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SPEAKER_02: Hey everybody. Hey everybody. Welcome back to This Week in Startups. It is 2020 and we are

SPEAKER_03: heading out of the summer and into the fall in the year of the pandemic. Some people are calling it the lost year. I think it's more of the year to rethink and reconsider everything. Maybe take stock and appreciate life and friendship and opportunity, how we treat each other and what we want for our world and our children going forward. That's actually been the topic I've been hearing most. I've had more people in my life tell me, I love you, Jake Al. I miss you. Can't wait to see you. And that level of appreciating each other and being there for each other, I think is the silver lining of this pandemic. And I'm really excited to have our guest on today. I think creating jobs, creating opportunity, this is something we're going to need in America in a major way, given the number of people who are unemployed. It is going to be perhaps the biggest challenge post-pandemic, along with

SPEAKER_02: maybe the impact this has on our kids. And so we'll talk about a little bit about that. And we'll talk

SPEAKER_03: about direct to consumer, which is a category of e-commerce. And we're going to talk about vitamins. And we're going to talk about supplements. And some people feel that's a real thing. And some people think like you get enough nutrients from vegetables, like actually, the founder of Ritual,

SPEAKER_02: who is now on the podcast, Katarina Schneider. We're going to call her Kat. And you can follow her on the Twitter, Katarina Markov. I guess you're going by, that's your maiden. And welcome to the pod. How is

SPEAKER_03: everything going for you running a business now into month six or seven of this pandemic?

SPEAKER_08: Yeah, it's going. I feel very-

SPEAKER_10: It is six months, yeah.

SPEAKER_08: I can't believe it's six months. It's probably the slowest and the fastest six months, I think, ever. But it's going well. I feel an immense sense of gratitude for the team that we have and how

SPEAKER_13: the shift that people have had in the world towards their health over this time and prioritizing nutrition, which wasn't always prioritized over other things in our lives. So the pandemic has

SPEAKER_08: taken an enormous emotional toll, I think, on me personally and a lot of people

SPEAKER_13: in every facet of life. And I wish that our business was benefiting from something other than a global health crisis. But it's had a positive impact, I would say, on our company.

SPEAKER_03: That is something that across my portfolio, I've been having a lot of candid conversations with founders. And it's almost, I won't say guilt, but it is definitely dissonance, cognitive dissonance, when you're watching the world struggle, and then certain

SPEAKER_17: businesses, maybe two, three X, com.com, Robin Hood, Steezy, the dance instruction, anything that

SPEAKER_02: involved a hobby or in front of a computer, had great growth, Uber Eats, Postmates, etc. And of course, your company, ritual.com, people taking stock of health. And also, are you mostly a DTC brand? I know you had, you have a store? Do you have multiple stores? Explain what ritual is and how you came up with the idea? And let's get right into it.

SPEAKER_13: Yeah, we're 100% direct to consumer. And that was the vision since the beginning. I bought ritual.com against a lot of advice from investors.

SPEAKER_23: That's a million dollar domain name right there. I mean, easily a seven figure domain name. You probably got a better deal, I assume.

SPEAKER_08: I actually kind of made money on it in some ways.

SPEAKER_23: Wait, do explain.

SPEAKER_08: Yeah, that's...

SPEAKER_24: I'm a sucker for a great domain name. Everybody knows that.

SPEAKER_08: It's, yeah, that's one of my favorite stories. I'll probably take up half this podcast.

SPEAKER_05: Let's start. Let's do it. I love a good domain story. I have inside.com. I had 20.com.

SPEAKER_25: I have natals.com if you know anyone who wants it. Which one do you have? Natals.

SPEAKER_03: Oh, natals. Yeah, like for prenatal vitamins. Yeah. Got it. Very good.

SPEAKER_08: So if anyone wants that, I'll give it to them.

SPEAKER_03: Well, there's ritual coffee. They must have wanted the domain name.

SPEAKER_08: Yeah, there's a number of rituals and other categories. I thought it was, and I'll give you a little bit of history on the company, but the vision

SPEAKER_27: was to go beyond vitamins and really reinvent the way that we interact with the products we use every single day. How do you elevate something from a routine to a habit to a ritual, which is why it was really important for me to buy ritual.com and not ritual vitamins and not be

SPEAKER_08: known as ritual vitamins from the beginning. So, you know, I spent a very long time trying to get ritual.com.

SPEAKER_22: Was it a domain owner or was it just an individual or another company?

SPEAKER_08: Yeah, it was another company and individual, a really interesting guy who was also an

SPEAKER_13: entrepreneur. And we got to know each other very regularly because I was very persistent about it. And, you know, we had calls at least, you know, probably 30 or so. I was, I was starting to call him every other day, got to know about his family. And then in the process of getting to know him because he refused to sell ritual.com for me, to me for less than, I don't know, it was like three or $500,000 at the time. That was a third or a quarter of what we had raised. I found out that he actually wanted jolt.com for his businesses and had a really

SPEAKER_08: difficult time getting that and getting the founder of that to sell that to him. So then I got to know the founder of jolt.com.

SPEAKER_35: Oh boy. I love it.

SPEAKER_13: Yes. And I, and I, and I did a kind of equity deal, slight cash deal with the founder of jolt.com who actually also went to, to Brown and had a background in the music industry as well.

SPEAKER_08: Um, and so then I ended up doing this crazy process of like three contracts and, and doing a trade, um, and getting, and getting ritual.com and also just, you know, ritual.com is a longer domain than jolt.com. So I definitely thought it was worth jolt was worth more.

SPEAKER_23: That is like a three team trade in the NBA. You're like, you're like, I really want to secure

SPEAKER_39: this player, but you need draft picks. And so we're going to just flip flop all these

SPEAKER_03: players around. And that's, that's how superstars get traded, uh, typically. Uh, but a great domain

SPEAKER_08: I remember investors, investors were saying, you know, why are you wasting your time on this? Start building the product and the company, like this is, this isn't as important, but

SPEAKER_13: I, I don't know. I felt, especially in, in the health space and the, in the vitamin category,

SPEAKER_27: buying a credible domain was just another indicator of trust and was, was really important. And I'm so

SPEAKER_46: glad that we ended up doing that. It's absolutely worth it. Um, I, I agree with your investors that you should not build your company because you can't get the domain name, but man, does it really help? Uh, we got the syndicate.com for my angel syndicate and took me three or four years to get it. I got inside.com. And when you have a great domain name like that, it does elevate trust when people

SPEAKER_03: see it in an advertisement and when people see it in a search result of correct, that is, was your

SPEAKER_13: thinking. Yeah. And you know what I didn't realize was that the social handles and all of the social domains were even more important when you're building a direct to consumer brand, um, and you're building it through social media. So, so then I, then I got equally as obsessed getting at ritual and Instagram and on Twitter and LinkedIn and all these things. Um, so we have ritual on all the, all the channels that we need. Um, but I didn't realize that that was actually going to be even more, even more fun and challenging, but it's definitely, it's a very personal thing, right? You have to

SPEAKER_51: get to know the person who has it. You have to make your case and people can be emotionally tied to

SPEAKER_13: those handles, correct? Yeah, exactly. And sometimes they don't even respond. So you might need to hire a private investigator to follow around. Now I know why, uh, Jason, I keep telling

SPEAKER_57: Jason Bateman, he's, he cannot have at Jason on Instagram or on Twitter and Jason Bateman keeps

SPEAKER_03: reaching out to me and I'm like, dude, I love you. I love Ozark. I love all of it, but Jason Bateman, you're not getting at Jason period on Instagram or on Twitter. And I know I had Jason Bateman's friends have been, I'm, I'm joking. I'm a fan of Jason Bateman's, but I wouldn't get, it is, it is an

SPEAKER_08: interesting, you should get some royalties on, on his shows or movies for the, yeah, I was thinking

SPEAKER_03: that, and you know, I often get people mistake me and Jason Statham, uh, for obvious reasons, uh, you know, physique, et cetera. We both put in kind of the hours, uh, in the gym and, and I, uh, I'm not giving it to Statham as well. So what was the first product you put out at ritual in terms of vitamins?

SPEAKER_57: Because I, I understand that you were not convinced that vitamins, uh, were necessary. And in fact, your mom, uh, I believe I heard, uh, on another podcast that had you on, didn't believe and you were raised to not believe in that you get all the nutrients you want from vegetables. When we get back from this quick message, I want to you to take us on your journey from when you went

SPEAKER_02: from being a non-believer to a believer in supplements and vitamins. We get back on the

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SPEAKER_65: that keep your customers coming back. Whether you're just getting started or running a well-known brand, it gives you everything you need to send memorable branded emails, text messages, and more so that you can build that strong relationship that keeps your customers coming back. With flexible automations, powerful insights, and super precise targeting, Klaviyo is the fastest way to turn great ideas into great customer experiences. That's why it's trusted by over 40,000 brands. Think about that for a second. Like Living Proof, Huckberry, and Aidsleep, which were investors in Aidsleep. And so we're glad to see them using Klaviyo. If you want to learn more about how you can grow your brand with Klaviyo, visit klaviyo.com slash twist to get started with a free trial today. They're going to give you that free trial because you listened to the pod. That's K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.com slash twist, klaviyo.com slash twist. Start sending those memorable marketing messages that are targeted to your users. Okay. Thanks again to Klaviyo for supporting independent

SPEAKER_03: media like this week in startups. Let's get back to this amazing episode. All right. Kat Schneider is

SPEAKER_05: with us. She is from Ritual. I'm assuming they have at Ritual on Twitter and Instagram, so you can go follow them and they have ritual.com. You were not a believer in the supplement

SPEAKER_23: vitamin space, I heard on a podcast. True. And then how did you come to believe in it enough

SPEAKER_13: to want to build a company around it? Yeah. So I grew up in a household. My mom is actually a macrobiotic practitioner. You know, if there's something, at one point, my parents were really into Ayurveda. I've always been deeply passionate about health, nutrition, and kind of healing. And then, you know, growing up, it was, if there was something wrong with me or anyone in our family, we would never take anything. We would, whether it was grinding up some garlic or, you know, oregano oil or whatever the flavor of the day was, that's how we would deal with our, you know, temporary ailments. So that's, vitamins and supplements were never part of the way that I grew up. Um, and then for me, I, I got pregnant with my first daughter, Tali, now have three, three daughters like you. Same. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. Um, the greatest. Yeah. How old are you? Uh, so two,

SPEAKER_08: four, and I have a three month old. So if you hear them in the background, I apologize. Uh, no,

SPEAKER_23: that's, I'm amazed, uh, that you're running a company and you have made three babies in the same

SPEAKER_05: period of time. Is that correct? You started the company five, six years ago, if I'm right.

SPEAKER_13: Yeah. I started when I was pregnant with my first and she's really the reason I started the company. So explain. Yeah. I was pregnant with Tali. Um, well, even just before being pregnant, I started really kind of dabbling and trying to understand prenatal vitamins for my pregnancy. And I really could not find a brand that I, um, that I really connected with. And, and I also wasn't sure why I needed prenatals. And so I went down the research rabbit hole and, um, found out, Hey, you know, these are actually really important during your pregnancy. Most doctors would agree. There's a lot of science behind folate and neural tube development. Uh, this makes sense to me. And then when I started looking at, at brands in the space, uh, as someone who's very health conscious, there was really nothing that I personally wanted to ingest every single day. Um, there, you know, there was a lot of, uh, pseudoscience. There were ingredients that I didn't want in or on my body. Right. And, um, and so I was kind of left with very little choice. And I was like, huh, this must be interesting. I wonder if other women feel the same way and started asking everyone. I know what, you know, what brand of prenatals are you taking? What multivitamins are you taking? And literally no one could remember the brand that they'd been taking for sometimes like 10 years. Cause they had like four or five kids. Um, and I was like, this is interesting. This is something most, you know, most women are taking every day. Um, and then multivitamins, most of the U S is taking every single day. And yet there's very little kind of brand affinity in the space and really nothing that kind of, um, is at the end was at the intersection of, of science and transparency. So that's how I, um, landed on at first the prenatal, but actually we never launched the prenatal, uh, in the beginning. We, we ended up launching a reinvented multi from day one. And I hired, um, one of the leading scientists in the industry. We spent a year just researching diets, trying to understand what people were actually getting from their foods and what they were getting from, um, you know, what they should be getting where the gaps were in, in, um, in their diets and realize it wasn't that 20 to 40 nutrients, um, in most, uh, multivitamins. It was actually a handful of things like vitamin D or magnesium, omega threes. Uh, and so kind of a contrarian approach to the category, uh, with we even trademarked, uh, less is more in the category. So really believe in fewer nutrients, filling the gaps in, in one's diets. And then what we did, which is radically different and what our brand, uh, has become known for is really this idea of traceability. So all of our nutrients, you can go on our site, you can see where everything comes from in the world, why it's there. And we even share every supplier. So if you wanted to recreate our, our multis, you could, you can go and do that. Um, and then on top of that, we ran a clinical study with a major university on our product. So you can see, um, that the nutrients are, are getting in. So, um, you know, in the clinical study tab on our site, uh, we really went deep on, on how the study was conducted and, and, and the results. And so really a radically different approach to, um, the category. And we also, um, are a hundred percent direct to consumer. So, um, that was something that when I started the company, especially, um, you know, was, was kind of interesting. See, on, on the site, if you go to, um, yeah, you can, there's also an ingredients tab. You can click in on those, but then you can also click in on the ingredients tab in the menu section, um, and, and, and the clinical study side as well.

SPEAKER_27: So, yeah. Um, and if you just click into any, any nutrient. There it is. Omega-3 is very

SPEAKER_45: important. And so you, you started to figure out where to, to source these, right? Uh, I see you're

SPEAKER_03: using the vegan ones as opposed to the fish oil. Right. So the, so the, it's Omega-3 DHA coming from

SPEAKER_08: algal oil. Um, we also list out our suppliers. So it's algorithm coming from microalgae in British

SPEAKER_13: Columbia. Our D3 comes from wild harvested lichen from a company called Vitashine. Um, and we literally just chose the best of the best ingredients from all over the world. Um, and then also I'm,

SPEAKER_27: I'm vegan. So, uh, vegan forms are really important to me. And so we also looked at ingredients that had

SPEAKER_13: mostly had their own human clinical studies behind them as well. So we left kind of like no expense.

SPEAKER_45: Um, and that was some, uh, sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just saying this, this is an important part. I think the D2C moment, when I look at direct to consumer companies, if you're going to make

SPEAKER_03: something that already exists in the world in order to build, uh, um, to, to build advertising around the product, there needs to be some benefit to the product or some innovation to the product and the sourcing, um, and, um, you know, the quality and the, the combination of what's important. These are all very nuanced discoveries you made during this year of discovery and, and, and that made for a product that didn't previously exist. You'd have a value proposition because when you're thinking about what's going to be in the ad, what's going to be on the website, there needs to be some bullet points or value proposition that people understand and believe. And that hopefully

SPEAKER_92: is true. That that's a big part of this. Yes.

SPEAKER_20: Yeah, for sure. I don't think you can create anything now with just beautiful branding and sell it direct to consumer and expect a company to scale. Um, you really have to be creating, I think a radically different product than anything else that exists. I mean, for us,

SPEAKER_27: even the encapsulation is, is just different than anything that was used before, um, our product-

SPEAKER_21: What does that mean, encapsulation? You mean how it comes into a capsule form or is it something

SPEAKER_98: more specific? Yeah. At a simplest form, it's how it comes in, in, in, in, is in cap, the ingredients

SPEAKER_27: are encapsulated. So we have beadlets in oil in a delayed release capsule that bypasses the stomach

SPEAKER_13: and gets released in the small intestine. So even that part for us is thought out and was really different in this multivitamin, um, space that we carved out. Um, because generally people would take, you know, a separate omega-3 pill, another magnesium pill, a multivitamin, a higher dosage of vitamin D, and they would be taking, you know, four or five capsules and someone who, as someone who didn't come, I was never a vitamin taker myself. I didn't really want to be taking a lot of pills. I didn't want to feel like I was sick. So we figured out kind of a way to, to encapsulate all these

SPEAKER_27: nutrients into, into capsules. Um, and then also just it, people say that it, you know, there's, there's better tolerability because we use gentler forms of, um, iron for women. Um, and also the, the nutrients bypass the stomach. So, um, that's better for absorption, I assume. And that, and that

SPEAKER_46: is the key issue. A lot of people take a bunch of supplements, but they never get into their body. I mean, I listened to like Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose, like geek out on this, on their podcasts.

SPEAKER_17: Like, that's a big thing. The absorption, actually getting this into it. How did you get investor money?

SPEAKER_46: Um, before you had a product or did you, or did you just do this all, all this research on your own while you, cause I remember you were, you were working for Troy Carter, correct? My, my, my pal,

SPEAKER_17: the investor and the, um, Lady Gaga's former manager and, uh, you know, Adam records. Is it Adam records? Was that the name? Adam factory, Adam factory. Sorry. It took me a second. I have so many names of companies, but yeah, he was running Adam factory. He was managing Gaga when I met him and he was investing in Uber and a couple other companies. That's how we became friendly. Um,

SPEAKER_02: but you worked with him. Uh, so did you raise money and then go on this journey of discovery and

SPEAKER_39: figuring these things out? Or did you first just figure this stuff out and then go to investors and say, Hey, look, I have this folder with a bunch of crazy ideas in it. Give me money.

SPEAKER_08: A little bit of both. Uh, Troy was an awesome mentor and, and, you know, he's an entrepreneur

SPEAKER_13: himself. So he, um, was very supportive of, of me starting something and was very encouraging. Like he had been with a lot of the companies that we, um, invested in and he even invested in ritual and, and I couldn't have asked for a better kind of mentor and partner and boss really in the beginning.

SPEAKER_27: So I actually left Adam factory when I was four months pregnant. Cause I started raising money from investors. I, for, for the idea that we created because of the level of investment and research

SPEAKER_13: that it took and, and the team that I needed on the scientific side, I couldn't have actually started the company without raising the money that we did. You needed like a million bucks just

SPEAKER_117: to get to the starting gate, 2 million bucks, something like that. Yeah. And, and honestly,

SPEAKER_13: we hadn't even, we didn't even launch with, with the first round of funding. Um, and so we, I raised a small, you know, seed round and then I read it, I raised another seed round that

SPEAKER_08: was led by, by forerunner and Kirsten green who joined our board, um, followed by series a from Brian Singerman at founders fund. Um, it's awesome. Hey, when we get back from this quick break, I want

SPEAKER_46: to hear about your stories of going and raising money as a pregnant woman and what the reaction you got from certain venture capitalists who shall remain nameless when we get back on this week. Oh my God,

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SPEAKER_02: All right, Kat Schneider from richwell.com is here. She makes vitamins and she does it really well. And she went out to raise money when she was pregnant. And I've heard from a number of female founders who we've invested in. That's always an interesting experience. Tell me, how did that go

SPEAKER_20: for you? I feel like I'm always pregnant raising money now, but hopefully it's my last time.

SPEAKER_49: Well, you had three kids over a six-year span and it was the same span or the same six years that you

SPEAKER_92: started a company. So, no degree of difficulty there, obviously.

SPEAKER_130: No, it's become the norm.

SPEAKER_131: It's become the norm, yeah. But I couldn't do it, I don't think. But you did it. I mean,

SPEAKER_49: it's super impressive. But what are the VCs? What was their reaction to you?

SPEAKER_128: Yeah. So, it was interesting because I came from the VC space. I came from investing

SPEAKER_13: in companies and I knew a lot of VCs early on. And it's interesting that a lot of the VCs that I actually went to kind of passed because they didn't want to touch the vitamin space.

SPEAKER_27: And then there were VCs, one in particular, that I had an investor who I knew for a long time tell me. And I think in a more friendly way, like, you can't start a company and have a family at the

SPEAKER_138: same time. Like, trust me. Wow. So, I think, yeah. You would never say that to a guy. You would send them a onesie with the VC's logo on it. Like, you would never say to a guy, like, you're having a baby.

SPEAKER_56: I mean, there is some truth that it is challenging to have kids while being an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_141: Right. It was challenging. He was challenging, but that doesn't, yeah.

SPEAKER_27: Yeah. But I also don't, yeah, for me, it was, it was fuel. It was, it was really empowering

SPEAKER_13: because I wanted to prove him wrong. But I also would have never started a company, you know,

SPEAKER_27: had I not had that experience of, of being pregnant. And now as we're thinking of other products as well, being a mom of three over the last five years, it's really impacted how I think about kind of this family context and what we should launch next and what, you know, families and moms want. So, it's actually been incredibly important for our business. Because I'm building, I'm building this company at the end of the day for myself as well.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah. I mean, understanding your customer is at the core of product innovation, marketing,

SPEAKER_46: customer service, all of these things. If you don't understand who you're, if you don't understand your customer or have an ideal customer profile, you know, how can you ever hope to,

SPEAKER_17: to build them a product? You, you are the ideal customer profile. You're a woman who has multiple kids, which means multiple vitamin journeys, right? I mean, you have the prenatal and then kids take vitamins. I was lucky enough to be an investor in a company called Smarty Pants. My friend, Gordon Gould, who's just been a friend of mine from New York, I'm starting this thing. I was like, yeah, yeah, put it, here's 50k or whatever. And then this company became giant. It's like unbelievable how big it's become now. And I think they started maybe five years before you. You're in kids vitamins

SPEAKER_05: now too, I take it. Yeah. We will be. You will be. Yeah. I knew that was coming. Don't say anything bad about Smarty Pants, but they, they've done pretty well. It's a, it's a pretty good category. Yeah.

SPEAKER_98: Yeah. It, I think that, um, and I know, and this is kind of the, the reason we're going into family is

SPEAKER_13: just once you have a family, you start caring about the health of, of your, your kids and your, your partner, um, more than you even care about yourself. Uh, and so that, that's a really interesting

SPEAKER_27: kind of transition that we're seeing for a lot of our, our customers. We, and, and, and I, I don't remember if I mentioned this, but we, so when we launched the prenatal, we only launched that about two, uh, about two years ago. It's actually become, um, one of the top selling prenatals in the US.

SPEAKER_13: We sold out of it, um, about a month ago and we had over 20,000 people on the waitlist already. Wow. That's just only increasing as a prenatal. It's not like a eye cream or something.

SPEAKER_112: Right. Um, so you gotta get through that waitlist pretty quick because there is a ticking clock. I

SPEAKER_05: mean, if people are signing up for it, they, you know, you have to get them the vitamins quickly.

SPEAKER_08: Yeah, for sure. It's, it's kind of become a cult product and we need to, can't wait for it to come

SPEAKER_56: back. Uh, it's coming back actually next week. This is the next piece of the puzzle you had to figure

SPEAKER_57: out, correct? Is supply chain and like inventory. This, if you're sourcing and you're doing this very, um, a deliberate sourcing, I guess would be the way to say it this. And then you have to bring all this, this disparate, uh, products and sourcing from around the world to some location to put it all together. You've, you've increased the level of difficulty because I'm sure the other people making vitamins are just like, yeah, whatever. Let's just check 20 boxes and, and get it in GNC.

SPEAKER_92: You have to get these things to some location. How does supply chain even work? Have you figured that out yet?

SPEAKER_27: Yeah, we've been really lucky. I mean, the prenatal, um, is the only product that's been, uh, really sold out before. And part of that is we kind of underestimated the demand that would have happened that happened this year. It just went crazy. So it's, it's good. It's becoming really interesting. Um, but as far as supply chain goes, we work with an incredible manufacturer, um, that's, that was just, you know, sold in the last couple of years for over $5 billion. They're, um, really pharmaceutical, uh, background and it is a complicated supply chain, but we actually work with suppliers that most of them have their own human clinical study. A lot of them are branded ingredients and, um, it's not just like, you know, they're harvesting some kind of wild flowers. Yeah. In, in their yard.

SPEAKER_157: They're professional at what they're doing. You're not the first person to come and get their DHA or vitamin D from them. These are, you're picking the top suppliers. So your vitamins

SPEAKER_46: cost what two to three times as much to manufacture than like the cheap ones I would buy at some nutritional store that shall remain nameless.

SPEAKER_128: I mean, you can buy a generic multi for, you know, like 10 bucks, even less sometimes. Um,

SPEAKER_27: our, our multivitamin for adults, 18 plus for women, 18 plus and men's 18 plus is $30 a month. Um, that being said is we include ingredients like omega-3 DHA in our products and different dosages. So it's not really a apples to apples comparison. Like if you were to buy omega-3 is on their own, they would cost you that if not more, especially from algae. So, um, in a lot of ways, if you were to cobble together our, our products, you are, it is the traditional D to C model in the sense that like, you know, bypassing the middleman, et cetera, et cetera, um, people are getting a really great value,

SPEAKER_07: um, for, for what they're buying.

SPEAKER_02: I mean, that is ultimately the promise of D to C is, Hey, if we take out this, you know, uh, middleman who's taking some percentage, we can actually invest more in the product and provide

SPEAKER_57: it cheaper and save money on this retail channel that what exactly is the point of going to a store

SPEAKER_03: and browsing for something like, I don't know who the person is who goes to a store and browsers for vitamins. That doesn't make any sense to me. Like it's a considered purchase. You should be making it by reading studies or watching videos or interviews. What's when we get back from this final break, I want to know what channels have broken out for you. And then how do you

SPEAKER_46: look at growth now that you've got a product that people have, you have demand for, how do you think about growth now in your five of a company like this when we get back on this week?

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SPEAKER_02: amazing episode. All right. Kat Schneider is with us from ritual.com and she makes vitamins and she does it really well. And part of that in year five is growth and marketing channels. What, I mean, Facebook is the obvious and Instagram are the obvious ones, but what are the, how do you assess each of these channels and then how do you get an advantage on them? Because it does seem like people have mastered Instagram and Facebook and does that mean there's not an opportunity there

SPEAKER_04: anymore? What are the channels and then how do you grow a business in year five like this?

SPEAKER_20: Yeah. So our channels are pretty diverse. I think when we started and, and it's all,

SPEAKER_27: it's all about timing. I think when we started Instagram was cost per acquisition was incredibly low. Um, we definitely, it definitely helped build our brand. And then, um, you know, more recently podcasts, podcast advertising have been huge for us as well as influencer. Um, word of mouth has, has definitely increased, especially this, this past year, um, by a lot. Um, I would say we're testing out TV right now as well. Um, and the other channel that's been really interesting for us that we're really excited to go grow is the doctor, doctor channel. Ah, fascinating. That has been a really interesting channel that we're starting to track. Our product is direct to, uh, obviously direct to consumer, but subscription only. So you can't just go and buy it, you know, once, um, you can cancel any time and we'll give you your money back. There's free shipping. Uh, but the subscription component is actually a really big part of the brand and part of turning something into a ritual and, and also why, um, we've invested really heavily into technology. We have full, you know, full stack engineering team. We are not using, you know, Shopify or any of the plugins. We've really, um, kind of just scratched the surface of what the consumer experience should be like for something you take daily and how, how much control a consumer should have over, um, kind of the delivery of that product and kind of the interaction of with it through, through technology. So.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah. SMS seems to work really well for people in this space now and like keeping,

SPEAKER_56: you know, prescriptions and, you know, consultations. Every pitch I see has like, yeah, we just do it through SMS. You know, it's like, boom, straight shot. Email works too, obviously,

SPEAKER_46: but this like SMS of, you know, log into the app with your phone number and, you know, get your prescription or pause your subscription. Obviously, a Dollar Shave Club story that you can pause your subscription. That actually seems to be super powerful and just taking the friction out and getting direct to your customer is the goal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_27: Yeah. We, with us, you can snooze or rush your subscription anytime. There's a really beautiful front end experience. So, you know, that's kind of the awesome part about having, um, really good UI UX in house and great engineers. And now we just launched men's, uh, multivitamins about a month ago and, and, and we also launched bundling. So you can control multiple subscriptions from one household. Um, no, you know, whether it's two women's products or two men's products or a men's and women's product, um, just even being able to control both and pause and skip different ones at different times. Um, it's something we're really excited about. And I think the big picture for me and for our team is like, you know, a lot of people buy their, their household items on Amazon and have this, it's pretty easy, right? Obviously, pretty friction free. And I was about to bring up

SPEAKER_46: the Amazon question because do you, how do you even think about them as a channel? Do you provide

SPEAKER_138: your stuff on Amazon or is that like a bad idea or do you provide like some of it there? How do you

SPEAKER_27: think about Amazon? No, we're entirely direct. So the way I think about Amazon is that I want us to become better than Amazon on the, um, kind of knowledge around daily use and daily behavior of products. So when we think about products, we're thinking about products that people use every single day that are essential and how do we become really on the forefront of even that experience, that control over those things that should be daily and that daily behavior. Cause Amazon right now, it's like subscribe and save or, um, but it, it's not that same level of experience that, that you get even with us, but I'm hoping we can even get better.

SPEAKER_190: Are you thinking about like apps and stuff like that? I know this, what's the app called,

SPEAKER_17: uh, nom or something like that, that ever that, well, that podcast advertise, like change your behavior habits to lose weight and behavioral science. And there's a lot of like, you know, apps for that kind of stuff where you're thinking of getting into sort of that space.

SPEAKER_13: Yeah. We've always been thinking about it. We have an Apple watch app. Um, I wish it had more usage because it's pretty great and seamless.

SPEAKER_167: What does it do? It just reminds you to take your vitamins or.

SPEAKER_128: Yeah. You can see your streak, how many days in a row it's like pretty,

SPEAKER_27: you can see who around you is also keeping the streak and, um, has a leaderboard. It's really beautifully designed. Uh, it's not the be all end all of where I kind of see us going from a technology perspective, but in the past, the idea of an iPhone app has just felt like almost more, more friction. People are already bad about taking their vitamins. In fact, two thirds of our customers had never, um, taken a vitamin or never consistently, um, had a habit prior to joining rituals. So I'm really kind of trying to change daily behavior.

SPEAKER_20: An app on the phone had, Oh, has always felt like friction to me. It's like, you're already having a hard time. Now I'm going to take out your phone.

SPEAKER_56: Yeah, no, no, it is definitely. I wish that my Fitbit would just send me a reminder at some point during the day over SMS, like, Hey, by the way, you're 64% on your steps or whatever it is, you know, or by the way, you're sleep deprived. You should just, just put it in my SMS for me or my Peloton doing that or my tonal doing that. I've been trying to figure out a way to kind of

SPEAKER_02: remind myself of that. So, but this creating habits, creating rituals is a big, uh, there's

SPEAKER_131: been a bunch of really like the power of habit and all this stuff. It's like a big topic for people.

SPEAKER_195: And it's actually influenced me a lot in the beginning. The power of habit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_20: Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting. Cause you know, we created this product, but, and I was reading the

SPEAKER_199: book and, um, the cure, the reward, it's like, you don't, you know, with a multivitamin, you really get a, get a reward, instant reward. No, I hate taking vitamins. Like I hate swallowing

SPEAKER_23: vitamins. I do like the gummy ones though. I like the sweet ones because it tastes like candy.

SPEAKER_27: Yeah. So ours, um, ours smell like fresh peppermint. And so that was kind of the,

SPEAKER_13: the reward and in some sense, and the prenatal smell like, and taste like fresh citrus. Um, so it was kind of a new approach to taking capsules.

SPEAKER_202: I've never heard about that. That's a great idea. Like maybe you feel like some,

SPEAKER_17: it's like a, yeah, it is like the, uh, it's not the cue, it's the reward, but you don't, there's no other reward for it. But a streak is definitely a reward. Like I actually went on vacation for 10 days and I came back and I was so upset at myself after going to the beach. Cause I had a seven week Peloton treadmill streak going and I didn't hit my streak. And I was like, oh, this doesn't matter. I was walking like five miles a day anyway on the beach. And, but for some reason my mental, you know, I was angry at myself for breaking my streak. It was very strange. Uh, it's like when you, it's, you ever have your Fitbit or your watch die when you're on a hike and you don't get counts for the steps and you feel bad, like, and you're like, but you actually did the hike. You shouldn't feel bad, but it's not recorded.

SPEAKER_205: I used to use the app moves on my phone and I loved how passive it was, you know? And I think a lot of

SPEAKER_27: the other, uh, kind of fitness apps or, or, or the things in general are just kind of, you have to be a lot more proactive about it. And I just don't feel like that works with health or habit formation.

SPEAKER_56: It's like, you need kind of that instant gratification. Uh, tell me about men versus

SPEAKER_02: women because you have these two different products and obviously you're the ideal customer profile for being a mom or prenatal, but perhaps you're not the ideal customer profile for men. How did you, is there some difference between how men use supplements and women goals? What did you learn

SPEAKER_27: in that space? Yeah, we did a lot of research. We have a market research team in house. We spoke to a lot of men, obviously, uh, we have a lot of men on the team. And so, uh, when it, when we surveyed men, um, about what they think it takes to achieve good health, men ranked exercise twice as important as a balanced diet, which is very different than women and obviously exercise important, but it's really just part of the story. And when, when you look at, um, research and you, you kind of read what the CDC has written, fewer men than women actually meet their minimum daily intake of recommendations for fruits and vegetables. And so men are not getting enough of some key micronutrients. And that was really interesting. And, and we kind of had this, uh, Kim campaign or as part of our messaging is kind of just like level up or get on her level. Uh, so, you know, we've been serving women for a long time, but now it's important for us to serve the whole whole family and support their nutrition. Another thing that we found was, um, 70% of our customers lived with a male in the household. So as part of our marketing, we are actually, um, not only targeting him, but we're actually targeting her for him as well. Um,

SPEAKER_17: That makes total sense because as you're saying, you're, you're triggering the competitive thing, like, Hey, get on her level, like level up, like that's a guy thing. Right. Um, but you're also kind of understanding that, um, in this male female dynamic, and we're getting into dangerous territory,

SPEAKER_46: talking about gender here, but based on studies and your experience, the, the female might actually be thinking about the male's health more than the male is thinking about it and make that decision

SPEAKER_196: for them in some cases. Yeah. And some relationships that's, that's what happens. Um, and you know, kind of what we're finding is that, um, men and women are almost equally like bundling for,

SPEAKER_27: for their households, which is kind of interesting. And I think pretty good for, um, the gender

SPEAKER_02: conversation. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's so many different combinations, but it definitely is helpful when you have a group around you, the, the time I had my best weight loss and my best like physical

SPEAKER_57: activity was when I was in a Fitbit competition for steps with my friends and they had the challenge button in there and we could challenge each other. And we all went on the journey together. And then I was on a thread with my friends who were all trying to lose 10 pounds and we were sending screenshots of zero fasting, uh, shout out zero fasting cameras, uh, to each other. And we would send each other and I was like, when are we going to have competition? They're launching competition. We're not competition, but challenges, I guess. So that's where I think like the family reminder,

SPEAKER_46: getting that push notification of like, Hey, did the family take the run? Because the first thing I do every morning or when I'm getting my coffee is I have the smarty pants vitamins there. And I get two of them for each of my daughters after the other breakfast, I give them their like two little gummy vitamins and they they're like, it's a little reward for eating their, you know,

SPEAKER_13: breakfast or whatever. And it's quite sweet. And I, and I give my kids the ritual ones, although they're not released yet, but we'll have to send you some.

SPEAKER_17: Yeah. Secret ones. Yeah. So, uh, are you making gummies and do you, or what's the deal with gummies? Like why are adult vitamins, not gummies? Why are there only gummies for kids? Because it seems

SPEAKER_93: to me that compliance would go up with gummies. There's plenty of gummy vitamins for kids. I mean, when we look at what I'm talking about, yeah. Yeah. For adults, there's gummy vitamins for adults as

SPEAKER_27: well. I mean, for us, when we think about each product is we're, we're actively looking at what is the best delivery mechanism for that product in particular. And as, as I mentioned, our products have this delayed release component that bypasses stomach, gets released in small intestine. And also the micronutrients are in their original form. So the fat soluble are in their original form, the water soluble are separated as well. So the beadlets and the oil phases. Um, and we also ran a clinical study on their women's product, um, to show how ingredients, you know, get into the body. And, and we have more of a scientific approach, I would say for kids. Um, I think teens can easily take capsules and that's probably the best delivery mechanism for them. For, for kids, you're not going to get, you know, I'm not going to get my kids to take a capsule, although that, that would be the better delivery format. Um, we are looking at edible forms, which stay tuned. We're going to be releasing our kids product very soon, but even their, um, gummies have so much sugar in them. And I

SPEAKER_20: personally do not want to give my kids sugar at any time of the day. That's extra.

SPEAKER_46: Well, I was thinking like Stevia, whatever that is. What's the, you know, Stevia, the natural one that I use in my coffee, which, you know, depending on the brand you get, it can either taste grainy

SPEAKER_17: or not. I love this, the Zevia soda. I don't know if you ever tried that one, but I don't give that to my kids. I make daddy soda, which is just carbonated water with a splash of juice. And they, they like, yeah, just daddy soda. They're just like, I want daddy soda or kombucha. They're crazy about kombucha. Uh, they just say, butcha, butcha, butcha, which is, yeah, hopefully that doesn't

SPEAKER_39: have any alcohol in there. Yeah. You know, that's been a bit of a thing. We were actually looking at that and we're like, let's make sure we take this from the right bottle because some of them have a

SPEAKER_196: little bit of alcohol. I remember they were taken out of Whole Foods for a while. I had to sign at some

SPEAKER_56: point. The guy's like, I need to see your driver's license, sir. And I was like, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_234: Whole Foods delivery. He's like, I'm getting this for my kid. What are you talking about? Yeah. I'm

SPEAKER_05: like, this is my child's alcohol. It's not for me. I'm not drinking this kombucha. Kombucha has such a de minimis amount of alcohol in it. I can't imagine it's like, I'm such a lightweight. I remember

SPEAKER_93: drinking kombucha when I was doing investment banking during the day and I felt my legs like

SPEAKER_237: tingling. Really? So I can't drink this. It's too much alcohol in here. Yeah. I think in the investment

SPEAKER_238: banking community, you might have been the lowest on the substance abuse run with kombucha. I only

SPEAKER_24: take omega-3s. Based on what I saw on the Wolf of Wall Street, I have a feeling your omega-3s and your kombucha was not competitive with the quaaludes and everything else going on.

SPEAKER_57: So when you went to raise money, I'm curious, having been in the investment space,

SPEAKER_07: was that an asset or was it a liability? It was a little bit of both. It's interesting, having been on kind of both sides of the table now, I would look at evaluating startups a lot

SPEAKER_27: differently. You know, having never been really a founder when I was investing, I wish I'd had this

SPEAKER_08: experience to now invest. I would totally be at least a nicer person. I was about to ask you why,

SPEAKER_248: but it's because of the suffering and the pain of being an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_56: Like just exactly how hard it is. Describe it. Yeah. Describe the life of your life as an investor versus the life of being the founder and the just giant difference in terms of stress.

SPEAKER_27: Yeah. I mean, you can just notice it when you go into an investor meeting where when a company's pitching, it's like the investor has their arms back and they're like laying back in the chair and their founder is just like dripping sweat and just like, I think it's just a different dynamic. And I would have just been a lot more gentler to founders, just amazed at what it takes to even just put yourself out there and start a company and be incredibly vulnerable, I think. You're not always

SPEAKER_07: making the right moves, but you're really putting yourself out there every single day. And luckily,

SPEAKER_27: you know, I've had incredible investors since the beginning and this business has had really incredible investors since the beginning. So all three of our board members, besides our COO, were investors since our seed round. Oh, wow. So Lisa Wu, who led our series B I met. I was a finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt on stage and she reached out right after that, invested in the seed and then ended up leading our B. Brian Singerman, I've known for, you know. He's awesome. Yeah, he's amazing. I've known him for, he was the first check in the business and he, you know, had no background in prenatal vitamins and at the time it was not a great idea. I'll tell you that. It was not what it ritual is today. I don't even want to get into

SPEAKER_159: how I position it. Oh, why was it such a bad idea? How'd you position it? We got to hear the story now.

SPEAKER_196: Oh yeah. It's, it's when I bought natals.com. Uh huh. Um, and which was a terrible name for

SPEAKER_259: company. I mean, how do you spell it? Yeah. N-A-T-A-L-S. No, no, I'm just saying

SPEAKER_260: people don't even, nobody's ever used the word natals. Like it's not. Yeah. And I, and I had someone

SPEAKER_259: say during a pitch meeting, like this can't really scale. Um, I was like, okay, cool.

SPEAKER_263: Noted. Wait, babies can't scale? The continuation of the species, birthing, it's not going to continue

SPEAKER_114: and this is the end? Yeah. So actually a lot of that, a lot of, because the idea, original idea was around prenatals because that's what the stage of life that I was in.

SPEAKER_27: People were like, a lot of investors, um, were saying, Hey, you know, you can't sell prenatal online. Like people are going to find out about this through their doctors. There's no way you're going to build trust with consumers to sell them something during this phase of life. And I was like, yes, we will. Um, I mean, the challenge is the opportunity, right? Like,

SPEAKER_56: so that is a valid challenge. But as you just discovered, like, once you figured, once you find a solution of that, you obviously figured something out with doctors, um, which I was going to ask you, like, what do you, how do you even get to doctors? Do you like have a sales team that's going out and meeting with them and just send them samples? Do you send them an email? All of it. All of it, just full court press, like getting them,

SPEAKER_63: getting the product in front of them and saying, Hey, here's what we do. Here's the vision.

SPEAKER_196: Yeah. I mean, right now it's a little bit harder with COVID and a lot of offices being closed, um,

SPEAKER_27: or, or just kind of more, um, you know, not open to, to visits as much. A lot of offices are still open, but you know, maybe in the beginning, but yeah, a lot of it involves going, having sales reps, taking calls, sending samples, um, getting to know offices and practices. And it's been, um, a really interesting, I think, uh, point for the future for, for our business, especially as we get into other products like kids. Um, but going back to your, I guess, investor, um, question.

SPEAKER_07: Investors versus being a founder. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so I, I've just felt very lucky with the

SPEAKER_27: investors that we've had. So Kirsten Green and let our seed round, she's on our board, Brian Singerman's on our board and Lisa Wu, and they have all, all three just, um, you know, just been really supportive of the vision and have really kind of given our team the freedoms to drive that vision. And all have provided really differentiated viewpoints on everything from, um, you know, with, with Lisa providing kind of, uh, with, uh, Kirsten providing really, uh, a broad look on retail and direct to consumer, having so, so much experience there to, to Brian being my point person on strategy and just big picture and hiring to, to Lisa, who, um, has very analytical mindset and kind of have this like really well-crafted, um, board that I really wouldn't have had had, had I not kind of seen the ins and outs of startups as an investor before. I think, um, my, I, I kind of chose our investors just as much as they chose us. And I think that's something, um, I'm constantly, you know, when I mentor other, other founders and, uh, other women, it's kind of like you, you're picking your, your investors too. It's, it's not like this date that you're on and you're, you're trying to impress the person. Um, they need to impress you as well. And it's, it's a balanced relationship and it has to be for, for the future to kind of succeed.

SPEAKER_23: Yeah. You have to be intentional about it. And it's a luxury. I mean, to be able to,

SPEAKER_56: to pick them, uh, not everybody has that luxury early on. They just take whatever money they can get, but you should be more intentional about it and make sure you have that,

SPEAKER_03: that investor. I always liked the investor product and the investor founder fit, you know, like, so the investor loves the founder, the investor, if the investor loves the product, that always goes a long way in terms of like, when they come to the board meeting,

SPEAKER_268: they're excited about it because they use the product. Uh, yeah, I think that, uh,

SPEAKER_27: I'm excited that we have men's now more male investors and women and female investors. And that was always a challenge. Like you said in our, in our break, like, uh, just having countless times in one, raising money, having, uh, male investors say, hold on, let me call my

SPEAKER_196: wife or let me, I'll talk to my daughter about what she thinks about this. And yeah, hold on little

SPEAKER_05: lady. Let me find, I know a woman, I'm married to one. Wait one second. Let me find a woman who can,

SPEAKER_283: it's like, well, you have a woman in the room who's a CEO. She can tell you too.

SPEAKER_196: I can show you the market research, but yeah, it's interesting. And I've had, I've had people call this my project in the beginning too. Oh yeah. Oh, you're a little

SPEAKER_237: project. This is not my project. We've sold millions of bottles already. So sorry. Yeah,

SPEAKER_05: that is that I've was always flabbergasted like 10 years ago when I started being on boards of companies or just started investing in companies. And you know, this one investor would like show up 15 minutes late and he'd be like, yeah, you know, I was talking to my wife about the product and I was like, you're obscenely wealthy and I'm not sure that your family's demographic living in Italy and

SPEAKER_238: Aspen for, you know, four months a year and Los Angeles from four months a year is representative

SPEAKER_196: of this company. That's funny. That's like Postmates. When I, I was looking and I was talking to the founder early on and, and at the time I was in the music industry and every, you know, all the managers and agents, everyone was using Postmates, but I couldn't even afford it. It was so expensive. Like,

SPEAKER_237: there's no way this is going to become investing in this because they're using it themselves. And

SPEAKER_190: was I, I was totally wrong. Well, I was literally when Postmates first, I mean,

SPEAKER_17: anyway, I got a little sort of history with Postmates. Um, but cause the founder was going to let me invest. I signed the papers and then the founder was like, oh yeah, I couldn't fit you into the round. I was like, you secured me like a hundred grand and I, and I signed the paperwork and sent it. He was like, yeah, I'll make it up to you at some point. And we never did. But anyway, putting that aside, um, we wound up getting bought by Uber. So I think I, I think I wound

SPEAKER_03: up winning in the end. Um, and it's all good. Uh, but I was sitting and, uh, I'll just say an NBA

SPEAKER_39: player who was addicted to Postmates. I was talking to him and he, I was like, I can't use Postmates.

SPEAKER_03: It's so crazy expensive. Like, do you know how much this costs? He's like, no, it's, it's like super cheap. I was like, no, it's not. It's like in the early days of Postmates, I think it was like $25 to have something delivered. And I was like, you're having like two cheeseburgers delivered and from In-N-Out and fries. And like, that's like $12. And it's like $25. He's like, no, no, no, no. And he looks, he goes, oh my God, you're right. J gal. I just ordered a burger for, that was like the holy

SPEAKER_17: grail. In-N-Out burger would not let anybody put them in the apps. And Postmates big hack was, you know, you were, they would put it on the Postmates card and they would just go in and buy it for you. We're live on Postmates today. You are? Oh, that's great. And what do you think the future of retail is? I know you had a showroom, right? Just one, right? Like for just showcasing

SPEAKER_196: the product, I guess? Yeah. What do you think the future of all this is? It's interesting. I think it's gone in waves. So we, you know, I remember, you know, talking to potentially new investors

SPEAKER_27: around the time of Casper's IPO and everyone was just really negative on direct to consumer brands.

SPEAKER_13: I think I read a dozen articles about why D2C was just over pre-COVID. And then

SPEAKER_27: everyone's kind of behaviors shifted to online even more so over the last six months.

SPEAKER_13: But pre that period, we are really interested in retail as a channel for us. I think we'll always be

SPEAKER_27: mostly direct to consumer. But when we tested out this pop-up on Melrose, we have a showroom

SPEAKER_60: for about a month. We saw that people were buying subscriptions.

SPEAKER_57: Oh, that's fascinating. So when you get that purchase in a store, unlike GNC or whatever, they get a one-time purchase. You have a lifetime value purchase. So your economics on the store are ridiculous. And because you're only selling your brand, you don't need to have a giant store with, you know, 50,000 SKUs, complicating things or 5,000, whatever. I don't know what these stores hold hundreds, if not thousands of SKUs. You just need to have like your 10 SKUs. You can have a tiny 800

SPEAKER_27: square foot store. Right, exactly. We don't need a large footprint. At the time, we only had one, we were only selling one product out of the store. And it was really, it was working. And it was really interesting to see people come in and be like, hey, you know, I saw you guys online on Instagram, or Google or a podcast, but I'd never, I'd really wanted to see the product in person. And then, you know, they'd smell the, the, the bottle, it smells like fresh peppermint. The capsules are beautiful and in person. And it was a very easy sell to just tell people about the ingredients and how the product was made in our story. And just having that human interaction really kind of seal the deal. So retail is something that we're really excited about for the future, especially for some of our upcoming products as well, that, that are very interesting. In person. Um, but really? Yes. Wow. Very interesting.

SPEAKER_61: In person. Hmm. Hmm. What could that be? Well, what are the rituals do people have? Well, they,

SPEAKER_17: they use soaps and lotions. I mean, are you thinking of expanding into other like, adjacencies like that? Because I mean, I use shampoo and soap and conditioner every day, that would be a, or, you know, like, moisturizer, you think that's another like,

SPEAKER_20: uh, you know, expansion for you? Yeah, we, you know, we start, we are constantly serving our customers and my, my vision was always to go beyond vitamins since the beginning. Um, I think

SPEAKER_27: that there's definitely a white space in other categories where that kind of intersection of science and transparency just don't, doesn't really exist. It's like either you find products that are really clean, um, clean, but there's, it's not a regulated term, uh, you know, or they're, they have ingredients that have science behind them and, and they work. And so that, but that intersection of something being effective and also good for you is I think still lacking in, in so many areas. So, so many areas. Um, so I, I really hope that our brand, um, can have a footprint beyond,

SPEAKER_02: um, nutrition. That's such a smart idea. I always love this company brandless, um, that Tina Sharkey was doing and that soft bank and that they shut it down. It didn't work out, but

SPEAKER_57: I thought this was such a great idea. If I could just outsource to somebody trust in the food I ordered for my family, which in a way, when you use whole foods or good eggs, you're doing because

SPEAKER_17: they're picking the best purveyors. They don't have cornstarch and they don't have animal cruelty. They have some level of, but I would just like to have like some ultra level of like you do for my breakfast cereal and just everything, just like fill the pantry. And I don't have to think about it and I don't want to see any brands. I just want to have like the brandless idea was so brilliant. What did you think of that brand when you saw it? Yeah, I thought it was, I thought it

SPEAKER_27: was really, really great. Um, it's unfortunate. I think it doesn't exist anymore, right? Yeah. I think

SPEAKER_159: they've raised too, you know, when you raise too much money like that, you just eyes off the prize,

SPEAKER_13: right? I mean, yeah, I think that that's an interesting topic. It's like, it's, it's nice

SPEAKER_27: to not have a lot of money in some ways. It makes people more creative and I think teams work harder and, um, you know, we've seen that with our company as well. Uh, so yeah, but brandless was a great idea. And I, I, I love that idea. I, I think for me though, the level of trust that I was looking for maybe just wasn't necessarily there with that brand. Um, I think the price point was spot on and very accessible and the products were like just good enough. Um, yeah, they weren't like the ultra,

SPEAKER_281: like you're doing, you're doing ultra clean, like you're sourcing the best in every single category,

SPEAKER_03: right? Which the subscription really helps you because your lifetime value is much higher and

SPEAKER_20: predictable. Right. So it's a very different idea. I mean, if it's, I don't know, what products did

SPEAKER_05: you buy from them? Curious. I bought, uh, everything from like crackers to cereal to, um, like they had

SPEAKER_57: cookies and you know, like, uh, you know, just every, I literally just want to, when, after they were on the podcast, I just picked like 20, they only had like maybe a hundred skews at that time. So like they had prep, they had like their version of goldfish, you know, petrish farm, goldfish or whatever. And I just ordered everything just to try it. And I would say all of it was like as good as those brands. Like you couldn't tell the difference, but I didn't. And when I looked at the ingredients, it looked, you know, like you were shopping at whole foods, like you weren't finding artificial

SPEAKER_131: color, you know, but it wasn't next level. Like you were on the next level tip with what you were

SPEAKER_27: doing. Yeah. And I think that's kind of the struggle. It's, it's like, I can definitely make a cheaper product. Like I can make a 10, five, $10 product, but it would, would it be radically different than everything else out there? Probably not as much, uh, definitely not as much. And, um, so that's, I think, uh, the struggle that we face every day is, you know, as even as we're developing new products, I'm like, Oh, I really want that organic blank, blank, blank.

SPEAKER_237: Yeah. Well, not, not, you know, like I have to put that in there and I'm like, Oh, but that costs that alone is just $6. Um, you're, you're in Los Angeles. And when I lived in Los Angeles,

SPEAKER_57: my wife comes home with press usery and I was like, Oh my God, this is incredible. This stuff

SPEAKER_39: is delicious. We should get this all the time. And then like, I see the receipt and I don't know if you remember when press started in Brentwood or wherever it started, but I think they were charging like $12 per juice. And I was like, wait a second, this can't be right. It's $12 for the,

SPEAKER_57: for the six bottles. Right. And she's like, no, no, it's $12 for each of the six. I was like,

SPEAKER_218: yeah, that my husband makes fun of me for that. There's a store in LA called air one where I get

SPEAKER_17: a $20 smoothie. Uh, I literally was in Malibu when I was staying at the beach. Uh, then when I started taking my 10 day vacation and I ordered from air one and they had like the shots, little, you know,

SPEAKER_287: shots you can get, like 15 bucks or something. Yeah, it was insane. And I was like, I mean,

SPEAKER_17: but then when you think about it, here's how I think about health and these things. Um, and my wife, you know, it's interesting. We, we mentioned gender dynamics and your discovery that men think working out is what it's about. Literally my wife was last night sending me links about my diet while I'm on the Peloton. I'm like, I just got to work out more and do the tunnel. I need some ritual

SPEAKER_03: after this. I'm going to order it myself. Don't worry about it. Uh, it would never take any freebies. I always buy, I always buy stuff, but anyway, it was a very like interesting dynamic

SPEAKER_57: where she, and I was just thinking like people spend $15 at a bar on, you know, a cocktail

SPEAKER_02: and they don't think anything of it. But if you were to order a $15, you know, gallon of smoothie or, you know, court of it or something, people are like, Oh my God, like what we actually

SPEAKER_57: make ginger at home. So this is one of, uh, my favorite things to do. I I'm addicted to ginger ale. Uh, and my wife will buy ginger, like a lot of it. And we have one of those juice pressing devices. That's not the centrifugal. It's more of the press. So is it like a Norman

SPEAKER_92: Walker? Yeah. Something like that. It's, it's, it's absurdly expensive and slow and tedious. Um,

SPEAKER_57: and hard to clean, hard to clean, absurd to clean, but it smashes it. It doesn't rip it apart. And then we just keep that ginger. And then I pour a little bit of that. And then I put my stevia and I mix it

SPEAKER_17: with club soda. And then all of a sudden I've got ginger ale. That's like, it tastes so good. The ginger is so strong. Yeah. There's nothing better. It's literally like you get hit with wasabi. Like what the first time I did it, I poured so much in, I was like eyes bleeding. Uh, what's going on when I was getting my hair done, uh, which I put my, my new haircut on, uh, Instagram, people went crazy. I, I, I realized now the power of Instagram is just getting your haircut and having the hairdresser take pictures. Um, she was telling me all the celebrities are taking, uh, the male celebrities,

SPEAKER_02: uh, and Natalia has all the top, uh, the, the hairstylist who's a friend of a friend, uh, my,

SPEAKER_131: one of my wife's friends. And she did the hair for me and she does like everybody, like

SPEAKER_341: every famous celebrity guy in the Marvel movie. She does. She was saying all them, all these guys

SPEAKER_57: are taking, um, male supplements to make your hair thicker. And that that's a whole new category

SPEAKER_02: of science that it can't grow your hair back, but it can make your hair thicker. Is that real? And do you have a product in that category? Cause whoever figures that out, obviously is going to,

SPEAKER_159: that's going to be the next trillion dollar company. Yeah. I mean, there's some companies

SPEAKER_196: doing that for sure. I mean, our, our business is all around essentiality. And so I think we get asked about beauty supplements all the time and you know, there's, there's a number of claims we can make,

SPEAKER_27: um, very few claims actually, just kidding, um, about our product and as it relates to beauty. Uh, but it's not something that we actually want to be doing. So when we have customers even comment and be like, Oh my God, this product made my hair grow, you know, like 10 inches, something ridiculous. Um, we're like, Oh, actually that's not why we designed it. Uh, we believe in foundational health and like filling the gaps in people's diets. Most people are lacking in certain nutrients like vitamin D and omega-3s. Well, as we're finding during COVID, vitamin D was

SPEAKER_02: one of these, uh, issues, right? Like people who are low in vitamin D were more susceptible. I mean, who knows if that actually will turn out to be the case, but that was definitely, um,

SPEAKER_27: part of the dialogue. Yeah, it was part of the dialogue and we try to be incredibly, uh, buttoned up on the regulatory side. So if I don't have a study, um, you know, a lot of studies actually showing a particular benefit with that dosage that I have in my product, I'm not going to make that claim. And, and I'll actually discredit people that will say that this product did that for them. Like, that's great, but that's not our product. Um, and I think that's kind of been a little bit abused, I would say in our category, especially through social media. Um, I think companies feel like they can just kind of get away with it and, and, and things will kind of go away, uh, over time. But to, to scale, I think to the scale that we're in and, and other, some other companies as well, um, you have to be really careful about what, what claims you're making, even if it's so easy to create an Instagram ad, or even as it's so easy to, um, you know, repurpose an influencer who's talking about crazy claims.

SPEAKER_56: Yes, that is influencers are a great marketing channel, but they're not scientists. So their

SPEAKER_17: claims. Yeah. Yeah. There's a question there. Like if one of, if a, if, if a product, if an influencer makes a claim about a product, that's not true, I guess that's arms distance from the

SPEAKER_27: No, you can still get in trouble. You still get in trouble. Yeah. Because you're paying them. So we have to monitor, we have to monitor that really carefully. And I would say like, it's, um, I, I see a lot of companies not doing that and I'm sure they may not get caught, but it's, it's not something we want to, you know, mess around with. And I think it's important for consumers to know that, you know, this, our product has nothing to do with COVID, um, at all. And is, and we are not literally doing like this will help

David Friedberg: you. Oh, right. There was somebody was doing something with this. Like, I think Alex Jones or

SPEAKER_05: somebody was talking about like one of their supplements was helping with COVID. Fact check

SPEAKER_242: me on that, Nick, if, before I put Alex Jones into that, but Alex Jones, COVID vitamins or something, Alex Jones is always selling supplements or something. It's horrible. Yeah. And it's horrible.

SPEAKER_05: You're just like, he might've actually gotten, does the FDA even enforce this stuff? Like, are they really on top of it or are they just making examples once in a while?

SPEAKER_196: Yeah. It's the FDA and the FTC. And I think it's, it's important, you know, a lot of times the smaller players might not, might kind of fly under the radar, but as you scale, um, you know,

SPEAKER_27: a lot of people don't even realize that supplements are regulated by the FDA. Uh, when I started the company, I thought, Hey, you know, supplements are not regulated. This is horrible, but it turns out they are. And it's really important to, um, have meaningful substantiation for what you talk about as a brand, not just for the FDA, but for your customers as well. Here it is. The FDA from

SPEAKER_02: insider.com, not inside.com insider.com. The FDA has warned InfoWars founder Alex Jones to stop selling

SPEAKER_46: false coronavirus cures, including silver toothpaste. Let me just say for the record,

SPEAKER_39: if you're taking any advice on life from Alex Jones, you have already failed the basic test to be in the gene pool. So please, for the love of God, if you're watching Alex Jones, take whatever he tells you to take, just do it. It's fine with me. Listen, I could keep you on here

SPEAKER_03: for hours, but, uh, I've already kept you on here for well over an hour and you've been awesome as a guest, continued success, uh, and, um, stay safe. I know that your, your, your showroom, we're talking off hours was, uh, looted during some of the, um, I guess there were valid protests going on, but then there were some looting that broke out and, and these were like coordinated,

SPEAKER_131: like criminals who just demolished Melrose and Fairfax, that area got demolished. Um,

SPEAKER_27: uh, but your store got hit too. Yeah. Yeah. Our store got hit and you know, we're going to rebuild our businesses and isn't, um, doesn't rely on retail. I mean, I do feel bad for a lot of the businesses, immigrant businesses and black owned businesses that are on Melrose that, um, got hit, but it's also, you know, our company where we're standing in solidarity with the black lives matter movement and have, have really committed to that as a brand. Um, so, you know, it sucks about getting looted, but we'll move on. And I think there's a lot more we can do as a business and, and a country to,

SPEAKER_319: to support the movement. Yeah, absolutely. And, um, just without picking any sides here, please register to vote. I mean, this is an election that matters if there ever was one,

SPEAKER_17: uh, Kat Schneider. Uh, thanks for coming on the program. Continued success. Uh, say hello to Brian Singerman for me and everybody go buy some ritual.com right now for your wife, for your husband, for your boyfriend, for your girlfriend, girlfriend, whatever combination kids coming

SPEAKER_46: soon and check out ritual on all platforms. She's got at ritual on every platform. I have a code if

SPEAKER_235: we can use it. Oh yeah. Code away. Startups for, uh, 25, 25% off their first month. There you go.

SPEAKER_372: Use the code startups for 25% off everybody and get, make sure you pick up some silver toothpaste.

SPEAKER_17: Then you can brush away that Corona virus. That is not true. That's my info wars. So what is even silver toothpaste? I got crazy. All right. Stay safe, Kat. Thanks so much for having me.