An Investor Offered Me Two Million Dollars for My Hop Farm and Brewery. Then I Read Page Forty-Three of Her Contract

My name is Brody Lindstrom. I’m 42, and I grow hops on two hundred acres in the Yakima Valley of Washington.

If you’ve ever had a good beer in America, there’s a decent chance the hops came from this valley.

My family has farmed here since the 1950s. Five years ago, I did something my father thought was insane. I built a small brewery and taproom in our old hop kiln and started making beer with our own hops.

It worked better than I ever expected.

The taproom is packed every weekend. Our IPA won a gold medal in Denver. People drive from Seattle just to sit on the patio, look at the hop fields and drink beer brewed fifty yards from where it grew.

The women who come in on Saturdays tell the bartenders I’m “the reason they keep coming back.” My bartender, Kelsey, tells me this with a completely straight face every Monday. I tell her to stop.

The problem with success is that it costs money.

We needed a new canning line, a bigger brewhouse and distribution in three new states. My business loan from the local bank was maxed out. The bank wouldn’t go higher without more collateral, and the only collateral I had was the farm.

So I started talking to investors.

Most of them were men in vests who called my beer “a brand” and wanted to put it in a can with a cartoon on it.

Then Tessa Vaughn walked in.

She was 38. Black hair cut sharp at her jaw, a camel coat, a leather portfolio under her arm. She was a partner at a venture capital firm in Seattle that invested in food and beverage companies.

She sat at the bar, ordered our IPA, tasted it, and looked at me over the glass.

“This is the best beer I’ve had in five years,” she said. “I want to own part of it.”