Inside the New Fund from CPG Powerhouses Clayton Christopher and Brian Goldberg – Astō Consumer Partners

Consumer VC #348: Clayton Christopher and Brian Goldberg, Founders of Astō Consumer Partners

Aug 04, 2025

Today’s Issue is brought to you by:

If you’re a brand, chargebacks and deductions from big-box retailers are a confusing mess that no one wants to deal with. But what if you didn’t have to?

Glimpse is an AI-powered service for fast-growing CPG brands that automatically manages and disputes deductions from retailers and distributors like Target, KEHE, UNFI, and Amazon—putting 2–3% of your topline revenue back in your pocket with zero work from the brand. No data entry. No chasing paperwork. No AR team required.

How they’ve helped brands:

• Helped Immi recover $50K and save $60k on accounting costs
• Saved Pickerfresh 25 hours/month

If deduction management is eating into your margins, it’s time to flip the script.

👉👉👉 Get started with Glimpse Here

Hey friends,

Back in May, I hosted a live podcast event at Brown Advisory in Austin, TX (Thank you Brown for hosting us). I was delighted to interview Clayton Christopher and Brian Goldberg as part of Austin’s Consumer Week. Also, thank you to EisnerAmper for sponsoring all of Consumer Week.

EisnerAmper provides financial advisory services tailored to the specific needs of consumer product companies. Looking for a strategic CFO partner?

Learn more here

If you don’t know, Clayton and Brian are two legends in the CPG space. Between them, they’ve founded and scaled brands like Sweet Leaf Tea, Waterloo Sparkling Water, Deep Eddy Vodka, Austin Eastciders, and SkinnyPop. Now, they’ve teamed up to launch Aströ Consumer Partners, a $400M+ growth-stage investment firm focused on scaling consumer brands.

In this episode, Clayton and Brian share what they’ve learned as both operators and investors—and what it really takes to build a brand that lasts:

✅ The biggest differences between early-stage and growth-stage investing
✅ How to know when you’re ready to raise capital—and why profitable brands still choose to do it
✅ The distribution trap: when to go deep vs. wide with retail
✅ DTC vs. retail: which to prioritize and why
✅ What “eliminating strategic risk” looks like in practice
✅ Real talk on CPG categories: why some brands crush ecommerce but flop in stores
✅ What actual value-add looks like from an investor
✅ Why profitability and leverage matter more than ever

👉 Whether you're scaling past $5M in revenue or wondering how investors really evaluate CPG brands—this conversation is packed with wisdom from two of the best in the game.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro
01:10 Meet Astro Consumer Partners: $400M Growth-Stage CPG Fund
05:30 What They Look For in Brands: People, Margins, & Category Leadership 08:00 When Should a CPG Brand Be Profitable?
10:35 Why Profitable Founders Still Raise Capital
13:30 Avoiding the Strategic Risk Trap
16:45 When to Go Deep vs. Wide in Retail
20:00 DTC Brands Going to Retail: What Works, What Doesn’t
24:00 Launching in Natural vs. Mass Retail
28:00 Building Retail Leverage Through Velocity and Data
31:00 Positive Leverage: Retail, Manufacturing & Celebrities
34:00 What “Value-Add” from Investors Actually Means
38:00 Advice for Early-Stage Founders
41:00 The Emotional Journey of Entrepreneurship
45:00 Live Audience Q&A

Thanks for listening.

Consumer VC