Red Flyer Investments’ GM helps bring new businesses to their next chapter.
Ali Brown got her career start working at Deloitte with banking and investment clients. Originally from Columbia, South Carolina, she dated her high school sweetheart while they were living apart (she in Washington, D.C., and he in Boston). The two UGA graduates were able to move to Atlanta together, where his family had lived previously, and she began a career in mergers and acquisitions. “I learned how to be a great client service person, problem solve, analyze big data, ask thoughtful questions, understand the importance of processes and gain M&A transaction experience,” she says.
Then in 2020, when the pandemic hit, and Brown was six months pregnant, all business came to a halt. The time away from working changed her perspective on her career. “M&A is highly unpredictable,” she says. “I loved working like that in my 20s, but when I had a family and a husband with an equally ambitious career and working 16-hour days, it became really challenging. It just wasn’t compatible with my pace of life.”
While she enjoyed her time off, she itched to find something just as fulfilling but less intense as her previous business work that could use her skills to support smaller businesses. Here and there, she helped her father-in-law, Terry Brown, a managing partner at Asana Partners, with investing in worthy companies. “It was just something on the side,” she says. However, sensing that her talents could be used in a more formal setting, the Brown family officially launched Red Flyer Investments in January 2023, offering Brown the opportunity to balance her two loves: family and work. “I was able to work but also be present,” she says.
The name began with a Radio Flyer wagon. “We wanted to nod to an iconic family brand and also convey messaging for great ideas taking flight,” she says.
Brown leads the business on behalf of the family. “We’re drawn to consumer brands we feel connected to,” she says. “We look at companies across food and beverage, clean beauty, health and wellness, lifestyle, apparel, new retail concepts, baby and kids, and anything we find interesting, cool, innovative or distinctive in the marketplace,” she says. That includes brands such as Alice, a functional mushroom chocolate brand; Fishwife, a tinned fish brand; and Hanni, a body care beauty brand based in Atlanta. While it’s not necessary for brands to be fully female-founded, more than 75% of the Red Flyer portfolio is made up of female owners, a point of pride for Brown.
The firm offers financial support in the form of minority stake investments up to $500,000, as well as expertise in finance, accounting, processes, real estate, marketing, network connections and more. Brown’s duties involve driving the day-to-day business. She has become an expert at balancing the personal interests of the entrepreneurs she works with and the growth-oriented goals, with an eye toward a high valuation when the company is sold one day.
Females make up only 11% of investing partners at VC firms according to a study by the Harvard Kennedy School of Women and Public Policy Program, but it’s a position Brown is proud to hold. “There’s a really active ecosystem of female business leaders out there, and access to capital for female entrepreneurs continues to be a significant challenge,” she says. “We’re happy to support them.”
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