Founder & Managing Partner @Sugar_Capital --dangerously-skip-permissions
San Francisco, CA
Joined January 2007
- Tweets178
- Following4
- Followers7.9K
- Likes11.8K
Om Malik, (@Om) 1966 to 2026
The friend who was the catalyst of PopSugar.
airsugar.com/p/om-malik-1966…
Brian Sugar retweeted
Introducing @runneth, the AI brain for Marketing.
It's like having your own mac mini in the cloud.
Seriously. We built infrastructure to give *every* customer their own dedicated virtual machine.
Unilever Is Acquiring Grüns
This is what conviction looks like.
Yesterday I missed a 70-week publishing streak on AirSugar. I was waiting for this moment.
When we first met Chad Janis, Grüns had just launched. Revenue was minimal. Another supplement brand in a crowded category, up against players with infinite budgets and decades of shelf space. Nothing about it looked like a venture outcome.
We invested anyway.
Not because the spreadsheet told us to. Lisa held the pouch and said: this is the product. This is it.
Read on: airsugar.com/p/unilever-is-a…
Yes, there are venture returns in CPG.
Unilever is acquiring fast-growing VMS brand Grüns for an undisclosed sum.
Founded in 2023 by Chad Janis, Grüns has become one of the largest brands in the U.S. Greens Supplement category. The company has also expanded into new categories like immunity, children’s nutrition, and pre-workout supplements. Grüns reached a $500M valuation 11 months ago.
Investors in Grüns include Headline, Selva Ventures, Vanterra Ventures, Sugar Capital, and others.
Unilever recently divested its massive food division in order to focus on beauty, wellness, and personal care.
Congrats to @chadjanis, the entire Grüns team, and our fellow investors.
flawless execution. unbelievable, intergalactic well done!
Congratulations to @chadjanis and the entire Grüns team for today’s announcement of their acquisition by Unilever
@SelvaVentures is a proud Grüns investor and I am a proud board member — we are incredibly excited by this outcome
Many people from the outside will tell stories of product-market-fit, direct marketing, DTC tactics and omnichannel execution — all of that is true, but it misses the real story
The real story is one of people — what is possible when talent density meets high accountability leadership and genuinely good people
I have spent time over the past 2 years with dozens of members of the Grüns team, and every time I have come away impressed by their IQ and EQ
These are going to be many of this industry’s next generation of great leaders — the “PayPal mafia” of CPG — remember their names and look out for them
Thank you Chad for bringing us along for this journey — it has truly been an honor
Congratulations to our fellow investors and collaborators: Headline
PLUS Capital
Vanterra / @TrevorRechnitz / @EllisFried
Sugar Capital / @briansugar
@shrayvj
and many more
Seven deals. Eighteen months. Nearly $9 billion.
Ghost. Poppi. Rhode. Dr. Squatch. LesserEvil. Coterie. Olive & June.
Brands most boardrooms didn’t know existed five years ago are now acquisition targets for the largest CPG companies in the world.
This isn’t a blip. It’s the first inning of a cycle we haven’t seen since enterprise software in 1999.
Consumers are demanding healthy. Retailers need young, relevant brands. Incumbents are sitting on unprecedented cash with innovation pipelines that are structurally insufficient. Their shareholders are out of patience.
They have one move left, buy what they cannot build.
Consumer is having its moment:
Been mostly off Twitter/X this year and thinking about coming back.
Substack and LinkedIn drive a material readership and been doing most of my writing there.
Here is my latest:
Most VCs are ignoring the best risk-adjusted opportunity in venture right now.
Contribution margins above 40%.
Real EBITDA before the growth round.
Acquirers lined up paying 3-5x revenue.
And almost no one is talking about it.
The founders who get it are building consumer companies with SaaS economics. High margins. Predictable revenue. Customers who actually want to come back.
Big Food can't build what it needs. So it's going to buy it.
I wrote about why this is the golden age of consumer investing:
I don't usually write about geopolitics. But some moments demand you say what you believe, without apology.
October 7 changed me. Not as an investor. As a person. Forever.
Soon, the hostages come home. After 730 days, Israeli families exhale.
I wrote about what those 730 days taught me about conviction, moral clarity, and refusing to break when the entire world screams at you to fold.
This isn't my usual AirSugar content. It's more important than that.
