Brian Sugar

New @Sugar_Capital office! The Presidio is such a privilege to work in, so beautiful. 💙

@ArjunShukl95550 @mengotomars @grok look at the first tweet where i show that i had to ask mars men multiple times to unsubscribe, is that illegal?

@briansugar @mengotomars Isn’t this illegal

persistence and grit... ...to cancel @mengotomars

@evaneugenescott @mengotomars i heard they had a monster biz and i was curious

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-…

@drewfallon12 Unbelievable, intergalactic execution. Oh and yes, there are venture returns in CPG.

UNILEVER TO ACQUIRE GRUNS FOR UNDISCLOSED SUM IN HUGE VMS SPLASH Grüns, one of the best stories in CPG of the last decade, has been punctuated with a massive deal to Unilever. The VMS M&A wave is in the early innings! Financial terms weren't disclosed, but given Gruns' disclosed revenue, growth rate, and Unilever's annual stated M&A budget - it was definitely a big one. The Numbers  - Founded: August 2023 by Chad Janis (confirmed a chad)  - $100M ARR: May 2025 (month 21)  - $300M ARR: August 2025 (month 24)  - Last valuation: $500M (April 2025 funding round led by Headline)  - Profitable within 14 months of launch Price undisclosed, but the $500M valuation set the floor 12 months ago. With $300M+ ARR at the time of deal announcement, rough benchmarks: - Huel acquired by Danone for ~3.4x revenue - 2026 - Liquid I.V. / Unilever - ~2.6x revenue - 2020  - Dr. Squatch / Unilever ~3x revenue - 2025 - poppi // PepsiCo ~3x revenue - 2025 Unilever has been making an all in effort into personal care and wellness, with brands like Liquid I.V. & Nutrafol set to pass $1B in sales, UL is putting together a formidable wellness portfolio. Plus, they spent $1.5B on Dr. Squatch last year. Early investors include Sugar Capital, Vanterra Capital, and more.

Yes, there are venture returns in CPG.

Congrats to @chadjanis, the entire Grüns team, and our fellow investors. flawless execution. unbelievable, intergalactic well done!

@KivaDickinson @chadjanis @SelvaVentures 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:

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:

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:

@damienghader @Lovable Cheat sheet

FCK it. Here's all the sauce. After shipping 100+ apps with @Lovable — I made the ULTIMATE Design Cheat Sheet. Every prompt. Every design system pattern. Every cloud config + infra setup. Every component standard + best practice we actually use to achieve world-class UI. All in one doc. Follow + comment "Cheat Sheet" and I'll DM it to you.

@edsuh 💯

OH from a relatively large LP: "if I see a VC fund deck with the terms gross MOIC or deal MOIC, it's an instant pass. I want to see 3 numbers in large bold font on the first page: TVPI, DPI, IRR (all on a net basis)."

@drewfallon12 Agreed

Linkedin has become a lot more powerful than X. I've gone from 0-15k followers after starting to post on LI really starting in january, a year ago activity was zero and so were followers Most of our business comes from there now Sry to anyone I disagreed with on this before

Full essay on why this deal matters for every DTC founder stuck in "too big for acquisition, too small for IPO" purgatory:

Mammoth Brands just bought Coterie for $650M+. After e.l.f. bought Rhode for $1.3B earlier this year, that makes two mega DTC acquisitions in twelve months. Once is luck. Twice is a pattern.