Chad, a serial entrepreneur with a background in private equity and investment banking, built and sold his third company—Grüns, a gummy-based comprehensive nutrition brand—to Unilever for $1.2 billion in just 32 months. He grew up in a large, financially modest Mormon family in Utah, served a two-year mission in Germany (becoming fluent in German), and worked at top-tier firms like Lazard and Summit Partners before attending Stanford GSB. His experience evaluating hundreds of consumer brands at Summit gave him deep intuition for unit economics, particularly LTV:CAC ratios, which became the backbone of his approach to building Grüns.
Origin of the Idea
Chad didn’t set out to start another company—he was headed to Stanford for an MBA when, two weeks before leaving, he was drinking a greens powder at his parents’ home and realized he hated the experience: the taste, the frothy sediment, and especially the idea of staring at the bottle on his countertop forever due to his OCD tendencies.
That moment sparked a simple but powerful question: How do you make something people look forward to taking every day? He didn’t immediately land on gummies, but within a day he connected it to his lifelong love of gummy candies (like Sour Patch Kids) and began exploring how to deliver full-spectrum nutrition in a format people enjoy.
The key insight was structural: the entire gummy supplement industry used small 30–60 count bottles, which couldn’t hold enough nutrients for comprehensive daily nutrition. Chad’s breakthrough was rethinking the format—not one giant gummy, but a daily pouch of eight smaller gummies totaling ~20g, each identical in nutrition, making the full dose both practical and enjoyable.
Building a $100M+ Revenue Brand in Under 3 Years
Chad launched Grüns with extreme capital efficiency and speed: Month 1: $30K revenue → Month 2: $230K → crossed $1M run rate by month 2–3. He burned ~$8M in primary capital before reaching profitability—a number he says could’ve been lower if he’d slowed growth, but he prioritized velocity.
His framework for hitting $100M in 3 years rests on two pillars:
1. Right Product = New White Space: Not just “better,” but a new format in an existing category. Examples:
Grüns: greens → gummy pouches
Doctor Squatch: soap → branded, fun, cold-process bars with pop-culture collabs
Dose: liver health → concentrated liquid shots
MaryRuth Organics: vitamins → liquid liposomal form
Cozy Earth: sheets → bamboo as hero material
Nicotine pouch brands (Zyn, etc.): energy → non-nicotine pouches
The pattern: take something familiar, change the form factor, own the new niche.
Most people confuse revenue with profit—Chad stresses that a 3x LTV:CAC likely means $5–6 in revenue per $1 spent on acquisition.
He set a strict CAC ceiling from Day 1 and kept ads “boring but honest” to stay under it, avoiding exaggerated claims common among drop-shippers.
Marketing Masterclass: How Grüns Scaled
Chad built the first landing page himself using Replo (a Shopify plugin), creating a template system that allowed rapid iteration. The core idea: one ad angle → one tailored funnel.
They run hundreds of ads per month, testing wildly different angles:
“Poop more” (gut health)
“Ozempic’s best friend” (positioning alongside GLP-1 drugs for nutrient gaps)
E-com team constantly iterating checkout, cart, post-purchase
Key philosophy: “New formats win.” Don’t copy—create a new way to consume something people already need.
Hiring and Culture
Chad hires only “all-stars”—not just skilled, but people with the confidence and autonomy to act like CEOs of their domain. He believes many of his team will go on to found successful companies.
The real challenge isn’t hiring great people—it’s unblocking them: getting out of the way so they can execute at their highest level. Mistakes are expected; speed of learning is what matters.
The Bigger Vision: Access, Exposure, and Legacy
Chad’s core philosophy: “Access is everything.” He came from a low-income, non-entrepreneurial family but earned access through relentless over-delivery for mentors at Lazard and Summit Partners—who then opened doors (e.g., Stanford recommendation).
He sees his legacy as facilitating exposure—especially for kids who’ve never seen entrepreneurship as possible. He now brings his own children to meetings, gyms, and real life to broaden their worldview.
He’s also sitting on a $10 billion idea he won’t share yet (“I’ll bleep it out”), but hints it’s in consumer and only he can execute it right now.
A Billion-Dollar Idea He’d Build If He Weren’t Running Grüns
Automated ACH distribution layer: A platform that acts as a smart intermediary for direct deposits. Instead of money hitting your checking account and requiring willpower to allocate, it’s automatically routed—rent, savings, investments, bills—so only discretionary cash (e.g., $500 for groceries) lands in your spend account.
Inspired by the book Profit First and early neo-banks like Simple (which used digital “envelopes”), but modernized with today’s programmable banking infra (Mercury, etc.).
Solves two problems:
Behavioral: removes friction from saving/spending discipline
Structural: forces budgeting as an input, not an output
Believes this could be a $500M–$1B acquisition target within 2 years if executed well.
What’s Next for Chad
The Unilever deal has signed but not yet closed (pending DOJ/FTC approval—required for transactions >$133.9M). Until then, he’s still fully operating Grüns.
Grüns is far from done: they’ve expanded beyond the original greens gummy to include Neutrops (nootropics), Immune (immunity gummies), Juiced (pre-energy), and have 12 more innovations in the pipeline.
Long-term, he’s focused on impact over investment—he’d rather deploy capital into building something meaningful (e.g., mentorship, exposure programs) than passively invest.
His mindset: “We’re 5 miles into a marathon.” The exit wasn’t the finish line—it’s fuel for the next leg.
