Houston-based startup expands hangover product line with new beverage launch

cheers to health

Cheers Health has expanded its product line as it evolves as a wellness-focused brand. Photo courtesy of Cheers

Houston-based startup Cheers first got a wave of brand devotees after it was passed over by investors on Shark Tank in 2018. In the years since, Cheers secured an impressive investment, launched new products, and became a staple hangover cure for customers. When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted businesses, the company rose to the occasion and experienced its first profitable year as drinking and wellness habits changed across America.

Cheers initially started its company under the name Thrive+ with a hangover-friendly pill that promised to minimize the not-so-fun side effects that come after a night out. The capsules support the liver by replacing lost vitamins, reduce GABAa rebound and lower the alcohol-induced acetaldehyde toxicity levels in the body. The company's legacy product complemented social calendars and nights on the town, providing next day relief.

With COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing measures, the days of pub crawls and social events were numbered. Cheers founder Brooks Powell saw the massive behavior change in people consuming alcohol, and leaned into his vision of becoming more than just a hangover cure but an "alcohol-related health company," he says.

When the pandemic first hit, Powell and his team noticed an immediate dip in sales — a relatable story for businesses in the grips of COVID-19.

"There is a three day period where we went from having the best month in company history to the worst month in company history, over a 72 hour stretch," he remarks.

He soon called an emergency board meeting and rattled off worst-case "doomsday" scenarios, he says.

"Thankfully, we never had to do any of these strategies because, ultimately, the team was able to rally around the new positioning for the brand which was far more focused on alcohol-related health," he says.

"We found that a lot less people were getting hangovers during 2020, because generally when you binge drink, you tend to binge drink with other people," he explains.

He noticed that health became an important focus for people, some who began to drink less due to the lack of social gatherings. On the contrary, some consumers began to drink more to fill the idle time.

According to a JAMA Network report, there was a 54 percent increase in national sales of alcohol for the week stay-at-home orders began last March, as compared to the year prior.

"All of a sudden, you have all of these people who probably aren't binge drinking but they're just frequently consuming alcohol. Their drinks per week are shooting up, and they're worried about liver health," explains Powell.

Outside of day-after support, Cheers leaned into its long-term health products to help drinkers consume alcohol in a healthier way. Cheers Restore, a dissolvable powder consumers can mix into their water, rehydrates the body by optimizing sodium and glucose molecules.

For continued support, Cheers Protect is a daily supplement designed to increase glutathione — an antioxidant that plays a key role in liver detoxification — and support overall liver health. Cheers Protect, which was launched in 2019, became a focus for the company as they pivoted its brand strategy and marketing to accommodate consumer behavior.

"The Cheers brand is just trying to reflect the mission statement, which is bringing people together through promoting fun, responsible and health-conscious alcohol consumption," says Powell. "It fits with our vision statement, which is a world where everyone can enjoy alcohol throughout a long, healthy and happy lifetime,."

At the close of 2020, Cheers had generated $10.4 million in revenue and over $1.7m in profit — its first profitable year since launch.

During the brand's mission to stay afloat during the pandemic, the Cheers team was also laying the groundwork for its entry into the retail space. When Powell launched the company during his junior year at Princeton University, bringing Cheers to brick-and-mortar stores had always been a goal. He envisioned liquor and grocery stores where Cheers was sold next to alcohol as a complementary item. "It's like getting sunscreen before going to the beach, they kind of go hand in hand," he says.

"When we spoke with retailers, specifically bars and liquor stores, what we learned is that a lot of these places were hesitant to put pills near alcohol," he says. Wanting an attractive and accessible mode of alcohol-support, the Cheers team created the Cheers Restore beverage.

Utilizing the technology Cheers developed with Princeton University researchers, the Cheers Restore beverage incorporates the benefits of the pill in a liquid, sugar-free form. The company states that its in-vivo study found that the drink is up to 19 times more bioavailable than pure dihydromyricetin (DHM), a Japanese raisin tree extract found in Cheers products and other hangover-related cures.

"What we figured out is that if you combine DHM — our main ingredient — with something called capric acid, which is an extract from coconut oil, the bioavailability shoots way up," says Powell. He notes the unique taste profile and the "creaminess" capric acid provides. "Now you have this lightly carbonated, zero-sugar, lemon sherbert, essentially liver support, hangover beverage that tastes great in 12 ounces and can mix with alcohol," he explains.

The Cheers Restore beverage is already hitting the Houston-area, where its found a home on menus at Present Company. The company has also run promotions with Houston hangouts like Memorial Trail Ice House, Drift, and The Powder Keg.

Currently, the beverage is only available in retail capacity and cannot be ordered on the Cheers website. As Powell focuses on expanding Cheers Restore beverage presence in the region, he welcomes the idea of expanding nationally in the future to come. While eager customers await the drink's national availability, they can actively invest in Cheers through the company's recently-launched online public offering.

Though repivoting a company and launching a new product is exciting, the process did not come without its caveats and stressors. While Cheers profited as a business in 2020, the staff and its founder weren't immune to the struggles of COVID-19.

"I think 2020 was the first year that it really became real for me that Cheers is far more than just some sort of alcohol-related health brand and its products," says Powell. "Cheers is really its employees and everything that goes into being a successful, durable company that people essentially bet their careers on and their family's well-being on and so forth," he continues.

"It really does weigh on you in a different way that it's never weighed on you before," says Powell, describing the stress of the pandemic. The experience was "enlightening," he says, and he wants others to know it's not embarrassing to need help.

"There is no lack of great leaders out there that at long periods of their life they needed help in some way," he says. "For me that was 2020 and being in the grinder and feeling the stress of the unknown and all of that, but it could happen to anyone," he continues.

On his failed investor attempt on Shark Tank, Brooks Powell couldn't secure a shark investment for $400,000. Now, he just closed on $2.1 million for his startup. Courtesy of Cheers

Houston hangover pill startup seen on Shark Tank rebrands following multimillion-dollar raise

Three cheers for cheers

When Brooks Powell's Houston-based startup got passed over by the investors on Shark Tank last year, he didn't let it deter him. Instead, the Houston entrepreneur buckled down and started seeking investments off the screen.

It paid off, and Cheers (née Thrive+) recently closed a $2.1 million seed round. The round was lead by NextView Ventures, which has the likes of TaskRabbit, threadUP, and Letgo among its portfolio.

With the new investment, Brooks says the company is rebranding from Thrive, its original moniker, to Cheers.

"Thrive+ doesn't really say anything about what we did or who we are about," Powell says. "We knew we needed something fitting for the alcohol industry but at the same time has the connotation of fun, responsibility, and health."

The process has been daunting, but worth it, Powell says, citing companies like Ring, which changed its company name from Doorbot.

"It would be hard to imagine Amazon buying a company named Doorbot," Powell says.

It's worth noting that Doorbot rebranded also following a similar rejection on Shark Tank.

Once Cheers had its new name, Powell began the process of the transition — relabeling bottles, redoing marketing materials, etc. There's still a long road ahead for the rebranding, but Powell says he wasn't going to drag his feet, since the change would just become more expensive and more challenging. Ring, for instance, had to pay $1 million for its new domain name.

"We wanted to become Cheers as soon as possible, because it would only become harder as time went on," he says.

From student to CEO
Cheers' formula isn't new. The key ingredient, Dihydromyricetin, a natural extract — like caffeine to coffee, which made the FDA process smooth sailing. DHM started being identified as an anti-alcohol treatment in 2012 following experiments on the effects on rats.

Around that time, Powell was a sophomore at Princeton University, and he came across the science surrounding DHM and knew if he could harness the natural extract for commercial use, it'd change the game of hangover health.

"I started working with some of my professors and asking them if it was safe and would it be effective," Powell says.

At the time, there was very little amount of DHM in the United States, so the company became the first to import the ingredient on a large scale.

Powell graduated from Princeton in 2017 and moved his company to its workspace in The Cannon.

Serving up growth
Cheers has seen a tremendous amount of growth over the past year. The company's revenue increased 20 times year over year. A key determiner of success for the company, Powell says, has been strategic marketing and a working product.

"Primarily products such as this, historically, have never worked," he says. "And they've always been marketing toward binge drinkers and partiers."

Another strategy Powell has is giving the company a presence nationwide by having advisers and investors from both coasts.

"What we have tried to do is have our cake and eat it too. We set roots in Houston, but we have our hands in other markets."

In addition to rebranding, Cheers plans to continue its growth, as well as research and development of the product.

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Houston founders launch edtech startup, pilot to pinpoint why students are struggling

learning gaps

Early detection. It sounds simple enough: identify a problem before it has the chance to become a bigger one.

But in practice, early detection is much more difficult to navigate, especially in education, when it comes to identifying the reasons behind a student's academic struggles.

That’s why co-founders Alapati “Al” Ware and Estela Montanez launched Progress Report, a Houston-built K-12 learning-intelligence platform designed to go beyond identifying that a student is struggling.

The platform recently began its pilot program with 35 educators and more than 200 students in Texas and Arizona.

“It’s a micro-learning school that works with children with disabilities, primarily dyslexia and nonverbal students,” Ware tells InnovationMap.

The platform is also being used by homeschool parents, home teachers and Houston educators, including those at SWPS College & Career Preparatory Academy, a Houston charter school.

Ware says Progress Report was designed to fill a gap he and Montanez saw in existing edtech. Some platforms cater almost entirely to students, leaving teachers with little insight into if and how a child is learning. Others focus heavily on district data, where “the student is just a number,” leaving teachers to navigate disconnected tools.

“Our goal was [to] focus purely on the teacher because the teacher is the backbone,” Ware says.

Progress Report traces student performance to learning gaps and prerequisite skills, helping educators understand not only where a student is struggling, but what may be causing it.

The platform then helps teachers build individualized instruction for general education students, students with special education and Individualized Education Program (IEP) needs, and Spanish-speaking learners—all within one educator-controlled system.

The goal is to reduce the guesswork and hours of manual work educators can spend developing individualized lesson plans.

Progress Report helps idenitify learning gaps and common roadblocks for each student. Image courtesy Progress Report

For Ware and Montanez, the mission is also personal.

The concept dates back to around 2023, when the co-founders first had to navigate and address their children’s educational needs.

Ware, Progress Report’s CEO and CTO with a background in edtech, built the platform end-to-end after watching his daughter, who had an IEP related to speech, struggle to get the support she needed.

Montanez, the company’s COO, brought another perspective. Her son is on the autism spectrum. She now leads Progress Report’s operations, partnerships and pilot execution while helping carry its focus on bilingual families from Puerto Rico to Houston.

Together, they began researching ways to personalize their children’s learning and help them progress academically. Montanez’s son went on to become an AP student and high school athlete, while Ware’s daughter began reading more than two grade levels above her grade, they tell InnovationMap.

But Progress Report isn’t designed simply to give a struggling student more work.

Take a student who appears to have difficulty with math.

The problem may not actually be math, the founders share. The student could understand the calculations but struggle to comprehend complex words used in a math problem.

Progress Report is designed to trace those performance patterns back to learning gaps, prerequisite skills or other instructional barriers. From there, it can recommend a next instructional step while leaving the educator in control.

The same concept applies to accommodations.

The system can read IEPs, 504 Plans, Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance (PLAAFPs), evaluations and other special education records. Approved IEP goals can then be mapped into the student’s learning graph, while accommodations can carry over into lesson planning and question delivery.

The founders say that approach separates Progress Report from simply adding another artificial intelligence chatbot to a classroom. And still, they believe teachers have to remain at the center.

Teachers, in fact, helped build Progress Report.

The founders began meeting with Houston-area educators months before the pilot. Their feedback helped shape the platform before testing began.

“We’ve been building alongside these educators,” Ware says.

Parents are another piece.

Progress Report can give parents access to their child’s learning record so they can see learning gaps as they develop. Teachers can also see information on work being completed at home when the parent and educator are working together.

After the pilot wraps, Ware and Montanez plan to introduce a $29.99 monthly subscription for homeschool parents, teachers and other educators. They say the price was intentionally kept relatively low to help make the tools more accessible.

They are also exploring ways to work with organizations that could help families who can’t afford the platform.

Moving forward, the goal is considerably bigger.

Over the next five years, Ware and Montanez want Progress Report to become what they describe as a “gold standard” in every state. They know getting there will require building relationships with educators, technology leaders, policymakers and school board members.

For now, they’re starting with a few hundred students and a question that sounds simple but can be remarkably difficult to answer: Why is this student struggling?

If Progress Report works the way its founders envision, teachers and parents will have a clearer answer.

Pioneering cohousing development opens in Houston's historic 2nd Ward

Housing in Hou

An experimental, multi-generational building in the East End is now open and accepting residents. Only 10 of the 33 units remain available at East End Commons, the first project from CoHousing Houston.

Located at 115 Lenox, East End Commons was first conceived in 2017 and is designed to combine the security of home ownership with the community aspect of apartment life, essentially a condominium but with added focus on bringing neighbors together.

Units range from 900-2,000 square feet, offering ample private home space, but with a large Common House area and central courtyard for gatherings, working, and interaction. Large front porches encourage people to spend time outside where they can meet their neighbors, as do extensive foot paths for casual meetings.

"At East End Commons, you know your neighbors before you move in — so you have a network of people and spaces that are immediately there for you," said founding resident Kelli Soika. "We designed for larger shared spaces versus larger personal spaces in order to foster the breakdown of the barriers that lead to loneliness."

Combating loneliness and isolation is certainly necessary. A 2025 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association shows that most Americans feel a sense of societal division and lonely. A loss of "third spaces," where people gather outside the home or work, is a prime factor. East End Commons aims to alleviate some of that disconnectedness.

"I wanted to live in a neighborhood that is imbued with a sense of community above the individual, like we have all experienced in Houston during times of disaster recovery," said Lynn Morstead, one of East End Commons‘ founding residents. "In those instances, such as Hurricane Harvey, we surface from our separateness and come together in new and unexpected ways. With East End Commons, the goal is to translate that notion beyond a set period of time and make it a fixture of everyday life. I call it 'disaster-free neighborliness.'"

East End Commons was designed by Kathleen English of English + Associates. Sustainability is part of the project's design, with amenities such as geothermal heating and cooling exchange HVAC, pre-heated water systems, low-energy use air conditioning and heating, and native landscaping.

Prices for units range from $300,000 to the $900,000s, which can be more than double the home price in the rapidly gentrifying East End. HOA fees not only help maintain communal areas, they also cover shared internet, water, and other communal expenses. Similarly, government of the building is handled democratically via a community board that aims to make decisions by building consensus.

For more information, email info@cohousinghouston.com or call 832-900-2919.

MD Anderson president to retire after nine years, interim successor named

retirement plan

An era is ending at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

On Aug. 26, Dr. Peter WT Pisters announced his plans to retire from his role as president of the comprehensive cancer center. He will work on a smooth transition of leadership with interim president Dr. Jeffrey E. Lee throughout September.

“I first arrived at UT MD Anderson 32 years ago with a passion for doing everything I could to advance our mission to end cancer. Serving as the only faculty member to become president, and now marking nine years in the role, I can say with great pride and gratitude that there is no better place than UT MD Anderson to turn hope into healing for patients and families everywhere,” Pisters said in a news release. “With a timeless strategy, a strong leadership team, unprecedented levels of financial health, and a priceless culture anchored in our deeply held Core Values, now is the right time for me to transition to other opportunities. UT MD Anderson has never been stronger, and its future has never been brighter.”

Pisters assumed the presidency in 2017 and helped launch some of the most cutting-edge new clinics in MD Anderson history. One of those was the James P. Allison Institute, named for the Nobel Laureate scientist who discovered a way to suppress immune response on tumors so that immune cells would attack cancer cells instead. As head of his titular clinic, Allison pioneered several new immunotherapies against cancer.

Pisters also oversaw the creation of the Institute for Data Science in Oncology in 2024, an innovative consortium of scientists dedicated to enhancing single-cell imaging to improve precision in cancer treatments. The institute also brought together teams to use data-driven analytics regarding safety, quality and access.

The UT System Board of Regents praised the leadership and work of Pisters in a statement, wishing him well in the next phase of his career.

“The Board of Regents and I are profoundly grateful to Dr. Pisters for his exceptional presidency over the past nine years and for thoughtfully concluding his service when UT MD Anderson is thriving at its best position of peak performance, strength and impact. We wish him our very best with his retirement and in his next chapter,” Kevin P. Eltife, chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, added in the release.

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