Unilever Is Acquiring Grüns

This is what conviction looks like.

"The truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry." — The Big Short (2015).

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. She’d been searching for something like it. So had every soccer mom passing sachets around like they were sharing something precious. Eight gummies in a pouch. No water. No pill shame. No mixing expensive green powder into a glass of lukewarm water at six in the morning and calling it a personality.

The market saw a supplement. Lisa saw a ritual. That gap is where we live.

Chad wasn’t a supplement industry veteran. He was a frustrated consumer who couldn’t figure out why taking care of himself had to feel like a chore. Three years ago, he told his wife Hannah it would be a dream if Grüns could one day partner with Unilever. He said that from a Stanford dorm room. He lived the problem before he thought to solve it. The destination was always there.

We wrote three checks. The third increased our position by 30%. When Headline led the fourth round at a $500 million valuation, we took some off the table. We had to. The first check is courage. The second is conviction. The third is a superpower.

There’s a version of this story where we’re cautious. Where we stay small and explain to our LPs that we were being thoughtful about concentration. That version doesn’t get told. The version that gets told is the one where you saw something real, believed it fully, and didn’t look away.

Today, Unilever¹ announced they are acquiring Grüns.

We can’t share the terms. What we can say is that Chad built something real. Three hundred million dollars in revenue by his second anniversary. The number one Greens Supplement on Amazon and in retail across the United States. But the number that actually matters: 80% of Grüns customers use it daily. Ninety-five percent use it at least four times a week. That’s not engagement. That’s a habit. That’s the whole thesis.

Two and a half years. From a deck that looked like every other deck to Unilever. That’s what the pattern looks like when you’re right.

There’s a persistent belief in venture that consumer doesn’t work for funds. That multiples are thin, exits are slow, and real returns live in software. We’ve never believed that. Grüns is the proof.

To our LPs who trusted us: this is what we do. To Chad: you told Hannah this would happen. It happened. To our fellow investors at SilverCircle (@Larry), Selva Ventures (@Kiva), Headline, PLUS Capital, and Vanterra: proud to have been in this with you. And to the Grüns team, someone called you the PayPal mafia of CPG. They’re early.

Yes, there are venture returns in CPG.

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¹Unilever Ventures is an LP in Sugar Capital Fund III.