Chris Vaughn '10
Position: CEO & Founder, Saucey
Industry: Logistics, Infrastructure & Technology
Lesson Learned: Grit is the difference between those who win and those who fail.
Chris Vaughn’s mission was to change the world in the way we drink, and he’s currently on the path of doing so. Vaughn founded Saucey in 2014, an on-demand delivery platform changing the way people purchase beer, wine, and spirits in the $113 billion yearly domestic alcohol retail market. Vaughn’s track record of successful startups goes even further back, as former CEO & founder of Jarvus, a mobile photo aggregation application acquired in 2012 by textPlus, where he was the director of marketing and business development for one of the largest mobile messaging apps in the world with over 70 million users.
As a marketing and strategy veteran, Vaughn has acquired tens of millions of users to mobile platforms, taken companies from $0 to millions in revenue in less than 12 months, raised both Angel and Venture Capital, and worked with some of the biggest and most forward-thinking brands in the world including Anheuser Busch, Absolut Vodka, Universal Music, Tesco, and others on their marketing and corporate strategies. His work has been featured in Forbes, Inc, Entrepreneur, WSJ, New York Times, LA Times, and Bloomberg, including FoxNews calling him a “Marketing Genius.”
For Vaughn, LMU created an environment where it was okay to challenge traditional thinking and explore new ideas, and that seed of influence has carried him further than any class or lesson. Chris Vaughn’s advice for his younger self is not to put yourself into a box. You can perform and produce valuable output more than you give yourself credit for – don’t sell yourself short. With grit and hustle, great things will happen.