Stix is a direct-to-consumer golf brand co-founded inside the Prota Ventures ecosystem. We took it from category insight to validated brand to live ecommerce, ending year one with $8M+ in revenue, a $10M Series A, and a Red Dot Design Award.
Co-founded DTC launch
Sporting goods (golf)
Startup
Brand, product design, ecommerce, paid acquisition, lifecycle
Golf is a category dominated by legacy retail, intimidating professional gear, and a customer experience tuned for the existing player. The strategic question was whether a DTC brand could capture the next generation of golfers, the casual entrants, the women, the young professionals who saw golf as social rather than competitive, with a different gear-and-tone proposition. The risk was the usual DTC risk amplified: a category with established giants, a wholesale distribution model that consumers know, and a high price point per transaction. We needed to validate the brand wedge before the manufacturing and inventory commits.
Brand and product co-developed with the founding team. We owned the launch program end-to-end. Demand validation proved the wedge before manufacturing committed.
Ecommerce stand-up with a conversion funnel tuned for the modern golfer. Paid acquisition program (Meta, Google) with creative tested against the brand thesis. Lifecycle marketing turning first-purchase customers into repeat buyers.
The line between "Prota Studios as services partner" and "Prota Ventures as co-founder" is set by strategic fit, not by methodology. Stix is the canonical reference for a DTC brand co-founded from the inside: the launch was the validation, and the validation was the launch.
Tell us what category you are betting on, what wedge you see in it, and what evidence would change the answer. We will tell you whether a Learning Sprint or a co-founded build is the right fit.
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