brand-loyalty
(5)
The VC Who Bet Against Unicorns - and Started Posting
Erica Wenger raised $4.3 million from 130 backers to fund 'elephants, not unicorns.' The unusual part isn't the thesis - it's that she built a following first.
Ty Haney
Ty Haney is a consumer-brand founder who built Outdoor Voices into a category-defining activewear label starting in 2013, was pushed out in 2020, and rebuilt from scratch. She now runs Try Your Best (TYB), a community and loyalty platform used by more than 200 consumer brands, and in 2025 returned as CEO of Outdoor Voices after its acquisition by Consortium Brand Partners. She also co-founded the plant-based energy brand Joggy.
Try Your Best (TYB)
Try Your Best (TYB) is a community rewards platform that lets consumer brands turn their most obsessed fans into a measurable, on-chain loyalty layer. Founded by Outdoor Voices creator Ty Haney in 2021, TYB rewards shoppers for participation - reviews, referrals, user-generated content, challenges and purchases - with collectibles, brand coins and access to exclusive drops. Around 200 brands including Glossier, Rare Beauty, Poppi, Urban Outfitters and Saie use TYB to reach roughly two million users, mostly Gen Z women, with the company reporting higher purchase frequency and lifetime value for participating customers.
Matt Smolin
Matt Smolin is co-founder and CEO of Hang, a New York-based customer engagement and loyalty platform now positioning itself as an AI marketing system for restaurants, beauty and apparel brands. Hang originally launched in 2021 as an NFT-powered membership platform and raised a $16M Series A led by Paradigm in 2022, with backing from Tiger Global, Kevin Durant's Thirty Five Ventures and MrBeast's Night Ventures. Under Smolin, the company has moved past its web3 branding into AI-driven segmentation, campaign automation and loyalty for brands like Just Salad, Jeni's, Boba Guys and Taziki's.
Aisle
Aisle is a New York-based retail marketing platform that turns any marketing channel into a trackable in-store purchase. Brands run cashback and incentive campaigns that reach shoppers over text; consumers snap a photo of their receipt and get paid back via Venmo within minutes. Along the way, Aisle captures the first-party customer data and offline attribution that consumer-goods brands have historically been blind to. Over 600 brands and 450,000+ shoppers use it.