#308 - Rikin Diwan, Soona - How to Craft Marketing Strategies That Sell

Vasa is the founder & CEO of Perfy, a low sugar soda, and Growthbuster, a remote marketing agency that leverages story and creative to help food and beverage brands grow.

Nigel Thomas is the CEO of Alpha Inboud, a digital marketing agency that helps DTC brands grow to 8 figures, profitably. Having previously built a 7 figure agency and consulted many 7 and 8 figure DTC brands on their marketing strategy, Nigel knows what it takes to implement complex paid social campaigns at scale.

Rob Willey is the CMO at Cheribundi, a tart cherry juice company, and Emil Capital Partners, a mid-size private equity firm focused on innovative late stage startups in the CPG, health, wellness and beauty space. Previously, Rob served as CMO of TaskRabbit through it's acquisition by IKEA.

On this episode of DTC Pod, Jesse joins Blaine to talk about the future of commerce. They discuss mobile commerce, moving from agency to brand owner, increasing conversion, bootstrapping, fundraising, testing out MVPs, getting customer buy in, developing product roadmaps, and much more.

Gretchen Hollingsworth is the founder of Ink+Alloy, a fast growing jewelry and accessories brand featuring products built by skilled artisans in India. Formerly she founded Paddywax, an internationally iconic candle company. As founder and creative director, she designed products for retail behemoths Whole Foods, Urban Outfitters, West Elm, Crate and Barrel, and Target.

Courtney Klein is the Founder & CEO of Storq, a maternity focused apparel brand. Having worked in creative & design for over a decade, at Razorfish and as a parter at NYC design firm Hard Candy shell, she saw a gap in the market for luxe basics for pregnancy, nursing, and parenthood.

Max Kislevitz is the Cofounder of Bala, an LA based fitness accessories company. Max & his wife + cofounder Natalie Holloway were one of Shark Tank's all time hottest deals, ultimately securing financing from Mark Cuban and Maria Sharapova. Since then, the company has done upwards of 50M+ in revenue, has been worn by celebs & culture icons, introduced new product lines, and kicked off Balacize, a new digital platform for the brand.

Haris Memon is the founder of Nameless Ventures, a holding co that launches high growth DTC brands. He is the founder of Miracle Brand, a functional home goods brand that has crossed 30M in ARR, as well as Seedwell, a holistic health & supplements brand which has demonstrated fast growth out of the gates. Haris has also served as an advisor and investor in several popular consumer and retail companies.

Lauren is the founder of Dreamday, a performance PR firm. She's also co-founder of The Quality Edit, and was formerly Founding Team & VP of Marketing at Ritual, where she oversaw its branding, communications, community, and partnerships from Day 1, helping to scale the company to millions of subscribers.

Jasmine Garnsworthy is the Founder of Female Founders World, a community for women building consumer businesses. She is a digital communications specialist and former style and beauty editor at POPSUGAR, StyleCaster, and Mamamia. Previously, she founded The Buff, a custom skincare brand which tailored products to each customer's unique skin type.

Ronak Trivedi is the Co-Founder & CEO of Pietra, the A16Z & Founders Fund backed platform that brings sourcing, fulfillment, and e-commerce under one roof to make launching a commerce brand a breeze. To date, the company has raised over $15 million and has supported thousands of brands, including a few that have been on DTC Pod (shoutout Suckerz, Form, & GEM!). Prior to starting Pietra, Ronak led product at UBER for UBER Pool.

Steven Izen is Founder & CEO of Elements and Lokai. Elements is a functional wellness drink, and Lokai is the popular jewelry brand known for bracelets including material sourced from the top of Mt. Everest and the bottom of the Dead Sea, and has official partnerships for collections with Disney, National Geographic, and major league sports like the NFL, NHL, NBA, WNBA, and MLB.

JT joins Blaine in the LA studio to talk about how brands can unlock massive growth by thinking like creators. They cover topics including building your tiktok strategy, the ins & outs of the tiktok and instagram algorithm, types of content that perform best, how to generate winning content,

Mark Samuel is the founder & CEO of IWON Organics, a plant-based food company that makes bold, flavor-infused snacks and cereal made from plant proteins like peas, beans and brown rice. IWON's healthy snacks can be found in over 5,000 stores nationwide, including Kroger's, Wegmans, Sprouts, Whole Foods, Vitamin Shoppe, Safeway, Ralphs, Brookshire’s, and online at iwonorganics.com, Amazon and Thrive Market.

Oriel Davis-Lyons is Head of Creative - Podcast & Talk at Spotify, and Founder of Corpleisure, an elevated WFH fashion & apparel line. He started his career in New Zealand, copywriting for Colenso BBDO, before moving to New York and joining both R/GA & Droga5 as Creative Director.

Tiny Organics Co-Founders Sofia Laurell (Co-CEO) and Carolyn O'Hare Batyske (President & COO) have raised over $13 million in venture funding to bring healthy and organic food options to children.

Brian Sugar is the Founder and General Partner of Sugar Capital, a venture capital firm investing in the future of commerce. Previously, he co-founded POPSUGAR, where he serves as CEO & board member. He is also a Co-Founder and Chairman at Novel.

Sahand Dilmaghani is the CEO & founder of Terra Kaffe, a cutting-edge espresso machine that transforms the entire experience of making coffee at home. Sahand started Terra Kaffe in 2017, which has raised over $14M to date.

Sami Clarke is a certified health, wellness, & fitness trainer who built a large following for her workout videos and holistic approach to wellness. With millions of followers and hundreds of millions of views across Youtube, Instagram, & TikTok, Sami cultivated a strong community before deciding to start her own fitness & wellness platform, FORM.

Cherene Aubert is the Director of Growth at Bobbie, the first European style organic infant formula that meets FDA standards. Bobbie has raised over $50M to take the soon to be 100B+ formula market by storm.

Paul Michaux is the co-founder & head of product at Prose, the DTC customized hair care brand. Michaux founded Prose in 2017 but he built up his expertise and knowledge of product, branding, & consumer goods working at P&G, Christian Dior, and L’Oréal.

Alex Plugaru is the CTO & cofounder of Gorgias, the customer service tool born from Techstars NYC program. Gorgias now has 9K+ customers (including some of the most well-known brands), $25M ARR, a global team of 230+ people, and $75M in fundraising.

Zero Acre Farms is creating a new category of healthy oils and fats, made by fermentation. Zero Acre is on a mission to reduce the consumption of vegetable oil which has been linked to significant health risks and has an environmentally destructive production process.

Oren Aks runs Atomic Milk as a Creative Director, Designer, Illustrator, & Social Media Consultant. He is famous for building the social media strategy behind the infamous Fyre Festival.

Darian Khosravi is the founder of Kosmo’s Q, a BBQ company that makes award-winning BBQ rubs and sauces. Khosravi founded Kosmo’s Q in 2009 with just $500. Today Kosmo’s Q has 170K customers worldwide, a 5x BBQ champion winner, and is a beloved BBQ brand.