On today’s episode, I sit down with Adam Gillman, Co-Founder of Hiya, a direct-to-consumer children’s vitamin and wellness company built around trust, transparency, and customer education as core operating principles.

We talk through how Hiya approached product development without prior experience in the health and wellness space, including how they thought about formulation tradeoffs, manufacturing partners, and palatability versus nutrition. Adam walks through why the company committed to a 100% subscription model from day one, how retention and customer feedback shaped product iteration over time, and how pricing was set to signal quality while remaining broadly accessible.

We also get into the operational realities of scaling a subscription business: managing cash flow while offering upfront discounts, navigating rising costs during COVID, financing growth while bootstrapped, and deciding when it made sense to expand the product line. Finally, Adam shares how scaling constraints and operational gaps ultimately led Hiya to pursue an acquisition, and what they looked for in a partner.

I can’t believe how much I learned in just 35 minutes with Adam, and as always, I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.