Three dads turned a $750 investment and 100 hats into $35 million in revenue, entirely through storytelling and daily content. Gary Vaynerchuk, the serial entrepreneur and CEO of VaynerMedia, has joined the company as a partner and active strategic advisor.

Dad Gang was founded in 2022 by Grant Eastey, Bart Szaniewski, and Ejay O’Donnell. Before it became a company, it was the name of a group text among three friends who spent years talking through the victories and frustrations of raising kids. When they eventually made hats to represent what fatherhood meant to them, the first batch resonated beyond their immediate circles. 

“Dad Gang wasn’t created to sell hats,” the founders say. “It was created to change the way fatherhood is represented.”

Four years in, the Los Angeles-based brand reports selling more than one million hats, building a community of over one million fathers, and expanding into more than 200 Lids locations nationwide. It also carries at SCHEELS, Pro Image Sports, and a network of independent retailers. Gary’s involvement makes him Dad Gang’s first external partner.

The Content Strategy That Replaced an Advertising Budget

Dad Gang’s growth depended on showing up daily rather than on paid reach. The founders posted every day, centering content on the emotional realities of fatherhood rather than on product. Stories about what it felt like to raise kids drove traction before product-centered content ever did.

“The goal wasn’t to scale overnight,” the founders say. “It was to get our story in front of more dads, one post at a time.”

As revenue came in, they reinvested it, but not into traditional campaigns. Their paid media budget amounted to roughly $10 a day behind posts that were already performing organically. The spend followed audience signals rather than a predetermined creative or media strategy.

The founders describe wanting to make a hat they were proud to wear as an explicit goal from the start. The combination of premium product standards and storytelling produced what they call an immediate product-market fit: dads were seeing, for the first time, a brand that represented what fatherhood actually felt like.

Gary frames what the founders built as a skill most brands have undervalued. “Organic social media is the most important execution, talent, skill, and variable in today’s demand-driven world,” he says. Brand marketers, he argues, have treated paid spend as the primary lever and consistently underestimated organic execution.

Athletes Came Without a Talent Budget

Dad Gang’s athlete collaborations formed through organic product adoption rather than outreach. Baseball players Mookie Betts, Justin Turner, and Alex Verdugo, along with boxer Teófimo López and NFL players Juwan Johnson and Justin Britt, worked with the brand. NBA champion Josh Hart and artists Post Malone and Teddy Swims have been spotted in the hat without any formal arrangement.

The founders are direct about how these connections formed. “Almost every time you see a big name wearing Dad Gang, they bought it for themselves or were given it as a gift,” they say. “We’ve never worked with anyone that wasn’t aware of the brand beforehand.”

What Cleared Gary’s Standard

Gary is specific about why he moved forward. “They’re far along,” he says. “They’re selling a lot, a lot, a lot of hats, and all three co-founders pass my intuition, and I can see myself in them.”

His read of the apparel category is pointed. The business depends on understanding culture, reading current media variables, and what he calls “day trading attention.” “It’s scrappy,” he says, “and I’ve seen this movie before when founder talent can will a business to success.”

The founders’ relationship with Gary’s work predated any business conversation by more than a decade. All three followed his content and books from around 2010 and credit his philosophy with shaping how they built Dad Gang. Ejay says two recurring ideas in particular, doing the right thing regardless of cost, and taking the finite nature of a single life, guided his decisions throughout. The formal introduction came through VaynerSports, where Dad Gang had already worked with Vayner-affiliated athletes on collaborations. AJ Vaynerchuk, Gary’s brother, eventually called to open the discussion directly.

Bart describes the outcome in terms that separate the business context from the longer personal history. “One of my dreams was to work for VaynerMedia at some point,” he says. “But this is way better. We’re business partners.”

What ‘Active Partner’ Is Designed to Deliver

Gary is specific about what his role covers and what the founders gain. “Bat phone. I think they were able to do reference checks with me and see that other founders were like, ‘Hey, I’m busy, but if you really need me, I’m there.’ And that mattered for them strategically, from a marketing standpoint, from a hiring standpoint, from a potential exit in the future standpoint,” he says.

He is equally direct about where accountability for the brand’s culture lies. “I only have very little say,” Gary says. “It’s going to come down to the founders.” His prescription for what those founders need to protect: put employees’ interests above customers’, and their own interests last.

The founders describe their engagement with the community as non-negotiable at any scale. They maintain a private Facebook group, respond to direct messages, and call members. “We still stay in touch with everyone,” they say. “The more we do that, the better.”

What the Partnership Is Trying to Prove

The partnership’s first concrete programming initiative is a series called “Dad Hour,” in which Gary will join the founders for live Q&A sessions with Dad Gang’s community. The format is intended to bring his direct conversational approach to the situations the brand’s audience navigates, including early parenthood, mental health challenges, and loss.

Gary’s explanation for why the mission connects to him personally centers on what happens inside communities of men. He describes a meaningful share of men as struggling with vulnerability and open communication, but notes that group contexts tend to create conditions for more honest exchange. “If this brand can be a catalyst and an engine for that,” he says, “that’s just another feather in the cap of why this is fun for me.”

Dad Gang’s retail expansion, including a recent Shopify partnership and the Lids rollout, runs alongside the partnership with Gary.

The founders frame their benchmark for the partnership a year from now in terms of reach rather than revenue. Success means more dads feeling present, supported, and connected, with Gary’s platform extending the mission further than three founders could reach alone.

Grant closes on the approach that built the brand. “If you’re willing to stay patient, stay humble, keep posting, and continue putting in the work when there’s no applause,” he says, “incredible things can happen over time. Dad Gang is living proof of that.”

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