Chris Draper

Embue Cacao

[Chris Draper @chrisrdraper]

@AdamGillman X

[Adam Gillman @AdamGillman]

Here’s how I did it in 30 steps:

1. Start with a problem you personally hate. We didn't find Hiya in a market report. I read the label on my kids' vitamins one morning and saw 2 teaspoons of sugar per serving. The average kids vitamin had as much sugar as a piece of chocolate cake. That frustration became a $260M company.

2. Understand your market size before you build. The US children's vitamin and supplement market was valued at $900M when we started. Expected to reach $1.4B by 2029. We weren't guessing there was opportunity. We knew exactly how big the ceiling was.

3. Find a co-founder who's already won with you. Darren and I had already built GoLive Mobile together — $250M in revenue, $100M in earnings, 1000x return for shareholders. We didn't start Hiya as strangers taking a leap of faith. We had 7 years of proof we worked together.

4. Spend at least 12 months on product before launch. We spent over a year mapping formulation, finding manufacturers, working with pediatricians and nutritionists before a single bottle shipped. Most founders spend 4-6 weeks. We spent 52+. That's why our product worked from day one.

5. Validate with experts not just instincts. We assembled a team of pediatricians, nutritionists, dentists, scientists and parents to formulate our product. Not 1 expert. Not 2. A full network. The result was 15 essential vitamins and minerals in a single chewable with 0 grams of sugar.

6. Outsiders redesign systems. Insiders optimize within them. We had 0 years of experience in children's health. That was our advantage. We questioned every industry default — sugar levels, gummy formats, synthetic fillers. Experts couldn't see what we saw because they were too deep in the system.

7. Your consumer and your customer are not always the same person. Our consumer was the child. Our customer was the parent. 100% of our marketing was aimed at parents while 100% of our product experience was designed for kids. Most competitors solved for 1. We solved for both simultaneously.

8. Launch on the worst possible day and keep going anyway. We launched March 11 2020. The exact same day WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. We thought it was over before it started. It wasn't. We hit $103M in annual revenue 4 years later.

9. Price is a signal of quality. We priced at a premium from day one — roughly $30/month per child. Above every competitor in the category. Not because we were greedy. Because $10 signals $10 quality. "Approachable luxury" — premium enough to signal trust, low enough that households making under $75K annually could still afford it. And they did. That demographic became our largest customer segment.

10. Never change your price. Change your value. Our price has never changed in 5+ years. Costs increased significantly — especially during COVID supply chain chaos. We absorbed every dollar of that by growing volume, improving retention, and expanding our product line instead of passing costs to customers and losing their trust.

11. Commit to 100% subscription from day one. Not a subscription option. 100% subscription only. No one-time purchases. No Amazon storefront. No retail shelf. Pure recurring revenue from the first day. This single decision defined our entire business model and cash flow trajectory.

12. Offer 50% off the first month. Never change it. We've tested every possible variation of this offer over 5 years. 50% off month 1 has been the highest performer every single time. The goal isn't margin on month 1. The goal is getting the right customer in the door so months 2 through 24 can compound.

13. Solve the cash flow paradox before it solves you. 50% off month 1 + bootstrapped growth = brutal cash flow problem. The faster we grew the more cash negative we became. Every 1,000 new customers we signed up created a cash hole that took months to fill. We raised $0 from VCs so we had to get creative with debt financing. Some partners were horrific. Some were great. Find them before you need them.

14. Text every single new customer personally within 24 hours. We built an entire vitamin concierge team. Every new subscriber — whether we had 100 customers or 100,000 — received a personal text from a real human introducing themselves and offering help. Not a bot. Not an automated sequence. A real person. That 1 decision shaped our entire retention curve.

15. Let customers customize down to individual units. Parents could text us "my son only likes the green ones." We'd ship custom ratios — 47 green, 37 yellow, 0 red per monthly shipment. Raised our costs slightly. Created a competitive moat that billion dollar companies like Unilever and P&G could never replicate. Drove a tangible measurable lift in both retention and brand sentiment.

16. Iterate relentlessly on your core product. We launched 1 multivitamin in March 2020. We are now on the 8th iteration of that same product. 8 rounds of improvements based purely on customer feedback. We changed flavor profiles, ingredient ratios, and texture based on what the data told us. Never stop improving what's already working.

17. Build your brand for 2 audiences simultaneously. Our packaging had to make a parent want to put it on their kitchen counter AND make a child excited to take their vitamin. We made a reusable glass bottle with stickers kids could decorate. Parents Instagrammed it. Kids personalized it. 1 product, 2 emotional hooks, zero sugar.

18. Insource fulfillment until scale makes it impossible. We ran our own warehouse operations in the early days. Complete control over every touchpoint. It enabled the customization. It enabled the quality control. Eventually when we reached a scale where the warehouse was becoming its own full business we outsourced the majority. But those early years of full control were invaluable.

19. Don't launch product 2 until product 1 is undeniable. We waited 2.5 years — approximately 30 months — before launching our probiotic as our second product. Not because we lacked confidence. Because we wanted 30 months of data, customer feedback, and retention proof before we risked our brand reputation on something new.

20. Survey customers before formulation begins. Every new product in our lineup was validated by existing customers before we spent $1 on development. We asked parents directly what problem they wanted us to solve next. They told us probiotics. We made probiotics. We knew it wouldn't fail before we made it. Today more than 50% of our customers purchase more than 1 Hiya product every single month.

21. Educate before you sell. Always. Our social and email strategy was 80% education, 20% promotion. We explained ingredients we DON'T use and why. We talked about what's wrong with kids nutrition in America. We gave parents information that had nothing to do with buying Hiya. The result was customers who trusted us as an expert advisor not just a brand they bought from.

22. Build a team with near zero turnover. In our entire existence as a company we lost approximately 2 employees voluntarily. 2. In a period where most DTC startups had 40-60% annual turnover. We did that by hiring the absolute best people in every discipline, never micromanaging, and building a culture around shared values not fear.

23. Vulnerability is the most underrated leadership trait. When we made mistakes we said so internally immediately. When we didn't know something we admitted it publicly to the team. When we entered retail — something we knew nothing about — we said so clearly. That honesty created a culture where people felt safe enough to do their best work.

24. Know your gaps before your gaps know you. We knew nothing about international expansion. USANA does 90%+ of their business internationally across 24+ countries. We knew nothing about large scale manufacturing optimization. USANA has been doing it for 30+ years. We picked our acquirer based on who filled our exact gaps. Not who offered the most money.

25. Never raise institutional capital if you can avoid it. Total outside capital raised over our entire existence: a few hundred thousand dollars from friends and family in 2020. That's it. No Series A. No Series B. No VC board. No dilution. $0 institutional capital → $103M annual revenue → $260M acquisition. Founders retained virtually all equity going into the exit.

26. A profitable company negotiates from strength. At the time we began exploring acquisition we were already highly profitable. $19M net income on $103M revenue — roughly 19% net margin. We did not need to sell. That single fact changed every conversation we had with potential acquirers. Never sell from desperation. Build something that doesn't need to be sold.

27. The subscription cash flow trap will suffocate you if you're not ready. This is the thing nobody in DTC talks about honestly. Growing fast with a discounted first month means every new customer cohort creates a cash hole. Sign up 10,000 new customers in a month at 50% off and you're immediately deeply cash negative even though your business is fundamentally healthy. Plan for this or it will kill you when you're winning.

28. Pick your acquirer like you pick your co-founder. We met with many potential buyers. We knew USANA was the right partner after our 2nd meeting. Not because of their offer. Because they wanted to learn FROM us not impose their will ON us. Post acquisition my day to day changed by approximately a few phone calls per week. That's it. Culture fit in an acquisition matters more than price.

29. Time is the only thing that can't be negotiated. Compounding only works with patience. The first 6 months of Hiya almost nothing worked. Month 7 we started finding our stride. By year 2 we were growing 50% year over year. By year 4 we were the #1 children's wellness brand in America. You cannot accelerate compounding. You can only show up every single day.

30. Let the scoreboard speak for itself. We never chased press. Never sought validation. Never announced funding rounds because we had none to announce. We just built. $0 raised. $103M revenue. $260M exit. 200,000+ families trusting us with their children's health. Zero VC. Zero regrets.

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[Chris Draper @chrisrdraper]

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