CEO and operator in Austin. Over ten years I've co-founded three consumer brands and a software product and built each from nothing: product, packaging, ad account, and the part of the spreadsheet that decides whether any of it was worth doing. Today I'm a partner in all four. They run with their own teams and their own rhythm, and I'm looking for the next P&L to run day to day.
Open to an operating role at a founder-led brandAustin, Texas
Austin, 2026. Wearing a Braxley.
Shop RadioNYT WirecutterForbesNew York PostAustin Business JournalTexas Tech
4
Companies co-founded; today a partner in each
300k+
Customers served across the brands
8 figures
Lifetime revenue across the portfolio
10 yrs
Operating consumer P&Ls end to end
Everything I've built
2017 — 2025Co-founder, now partner
Braxley Bands
Apple Watch and Garmin bands — led it for eight years
A stretchy watch band I made in a Texas Tech dorm room, which turned into a top one percent Shopify store and the anchor of everything that followed. I built the brand, the packaging, the store, and the acquisition engine, then kept it profitable through the years when rising ad costs killed a lot of brands our size. These days it runs steady on its repeat base.
Grass Valley, CAWellnessShopify · Wholesale EURegulated category
A herbal apothecary built on my wife's clinical practice. I built the entire growth side: brand system, storefront, Meta and Google, lifecycle email, the creator program, and a wholesale push into Europe. Day to day this is Maddie's company now; I stay close as her partner and sounding board. Traffic was the easy part. The hard part was sounding clinically credible and human at once, in a category where every claim is regulated.
A single ingredient chewing gum sold into a category held by generic sellers with no brand at all. Zero to a six figure monthly run rate in the first year, almost entirely through TikTok Shop and a creator program we rebuilt week over week. It also served as my proving ground: what worked here at low spend graduated to the bigger brands the following week. The playbook is written; the machine mostly runs it.
My first software product and a deliberate step off the physical goods treadmill. Shop Radio generates custom branded audio for Shopify stores, so a storefront sounds like the brand instead of like nothing. I own product, brand, the marketing site, pricing, and the merchant experience. Owning a full stack I'd never owned before was the reason to do it. It's built to run light: software margins, no inventory, no headcount to feed.
Keeping Braxley profitable through the ad-cost squeeze
In 2021 the ground moved under every DTC brand. iOS 14.5 broke targeting, CPMs climbed, and acquisition math that had worked for years stopped working. Plenty of brands Braxley's size never made it out.
Braxley did, without outspending anyone. It's a better story with the numbers in front of us, so ask me about it.
Contribution margin per order, not ROAS.Platform numbers flattered themselves. Bank statements didn't.
Repeat purchase and owned channels first.Budget moved from cold acquisition toward email and the existing base.
Creative cadence kept running.When it would have been cheaper to stop testing, we didn't.
Ads that get watched, made in-house, at volume
Creative is the only lever left in paid media that the platform doesn't control for you.
Every clip below was written, storyboarded, generated and cut by me with AI tooling, no shoot day and no agency. Five visual worlds for Braxley: a claymation watchmaker, a clay-noir detective, a toddler, a neighborhood, and a hand-drawn support group for people addicted to bad watch bands, plus kinetic type spots and live action of the real product. A hundred and twenty four of these came out of one day.
Braxley
Live actionReal product
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Live actionWasher test
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Live actionGym
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Live actionGolden hour
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The WatchmakerClaymation
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The WatchmakerClaymation
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The WatchmakerClaymation
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The WatchmakerClaymation
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The WatchmakerClaymation
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The WatchmakerClaymation
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The DetectiveClaymation
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The DetectiveClaymation
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The DetectiveClaymation
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The ToddlerClaymation
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The ToddlerClaymation
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The NeighborhoodClaymation
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The NeighborhoodClaymation
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Support GroupHand-drawn
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Support GroupHand-drawn
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ComicIllustrated
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No BucklesKinetic type
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Slides OnKinetic type
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StretchyKinetic type
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Buy 2 Get 1Kinetic type
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ProductStudio set
124finished clips generated in one day, September 4
5visual worlds with recurring characters, so the ads compound
$0production cost beyond software. No crew, no set, no reshoot
Why this is the whole funnel now
On Meta and TikTok the algorithm does the targeting. What you control is the creative, and the creative decides your costs: the first three seconds set your hook rate and therefore your CPM, the middle sets your hold rate and therefore your CPC, and the number of variants you can test sets how fast you find the winner. A brand that ships forty testable clips in an afternoon buys traffic cheaper than one that ships four a month.
How a script becomes forty ads
One style bible so every clip looks like it came from the same world. Character sheets so faces stay consistent. Hooks written in batches, generated as variants, captioned, and cut to length per placement. Winners get more budget and a sequel; losers get killed the same week. The machine runs weekly, and it runs on one person.
01HooksTwenty first-lines per angle, written and ranked before anything is generated.
02Script & boardsShot-by-shot, three to five seconds each, one gag per ad.
03Style bibleOne token, one world, recurring cast. Consistency is the trick.
04GenerateVariants in parallel, real product photos as references so the band stays on-model.
05Cut & caption9:16, 1:1, 4:5. Captions burned in. Abrupt endings on purpose.
06Test & scaleRead against contribution margin. Sequels for winners, kill the rest.
What I'm good at
The parts of building and running a consumer brand I've owned end to end, with my own money at risk. Nine of them.
01
Owning the number instead of the activity
I've run businesses where a bad month of acquisition cost showed up in my own bank account. So I read performance against contribution margin and cash, not against a platform's version of ROAS. If something isn't working I'd rather bring you the diagnosis and the plan than the report.
02
Paid media on Meta and Google
Account structure, bidding, audience saturation, creative fatigue, incrementality testing. I know the specific places platform reporting flatters itself, and how to check it against what landed in the bank.
03
Creative that gets tested like a system
Hooks, angles, formats, and a cadence that produces winners deliberately instead of occasionally. I write the briefs, I often shoot the thing, and I can usually tell you why the winner won.
04
Creator and affiliate programs
Recruiting, briefing, whitelisting, and paying people against attribution that holds up. Including the unglamorous half: cutting the creators who don't convert and re-briefing the ones who nearly do.
05
Retention and lifecycle
Klaviyo flows, subscription economics, post purchase paths. I've built subscription programs and fixed broken ones, and I price the second and third order into every acquisition decision, because that's where the business lives.
06
Inventory and the physical side
Forecasting buys, sizing curves, 3PL transitions, landed cost. Eight years of physical goods teaches you the P&L lives in the warehouse as much as in the ad account, and that stock-outs kill brands faster than bad ads do.
07
Building with AI every day
Sites, creative, analysis, internal automation. It's the reason one person in my seat covers what usually needs a small team, and it's the most portable thing I'd bring into a new company.
08
Product design
Every product across the brands started as my sketch: the Braxley band and its packaging system, the Mystic tin and pack, the PLH bottle and label. I design for the shelf, the unboxing, and the photo a customer posts, and I know what a factory can make for the price.
Packaging
Sourcing
Unit cost
09
Web design and build
I built all four brand storefronts and this site myself, with AI in the workflow: design, copy, code, speed. A landing page in an afternoon, a drop page in a day, and a storefront that loads in under two seconds instead of eleven.
Why the operating seat next to a creative founder is the one I want.
The best consumer brands have a founder who is the creative soul of the thing. The common mistake is asking that same person to also run inventory planning, subscription billing, and the weekly ad budget. Those are different jobs, done well by different people.
I've sat in the founder seat, so I know exactly what not to take away. The work I want next is the other chair: take over the operating side of a brand someone else started, keep the machine honest, and give the founder their creative time back.
Bio
With Maddie, his wife and co-founder, and their first child. Austin, 2026.
Braxton Manley is a CEO and operator in Austin, Texas. He started Braxley Bands out of a Texas Tech dorm room and went on to co-found three consumer brands and a software company. He remains a partner in each; day to day, they run with their own teams, which is what leaves him free to take on a new operating role.
He studied marketing and management at Texas Tech's Rawls College of Business and was selected as a University Innovation Fellow through Stanford's d.school, where he trained in design thinking and campus entrepreneurship programs.
He lives in Austin with his wife Maddie, a clinical herbalist and his co-founder at Peace Love Hormones, and their first child.
Background
2018
Texas Tech University, Rawls College of Business
B.B.A. in Marketing and Management, with Strategic Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
2016 — 2018
University Innovation Fellow, Stanford d.school program
Selected into the d.school fellowship that trains students to build design and entrepreneurship programs on their own campuses.
2016 — 2018
3 Day Startup, team lead
Ran founding teams through weekend company building sprints. Member of Tech CEOs.
2019
Pitched Mark Cuban
Braxley Bands got in front of him in Austin. The Austin Business Journal wrote it up.
If you're a founder who wants someone to run the machine, or you're hiring for growth or brand, send the situation and the constraint behind it. Within 48 hours you'll have a one page plan back: where I think the leaks are, what I'd do first, and how I'd measure it. You keep the plan either way.
Shop Radio
NYT Wirecutter
Forbes
New York Post
Austin Business Journal
Texas Tech
Authority Magazine
MacRumors
The Gadgeteer