Chad Janis: How I Sold Grüns to Unilever for $1.2B

This is our full interview with Chad Janis recorded live on TBPN. We discuss his accidental entry into building Grüns after spotting a broken habit in greens powders, his conviction in reimagining supplements through a more enjoyable gummy form factor, and how he built one of the largest D2C exits in the category despite launching at a low point in consumer sentiment. Sign up for TBPN’s daily newsletter at TBPN.com Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John Coogan?

  Let's bring in Chad Janis from Grims. Welcome to the show.

• 0:04Jordi Hays?

  What's going on?

• 0:05Speaker 02

  Hey guys, how we doing?

• 0:06John Coogan?

  How we doing?

• 0:07Jordi Hays?

  Doing great.

• 0:07John Coogan?

  Congratulations on the massive acquisition. We have to hit the gong for you. Unilever paid 1.2 billion. Congratulations.

• 0:17Jordi Hays?

  Big, big hit. We've been, I think we tried to make this happen last year. So great, great to finally have you on the show. I think everyone was appreciating how offline you've been for the last little bit. I think somebody, I saw somebody post like, the founder hasn't posted on X since like Q4 of last year. You guys were busy, busy grinding. But, um, but yeah, I guess like the, I want to kind of 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 was it, three and a half years ago? At this point, you had, you'd been on the board of a bunch of different D to C brands.

• 1:02Jordi Hays?

  I would say like you started the company in like the, probably the trot, like the, the, the very bottom of the trough in terms of like D to C sentiment. Like the, at the time, there, there were not, uh, there were not many like great kind of exit comps to, to point at. A lot of like the D to C darlings had been struggling. Uh, you clearly had faith in the category and, uh, managed to, um, build to one of the biggest exits in, in the space in, in a, in a while. So, uh, talk about those, you know, the kind of, uh, the year or months leading up to starting the company and, and what you saw.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Um, so I actually was trying not to start a company. Uh, when I had the idea for Grims, I was going to go get my MBA at Stanford. And I was saying, hey, I want to have a pretty normal MBA experience, hang out with friends a ton. 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 30 days. Um, so that was sort of the epiphany of, hey, how do I take? Something is robust and comprehensive and make it into a form factor. Didn't think gummies at the time. Make it into a form factor that could build a habit for consumer. Make it something they look forward to. They go to bed at night thinking about, excited about taking grins the

• 2:23Speaker 02

  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 of 2023.

• 2:40Jordi Hays?

  What, what other companies had you looked at in the category? I know there was, I'm, I'm gonna probably blank on the name, but there was a very high profile, like apple cider vinegar.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Goli.

• 2:54Jordi Hays?

  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. Like, there was a bunch of demand, but maybe it wasn't possible to build to this level of outcome. Did, did, uh, did you have any kind of concerns about the cat, the form factor at all? Or you just had conviction because people love the product?

• 3:24Speaker 02

  I mean, not the form factor. The history of gummies is actually really interesting. About 20 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 V3 of the gummy era, which is taking really robust blends and putting them into a form factor like gummy. 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 might have just there with Goli. I think they were more focused on individual ingredients that sort of rose and, rose the, rode

• 4:06Speaker 02

  with trends and then came back down as they sort of trended away. We, we stay away from like single ingredients.

• 4:12Jordi Hays?

  Uh, what would you say are the three biggest factors that contributed to your guys's, what I would describe as hypergrowth?

• 4:23Speaker 02

  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. I guess 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 a compounds over time if you're delivering that much urgency and impact every day. And then the third thing that I'd say is the absolute most important is the team. We've got 130 plus individuals here at this company.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  We have a culture of autonomy and accountability. And each individual here wakes up every day as the CEO of their domain. So when you sort of take 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.

• 5:24John Coogan?

  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 staged the, the scale out?

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, the hardest part about building a company is like you as the founder have to do mu- too much. You have to do too much to start.

• 5:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  And so over time you 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 a, hey, what advice would I give about building?

• 5:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Through the stages that we, we did. You've got to 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. I'm trying to think of another one that we might've hired earlier than, than most people would have.

• 6:29John Coogan?

  What, what was the motivation between the early hire on the chief people officer?

• 6:33Speaker 02

  I think it comes back to like, ultimately, at the end of the day, like a company's success is the people.

• 6:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Right? The culture that you have, how that facilitates frictionless growth.

• 6:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  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.

• 6:50John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Where they can be their full self. They can excel to the extent that they can. I mean, we've got people at the company who probably had an impact at other companies, but when they got here, it was like night and day, the impact that they were able to have.

• 7:03John Coogan?

  Well, 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.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, we, early days of the business, pre-launch, the process was calling up 20 different co-bands.

• 7:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Co-manufacturing partners, and telling them, here's what I want to 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 going to do that. Like, that's going to taste disgusting, that doesn't work in a gummy, it's never going to work.

• 7:47John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  The one who said, who said he would give it a try, he was like-

• 7:50Jordi Hays?

  It's so funny because, because you say that, like, you talk about 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.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Well, here's where it gets crazier. So, so we finally got the one to try, and I was like, look, just produce it, we'll both sample it, we'll say if it tastes terrible or not. 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.

• 8:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  That, that infrastructure for taking gummies and putting it into packs did not exist prior to us.

• 8:39John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  So, for the first six to eight months of this business, we had 20 bodies standing around a table.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Manually picking up gummies and putting them in packs and taking a clamp sealer that looks like a staple gun.

• 8:51John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  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 million gummies a day.

• 9:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  And have the infrastructure for it.

• 9:02John Coogan?

  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?

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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, uh, more like flimsier type packaging.

• 9:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  And that's all in-house.

• 9:24John Coogan?

  That's all in-house, yeah, so it's not on the shelf. Yeah.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  There's not really like a manufacturing supply chain that does that.

• 9:29John Coogan?

  Yeah. So, yeah, did you stay with Co-Packer for a long time? Did you wind up dual sourcing? How did you like solve the supply chain over time?

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this has been the the biggest unlock of our business over time. And frankly, the part that people are going to overlook is like having operations scale at the rate that we've been able to do it.

• 9:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Is a massive feat. Uh, we've got multiple co-mans, multiple co-packers, multiple nodes, uh, 3PL in-house facility. Uh, it it's been a lot. We're finally at a place where we can actually meet the demand that's out there.

• 10:04John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Uh, and keep up with it. So, we're we're in a good operational place right now. The operations stayed asleep.

• 10:09John Coogan?

  Did you raise a lot of money along the way?

• 10:11Speaker 02

  We raised probably around 50 million.

• 10:15John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Over the course of the business. Some of that was secondary over the course, then on primary as well, obviously.

• 10:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Jordi Hays?

  You have a fantastic, uh, group of investors, by the way.

• 10:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 10:26Jordi Hays?

  A lot of them are.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  They're great, right?

• 10:27Jordi Hays?

  Eva, Amanda, all those people are fantastic. Uh, 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, uh, money, uh, to meta platforms, uh, 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, 80, 90% Google Meta for the history plus, you know, rotating in experimental budget?

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, Meta is always going to be a beast for like every brand that's online. What I'll say, though, is it has been surprising to me when I hear others mix and that Meta makes up, like you said, like eighty-five, ninety percent. It's like, oh, wow, you should probably like diversify that a little bit. Meta is always going to take up a massive chunk. I mean, they've built such a good platform that allows for companies to find people in market for their particular product. And so we've diversified over time. We have intent to continue diversifying, building awareness. And so it's not that we feel like, you know, we're overexposed in a channel, but we've just always had the intent to create defensibility against the media mix.

• 11:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Scariest moment over the last three and a half years?

• 11:46Speaker 02

  I can tell you the exact day. Six months into the business, January twenty-ninth, I was calling my co-man. I was like, hey, we don't have, it was like two weeks of telling him, hey, I don't think we have enough inventory, right? He's like, no, no, no, we're good, we're good, we're good. January twenty-ninth, I was like, hey, we're not good, are we? And he's like, no, no, we're not good. And so we had to shut off marketing spend by ninety-three percent overnight.

• 12:11Jordi Hays?

  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...

• 12:19Speaker 02

  So we've never gone out of stock for like more than a couple of days. So there's been like a couple of periods in the business where we were close. We've never gone out of stock in like a way that would hurt our consumer. But that, you got it exactly right. Like the golden rule at Grin's is we do not go out of stock. These people expect, they take it daily. We are in stock. If that means we can't acquire customers, fine. We've got to deliver for those here subscribers.

• 12:43John Coogan?

  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 the inventory management?

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, look, like, we've got a couple of, I would say we have a couple of SKUs per brand. We launch, if you asked our operations team in the actual SKU that we have, they would tell you we have hundreds of SKUs. So I'm probably downplaying the complexity. But yeah, like, we, the nice thing about this business is we, we have solutions that solve consumers' needs in mass. So we don't have to create, you know, fifty different products to solve niche needs that a consumer has.

• 13:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:22Jordi Hays?

  What's your outlook on consumer broadly?

• 13:27Speaker 02

  I love it. I can't imagine building in a different space. 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. Probably you've seen trends, but I would say consumer is a category. It's a beautiful thing, right? Like our team, we're leveraging AI probably in a opportunistic way. Not in the 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.

• 14:03John Coogan?

  Interesting. How did you think about messaging in the early days and like honing the brand messaging? Because the product delivers across a couple of vectors, convenience and health benefits. Was there ever like a tension between those? Like, how did you wind up sort? What did you settle on for like the key value prop if you could just deliver one message?

• 14:25Speaker 02

  I think your consumer helps you identify what resonates best. I would say though, the approach of like the overarching approach of what we've done. One brand that I looked up to is Dr. 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. It's like really fun. This is a nice experience. Something like actually like Mark, your experience there. And 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? 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.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  We're kind of a lifestyle brand. And so consumers buy it, 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 that we're a brand that personifies our consumer. And they like to associate and have the benefits from it.

• 15:27John Coogan?

  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 going to take? Or was there a moment when you were like, okay, I'm ready, we're ready to go, now's the time?

• 15:43Jordi Hays?

  Or did Trey come and find you and say, it's time to go?

• 15:46Speaker 02

  You guys know Trey?

• 15:47Jordi Hays?

  I know, I know Trey, yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  Love it. Trey's awesome. He's been a good buddy and helping the business since the early days. He actually went with me to pitch, I believe Walmart and Sam's Club in the summer of 2024. But we didn't have a lot of employees at the time and I was the original one pitching. Look, I just always knew this business was going to be omnichannel. I don't think there's any reason to like have pride in being a solely D to C business or 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. So I first had conversations about launching retail back in like January of 2024. And I'll tell you, everybody was telling me, hey, it's kind of early, like, do you really want to do this? And I said, yes, I guarantee, like the sell-in cycles are so long here.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  I guarantee by next year, when we're finally in this retailer, we're going to be really glad that we put in the time today.

• 16:38John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  And so we, you know, that process took really long. We launched with Sprouts in October of 2024. Target in February of 2025 and then Walmart in April of 2025. And then a bunch of other amazing retailers after that.

• 16:53John Coogan?

  And then what were you tracking? What changed about the business, the marketing, the strategy to actually be successful in retail?

• 17:03Speaker 02

  The biggest thing is the rebrand we did.

• 17:04John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  So the original branding, I don't know if you've seen it, it was like a dark green color.

• 17:08John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  I, I, I'm glad you haven't seen it. I developed it in Canva in an afternoon. You know, it'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. 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. Nothing special there. So we redid the packaging. We made it ready for retail.

• 17:32John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  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.

• 17:46Jordi Hays?

  Is, is product the only thing that really matters in, in, with, with an early stage consumer brand?

• 17:55Speaker 02

  It's a big broad statement. I think it really matters for us because it's the it is it sets the stage for how big any of our businesses can become. So as you know, we've got Croons, we've got Nutrups, our mushroom product, Nutrepics, we've got Immune, which is an immunity product, and we've got Juiced, which is our pre-workout, pre-anything energy product. If we don't get that product right, speaking to that category right, then it caps the upside of how big that business can be. So it really matters for us. I can't speak for every business, though.

• 18:28John Coogan?

  Yeah. How diversified did the business become? I mean, 130 employees is a lot. I imagine that you've had success both in e-commerce 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?

• 18:52Jordi Hays?

  There's always a power law.

• 18:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:55John Coogan?

  But how

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Everything's growing. Everything's doing well. Like, all these products are phenomenal. People should try them.

• 19:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  See if they want to stick with them. I would say that our team's like, super ambitious. So if you asked us, we'd be like, oh, my goodness, we want these secondary products behind Croons to be much bigger than they are.

• 19:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  But to be clear, like, they're large businesses.

• 19:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  And I think any founder would love to have just one of them as their core business. So and we've got a lot of really exciting innovation coming that I think will grow nicely like Croons has.

• 19:27John Coogan?

  Yeah. When did you first meet Unilever or the folks over there?

• 19:32Speaker 02

  I first had a conversation with them probably in like June of last year.

• 19:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  It's when we started talking, but like casually, not like, 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've been chatting with them for quite some time to identify whether it was a good fit for both sides.

• 19:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you also, you're like, give me another year, I'll like 3, 4X again.

• 20:00John Coogan?

  And then, and then what, what do you think Unilever brings to the table to let you fulfill the vision here?

• 20:07Speaker 02

  They're, they're awesome. I mean, you may, you may be familiar with their background, but they've done this like with multiple businesses before and frankly, might be one of the few strategic partners that has. So you've got Nutriful, 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. They acquired Liquid IV back in probably 2020. That business is massively larger. I think they just stated last year that it's around a billion of revenue. They acquired Ollie back in 2019. That business is significantly bigger. 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.

• 20:51John Coogan?

  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?

• 21:17Speaker 02

  One of the biggest things I'm grateful for is we have a really, really strong data and finance team. And so we have like all the data infrastructure, data warehouse in a place where it's accessible through Claude to our team. 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. It's kind of a, the objective is kind of a joke, but it's basically make yourself replaceable. Like can AI replace your job? And so we're all ticking across the aspects of our roles and what we can automate through AI and find a lot of productivity from it. But I would

• 22:01Speaker 02

  say the biggest takeaway there is you've got to have your data infrastructure and data warehouse in a place that it's a source of truth to every individual in the company.

• 22:09Jordi Hays?

  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.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  You know, we haven't really used AI for that. Um, 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. Some of it's a little testy. It's kind of like, hey, we're, we're a reputable brand, like we can't be putting some things out on the internet like that. And so we're pretty careful about it. 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 actual humans creating UGC or working with influencers who are creating content. Uh, we, we haven't moved, I would say into like AI being the the generator of our, our creative.

• 23:10Jordi Hays?

  Interesting. Uh, did you actually get your MBA or did, did you drop out?

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Oh, I was so close. It was so close.

• 23:17Jordi Hays?

  Okay. So, so an exit, exit at this scale, can they not just say like, okay, this guy's a master of business. Well, give him the degree.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  I don't think they would. I don't think they would. Uh, I don't think they've done that for others who have, uh, who have, uh, had some success, successful outcomes. Just before I graduated, every quarter, so the business was doing like 50 million of revenue when I graduated. Uh, we had probably like six people working on it at the time. And, uh, it was two weeks before I graduated. I came to my wife, back to our door, but I was like, hey, there's like a real chance I'm not going to graduate. I was like right on the GPA cutoff. She's like, ah, I'm like, no, no, like, like dead serious. We're like one test, one, one point uh, lower and we're not going to graduate. She's like, do you want to come back? I was like, no. Uh, either we graduate and I have an MBA or we don't and I, I don't have an MBA. That's, uh, that is completely out.

• 24:04Jordi Hays?

  Well, you're, you're a master, you're a master of business in our book. So I think you got, you got the, you, you won the right award. Uh, but thank you. Thank you for hanging out on, uh, and congratulations to, to the entire team. It's really, uh, uh, incredible.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Thanks, guys.

• 24:19John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you soon. Have a good rest of your day.