The Cavinder Twins’ Next Chapter: From Athletes To Entrepreneurs

Haley and Hanna Cavinder are using what they learned doing NIL deals as college athletes to launch their new wellness brand, Go Two.

Haley and Hanna Cavinder announced their first NIL with Boost Mobile in Times Square at 12:01 a.m. on July 1, 2021, the literal first moment the NCAA's new rules took effect. Five years later, they’ve moved beyond helping build other people’s businesses to focusing on launching and growing their own.

Last week, the Cavinder twins launched Go Two, their new wellness brand. In its first few days on the market, it outperformed the previous best launch from its operating partner by roughly 7x, without discounts or coupon codes.

"Our thesis from the beginning has been around frictionless wellness on the go, creating products that make it easier to optimize how you feel wherever you are and whenever you need them," Haley said. "The early response gives us confidence that consumers understand that proposition and that there is meaningful room to build well beyond these first products."

With this launch, Haley and Hanna are answering a question most college athletes haven’t even dreamed to ask about NIL: can you leverage NIL to gain the know-how and the seed capital to build your own successful company after graduation?

"I think this is just the next phase of what NIL could look like for multiple people," said Haley.

From Influencers to Founders

Go Two launched with two drink products, Debloat and Sleepy, both built around what Hanna Cavinder calls "wellness on the go." The company plans to expand into hydration, protein, collagen and other categories over time.

This isn’t a one-off licensing deal with the twins' faces slapped on a label. Haley and Hanna are co-founders, alongside their longtime agent Jeff Hoffman and Alexi Hecht. Haley will be leading brand and creative, Hanna will take the lead on influence and social, Hoffman will be handling business and strategy, and Alexi will run operations.

Hoffman, who has represented the twins since NIL began, said Go Two is the first time he's built a company with a client rather than negotiating deals on their behalf.

"We get to be the boat, the sail, the rudder, the entire thing, and take it on our own journey," Hoffman said. "It's a little different when you get to decide, you know, how the company is going to go, what the product are going to be, how you're going to message it, what the colors look like, what does it look like on social... that control has really been fed by all those experiences. But the big power is the fact that we get to steer the ship more than ride with somebody else."

The twins are also involved in Azucar, a ready-to-drink tequila brand that came together after they built a relationship with New York businessman Adam Weisman, who owns the company and brought them on as co-founders with creative control over branding and marketing.

“It really started with what Hanna and I have learned from a very young age about networking and building relationships,” Haley said.

“Haley and I are big ranch water girls, so it’s going to be very fun when it all comes together,” Hanna said. “We’re being able to dip our toe into things that we’re very passionate about, and you’re seeing that with these two companies.”

Fans can watch out for tailgate activations tied to Azucar this football season.

What Five Years of NIL Deals Taught Them

Both twins pointed to NIL, and specifically their experiences holding equity in other companies during college, as valuable preparation for building Go Two.

"I think you are constantly a sponge in this space," Hanna said. "So being able to understand how they do it and applying things that Under Armour does or Ghost does into what we want for Go Two…it's definitely like you're constantly learning from them every single day."

“Having equity in companies taught Hanna and I at a very young age that rather than taking revenue out early, you should reinvest your money to stay in it for the long-term goal,” Haley said.

Hoffman framed it as the twins sitting on a live market research operation for half a decade. Every post they make generates immediate, unfiltered feedback, positive and negative, from an audience that's been engaged with them since 2020.

"To have that marketplace at your fingertips to learn and grow from it for half a decade gives us an insight into growth and product behavior that very few people can have," he said.

The Faceless-Brand Strategy

After years of being the face of other people’s brands, the twins say they are intentionally trying to build Go Two into something that doesn't depend on them long-term.

“We want the brand to be bigger than us,” Hanna said. “When it launches, our faces will be on it, but the best thing that you can do for your company is have a faceless brand and have customers come back for the product and not for you. Hanna and I know that, and I think that’s the next phase of our careers.”

Sure, they’re promoting the brand on their social channels now, but their names won't need to carry the company forever if the plan works.

It’s a strategy that avoids what we’ve seen with many other athlete brands that live and die with the athlete's own visibility. It also sets up a possible exit path. Hanna floated the idea of eventually selling Go Two to a larger company or folding it into a bigger portfolio down the line.

"It’s constantly evolving," she said, "but I don't think we ever slow down."

Neither twin plans to step back from brand endorsement work while running Go Two and Azúcar. Hanna said she expects to keep doing deals under the Cavinder Twins name while building the companies behind the scenes, treating the personal brand and the ownership stakes as separate, parallel tracks rather than a transition from one to the other.

What Other College Athletes Can Learn

Not every college athlete has the following or brand power to do what the Cavinders have done at the same scale, but they have created a roadmap that other athletes who are aspiring entrepreneurs can follow: build an audience, take equity instead of just cash where possible, learn the operational side from brand partners, then launch your own company.

“NIL was the seed money,” Hoffman said. “Now Haley and Hanna have the capital investment to take on new endeavors and grow their business.”

The twins are set to speak at Harvard in November as part of the school's undergraduate women in business programming. It's one more marker of how far the conversation around them has shifted, from the athletes who cashed the first NIL check to founders being asked how they built a company.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com