ShelfLife, a marketplace for raw materials, raises $3 million seed round Two years ago, Lillian Cartwright teamed up with some fellow Harvard Business School students to launch a new spiked seltzer brand called Astrid. Despite all the tools that make launching a D2C brand easier than it’s ever been, the team ran into complications when it came to securing raw materials. This piece of the supply chain is still stuck in the past, according to Cartwright, who explained that most of it is still based around trade shows, powered by referrals and personal connections and plenty of phone calls.