The founder of the best-selling Black-owned spirit brand shares why she prefers to work with individual investors over VC firms and how they helped her reach $100 million in sales

• Fawn Weaver's Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey is the best-selling Black-owned spirit brand in the US.
• She chose to take funding from individual investors, not from VC or private-equity firms.

Fawn Weaver founded her whiskey brand, Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, in 2017 after being inspired by the story of Nearest Green, the first known African American master distiller.

Since she opened her distillery in Tennessee, her company has become the best-selling Black-owned spirit brand in the US and generated more than $100 million in sales since its launch, according to documentation obtained by Insider, which included research on other brands' sales.

As one of the only Black female entrepreneurs and CEOs in the liquor industry, Weaver credits many of her accomplishments with her work ethic and a women-led workforce of 110 employees. Then there are her investors, whom she calls her "sixth man," a reference to a basketball player who's not on the starting five-player lineup but plays a key role in the second or third string. In Weaver's case, her investors have helped her company gain national distribution.

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"You also are gaining a sales force if your investors are excited about your brand," she said. "I'm building a relationship with a group of people that's larger than my actual salesforce."

Here's how her investors helped her get her whiskey in more than 25,000 stores, bars, restaurants, and hotels.

A sales force of 100 investors

Financing can be especially difficult for Black women — they received less than 1% of all venture-capital funding in 2022, according to Crunchbase data.

Weaver said she took funding only from individual investors, not from venture-capital or private-equity firms. Her strategy was to form a network of people who would naturally expand her brand with her, as they used her product in their daily lives.

"I have 100 people out there excited about the brand, introducing it to their family, buying it as gifts for the holidays and for birthdays, and giving it to their employees," she said. "They have been a huge sales force for us."

Many of her investors golf or rack up large bills at fine restaurants, so when they request Uncle Nearest whiskey, their continued patronage incentivizes the owners at those establishments to stock it, she said.

"We have so many investors who ate at Smith & Wollensky," she said of the landmark New York City steakhouse. "One of our first really big accounts nationwide was to have Uncle Nearest cocktails on the menu."

Additionally, the brand was sold at some of the top golf courses in Pebble Beach, California, and Augusta, Georgia, prestigious golf areas, early in the company's history, she said.

In return, Weaver said she's transparent with her investors, giving them access to her and her chief financial officer at any time.

"They'll text me all the time," she said. "There was a comfort in investing knowing that my door was always open, my phone was always available to them."