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In our Expo West preview story on Spindrift last week, we noted that one research element ahead of Spindrift Iced Tea launch was virtual focus group assembled by Boston-area AI player called Aaru (BBI, Mar 3). This morning Wall St Jnl did fascinating deep dive into teen-founded entity that boasts billion-dollar valuation and some striking ties to beer & bevs, including Spindrift CEO Dave Burwick, who's an investor as well as client. Aaru was founded by trio of college-dropout teens, Bill Gates-style, that includes son of incoming Constellation Brands CEO Nick Fink - not that any of founders sought any startup capital from their fams. Burwick, former CEO of Boston Beer, not only "personally invested in the startup," per profile, but played crucial role in broadening its lens from political world to corporate strategy.In essence, Aaru is betting that bots "can predict human behavior better than humans can," per WSJ. In contrast to often lengthy and costly human surveys and focus groups, Aaru "uses thousands of AI agents, or bots, to simulate human responses." It customizes research by feeding demographic and psychographic info into its models to create human profiles that match its clients' needs. "The results those bots spit out are being used for product development, pricing, identifying new customers and political polling."Aaru has worked with companies spanning McDonald's, EY, Boston Beer, Spindrift, film studio A24 and Aspirin/Aleve parent co Bayer. Coca-Cola "is currently testing Aaru's technology." But Constellation may not be able to use it due to conflicts of interest given that father/son connection.When STZ's soon-to-be ceo Nick Fink first overheard his son and another Aaru cofounder negotiating a pre-seed investment on a spring trip to the Bahamas, he "barely understood what the business was at the time and was surprised the two teenagers didn't ask him for help," the article recounts. But they "steadfastly refused" any financial assistance from their families, Nick noted."Cofounders Cameron Fink and Ned Koh started the company two years ago when they were 18 and 19 years old, respectively, along with technology chief John Kessler, then 15," who's still too young to join the board. Fink "spent one night at Dartmouth College, while Koh spent two weeks at Harvard University, before they decided to focus on building their budding business."Burwick Helped Chart 'New Course' from Politics to Corporate Strategy Turns out a chance intro to Burwick helped Aaru "set a new course" after the product first got its start in politics. "Backtesting past elections, their model for 2020 came within 0.5% of the actual results&mdash;far better than the margin of error in standard polls that year," noted WSJ. But in addition to enlisting "well-known pollster Frank Luntz to validate their approach," Dave helped steer the co "from political polling to corporate-strategy work, introducing the founders to venture capitalists and CEOs."At Spindrift, Burwick enlisted Aaru to identify which new product lines could accelerate growth. Within 1 week, Aaru's bots "selected fruit tea, matching the results of Spindrift's independent, 500-person consumer research, which had taken two months." As Dave told paper, "the biggest challenge for consumer product companies is, how do you shorten that innovation cycle?"

PRESS CLIPS: Meet The Billion-Dollar AI Startup Cofounded by Teenage Son of Incoming Constellation CEO; Spindrift's Burwick Is Investor/Advisor

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