Every week another celebrity announces a new spirits brand. Another beauty line. Another apparel drop. And every week I find myself asking the same question I have been asking since I first got into this space: is this really the best we can do?

This week I am breaking down the wasted opportunity in celebrity brand building, why it frustrates me personally, and why I think the window to do something about it is still open.

We just published our June 2026 celebrity- and creator-founded brand report, covering every launch, raise, equity deal, and milestone in the ecosystem this month.

Inside:
✅ 8 new launches, the celebrity/creator, the story, the product
✅ 6 funding rounds, how much raised and who invested
✅ 6 equity deals, celebrities and creators joining cap tables
✅ 5 milestones, exits, revenue jumps, and category-shaping moves
✅ Plus more: shutdowns, pivots, and other notable moves

You can access the report here.

Around 2020, I started noticing the first real wave of celebrities launching their own companies. And my reaction was not what most people in this industry would expect. It was not excitement. It was frustration.

Not because celebrities were building brands. That part made complete sense to me. They had an audience of millions that most companies spend millions of dollars on to reach. They had trust that no amount of marketing budget could manufacture. The distribution advantage was real.

What frustrated me was what they were choosing to build with it. White-label gin. Generic beauty lines. Apparel brands with nothing behind them except a famous name on the label. Products that solved no problem, served no mission, and added nothing to the world beyond another option on an already crowded shelf. 

Celebrity after celebrity with the kind of platform that could genuinely change how millions of people eat, drink, or think about their health. And most of them were using it to launch another product nobody needed or asked for.

That frustration is what got me into this space because I got a different opportunity. I started approaching celebrities and creators with a different kind of deal flow. Not another white-label product looking for a famous face. Genuinely innovative companies building things that mattered, startups working on problems worth solving. And the response told me something important: the right celebrities were hungry for exactly that. They just were not being shown it.

So when I launched HotStart VC, our thesis was different than most investment firms investing in celebrity- and creator-founded brands from day one. We only back celebrities and creators who are building brands that are genuinely better for human and planetary health. We are not interested in another tequila or another white-label beauty line with a famous face on the label. We are interested in celebrities who see their platform as a genuine opportunity to solve a real problem and build something that lasts beyond their moment in culture.

This does not mean that such generic celebrity brands won't succeed. Some will be massively successful. That is not the point. But that is simply not the impact I want to make with this fund or what I personally want to be remembered for. So when I get pitched ten generic celebrity products every single week, the answer is always the same: ¨Good to see you are choosing to bet on yourself, but this is not for us.¨

So what are we focused on? We are super bullish on celebrities and creators who leverage their platforms to launch and scale companies that are genuinely better for human and planetary health. And I believe those companies have just as much potential to produce exceptional returns as any generic celebrity product. Probably even more. Because the ones built on real conviction and a real mission tend to earn something a famous name alone never could: loyalty that outlasts the hype.

And several celebrities and creators are already showing that this thesis is not just idealistic; it is actually rewarding. 

Patrick Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver co-founded MOSH around a genuine obsession with brain health, driven by Maria's personal experience watching her father lose his battle with Alzheimer's. The brand launched on World Alzheimer's Day. A portion of every sale goes to Alzheimer's research. The product is built around ingredients that actually support brain function. It is not a celebrity slapping a name on a protein bar. It is a celebrity using their platform to bring a genuinely underserved health need into the mainstream. They raised a $13 million Series A in May 2026 to fuel national expansion.

Jennifer Garner co-founded Once Upon a Farm around a mission to give children access to genuinely nutritious food made from real ingredients. The brand has donated over 1.2 million meals to kids in food-insecure communities through its partnership with Save the Children. It IPO'd on the NYSE earlier this year at a $724 million valuation and is guiding to over $300 million in revenue for 2026. The commercial outcome reflects the ambition behind it.

Robert Downey Jr. built Happy Coffee and gave NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an actual equity stake in the business. Real ownership, so that as the company grows, so does the organisation fighting for mental health. A celebrity using the structure of a deal itself as a vehicle for impact.

These are not charities. They are high-growth businesses producing real returns. Doing good and building a valuable company are not in conflict. The ones getting this right are proving it every single day. And we are looking for the next celebrity who wants to leverage their platform to launch an impact-driven business. 

Here is what genuinely worries me. In ten or twenty years, when we look back at this era of celebrity entrepreneurship, what will it be remembered for?

Celebrities today have platforms larger than anything that existed a generation ago, with the ability to shift what millions of people buy, eat, drink, and believe about what is possible. And if the defining output of that generation turns out to be another wave of tequila brands and white-label beauty lines, that is going to feel like a profound waste of what was available.

The window is still open. Audiences are still forming opinions about which celebrities actually stand for something and which ones are just monetising their fame before it fades. But that window does not stay open forever. The celebrities who use it to build something that actually matters will be remembered differently from the ones who used it to launch their fifth spirits brand. And based on what MOSH, Once Upon a Farm, and Happy Coffee are already proving, they will likely make more money doing it too.

The opportunity in celebrity brand building has never been bigger. And most of it is still being aimed at another tequila.

Hopefully that is going to change. It already is, slowly, for the celebrities who understand what they actually have. A platform is not just a marketing channel. It is a lever for genuine impact. The question that matters is not how famous you are. It is what mission you are building toward and what problem you are actually solving.

The ones asking that question are the ones we want to back. And in ten years, they are the ones this era will be remembered for.

This week, I'm joined by Azhar Muhammad, COO of Paradigm Sports, the combat sports management firm behind some of the most successful athlete-founded companies in the world, including Conor McGregor's Proper 12 Irish Whiskey, which sold for $600 million just three years after launching, and Dakota Ditcheva's Vann Norway fine water brand.

Azhar breaks down why most athlete representation firms are economically misaligned and how Paradigm built a different model around equity and long-term value, how they think about career timing when launching ventures with athletes, and why fame is the distribution and not the business model. We also talk about what separates the athlete-founded brands that last from the ones that quietly fail, and what Paradigm is building next across their roster of elite combat sports athletes.

Now available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

About HotStart VC

HotStart VC is launching a new fund to invest in brands founded by celebrities and creators. We’re building the go-to platform for creators and celebrities launching brands, providing capital, strategic support, and the infrastructure to scale.