Rohan Oza: The playbook for building billion-dollar consumer brands

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It takes about 10 seconds to find just search Rapid Response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. I've been wanted to do a story about Cartel presence in Elias. We started with the murder investigation of this woman who was tortured and they cut off her fingers and then eventually killed her. And she was killed by the cartel. And it was in the middle of nowhere in Georgia. And then we followed the investigation and she realized that they're everywhere and particularly liked to operate in small town America. If you want to hear how Cartel's hide and plane sight, check out episode 1302 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. I started looking around as he who could help make "Vitamwater Cool" and "Broad" because the product was great, package was great, but didn't have that zeitgeist. Rohan O'Soo's new job was to make "Vitamwater" stand out in a crowded, average landscape. So 2004, the two guys at the height of the game in music were 50 and J. If you know, you know, but if you don't, that's rapper's 50 cent and JZ. But "Vitamwater" was a scrappy young brand. How could they possibly afford a global superstar as their spokesperson? And the vision was to get 50 in the room and how fifth could be the face of the brand. I'm like, I said to fifth, I can't afford you. But I have an idea. I said, we can do an equity game. I'll give you skin in the game if you want to do this. And he's like, I'm in. This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show, Rohan O'Soo. If we were directing the Mount Rushmore of consumer marketing for the 21st century, there is no question that our guests today would have a spot on that monument. The mastermind behind 8 billion plus in exits, the guy who brought 50 cent into "Vitamwater" with an equity deal that changed the way, not only that brand grew, but changed the way celebrities and influencers ultimately play in the world of brand. Recently, the co-founder of Poppy, which had a $2 billion exit to Pepsi, the co-founder of Kavu, which is a consumer brand's investment fund, where also your partner with founders, Rohan, thrilled to welcome you to Masters of Scale. Thank you. It's quite the intro. Really excited to dive in with you on the journey that you've had. We just take us back, like, set the stage. Where do your entrepreneurial roots come from? Probably my family. Originally Indian, born and raised in Africa, educated in England, and now I'm American. So I'm like the sort of immigrant American dream story. My family was all a bunch of businessmen. It's in the blood, it's in the culture. Initially, the thought was I'd join our father's business. Indian families, dad, dad started to, the granddad started to join it. What kind of business was that? And that's the problem. It was in agricultural equipment, hardware, things that I was one terrible act, and two had no interest. And one of the things I push for is be passionate about what you're doing if you're allowed to do that. Sometimes you have to just work to get a paycheck, but if you're blessed to be passionate about it, I think you can be a lot more successful. So I realized that if I did this, I would do okay with my dad, but I would never do really well. And so I kind of transitioned into consumer products, fire engineering, meaning I started manufacturing with Mars M&Ms. And then I went from the Edo Coca-Cola. Why are you manufacturing with Mars M&Ms? Mars has created probably some of the most iconic consumer brands in the world. The power of brand is one thing that I espouse a lot, and Mars is a great place to understand that. Like how have you created such legacy brands that 100 years later are still massive? So why am I not sitting here talking to the head of manufacturing for Mars M&M? Yeah, because they fired me. So I went there and I started manufacturing and I wanted a pivot to marketing. And so I'm like, what do I do? I came to the States, we're in Michigan. And so why business school? Business school is not for everyone, by the way. But for me, it gave me intellectual maturity, which I think what I needed. It allowed me to shape where I wanted to go. And why Coke? Why did you choose to go there? I gravitate towards iconic brands. And that's why I think in my career, I've tried to build iconic brands because my foundational learning other than Mars, the other company that has probably some of the most iconic brands in the world was Coke at the time, right? Why do you think Coke took you and said, we want to make a bet on this guy? This was the Olympics year. So they didn't do a full summer internship. It was like a abbreviated internship. And one of the guys, the guy called Carl Swerd actually, I don't know if becoming one of my mentors there, was like, this guy is high risk high reward. We don't know if he's going to be a brilliant or a train wreck. He's going to be one of the two. He's not middle of the road. They just take the gamble on him. So I was like, the last man picked from Jim Klaus. Did you understand why they would consider you high risk high reward? As I've grown up, I realize I'm high risk high reward. But at the time, I didn't quite understand it. What led to the next step for you there? Well, the next step was I ended up on the brand Sprite, which I loved. And that's where I kind of learned what became one of my Montreje's inference influencer because Sprite had suddenly become the super cool brand we did stuff with Kobe Bryant and Miss Yalea and Tim Duncan. And in the African American community Sprite became super cool because of all the hip hop that we were doing, which by the way I had to learn while it's doing. And I learned from super smart creative people. And then after that, I got under power rate. And I redefined power rate because no one really cared about the brand. It was like a dying brand. And so I was like, sure, what harm can Rohan do? Right. So I put an excellent team together, revamped the whole thing and the brand took off. So what did you do? What did you take from Sprite and innovate to make power aid pop? First of all, packaging and redesign. Your package is the brand you walk around with. So redesigned the brand, the packaging. I brought an influencer strategy to the mix. So we brought in different athletes into the mix because I think at the time, power rate was just picking what Gatoray didn't want. And like, that's not a strategy. Picking up leftovers is a strategy. Go find people you want and dry forward. And so with new product, new packaging, and an influencer strategy, I was able to get the Coke botless who are critical to Coke success to actually get behind the brand again. On the product and packaging side, I sat with Jeff Crowe from Stan Sucks several years ago. And he talked about walking up and down aisles at grocery stores, at Target, at Walmart, et cetera. To look what products look all the same and where's an opportunity to differentiate? What was your process for figuring out how to reimagine the product and the packaging so it would stand out in the marketplace? It's funny that my wife gets very upset when I go to the grocery store because I take me two hours because I spend so much time going up and down looking at product package. And she's like, I just said you have four things. Can you get back here quicker? But yes, I think it depends on the brand of the need. The key thing is you have to stand out. So the product has to pop. There's no one thing. I think it's one, you have to have a vision for what that brand needs to stand for. Then you got to put a strong creative team together. And then the end is a gut feel because if it's just research, then everyone's going to have great packaging. Right. Because you have the same agency you'll show them 10 designs. I think finding the right designer and going with your gut is a big part of what makes packaging cool. On the celebrity side, going back to Powerhead, it's not like celebrity endorsement was a new thing, right? I mean, celebrity subendorsing products long before you and I walk your earth. What did you see as the opportunity to do differently to evolve or to reinvent to make Powerhead stand out with your engagement with the celebrities? I think what I started on a power and I took it forward with me is the importance of engaging celebrities or influencers because celebrities were the influence of that time who felt your brand. Sometimes people just signed on a celeb because, hey, let's pay the money and get it done. But they didn't feel the brand. And I think it's important for them to feel the brand because when they do, they go above and beyond. And when we go forward and I'll talk about other brands, it makes a massive difference, especially on entrepreneurial brands. How do you know when they feel the brand is that gut? I think it's good with them. I think a lot of is the interaction. I sat with 50 on Vitamin Water and Justin Timberlake on buy. We sat with Alex Earl on on Poppy and you can see how they react to the brand. Big difference. You have to sit with because a lot of times if you just go through the agent and you don't connect with the actual artist, you have no idea how they react to your brand. I think this is a really critical piece because whether it's an agency or an agent or a manager or a lawyer, whoever the somebody's working with, part of their job is to protect the talent, right? To protect the time. Like they don't want you to have direct access to them. God forbid you pitched them some something that they wouldn't recommend or they don't get credit or you at this point in your career can get in the room with anyone. But for an entrepreneur who's not known, who doesn't have your track record, how do you advise them how to navigate that maze? It's all about relationships. First, make sure you have a good relationship with the agent because you can't go around the agent. The agent's dead go to person. So there's no going direct to Otis. So foster that direct relationship with the agent. And I've done that a lot over time. And that was number one, right? With 50, it was Chris Lighty. It was Ricky Ormah Justin. Like I established the relationships because then they trust you and they know you're not going to try and do a side swipe pitch on the artist. And then a core part of the final negotiation is I'd like to say with the artist because in the end, they're representing our brand. So all the upfront negotiation, you're never going to get there. But you know, it's almost a house before you write the check, you got to do a final inspection. Okay. And then I've got a great pause. So I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. So I took that same thing and I started going radio DJs. Wow. And so I did partnerships across the country. I hired a whole set of field marketers that were cool, that felt the brand. Young, hip, dynamic, they knew the radio DJs, they knew the hot bartenders, but there was a lot of street marketing 'cause the digital world didn't exist there. And so I started looking around and see who could help make "Vitamwater Cool" and "Broad", 'cause a product was great, packages great, but it didn't have that zeitgeist. So I looked at two guys, it's still about 2004, the two guys at the height of the game in music were 50 and J. Friend of mine, Salfa Sethrovsky actually had 50s number. Or Chris Lighty's, I had neither, I was a nobody. So he got that can cut you to Chris Lighty. And Chris and I bonded. Remember I told you the importance of building relationships? He and I became good friends. And incredible guy, super smart, came from the streets. Hard life, he had a hard life. Guy gets pitched 20 times a day. What broke through? How did you get Chris to pay attention? I actually think the product and package did the work for me in a big way 'cause he saw it and then I painted the vision. And he before I had never done that. He'd been like with sports and re-bark and this and that music, but actually the face of a beverage brand was first time. Here's a problem though. I said to fifth, I can't afford you. But I have an idea. I'll give you a skin in the game if you wanted to do this. That quickly shocked. He's a very smart individual. So he understands business called. And he knew what he was capable of more than I did. Because I had a number in my mind of what I thought 50 could make. And I think he made 10 times that. Because I also didn't think the company would sell for $4 billion and fifth got fully behind it. And so that was a big part of-- and he owned it. And funny, when he actually met Darrys the founder, Darrys walked up to him and said, by the way, I'm the real founder of Vydenwald. And 50 cracked up. Because fifth basically just put on his back and said, I'm Vydenwald. He basically re-founded it. Yeah. But it was fine. It lifted the brand. Still ahead, more with Rohan Oza on how he turned his beverage brand playbook into multiple massive exits. The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams. They remove bottlenecks. And they eliminate single points of failure. 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As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and much more on our YouTube channel. And be sure to check out the show notes for a link to our newsletter. The vitamin water deal with 50 cent fueled a wildly successful trajectory for the brand's parent company. It led to a $4.1 billion exit to Coca-Cola in 2007. But Rohan knew that working inside a giant company like Coke was not the right place for him. Instead, he took his winning playbook and built something new. It's called a Kavu Consumer Partners and Kavu blends traditional investing with hands-on help for brands. The result? Dozens of success stories for health-conscious companies like Poppy, once upon a farm, Noom, the farmer's dog, the list of companies that you know well goes on and on. Rohan credits his co-founder for seeing the potential to make Kavu something different. My business partner, Brett, saw it. He was a hedge fund guy. He wanted a pivot into private equity. And he's like, but I've got to do it differently. 'Cause he's a hedge fund guy. So hedge fund guy's always won an edge, right? What's the edge? And in his opinion, like, him raising a fund to deploy is no edge. He saw what I was doing. And he's like, ooh, this is a vision. And so he approached me and said, look, let's go create a fund where we can provide real value ad to companies we invest in. So we create a Kavu. Kavu stands for ceiling and visibility unlimited. It's a flying term, I never knew that. But what it means that we help entrepreneurs guide, assuming they're flying, they're flying their brands through turbulent times to clear skies, right? So when you get them a plane and a pilot say, it's Kavu, great, that's gonna be a nice flight. So we create a Kavu against his vision, which was how do we leverage what you and Steve have been doing and now do it in a much bigger scale? So that's why I pivoted 'cause before I was writing much smaller checks, now as a fund, we can really go disrupt the landscape. And the mission for Kavu was like, okay, it's to democratize better living for all humans and their families. That was a scenario. - Is it founders come and are pitching you and you fall in love with the founder, you fall in love with the idea, you fall in love with both? What's your process for choosing where you're going to invest your money in your time? - Unfortunately for me, no one ever just walks at the door and is, hey guys, I'm here, I'm brilliant. To find the best, you really have to go find. It's a hunt. So we have a great team that goes out there and there's a hunt. And so we gotta find the best brands and then you bond with the founders. It's their company, we're not running it, let's be clear. We just become the wingman or wing woman to them on their branding journey. So, and by the way, think of us, Swiss Army knife, right? I don't have to fix everything on your brand. It's like, you pick. You want packaging? I got you. influencer, Amazon, DTC, billboards. Like we've got all these things in the mix where we can offer you either great pricing, great relationships, we do it ourselves, it really varies. And so they love it because they're like, oh, I'm getting money. Oh, and you guys can help me with the brand and brand is king. Like brand is king. If you don't have that brand mode, what do you have? - Yeah, right. - I think part of it's also having a real combo of the founders, are they willing to work together? Again, not my show, they're show. And they should run at 80%, 90%. But they should be willing to maybe work a little bit on the stuff that we can provide value on. And I think 90% of the time the founders have. - So let's use poppy as an example here. How does poppy become poppy in your world? - So I mean, step back a little bit. So I went on a shark tank. So I was a shark and shark tank. And the funny thing is I did that as a pay at Ford because I'm blessed, I'm living the American dream, right? I'm an immigrant, I've come to America, I'm an American now, I've been very successful. And my personal belief, I don't care what side of the aisle you sit on, this is the greatest country in the world of being entrepreneur, hands down. Almost nowhere else on earth can you create products from scratch and in five years be worth two billion, three billion, five billion. I mean, I think it's in arguable. It is not a political statement. It is the environment for entrepreneurs in the US, all the conditions for it are better than anywhere in the world and there are literally thousands of examples to put that up. - And we're blessed, I mean, for me, I wake up every day, I'm like, I'm blessed to have been able to do this. So I go on a shark tank, pay at Ford. And sometimes you don't know, but when you do that, it actually got paid back to me, which is crazy. So I'm sitting there and I had always had this vision because understand, I started my crazy soda guy. I love soda, but I stopped drinking it. Because you know, I'm like, do I have sugar, I don't want the artificial sweeteners and I always wanted a soda that I could just feel good about. So every deal on shark tank I lost money, basically. And then this one deal comes on, I'm like, here we go again, another beverage. It's called Mother Beverage. First of all, I don't like the name. It's a terrible package. It's in a glass bottle, which is no one can carry around 'cause it breaks and no dice. But the entrepreneur has seemed cool. Great vibe, good looking couple, like straight out of central casting. - That's been a white founder, that's a white founder. She's like seven months pregnant. I'm like, that's commitment. You know, she's on a show, she's about to give birth. So they make the pitch. So I like the founders of mother. I tried the product, I like to. And the one I like the most was the orange one. It's still my favorite today. And the reason for me, it was a cross between Fanta and Orangeyna. I'm like, oh my God, those are two drinks that I drank as a kid. I can now drink it every day and not feel bad. It's got fiber, it's got low sugar, natural ingredients. They zero guilt. It's what I call permissible guilt. It's completely permissible. It's all good. And so I said, I'm in. But what am I in for? I'm in for a brand that has no scalability in a package that's terrible. So, and I give, you know, Alison, Stephen, a lot of credit. I said, guys, we're shutting the company down and we are going to create a new company together. And I think that's a lot of faith in that around. Yeah, that's scary moments for me. And the company wasn't big, but for them, there's still a lot of money, obviously. And so that trust, I give them that. So basically, Alison, Stephen, me and Stevie sat down and with Carv, who's backing, basically co-founded Poppy. Well, and so we got a bunch of packages and designs. And to be fair, I actually picked a different package to this. It was very similar, but it was a different, it was reverse knockout. The name was Stevie. The package we did together. And I went in as a shock because I had to, I have to invest myself. And then I spoke with Brett and he said, look, if you're doing a beverage, Carv, who's in. So we'll back it. And so as a team, we co-founded Poppy, which is like, it's a unique and different scenario, right? So you take the original founders who had a great idea and product. I brought the vision, which was modern soda. Stevie designs the package and the marketing DNA and Carv, who funds it. And even with great product, phenomenal packaging, capital behind it, and a category that is basically being invented here. You're effectively inventing a new category. And as someone who's 17 years, called Turkey, I mean, I haven't had a Coca-Cola in that long. I loved Coca-Cola. I deeply appreciate Poppy in the market. It doesn't just happen. So what are the inflection points that they get Poppy to wear your ultimately selling it? It's a practically $2 billion. The world has changed, right? It's all very digital. So Allison, Stevie, the team all went into full digital mode. And I think that was exacerbated by the fact we launched Poppy in March of 2020. I can't remember what was happening in March of 2020. Yeah, something went wrong. There was a big thing. Two weeks later, Rachel has called me and said, "Sorry, we're not carrying you, the world's shut down." Yeah. So suddenly we're pivoting and are forced to pivot. So we've got the influenza strategy. We become digital first, Amazon only, and take the old school influenza strategy and make it modern. That was an amazing team that pulled that together. So immediately there was a zeitgeist on the brand. Rohan, I remember Poppy popping in part because you had a founder who made a video that took off. But it feels like there was a really intentional, almost laddered, influencer strategy here. How did that work? How did you approach digital and social in that COVID era as Poppy was launching? Because of COVID, we had to go digital first. And it forced us to become a modern digital marketing company off the bat. And so the first thing that happened was Allison created a TikTok that went viral. So immediately you got a founder who was creating a TikTok that goes viral. You got buzz off it. Then we have an incredible team. That we hired who are all young, dynamic women that live the brand. So we're not using an agency, we're not going external, we're doing it all within. So Stevie's right at the DNA. You've got an incredible team around that that's actually executing it. And what happened is that resulted in an incredible community. And Allison, the rest of the team all worked on building this incredible Poppy community, which existed today, by the way. And I think then it started laddering up to the point that big names like Haley Bieber and Kylie Jenner, all like we're just drinking the product. They were even being paid. They were walking around paparazzi snapping them with the product. Correct. And they love it. And so that's where we went for the call of the mega influencer. And to be fair, she took a risk on us, we took risk on her. But Alex saw the vision. Alex saw the vision really early. Stevie, Allison, team, all loved Alex. In fact, to be fair, I was being educated on Alex at the time. So a contact rate of that. But she won the first influencers that did an equity strategy. The same way 50 had done it as an artist back in the day on vitamin water. And that's what changed the game. And now every influencer wants an equity plan. The same way that artists and celebs wanted it back in the day. There's a point at which if you are out of the demo or out of the core of what the product is marketing to, we just have to hire the right team and trust them. Is that part of me? I was cool 20 years ago. I'm not cool now. So I can see cool. But someone else got to create the cool. The other question that comes up a lot with consumer brand founders is, do I have to be the influencer? Do I have to be the face of the brand? When you're looking at a brand to invest in for Kavu and partner with founders, is that part of the inquiry for you? It varies like in some brands like in Buy, for example, the face of brand became Justin Timberlake. Not every find it wants to be the face of brand. They want to be recognized and get credit, obviously, and as they should for, you know, the brand they create. But like in in Poppy's case, Allison was front center as well, right? There were a bunch of influencers, but she was the founding influencer face on the brand. So it works in some circumstances. It doesn't. In this case, it did like invite a cocoa, Michael's an incredible operator, Mike Kerbin, but Madonna was a face of the brand, you know, and I think he recognized Madonna's right about a face than he was, you know, but he's most of us would recognize that. But he's a brilliant operator. I mean, he's, you know, he's got a $3 billion brand plus now. So before I have to let you go, that's some or is one of a set of venture firms known for an anti portfolio? Is there one that got away? Is there one that you had a shot at investing in that you passed on? Where you go? F me. I can't believe we didn't do that one. Probably a couple. One was the the product of the ordinary. Sure. It's a great product. Yep. I love the founder, Shane Reston, Peace, we're guy. He and I bonded. It was our first fund. It was a big check. And he was a hot, we fare high risk high reward guy. Yeah. And I think we got two corporate. He got two nervous. Because we're like, if this doesn't work, we're out of the game. Yeah. Right? Like because it was a third of the fund. You had to be safer at that stage. Yeah. And that was that went on to self an author to billion. That would have that fund alone or to triple off that one deal. Yeah. Another one with a great product. Great. And the other one was probably we had a deal on the table. It was for a brand called on. Of the shoe company? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And a little bit broader than our spectrum, but it was adjacent to what we're doing. And we had a deal ready to go. And founders were to sign. And that day they announced Roger Federer. Oh, I was going to ask if it was before after Federer and that changed it. Literally every single investor reupped. We were blocked out. Wow. And that would have been about a six, seven bagger on a big check. You referenced several mentors along the way. Was there a moment where one of them gave you a piece of advice or gave you an insight into the world, the market, you personally, that is still with you today? I don't think there was one piece. I think it's an amalgamation of me learning by watching. And so I looked at a lot of guys and how they did it and what they built into this day, right? Like whether it's from Coke when I learned from a Darrell carbon and how to do cool marketing or learning from MicroPoli at Advising Water, how to create the right corporate culture. Or even today from a Chris Hall. Like, how do you actually operate and run a tight ship? Like, I'm constantly learning. So I think for me, you should never feel like you know it. You should always be a student. That's actually a phrase I got from Daria. So it's like always be a student of the industry because it's a continual learning exercise. And as the world evolves, you have to keep learning. Well, I am grateful to be a student sitting with you. Thank you. I hope we can have you back on to dive deeper into a lot of this. But awesome, having a master's scale. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks again to Rohan. I was up for joining us. It is inspiring to see how Rohan is still evolving. His brand building playbook to super charge better for you products in nearly every grocery aisle. And if you want to hear more about Poppy's scale journey, be sure to check out the master's scale episode we did with its other co-founders, Allison and Steven Elsworth. We'll put a link in the show notes. I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening. Master's of scale is a weight. 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