Opinion
Janis says Goli struggled by relying on trend-dependent single ingredients
“Goalie, I think they were more focused on individual ingredients that sort of rose and roads that rode with trends and then came back down as that sort of trended away.”
Insight
Janis: Supplement market enters 'V-three' era of comprehensive gummy blends
“And then I would say we're entering what I would consider a V-three of the Gummy era, which is taking really robust blends and putting them into a form factor like Gummy.”
Disclosure
Janis says Grüns downplays clinical studies to position as lifestyle brand
“We do clinical research, but we don't, it's not like the only thing we talk about, right? We do we have like studies, we've done all this wonderful stuff, but we try not to lean too much on that because that's what the rest of the category is doing. We're kind…”
Insight
Janis: Brands should not have pride in remaining solely direct-to-consumer
“I don't think there's any reason to like, Have pride in being a solely DTC business or a solely on, like, there's just, there's consumers everywhere. Like, meet them with the solution that, and at the price point that works for them.”
Disclosure
Janis: Over 99% of Grüns marketing creative remains human-generated
“I would say at this point, we're still like 99% plus like human generated Whether it's like in a editing file or whether it's actual humans creating UGC or working with influencers who are creating content. We haven't moved, I would say into like AI being the …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Janis says Grüns generated $50M in revenue by his Stanford graduation
“So the business was doing like fifty million of revenue when I graduated.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Janis: 19 of 20 co-manufacturers rejected Grüns before its launch
“Early days of the business, pre-launch, the process was calling up 20 different co-bands, co-manufacturing partners, and telling them, here's what I want to do, here's what the ingredients are, I'll source all of it, and every single one of them, except for on…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Grüns team hand-packed gummies with clamp sealers for first eight months
“That infrastructure for taking gummies and putting it into packs did not exist prior to us. So for the first six to eight months of this business, we had 20 bodies standing around a table. Manually picking up gummies and putting them in packs and taking a clam…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Janis: Grüns built capacity to ship 10M gummies daily
“Where we can, you know, ship ten million gummies a day and have the infrastructure for it.”
Disclosure
Janis: Grüns Raised Around $50M in Total Capital
“We raised probably around fifty million over the course of the business. Some of that was secondary over the course, then on primary as well, obviously.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Grüns cut marketing spend by 93% overnight due to inventory shortage
“Six months into the business, January 29th was calling my co-man. I was like, hey, we don't have, it was like two weeks of telling him, hey, I don't think we have enough inventory, right? He's like, no, no, no, we're good. January 29th, I was like, hey, we're …”
Assertion Partly supported
Grüns launched in Sprouts, Target, and Walmart between 2024 and 2025
“We launched with Sprouts in October of twenty-twenty-four Target in February of twenty-twenty-five, and then Walmart in April of twenty-twenty-five, and then a bunch of other amazing retailers after that.”
Assertion Supported
Janis says Unilever publicly stated Liquid I.V. reached $1B in revenue
“They acquired liquid IV back in probably. That business is massively larger. I think they just stated last year that it's around a billion of revenue.”
Disclosure
Grüns connects its data warehouse to Anthropic's Claude for all teams
“We have like all the data infrastructure data warehouse in a place where it's accessible through Claude to our team. So you've got the CX team, you've got the finance team, you've got the marketing team, all like immediately accessible with that information to…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Janis says Grüns had only six employees when he graduated Stanford
“We had probably like six people working on it at the time.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Janis: One-quarter of Stanford MBA class tested early Grüns iterations
“About one-fourth of my entire Stanford class tried the early iterations of Grins before we launched.”
