A new Chicago venture wants to give anyone the opportunity to have their own personal wine cellar, accessible at their fingertips.
Early Uber alums Phil Mikhaylov and Kenny Tsai have joined forces with local hospitality veterans AJ Heindel and Cody Modeer to create a wine and spirits auction platform.
The four merged their two businesses — Unicorn Auctions, Heindel and Modeer's full-service, rare-spirits auction marketplace, and Vintage, Mikhaylov and Tsai's modern platform for wine and spirits — to create a combined entity operating under the name Unicorn, which this week announced a $5.8 million funding round.
Mikhaylov will serve as CEO of the new company. Modeer is chief business officer, Heindel is chief strategy officer, and Tsai is chief operations officer.
"We realized that coming together we'd be able to accelerate each other's vision of building a modern platform for spirits and wine, where customers can buy, trade and sell on a platform. They can store, and we can help take care of all the logistics for them," Mikhaylov told Chicago Inno.
Unicorn enables wine and spirts collectors around the world to buy, sell, store and digitally manage their collections online and through an app.
The Unicorn Auctions site now serves the combined company. The site has completed more than 3.2 million total bids and has neared over $100 million in lifetime platform sales, vaulting hundreds of thousands of bottles from around the globe in that time.
Registration to bid or consign is free, according to the website. The platform charges a 15% buyer's premium on winning bids and for every one of their users' bottles that sell, Unicorn charges a $5 per bottle commission.
The peer-to-peer marketplace provides insights into wine and spirits market trends, valuations and investment opportunities within the alcohol spirit industry.
Unicorn is backed by large alcohol and liquor distributors and includes a list of investors such as Protagonist, Blue Equity, Jason Pritzer, and former NBA player Carmelo Anthony and business partner Asani Swann, co-founders of The Seventh Estate.
"We strategically wanted to go out and raise from people who are big collectors, people who own big brands, distributors, people who are in the blockchain space, as well as people who are everyday enthusiasts and collectors on the platform," Mikhaylov said.
One thing that Mikhaylov said is unique to Unicorn is how it has been able to grow through word of mouth, though the company benefits from having a built-in clientele from the two previous companies. Unicorn will use the new funding to invest in marketing and new tech to attract new clients to the platform, as well as expand the number of storage facilities in its network.
"In previous companies that I was a part of, user acquisition was a huge spend," he said.
Unicorn recently opened a new office in Chicago in Ravenswood and currently has around 55 employees, though it plans to double its tech headcount following the raise.
"The thing about Chicago is that there's a tremendous potential in the growing tech ecosystem," Mikhaylov said. "I started at Uber, I moved to New York, I moved to San Francisco and lived internationally, but I think Chicago just has a diverse talent pool, world-class universities and a thriving business community. Chicago also has a rich history and culture when it comes to food and beverage, spirits and wine."
