#323 - The Brand Whisperer: Revealing the Tactics behind Your Favorite DTC Brands with Emmett Shine

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.

Tom Shea is the co-founder and CRO of Adgile, an OOH advertising startup that specializes in truck side advertising. After graduating from Boston College in 2016, Tom joined McMaster-Carr, a 3K+ person supply company that provides businesses with hardware, tools, raw materials, industrial materials, and maintenance equipment.

Kasey Stewart is the co-founder and CEO of Suckerz, a better-for-you lollipop. Before starting his own CPG company, Stewart spent many years working on the agency side at companies like SapientRazorFish where he led creative direction.

Nick Hasselberg is the VP of Growth & eCommerce at Every Man Jack, a men’s grooming company. In 2019, Nick joined Every Man Jack. He oversees all of their marketplaces, digital lead growth, and internal media buying.

Brendan Brosnan and Chris Heckman are co-founders of Yogaste, which they built and sold to OpenStore after just 2 years. They are serial entrepreneurs who are experts at quickly creating, scaling, and selling online brands.

Nishant Samantray is the Co-Founder of Arrae, the creator-led and clinically proven holistic supplement brand.

Jonah Reider is the founder and CEO of Pzaz, an energy mist spray.

Welcome to episode 200. In this episode Blaine and Ramon get together in the studio in Miami to share key learnings and tactics from guests, a breakdown of the current commerce, creator, and consumer landscape, and where the pod is headed next. Make sure to follow us on social where we share all the gems our guests drop and leave us a review if you like the content.

Mélanie Masarin is the co-founder & CEO of Ghia, the acclaimed non-alcoholic apértif beverage. Prior to starting Ghia, she served as Glossier’s Head of Retail & Offline Experiences, where she led experiential strategy and brought life to physical showrooms, permanent spaces, and pop-ups. Before Glossier, she served as Creative Director and Head of Brand & Marketing at Dig Inn.

Darrin Willingham is the creator & host of DNA SHOW, a YouTube channel with 215K subscribers where he talks about lifestyle around sneakers, finance, sports and travel.

Kevin Wong is the cofounder of Lunar, an award-winner hard seltzer brand inspired by Asian flavors. But Kevin’s path to becoming the founder of an alcohol brand wasn’t linear. Kevin studied computer science at University of Virginia