When Stern alum Perry Ya’s childhood best friend moved to New York City after college, the pair found themselves spending countless nights in Koreatown drinking soju, introduced to them by their Korean American friends. They fell in love with the way the drink brought people together, and started hosting their own parties featuring homemade versions infused with fresh fruit and botanicals.

Those experiments became Wild Mannered, a natural soju cocktail brand that celebrates Asian American drinking culture. Ya and his friend recently left their careers in tech to focus on the business full-time, and their three flavors are now sold at New York City liquor stores and bars — including Union Square Wines, which Ya walked past nearly every day as a first-year living in Founders Hall.

Ya spoke to WSN about balancing innovation and cultural respect, building a product for new drinkers and what it’s like running a company with your best friend.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

WSN: Can you talk about your approach to creating soju cocktails and the three flavors you offer?

Ya: The product inspiration comes from the flavored sojus from Korea, like lychee and apple — iconic drinks that as Asian Americans in our early twenties, we spent a lot of time drinking. But we also noticed that the new generation of consumers are drinking a lot less than they used to. One theory we have is that as better-for-you ingredients and higher quality products become more common, traditional alcohol gets a bad rep. Of course, it’s not the best thing to drink all the time, but for us, it’s a fundamental social lubricant. Our customers didn’t spend their college days drinking shitty whiskeys and vodkas — they came up in an age of White Claw and Truly, fun drinks that don’t fit neatly into wine or beer categories.

We wanted to be a gateway into soju, so we created 13% ABV cocktails that come in three flavor combinations: cucumber, lime and mint, which is our play on a mojito and is very light and refreshing; pineapple and ginger, which has a spicy kick and is our take on a Moscow mule; and strawberry and basil, which is fruitier and sweeter. We made sure none of them tasted too sweet, because if you want more than one drink, you don’t want to be knocked out from sugar on the first one.

WSN: How do you balance creating new drinks while respecting soju’s cultural history?

Ya: We come from a perspective of loving the product, but also wanting to celebrate more than just what it stands for. And for us, it’s sharing. As Asians, we grew up seeing our parents get together with friends to drink a bottle of baijiu, for example. Similarly, soju is a very communal drink in itself. The way that you drink it has a lot of rituals in Korea — you pay respects to the folks who are older around the table and you make sure you pour for each other. Those are the kind of elements that we always wanted to celebrate as a drinks brand, but doing it in a way that feels inviting and accessible. If it’s good enough for you to try it and you ultimately learn a little bit about Korean culture, we’ve done our job.

WSN: Did your experience at the Stern School of Business shape the way you’ve built Wild Mannered?

Ya: What Stern or any other program at NYU teaches you to do is to be a critical thinker and to be capable of going out there, exploring your interests and finding the right ways to succeed at it. It doesn’t necessarily teach you exactly how to do that, but it does give you an opportunity to be in New York City among very smart people. You learn to collaborate, you learn what you like and you learn to empathize. The goal when you build a company like ours, at the end of the day, is to connect with your customers and form a community of people that like your products.

WSN: What was it like transitioning from tech to the beverage industry?

Ya: We started this business back in 2023, and always played along with the idea that it would be something that we would invest a little bit of time into at the end of our days. Ultimately, we realized if we really want a shot at this, this is going to be a full-time thing, so we went headfirst into it last year. Tech is a very comfortable industry to be in, but it was exciting for us to come to the alcohol industry with a lot of innocence, naivete and a dream of trying to change something that we know and love in a way that feels authentic to us. The way we pursued it was by taking principles out of tech. We launched with a lightweight minimum viable product with our initial brand and tested that in the market for about a year and a half. In March, we rebranded from Neat to Wild Mannered — everything’s changed except for the liquid inside.

WSN: Looking back on the past few years, what are you most proud of?

Ya: Despite having known each other for our entire lives, my co-founder and I learn something new about each other every day, and we understand each other to a degree that even I didn’t think was possible back when we started. The friendship stays paramount throughout it all, and that’s the thing I cherish the most out of anything. On a day-to-day basis, we work together, and sometimes we challenge and fight each other. That’s something that I think is a huge achievement to me — to be able to nowadays call him an even better friend than he was before. I like to celebrate that as much as I can.