan as she builds the defining brand in a category that's just getting started. And we can't wait for you to try it.

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