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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
Let's bring in a gong
Speaker 2:Chad Janis from Grooms. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:What's going on?
Speaker 3:Hey, guys. How are
Speaker 2:doing? How are doing? Doing great. Congratulations on the massive acquisition. We have to hit the gong for you.
Speaker 2:Unilever paid 1,200,000.0. Congratulations.
Speaker 1:Big big hit. We've been we I think we tried to make this happen last year. So great great to finally Yeah. Have you on the show. I think everyone was appreciating how offline you've been, for for the last little bit.
Speaker 1:I think somebody I I saw somebody post like, the founder hasn't posted on x since like q four of last year if you guys busy, busy grinding. But, but, yeah, I I guess like the I wanna kinda dive right into and I'm sure you've told the story before, but I think it's fun to hear it now. Like, what drew you to this category in, you know, what what was it? Three and a half years ago At this point, you had you had been on the board of a bunch of different, d to c brands. I would say, like, you started the company in, the probably the the trough like, the the the very bottom of the trough in terms of, like, d to c sentiment, like, the the at the time, there there were not, there were not many, like, great kind of exit comps to to point at.
Speaker 1:A lot of like the d to c darlings had been struggling. You clearly had faith in the category and managed to, build to one of the biggest exits in in the space in in a in a while. So, talk about those, you know, the kind of the year or months leading up to starting the company and and what you saw.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Thanks for having me on. So I actually was trying not to start a company, when I had the idea for Grins. I I was going to go get my MBA at Stanford, and I was saying, hey. I wanna have a pretty normal MBA experience, hang out with friends a ton.
Speaker 3:And it was about two weeks before I went out to Stanford. I was at my dad's place, and I was drinking a greens powder and looked up in the corner of the room, and I was just like, there's no way I'm keeping this habit past thirty days. So that was sort of the epiphany of, hey, how do I take something as robust and comprehensive and make it into a form factor? Didn't think gummies at the time. I'd make it into a form factor that could build a habit for consumer, make it something they look forward to.
Speaker 3:They go to bed at night thinking about, excited about taking grins the next day. And so that started the journey of about a year, formulating, piloting, testing, sampling. About one fourth of my entire Stanford class tried the early iterations of Grins before we launched, And then we launched in August 2023.
Speaker 1:What what other companies had you looked at in the category? I know there was I'm I'm I'm gonna probably blank on the name, but, there was a very high profile, like, cider vinegar Goli. Goli. They had they had scaled extremely rapidly, but then not I don't know where that that business netted out, but I don't I don't believe it was a fantastic outcome. So I felt like I kind of had this feeling at the time that maybe there was something wrong with gummies as a category.
Speaker 1:Like, there was a bunch of demand, but maybe it wasn't possible to build to this level of outcome. Did did did you have any kind of concerns about the cat the form factor at all, or or you just had conviction because people love the product?
Speaker 3:I mean, not the form factor. The history of gummy is actually really interesting. About twenty years ago, it didn't really exist. And I would say then Ollie came around in 2014, I believe, and made, gummy an approachable category. And then I would say we're entering what I would consider a v three of the gummy era, which is taking really robust blends and putting them into a form factor like gummy.
Speaker 3:So you sort of get the best of all worlds. You get robust comprehensive blends in a form factor that's convenient, enjoyable. Consumers can look forward to it. And so I didn't I didn't necessarily tie the dots the way that you got it just there with Golli. I think they were more focused on individual ingredients that sort of rose and roads that road with trends and then came back down as they sort of trended away.
Speaker 3:We we stay away from, like, single ingredients.
Speaker 1:What would you say are the three biggest factors that contributed to your guys', what I would describe as hyper growth?
Speaker 3:I would say first is novel innovation. So each of the products you see us launching does not exist in the market. So when people say, like, oh, who are you competing with? It's like, well, we're kind of creating our own, new categories against large outstanding categories. I would say second is just, like, unrelenting urgency every day.
Speaker 3:Like, I sort of look back at the urgency I've had every single day over the last three and a half, four years, as well as the urgency that my team has every day. Like, it it's just it compounds over time if you're delivering that much urgency and impact every day. Know, the third thing that I'd say is the absolute most important is the team. We've got, a 130 plus individuals here at this company. We have a culture of autonomy and accountability, and each individual here wakes up every day as the CEO of their domain.
Speaker 3:So when you sort of take a 130 plus people who are CEOs of their function and stack that together, you end up in a, I guess, in a place that we just have ended up, here in the last week.
Speaker 2:Can you talk about how you thought about building the team? Like, what roles you wanted to hire for and when and sort of how you stage the the scale out?
Speaker 3:Yeah. The the hardest part about building a company is, like, you as the founder have to do too much. You have to do too much to start.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so over time, get to a place of like, okay, where does the company need me most? Like, where am I uniquely capable? So I guess, like, the advice I would take that question is like, hey. What advice would I give about building Yeah. Through the stages that we we did?
Speaker 3:You gotta surround yourself with, like, the absolute best in each each function. And so you sort of pick off each function slowly over time where either you don't enjoy it and it's sort of, you know, it's pushing down on your your vibes, I guess I could say. Or b, alternatively, things that you think somebody could do way better than you, and you need to clear that out so that you can focus on other things. And so I I wouldn't say that, you know, we we probably made some hires early that others wouldn't. Like, we hired our chief people officer pretty early in the company.
Speaker 3:I'm trying to think of another one that we might have hired earlier than than most people would have.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What what was the motivation between the early hire on the chief people officer?
Speaker 3:I I think it comes back to, like, ultimately, at the end of the day, like, a company's success is the people. Yeah. Right? The culture that you have, how that facilitates frictionless growth.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so from the early days, like, we've always been focused on ensuring that we get the absolute best people here in the company and then put them in an environment. Yeah. Where they can be their full self. They can excel to the the the extent that they can. I mean, we've got people at the company who, probably had impacted other companies, but when they got here, it was, like, night and day, the impact that they were able to have.
Speaker 2:Well, you you mentioned that you demoed the product with your Stanford class. What was the actual process of the very first version of the product to the, you know, the scale up? Were you formulating it yourself using off the shelf products and then go to a co packer and then in house manufacturing? Take me on, like, the actual product development journey.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We, early days of the business, prelaunch, the process was calling up 20 different co bands
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Co manufacturing partners and telling them, here's what I wanna do. Here's what the ingredients are. I'll source all of it. And every single one of them, except for one said, I'm not gonna do that. Like, that that's gonna taste disgusting.
Speaker 3:That doesn't work in a gummy. It's never gonna Yeah. The one who said who said he would give it a try, he was like
Speaker 1:It's so funny because because you say that, like, you you talk about the the product being innovative, but I think you guys have been so successful and probably had so many clones that my assumption has been that, like, this category always existed and you guys just came in and out out executed, but actually creating the category.
Speaker 3:Well well, here here's where it gets crazier. So so we finally got the one to try, and I was like, look. Just just produce it. We'll both sample it. We'll say it tastes terrible or not.
Speaker 3:So we ended up by producing. It didn't taste terrible. It had some work to do. We went through multiple iterations with the Stanford classmates, 25% of them. And then the hardest part about building this business is the little pack that we have, the daily packs.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That in that infrastructure for taking gummies and putting it into packs did not exist prior to us.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:So for the first six to eight months of this business, we had 20 bodies standing around a table Mhmm. Manually picking up gummies and putting them in packs and taking a clamp sealer that looks like a staple gun Yep. Before we then were able to automate it. So, I mean, that that's been the hardest part about this business is getting the infrastructure to where it is today where we can, you know, ship 10,000,000 gummies a day Yeah. And have the infrastructure for it.
Speaker 2:Is that because, the gummies are sticky so they don't work on normal, like, machinery to just fall into the pouches themselves on an automated line?
Speaker 3:I mean, that's one of the biggest difficulties. Why it didn't exist prior? I think in the instances where it does exist would be, like, your General Mills, like, Mott's gummies. They're, like, the Yeah. More, like, flimsier type packaging.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And and that's all in house.
Speaker 2:That's all in house. Yes.
Speaker 3:It's not on the shelf.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. There's not really, a manufacturing supply chain that does that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, yeah, did you stay with a co packer for a long time? Did you wind up dual sourcing? How did you, like, solve the supply chain over time?
Speaker 3:Yeah. And this has been the the biggest unlock of our business over time. And, frankly, the part that people are gonna overlook is, like, having operations scale at the rate that we've been able to do it Yeah. Is a massive feat. We've got multiple co mans, multiple co packers
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Multiple nodes, three PL in house facility. It it's been a lot. We're finally at a place where we can actually meet the demand that's out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And keep up with it. So we're we're in a good operational place right now. The operations stayed asleep.
Speaker 2:You, raise a lot of money along the way?
Speaker 3:We raised probably around 50,000,000
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Over the course of the business. Some of that was secondary over the course, and then on primary as well, obviously.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You have a fantastic, group of investors, by the way. Yeah. All of them are
Speaker 3:They're great.
Speaker 1:Right? Ava, Amanda, all those people are fantastic. How did your how did your marketing mix evolve over time? Was it relatively consistent? I mean, I'm assuming you've you've given quite a lot of, money, to meta platforms.
Speaker 1:But but any anything that was surprising from a user acquisition standpoint? Or was it the kind of thing where it was, like, you know, 90% Google meta for the history plus, you know, rotating in experimental budget?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, meta is always gonna be a beast, for, like, every brand that's, online. What I'll say, though, is it it has been surprising to me when I hear others mix and that Meta makes up, like you said, like, 85, 90%. Mhmm. It's like, oh, wow.
Speaker 3:You should probably, like, diversify that a little bit. Meta's always gonna take up a massive chunk. I mean, they built such a good platform that allows for companies to find people in market for their particular product. And so we we've diversified over time. We have intent to continue diversifying, building awareness.
Speaker 3:And so it's not that we feel like, you know, we're overexposed in a channel, but we we just always had the intent to create defensibility against the media mix.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Scariest moment over the last three and a half years.
Speaker 3:I can tell you the exact day. I the I six months into the business, January 29. I was calling my co man. I was like, hey. We don't have it was, like, two weeks of telling a day.
Speaker 3:I don't think we have enough inventory. Right? It's like, no. No. No.
Speaker 3:We're good. We're good. We're good. January 29, I was like, hey. We're not good, are we?
Speaker 3:And he's like, no. No. We're not good. And so we had to shut off marketing spend by 93% overnight.
Speaker 1:And this is because you had a bunch of subscribers and you're worried about delivering on the subscriptions. If you can't, you know, there's huge amount of churn and then So
Speaker 3:so we've we've never gone out of stock for, like, more than a couple days.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:So there's been, like, a couple periods in the business where we were close. We've never gone out of stock in, like, a a way that would hurt our consumer. But that you you got it exactly right. Like, the golden rule at Grunz is we do not go out of stock. These people expect they take it daily.
Speaker 3:We are in stock. If that means we can't acquire customers, fine. We've gotta deliver for those, your subscribers.
Speaker 2:So does that also affect the SKU mix and how careful you are about launching new SKUs? Because every new SKU adds complexity to the supply chain and and the inventory management.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, look, like, we've got a couple of, I I would say, we have a couple of SKUs per brand we launch. If you asked our operations team and the actual SKU that we have, they would tell you we have hundreds of SKUs. Yeah. So I'm probably downplaying the complexity.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But, yeah, like, we the nice thing about this business is we we have solutions that solve consumers' needs en masse, so we don't have to create, you know, 50 different products to solve niche needs that a consumer has.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What's your outlook on consumer broadly?
Speaker 3:I love it. I I can't imagine building in a different space. Mhmm. But I would say consumer sentiment is rough in some ways right now, but I don't think that's, like, a surprise. You can look.
Speaker 3:Probably, you've seen trends, but I would say consumer as a category, it's a beautiful thing. Right? Like, team, we're leveraging AI probably in a opportunistic way, not in a existential way that a lot of tech companies are like, hey. If we don't do this right, are we existing next year? It for us, it's an opportunity, and we're finding some really nice inroads there.
Speaker 2:Interesting. How did you think about messaging in the early days and, like, honing the brand messaging? Because the product delivers across a couple vectors, convenience and health benefits. Was there ever, a tension between those? Like, how did you wind up sore what did you settle on for, like, the key value prop if you could just deliver one message?
Speaker 3:I think your consumer helps you identify what resonates best. I would say, though, the approach of, like, overarching approach of what we've done. One brand that I looked up to is Doctor. Squatch. As you know, their approach, you know, it's probably the first time I was in the shower using a soap, and I was like, wow.
Speaker 3:It's, like, really fun. This is a nice experience. Yeah. Something like, actually, like, mark your experience there, and I I think we've taken some of that concept to the supplement category where, as you've sort of called out, most brands are like like, we do clinical research, but we don't, It's not like the only thing we talk about. Right?
Speaker 3:It's we do we have, like, studies. We've done all this wonderful stuff, but we try not to lean too much on that because that's what the rest of the category is doing. We're kind of a lifestyle brand. Yeah. And so consumers buy it.
Speaker 3:They enjoy it. They look forward to it, and it drives an impact in their life. And so I would say the overarching theme, and I think if you were to look at our, our ad account, if you were to look at our, like, what resonates with the consumer, it's it's that we're a brand that personifies our consumer, and they like to associate and have the benefits from it.
Speaker 2:Talk to me about the d to c to retail transition. Was that in the pitch deck at the very start? Did you know exactly how long that was gonna take? Or was there a moment when you were like, okay. I'm ready.
Speaker 2:We're ready to go. Now is the time.
Speaker 1:Or did, did Shrey come and find you and say, it's time to go and
Speaker 2:You guys
Speaker 3:know Shrey?
Speaker 1:I know. I know Shrey. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Love it. Shrey Shrey's awesome. He's been a good buddy in, helping the business since early days. He actually went with me to pitch, I believe, Walmart and Sam's Club in the 2024. Oh.
Speaker 3:But we didn't have a lot of employees at the time, and I was the original one pitching. Look. I I just always knew this business was gonna be omnichannel. I I don't think there's any reason to, like, have pride in being a solely d to c business or a solely like, there's just there's consumers everywhere. Like, meet them with the solution that and at the price point that works for them.
Speaker 3:So I first had conversations about launching retail back in, like, January 2024, and I'll tell you everybody was telling me, hey. It's kinda early. Like, do you really wanna do this? And I said, yes. I guarantee, like, the selling cycles are so long here.
Speaker 3:We'll guarantee by next year when we're finally in this retailer, we're gonna be really glad that we put in the time today. Totally. And so we you know, that process took really long. We launched with Sprouts in October 2024 Mhmm. Target in February 2025, and then Walmart in April 2025, and then a a bunch of other, amazing retailers after that.
Speaker 2:And then what were you tracking? What what changed about the business, the marketing, the strategy to actually be successful in retail?
Speaker 3:The the biggest thing is the rebrand we did. Okay. So the original branding, I don't know if you've seen it. It looks like a dark green color.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:I I I'm I'm glad you haven't seen it. I developed it in Canva in an afternoon. Okay. You know what's funny is it was, like, it was so bad, but when we changed, like, the vast majority of people were like, this is a really good rebrand change. Yeah.
Speaker 3:We got a few people who were like, hey. Like, what's up with the I want the old branding. I was like, guys, like, that's Canva. Like, nothing special there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So we we redid the packaging. We made it ready for retail.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:You could more quickly in sort of three seconds identify, what what the product was. And so that's probably the biggest change we had to do to get ready for, retail distribution.
Speaker 1:Is is product the only thing that really matters in in, with with an early stage consumer brand?
Speaker 3:It's a big broad statement. I think it really matters for us because it's the it sets the stage for how big any of our businesses can become. So as you know, we've got prunes, we've got Nutrips, our mushroom product, Nootropics, we've got Immune, which is an immunity product, and we've got juice, which is our pre workout, pre anything energy product. If we don't get that product right, speaking to that category right, then it it caps the upside of how big that business can be. So it really matters for us.
Speaker 3:I can't speak for every business, though.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How how diversified did the business become? I mean, a 130 employees is, is a lot. I imagine that you've had success both in ecommerce and then also in retail and then also across these new product lines. But is there a power law where one product in retail is driving the vast majority of sales, or is it pretty much like a sum of some of all the different parts?
Speaker 1:There's always a power law. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But how's
Speaker 3:everything going? Everything's doing well. Like, all these products are phenomenal. People should, should try them
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:See if they wanna stick with them. I I would say that our team's, like, super ambitious. So for if you asked us, we'd be like, oh my goodness. We want these these secondary products behind Grunz to be much bigger than they are. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But to be clear, like, they're large businesses. Yeah. And I think any founder would love to have just one of them Mhmm. As their core business. So and and and we've got a lot of really exciting innovation coming that I I think all grown nicely like, Greens has.
Speaker 2:Yeah. When did you first meet Unilever or the folks over there?
Speaker 3:I first had a conversation with them probably in, like, June.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's when we started talking. But but, like, casually, not like I like, just getting to know them. Ultimately, for me, what really matters is the individual is somebody that I'm excited to work with, I'm excited to build with. And so I I've been chatting with them for quite some time to identify whether it was a good fit for both sides.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You also you're like, give me another year. I'll, like, three, four x again. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then and then what what do you think Unilever brings to the table to let you fulfill the vision here?
Speaker 3:They're they're awesome. I mean, you may you may be familiar with their background, but Yeah. They've done this, like, with multiple businesses before and, frankly, might be one of the few strategic partners that has. Yeah. So you've got Nutrafol, which they just acquired probably about four years ago, and they're they're publicly stated that that business is significantly larger than when they acquired it.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. They acquired LiquidIV back in probably 2020. That business is massively larger. I think they just stated last year that it's around 1,000,000,000 of revenue.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 3:They acquired Ollie back in 2019. That business is significantly bigger. Yeah. So they they just done a really good job. They they know what to look for, and, I think that's what our team's most excited for is we're getting a partner who can help us on our ambitious goals and, knows the path to get there.
Speaker 2:You mentioned that you're using AI opportunistically. What does that actually look like in practice? Because I I can imagine that, you know, you you probably have some sort of software SaaS product in many verticals. All of those companies are probably launching or adding AI features so you can flip a switch and turn that on, or you can go and build from scratch. Like, what's working right now?
Speaker 3:One of the biggest things I'm grateful for is we have a really, really strong data and finance team.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And so we have, like, all the data infrastructure, data warehouse in a place where it's accessible through Claude to our team.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:So you've got you've got the CX team. You've got the finance team. You've got the marketing team all, like, immediately accessible with that information to make decisions. So I'd say that's probably the biggest unlock is everyone's in Claude. Everyone is like, we we all went through an effort.
Speaker 3:It's kind of a the objective's kind of a joke, but it's basically make yourself replaceable. Like, can AI replace your job? And Yeah. So we're all ticking across the aspects of our roles and what we can automate through AI. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I find a lot of productivity from it. But I would say the biggest takeaway there is you've gotta have your data infrastructure and data warehouse in a place that it's a a source of truth to every individual in the company.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Talk about your approach to creative. I've heard that you guys are, like, absolute powerhouse when it comes to just, like, generating high volumes of creative, and I'm curious if there's any unlocks on the AI side on that front as well.
Speaker 3:You know, we haven't really used AI for that. I imagine that like, we're we're testing, like, a few things, but I'm sure you guys see all over x. There's a million posts about people creating, like, the Pixar animations and stuff. And, yeah, say what you will. I some of it's a little testy.
Speaker 3:It's kinda like, hey. We're we're a reputable brand. Like, we can't be putting some things out in the Internet like that, and so we're pretty careful about it.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:I would say at this point, we're still, like, 99 plus, like, human generated, whether it's, like, in a editing file or whether it's actually humans creating UGC or working with influencers who are creating content. We we haven't moved, I would say, into, like, AI being the the generator of our our creative.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Did you actually get your MBA or did did you drop out?
Speaker 3:Oh, it was so close. It was so close. There's two programs. So an
Speaker 1:exit exit at this scale, can they not just say, like, okay, this guy's a master of business? We'll give him
Speaker 3:a I don't think they would. I don't think they've done that for others who have who have had some success successful outcomes. Just before I graduated, every quarter so the business is doing, like, 50,000,000 of revenue when I graduated.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:We had probably, like, six people working on it at the time. And it was two weeks before I graduated. I came to my wife back to our dorm, and I was like, hey. There's, a real chance I'm not gonna graduate. I was, like, right on the GPA cutoff.
Speaker 3:She's like, I'm like, no. No. Like like, dead serious. We're we're, like, one test, one one point lower, and we're not gonna graduate. She's like, do wanna come back?
Speaker 3:I was like, no. Either we graduate and I have an MBA or we don't, and I I don't have an MBA. That's Yeah. Was hoping out.
Speaker 1:Well, you're you're a master you're a master of business in our book. So I agree. I think you got you got the you you won the right award. Yeah. But thank you thank you for hanging out on, and congratulations to to the entire team.
Speaker 1:It's Congratulations. Incredible story.
Speaker 2:We'll talk to you soon. Have a good rest of your day.