Bill Shufelt ’05 never envisioned himself as an entrepreneur—until a personal lifestyle shift led him to redefine an entire industry. As the co-founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing Company, he set out to make non-alcoholic beer both exceptional and accessible. In this conversation, Bill shares how his time at Middlebury shaped his journey, and how a simple decision to cut out alcohol sparked a business with a mission to change lives.

Transcript

I am Bill Shufelt, Middlebury Cass of 2005. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing Company. I came into Middlebury and I didn’t know a hundred percent for sure what I wanted to do coming out of Middlebury. Right from the start, the football program was a great way to break into the school.

On the field and off the field, I learned about hard work. I learned about giving back in the community. You get the big things done in your life and then there’s time for everything else beyond that. I admittedly never envisioned myself as an entrepreneur because I didn’t have that idea that I cared so deeply about. But as I was turning 30, taking my career more seriously, thinking about what matters to me, and that’s family, career productivity, sleep, health, relationships. I was thinking about all those variables, and I was like, wow, alcohol is a ceiling on all those things.

So I cut out this one variable for 30 days and immediately felt so much better. I’m just leaving alcohol behind. But being moderate and participating in society’s functions wasn’t even an option 10 years ago. But it was so clear to me that my experience was very average. I wasn’t this total outlier. I was just a normal guy with a job, wanted to be a great family guy, and I wanted to do stuff with friends and family and not have the alcohol. 

And I was like, I bet there could be a lot of people like that in the future who just are going through exactly what I’m going through. So I shared that with my wife and she hit me so hard on the shoulder and was basically like, “You should do that.”

Two years in after she told me, “You have an idea,” she took me out to dinner and was basically like, “I want you to quit your job on the first day of the year. By making moderation accessible and cool, you’d have a positive impact on tens of millions of people and you’re not going to do that in your financial world. And I feel like we’re just going to talk about this idea the whole rest of your life if you don’t do this.”

And so I had that household buy-in and I walked in and quit my job. Within the coming months, found out I knew absolutely nothing about the beer industry and started from basically zero. I met our co-founder, John, shortly after that. He’s an incredible person, extremely talented. And since then we’ve had 250 amazing people walk in our door who are just the best people.

We’ve built such a good culture around here. There are people we want to work with forever, trying to attempt big things, have a huge impact on the world. We just want to make non-alcoholic beer great, accessible, the best part of everyone’s day, and we know it’s a better-for-you product. 

Being able to go to Middlebury and get intellectual experience and exposure to a lot of different realms as a generalist was very important to me, and I think that suited me particularly well in a entrepreneurial environment. 

There’s that saying, “Youth is wasted on the young.” Me as an adult would shake my 20-year-old self and be like, “Get out there and cover as many things academically as you can at Middlebury.” I always encourage students to hit the ground and run while you’re there.