Poppy创始人复盘：TikTok红利与品牌优先策略如何驱动20亿美金退出

First time we did a Super Bowl. Let me lay lay this down for you. We bought the Super Bowl 5 days before the Super Bowl.

Literally.

Uh Sam, you want to do like an intro real quick?

Yeah. So, you and your husband are one of the fathers of Poppy, which you sold for $2 billion. And I would have to say you probably win the award for brand glowup because one of my favorite things to watch is this old uh Shark Tank video of you guys.

So good. And the way that it started and the where you are now, that gap is huge.

Yeah. What was it called originally? Mothers or something.

Oh, so embarrassing. You had to say it out loud. Um, mother beverage. And yes, I think it was a globe of the century. The best of all time.

What was the story?

It was just one of those beautiful entrepreneurial American dream stories where you start in your kitchen because of a personal problem. I had like tummy problems with drinking apple cider vinegar, you know, hated the taste and I was like, I I have an idea. I can make this taste better. Little did I know how intense beverage is. Looking back, I don't think if I knew what I knew now, I would have done it. And it's not knowing is just such a beautiful thing.

But you basically like were were selling something at a farmers market that was kind of curing your own problem. And I think you did that for more than a couple years. And then you hooked up with a guy who kind of like was like, "Hey, this is amazing, but why don't we tinker with the packaging a little bit?" And then you raised a little bit of money and it was like off to the races. It was like zero to like 20 million to like 60 million to like 120 or something like crazy like that.

Was that crazy?

Year to kind of ground you just to like in timeline. So we did do for like 2 years farmers market and then went on to Shark Tank got a deal on Shark Tank and went through a whole rebrand and then we decided to launch Poppy March 3rd 2020 the first week of co and it was like the first time everyone's thinking about their health health and wellness. It's the first time people are looking at labels and wanting to understand what they're putting your into your body and how can I boost my immune system and all of these things of the conversation.

And so that first year we market I think we did about 3 million in revenue and then the next year was 2250 and then the big jump was from 50 to 200 million and then 500 plus to then be sold. So it's like four and a half years to almost $550 million which is crazy growth.

Did you ever feel uh imposttor syndrome doing that? Because like uh you know whenever I have a little bit of success I'm like oh man is this real? Does this this is wild? But our success was a lot slower than yours.

We were just going so quick. It was hard to even sit back and and even realize or fathom what was happening because it was so not normal. Like people don't understand like what we had and what growth we had is not normal. It was truly lightning in a bottle. And so I don't know if there's imposttor syndrome because like I'm very confident. We were confident in what we were building but it wasn't a guarantee, right? And so it's this thing of like do I celebrate?

Well, it's too soon to celebrate. So, when we finally sold it definitely was like, wait, what just happened? That was 4 and 1/2 years, 5 years of this crazy growth. And I don't think I ever stopped and smelled the roses.

Did you you know when when there's like a movie and they always have like act one of the movie is the main character and they're just sort of stumbling and fumbling and they're they're they're struggling and then they finally start to figure something out. Act two is always the montage where things start happening sort of fast and furious and that's kind of the growth phase that you're describing. But they usually, you know, they sort of figure some one or two things out, right?

One or two things start to really work and then they lean in and double down into those and it's like the the things that makes all the other dominoes fall. So for you guys, you're saying timing was obviously beneficial, but what were you guys doing as entrepreneurs or founders? What were the key dominoes that started to fall? Yes, we were one of the first founder-led brands to really lean into Tik Tok and back then it was the wild wild west and you were doing dances, you doing recipe videos, you're just like literally doing all these like fun transition videos.

Do you like almost making a fool of yourself to try to go viral? Because I I had this like personal obsession with Tik Tok and and it's funny. I know you guys have had Rohan on and I remember him being like Allison that's for like young kids and dancers and don't don't try. He wasn't like against it by any means, but he like no one really got that platform. And so I was like, "Okay, I'll spend my nights and weekends and um I'll play around on it until we finally went viral."

And we had a lot of success on the platform and I think it was a really big key driver in why we grew so fast because typically if you're a better for you brand, you blow up in LA, New York, Miami, these like major hubs and then you kind of grow inwardly. But when you grow up with a digital first mindset within the business from core day one, we had people like I think at one point one of our top targets was like Fargo, North Dakota and all of these like Cincinnati, Ohio, Houston, Texas.

And so when you're a true digital first brand, you can really break through and go to more places quicker. It's like a modern field day marketing type tactic, right? Do you want to stand in a Whole Foods and give away 30 samples or do you want to uh do something and educate and put paid behind it and push your ads out organically to the FYP page and get 300,000 people to see it? And so I think that was a really big thing that really just made us different than other brands.

Now everyone's doing it, right? It's it's part of everyone's uh marketing mix. But I think another really big one is we were brand first. So our number one KPI was brand awareness. How do we truly build a long lasting generational brand with every ounce of every decision that we did down to if we were like what should be our variety pack at Costco and the data was saying you know it should be root beer this cream soda and cola and I'd be like well those colors don't look good together and our buyers would be like wait what and I'm like no no no it has to be vibrant on the shelf it has to jump and people have to right every decision that we had was brand first, digital first.

And it's easier said than done. I say this like it's it's common sense, but a lot of people still don't do these things. you sort of have this energy that I've I've seen with a lot of my very successful friends, particularly the women, where they basically are like a bolded china shop, which both men and women are, but you've like wrapped it in a much more uh like appealing package where like a lot of my friends who are bold in the China shops, they like I look at them, I'm like, you're a you're kind of a wreck, but like you're probably going to figure it out.

But when I watched your stuff on Instagram, you're very relatable. Even though that even though you're crazy successful, and yet you still have this like attribute where it's like A is here, B is here, the straight line, and just go and run as fast as you can.

Yeah. Well, I think it's confidence. So, people ask me all the time like, how are you so confident? I'm confident because I failed and made a total fool of myself for so many years to kind of figure out what works and how how to be confident. Like for example, everyone sees this $ 1.95 billion exit, but they don't see or remember me standing at a farmers market at a folding table saying, "You want to try this apple cider vinegar drink?"

Like that's so embarrassing. And so it's this ability of like I have