Chamillionaire Invests Cha-thousands in Teen Entrepreneur's Company

Grammy-winning rapper and serial entrepreneur Chamillionaire has lent his name and funds to Sienna Sauce, the gourmet condiment company founded by 16-year-old Tyla-Simone Crayton. The origins of Crayton’s company, which now offers three sauces (Tangy, Spicy, and Lemon-Pepper) began when she was only 8 years old, creating the Tangy flavor to mimic her favorite Brooklyn wing spot, because it had closed.

The investment from Chamillionaire, which was less than $10,000, might be seen as a paltry amount. However, his co-sign is likely worth more than the amount he’s invested. He’s previously invested in startups like Uber alternative Lyft (which IPO’d but flopped), digital media network Maker studio (acquired by Disney) police state darling Ring (acquired by Amazon), and self-driving startup Cruise (acquired by General Motors.) And to his credit, Chamillionaire has also publicly noted to invest in startups launched by women and people of color, as he told Yahoo! Finance in May 2019.

Sienna Sauce is a company led by a young woman of color. Despite its modest fundraising, it's far from a lemonade stand operation; the company is already in over 50 retail locations and has already done approximately $190,000 in revenue, according to Republic, a public investing platform. Chamillionaire invested in Sienna Sauce because he “back(s) startups that have domain expertise, resiliency, and a roadmap that I believe could potentially lead to success,” according to his investor page on Republic.

By donating a small, undisclosed amount to Sienna Sauce, Chamillionaire is hopefully avoiding a WeWork-type situation, where investors fell over each other trying to get a piece of a shiny tech company that ended up being a very unsexy real estate firm. By investing a modest sum, Chamillionaire seems to admit a monstrous one-time investment in Sienna Sauce could spark the notion that the company is actually a technology platform that happens to be in the sauce business, dooming it to fail with an accompanying TV show and book about its demise.

Unlike WeWork, there is innovation in Crayton’s product, as capitalizes on a number of trends: it’s gluten-free, sans high fructose corn syrup, and recreates the best part of chicken wings: the sauce. As comedian and Chappelle’s show co-creator Neal Brennan has noted, meat is often a “sauce + seasoning delivery system.” Companies like Beyond Meats and Impossible Foods continue to attempt to recreate the flavor and texture of dead flesh, so it makes sense for a company to innovate on the accouterments.

Chamillionaire knows something Silicon Valley still doesn’t understand. A chabillion dollars isn’t cool. A sustainable and healthy condiment business raising small amounts of capital as needed? That’s what’s really cool.