Helmi Ben Bechir

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.

Zuck’s Rule: The brand that can rationally pay the most for a customer will acquire the customer. Meta is an auction. The highest rational bidder wins. Everything else (creative, media buying, landing pages) matters, but those are multipliers. The real ceiling and enabler is structural. Some brands are simply built to pay more for the exact same customer. Start with gross margins. If Brand A operates at 50% gross margin and Brand B operates at 65%, the math is straightforward. On a $100 AOV, Brand A can afford to spend $50 to breakeven. Brand B can afford $65. That $15 makes all the difference in an auction. Meta wants that $15. Then there’s LTV. If one brand generates an incremental $50 over the first six months and another generates $100, the second brand can justify a meaningfully higher upfront CAC. Short-term ROAS becomes less important when downstream cash flow is stronger and more predictable. The higher LTV brand is willing to spend more than the lower LTV brand, and Meta will gladly let them spend more. Omnichannel is where this really separates winners from everyone else. A brand that only sells DTC has to make its DTC unit economics work in isolation, or else there business doesn't work. A brand that sells DTC, Amazon, and Target benefits from halo effects. Spend on Meta and acquire some customers directly on your DTC, some customers on Amazon, and some customers in retail. The omnichannel brand can spend more to acquire the DTC customer because they know those dollars will also go to work on other channels. And because they are willing to spend more, they will acquire that DTC customer. Here is where it get virtuous. Omnichannel brands can structurally afford to pay more for customers and therefore can scale spend more on Meta. Scaling on Meta drives more awareness and halo effect than then results in more velocity on Amazon and in retail. That velocity in Amazon and retail generates profits. Those profits can then be reinvested back into scaling Meta. And so on an so forth... This is why many of the newer brands winning on DTC are also winning in retail. They understand Zuck's rule. Strong margins, high LTV, and broad distribution structurally raise the amount they can pay to acquire a customer. That spend then reinforces every other channel. The flywheel...flies. If you understand Zuck's Rule, scaling on Meta starts to make sense. If you don’t, you’ll keep tweaking creatives and questioning your media buyer, even though the real constraint is structural. Zuck doesn’t reward the most beautiful brand. He rewards the brand that can pay him the most.

If I had to start a new account from zero: Don't use highest volume to "warm it up." Use bid caps from Day 1. But inflate the bids (not the budget). Start at 1.5-2x target CPA. Collect data. Lower bid toward target as account learns. You get bid cap protection while feeding the algorithm data. Best of both worlds.

Introducing Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work. Cowork lets you complete non-technical tasks much like how developers use Claude Code.