SB meets… Paolo Dalla Mora, Liquid Ventures
Why does this matter?
Europe's first no/low-alcohol venture builder launches with AI-powered insights platform, creating new funding opportunities and revealing strategic whitespace in fast-growing beverage category.
Highlights
As Liquid Ventures officially launches as Europe’s first venture builder focused on the fast‐growing no‐ and low‐alcohol category, we chat to its founder and CEO about his vision for the company. You describe Liquid Ventures as a ‘venture builder’ rather than an incubator – what does that mean? An incubator hosts ideas. We build companies. The distinction matters enormously. We don’t adopt a ‘spray and pray’ attitude, we don’t scatter capital hoping something sticks. We develop our ideas internally, build them with operational rigour, and only then bring them to market with full conviction. We don’t write a cheque and wish founders luck – we come in with operational infrastructure, brand architecture, distribution thinking, and investor‐ready positioning already embedded. We are co‐founders with capital, not passive backers with hope. What gaps in the no- and low-alcohol market convinced you that now is the right time to launch Liquid Ventures? The category is growing fast but maturing unevenly. You have a flood of products chasing a handful of proven formats – non‐alcoholic ‘spirits’, ready‐to‐drink, kombucha – while massive white space remains in fermented beverages, functional drinks, and premium Alpine categories. More critically, most no/low brands are built by people who came from wellness, not from drinks. They understand the consumer but not the trade. We understand both. Millennials and Gen Z are central to your strategy. What insights about their behaviour are still misunderstood by the drinks industry? The industry keeps framing this as ‘young people drinking less’. That’s the wrong lens entirely. What’s actually happening is that these consumers are redefining the ritual, not abandoning it. They want the social experience, the craft, the occasion – they just want agency over what they put in their bodies. They are not abstainers, they are curators. Brands that position no/low as a sacrifice will lose. Brands that position it as a choice worth making will win. What lessons from building gin brand Engine will you apply to this venture, and what would you do differently this time? Engine taught me that a strong visual identity and a clear origin story can open doors that distribution budget alone cannot. Design and narrative are distribution strategy. What I’d do differently is build the commercial architecture earlier – pricing tiers, channel sequencing, margin logic – before the brand hits the market, not after. Liquid Ventures’ five-year plan includes the launch of the Liquid Insight Lab. What is that? It is our proprietary intelligence function, a dedicated research unit that tracks consumer behaviour, category white space, and emerging cultural signals across our key markets. It feeds directly into our brand‐building process, so every venture we build starts from evidence, not instinct alone. Over time, it will also become a resource we share selectively with retail and HoReCa partners who want a sharper read on the no/low consumer. Intelligence as a service, essentially. How do you see AI shaping product development, branding, or consumer insights in your model? AI accelerates the distance between a signal and a decision. We don’t use AI for creativity or to build a business idea, but we use it in content production, trend analysis, and investor communications – not to replace judgment, but to compress the time it takes to get from observation to action. In a category moving this quickly, speed of insight is a competitive advantage. Do you see Liquid Ventures evolving into a house of brands, a platform business, or something closer to a global lifestyle company? All three contain part of the answer, but I’d resist the label. What we are building is a belief system made commercial, the conviction that drinking culture is evolving, and that the brands worth investing in are the ones that evolve with it. The structure will follow the opportunity. The conviction stays fixed.
The Spirits Business
