What happens when a CMO becomes a founder?

I'm Amanda Richards. I spent thirty years building consumer brands at Unilever and Philips, and last year decided to build one of my own: Saysah, a consumer-first Crémant, for people who have outgrown cheap, mass-produced Prosecco, can't always justify Champagne and don't know what comes next. This is the first instalment of my journey as a someone who has moved from CMO to CEO and founder.

It began, as these things often do, after a few glasses! Visiting friends in Alsace, my husband Tom and I were reminded of Crémant: sparkling wine made exactly the same way as Champagne, at a fraction of the price. The French love it. Most Brits have barely heard of it. 

By spring 2025 and during a bit of a gardening leave, I started looking at the opportunity seriously. 

The numbers were compelling. The UK sparkling wine market is worth around £3.1 billion. Champagne is declining, Prosecco has plateaued at roughly 130 million bottles a year, and Crémant is the fastest-growing part of the category, up 22% in a year, off a tiny base. For every twenty bottles of Prosecco sold in Britain, one bottle of Crémant is. It’s a category without a brand hero. Every bottle on the shelf leads with the château and the vineyard. Not one of them talks to the drinker.

This was our opportunity. A large group of people are ‘over’ Prosecco and can't always justify Champagne, not only financially. Champagne can feel like too much: too formal, a bit awkward to turn up with on a Thursday. 

At this stage, I brought my husband Tom on board. He’s the wine guy - qualified and an awesome co-founder. We talked to a lot of people and there was only encouraging feedback. We were on to something.

Then in December 2025, I came across Eggbox by Broody, a 6-month founder incubator run together with Mother, a creative agency I had always admired and never had the chance to work with in corporate life. We applied. Several interview rounds later and we were one of 12 startups (out of an initial 400 applications) to be awarded a place on their inaugural programme. And so, in April we started. What drew me most to Eggbox was the opportunity to work with Mother on the brand creation. They've done a brilliant job, and their belief in the idea was the confirmation we needed to go all in. 

Five months on, the brand exists and we are getting ready for launch. The workload is crazy and varied. As a marketer in big corporations, I have always had a team and a budget. In a start up I have neither. One minute, we are wrestling with the financial model and preparing for investor pitches, the next we are learning how to create Instagram and Tik Tok posts, visiting our amazing vineyard or trying to find a better deal for final mile delivery. In the blizzard of to-dos, prioritizing is critical and we don’t always get it right.

Being able to surround ourselves with other founders at a similar stage to us has been brilliant. It can be a lonely world as a founder. Finding people who are where you are at and talking to them is so important. Ours came through an incubator, but it could be through founder communities. Either way, don't do it alone!