Lessons From CPG Founders

The 7 brutal habits of highly successful CPG founders (Spoiler: It’s not what the business books tell you.) Over 20 years in CPG, I’ve seen what separates the walking dead from the winners. The difference? They master the unglamorous stuff. 1) They model trade spend and deductions first, revenue second Most founders celebrate the $50K PO. Winners plan for the $5K–$10K+ that will be netted out via trade spend, fees, and deductions, and price and budget accordingly. They build it into the P&L from day one. 2) They kill their darlings before the market does That SKU you love but isn’t moving? They set a clear velocity hurdle and make a call within weeks, not quarters... rework it or retire it. No emotion. Just math. 3) They visit stores more than they visit Instagram Weekly store walks. Real conversations with staff. Watching shoppers ignore their product. They fix what they see: mispriced tags, missing facings, empty pegs, dead displays. The truth lives on the shelf, not in your feed. 4) They say no to big retailers (at first) They don’t chase a national rollout before they own 10 local stores. Deep before wide. Velocity before vanity. Big accounts come with expectations (promos, fees, flawless execution) that can drain cash and get you delisted if you’re not ready. 5) They treat cash like oxygen Not “runway until next raise,” but “days until we suffocate.” They know their cash conversion cycle and burn to the penny. Daily. 6) They systematize the boring stuff early Ops. Inventory. Trade & deduction tracking. They install lightweight SOPs and tools when they’re small, so growth doesn’t break them later. Their future self says thanks. 7) They stay paranoid when winning Good velocity? They ask what’s about to break. Growing fast? They stress‑test the P&L. Success makes them more careful, not less. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: - None of this is sexy. - None of this makes good LinkedIn content. - None of this gets you featured in Forbes. But it keeps you alive. My skincare brand had the mission. The clean ingredients. The customer testimonials that made me cry. What I didn’t have? These 7 habits. It cost me everything. The founders who last aren’t the smartest or most funded. They’re the ones who do the uncomfortable work before it’s required. Every. Single. Day. 👇 Which habit hits closest to home, or which one saved your brand? ♻️ Repost if you know a founder who needs this reality check.

Sea Monsters is winding down. Building this company was one of the most intense, exhausting, and rewarding chapters of my life. My partner / co-founder Jiae Kim and I raised capital, built a brand from scratch, hit national retail, and worked with some incredible people along the way. And yet—it still didn’t work. In the CPG world, the failure rate is around 90%. It’s a brutal game where branding, timing, distribution, and luck all have to hit at the exact same time. If one of those pins falls, the whole thing can sink. I’m currently transitioning into my next chapter as a Creative Director at VaynerMedia, and as I look back, there are three big lessons I’m carrying with me. If you’re building something right now, I hope these save you some of the headaches I had. 1. Money buys time, not certainty. When we raised capital, I felt like I had permission to move faster. I started hiring and investing in marketing because it felt like "growth." A mentor told me something I didn't want to hear at the time: “Act like the money doesn’t exist.” He was right. Every hire and every spend decision locks you into a burn rate that’s incredibly hard to unwind. I learned the hard way that as a founder, you have to deeply understand every corner of the business—sales, ops, social—before you hand it off. Hiring doesn’t create clarity; it just amplifies whatever mess already exists. 2. Don’t let "experts" own your momentum. We got a lot of confident advice from industry vets: “You need this channel,” or “This is how it’s done.” Most of it was well-intentioned, but some of it was just flat-out wrong for us. Here’s the reality: Experts see patterns, but you live the consequences. Everyone—distributors, retailers, vendors—will push you to move faster than you’re ready for. But if you scale before your margins or your product-market fit are truly ready, you don’t just lose money—you lose momentum. And in this game, momentum is everything. The pace has to be yours. 3. "Good enough" will get you killed on the shelf. In software, you can ship "good enough" and fix it later. In retail, you have about three seconds to win a customer. If your product doesn’t immediately make sense and immediately deliver, you don’t get a second chance. Between retailer margins (40–60%), distributor margins (~15%), the math is unforgiving. If your product isn't undeniably better or different, the shelf will eat you alive. "Ready enough" is rarely enough when you're fighting for space. I’m walking away with some scars, but my instincts are sharper than they’ve ever been. I’m incredibly proud of what we built at Sea Monsters, and I'm deeply grateful to everyone who backed us. I’m genuinely excited to bring this "founder-brain" to the team at VaynerMedia. There’s nothing like building a startup to teach you how creativity, culture, and business outcomes actually intersect. Onward. Quick question for the builders: What’s one lesson you had to learn the hard way that you now swear by?

I wasted years as a Founder in CPG chasing the wrong milestones. Doors, dollars, and design. None of them mattered as much as I thought. I thought winning in CPG meant: – getting into Whole Foods – landing investors – and showing up at Expo with a booth that looked legit. I was wrong - all great but not the right measuring stick. 3 harsh truths I learned the hard way: 1) Retail doesn’t fix product-market fit. I used to think more doors = more validation. Then I realized velocity tells the real story. If the product isn’t pulling, distribution just scales the problem. 2) Funding doesn’t fix fundamentals. Every founder believes a cash infusion will solve their pain. But if you don’t have pricing discipline, supply chain reliability, or a margin that works — you’re just fueling a fire you can’t control. 3) Brand doesn’t beat execution. You can have the best story, packaging, and social media in the world. If you can’t ship on time, hit margin, and communicate clearly — it all collapses. None of these are fun to learn. But they separate the founders who build businesses from the ones who just build buzz. You don’t need to be perfect — just brutally honest with yourself. I may be wrong. But I doubt it.

We hosted 50 CPG executives last month. CEOs. GMs. Presidents. Category Leaders. Two hours of conversation about portfolio strategy. One framework cut through every single debate in the room. From Agustin Caceres; President of Genomma Lab USA: 1. Does this category solve a real and growing consumer problem? 2. Can we win with our brand-building and go-to-market model? 3. Can we scale it profitably — not just launch it? Every CPG company in that room; from challenger brands to global giants admitted the same thing. Question 1 is easy. Everyone answers question 1. You do the trend research, see the consumer data, identify the white space. Hydration. Functional wellness. GLP-1 adjacencies. Science-backed beauty. Digestive health. Sleep. The growing problems aren't hard to find, they're everywhere. Question 2 is where it gets uncomfortable, because "can we win" requires honest self-assessment. It requires looking at your brand's actual equity, not the equity you wish you had. Your real go-to-market capabilities, right to play in this space. Most companies convince themselves the answer is yes; nobody wants to be the person in the room who says "actually — we can't win here." That takes a different kind of courage. Question 3 is where almost everyone fails: "Can we scale it profitably, not just launch it?" CPG has a launch addiction: New products, ranges, extensions. Innovation pipelines full of things that can absolutely be launched. And almost never should be. Agustin said it directly: "The challenge is to stay ambitious but also stay disciplined." Ambition gets you to question 1. Discipline is what gets you through question 3. As Agustin put it in closing: "We need to bet on categories where consumer relevance is rising and where science, trust, and brand matter. And we are looking at harvesting or simplifying the parts of the portfolio that consume energy without creating future enterprise value." Save this framework. Take it into your next portfolio review. #CPG #FMCG #PortfolioStrategy #BrandStrategy #Leadership #Innovation #ConsumerGoods

I've worked for founder led businesses my whole career - here's my top 5 learnings... 1/ My first job out of uni - working for a boutique business consultancy: ↳ We productised our offering to keep things simple ↳ But massively underpriced our time ↳ And always over-serviced with bespoke scopes ↳ Despite being busy as hell, we were losing money on every hour spent ↳ The company went (very slowly) bust. Lesson: Don't underprice what you do 💷 2/ My first job in FMCG - flogging a vitamin shot drink: ↳ With zero distribution, the company employed 5 junior sales people (me included), a very senior (and very corporate) chairman and a senior marketing director ↳ We were sent out in suits carrying doctors brief cases of samples whilst the other soft drinks brands wore t shirts and sandals. ↳ Our sales strategy was “sell to everyone and anyone” which meant we appealed to no-one ↳ The founder was only interested in landing big grocers so heard non of the feedback from the indies ↳ The company went bust within 18 months. Lesson: Walk before you try to run & stay close to your customers 🚶♂️ 2/ My dream job - working at innocent drinks ↳ The startup alumni from the first 10 years of innocent is ludicrous: Paul Brown (BOL Foods), Mike Stevens (Peppersmith), Barney😜 Mauleverer (FUEL10K), Giles Brook, Anthony Fletcher (Believe in Science Ltd.), James Davidson (tails.com) to name just a few ↳ The founders inherently understood the trade off you get by employing entrepreneurial people  ↳ You need them to make magic happen in those early years, but you know they won't stay long as the entrepreneurial itch gets too much ↳ It's no surprise that the second decade of innocent produced a lot more "lifers" Lesson: In the early days, employ future founders 💡 3/ My 2nd dream job - BrewDog in the early days ↳ It's 2013, I'm on a train with James Watt and he tells me his vision for BrewDog to be a billion dollar company within 5 years ↳ I smile and nod - “ok mate, good luck with that” (When was the last time you saw a challenger FMCG hit a $1bn valuation after all?) ↳ 4 years later - BrewDog announce a PE investment that values the company at $1bn   Lesson: Dream impossibly big 🚀 5/ My first job post running my own business ↳ Brand Hackers is an agency in its infancy ↳ I’ve no experience but that’s ok because we want to build a new sort of agency (“don’t call it an agency”) ↳ Everyday we’re learning - trying something new - moving at pace ↳ All this iteration got us to our current model - fractional teams for brands with big dreams - which is pretty unique and very much needed Lesson: Pace & agility are your unfair advantages when your brand is super young 💨 Which one resonates most for you? p.s. I did a short stint at the Odeon (it was awesome!) so technically I've not only ever worked at founder led businesses!

One phone call made me realise how much control we had lost over the business. In 2014, I was attending a residential business programme when my wife and the finance controller called with news I never expected to hear. There wasn’t enough cash in the bank to cover salaries. I still remember the sinking feeling. For years, I had worked hard to build a profitable business. I had always believed that no employee should ever have to wonder whether their salary would arrive on time. Yet there I was, faced with the possibility of missing payroll for the first and thankfully the last time. The irony was that the business was growing. We had raised funding, expanded rapidly, hired aggressively and focused intensely on revenue growth. But somewhere along the way, we had taken our eyes off the fundamentals. My father had warned me repeatedly: “The only thing that really matters is cash flow.” At the time, I thought growth would solve everything. It took that phone call for me to realise what he meant. The first two calls I made were to people whom I would normally reach out to in difficult situations. As it happened, those two people were the ones who actually helped me cover the shortfall. But that day taught me a lesson that continues to be my guiding principle: revenue is an opinion, profit is a result, but cash flow is reality. Rebuilding took a few years. We went back to the basics, building better processes, stronger controls and greater visibility into the numbers. Today, whenever I speak to founders, I share the same advice: • Never lose sight of your cash flow. • Build your dashboard early and ensure you have real-time visibility into the business. • Keep a close eye on your margins during periods of rapid growth. • Keep cost growth at no more than half the pace of revenue growth. If the cost is growing by 10%, your revenue should grow by 20%. • Every high-cost hire should eventually pay for themselves through value creation. What is the most important business lesson you’ve learnt the hard way?

Getting onto the shelf is a vanity metric. Most founders celebrate the "Yes" from a buyer, but they don't realize they've just signed an expensive rental agreement. The operational reality of CPG isn't what people think: Post-Purchase Risk: You think a sale to a distributor is final. It’s not. If the product doesn’t move, you’re often carrying the liability for the dead inventory. Invisible Labor: Retailers don't always stock your product. You often have to fund the displays, the materials, and the people to physically put the bags on the hooks. The Promo Trap: Those "2 for $6.00" tags? The brand usually funds that discount and pays a fee to the retailer just for the privilege of running the deal. The grocery aisle isn't a gallery for your brand story; it’s a high-stakes rental market. Stop pitching your "clean ingredients" or your "category disruption." Buyers don’t want a story. They want proof of performance. Once I stopped selling Rotten and started selling impact – velocity, incrementality, and category growth – our close rate shifted. If you aren't prepared to be the merchandiser, the marketer, and the insurance policy for the store, you’ve already lost.

16 months with LIQUIDZ: 3 brutal lessons from the early adopter trenches. There’s a classic startup book called Crossing the Chasm (probably my favorite), about how brands jump or “cross” from early adopters to the mainstream But here’s the truth: even before you reach that chasm, the early market can break you. We’re still there at the early market, building Brazil’s fastest-growing hydration brand, and here’s what we’ve learned: 1. Niche doesn’t mean small, it means specialized. In just the past few weeks, we’ve executed nearly 40 events across beach tennis, running, and cycling and impacting over 30,000 to 40,000 people. Each of these sports has its own community, its own heroes, its own rules. What resonates with a runner doesn’t always land with a cyclist. What matters to beach tennis players is different again. If you don’t respect the specialization, you waste time, money, and credibility. 2. Storytelling matters even when you’re tiny. People don’t just buy electrolytes, they buy why you exist. My personal story with hydration has shaped the DNA of Liquidz, but to scale, the story can’t just live with me or my co-founders. The team, the culture, the brand all need to carry and expand that truth. Authentic storytelling is what builds trust when you’re small. It is on top of that truth that founder marketing has become such a powerful tool. But it has to be real! 3. Operational stress is the hidden backbone of CPG. Everyone loves to talk about the sexy part of this business which is the breakthroughs in marketing, go-to-market, influencers, closing huge retailers and # of POS, etc! But one of the real challenges is Building the operational backbone: the systems that keep retail, e-commerce, events, influencers, ambassadors all working in perfect order! We’ve hit stockouts, cash squeezes, production delays and every one of those tested the company more than any marketing challenge. We’re still learning every day, and the road ahead is long! #cpg #innovation #startups #electrolytes

Too many CPG brands waste money on sexy branding before they have a product worth buying. I see it all the time. Beautiful packaging. Perfect color palette. Gorgeous website. Then their product tastes like shit. At Factor_, our first packaging was embarrassing. But the food? People ordered it every week for years. At MALK, we cringe when we look at the original packaging. But the obsession revolved around having only 3 ingredients. Water. Almonds. Salt. That's what people buy. Not your mood board. Here's what founders get backwards: They think great branding creates demand. Wrong. Great product creates demand. Branding just directs it. You earn the right to better branding through retention. Through people buying your shit again. And again. Not through your first impression.

In the past 14 months, I've worked with 12 different brands in the Food, Bev and Supplements category (pre-revenue to 9 figs). Here's my honest advice for anyone thinking of entering this space in 2025+: 1) It is not a part-time job; even if you hire people to 'run it' for you, you still need to lean in hard as the figurehead of the brand. 2) It's never been easier to launch a product or brand; it also means it's never been easier to be ignored. Don't count on product features or ingredients to be your silver bullet. That's no longer enough. You need to drive AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action). You build that with sweat equity/talent, or prepare to spend to buy it. Or as Will Nitze likes to say, build your defensible moat. 4) If you are just starting out, please please please don't blow your entire budget on pre-launch activities (ie: inventory, branding, site build, etc.). Most of that will likely change based on market feedback. Upfront research may help, but nothing is like real customer feedback. 5) Have at least 6 months of runway (or longer) to promote your product after. Budget $5-7K a month to start - and more if you need people to run it for you. Caveat: if you are great at driving awareness and exposure pre-launch, like Jay Williams or Mark A. Samuel, this cost can come down to start. 6) Be mentally prepared to stomach the ride. It will test every aspect of your resilience, ego, and intellect. It’s not for the faint of heart, but having the right mindset and preparation in place makes a big difference.   CPG is and always will be a tough space. Those who are in it like the pressure and don’t (usually) do it for the money ( tech and finance are better for that). CGP folks are obsessed with people, love to build, and problem solve (we get to practice that a lot 💆♀️). Here are some heavy hitters I learned (and continue to learn) from: Niraj Dawar - My brand professor at Uni, who first exposed me to this world Graham Robertson - I go to his book when I lose my way Mark Ritson - International brand marketing master Mats Georgson, Ph.D. - If you still don't get it, grandma will beat it into you ✌ Follow for more CPG tales, big and small.  DM if you want to know if you are paying too much for marketing things