Shannon Davenport is the Founder & CEO of Esker Beauty, a clean, plant-based bodycare brand she launched in 2018 after 12 years as a trend forecaster for global brands including L'Oréal, Unilever, and Beiersdorf. She bootstrapped Esker to approximately $1M in revenue before raising outside capital, building a premium retail presence at Bergdorf Goodman, Net-a-Porter, Credo Beauty, and Anthropologie, and creating breakout products like the Body Plane — a modern reinterpretation of an ancient Roman strigil that went viral and became a defining brand moment.

🔧 Category Creation Without Fear Marketing — Framework for building consumer demand in a category people don't yet know they need

📊 Trend Intelligence as Founder Fuel — Approach to translating consumer insight into conviction when your own capital is at stake

🤝 Premium Retail Channel Strategy — Framework for balancing DTC ownership with strategic retail partnerships for positioning and revenue

⚙️ Counterintuitive DTC Growth Levers — How Esker cut ad spend by 70% during BFCM and dramatically increased net profit and margin

📈 Product Development as Brand Building — Process for creating products that expand category meaning, not just SKU count

🎯 Bootstrap-to-Raise Decision Framework — How to determine when to stay lean versus when outside capital actually accelerates the mission

Whether you're building in an overlooked category or navigating the DTC-to-retail transition, Shannon's frameworks will help you build with conviction, stay capital-efficient, and create a brand that earns its place at premium retail.

Perfect for: Clean beauty founders, wellness brand operators, DTC-to-retail builders, bootstrapped founders considering a raise

Guest: Shannon Davenport — Founder & CEO, Esker Beauty
Host: Samantha Rose — Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce

This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Caryn Wasser has spent nearly seven years building Little Spoon into the largest direct-to-consumer kids' food brand in the U.S. — scaling from a two-person startup to $150M+ in net revenue across 11 product categories, and recently engineering what Target called its largest food and beverage launch of all time: 23 products across six aisles in 1,800+ stores. Named a Breakout Brand Leader by Ad Age in 2023, she's built brand-led growth without legacy media budgets — using community, collaborations, and consumer truth as her core growth infrastructure.

🔧 Brand-Led Growth Architecture — Framework for making brand a core revenue driver, not a marketing halo

📊 DTC-to-Retail Brand Transition — Approach to maintaining brand intimacy and identity when moving from controlled e-commerce to national retail shelves

🤝 Community as Growth Infrastructure — Process for building two-way customer relationships that compound as a business asset over time

⚙️ High-Impact Campaign Construction — Method for building creative briefs and influencer strategies that generate outsized ROI without legacy media budgets

📈 Cross-Functional Insight Compounding — Framework for eliminating organizational silos so community signals, paid performance, and creative teams reinforce each other

🎯 Brand Partnership Evaluation — Strategy for choosing collaborations that drive measurable acquisition and attachment, not just awareness

Whether you're building brand from scratch at an early-stage startup or navigating the DTC-to-retail transition, Caryn's frameworks will help you make brand the engine that drives real, sustainable business growth.

Perfect for: DTC founders transitioning to retail, consumer brand operators, brand and marketing leaders, challenger brand builders

Guest: Caryn Wasser — Chief Brand Officer, Little Spoon Host: Samantha Rose — Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce

This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

🍦 DANIEL GOETZ // GOODPOP FOUNDER & CEO 

Daniel Goetz built GoodPop from a $3,500 investment and a borrowed kitchen at UT Austin into one of the U.S.'s top-performing better-for-you frozen novelty brands — generating over $63 million in gross sales across 10,000+ retail locations including Costco, Walmart, and Whole Foods. In 15 years, he has never taken outside funding, built custom manufacturing equipment when existing lines couldn't handle real fruit, and discontinued an entire product line rather than add a gram of sugar.

🔧 Mission-Preserving Scale Framework — How to grow a values-driven brand without trading away the standards that made it worth building

📊 Bootstrapped Growth Architecture — Approach to generating creative financial bridges and making every decision count when it's your own money on the line

🤝 Frozen Category Distribution Management — Process for navigating the handoffs from self-distribution to regional to national retail without losing product quality or retailer trust

⚙️ Values-Based Product Decision Making — Framework for knowing when to discontinue versus pivot, and how to protect ingredient standards under commercial pressure

📈 Competing Against Giants on Mission — Strategy for winning shelf space and buyer relationships at major retailers when you're up against massive legacy players

🎯 Strategic Licensing & Partnership Evaluation — Framework for identifying growth partnerships that extend the brand rather than dilute it

Whether you're bootstrapping in a category dominated by legacy players or protecting a mission under commercial pressure, Daniel's frameworks will help you build a brand with genuine durability — without compromising the thing that makes it matter.

Perfect for: Bootstrapped CPG founders, better-for-you brand operators, founders navigating retail scale, mission-driven consumer brand builders

Guest: Daniel Goetz — Founder & CEO, GoodPop 

Host: Samantha Rose — Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce

This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Hudson Davis-Ross has spent nearly two decades building and scaling consumer brands, culminating in Plant People — the practitioner-grade supplement brand now ranking as the #1 seller at Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Erewhon. After co-founding RISE Brewing Co., running CROSBY Advisory, and serving on the founding team at ALOHA, Hudson bootstrapped Plant People through a major category pivot, a pandemic that wiped out 70% of revenue, and into approximately 117% year-over-year gross revenue growth from 2023 to 2024 — now backed by strategic investor Manna Tree.

🔧 Category Pivot Framework — Decision-making process for adapting when external forces, not execution, stall your business

📊 Survival Mode Operations — How to triage a business mid-crisis: what to cut, what to protect, what to rebuild

🤝 Omnichannel Profitability — Approach to managing unit economics and margin across DTC, Amazon, and major retail simultaneously

⚙️ Consumer Education at Scale — Translating clinical credibility into shelf-ready brand positioning in a noisy supplement aisle

📈 Category Defense Strategy — How to protect brand position as a trend you helped create becomes overcrowded

🎯 Strategic Capital Selection — Framework for evaluating investors after years of bootstrapping, and what "right fit" actually means at growth stage

Whether you're navigating a regulatory headwind, rebuilding after a setback, or managing the complexity of going omnichannel while staying profitable, Hudson's frameworks offer a grounded, experience-tested playbook for founders building in the wellness and functional food space.

Perfect for: Wellness brand founders, functional food entrepreneurs, omnichannel CPG operators, bootstrapped founders approaching their first raise

Guest: Hudson Davis-Ross — Co-Founder & CEO, Plant People Host: Samantha Rose — Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce

This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Nakul Kapoor left a career at the International Monetary Fund to build Lazy Food Co., a brand making authentic Italian one-pot pasta meals that are gluten-free, high-protein, and ready in under 20 minutes. Now available nationwide at Whole Foods Market and on Amazon, Lazy Food Co. was named to Whole Foods' Top 10 Food Trends for 2024 alongside some of the most talked-about names in modern food.

🔧 Retail Entry Framework — Approach to getting into premium retailers without a conventional playbook

📊 Positioning at Intersection — Strategy for leading with culinary identity while competing in the better-for-you convenience space

🤝 Buyer Relationship Building — Method for developing retail partnerships when you're early stage and resource-constrained

⚙️ SKU Complexity Management — Framework for evaluating product line decisions when you're operating with a small team

📈 Design as Competitive Advantage — Approach to packaging investment and brand-building at early scale

🎯 Supply Chain Constraint Navigation — Systems for managing demand surges and production limits without losing retail momentum

Whether you're building in the better-for-you food space or trying to crack premium retail distribution, Nakul's frameworks will help you think about positioning, buyer conversations, and the operations that hold it all together.

Perfect for: Food & beverage founders, better-for-you CPG operators, early-stage retail brands, founders navigating DTC-to-retail transitions

Guest: Nakul Kapoor — Co-founder & CEO, Lazy Food Co.
Host: Samantha Rose — Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce

This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Description

Ali Kriegsman built Bulletin, the B2B wholesale marketplace, from a side-hustle newsletter at age 24 to a full-scale platform connecting 3,000 independent brands with over 26,000 retailers — before selling to Emerald Holding for roughly $10 million in 2022. Since then, she's channeled that builder's lens into consulting for early- to mid-stage consumer and DTC brands, advising on ShopMy strategy and go-to-market, writing her Substack New Motives, and publishing two books: the non-fiction How to Build a Goddamn Empire and her debut novel The Raise — a psychological thriller about a founder who has to take over after her co-founder mysteriously dies mid-fundraise.

🔧 Neglected Vertical Identification — How Ali spotted what VC-backed startups had overlooked in wholesale and B2B, and how that shaped the decision to sell to Emerald

📊 Consumer Brand Go-to-Market as Book Launch — The unconventional, DTC-style strategy behind self-publishing The Raise, and why she treated it like a product drop rather than a traditional book release

🤝 ShopMy for CPG Founders — Who should and shouldn't be on the platform, what founders consistently get wrong, and what good looks like before engaging a consultant

⚙️ Traction Without Structural Advantages — What founders without networks or runway actually need to know about getting early traction in today's market

📈 Founder-to-Consultant Identity Shift — The mental and operational transition from being the figurehead to supporting other founders behind the scenes — and whether she'd build again

🎯 Cross-Portfolio Operator Insights — The most common mistakes CPG founders are making right now, spotted across multiple brands simultaneously

Whether you're preparing for an exit, figuring out how to grow without paid ads, or navigating what comes after the founder chapter — Ali's frameworks will help you operate with more clarity and less noise.

Perfect for: DTC founders, early-stage CPG operators, brand consultants, founders considering an exit

Guest: Ali Kriegsman — Exited Founder (Bulletin) | Author | Consultant

Host: Samantha Rose — Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce

This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Brian Rose is Co-founder of Endless Commerce, an AI-powered commerceOS serving consumer brands scaling from $1M to $500M+ in revenue. With nearly a decade at BlueMountain Capital as a Consumer & Retail Investment Analyst, Brian brings a unique perspective combining investment analysis, brand operations as CFO of GIR (sold to Pattern Brands in 2021), and infrastructure building through Mvnifest’s full-stack brand accelerator.

🔧 Investment-to-Operations Translation - Framework for understanding what sophisticated investors miss when evaluating consumer brands versus what actually breaks operationally

📊 Revenue Milestone System Rebuilds - Approach to identifying operational breaking points at different growth stages and rebuilding infrastructure proactively

🤝 Multi-Brand Pattern Recognition - Process for extracting operational patterns across dozens of brands to inform infrastructure design

⚙️ White Space Product Strategy - Method for building between Excel and enterprise systems for the overlooked mid-market segment

📈 Complex Channel Integration - Framework for managing operational requirements across 40+ channels without overwhelming operators

🎯 AI Trust Architecture - Approach to building AI-powered forecasting and recommendations that operators can understand and trust

Whether you’re evaluating operational investments, building infrastructure for scaling brands, or navigating multi-channel complexity, Brian’s frameworks will help you understand what actually breaks in consumer operations and how to build systems that scale.

Perfect for: Operations leaders, infrastructure builders, consumer brand CFOs, multi-channel operators, commerce platform founders

Guest: Brian Rose - Co-founder, Endless Commerce

Host: Samantha Rose - Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce

This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Jake Kouns has built Dead Meat Society into a mission-driven grilling community after founding and scaling Risk Based Security, a cybersecurity company acquired by Flashpoint in 2022. Transitioning from B2B SaaS to consumer products, he's launched a grilling tools brand with a social purpose - fighting the loneliness epidemic by bringing people together around flame, family, and community. Dead Meat Society combines DTC commerce, local chapters, charitable giving, and community engagement to build something bigger than just grilling gear.

🔧 Tech-to-CPG Transition Framework - Approach to translating B2B operational principles to consumer brand operations

📊 Mission-Product Balance Strategy - Process for balancing SKU development with community building investments

🤝 Custom Manufacturing Navigation - Framework for finding co-manufacturers for unique branded products as a first-time CPG founder

⚙️ Multi-Channel Community Operations - Systems for managing DTC, local chapters, content, and community engagement simultaneously

📈 Purpose-Driven Commerce Model - Method for operationalizing social mission alongside profitability in early-stage scaling

🎯 Distributed Community Governance - Strategy for maintaining brand consistency and authenticity across local chapters

Whether you're pivoting from another industry into consumer products or building mission-driven brands that prioritize community, Jake's frameworks will help you operationalize purpose, manage complex multi-channel models, and scale community without losing authenticity.

Perfect for: Tech founders entering CPG, mission-driven brand builders, community-first entrepreneurs, lifestyle brand operators

Guest: Jake Kouns - Founder & Chief Grilling Officer, Dead Meat Society
Host: Samantha Rose - Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce

This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Emily Groden has built Evergreen into one of America's fastest-growing frozen breakfast brands, scaling from a household Vitamix to $9.3 million in retail sales across 8,000+ stores. A Harvard Law graduate who cold-emailed her way from corporate law to General Counsel at three-Michelin-star Alinea, she launched Evergreen in 2020 with zero CPG experience. Now her fruit-and-vegetable-packed frozen waffles are stocked at Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, and Kroger nationwide, with 2025 revenue projected to more than double to $26 million.

🔧 Status Quo Disruption Framework - Method for applying challenger mindset from high-end hospitality to mass-market CPG operations

📊 Manufacturing Insourcing Decision Matrix - Process for evaluating when to build your own facility versus continuing co-man search during scaling

🤝 Customer Feedback Integration - Approach to using trade show insights to drive complete rebrands that increase sales 50% overnight

⚙️ Multi-Line Portfolio Management - Framework for expanding product lines to serve different customer segments while maintaining operational focus

📈 Hyperscale Distribution Strategy - System for managing 600 to 8,000 retail doors in two years without breaking operations

🎯 Frozen Category Unit Economics - Methods for structuring pricing and efficiencies to compete against legacy players in capital-intensive categories

Whether you're launching in the frozen aisle or scaling clean-label products, Emily's frameworks will help you challenge category assumptions, make strategic manufacturing decisions, and execute operational infrastructure for hypergrowth.

Perfect for: Frozen food entrepreneurs, clean-label brand founders, lawyer-to-founder transitions, category disruptors

Guest: Emily Groden - Founder & CEO, Evergreen
Host: Samantha Rose - Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce

This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Jamie Norwood has built Winx Health into a profitable women's health brand revolutionizing sexual and vaginal wellness. Since launching in 2019, she's scaled from a single DTC pregnancy test to a nationwide presence in over 7,000 Walgreens stores, achieved profitability in early 2024 by eliminating paid marketing entirely, and built Real Talk - an educational platform with 900+ medically-reviewed articles that organically drives nearly 20% of sales. With approximately $8 million raised, celebrity investor Kerry Washington, and a TIME Best Invention award for their UTI Test & Treat kit, Winx is redefining accessible women's health care.

🔧 Pain Point Validation Framework - Process for testing whether personal frustrations represent viable market opportunities versus just individual annoyances

📊 Strategic Product Portfolio Development - Approach to expanding product lines in complex health categories while maintaining operational simplicity

🤝 Education-as-Marketing Model - System for building profitable businesses through free educational content instead of paid customer acquisition

⚙️ Regulatory Retail Navigation - Framework for getting novel diagnostic health products into major retail chains without obvious shelf placement

📈 Physical-Digital Retail Integration - Strategy for leveraging brick-and-mortar presence to win on delivery platforms against legacy competitors

🎯 Brand Identity Evolution Management - Methodology for executing major rebrands without disrupting operations or customer relationships

Whether you're building mission-driven health brands or navigating complex retail categories, Jamie's frameworks will help you validate opportunities, scale through education, and balance advocacy with sustainable business growth.

Perfect for: Health and wellness founders, DTC-to-retail operators, mission-driven consumer brands, regulatory-heavy CPG entrepreneurs

Guest: Jamie Norwood - Co-founder & CEO, Winx Health
Host: Samantha Rose - Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce

This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.