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GLP-1 drugs are essentially a fast-moving consumer good. 52 doses per year is an enviable buy rate for any emerging consumer business. These drugs also exhibit decent premium CPG retention rates. Read my analysis of these drugs' future and likely long-term impact on the food industry. Link in comments. Thanks to Christopher Campbell and Brian Choi, CFA at The Food Institute, for this opportunity. #business #startups #entrepreneurship

Holiday team orders! Ten bucks. Each. 💥 Check Jeff’s “site” for deets. #business #entrepreneurship #startups

If you've DM'ed me with questions and heard from "Jan," this is your chance to get my free answer. Live. That simple. #business #startups

Gen Z Founders: The "long game" is not a year. Or six months. Or a month. It's years. And years. Gen Z founders must reckon with this unchanged reality as they plot strategies to grow their businesses. The refresh speed of social feeds you grew up scrolling has nothing to do with the speed of growth in consumer packaged goods. Even the most cited digitally native CPG unicorns, like Prime or Feastables, stood on top of years and years of personal brand-building. Actual, out-of-nowhere consumer brand unicorns are just as rare as ever. Don't let the speed of the internet set your expectations. #business #entrepreneurship #startups #putdownyourphones

Strong velocity growth steepens the Ramp. Pulling it off for an emerging brand requires enormous, cross-functional intention. It's rarely a unicorn accident of market timing and perfect product design. A decent product will eventually scale with mere distribution build and decent shelf visibility. It just scales much more slowly. Could take 15-20 years and has...many times. If you want to reasonably fast growth, growing velocity 50+ annually is how to you do this. #business #startup #entrepreneurship

More than ever, it's critical that your finished consumer product experience pass the Uncle Larry sensory/user test. Please the haters and you probably have a winner. If you sell granola bars, make the best-tasting one anyone has ever had (not easy). If you sell vegetable chips, make the best-tasting ones anyone has ever had (also not easy). Re-define what 'best' is in your category. This is the key to commanding a premium in the 2020s. Not flashy status symbols like "organic" or"sustainable." #business #startups #entrepreneurship

Early-stage founders. You need two kinds of forecasts every year. At first, they seem incompatible. A conservative revenue forecast (if your marketing flops), so you manage cash flow intelligently A wildly optimistic production forecast (if you strike topline oil), so you do NOT run out of product...ever In the United States, there are a gazillion ways to dump excess inventory after its 75% shelf life and get your costs back. You need to be prepared for, but not expecting, sudden increases in growth rate. This is the Zen of early-stage brand building. Do it. #business #startups #entrepreneurship

There are very bad, awful angel investors out there. Generally, they are just super-rich people who invest for their egos and don't need a $100M return. And they treat first-time founders like goofy kids. But, overall, my observation is that good angels (HNWI who are patient for returns and invest in founders whose acumen they believe in) are highly preferred to inexperienced institutional investment outfits. Voting angels don't suddenly bring the hidden politics of the Wall Street LP into the fight. Too many PE kids have been starting funds without knowing how to manage Wall Street egos... ...stay far away from these folks...regardless of their gender or ethnic alignment to you. More deets on the PGS Blog... #business #startups #entrepreneurship

I work with various eight- and nine-figure insurgent brands in CPG. As they grow larger, they hire 'classically' trained professionals. Invariably. The worst of the worst bad habits of BigCo managers? Defining the competitive set as folks next to me on the retail shelf. This is NOT how volume gets sourced for the highest growth rate brands disrupting the market. Ever. Not Chobani. Not Dr. Squatch Soap. Not Skinny Pop. The volume comes from consumers new (or returning) to the category. Ignoring the market leaders at the shelf with your positioning is the most intelligent decision you can make as a strategist and steward of your brand. Think bigger than the lazy leaders do. They are lost in narrow 'market share' thinking. Make 2025 the year that your mind escapes the trap of a 'shelf-based' strategy. PS - If DTC taught us nothing else, it taught us the power of selling in public with none of your competition nearby. You get to reach anyone predisposed to your thing. Powerful. #business #entrepreneurship #startups

I posted a week ago about the increased likelihood of a Trump-induced mild recession in 2025/2026, depending on when specific policies yield empirical effects. Below is a teaser from my upcoming podcast take on what a recession means for an early-stage premium-priced consumer brand. It's not all bad. You should always have a recession Plan B ready to go anyway. From Episode 131 of The Startup Confidential Podcast, dropping this Sunday, Dec. 1 Subscribe on YouTube or Apple podcasts. Links in the 1st comment. #business #entrepreneurship #startups