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Hello, and welcome to Inc.’s 1 Smart Business Story! Today's pick dives into Bravo, the entertainment powerhouse best known for iconic franchises like The Real Housewives and Below Deck. While viewers tune in for dramatic plotlines and meme-worthy meltdowns, NBCUniversal's reality empire has quietly evolved into something unexpected for its stars: a personality-driven startup incubator.
The Real Housewives of New York gave us Bethenny Frankel’s Skinny Girl empire. Summer House has followed with Kyle Cooke’s Loverboy canned cocktails, and Paige DeSorbo’s hit loungewear company, Daphne So how did a network often dismissed as a “guilty pleasure” become the new QVC?
In this piece, Inc. contributor and Bravo expert Brian Moylan explores:
Why reality stars are treating business ventures as the end goal
How Bravo and its casts are leveraging their celebrity as a launchpad for businesses
What the success of Summer House alumni brands means for founders and their investors
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How Bravo Became the New QVC
By Brian Moylan
How the network famous for Real Housewives quietly reinvented itself as a startup incubator, spawning personality-driven brands in businesses from canned cocktails to loungewear.
On a hot April night, BodyArmor, the sports drink company acquired by Coca-Cola in 2021 in a $5.6 billion deal, was throwing a huge party in downtown Manhattan to celebrate its relaunch. Plenty of MBA types in brown lace-ups and untucked shirts clutched vodka sodas in Hall des Lumières, the cavernous bank-turned-event-space across from City Hall. They were eying young women in short skirts and high heels who—along with star-studded guest lists and goodie bags so heavy they threaten to break—are the lifeblood of these corporate soirees. By the dance floor, where an energetic DJ pumped his fist in the while air playing remixes of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” and Doechii’s TikTok hit “Anxiety,” two trios of women collided and traded air kisses.
“Have you seen any famous people?” a blonde in one group asked a blonde in the other group.
“Only Kyle,” she said, motioning to the DJ, a forty-something so blond, angular, and handsome he could be the villain in a John Hughes movie.
But Kyle is not the new Diplo, Tiësto, or Skrillex. In fact, he’s not even a full-time DJ. Kyle Cooke is one of the stars of Bravo’s long-running reality TV show Summer House, which follows a group of young New Yorkers sharing a Hamptons mansion, drinking and dating their way through the East End social scene. NBC Universal reported last June that the ninth season of the show was on track to be its most-watched yet, averaging 2.2 million viewers across all platforms, with ratings up 31% on Peacock, the network’s streaming platform.
But Summer House isn’t Kyle’s full-time job either. Both the show and the DJ set support his core enterprise: founder and CEO of Loverboy, a canned cocktail company that he started in 2018, before season 3 began filming. On this occasion, he waved his $10,000 fee to ensure that Loverboy is both stocked at the bar and prominently displayed for partygoers, with the label facing out toward the crowd of movers and shakers. There’s no paycheck as good as that sweet, sweet brand recognition.
Loverboy launched in 2018 with angel funding from Slaine Holdings, which has current investments in Goodles and Olipop, and was an investor with Poppi until its $1.95 billion sale to Pepsi in 2025. Loverboy began as a line of sparkling hard teas and branched out into an array of spritzes and cocktails, with 17 full-time employees, an office in Manhattan, and a valuation of $100 million.
Cooke is just one of a long line of Bravolebrity-founders who have launched companies on their respective shows that have become major brands. The network has become a new QVC for a specific kind of ambitious entrepreneur who knows how to leverage an opportunity. Stephanie Dade, Senior Vice President of Global Content and Integration at brand integration firm BENLabs, has worked on many campaigns with Bravo over the years, and she describes them as “fantastic partners” willing to customize integrations to ensure they resonate with both talent and fans. With a number of caveats about the product category and amount of exposure, she says it costs most brands “in the high six figures” to get on one of the shows. Bravolebrities, as they’re called, get the same integration for free, though they don’t get to dictate how, or even if, their product makes the final edit.
To finish reading this story read more at Inc.com
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