# 1 Smart Business Story: Grüns’s Journey to a $1.2 Billion Acquisition | Inc.

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Inc.
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHGCcCE_x3I
- **Дата:** 11.05.2026
- **Длительность:** 26:06
- **Просмотры:** 76
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/50306

## Описание

Back when Chad Janis was in graduate school, his little gummy bear company was the butt of his Stanford classmates’ jokes.  

Now, nobody’s laughing. Except maybe the wise few who invested early in Grüns and saw their money multiply by 100x.  

Janis’ gummy bear supplement brand, Grüns, was recently acquired by Unilever for a reported $1.2 billion. Close listeners to The Business Model feed will note that’s more than double the company’s $500 million valuation, which we covered with shock and awe a mere six months ago.  

It’s been a frenzied rise for a brand that first went for sale just three years ago. Inc.’s Jennifer Conrad has the story on Grüns’ explosive path and she joins Tim Crino to talk it over on this episode of 1 Smart Business Story.  

Inc. Magazine delivers advice, tools, and services to help business owners, entrepreneurs and CEOs grow their businesses more successfully. You'll find information and advice covering virtually every business and management task including 

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

Unilver. I can also make soap if you want to hire me. — I can pour some candles or — Yeah, we can. Oh, we have a c we have a virgin candle business. Hey, this is Jim Kuno from Inc. Thanks for checking out the business model. Make sure you're following us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts for the best business news and insights that you need every week. And while you're here, tell us what you like about the show. want to see more of. What do less of? Leave us a comment on YouTube or Spotify. We've all been there. Your team's feedback is scattered across emails, chats, and sticky notes. It's a mess. But PDF spaces in Adobe Acrobat gives you one collaborative workspace to streamline every file and comment. Learn more at adobe. com/do thatwithacrobat. — Welcome to the business model. I'm Tim Ko — and I'm Jennifer Conrad. Today on one smart business story, we're tracing the meteoric rise of the supplement brand. So Jennifer, the headline here is that Grun, the gummy company, is being acquired by Unilver for it's 1. 2 billion. — That's what's been reported. Some people think it might be even higher. — Really? Oh, how high do they think? Do you know? — I don't know. But um you know, Grun's had 300 million ARR the last time they publicly announced their revenue. Some people have said it might be 550 now annual recurring revenue. So that would suggest a pretty high purchase price could be in the cards. What we know is a lot of people have reported 1. 2 billion. — Okay. And including us. — Um so that's kind of a crazy story. I mean like this company started what? Less than 3 years ago. — Less than three years ago — and now a billion dollar exit. — Yes. — I mean so what's the like what's the secret sauce here? What's in those gummies? — Well, um what's in these gummies is a bunch of the nutrients that you would find in a traditional greens powder, um like AG1 or Bloom or something like that. And Chad Janice, the founder, realized that they're kind of messy, not portable. And so he's like, "Well, what if we could put it in a little sache? " And so this is essentially your daily serving of greens, vitamins, fiber, things like that. — Okay. Um and have you I assume you've tasted the product. What do you think of? How does it taste? — Pretty good. Yeah. I always My cousin's a bodybuilder and she like every morning at like 5:30 a. m. cuz it has a time stamp. She like sticks her frother in there and then in her like green drink and I'm like that looks disgusting. I hope it works. But these are sort of I guess like more palatable. They're cleaner. — Yeah, she should try these uh juiced. This is their version for uh athletic people. Um, it's a little bear that has a barbell. — See on the back? — Very illustrative. Um, and then they've got I know they've got one for like immunity. I think you I think — Shopic Mushroom, — right? Lion's mane. Right. Okay. — Yeah. Um, and then a version for kids. One of the remarkable things about this company is, you know, as we said, it's only a couple years old, but they've managed to roll out multiple products and get into a lot of stores very quickly. — Right. So, so take me back to the beginning. um uh the founder Chad Janice. So he came up with this concept in 2022 and he was at Stanford's graduate school of business. Talk to me about like his early days there. What was that like? — Yes. So um as I was reporting this article, I actually got to talk to some of his grad school classmates. Um basically what Chad told me was he realized a summer before grad school that there had to be a better way to get these grains than the powders. And so he got to Stanford and he was immediately thinking about how can I create a gummy bear. He was like having samples made. He had to find a c-acker who could actually create this kind of packaging. Within the first few months, he invited a bunch of his classmates for a gummy bear tasting and to give like initial feedback. Then by spring semester, he sent out an investor deck just in the company or the um university slack and he invited anyone in his class that wanted to invest in his company. — Wow, that's such a smart idea. — Yeah, — we definitely weren't having um those kind of gummy parties at uh St. Pentary University. What So were people like eager to invest? Did they like the gummies? Yeah, I think that one of the things that his classmates said is he was just obviously very very smart about the CPG market. He had previously worked at Summit Partners, which is a VC firm. And so he sat on the board as a board observer for Ruggable, Chubbies

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

and a handful of the other DTC darlings of that era. So he got to Stanford and he could just talk circles around everyone explaining how deals are made, what companies are looking for, and things like that. Do you have like a ballpark for like the early um total funding in the beginning there? — He did an initial round of friends and family and Stanford classmates and that was about $400,000 and then that was rolled into a preede round of 1. 8 million. — Right. And then he also am I I read he also um had a sort of a stand-up comedy career. So, you know how in when you're in grad school or when you're in school, there'll be like student activities that are kind of weird? Like I went to international affairs school and we talent shows. — Um, so — wait, what was your talent? — Oh, I didn't I was just in the audience, right? — Um, but you know, it would be like someone singing I don't know, Matchbox 20 and then a magician and you're like, okay, these are like our future diplomats. But so at Stanford, one of the classmates arranged a standup comedy night for all the business school students and Chad would kind of get roasted because he was spending all of his time working on his gummy bear startup rather than doing his school work. And in the end, I mean, obviously didn't hurt him, but he just like barely squeaked by the line to uh get his degree. — Okay. So maybe he should have started with the um the new Tropic gummies. Um, so he's got kind of like early investors, early traction. Um, when did this kind of start to take off? I mean, that's a lot of space between like a friends and family round and like a 1. 2 billion acquisition by Unilver. — Yeah. So, I think one of the things that um was really remarkable about this story is how fast the company was able to move. They were August 2023 on their website. By December they were in Amazon and then soon after they were moving into Target and um various other stores they just announced Kroger. So to be able to pull off that DTOC to retail roll out so quickly. A lot of people told me there's just like very remarkable because there's so many things that can go wrong. You need to up the level of inventory you have very quickly figure out the finances to make sure that you're always delivering what these big customers want, right? Because if you like don't deliver for Target one month, you know, they're probably not going to have you back, — right? Yeah. And and the customer, you know, won't like come to expect that you're there, right? So — So do they have any sort of like secrets or tips and tricks for like how they were able to do this so quickly when others, you know, don't do that successfully. — I talked to a lot of people, including Chad himself, and I was like, how did he do this? You know, how do you pull this off? And everyone said it came down to nailing the execution and just hiring really good people. And they have a relatively big staff. I think it's 100ish people. And one thing Chad told me was he was very careful to um allow people to be in charge of their own domain and to um hire the best people and let them go with their ideas. — So it's kind of like a anti-micromanaging. — Exactly. And that's exactly what he said. One of the things he said to me was a lot of times businesses struggle because the founders are so micromanaging that it ends up with worst results and also that it's a little pretentious for a founder to assume that they always know the right solution. — Yeah. I saw a really good quote from um the incoming CEO of Apple and it's I'm paraphrasing basically he's like always assume you're as smart as everyone in the room but don't assume that you know what everyone else in the room knows. Right. — Um, and I thought that was like just really, you know, smart because it's like, yeah, I'm not an encyclopedia. Like, — right. — Um, — or if you're busy focusing on one area, maybe you don't have the same level of visibility into everything else. — Yeah. And also, it's like you're one person like no matter how like great you are at founding a company, like no one has unlimited bandwidth in a day. So I sounds like Chad like knows that and like took a really smart approach. After he started to get like early traction or started to get early traction in Target and all these um retailers, when did they start to see competition or are they seeing a lot of competition or is there someone else doing what they're doing? — You know, if you go on Amazon, there are a lot of lookalike sachets of gummies and supplements. And then you do have just a ton of gummy vitamins, a ton of supplements flooding the market right now, but Grun seems to have just gotten out there so much faster and so much better distribution — that they seem to be in a good place. — So they've kind of like established their brand and like they have a relationship with a customer. — Yeah. And I think that's another thing that a lot of people picked up on as far as why Gruns was successful is they were able to position itself as a daily habit. And it even says daily on the

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outer package. And so, you know, you're buying one of these packages every day, — right? — That's a lot of gummies. — And it's I think it's smart that it's like just daily, like one daily, because sometime like there are some supplements that I take that I look at the back and it's like take twice daily. And I'm like, I'm never going to remember this pill bottle until tomorrow morning, so I'm just taking two now, which I probably shouldn't do, but whatever. um beyond like the sort of like package marketing like how have they kind of you know what's their digital marketing strategy look like? — Yeah, I mean they're very online as a brand and they do a lot of in-house creative. Um but if you go on Instagram, they just have dozens and dozens of different ads targeting different populations. Um whether it's marathon runners or GLP-1 users or people who are having digestive issues. They've done collaborations with Lollipop and they did one with the Grinch around the holidays. Um cuz you know it's green Grinch. — I just made that connection. Yeah. — So I they've been very smart about getting it in front of a younger consumer and being there. You know that was one of the things that people referenced a lot if you read the internet hottakes about this brand is that it was you know a customer acquisition vehicle that Unilver was desperate to get its hands on. — Right. Yeah. And but and they had like a couple like sort of like celebrity connections too, right? Anna Kendrick was involved and the snowboarder Shawn White does Sean White snowboard. — Yes. Um, so we have NFL players Joe Burrow, Dak Prescott, DK Metaf, NBA players Klay Thompson, Paul George, snowboarder Shawn White, actors Anna Kendrick, Nina Dobrev, and Steven Yuan, musician Morgan Wallen, and food influencer Rachel Mansfield were among their early like fans and celebrity whackers. That's it's a really interesting like just like psychological marketing strategy because it's like look at these beautiful people, look at these like super athletic, successful people, they take goons. — I wonder if like they can kind of like keep that momentum going. What do you think? — You know, I do think the transition to unilver is going to be interesting. There are some brands like Liquid IV and Ali, which is another supplement brand that have been really successful, seen their revenue double. There have been others um The Laundress being a famous example that have maybe stumbled a little bit. So, I don't know. I think everyone will be watching with um anticipation. — Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about the stumble. Like what do you think the stumble might be? Cuz it's kind of a saturated market. — Yeah. So I think as far as entering, you know, this big conglomerate, a lot of times founders find that the new owners are not giving their brand the attention that they would have given or there is like a little bit of a psychological challenge to giving up your baby and maybe feeling like things aren't being handled the way you would want to, — right? — And you know, they're looking at their entire portfolio. So maybe they're not — so focused on the survival and growth of one brand. — Mhm. That makes Yeah, that makes sense. Uh so we've learn we've talked a lot about like why Gruns is successful and why Unilver was kind of maybe so attracted to them. What did the process of getting acquired look like? So they started talking last June and these were just kind of initial meet and greet meetings and then Chad said he had probably like 10 hours of facetime with the CEO of Un Lever Wellness alone and he was also taking meetings with some of the other people that you might expect would be interested but I think in the end he felt like this was a company that gives new brands a lot of runway to kind of grow with and there's a slower integration process than maybe with some of the other conglomerates. and he just felt like this was the right home for his brand. — Is the sale final or is it — It's not final yet, but — So, is any kind of like timeline on when it might be? Probably not, right? — Not that I know of, but I know Chad has said he intends to stay with the company and probably a lot of his employees do as well. — So, getting back to the just the sort of like how the kind of like wellness market is saturated or like the like wellness CPG market is saturated and we've talked about how like tough it is for CPG brands to get into retail. What are some other um success stories in the CPG space that you're seeing right now? — Um I think that two of the big blockbuster acquisitions of the past couple years were Ciieté Foods which exited Pepsi. Um and then what was the other one? Oh, and Poppy. Poppy also exited for and both were over a billion. Then you have Dr. Squatch the soap brand which was acquired by Unilver reportedly for I think 1. 5 billion. — Jeez. — Unilver. I can also make soap if you want to hire me. — I can pour some candles or — Yeah, we can. Oh, we have a c we have a burgers candle business. The sales and process with Unilver. Um Janice is he Chad's staying on as um and in and his capacity as leader and his

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early investors are like incredibly wealthy now, right? — Yes. He keeps using the term life-changing money. A lot of his employees have equity in the company. And then also those Stanford classmates and their friends and family members who got in at the very beginning, one of them told me that they 100 times their investment. — Oh my god. — So yeah, life-changing money, you know. Wow. That's a house, a down payment, you know. — Yeah. So truly everyone is happy. — I think everyone is happy. Yes. — Wow. So they're not laughing about his gummies now, are they? — No. Was there anything else that like you thought was like super kind of like unusual or interesting in your reporting that didn't make it into the story? — This didn't actually article, but I spoke to Jack Haldrup who is the founder of Dr. Squatch um which is acquired by Unilver. he's no longer involved with the company. But um one of the things he told me is that the speed at which CPG brands are breaking away from the pack and getting to these like big levels, getting to acquisitions is much faster now for the ones that make it. Um you know, this is a contrast to a couple years ago when Haron magazine said that CVG brands are no longer going to grow like tech companies. And then we have Gruins, which as our colleague David Litzky reported was growing last year faster than an AI company. — Well, I wonder if there's a connection there. I mean, is AI perhaps like helping them optimize processes? What what's the what's going on? — You know, one of his investors told me that they are using various AI tools, but in very smart ways. Like I said, I mean, it's a big company, 100ish people. They're bringing more and more manufacturing and things in house. So it's not that conventional wisdom of you just have like a couple people. AI does the rest. You work with co-ackers. But what she told me was that they are always looking for new AI tools to use and you know new software, new processes and they will bring them to their portfolio companies and most of the time Gruns is like oh we're already using that we tried that. We realized it didn't work. Mhm. I wonder if it also like if Grun's sort of like feudal anti-micromanagement system kind of helps them sort of innovate faster and be more open to like trying new tools. Did that sort of like surface at all in your reporting or — I think so. Um one of the other things I heard was that Chad is willing to hire people who are younger who maybe don't have the exact experience that you would look for. His former chief of staff is now the company president. Um, the number nine employee was one of his Stanford classmates, Juliet, who I believe is their head of product. And I actually talked to Chad a little bit about this on our very first interview, which was 2025 when he was just announcing their $500 million valuation, which seems quaint now. Um, and he said that he spent a year traveling around the world with his wife soon after they got married. and he felt like that experience and some earlier international experiences he had when he was younger made him sort of more open-minded to who he was going to hire and work with. — Interesting. — And I do think that there is something to the idea that he went a bit off the beaten path at various points in his life and career. And so that's made him a little bit more maybe had a broader perspective than someone who has just always been laser focused on one thing. Yeah, that was kind of the impression I was getting reading the story is like this guy kind of like takes a zigzag path and like does what he you know marches to the beat of his own drum, I guess you'd say. Well, anyway, this has been, like I said, so fun. Um, I got to go pick me up some goons. — Can I offer you a juice or a classic? — Oh, um, I would love Which what does each one do? — This one is um a preworkout energy. — Oh, no. Uh, this is — But it has a very cute little dumbbell. — We'll return in a minute for circling back. — We've all been there. Your team's feedback is scattered across emails, chats, and sticky notes. It's a mess. But PDF spaces in Adobe Acrobat gives you one collaborative workspace to streamline every file and comment. So, if you need six departments to finally agree on a proposal, do that with Acrobat. Need to turn a mountain of feedback into one plan of action? Do that with Acrobat. Want to stop searching for files and finally get everyone on the same page? Do that. Learn more at adobe. com/do that withacrobat. It's time for circling back. Jennifer, what story is on your mind this week? So, I just read an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal at the end of April, and it was about how AI companies

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are renting trophy real estate spaces in New York City, kind of massive spaces that they don't necessarily have the staff to fill out yet. — And like how big are these companies? — Some of these companies have three, four, five employees. And so, there seemed to be two rationale for doing it. One was they wanted to have a really beautiful space that they could have client meetings in. and you know they could just enjoy and then also they're thinking they're going to grow at hypers speed in the next few years so they'll need all that room to expand. — Isn't that a little counterintuitive? Like if AI is going to replace everyone as many of these companies keep saying or are like aiming to do what do they need an office for? — Well, they're not going to be replaced. — Of course. Right. Yeah. — Yeah. I think that for some of them it just is the thrill of having an office in Soho or a beautiful place in Flat Iron and then maybe you can do your morning work at one desk and then go across the room and do your quiet work at another desk. — Yeah, I mean I have a living room but I mean I agree an office is beautiful. — Our office is beautiful. Yeah. Did the article talk at all about like um if the investors of these AI companies also have investments in corporate real estate? — The article didn't get into that. Um, but one of the interesting aspects of the article was that a lot of these commercial real estate firms were kind of burned by the dotcom bubble when all of these companies that had rented went out of business. So, they're actually doing their own vetting as though the company were an investment to look at a company's run rate, to look at their revenue projections and things like that and to see is this someone who we can give a $30,000 a month 10-year lease to. — That is really interesting. Do you think this is going to is a trend that's going to keep going or is it just like a temporary kind of like trend? — It's an interesting question and I think that you know New York City real estate has really struggled for the past several years. So maybe a lot of people are thinking this is a good opportunity to get in while rents are still relatively low. At the same time we're seeing this I think we're seeing a trend towards companies renting in high-end co-working spaces like the Min. As soon as they put a private office on the market, people snap it up. So, I do think that there is a demand for in-person spaces and especially for growing startup companies that kind of want to make a splash. They want like a nice office. So, whether that will be some of what they traditionally call class A real estate or whether it's going to be more co-working spaces, I think it remains to be seen. Um maybe at some point the investors are going to be like, is this really the best use of our money? But we'll see. — Right. Yeah. Um I I'm waiting for the followup on we heard we work somehow pivoting to being an AI company. Well, I brought a story from um The Economist. The headline is um how Kelsey can help the Federal Reserve. Oh, — which yeah, obviously attention grabbing. So basically it's a it's a just a quick little look at like how um the Fed is paying close attention to um prediction markets like KHI and that's basically because they've taken a look at like um how Khi like predicts things like futures or options contracts um and they found that in many cases that predictions on Khi will actually be more accurate than the tools that the Fed um like currently uses. I can tell you, Kyle, she is quite accurate because um we recently did a March Madness bracket in the office, right? And I did my men's bracket based on the poly market predictions and the women's based on call she and I won the women's. — That's fun. Yeah, you won the How much did you win? — Maybe like $40. It wasn't that much. We didn't have that many participants in the women's bracket, unfortunately. — Uh those brackets are always so mystifying to me. I don't know how to do it. you win. Um — calli. I'll just do what Calli says. Yes. Um well, if I remember correctly, Khi just announced a massive fund raise this morning. — Um I think it was $1 billion, 22 billion valuation. So they're uh really on fire. — They really are. I mean, I also I mean, do you you've covered prediction marks sort of a little bit here and there? I mean, what do you think of them? I mean, do you think they in this case like there's more things that can be that they can do that's like sort of for the public good or do you think overall it's kind of like a cautionary tale there and like getting too into — Yeah, I mean it does seem like being able to crowdsource information. They've been very effective and accurate so far, but you know, there have been a few accusations of things like insider trading, people trading on non-public information about what was happening in Iran or I believe it was poly market there was a mini scandal because people were manipulating the temperature sensors at Charles de Gaul. — Oh. — Um and then betting on the temperatures. Okay. So, you know, I think unless we can clean up some of those things and, you know, I know that the platforms are trying to crack down on it, — but right now it seems like they are rife for that kind of manipulation. And

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if there's more and more of that, I don't know if this can last. That was a thought I had in my head is like it's hard to like look at anything outside of the context of AI anymore. But like Khi alongside like the recent news about anthropics mythos which can find like backends and flaws and code and stuff and presumably like help hackers um exploit those flaws. I just feel like there's going to be more and more things like the Charles de Gaul situation where like you can kind of like hack the I don't know the Times Square clock or something. Do we have a clock in time square and make bets on that? Um, but so I'm a little nervous, but in the meantime, go off drone pal. — Jennifer, thanks for bearing with me on this edition of One Smart Business Story. — Anytime, Tim. — The business model is an Inc. podcast. You can find episodes every Monday and Friday on our YouTube channel. So, make sure you subscribe and check out some of our other videos. You can hear the audio version on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back on your feet on Friday.