Milwaukee-based Bright Cellars raises next round

Bright Cellars has raised a new round of funding.

Bright Cellars is a subscription wine club that prides itself on matching individual wine drinkers with wine that they will love.

They do this by providing an online assessment that helps wine drinkers discover their own preferences in wine to ensure that their monthly subscription delivers only the best wine for the buyer based on their preferences and sends it to them by mail.

After significant revenue growth in 2017 and 2018, Bright Cellars is primed for additional expansion in 2019. In order to execute on this expansion, CEO Richard Yau sought outside expertise from experience investors – Revolution and Northwestern Mutual. These firms provided a new infusion of $8.5 million of capital. They joined the existing investor group, which includes CSA Partners, Brightstar Wisconsin Foundation, and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.

Bright Cellars founders, Richard Yau and Joseph Laurendi participated in 2015 in the gener8tor concierge startup program discussed in this article on SPN this week about gener8tor.

As part of that program, gener8tor also owns equity in the company. Following the completion of the program, the two MIT grads moved to Milwaukee to continue to grow the business. To find out more or to subscribe, please visit www.brightcellars.com.