Marc Washington (Supergut) - Why better health starts with the gut, What is the gut microbiome and His innovation within CPG

The Consumer VC: Venture Capital I B2C Startups I Commerce | Early-Stage Investing I Brands

Our guest today is Marc Washington, Founder & CEO of Supergut. Supergut is the world's only clinically validated food that nourishes the gut microbiome and delivers meaningful results across gut health, blood sugar levels, wellbeing, sleep, weight management and other categories of overall health. I’ve personally been very impressed with their products. We discuss Marc’s gut health journey and the founding of Supergut, how the microbiome affects gut health, how he thought about creating real IP and product differentiation, his approach to marketing, positioning, sales channels and who the intended consumer of Supergut’s products is, and much more.

Some of the questions I ask:

1. What got you interested in gut health and can you describe why it’s important to have a healthy gut and how to improve it? Why are microbiomes so important and why was that your focus area?
2. How does the gut microbiome affect gut health, blood sugar levels, wellbeing, weight management, and your overall health?
3. Can you provide us with deeper insight into the science behind Supergut and the DNA sequencing?
4. What was the insight and science that led to Supergut? What was missing from the market? What did consumers not understand?
5. How did you think about formulation. Why did you decide to do both bars and powders/shakes? Which came first?
6. Once you had these products, how did you approach distribution and finding your early adopters? Consumer education?
7. What was your sales channel strategy?
8. How did you think about fundraising and finding the right partner?
9. How did you raise your seed round and what has it been like working with The Production Board? What’s it like with only one investor?
10. How do you think about differentiated brand building online? How do you position yourself against other gut health / microbiome focused products and better for you products in general? There’s lots of excitement for the better for you movement and lots of products out there, but probably only a few that are going to become household names. Seems like there’s a lot of buzz about these types of products that better serve you better.
11. It’s really hard to do DTC subscription well. Is the idea to become a large DTC focused subscription company like an Athletic Greens and hope to educate and develop new habits for consumers or is it to become a wholesale brand and cross over into Walmarts and Targets?

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