I back, build, and operate consumer brands. One exit, four current positions, and a long-running thesis: bet on real products with strong personalities, then put the playbook behind them.
Jason Brietstein is a founder, investor, and operator in consumer brands. One exit (Linuxnewbie.org → Internet.com), four current positions, and a quarter-century of shipping things on the internet — from the band-website days through dot-com retail to today's CPG shelves.
The thesis hasn't changed much since 1999: real products, strong personalities, a playbook that holds up. Worked with the likes of Benihana, Flex Seal, Paramount, and Sony Pictures at Brandamos before turning the same instincts toward founding and backing his own brands.
The throughline? Build the brand, elevate the brand, hand it the mic. Across hemp, beverages, brand consulting, and functional supplements, the playbook is the same: start with a real product, give it a personality, and trust the customer to get the joke.
Ratio-specific cannabis-infused edibles for people who want their dosing to look more like a recipe than a guess. Functional, formulated, and stocked nationwide.
Functional supplements that hit different. Creatine gummies, energy gummies, sleep gummies, energy mints, and sleep mints — built for people who want their daily dose to taste good and work fast.
A beverage built around the most underrated product feature in the category: people you actually like. Co-founded, brand-led, and aimed squarely at the gap between "fun" and "functional."
The umbrella studio behind the playbook. Naming, positioning, identity, launch strategy — the kind of work that turns "we have a product" into "people know what we sound like before we walk in the room."
A scrolling lineup of the marks I've built, co-built, or actively elevated. Click any one of them to jump to the venture above.
Built websites for my band at the command line — opened for Sister Hazel, Matchbox 20, and similar acts. After college: tech support at a dial-up ISP, then lead webmaster and architect for several early e-commerce brands. Foundational years for everything that came after.
Founded one of the early Linux help communities on the open web. Sold to Internet.com during the dot-com era — first real exit and the start of the operator/investor pattern.
Affiliate marketing across many verticals, then co-founded Brandamos — a marketing agency specializing in everything internet (and a fair amount of off-internet too). Worked with brands including Benihana, Flex Seal, Paramount Pictures, and Sony Pictures.
Began co-launching and backing consumer brands directly: Tillman's Tranquils, then Amigos and Laser Beams, with Brand Elevation Labs as the studio behind the playbook. Same thesis, my own cap table.
A non-exhaustive list of things I get hired to do, paid to do, or just keep doing because nobody has stopped me yet:
Whether you've got a brand to elevate, a product to launch, or you just want to argue about the golden age of Slashdot — the inbox is open.