Ep 16: The Future of Cellar Tracking and Wine Arbitrage: Jeffrey Ishmael of Cellr

Welcome to another episode! Today’s guest is Jeffrey Ishmael. Jeff is the CEO and co-founder of CELLR, which is a consumer-centric wine app intended to help wine enthusiasts curate their wine life. CELLR was launched to provide an app that lives at the crossroads of Vivino, Cellar Tracker, and Wine Searcher. Jeff has been an avid wine enthusiast for almost 25 years and started his appreciation of wine in Paso Robles where he owned a home, but then started expanding his cellar holdings to include a wide variety of Napa and Bordeaux based wines.

Jeff has over 20-years of successful finance and operations experience with a broad background that includes Technology, Retail, and Apparel. Currently, he is the CFO for RAEN Optics, which is a lifestyle optical brand in Carlsbad, CA. Previously, he was the founding CFO of Cylance, which was a cybersecurity company in Irvine that was subsequently sold to Blackberry for $1.4B. Jeff was also on the founding team of Obsidian Security. He has been involved in over $200m in funding with a selection of VC firms that include Khosla Ventures, Greylock Partners, Blackstone, DFJ Growth, GV, KKR, Citi Ventures, Wing Ventures, and more.

In this episode, Jeffery shares with us his journey merging tech and wine.

Let’s dive in! 

[00:01 - 11:10] Opening Segment 

• I introduce our guest for this episode and short bio
• Jeff describes how the idea of CELLR came about
• • Developing a wine community through and app
  • Connecting cellar owners directly
• Using data to match the preferences of wine enthusiasts
• Using accurate data to allow the community to have a good experience

[11:11 - 38:13] From Wine Enthusiast to Wine Tech

• Jeff shares his experience working almost 10 years working with data scientists and software engineers, cyber security and tech finance
• The first stages developing the app
• How Jeff chooses his wines for his collection
• • Experiences that lead to discovering new wines
  • Getting familiar with wine regions
• The importance of on site tasting and bringing people in the same environment
• Jeff shares his latest and favorite wines and the stories that led to choosing them
• The challenges and opportunities for wine coming up on 2022
• • The ability to monetize assets in  the Cellr Tarcker
  • Cellr connecting cellar owners and aficionados directly

• The sense of community that brings people together around wine
• Bringing ideas from the community into individual use

[38:14- 41:30] Closing Segment

• Favorite Wine
• • Turtle Rock Westberg Ray
• Go to pairing
• • Filet and Black Label from Maryland Branch
• Wine resource
• • www.winebusiness.com
• Connect with Jeffrey Ishmael
• • See links below 
• Reach out to me for more wine conversations through the links below 
• Subscribe and leave a review
• Final words

Tweetable Quotes:

“And that's what we implement, it's implementing ideas that are coming out of the community and developing a product for them to use individually.” -Jeffrey Ishmael

“ I want to send you a bottle of wine in Kansas City, it's a federal offense to drop that in the mail, I mean, it's stupid” - Jeffrey Ishmael

“It's being able to curate your individual, you know, Wine,  lifestyle,, tracking the varietals that you you drink” - Jeffrey Ishmael

Connect with Jeff through his accounts on Instagram: @cellrsociety & @Twitter! You can also check out his website at www.cellr.com

Let’s continue the Everyday Wine Conversations and connect with me through Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or feel free to shoot me an email at [email protected]. You can also check out my website at ​www.​klevywineco.com.

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