Alaskans Reese Hanneman and Ryan Sheldon hatched their plan for pre-workout supplement Antidote on the ski trails near Service High School. (Photo provided by Ryan Sheldon)
Reese Hanneman and Ryan Sheldon were skiing along the Besh Loop on the Service High School trails in Anchorage when the conversation turned to their pre-workout routines.
Hanneman, a former Olympic skier from Fairbanks, and Sheldon, a former collegiate track and field athlete from Talkeetna, had experienced similar struggles.
It was on those trails the pair vowed to develop a pre-workout supplement that would have met their needs when they were performing at the highest levels.
In 2024, they released Antidote, which they describe as a pre-workout powder that is clean and all-natural, and provides the vitalization and energy athletes and enthusiasts need to train, race or play.
“We decided that we should make this natural pre-workout come to life because we both had so many friends that felt so much need for it,” Hanneman said.
While not all of those friends were high-level athletes, they were often typical Alaskans — active in skiing, trail running, cross-training and other outdoor endeavors.
“There are a lot of people here in Anchorage and in Alaska who are super active,” he said.
Having an all-natural product was vital for the company. Hanneman said pre-workout mixes have developed a bad reputation and he’d avoided them during his skiing career.
Unable to find a good commercial product himself, Hanneman said he had used a number of the components in Antidote like beetroot, beta-alanine and tart cherry for his own pre-workout mix. But developing a product meant working with nutritional scientists and finding a manufacturer that would make their detailed blend instead of just slapping a new label on an established product.
“The real challenge was finding a manufacturer that was actually willing to make the product to our exact specifications,” Sheldon said. “Because they really wanted an off-the-shelf solution. They wanted the easy way out, basically. And that’s just not what Reese and I are all about.”
Initially all of the investors were Alaska-based, a point of pride for Hanneman and Sheldon.
“We had some great local business people and local people get involved and come on board and helped us get going,” Hanneman said. “So that was really cool to see the Anchorage business community see the vision and know they’re on board.”
After launching direct-to-consumer sales on their website, Hanneman and Sheldon started selling the products on Amazon late last year.
Antidote — a pre-workout supplement developed by Reese Hanneman, an Olympic cross country skier from Fairbanks, and Ryan Sheldon, a track and field athlete from Talkeetna — is seen on the shelf at the high-end Erewhon grocery store in Culver City, Calif., on Saturday, May 3, 2025. (ADN photo)
In recent weeks, the duo has scored a big win in the retail market, landing Antidote in Erewhon, an upscale Los Angeles-based grocery store.
It’s the only product of its kind carried at the store and a good fit for its natural- and organic-focused clientele.
To land the contract, Sheldon flew down in person and dropped in on the store’s headquarters.
“I showed up in person one day and was like, ‘Hey, you don’t know who I am, but we want to put this in your store,’ ” Sheldon said. “The guy was so startled, it was hilarious. And he said, ‘Well, talk to these people.’ And that’s just how it all got started.”
They’re continuing to try to find other placements for retail sales for the product, including at Whole Foods. They also have another product in development.
The pair had initially met through Hanneman’s wife, Jessica, who interviewed Sheldon for a job at Anchorage’s Marsh McLennan Agency, an insurance brokerage. While Sheldon decided not to take the job, Jessica Hanneman had an inkling the two co-founders of Antidote would work well together and set them up on a “man-date,” according to Sheldon.
“Reese and I are very proud of being from Alaska, born and raised and our families have been here for a long time,” Sheldon said. “So it’s just fun to kind of keep that entrepreneurial and pioneering spirit going.”