COVID Killed 90% of His Accounts. The Pivot That Followed Built an Eight-Figure Wine Brand

What happens when a tech founder walks away from a successful exit, spends time drinking wine in Southern Europe, and comes back convinced the American wine industry is getting it completely wrong?Stephen Vlahos, Co-Founder and CEO of Gratsi, joins In The Money to tell the story of building an eight-figure, no-additive, zero-sugar wine brand from scratch, through a pivot that COVID forced on him, a format that nobody thought would work for a premium brand, and a subscriber base of over 30,000 people who keep coming back every month.Before Gratsi, Stephen co-founded Bellhops, a venture-backed two-sided marketplace that scaled to $15 million in revenue before he handed the keys to a team from Uber. What he learned about co-founder dynamics, internal conflict, and what kills companies from the inside shaped everything about how he built Gratsi.We cover:Why Stephen left tech to sell wine, and what time in Southern Europe taught him about how Americans drink wrongThe Bellhops lessons: what happens when a founding team fights more internal battles than external onesHow Gratsi launched in Austin bars and restaurants, and why COVID shutting down 90% of his accounts turned out to be the best thing that happened to the businessThe bag-in-box pivot: why a format associated with cheap wine became Gratsi's biggest competitive advantageHow Gratsi thinks about zero sugar and no additives as a product truth, not just a marketing claimThe DTC-to-retail sequencing playbook: how Gratsi uses ecommerce data to identify which markets to enter before a single case hits a distributor's truckWhy staying at three SKUs while the rest of the industry chases product proliferation has been one of his best decisionsBuilding a subscription wine business: what 30,000 subscribers actually means for capital efficiency and forecastingThe wholesale expansion strategy: how DTC revenue warms up a market before retail arrivesFundraising in beverage alcohol: what investors are looking for and how the category is different from traditional CPGWhat Stephen would do differently in the first 12 months if he started overWhere Gratsi is heading in 2026 and beyondIf you're building in beverage, alcohol, DTC, or any category where the product format itself is the story, this episode is packed with hard-won lessons from a founder who's done it in two very different industries.