This Week in Startups - E1109: Ritual CEO Katerina Schneider on creating pure & effective vitamins, standing out in a crowded DTC market, utilizing subscriptions & more

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

Check out Ritual: https://ritual.com & use code STARTUPS for 25% off your first month FOLLOW Kat: https://twitter.com/KaterinaMarkov FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis

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slash this week in startups. Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to this week in startups. It is 2020, and we are 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 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, J-Cal. I miss you. I 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, is this 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 maybe the impact this has on our kids. And so we'll talk about a little bit about

that. And we'll talk 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 who is now on the podcast Katerina Schneider

we're going to call her cat 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 everything going for you running a business now into month six or seven of this pandemic

Yeah, it's going. I feel very, 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, you know, the kind of the shift that people have had in the world towards their health over this time. prioritizing, you know, nutrition, which wasn't always prioritized over other things in our lives. So, you know, the pandemic has taken an enormous emotional toll, I think, on me personally and a lot of

people 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. 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 businesses, maybe two, three-x, com.com, robin hood, steasy, the dance instruction, anything that involved a hobby or in front of a computer. had great growth, breeds, postmates, et cetera.

And of course, your company, ritual.com, people taking stock of health. And also, are you mostly a D2C brand? I know you have a store or do you have multiple stores? Explain what ritual is and how you came up with the idea. And let's get right into it. 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. 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. I actually kind of made money on it in some ways. Wait, do explain. Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, I'm a soccer for a great domain name. Everybody knows that. It's, yeah, that's one of my favorite stories. I'll probably take up half this podcast. Let's start, let's do it. I love a good domain story. I have inside.com. I had 20.com. I have natals.com. If you know anyone who wants it.

Which one? You have? Nadles. Oh, natals. Yeah. Like for pre-nation. vitamins. Yeah. Got it. Very good. So if anyone wants that, I'll give it to them. Well, there's ritual coffee. They must have wanted the domain name.

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 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 known as ritual vitamins from the beginning. So, you know, I spent a very long time trying to get ritual.com. Was it a domain owner or was it just an individual or another company?

Yeah, it was another company and individual, a really interesting guy who was also an entrepreneur. And we got to know each other very regularly because I was very persistent about it. And we had calls at least, you know, probably 30 or so. I was starting to call him every other day, got to know about his family. And then in the process 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 $3,000 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 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. Oh, boy. I love it. Yes. And I did a kind of equity deal, slight cash deal with the founder of jolt.com who actually also went to Brown and had back. background in the music industry as well. And so then I ended up doing this crazy process of like three contracts and doing a trade 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. That is like a three-team trade in the NBA. You're like, you're like, I really want to secure this player, but you need draft picks. and so we're going to just flip-flop all these players around. And that's how superstars get traded typically. But a great domain name is awesome. Investors were saying, you know, why are you wasting your time on this?

Start building the product and the company. Like, this isn't as important. But I don't know, I felt especially in the health space and the vitamin category, buying a credible domain was just another indicator of trust and was really important. and I'm so glad that we ended up doing that. It's absolutely worth it. 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?

We got TheSindicate.com for my angel syndicate and it took me three or four years to get it. I got Insight.com. And when you have a great domain name like that, it does elevate trust when people see it in an advertisement and when people see it in a search result, correct? That is what was your thinking. Yeah, and 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 and you're building it through social media. So then I got equally as obsessed getting at ritual and Instagram and on Twitter and LinkedIn and all these things. So we have ritual on all the channels that we need.

But I didn't realize that that was actually going to be even more fun and challenging. But it's definitely. It's a very personal thing, right? You have to get to know the person who has it. You have to make your case. And people can be emotionally tied to 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 Jason, I keep telling Jason Bateman, he cannot have that Jason on Instagram or on Twitter. And Jason Bateman keeps 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 Jason Bateman's friends have been, I'm joking.

I'm a fan of Jason Bateman's, but I wouldn't get it. It is an interesting. You should get some royalties on his shows or movies for the. Yeah, I was thinking that. And, you know, I often get people mistake me and Jason Statham for obvious reasons, you know, physique, etc. We both put in kind of the hours in the gym and I'm not giving it to Statham as well. So what was the first product you put out at ritual in terms of vitamins?

Because I understand that you were not convinced that vitamins were necessary. And in fact, your mom, I believe I heard on another podcast that had you on, didn't believe, and you were raised and not believing 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, from what. when you went from being a non-believer to a believer in supplements and vitamins, we get back on the sweet startups. If growing an e-commerce business is your focus, you need a platform that is focused on growth. That's where Clavio comes in.

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to the pod. That's K-L-A-V-I-O dot com slash twist. Clavio.com slash twist. Start sending those memorable marketing messages that are targeted to your users. Okay. Thanks again to Clavio for supporting independent media like this week and serve. Let's get back to this amazing episode. All right, Kat Schneider is with us. She is from Ritual. I'm assuming they have that ritual on Twitter and Instagram, so you can go follow them and they have Ritual.com.

You were not a believer in the supplemented vitamin space, I heard on a podcast, true. And then how did you come to believe in it enough to want to build a company around it? Yeah, so I grew up in a household. My mom is actually a macrobiotic practitioner. or, 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, 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. And then for me, I got pregnant with my first daughter, Tali. Now have three daughters like you. Same, yeah. Yeah, it's fun.

That's the greatest. Yeah. How old are yours? So two, four, and I, I have a three-month-old. So if you hear them in the background, I apologize. No, that's, I'm amazed that you're running a company and you have made three babies in the same period of time. Is that correct?

You started the company five, six years ago, if I'm right. Yeah, I started when I was pregnant with my first. And she's really the reason I started the company. So. Explain you. I was pregnant with Tali. 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 really connected with. And I also wasn't sure why I needed prenatals. And so I went down the research rabbit hole and 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. This makes sense to me. And then when I started looking at brands in the space, as someone who was very health conscious,

there was really nothing that I personally wanted to ingest every single day. There was a lot of pseudoscience. There were ingredients that I didn't want in or on my body. 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 brand of prenatals are you taking? What multivitamins are you taking?

And literally no one could remember the brand that they've been taking for sometimes like 10 years because they had like four or five kids. And I was like, this is interesting. This is something most women are taking every day. 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 was at the intersection of science and transparency. So that's how I landed on at first the prenatal, but actually we never launched the prenatal in the beginning.

We ended up launching a reinvented multi from day one. And I hired 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, you know, what they should be getting where the gaps were in their diets. And realize it wasn't the 20 to 40 nutrients in most multivitamins. It was actually a handful of things like vitamin D or magnesium omega-3s. And so kind of a contrarian approach to the category with even trademarked less is more in the category.

So really believe in fewer nutrients filling the gaps in one's diets. And then what we did, which is radically different, and what our brand 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 multis, you can go and do that. And then on top of that, we ran a clinical study with a major university on our product. So you can see that the nutrients are getting in. So, you know, in the clinical study tab on our site, we really went deep on how the study was conducted and the results.

And so really a radically different approach to the category. And we also are 100% direct to consumer. So that was something that when I started the company especially, you know, was kind of interesting. See on the site if you go to, yeah, 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. and the clinical study side as well. So, yeah.

And if you just click into any nutrient. There it is. Omega-3 is very important. And so you started to figure out where to source these, right? I see you're using the vegan ones as opposed to the fish oil. Right. So it's omega-3 DHA coming from algal oil. We also list out our supplier, so it's algorithm coming from microalgae in British Columbia.

Our D3 comes from wild harvested lichen from a company called Vitashine. And we literally just chose the best of the best ingredients from all over the world. And then also, I'm vegan, so vegan forms were really important to me. And so we also looked at ingredients that had mostly had their own, human clinical studies behind them as well. So we left kind of like no expense. And that was some, sorry, go ahead. Well, as I was just saying, this is an important part, I think, the D to C moment. When I look at direct to consumer companies, if you're going to make something that already exists in the world, in order to build, to build advertising around the product, there needs to be

some benefit to the product or some innovation to the product. And the store. And the sourcing and, you know, the quality and the combination of what's important. These are all very nuanced discoveries you made during this year of discovery. And that made for a product that didn't previously exist. You 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 is true. That's a big part of this, yes. 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. You really have to be creating, I think, a radically different product than anything else that exists. I mean, for us, even the encapsulation is just different than anything that was used before. What does that mean encapsulation? You mean how it comes into a capsule form or is it something more specific?

Yeah, at a simplest form, it's how it comes in and the ingredients are encapsulated. So we have beadlets in oil in a delayed release capsule that bypasses the stomach and gets released in the small intestine. So even that part for us is thought out and was really different in this multivitamin space that we carved out. Because generally people would take a separate omega-3 pill, another magnesium pill, a multivitamin, a higher dosage of, of vitamin D and they would be taking, you know, four or five capsules. And 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 encapsulate all these nutrients into, in two capsules. And then also just people say that it, you know, there's better tolerability because we use gentler forms of iron for women. and also the nutrients bypass the stomach. So that's better for absorption, I would assume. And that is the key issue. A lot of people take a bunch of supplements, but they never get into their body.

I mean, I listen to like Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose, like geek out on this on their podcast. Like that's a big thing, the absorption actually getting this into it. How did you get investor money before you had a product? Or did you? Or did you just do this all this research on your own while you, because I remember you were working.

for Troy Carter, correct? My pal, the investor and the Lady Gaga's former manager and, you know, Adam Records. Is it Adam Records? Was that the name of the name? Adam Factory. Adam Factory, sorry, 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. But you worked with him. So did you raise money and then go on this journey of discovery and 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. A little bit of both. Troy was an awesome mentor. And, you know, he's an entrepreneur

himself. So he was very supportive of me starting something and was very encouraging. like he had been with a lot of the companies that we invested in. And he even invested in ritual. And I couldn't have asked for a better kind of mentor and partner and boss, really, in the beginning. So I actually left Adam Factory when I was four months pregnant because I started raising money from investors. for the idea that we created because of the level of investment and research that it took 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 to get to the starting gate, $2 million, something like that. Yeah. And honestly, we didn't even launch with the first round of funding. And so I raised a small, you know, seed round. and then I raised another seed round that was led by Forerunner and Kirsten Green, who joined our board, followed by Series A from Brian Singerman at Founders Fund. Oh, Brian, it's awesome.

Hey, when we get back from this quick break, I want 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. We'll get back on this week's start. Oh, my God. Everything has been go, go, go. and it is always on culture and hustle culture. And it's been that way for a while. Most of us are expected to be crushing it 24-7,

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and must be completed by 630, 2022. Official rules, including how to enterprise details and restrictions, visit coreslight.com slash outside voidware prohibited message and data rates may apply. All right, Kat Schneider from ritual.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 for you? I feel like I'm always pregnant raising money now. but hopefully it's my last time. Well, you had three kids over a six-year span, and it was the same span, or the same six years that you started a company, so no degree of difficulty there, obviously.

No, it's become the norm. It's become the norm, yeah. But I couldn't do it, I don't think. But you did it. I mean, it's super impressive. But what did the VCs? Where's the reaction to you? So it was interesting because I came from the VC space.

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

I mean, there is some truth that it is challenging to have kids while being an entrepreneur. Yeah, he was challenging. He was challenging. But that's, yeah. Yeah, but I also don't, yeah, for me, it was, it was fuel. It was, it was really empowering because I wanted to prove him wrong. But I also would have never started the company, you know, had I not had that experience of being pregnant. And now 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. Yeah, I mean, understanding your customer is at the core of product innovation, marketing, 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, to build them a product? 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,

who's trying this thing. I was like, yeah, yeah, 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 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 pets but they they've done pretty well it's a it's a pretty good category yeah yeah it i think that um and i know and this is kind of the the reason we're going into

family is just once you have a family you start caring about the health of your your kids and your partner more than you even care about yourself. And so that that's a really interesting kind of transition that we're seeing for a lot of our customers. We, and I don't remember if I mentioned this, but we, so when we launched the prenatal, we only launched that about two, about two years ago, it's actually become one of the top selling prenatals in the U.S. We sold out of it about a month ago, and we had over 20,000 people on the wait list already. Wow. That's just only increasing.

And it's a prenatal. It's not like a eye cream or something. Right. So you got to get through that wait list pretty quick because there is a ticking clock. I mean, if people are signing up for it, you know, you have to get them the vitamins quickly. Yeah, for sure. It's kind of become a cult product.

And we need to, I can't wait for it to come back. It's coming back actually next week. This is the next piece of the puzzle you had to figure out, correct? is supply chain and like inventory. If you're sourcing and you're doing this very, um, a deliberate sourcing, I guess we'd be the way to say it.

This and then you have to bring all this, this disparate products and sourcing from around the world to some location to put it all together. You've, you've increased the level of difficult 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.

You have to get these things to some location. How does supply chain even, work. Have you figured that out yet? Yeah, we've been really lucky. I mean, the prenatal is the only product that's been 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 becoming really interesting. But as far as supply chain goes, we work with an incredible manufacturer that's, that was just, you know, sold in the last couple of years for over five billion dollars. they're really pharmaceutical 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 it's not just like, you know, they're harvesting some kind of wildflowers in their yard. They're professional of what they're doing. You're not the first person to come

and get their DHA or vitamin DHA. from them. You're picking the top suppliers. So your vitamins 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? I mean, you can buy a generic multi for, you know, like 10 bucks, even less sometimes. And our multivitamin for adults 18 plus for women, 18 plus and men's 18 plus is $30 a month. That being said is we include ingredients like Omega 3 DHA in our product.

in different dosages. So it's not really an apples to apples comparison. If you were to buy omega-3s on their own, they would cost you that, if not more, especially from algae. So in a lot of ways, if you were to cobble together, our products, you are,

it is the traditional D to C model in the sense that like, you know, bypassing the middle, etc., etc., people are getting a really great value for what they're buying. 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 a cheaper and save money on this retail channel that what exactly is the point of going to a store and browsing for something like, I don't know who the person is who goes to a store and browses for vitamins. That doesn't make any sense to be like, it's a considered purchase. You should be making it by reading studies or watching videos. or interviews. When we get back from this final break, I want to know what channels have broken out for you. And then how do you 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 year five of a company

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You have to visit LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups. That's right. You have to type in all those letters. LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups for the hundy. Terms and conditions of course apply because they're giving you 100 bucks at LinkedIn.com slash this week and startups. Okay. Let's get back to this amazing episode. All right. Catchaniders with us from ritual.com. And she makes vitamins and she does it really well. And part of that in Year 5 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 anymore?

What are the channels and then how do you grow a business in your five like this? Yeah. So our channels are pretty diverse. I think when we started and it's all about timing. I think when we started Instagram was cost per acquisition was incredibly low. We definitely helped it definitely helped build our brand. And then, you know, more recently, podcasts, podcast advertising have been huge for us as well as influencer. Word of mouth has definitely increased, especially this past year by a lot.

I would say we're testing out TV right now as well. And the other channel that's been really interesting for us that we're really excited to grow is the doctor, doctor channel. Ah, fascinating. That has been a really interesting channel that we're starting to track. Our product is obviously direct to consumer, but subscription only. So you can't just go and buy it, you know, once. You can cancel any time and we'll give you your money back.

There's free shipping. But the subscription component is actually a really big part of the brand and part of turning something into a ritual and also why 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 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 kind of the delivery of that product and kind of the interaction with it through, through technology. So, SMS seems to work really well.

well for people in this space now and like keeping, 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. 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 started that you could 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? Yeah, 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 really good UIUX in-house and great engineers. And now we just launched men's multivitamins about a month ago. And we also launched bundling. So you can control multiple subscriptions from one household. whether it's two women's products or two men's products or a men's and women's product, just even being able to control both and pause and skip different ones at different times is 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 household items on Amazon and have this. It's pretty easy, right? obviously. Yes, pretty friction-free. And I was about to bring up the Amazon question because how do you even think about them as a channel? Do you provide yourself on Amazon or is that like a bad idea? Or do you provide like some of it there?

How do you 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 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? Because Amazon right now, it's like subscribe and save or, but it's not that same level of experience that that you get even with us. But I'm hoping we can even get better.

Are you thinking about like apps and stuff like that? I know this, what's the app called? nom or something like that, that podcast advertised, 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. Were you thinking of getting into sort of that space? Yeah, we've always been thinking about it. We have an Apple Watch app. I wish it had more usage because it's pretty great and seamless. What does it do? It just reminds you to take your vitamins or? Yeah, you can see your streak how many days in a row. It's like pretty, you can see who around you is also keeping the streak.

has a leaderboard. It's really beautifully designed. 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 friction. People are already bad about taking their vitamins. In fact, two-thirds of our customers had never taken a vitamin or never consistently had a habit prior to joining rituals. So I really kind of trying to change daily behavior.

An app on the phone 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. 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. Or by the way, you're sleep deprived. You should 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 remind myself of that. But this creating habits, creating rituals is a big, there's been a bunch of really like the power of habit and all this stuff. It's like a big topic for people. That book actually influenced me a lot in the beginning. The power of habit, yeah. Yeah, it was interesting because, you know, we created this product and I was reading the book. And the cue or the reward, it's like you don't, you know, with a multivitamin, you really get a reward, instant reward. I hate taking vitamins.

I hate swallowing vitamins. I do like the gummy ones, though. I like the sweet ones because it tastes like candy. Yeah, so ours smell like fresh peppermint. And so that was kind of the reward in some sense. And the prenatals smell like and taste like fresh citrus. So it was kind of a new approach to taking capsules. I've never heard about that.

That's a great idea. Like maybe you feel like some. It's like, yeah, it is like the, it's not the cue. It's the reward. But you don't get, 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 because I had a seven-week Peloton treadmill street 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. But for some reason, my mental, you know, I was angry at myself for breaking my streak. It was very strange. Yeah. 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

and you're like, but you actually did the hike, you shouldn't feel bad. But it's not recorded. 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 the other kind of fitness apps or 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. It's like you need kind of that instant gratification. Tell me about men versus 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 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, we have a lot of men on the team. So when we surveyed men 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 is important, but it's really just part of the story.

And when you look at research and 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 we kind of had this campaign as part of our messaging is kind of just like level up or get on her level. I like it. 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 70% of our customers lived with a male in the household. So as part of our marketing, we are actually not only targeting him, but we're actually targeting her for him as well. That makes total sense because, as you're saying, you're triggering the competitive thing, like, hey, get on her level, like level up. Like, that's a guy thing, right? But you're also kind of understanding that in this male-female dynamic,

and we're getting into dangerous territory talking about gender here. But based on studies and your experience, the female might actually be thinking about the male's health more than the male is thinking about it and make that decision for them in some cases. Yeah, in some relationships. That's what happens. And, you know, kind of what we're finding is that, men and women are almost equally like bundling for for their households, which is kind of

interesting. And I think pretty good for the gender conversation. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's so many different combinations, but it definitely is helpful when you have a group around you. The time I had my best weight loss and my best, like, physical 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 to each other and we would send each other and I was like what 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 getting that push notification of like, hey, did the family take their vitamins? 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're like, it's a little reward for eating their, you know, 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 them. Yeah, secret ones. So are you making gummies? And do you are, what's the deal with gummies? Like, why are a

adult vitamins, not gummies. Why are there only gummies for kids? Because it seems to me that compliance would go up with gummies. There's plenty of gummy. Gummy vitamins for kids. I mean, when we look at gummies. Well, for adults, I'm talking about, yeah. Yeah, for adults, there's gummy vitamins for adults as well. I mean, for us, when we think about each product is we're actively looking at what is the best delivery mechanism for that product in particular. And as I mentioned, our product have this delayed release component that bypass the stomach. It's released in small intestine. 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. And we also ran a clinical study on the women's product to show how ingredients, you know, get into the body. And we have more of a scientific approach, I would say. For kids, I think teens can easily take capsules. and that's probably the best delivery mechanism for them.

For kids, you're not going to get, you know, I'm not going to get my kids to take a capsule, although that would be the better delivery format. We are looking at edible forms, which stay tuned. We're going to be releasing our kids' product very soon. But even there, gummies have so much sugar in them. And I personally do not want to give my kids sugar at any time of the day.

That's extra. Well, I was thinking like stevia, whatever that is. What's the, you know, stevia? Stevia, the natural one that I. using my coffee, which, you know, depending on the brand you get, it can either taste grain 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, that sounds delicious. Yeah, just daddy soda. They're just like, I want daddy

soda or kombucha. They're crazy about kombucha. They just say, boucha, bocha, boucha. Yeah, hopefully that doesn't 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 the from the right bottle because some of them have a little bit of alcohol. You have to... I remember they were taking out of Whole Foods for a while. I had to sign. At some point, I was like, I need to see your driver's license, sir.

And I was like, I'm sorry for whole food delivery. He's like, I'm getting this for my kid. What are you talking about? Yeah, I'm like, this is my child's alcohol. It's not for me. I'm not drinking this kombucha. My kombucha has such a minimis amount of alcohol in it. I can't imagine.

It's like... I'm such a lightweight. I remember drinking kombucha when I was doing investment banking during the day. And I felt my legs like tingling. Really? So I can't drink this, but it's too much alcohol in here. Yeah, I think in the investment banking community, you might have been the lowest on the substance abuse.

Yeah, for sure. I only take omega-3s. Based on what I saw on the Wolf of Wall Street, I have a feeling you're omega-3s and your kombucha was not competitive with the quailudes and everything else going on. So when you went to raise money, I'm curious, having been in the investment space, 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 differently. You know, having never been really a founder when I was investing, I wish I'd had this experience to now invest. I would totally be at least a nicer person. I was about to ask you why, but it's because of the size. suffering and the pain of being an entrepreneur.

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. Yeah. I mean, you can just notice it when you go into a investor meeting when a company is pitching. It's like the investor has their arms back and they're like laying back in the chair

and the founder is just like dripping sweat. Yeah. 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 making the right moves, but you're really putting yourself out there every single day. And luckily, 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 her B. Brian Singerman, I've known for, I don't 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 how I positioned it. Oh, why was it such a bad idea? How did you position it? We got to hear the story now. Oh, yeah.

It's when I bought natals.com. Uh-huh. And which was a terrible name for a company. I mean, if someone's, N-A-T-A-L-S. No, no, I'm just saying, people don't even, nobody's ever used the word natals.

It's not, yeah. And I had someone say during a pitch meeting, like, this can't really scale. I was like, okay, cool. Noted. Wait, babies can't scale? The continuation of the species? Burthing, it's not going to continue,

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 state. age of life that I was in. People were like, a lot of investors were saying, hey, you know, you can't sell a pre-needle 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. Well, I mean, the challenge is the opportunity, right? Like, so that is a valid challenge. But as you just discovered, like, once you find a solution of that time, you obviously figured something out with doctors. which I was going to ask you, like, how do you even get to doctors? Do you, like,

have a sales team that's going out and meeting with them? We just send them samples. Do you send them an email? All of it. All of it. Just full core press, like getting them, getting the product in front of them and saying, hey, here's what we do. Here's the vision. Yeah. I mean, right now it's a little bit harder with COVID and a lot of offices being closed or just kind of more, you know, not open 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, getting to know offices and practices.

And it's been a really interesting, I think, a point for the future for our business, especially as we get into other products like kids. but going back to your, I guess, investor question. Investors versus being a founder, yeah. Yeah. So I've just felt very lucky with the investors that we've had. So Kirsten Green and led our seed round. She's on our board.

Brian Singerman's on our board and Lisa Wu. And they have all three just, 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, you know, with Lisa providing kind of, with Kirsten providing really a broad look on retail and direct to consumer, having so, so much experience there, to Brian being my point person on strategy and just big picture and hiring to Lisa, who has very analytical mindset

and kind of have this really well-crafted board that I really wouldn't have had, had I not kind of seen the ins and outs of startups as an investor before. I think my, I kind of chose our investors just as much as they chose us. And I think that's something, I'm constantly, you know, when I mentor other founders and other women, it's kind of like you're picking your investors too.

It's not like this date that you're on and you're trying to impress the person. They need to impress you as well. And it's a balanced relationship. And it has to be for the future to kind of succeed. Yeah, you have to be intentional about it. And it's a luxury. I mean, to be able to pick them. Not everybody has that luxury early on.

They just take whatever money they can get. But you should be more intentional about it. make sure you have that investor. I always like the investor product and the investor founder fit. So the investor loves the founder. If the investor loves the product, that always goes a long way in terms of like when they come to the board meeting, they're excited about it because they use the product. Yeah.

I think that I'm excited that we have men's now. Yeah. Because there's definitely a lot more male investors than women and female investors. And that was always a challenge. like you said in our break, like just having countless times in when raising money, having male investors say, hold on me, call my wife or let me. I'll talk to my daughter about what she thinks about this. Yeah, hold on, little lady. Let me find, I know a woman. I'm married to one. Wait one second. Let me find a woman who can, it's like, you have a woman in the room who's a CEO.

She can tell you too. I can show you the market research. But yeah, it's interesting. and I've had people call this my project in the beginning, too. Oh, you're a little project. Oh, it's so nice. This is not my project. We've sold millions of bottles already. So, sorry. Yeah, that is that I was always flabbergasted like 10 years ago when I started being on boards of companies

or just started investing in companies. And, you know, as 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 just like, you're obscene. wealthy, and I'm not sure that your family's demographic living in Italy and Aspen for, you know, four months a year and Los Angeles for four months a year is representative of this companies? That's funny.

That's like Postmates when I was looking and I was talking to the founder early on, 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. And they're like, there's no way this is going to become. They're just investing in this because they're using it themselves. And was I was totally wrong. Well, I was literally when Postmates first came.

Anyway, I got a little sort of history with Postmates. But because 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 $100,000. And I signed the paperwork and sent it. He was like, yeah, I'll make it up to you at some point. And you never did. But anyway, putting that aside, we wound up getting,

bought by Uber, so I think I, I think I wound up winning in the end, and it's all good. But I was sitting and, I'll just say, an NBA player who was addicted to Postmates, I was talking to him, and he, I was like, I can't use Postmates. It's just so crazy expensive. Like, do you know how much this cost? He's like, no, it's like super cheap. I was like, no, it's like, no, it's like, in the early days to 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 and out and fries. And, and, like that's like $12 and it's like $25. It's like no, no, no, no.

And he looks, he goes, oh my God, you're right, Jigal. I just ordered In-N-Out Burger for, that was like the holy grail. And In-N-Out Burger would not let anybody put them in the apps. And Postmates's 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? for just showcasing the product, I guess? Yeah, we... 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 around the time of Casper's IPO and everyone was just really negative on direct-to-consumer brands. I think I read a dozen articles about why D-2C was just over pre-COVID. and then everyone's kind of behavior has shifted to online even more so over the last six months. But pre that period, we are really interested in retail as a channel for us. I think we'll always be mostly direct to consumer. But when we tested out this pop-up on Melrose, we have a showroom for about a month. month, we saw that people were buying subscriptions.

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 skews complicating things or 5,000, whatever. I don't know what these stores hold, hundreds, if not thousands of skews. you just need to have like your 10 skews.

You can have a tiny 800 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. 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 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 are very interesting in person. Oh, really? Yes. Wow. Very interesting. in person. Hmm. Hmm.

Look at that be. Well, what other rituals do people have? Well, 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, or, you know, like, moisturizer. You think that's another, like, you know, expansion for you?

Yeah. We, you know, we were constantly serving our customers, and my vision was always to go beyond, vitamins since the beginning. I think that there's definitely a white space in other categories where that kind of intersection of science and transparency just doesn't really exist. It's like either you find products that are really clean, clean. It's not a regulated term.

Or they have ingredients that have science behind them and they work. And so that, but that intersection of something. being effective and also good for you is, I think, still lacking in so many areas. So, so many areas. So I really hope that our brand can have a footprint beyond nutrition. That's such a smart idea. I always love this company brandless that Tina Sharkey was doing and that SoftBank. And I think they shut it down. It didn't work out. But 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 they're picking the best purveyors.

They don't have cornstarch. 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 was really, really great.

It's unfortunate. I think it doesn't exist anymore, right? Yeah, I think they've raised too, you know, when you raise too much money like that, you just, eyes off the prize, right? I mean. Yeah, I think that that's an interesting topic. It's like, it's, it's nice to not have a lot of money in some ways. It makes people more creative and I think teams work harder and, you know, we've seen that

with our company as well. So, yeah. But Brandeis was a great idea and I, I love that idea. I think for me, though, the level of trust that I was looking for maybe just wasn't necessarily there with that brand. I think the price point was spot on and very accessible and the products were like just good enough. Yeah, they weren't like the ultra like you're doing. You're doing ultra clean. Like you're sourcing the best in every single category.

Right. Which the subscription really helps you because your lifetime value is much. much higher and predictable. Right. So it's a very different idea. I mean, if it's, I don't know, what products did you buy from them? Curious. I bought everything from like crackers to cereal to, um, like they had cookies and, you know,

like, uh, you know, just every, I literally just went 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, like their version of gold. fish, 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 color, you know, but it wasn't next level. Like you're on the next level tip with what you were doing. Yeah. And I think that's kind of the struggle.

It's like I can definitely make a cheaper product. Like I can make a $5, $10 product. but it would, would it be radically different than everything else out there? Probably not as much. Definitely not as much. And so that's, I think, the struggle that we face every day is, you know, even as we're developing new products, I'm like, oh, I really want that organic, blank, blank, blank. Yeah. And I know, 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. dollars. You're in Los Angeles. When I lived in Los Angeles, my wife comes home with press juiceroy. And I was like, oh, my God, this is incredible. This stuff 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 six bottles, right? And she's like, no, no, it was $12 for each of the six bottles. six. I was like,

yeah, that my husband makes fun of me for that. There's a store in L.A. called Air One, where I get a $20 smoothie. I literally was in Malibu

when I was staying at the beach when I started taking my 10-day vacation and I ordered from Erwan and they had like the shots. Little, you know, shots you can get. Like 15 bucks or something.

Yeah, it was insane. And I was like, I mean, but then when you think about it, here's how I think about health and these things. And my,

you know, it's interesting. We mentioned gender dynamics in 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 tonal.

I have to send you some ritual after this. I'm going to order it myself. Don't worry about it. It would never take any freebies. I always buy stuff. But anyway, it was a very like interesting dynamic where she, and I was just thinking like, people spend $15 at a bar on, you know, a cocktail and they don't think anything of it. But if you were to order a $15, you know, gallon of smoothie or, you know, a quart of

or something, people are like, oh my God. Like, what we actually make ginger at home. So this is one of my favorite things to do. I'm addicted to ginger ale. 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 the press. So is it like the Norman Walker?

Yeah, something like that. It's absurdly expensive and slow and tedious. 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 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, fresh gender. There's nothing better. It's literally like you get hit with wasabi. Like the first time I did it, I poured so much in. I was like eyes bleeding.

What's going on when I was getting my hair done, which I put my new haircut. on Instagram, people went crazy. I realize now the power of Instagram is just getting her haircut and having the hairdresser or take pictures. She was telling me all the celebrities are taking the male celebrities.

And Natalia has all the top the hairstylist who's a friend of a friend, one of my wife's friends, and she did the hair for me. And she does like everybody, like every famous celebrity guy in the Marvel movie she does. She was saying all these guys are taking male supplements to make your hair thicker and that that's a whole new category of science

and it can't grow your hair back but it can make your hair thicker. Is that real? Do you have a product in that category? Because whoever figures that out, obviously, that's going to be the next trillion dollar company. Yeah, I mean, there's some companies doing that for sure. I mean, our business is all around essentiality

and so I think we get asked about beauty supplements all the time and, you know, there's a number of claims we can make very, few claims actually, just kidding, about our product as it relates to beauty. But it's not something that we actually want to be doing. So when we have customers, they've in common, be like, oh my God, this product made my hair grow, you know, like 10 inches, something ridiculous.

We're like, well, actually, that's not why we designed it. Yes. We believe in foundational health and, like, filling the gaps in people's diets. Most people are lacking in certain nutrients. vitamin D and omega-3. Well, as we're finding during COVID, vitamin D was one of these issues, right?

Like people who were 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 a part of the dialogue. Yeah, it was part of the dialogue. And we try to be incredibly buttoned up on the regulatory side. So if I don't have a study, you know, a lot of studies actually showing a particular benefit with that dose that I have in my product, I'm not going to make that claim.

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. And I think that's kind of been a little bit abused, I would say, in our category, especially through social media. I think companies feel like they can just kind of get away with it and things will kind of go away over time. But to scale, I think to the scale that we're in and some other companies as well, You have to be really careful about what claims you're making, even if it's so easy to create an Instagram ad or even is it's so easy to, you know, repurpose an influencer who's talking about crazy claims.

Oh, yes, that is. Influencers are a great marketing channel, but they're not scientists. So their claims, yeah, yeah, there's a question there. like if one of if a product if an influencer makes a claim about a product that's not true I guess that's arms distance from the no you could still get in trouble for it 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 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 at all. And is, and we are not. People literally doing like this will help you. Oh, right. There was somebody was doing something with this. Like I think Alex Jones or somebody was talking about like one of their supplements was helping with COVID. Fact check me on that, Nick, before I put Alex Jones into that.

But Alex Joan COVID vitamins or something. Alex Jones is always selling supplements or something. It's horrible. Yeah. And it's horrible. You're just like, he might have actually got. Does the FDA? even enforce this stuff? Are they really on top of it or are they just make examples once in a while?

Yeah, it's the FDA and the FTC and I think it's important. A lot of times the smaller players might not, might kind of fly under the radar, but as you scale, you know, a lot of people don't even realize that supplements are regulated by the FDA. 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 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 Insider.com, not inside.com, insider.com.

The FDA has warned InfoWare's founder Alex Jones to stop selling false coronavirus cures, including silver toothpaste. Let me just say, for the record, if you're taking any advice on life from Alex Jones, you have already fell 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 for hours but I've already kept you on here for well over an hour and you've been awesome as a guest continued success and stay safe

I know your showroom we're talking off hours was looted during some of the I guess there were valid protests going on, but then there were some looting that broke out, and these were like coordinated

like criminals who just demolished Melrose and Fairfax, that area got demolished. But your store got hit too, yeah? Yeah, our store got hit and you know, we're going to rebuild. Our business isn't, 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 got hit. But it's also, you know, our company where we're standing in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and have really committed to that as a brand. 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 a country to support the movement. Yeah, absolutely. And just without picking any sides here, please register to vote.

I mean, this is an election that matters if there ever was one. Catch Snyder. Thanks for coming on the program. Continued Success. 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 soon and check out ritual on all platforms. She's got at ritual on every platform.

I have a code if we can use it. Oh, yeah. Code away. Startups for 25% off. first month. There you go. Use the code startups for 25% off, everybody. And make sure you pick up some silver toothpaste, then you can brush away that coronavirus. That is not true.

That's my info wars. So what is even silver toothpaste? My God, crazy. All right. Stay safe, Kat. Thanks going on five. Thanks so much for having me.