Will Beyond Meat’s Small Army of Celeb Endorsers Help Sell its IPO?

Alex Honnold may be the only person to have ever free solo climbed El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, but he is just one of many sport celebs who hopped on board the Beyond Meat bandwagon this week. (I just watched Free Solo so I have the climber on the brain.)

Honnold is actually among the least-known sports figures who are were announced this week as investors and champions for the plant-based burger company. This list is rather lengthy, so I’m just going to quote the Beyond Meat blog here:

The new roster is being unveiled as part of our new Go Beyond campaign and includes Kyrie Irving, Shaquille O’Neal, Chris Paul, DeAndre Hopkins, Victor Oladipo, Lindsey Vonn, DeAndre Jordan, JaVale McGee, Harrison Barnes, Malcolm Jenkins, Derrick & Charity Morgan, Alex Honnold, Shaun White, and Luke Walton. These athletes join existing Beyond Meat shareholders JJ Redick, Tony Gonzales, Leonardo DiCaprio, Thomas Middleditch, David Wright, Eric Bledsoe, Maya Moore, and Tia Blanco, as well as forward-thinking celebrities Snoop Dogg, Common, Jessica Chastain, Nicole Williams and Liza Koshy.

We asked Beyond for some more details around the nature of these celebrity investments and will update this post if we hear back.

Beyond Meat is adding all this star power on the heels of the company releasing a new recipe and in the run up to its hotly anticipated IPO. Will this cadre of cool spokespeople help Beyond’s public offering pop?

All eyes are on the Beyond IPO as it will be a bellwether for the fake meat industry. Beyond Meat itself has raised $122 million while alterna-protein rival, Impossible Foods has raised $387.5 million. In addition to those two behemoths needing to generate a return for their investors, there are a number of other plant-based protein startups coming up that will be looking to find and fund their own paths to success. The hit or miss of Beyond’s IPO could impact their ability to raise money and scale as well.

While Honnold is certainly not alone in his endorsement, we’ll just have to see if Beyond’s stock will climb as well as he does. (Seriously, go watch Free Solo right now, it’s terrifyingly great.)