Pod Insights Masters of Scale Rohan Oza: The playbook for building billion-dollar consumer brands About this episode If there was a Mount Rushmore of brand builders, investor Rohan Oza would be on it. He’s been the driving force behind $8 billion in exits for vitaminwater, Poppi, and more. Oza joins host Jeff Berman to reveal his playbook for success.
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2:11 Speaker 02 I started looking around to see who could help make Vitamin Water cool and broad because the product was great, package was great, but didn't have that zeitgeist.
2:19 Speaker 00 Rohan Oza's new job was to make Vitamin Water stand out in a crowded beverage landscape.
2:24 Speaker 02 So 2004 year, right? The two guys at the height of the game in music were 50 and Jay.
2:30 Speaker 00 If you know, you know, but if you don't, that's rappers 50 Cent and Jay-Z. But Vitamin Water was a scrappy young brand. How could they possibly afford a global superstar as their spokesperson?
2:43 Speaker 02 And the vision was to get 50 in the room and how Fifth could be the face of the brand. I'm like, I said to Fifth, I can't afford you, but I have an idea. I said, we can do an equity game. I'll give you skin in the game if you wanted to do this. And he's like, I'm in.
3:07 Speaker 00 This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show, Rohan Oza. If we were erecting the Mount Rushmore of consumer marketing for the 21st century, there is no question that our guest today would have a spot on that monument. The mastermind behind eight billion plus in exits. The guy who brought 50 Cent into Vitamin Water with an equity deal that changed the way not only that brand grew, but changed the way celebrities and influencers ultimately play in the world of brand. Recently, the co-founder of Poppy, which had a $2 billion exit to Pepsi. The co-founder of Cavu, which is a consumer brands investment fund where also you're partnering with founders.
3:51 Speaker 00 Rohan, thrilled to welcome you to Masters of Scale.
3:54 Speaker 02 Thank you. Quite the intro.
3:58 Speaker 00 Really excited to dive in with you on the journey that you've had. We just take us back like set the stage. Where do your entrepreneurial roots come from?
4:04 Speaker 02 Probably my family. I'm originally Indian, born and raised in Africa, educated in England, and now I'm American. So like the sort of the immigrant American dream story. And my family was all a bunch of businessmen. It's in the blood, it's in the culture. And initially the thought was I'd join my father's business. You know, Indian families, dad starts or the granddad starts to join it.
4:26 Speaker 00 What kind of business was that?
4:27 Speaker 02 And that's the problem. It was in agricultural equipment, hardware, things that I was one terrible at and two had no interest. And one of the things I pushed for. Is be passionate about what you're doing if you're allowed to do that. Right. Sometimes you have to just work to get a paycheck. But if you're blessed, be able to be passionate about it. I think you can be a lot more successful. So I realized that if I did this, I would do okay with my dad, but I would never do really well. And so I kind of transitioned into consumer products via engineering. Meaning I started in manufacturing with Mars M and M's. And then I went from there to Coca-Cola.
5:01 Speaker 00 Why manufacturing with Mars M and M's?
5:03 Speaker 02 Mars has created probably some of the most iconic consumer brands in the world. The power of brand is one thing that I espouse a lot. And Mars is a great place to understand that. Like, how have you created such legacy brands that a hundred years later are still massive?
5:18 Speaker 00 So why am I not sitting here talking to the head of manufacturing for Mars M and M?
5:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, because they fired me. So, so I went there and I started manufacturing and I wanted to pivot to marketing. And so I'm like, what do I do? I came to the States, went to Michigan.
5:32 Speaker 00 And so why business school?
5:33 Speaker 02 Business school is not for everyone, by the way. But for me, it gave me intellectual maturity, which I think what I needed. It allowed me to shape where I wanted to go.
5:42 Speaker 00 And why Coke? Why did you choose to go there?
5:44 Speaker 02 I gravitate towards iconic brands. And that's why I think in my career, I've tried to build iconic brands because my foundational learning. Other than Mars, the other company that has probably some of the most iconic brands in the world was Coke at the time. Right?
5:57 Speaker 00 Why do you think Coke took you and said, we want to make a bet on this guy?
6:01 Speaker 02 This was the Olympics year, so they didn't do a full summer internship. It was like an abbreviated internship. And one of the guys, a guy called Carl Swat, actually ended up becoming one of my mentors there. Was like, this guy is high risk, high reward. We don't know if he's going to be brilliant or a train wreck. He's going to be one of the two. He's not middle of the road. Let's just take the gamble on him. So I was like the last man picked from gym class.
6:23 Speaker 00 Did you understand why they would consider you high risk, high reward?
6:26 Speaker 02 As I've grown up, I realize I'm high risk, high reward. But at the time, I didn't quite understand it.
6:33 Speaker 00 What led to the next step for you there?
6:35 Speaker 02 Well, the next step was I ended up on the brand Sprite, which I loved. And that's where I kind of learned what became one of my mantras was influence the influencer. Because Sprite had suddenly become this super cool brand. We did stuff with Kobe Bryant and Missy Elliott and Tim Duncan. And in the African American community, Sprite became super cool because of all the hip hop that we were doing. Which, by the way, I had to learn whilst doing, and I learned from super smart, creative people. And then after that, I got on to Powerade and I redefined Powerade because no one really cared about the brand. It was like a dying brand. And so I was like, sure, what harm can Rohan do?
7:09 Speaker 00 Right.
7:11 Speaker 02 So I put an excellent team together, revamped the whole thing and the brand took off.
7:14 Speaker 00 And so what did you do? What did you take from Sprite and innovate to make Powerade pop?
7:19 Speaker 02 First of all, it's packaging and redesign. Your package is the brand you walk around with. So redesign the brand, the packaging. I brought an influencer strategy to the mix. So we brought in different athletes into the mix because I think at the time, Powerade was just picking what Gatorade didn't want. And like, that's not a strategy. Picking up leftovers isn't a strategy. Go find people you want and drive forward. And so with new product, new packaging and an influencer strategy, I was able to get the Coke bottlers, who are critical to Coke's success, to actually get behind the brand again.
7:51 Speaker 00 On the product and packaging side, I sat with Jeff Curl from Stance Sucks several years ago. And he talked about walking up and down aisles at grocery stores, at Target, at Walmart, et cetera, to look what products look all the same and where is there an opportunity to differentiate? What was your process for figuring out how to reimagine the product and the packaging? So it would stand out in the marketplace?
8:14 Speaker 02 It's funny you bring that up. My wife gets very upset when I go to the grocery store because it takes me two hours. Because I spend so much time going up and down, looking at product, package. And she's like, I just sent you for four things. Can you get back here quicker? But yes, I think it depends on the brand and the need. The key thing is you have to stand out. So the product has to pop. There's no one thing. I think it's one, you have to have a vision for what that brand needs to stand for. Then you've got to put a strong creative team together. And in the end, there's a gut feel because if it's just research, then everyone's going to have great packaging.
8:44 Speaker 00 Right.
8:45 Speaker 02 Because you have the same agency, you'll show them 10 designs. I think finding the right designer and going with your gut is a big part of what makes packaging cool.
8:52 Speaker 00 On the celebrity side, going back to Powerade, it's not like celebrity endorsement was a new thing, right? I mean, celebrities have been endorsing products long before you and I walked the earth.
9:02 Speaker 02 Correct.
9:02 Speaker 00 What did you see as the opportunity to do differently, to evolve or to reinvent, to make Powerade stand out with your engagement with the celebrities?
9:10 Speaker 02 I think what I started on Powerade and I took it forward with me is the importance of engaging celebrities or influencers, because celebrities were the influence at that time, who felt your brand. Sometimes people just signed on a celeb because, hey, let's pay the money and get it done. But they didn't feel the brand. And I think it's important for them to feel the brand because when they do, they go above and beyond. And when we go forward, and I'll talk about other brands, it makes a massive difference, especially on entrepreneurial brands.
9:40 Speaker 00 How do you know when they feel the brand? Is that gut?
9:42 Speaker 02 I think it's with them. I think a lot of it is the interaction. I sat with 50 on Vitam Water and Justin Timberlake on By. We sat with Alex Earl on Poppy and you can see how they react to the brand. Big difference. You have to sit with, because a lot of times if you just go through the agent, you don't connect with the actual artist, you have no idea how they react to your brand.
10:01 Speaker 00 I think this is a really critical piece because whether it's an agency or an agent or a manager or a lawyer, whoever the celebrity is working with, part of their job is to protect the talent, right? To protect their time. Like, they don't want you to have direct access to them. God forbid you pitch them something that they wouldn't recommend or they don't get credit for. You, at this point in your career, can get in the room with anyone. But for an entrepreneur who's not known, who doesn't have your track record, how do you advise them how to navigate that maze?
10:28 Speaker 02 It's all about relationships. First, make sure you have a good relationship with the agent because you can't go around the agent. The agent's their go-to person. So there's no going direct to artists. So foster that direct relationship with the agent. And I've done that a lot over time. And that was number one, right? With 50 was Chris Lighty. It was Rick Yorma, Justin. Like, I established the relationships because then they trust you. And they know you're not going to try and do a side swipe pitch on the on the artist. And then a core part of the final negotiation is, I'd like to say, with the artist. Because in the end, they're representing our brand. So all the upfront negotiation, you're never going to get there. But, you know, it's almost a house. Before you write the check, you've got to do a final inspection.
11:09 Speaker 00 Okay, so Powerade pops. Coke is starting to see the high reward, not the high risk side of of having you on the team. What happens next?
11:17 Speaker 02 So brands rocking and rolling. This is the high risk part. I'm kind of probably a little too cocky at this point because my team is one running the show.
11:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:27 Speaker 02 And instead of Coke moving me up the ranks, which I felt I deserved, they put someone above me.
11:33 Speaker 00 I just want to pause you for a second here because you are murdering at a Powerade. Things are happening. You're hard driving. You've got real vision. The best of companies would say, like, hell, yeah, like, this is a weapon we've got. Let's go figure out what's the next brand we can give them to go do it with. Why are they layering you?
11:52 Speaker 02 Corporate America, a lot of chess moves. They get nervous. When you move very fast, I was too entrepreneurial in my approach, which is difficult to do within the confines of corporate America.
12:01 Speaker 00 I think this is just super relatable for a lot of entrepreneurs. I went to the
12:05 Speaker 02 I like that phrase, entrepreneur.
12:06 Speaker 00 Right. I mean, you're not smarter than the inside of a big company. Okay, but so you get layered. What happens next?
12:11 Speaker 02 And at the same time, a guy called Mike Ropoli had reached out to me. Mike's a super successful entrepreneur himself. He was the number two guy at Vitamin Water. He'd come in super early and they needed a CMO and he's like, listen to the guy. And Mike's also a gunslinger himself, so we kind of got along very well. And so I I'd received that offer and I'm like, you know what? Things happen for a reason. I went to Vitamin Water and became the CMO and started what was the next and probably most important chapter of my life to lay the foundation for my future.
12:42 Speaker 00 Okay, so what what happens at Vitamin Water?
12:43 Speaker 02 So it was an incredible product at the time, but the biggest problem was like, no one knew about it. And how do you do that? So at the time, I took my Sprite experience, which was very much an influence of strategy with Sprite. I used to, you and I are old enough on this. The influencers back then, by the way, were radio DJs.
13:01 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
13:01 Speaker 02 Remember back in the day?
13:02 Speaker 00 Sure.
13:03 Speaker 02 So I, back in the day, I flew in like about eighty DJs from the top sixty markets in the country into Vegas for a recording session and every artist around an award show. And so every artist could hit twenty cities in an hour and a half.
13:19 Speaker 00 So you basically created a Super Bowl radio row around an award show.
13:22 Speaker 02 Exactly.
13:23 Speaker 00 That was a product promotion opportunity.
13:25 Speaker 02 Ahead of its time.
13:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:26 Speaker 02 So I did that same thing and I started going radio DJs.
13:29 Speaker 00 Wow.
13:29 Speaker 02 And so I did partnerships across the country. I hired a whole set of field marketers that were cool, that felt the brand. Young, hip, dynamic, they knew the radio DJs, they knew the hot bartenders. But it was a lot of street marketing because the digital world didn't exist there. And so I started looking around to see who could help make vitamin water cool and broad. Because the product was great, package is great, but didn't have that zeitgeist.
13:55 Speaker 02 So I looked at two guys, it's almost two thousand and four year, right? The two guys at the height of the game in music were Fifty and J. Friend of mine, Seth Rodsky, actually had a Fifty's number or Chris Lighty's. I had neither, I was a nobody. So he goes, I can cut you to Chris Lighty. And Chris and I bonded. Remember I told you the importance of building relationships? He and I became good friends. And incredible guy, super smart, came from the streets, hard life, he had a hard life.
14:19 Speaker 00 Guy gets pitched twenty times a day. What broke through? How, how did you get Chris to pay attention?
14:25 Speaker 02 I actually think the product and package did the work for me in a big way because he saw it. And then I painted the vision. And the vision was to get Fifty in the room and how Fifth could be the face of the brand. And he before had never done that. He'd been like with sports and Reebok and this and that music, but actually the face of a beverage brand was first time. Here's a problem though. I said to Fifth, I can't afford you. But I have an idea. I said, we can do an equity game. I'll give you skin in the game if you're willing to do this. And he's like, I'm in. That quickly, shocked. He's a very smart individual. So he understands business cold. And he knew what he was capable of more than I did.
15:08 Speaker 02 Because I had a number in my mind of what I thought 50 could make. And I think he made 10 times that. Wow. Because I also didn't think the company would sell for $4 billion. And Fifth got fully behind it. And so that was a big part of, and he owned it. And funny, when he actually met Darius, the founder, Darius walked up to him and said, by the way, I'm the real founder of Vitamin Water. And 50 cracked up because Fifth basically just put on his back and said, I'm Vitamin Water. He basically refounded it. Yeah. And, but it was fine. It lifted the brand.
15:39 Speaker 00 Still ahead, more with Rohan Oza on how he turned his beverage brand playbook into multiple massive exits.
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17:36 Speaker 00 Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and much more on our YouTube channel and be sure to check out the show notes for a link to our newsletter. The Vitamin Water deal with 50 Cent fueled a wildly successful trajectory for the brand's parent company. It led to a $4.1 billion exit to Coca-Cola in 2007, but Rohan knew that working inside a giant company like Coke was not the right place for him. Instead, he took his winning playbook and built something new. It's called Cavu Consumer Partners, and Cavu blends traditional investing with hands-on help for brands. The result? Dozens of success stories for health-conscious companies like Poppy, Once Upon a Farm, Noom,
18:20 Speaker 00 The Farmer's Dog, the list of companies that you know well goes on and on. Rohan credits his co-founder for seeing the potential to make Cavu something different.
18:32 Speaker 02 My business partner, Brett, saw it. He was a hedge fund guy. He wanted to pivot into private equity. And he's like, but I've got to do it differently. Because he's a hedge fund guy. So hedge fund guys always want an edge, right? What's the edge? And in his opinion, like him raising a fund to deploy, there's no edge. He saw what I was doing. And he's like, oh, this is a vision. And so he approached me and said, look, let's go create a fund where we can provide real value add.
19:00 Speaker 02 To companies we invest in. So we created Cavu. Cavu stands for Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited. It's a flying term. I never knew that. But what it means that we help entrepreneurs guide, assuming they're flying, they're flying their brands through turbulent times to clear skies. Right? So when you get on a plane and a pilot says Cavu, great, that's gonna be a nice flight. So we created Cavu against his vision, which was, how do we leverage what you and Steve have been doing and now do it in a much bigger scale? So that's why I pivoted, because before I was writing much smaller checks. Now as a fund, we can really go disrupt the landscape. And the mission for Cavu was like, okay, it's to democratize better living for all humans and their families. That was our scenario.
19:44 Speaker 00 Is it founders come and are pitching you and you fall in love with the founder? You fall in love with the idea, you fall in love with both? What's your process for choosing where you're going to invest your money and your time?
19:55 Speaker 02 Unfortunately for me, no one ever just walks to the door and is, hey, guys, I'm here, I'm brilliant. To find the best, you really have to go find. It's a hunt. So we have a great team that goes out there and there's a hunt. And so we've got to find the best brands and then you bond with the founders. It's their company. We're not running it. Let's be clear. We just become the wingman or wingwoman to them on their branding journey. So, and by the way, think of a Swiss Army knife, right? I don't have to fix everything on your brand. Like you pick. You want packaging? I got you. Influencer, Amazon, DTC, billboards. Like, we've got all these things in the mix where we can offer you either great pricing, great relationships, we do it ourselves.
20:38 Speaker 02 It really varies. And so they love it because they're like, oh, I'm getting money. Oh, and you guys can help me with the brand. And brand is king. Like, brand is king.
20:46 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:46 Speaker 02 If you don't have that brand moat, what do you have?
20:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, right.
20:49 Speaker 02 I think part of it is also having a real combo of the founders. Are they willing to work together? Again, not my show, their show. And they should run at 80%, 90%, but they should be willing to maybe work a little bit on the stuff that we can provide value on.
21:03 Speaker 00 Yeah.
21:03 Speaker 02 And I think 90% of the time, the founders have.
21:05 Speaker 00 So let's use Poppy as an example here. How does Poppy become Poppy in your world?
21:10 Speaker 02 So, I mean, step back a little bit. So I went on a shock tank. So I was a shock and shock tank. And the funny thing is, I did that as a pay it forward. Because I'm blessed, I'm living the American dream, right? I'm an immigrant, I've come to America, I'm an American now, I've been very successful. And my personal belief, I don't care what side of the aisle you sit on, this is the greatest country in the world to be an entrepreneur, hands down. Almost nowhere else on earth can you create products from scratch and in five years be worth two billion, three billion, five billion.
21:38 Speaker 00 I mean, I think it's inarguable. It is, this is not a political statement. It is the environment for entrepreneurs in the U S. All the conditions for it are better than anywhere in the world. And there are literally thousands of examples to back that up.
21:51 Speaker 02 And we're blessed. I mean, part of it is like for me, I, I wake up every day, I'm like, I'm blessed to have been able to do this. So I go on a Shark Tank, pay it forward. And sometimes you don't know, but when you do that, it actually got paid back to me, which is crazy. So I'm sitting there and I had always had this vision, because I understand, I started my career as a soda guy. I love soda, but I stopped drinking it.
22:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
22:09 Speaker 02 Because, you know, I'm like, too much sugar, I don't want the artificial sweetness. And I always wanted a soda that I could just feel good about. So every deal on Shark Tank, I lost money, basically. And then this one deal comes on, I'm like, here we go again, another beverage. It's called Mother Beverage. Also, I don't like the name. It's a terrible package. It's in a glass bottle, which is no one can carry around because it breaks and no dice. But the entrepreneurs seem cool. Great vibe, good looking couple, like straight out of Central Casting.
22:38 Speaker 00 Husband, wife, founder.
22:38 Speaker 02 Husband, wife, founder. She's like seven months pregnant, I'm like, that's commitment. You know, she's on a show, she's about to give birth. So they make the pitch. So I like the founder's mother. I tried the product, I liked two. And the one I liked the most was the orange one, still my favorite today. And the reason for me, it was a cross between Fanta and Orangina. I'm like, oh my God, those are two drinks that I drank as a kid. I can now drink it every day and not feel bad. It's got fiber, it's got low sugar, natural ingredients. There is zero guilt. It's what I call permissible guilt. It's completely permissible. It's all good. And so I said, I'm in, but what am I in for? I'm in for a brand that has no scalability in a package that's terrible.
23:24 Speaker 02 So, and I give Alison and Stephen a lot of credit. I said, guys, we're shutting the company down and we are going to create a new company together. And I think that's a lot of faith in their hands.
23:34 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's a scary moment for entrepreneurs.
23:35 Speaker 02 And the company wasn't big, but for them, there's still a lot of money, obviously. And so that trust, I give them that. So basically Alison, Stephen, me and Stevie sat down and with Cavu's backing, basically co-founded Poppy.
23:49 Speaker 00 Wow.
23:50 Speaker 02 And so we got a bunch of packages and designs. And to be fair, I actually picked a different package to this. It was very similar, but it was a different, it was reverse knockout. The name was Stevie. The package we did together and I went in as a shock because I had to, I have to invest myself. And then I spoke with Brett and he said, look, if you're doing a beverage, Cavu's in, so we'll back it. And so as a team, we co-founded Poppy, which is like, it's a unique and different scenario, right? So you take the original founders who had a great idea, product. I brought the vision, which was modern soda. Stevie designs the package and the marketing DNA and Cavu funds it.
24:29 Speaker 00 And even with great product, phenomenal packaging, capital behind it, and a category that is basically being invented here, you're effectively inventing a new category. And as someone who's 17 years cold turkey, I mean, I haven't had a Coca-Cola in that long and I loved Coca-Cola. I deeply appreciate Poppy in the market. It doesn't just happen. So what, what are the inflection points that they get Poppy to, to where you're ultimately selling it to Pepsi for nearly $2 billion?
24:58 Speaker 02 The world has changed, right? It's all very digital. So Alison, Stevie, the team all went into full digital mode. And I think that was exacerbated by the fact we launched Poppy in March of 2020.
25:13 Speaker 00 I can't remember what was happening in March of 2020. It was a big thing.
25:16 Speaker 02 Two weeks later, retailers called me and said, sorry, we're not carrying you. The world shut down.
25:21 Speaker 00 Yeah.
25:22 Speaker 02 So suddenly we're pivoting and are forced to pivot. So we've got the influencer strategy. We become digital first, Amazon only, and take them, the old school influencer strategy and make it modern. That was an amazing team that pulled that together. So immediately there was a zeitgeist in the brand.
25:41 Speaker 00 Rohan, I, I remember Poppy popping in part because you had a founder who made a video that took off. But it feels like there was a really intentional, almost laddered influencer strategy here. How did that work? How did you approach digital and social in that COVID era as Poppy was launching?
25:59 Speaker 02 Because of COVID, we had to go digital first and it forced us to become a modern digital marketing company off the bat. And so the first thing that happened was Alison created a TikTok that went viral. So immediately you got a founder who was creating a TikTok that goes viral, you got buzz off it. Then we have an incredible team that we hired who are all young, dynamic women that live the brand. So we're not using an agency, we're not going external, we're doing it all within. So Stevie's right at the DNA, you've got an incredible team around that, that's actually executing it. And what happened is that resulted in incredible community. And Alison, the rest of the team, all worked on building this incredible Poppy community, which exists today, by the way. And I think then it started laddering up to the point that
26:45 Speaker 02 big names like Hailey Bieber and Kylie Jenner all like were just drinking the product.
26:49 Speaker 00 They weren't even being paid. They were just walking around paparazzi snapping them with the product.
26:54 Speaker 02 Correct. And they love it. And so that's where we went for the, call it the mega influencer. And to be fair, she took a risk on us, we took a risk on her, but Alex saw the vision. Alex also saw the vision really early. Stevie, Alison team all loved Alex. In fact, to be fair, I was being educated on Alex at the time, so can't take credit there. But she one of the first influencers that did an equity strategy, the same way 50 had done it as an artist back in the day on Vita Water. And that's what changed the game. And now every influencer wants an equity plan, the same way that artists and celebs wanted it back in the day.
27:27 Speaker 00 There's a point at which if you are out of the demo or out of the core of what the product is marketing to, where you just have to hire the, the right team and trust them. Is that part of this?
27:37 Speaker 02 For me, I was cool 20 years ago. I'm not cool now. So I can see cool. But someone else got to create the call.
27:43 Speaker 00 The other question that comes up a lot with consumer brand founders is do I have to be the influencer? Do I have to be the face of the brand? When you're looking at a brand to invest in for Kavu and partner with founders, is that part of the inquiry for you?
27:55 Speaker 02 It varies, like in some brands, like in Bai, for example, the face of the brand became Justin Timberlake. Not every founder wants to be the face of the brand. They want to be recognized and get credit, obviously, and as they should for, you know, the brand they create. But like in in Poppy's case, Alison was front center as well, right? There were a bunch of influencers, but she was the founding influencer face on the brand. So it works in some circumstances, it doesn't. In this case, it did, like in Vita Coco, Michael's an incredible operator, Mike Kirby, but Madonna was a face of the brand. You know, and and I think he recognized Madonna's probably a better face than he was.
28:28 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:29 Speaker 02 You know, but he's.
28:30 Speaker 00 Most of us would recognize that.
28:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, but he's a brilliant operator. I mean, he's, you know, he's got a three billion dollar brand plus now, so.
28:35 Speaker 00 Before I have to let you go, Vecima is one of a set of venture firms known for an anti-portfolio. Is there one that got away? Is there one that you had a shot at investing in that you passed on where you go, F me? I can't believe we didn't do that one.
28:46 Speaker 02 Probably a couple. One was, there's a product called The Ordinary.
28:51 Speaker 00 Sure.
28:52 Speaker 02 It's a beauty product.
28:53 Speaker 00 Yep.
28:53 Speaker 02 I love the founder, shame, rest in peace, poor guy. He and I bonded. It was our first fund. It was a big check and he was a high, to be fair, high risk, high reward guy.
29:04 Speaker 00 Yeah.
29:05 Speaker 02 And I think we got too corporate. We got too nervous and because we're like, if this doesn't work, we're out of the game.
29:12 Speaker 00 Yeah.
29:12 Speaker 02 Right? Like, because it was a third of the fund.
29:14 Speaker 00 You had to be safer at that stage.
29:16 Speaker 02 And that was, that went on to self a north of two billion. That would have, that fund alone would have tripled off that one deal.
29:21 Speaker 00 Yeah, another one with great product, great packaging.
29:22 Speaker 02 The other one was probably, we had a deal on the table. It was for a brand called On.
29:27 Speaker 00 The shoe company?
29:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:28 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah.
29:28 Speaker 02 And a little bit broader than our spectrum, but it was adjacent to what we're doing. And we had a deal ready to go and founders ready to sign. And that day, they announced Roger Federer.
29:39 Speaker 00 Oh, I was gonna ask if it was before or after Federer and that changed it.
29:42 Speaker 02 Literally every single investor re-upped.
29:44 Speaker 00 Yeah.
29:44 Speaker 02 We were blocked out.
29:45 Speaker 00 Wow.
29:45 Speaker 02 And that would have been about a six, seven bagger.
29:48 Speaker 00 Yeah.
29:48 Speaker 02 On a big check.
29:49 Speaker 00 You referenced several mentors along the way. Was there a moment where one of them gave you a piece of advice or gave you an insight into the world, the market? You personally, that is still with you today?
30:00 Speaker 02 I don't think there was one piece. I think it's, it's, it's an amalgamation of me learning. By watching. And so I looked at a lot of guys and how they did it and what they built. And to this day, right? Like whether it's from, you know, Coke, when I learned from a Darrell Carbon and how to do cool marketing, or learning from micropolyat at Vitamin Water, how to create the right corporate culture, even today from a Chris Hall, like how do you actually operate and run a tight ship? Like, I'm constantly learning. So I think for me, you should never feel like you know it. You should always be a student. And that's actually a phrase I got from Darius, who's like, always be a student of the industry. Because it's a continual learning exercise. And as the world evolves, you have to keep learning.
30:40 Speaker 00 Well, I'm grateful to be a student sitting with you. Thank you. I hope we can have you back on to dive deeper into a lot of this. But awesome having you on Masters of Scale. Thank you.
30:49 Speaker 02 Thanks for having me.
30:52 Speaker 00 Thanks again to Rohan Oza for joining us. It is inspiring to see how Rohan is still evolving his brand building playbook to supercharge better for you products in nearly every grocery aisle. And if you want to hear more about Poppy's scale journey, be sure to check out the Masters of Scale episode we did with its other co-founders, Allison and Stephen Ellsworth. We'll put a link in the show notes. I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening.
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32:01 Speaker 00 Before we get to the rest of our conversation today, I want to spend a moment sharing with you about Masters of Scale Summit, which returns to San Francisco this October 20th to 22nd. So many of us feel overwhelmed right now. It feels like so much of the world is careening and we don't have power. We don't have agency. That's the thing about the Masters of Scale Summit. It's really designed to remind us that we do have agency, agency to lead, agency to design, to build the relationships and the partnerships that empower us and to make the change that we want to see. We program a stage, we curate an audience, we set a schedule that builds in time for these relationships to be made and to grow.
32:44 Speaker 00 So that by the time you leave summit, you are fired out of a cannon, ready to run through walls to do better in the world with the agency that you actually have. I hope to see you there. Visit mastersofscale.com/summit.
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34:27 Speaker 03 Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely, from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find. Just search Rapid Response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.
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