How Moiz Ali Made $100 MILLION Selling Deodorant

October 1st, 2017 was the first month we paid for our own office space. And it was like $8,000 a month. It was so cheap. I put a, like, you know, they were like, it costs $250 to put your sign on, to put your name on the door. I was like, $250? Are you fucking crazy? I took out a white sheet of paper, a black Sharpie. I wrote Native. I taped it to the door and that was it. And I was like, great. That cost me less than a penny.

Wow.

And then I remember after the acquisition, The P&G folks came for the first time to our office because we'd always met offsite. They came to our office and they're like, the name is written outside with a Sharpie. And I was like, yeah, that's our— that's how we operate here. We're super frugal. We put money where it matters, which is into the brand and into marketing. You know, we don't have a lot of ego. We're not going to pay that $250. I don't give a shit if this is owned by P&G or if it's owned by You know, Jeff Bezos, that sign stays here. And they loved it. You know, it was fantastic. They're like, this is such a great attitude.

All right, folks, we got it. We got a heater for you today. I am— when I saw this on the calendar, this was really— gotta tell you, it's probably the best yet to date. And so I'm really excited to introduce you to all The deodorant kingpin, the investor connoisseur, Moiz Ali. Moiz, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me. Super excited to be here.

Yeah, your 30th episode. It's incredible how these have just been flying through. And then as the episodes escalate, so do the quality of guests. So I'm so happy that we have you on. So I am in Austin as always in the Marketing HQ. Where does this podcast find you today, Moiz?

I'm in New York City right now.

Oh, beautiful, beautiful. So much energy in that city. I love that city. So you're, you're all over the place though, because you went to the University of Florida, so south, and then you went to Harvard Law, correct?

That's right. Then I've lived in New York, San Francisco, LA, Dallas, Austin, Miami during the pandemic. So I've really been bopping around to quite a few places. Oh, wow.

What's been your favorite? Obviously the city, or?

I love New York City. I think the pandemic really allowed me to spend a lot of time with my family and my parents, which You know, I haven't really had a chance to do a ton of that since I've been an adult. And so probably spending time with them, that's been, you know, the best part of the pandemic.

Yeah, that's fantastic. So tell me a little bit about going from University of Florida. What'd you study there?

I studied political science and microbiology.

Oh, that's a weird mix. So poli sci and microbiology. That's really—

I wanted to be a lawyer, possibly a doctor. And so I was sort of like— I'm going to keep both my options open until I graduate.

I love that. And then you did end up studying to be a lawyer, went out east to Harvard Law School.

Yep, was there. I went to Harvard. I graduated in 2009, so more than a decade ago. I moved to New York City for 2 and a half years after I graduated law school and as a lawyer in New York City. And then I stopped, I quit. And then I was like, I wanna start my own business. Basically everyone in my entire family had started their own business or like my brother had, my father had. My father's in his 80s. He's never once gotten a paycheck in his entire life. And— Heads up for that. So I was like, you know, he was like constantly calling me being like, what are you doing working for somebody else? This isn't part of our DNA. And so finally he convinced me that he was right and I quit and started an e-commerce business. My brother tells this amazing story. He used to do this to my brother as well. So my brother graduated Georgia Tech, got a job at Microsoft. And so on his first day at Microsoft, my brother called up my father and he's like, this is my office phone and phone number. I mean, this is back in the '90s. He's like, this is my office phone number. Whenever you need to get in touch with me, call me here. Like, this is my— look, this is my phone number, private line. And my father's like, that's great that you got an office. and your own private line, I think you should go to your boss and quit today because you're not meant to work for anybody else. And my brother was like, this is my first day. Like, this is my first job out of college, day one, and you want me to quit?

That's amazing. And to be fair too, at a fairly established company. I mean, especially in the '90s.

Yeah, yeah, it was a huge company at the time.

It was a rocket ship. Like, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it was a darling at the time. Definitely. And my mother's the exact opposite of my father. She's like, don't ever quit your job. Like, even now, I think she still regrets that I quit being a lawyer. She's like, you could be wearing a suit and tie every day. Why wouldn't you keep doing that? Like, she's the exact opposite of my father.

Oh, wow. That's incredible. What kind of law did you practice?

I was a corporate lawyer for a firm called Simpson Thatcher Bartlett. And so their primary clients were like big private equity firms. So think Blackstone and KKR. Did a ton of work for JPMorgan. I summered there the year of 2007. during the financial crisis. And, you know, one of their top 5 clients was Lehman Brothers.

Oh.

And so it was like definitely a scary time for the legal world because they're like, what's going on? Nobody wants— nobody's doing M&A or like voluntary M&A during the financial crisis, and nobody can issue debt. So it's really tough times. But the firm was a stellar firm. And like, you know, I really admired the people that worked there. Like, they It was the first place I think I went to where I was like, wow, the people here are really bright and have incredible work ethic. Like, you know, people would work till 4 in the morning and do it again the next day and the next day and the next day, and they would never have an issue with that. And so I was like, wow, the people here are smart and they don't have any problem working till 4 AM. Really amazing. Like, I couldn't believe they could gather people like that into one building.

That is incredible. Very entrepreneurial a bit too, especially early stage, right? Where you're burning the midnight oil a lot of times at that early stage startup. There's definitely some parallels there, right? Yeah.

I mean, from a work ethic perspective, a ton of parallels. From a, you know, you eat what you kill perspective, as an associate at a law firm, doesn't matter at all. Like, you, if you work 80 hours a week or 10 hours a week, you just got paid the same amount. And so that's kind of crazy.

Yeah, that is a bit unique. Um, how did you cut your teeth in business then? So you went on this very prestigious academic journey, um, you got the job, dad Hates it, mom loves it, and then you finally jump into the father's tracks, his tutelage, and then you're pursuing your business and your entrepreneurial dreams. Kind of give me some color there.

That's right. So I was talking with one of my law school classmates and we sort of like brainstormed business ideas. And finally we had an idea where we're like, okay, let's quit our job. I'm not even sure the idea was any good. In fact, I'm sure it wasn't any good, but we're like, okay, this is a good enough idea to quit our jobs and say, you know what, we're all in. And so I remember that one of the days we were brainstorming was like September 2011. It was in the month of September 2011, 'cause I remember we were chatting about some idea and I got the news that Jobs had passed away. And I was like, wow, that's really tragic.

Yeah.

But I still remember, like, we were at the Starbucks in Union Square in New York City trying to figure out what to do with our lives. And so, like, you know, during that meeting, at some point we're like, okay, this is good enough. Let's, let's quit. Let's give our notice and see if we can do— make a run at this. And so he and I ended up like, you know, like bouncing around a few ideas. And finally we started— this was back in 2012. We started a daily deal site for hard liquor. It was called Caskers. And so this was like the, you know, the peak daily deals lifestyle. This was all like, you know, when Groupon was around.

Groupon era.

Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, exactly. And so like, there was another one in the business called Lot 18, which really focused on wine, which is a much better idea than our idea because wine is, you know, first, it's a lot easier to ship wine around the country than it is to ship hard alcohol around the country. And there's just a lot more craft producers of wine.

Yeah.

There's no winery that everyone in the world knows, but everyone knows what Jack Daniel's is. Look, there's a Budweiser of the hard alcohol industry. There's no Budweiser in the wine industry. And so that was a much better idea, the wine industry guys, but that already existed. So we're like, well, we can't do it because somebody's already doing it, which is bananas. So we're like, okay, let's do this for hard alcohol. We had a go at it. We bootstrapped the business, started in June. I remember our first sale came June 18th, 2012, because we were on this like email newsletter in New York City called Thrillist. You know, I'm not sure a lot of people are still using email newsletters like they, like they used to back in the day. I'm sorry, we weren't on Thrillist. We were in Urban Daddy. But like back in the days when Thrillist and Urban Daddy were massive and everyone was sort of getting their Where should I go tonight? News from those newsletters. We were in this newsletter in Urban Daddy in June. We launched, and then all of a sudden we did probably like $6,000 in revenue that day. And we were ecstatic. We're like, wow, look at this. Day one, $6,000 in revenue. We're giving each other high fives. We order pizza because all these orders are coming in. We don't know what to do with them. And so that was really great. And then day 2, You know, we had $0 in sales basically because we didn't send out an email. We weren't prepared for day 2. We were only prepared for day 1. So day 2, we basically have $0 in sales. And, you know, day 3, we send out an email and feature a new product like they would do on Groupon. And, you know, we get some sales and we do that for basically 18 months. It's a completely bootstrapped business. And then we sell it to a private equity investor based out of Atlanta, Georgia.

Oh, fantastic. So you did that. So that's your first exit then, I'm guessing?

That was my first exit, yeah.

Fantastic.

And it was weird because, um, the private equity investor was the largest customer of our website, actually. So he was the number one customer buying booze. You know, he'd buy— like, we'd feature a bottle for like $10,000 sometimes, like a single bottle of whiskey, and he would buy it. And we're like, who is this guy who keeps doing this? And finally he contacted us and was like, I love this business. I want to invest. And we're like, well, we're not going to say no because you're our number one customer and you're spending tens of thousands of dollars, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on the site. So his team flew up here and they're like, actually, we don't want to invest. We want to buy the business. And so that's how we sold the first business. Incredible.

Wow. And so we'll get into Native in the value-add segment, but just a small digression. Native was a very quick exit as well, if I recall right?

Native was 2 and a half years. First one was 18 months. So the 18 months was faster than 2 and a half years, you know. 18 months is what I strive for, I guess.

Yeah.

Both of them have been quick exits.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Oh, wow. So how did you translate, 'cause there's definitely some parallels to a lawyer, but a lawyer is very much so, there's some creativity to it, but it's more so understanding kind of the skill sets and the pieces and then how to apply those pieces when and where, right? Whereas an entrepreneur is just trying to really grab when, timing, ideas, people, and synthesizing this into a thing that doesn't blow up. How did you kind of skill up to become this entrepreneur? And I know you said there's some tutelage from your dad, the DNA from your dad. Was there frameworks or books, or how did you get to 2 exits? I mean, first off, exiting your first business profitably is fantastic, right? Like, that usually doesn't happen at all.

Sure.

Second off, in 18 months, is sensational. Third off, the idea, you know, is okay, but it wasn't— this wasn't this like incredible idea. So like, how did you, you know, land on all this success? Was there again like frameworks or books or people that you, you listened to or mentored from, or was it just—

You know, there were a ton of books. Like, yeah, I think, I think it was a combination of all of that. Like, I, you know, there's— I don't think anybody who can— who's achieved any level of success can be like, this was the reason that I did it and point to a single thing. Like, yeah, did I read books about businesses? Of course I did. Did I, like, try and get inspired by the Gary Vees of the world? Of course I did. But ultimately, you're the only per— like, you know, you're running your own business. Gary Vee isn't going to come out and help you do customer service. And so you've got to figure out, hey, what is making my business work and what is making it not work? And so a lot of it is gut— you know, some of it is, you know, you try to get as much data as you can. A lot of it is gut instinct.

Yeah.

trying to understand, hey, what am I doing right? What am I doing poorly? And doubling down what I'm doing right and like sort of not caring about what I'm doing poorly. And so like, you know, the first business, I had no idea. I didn't know the difference between gin and vodka at the time, you know?

Yeah.

And so I was like, let's just sell anything, who cares? And it turns out it was whiskeys that we're selling and not vodkas and gins, which, you know, today makes a ton of sense. But when I started the business, I didn't know that that would be a thing. And so we're like, okay, let's feature more whiskeys than we do gins and vodkas. You know, there was a sweet spot in terms of price point where we're like, great, something like $60 to $80 is something that's hard to get. It's worth paying the extra shipping for. Something that's $20, nobody wants to pay $10 in shipping for because we didn't offer free shipping for this. Something that's $70, the $10 shipping is a little bit more palatable. And so we— and like, you know, Q4 is really when hard alcohol, like, you know, grows or like that's the entire—

Yeah.

Like, you know, the last 3 months of the year are probably 50 to 60% of hard alcohol sales. And so, you know, preparing for that, creating a product lineup for that, getting your, you know, getting your partners ready for that, and then like understanding how to scale. Like, you know, I didn't know any of that kind of stuff before I walked into the business. And you sort of learn or you fail. And, you know, I learned enough where, you know, the exit was meaningful. And we probably sold the business when we were doing $500,000 or $600,000 a year— I'm sorry, $500,000 or $600,000 a month in revenue. So, we were at a decent run rate. Wow. That's a stat. It wasn't like a bad business. You know, we were bootstrapped, we were profitable. We weren't materially profitable. You know, we were probably making $250,000 a year because we didn't know what we were doing. And like, we were still being very frugal. And, you know, back in 2012, no one knew how to— there was no Facebook advertising like there is today.

Right.

If you wanted to advertise on Facebook, you just bought a bunch of likes. You're like, promote this post and a lot of people will like it. And that's what we did. And like, you know, Now it's a lot more sophisticated.

Wow, that's an incredible story. How about that? Caskers, let's go. That's amazing.

Yeah, it's nuts. It's a medicine.

What's one piece of advice you wish you would have gotten in your younger years when you were kind of on this entrepreneurial journey?

Yeah, you know, I've generally been really frugal as an entrepreneur my entire life. Both of them, like, you know, Caspers was entirely bootstrapped. At Native, we raised about $500,000, but like, we didn't really need to raise any of that.

Oh, wow.

Or like, we just needed to raise about $50,000.

That's incredible.

And so, you know, for a long time, when I've been frugal, I've been really embarrassed about it, because I'll go to someone's office, and I'll be like, this is amazing. What, like, you know, your name is outside, and it, like, you know, someone paint— like, somebody did an amazing job making your art. You know, you've got stuff on the walls, you've got nice desks, and you've got Harmless Harvest coconut water in the refrigerator. You guys are rich. And it feels like you're rich and successful when you get in here. And so, like, you know, I was super frugal and embarrassed by that because, you know, because I was just like, we don't spend any money because we don't make any money. So I'm sorry, like, we're not as successful as you, and I'm embarrassed. And now I'm like, That's actually like I wear that as a badge of honor where I walk like now I walk into a business and I'm like, "Wow, this is a really nice office. You guys are burning a ton of money. You're having trouble fundraising." No, you know, here's something you should cut: this. How about you get rid of that harmless harvest coconut water because you can't afford four dollar coconut water? You know, people, you know, like it doesn't make any sense. And so I think like people who are frugal and sort of like you know it's tough being a bootstrapped entrepreneur. The other ways are like you know when I was a lawyer, all my friends were starting to make a lot. of money their 3rd and 4th and 5th year of law, you know, being a lawyer. They were starting to make $300,000, $500,000 a year. And I was like, look, we're barely making any money. I don't know what I'm doing over here. I'm trying to start a business. Who knows what'll happen? And, you know, like entrepreneur, like that's the risk you take. And you take a little bit of that society risk of not continuing to keep up with the Joneses. And you take a little bit of that, okay, I'm gonna be embarrassed because I just walked into this guy's office and super nice, and he's got an assistant and a chief of staff. And, you know, it's just me answering customer service tickets at my computer. And so I think it's a little bit— I hope a lot more people take pride in that rather than do what I did, which was be a little bit embarrassed by that.

I love that. I love that. Yeah. Not everybody at the, you know, before the raise needs a Herman Miller chair, right? Like, we can—

Yeah, that's right.

We don't need $3,000 chairs for everybody yet. Let's relax a bit.

It's absolutely, you know, Native, when I started, like, so I started Native, we worked in a free coworking space in San Francisco called the Founders Dojo. Once that sort of went away, I moved into my brother's office space and worked in like a closet, like basically a closet in that office space. We started hiring, like, you know, we started hiring and we probably had 6 or 8 people and we moved into a conference room rather than a closet. And then Like, we sold the business in November of 2017, like November 7th. October 1st, 2017, a month before, was the first month we paid for our own office space. And it was like $8,000 a month. It was so cheap. I put a, like, you know, they were like, it costs $250 to put your sign on, to put your name on the door. I was like, $250? Are you fucking crazy? I took out a white sheet of paper, a black Sharpie. I wrote Native. I taped it to the door. And that was it. And I was like, great, that cost me less than a penny.

Wow.

And then I remember after the acquisition, the P&G folks came for the first time to our office because we'd always met offsite. They came to our office and they're like, the name is written outside with a Sharpie. And I was like, yeah, that's our— that's how we operate here. We're super frugal. We put money where it matters, which is into the brand and into marketing. We, you know, we don't have a lot of ego. We're not gonna pay that $250. I don't give a shit if this is owned by P&G or if it's owned by, you know, Jeff Bezos. That sign stays here. Um, and they loved it. You know, it was fantastic. They're like, this is such a great attitude here.

I love that. That's fantastic. Okay, one last question. We'll wrap up the main segment. What's the nicest thing someone's done for you?

What is the nicest thing someone has done for me? Well, I'll go back a long time. When I was in 3rd grade— I'll go back a really long time when I was a kid. When I was in the 3rd grade, one day I was walking home from school. I was like walking through a parking lot and a car hit me.

Mm-hmm.

And it hit my knee and it started bleeding profusely. And my parents weren't home and some other student from my school saw me get hit. And she walked— she's like, come to my house. I went to her house. This is, you know, probably like 1993. I went to her house and her mom like bandaged up my knee and poured rubbing alcohol on it and like called my parents and was like, your son got hit by a car. I'm taking care of him. What should we do? And, you know, she— complete random stranger— saw me get hit by a car, took me to her house, and her mom cared for me. And that's probably the nicest thing anyone's ever done.

Wow.

Like, really amazing.

You have incredible stories. That's intense. That is—

That is an intense story. Yeah.

Yeah, that's beautiful. All right, this is why people bought the ticket. Let's get into the value-add segment. Why did you start Native? So Native's your biggest exit to date. Why did you start? And then was there like an aha moment where you're like, people hate crappy deodorant, people hate these chemicals, or like, kind of take me through that process. Because it sounds like you already had these ideas with Caskers, but this was a pretty big one, especially too, At the price point, right? Like, it's a premium product for a premium price, to be fair. And so that had to be a little bit scary, especially coming from this frugality mentality.

Yeah. So, you know, I had the idea a long time before I started it, which was I was using Axe deodorant, which was made by Unilever. And I was like, you know, they had these commercials on where they're like, put on this deodorant and women will come flocking to you. You know, I was like, I've been trying this since high school. It is absolutely not working. I don't know what else I can do here. But in any case, I remember being in Duane Reade buying it. And I was like, I'm going to try and read the ingredients on this thing. And I couldn't pronounce one of the words on the back of this thing. And I was like, I'm a lawyer. I should be able to— like, I can speak English. I can read English. It's what I do for a living. I can't even pronounce the words on the back of this thing. That can't be good for me. And, I was thinking, okay, deodorant is the thing that I put on my body all day every day.

Yeah.

I put it on when I get out of the shower. It stays on my skin. It's not like toothpaste that I spit out or bar soap or body wash that I wash off. It's on my body all day every day. So, I was like, this can't be good for me. And then, I was sitting in a conference room. I was sitting in that coworking space in San Francisco and there were just 8 guys and it was the most ghetto coworking space you can imagine, but it was fantastic. So many great businesses launch out of there. And so, you know, we're chatting with— I like chatting with these guys. And I was like, thinking about starting a deodorant business. And all like 6 of these 8 guys use alternative deodorants. Like one of them used a natural deodorant, or a few of them use natural deodorants. A few of them use coconut oil. There was a guy that didn't use any deodorant whatsoever. It was very clear. And so I was like, you know what? It's not just me that cares about this. There are clearly other people that care about this. And this may be like a little bit of a you know, a unique audience in that it's in San Francisco and it's a bunch of young people.

Sure.

So maybe, maybe this won't hold, but I was like, let me launch this product and see what happens. Day 1, we had 1 sale. Day 2, we had 60 sales. And I was like, you know what, 60. Yeah, we were on this site called Product Hunt. And like, yeah.

Oh yeah, fantastic.

And so we're on Product Hunt. And so we got 60 sales. And I was like, okay, you know, 60 sales is not nothing. Let's see what happens. And so I sent out the product to the 60 people, like I was mailing it out of my own house. And, you know, I started advertising for the product. Like I started running ads. I started trying to get YouTube influencers. I started trying to get, you know, run Google ads. So when people search Secret deodorant, I said, don't use Secret, use Native. And I couldn't get— I got a little bit of traction through Facebook, to be honest. No, the first day I tried was through Google AdWords. I think I lost $500. The business was bootstrapped, and I was like, fuck, $500? That sucks. And then we started getting a little bit of traction through Facebook ads, and that's how the business started. Then we started getting a lot of organic traction because people— we were primarily advertising to women, and women would tell their friends or their mothers or their sisters or their daughters. And so that's how we started getting this flywheel effect of a lot more success.

Wow, that is fantastic. Wow, Founder Dojo just launching out.

Founder Dojo. Yeah, it was fantastic. There's this guy named David Grossblatt. Yeah, David. Like, I got on Product Hunt because one of the guys from Product Hunt would come to the Founder Dojo once in a while, and he heard me talking about it. He's like, I'll go ahead and put this on Product Hunt and make sure it gets on the first page. Like, it was all— it all came out of this, like, You know, 8-person coworking space with a crap— like, you know, it was the crappiest place in the world, but like, as a result of being kind of crappy, it had this sense of magic.

That is so— and you said it's free?

It was free, yeah. It closed down a long time ago, but it was pretty insane.

Probably not the best business model, but hey.

Yeah, yeah, it wasn't a good business model. You're right. Yeah.

That is so cool. Wow. What was the best part of running Native and the worst part?

The best part was the people, like, you know, the best part was the people I got to work with and like the growth that we had. I remember thinking like, you know, first, like, I was like, I'm gonna hire people that I genuinely enjoy being around and not assholes.

Yeah.

And so I was like, this person is gonna be an asshole, let's not work with them. This person's fantastic, let's work with them. And so that was a lot of fun. Like, I, you know, the people that I worked with were close friends of, like, ended up becoming close friends of mine. And I'm still in touch with a bunch of them.

Super cool.

And the growth was also amazing. I remember thinking, if I get hit by— if a bus comes and hits me today, I'm still gonna go to work. I'm not gonna go to the hospital because we're gonna make so much money and do something amazing today. And so that was a ton of fun. It was really this feeling of invincibility that I'm not sure you can ever get unless you have product-market fit. Like once you get product-market fit and product marketing fit, you know, I just felt like Superman where I was like, you want me to fly? Do you guys want me to fly? Because I can fly right now. I can do anything. It was an insane sense of invincibility that is, you know, an incredible high. And so I think that was the best part about it. What was the worst part? The worst part was like, you know, there were a lot of things that we did really poorly. Like, it took a while.

Sure.

Like, you know, I felt like I was a bad manager. Like, I'd hired my friends, but I was a bad, you know, people would be like, hey, give me a performance review. And I sucked at that kind of stuff. Like, I wanted, I wasn't good at instituting processes. I wasn't good at following anybody else who was trying to institute processes. I was making random decisions. I didn't hire a bunch of executives, which I should have done to alleviate a little bit of the weight that was on my shoulders. And I feel like those were all big mistakes that I made. But, like, you know, was there anything bad? Like, was it the worst part? Maybe that was the worst part, but, like, there was not a moment I regret working at Native. There was no moment where I was like, wow, I wish I hadn't started this company. Every moment I was like, this is the greatest thing I've ever done and maybe the first line of my obituary.

Wow.

Wow.

That is—

what a story.

What a story. Who was your first hire?

My first hire was this girl named Neva Bigler, who is— was like, you know, she looks like she's 8 years old. And I still see her once in a while. And I'm like, I think you're 8 years old. And she's like, I'm 30 now or something. And I'm like, I think you're 8. She was like— she started in customer service.

Okay.

The first like 3 hires we had were in customer service because like—

Perfect.

We were just like, you know, I was the only person at the business when we were doing about $200,000. in revenue a month. And the customer service inbox was just taking up so much of my time. So we hired Neva, and I was like, great, I'm gonna stop doing customer service. And by then, then we started doing $500,000 a month, and Neva was like, I can't do all of this. Like, this is so— this inbox doesn't stop ever. And so, and like, $500,000 a month for a $12 product is a lot of orders.

Yeah.

And so then we hired another person and another person, and the entire life of the company, we were basically trying to keep up with like the growth in the customer service inbox. And people like, you know, did amazing things. She started in customer service, she moved on to marketing, she became a product— like, you know, she really grew with the company. And that was fantastic. And yeah, yeah, that was fantastic.

That's awesome. Does it ever blow your mind now when you're— because you, you out of Dailies 2020-ish, right?

That's right. Yeah, I left in the beginning of 2020. You know, what's crazy is like, I was at an open house earlier today because I was like, I'm looking to buy like a home. I'm living in Airbnbs. So none of this stuff behind me is my stuff. It's somebody else's. And somebody had Native on their countertop in a home that I looked at. And I was like, wow, I've never seen— I've never seen this before in somebody else's house. And so that felt pretty insane.

Yeah, I was just going to ask because like every time I go into like Target or any of these retailers and like you're always on the end caps, and it's always like the most prestigious placements. And so that has to be when you're going through these places or Duane Reade's or whatever, and you just see them, you have to smile and nod at yourself, right?

Where it's like, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a great feeling.

An idea to being this darling of retail. It's incredible.

It's a great feeling. And it's like, you know, a great brand, like really changed the category in a few ways. We changed the category because we pushed everyone towards healthier ingredients. Like Secret and Dove are now launching ingredients that are more like, um, that have— that smell like things that on Earth, like, they don't call— like, you know, Dove for Men will call something eucalyptus rather than Arctic Power or like Arctic Shower or something, you know, because they're like, okay, natural is the way to go. We've pushed price points up in the entire category. Like when I was at P&G, they were like, we're raising the price of Secret deodorant by a dollar. Across the board, Old Spice by a dollar across the board. And I was like, why are you guys doing that? And they're like, if Native works at $12, Secret doesn't have to be at $3. We didn't realize this category could support higher price points. And so in those ways, that's been a ton of fun. Like, and like now natural deodorants are so mainstream. And I feel like, you know, aside from being the biggest natural deodorant, we're also like the guys who really paved the way. Like the other guys came before us. Don't get me wrong. Tom's of Maine came before rods. There were other brands that existed in the '80s and '90s, but we sort of were like, look, this should be a mainstream product, not just this granola product.

Sure. Yeah, for sure. And there's definitely some, like you said before, I feel like you guys were definitely at the tip of the spear to really, again, move the market in all the ways that you just mentioned. It's fantastic. Did you see the P&G acquisition coming? Were you building for an exit or were you just kind of blindsided?

Well, it certainly wasn't blind luck. You know, what happened was somebody came knocking on our door and they're like, we want to buy this business. And so we're like, okay, if somebody is interested in buying this business, we should run a real process, hire a banker, and see if we can sell this business. And, you know, the crazy part was that probably started in February 2017. So 18 months into the life of the business. Look at you again. We're now in sales mode. Like, you know, we're like, okay, let's see if there's a home for this business. And like in 2017, the business grows like a rocket ship, basically 4x's in the first 10 months of 2017. And so now we're like, you know, it's a big business, but it's like coming— it's not coming apart. It's like coming apart at the seams. I guess that's the best way to describe it in that like everything is busting. Like our contract manufacturer cannot keep up with the demand. Our customer service team cannot keep up with the demand. Our influencer team cannot keep up with like, you know, amount of influencers that we're working with. Nothing is like— the only thing we're doing is growing top line and everything else is bursting. Like, you know, we cannot contain it all. Like, there are 30 fires to put out and each of those fires will take me 6 months to put out. Like, we need to hire more customer service people, hire, like, you know, train them better, create real processes around it. We need to— our contract manufacturer needs to move into a new facility. Buy new equipment, you know, and grow materially. And so, like, there were a lot of things happening at that time when we sold. I think we had 8 people and, you know, the business was just on fire. So it's not that I didn't see it coming. Like, you know, we had a knock on the door back in like December or January. You know, we had a— we ran a process. That process took 6 months when we got serious about it. So I definitely saw it coming. It was just, um, it was like, uh, still somewhat unexpected where you're like, wow, I can't believe so much has changed in 2 and a half years in my life.

Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, because I think I saw either a tweet or on your Instagram, you guys were approaching almost $1 million in revenue per employee at one point, right? Where it was, it was—

We were, um, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we were doing, at one point, I think we were doing like, uh, When, like, post-P&G acquisition, I think we were close to like $700,000 per employee per month.

Yeah, that's what it was. I think that was the same.

So it wasn't per year, it was per month, which is bananas.

Oh, wow.

We were certainly doing $1 million an employee in revenue. I mean, we were doing, you know, but pre-selling the business, we were probably doing $4 million in revenue per employee, maybe $5 million in revenue per employee. But, you know, Post-acquisition, we were trying to do, you know, $10 million in revenue per employee per year.

Moiz, those are video game numbers. Those are video game numbers.

Which is very— that's really tough.

That's incredible. What gave you more gray hair? Well, you don't really have that much gray hair, but if you did have gray hair, what gave you more gray hair, Caspers or Native?

Native gave me more gray hair. Caspers, I was young and didn't know what I was doing. The dollars weren't as big. I could make mistakes and be like, You know what? I'm going back to my old job. By the time I was running Native, it was my career. E-commerce was my career. It was too— the ship had sailed. I could never become an attorney again because I'd been out of the market for so long. And the dollars were just big. I remember the acquisition, when we were trying to sell the business, we were talking to people for 3 or 4 months. I was trying to keep the business together and continuing to grow it.

Yeah.

And we were spending time trying to sell the business, and that was a lot of lifting to do. And, you know, the dollars were huge. I was like, okay, this is gonna dramatically change the rest of my life if I'm able to sell the business. And so it was a big deal.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Perfect segue. So now you are quite the investor now. When you do look at an investment, what do you— how are you evaluating that? How do you know when you wanna put some money down and plunk some money down, or how do you know, this might not be the place that I wanna put my cheddar behind?

Yeah, great question. I think that there's two things. Most people, a lot of guys, a lot of VCs will be like, the founder is it. I'm investing in the team. I'm not that way. I'm generally investing in the product or idea, and the team can make or break it. But if Mark Zuckerberg was like, hey, I wanna, bottle my urine and sell it, although I think that'd probably be— I think that business would actually probably work because he's Mark Zuckerberg. You know, I'd probably be like, I'm not going to invest in this thing. I, you know, you're clearly a brilliant founder and have built a trillion-dollar business, but, you know, bottled urine is not my cup of tea, so I'm going to pass.

Yeah.

And so I think like product really matters to me, especially when you were talking about consumer products. And so a lot of it is like, do I— can I see a market for this? A lot of it is, can this person market this product themselves? Like, you know, do they know how to get this product into the hands of consumers? Have they thought about that? Or have they spent— you know, some, some people are like, I've spent 3 years building this product. Well, that's great, but you've been trying to get the product right for so long, the market has moved. You don't know, you don't know about marketing, how to get consumers to buy this product. And so, um, I think that's really dangerous. And so I'm like, yeah, does the founder matter? No question the founder matters. Of course they do. And I talk to them and we'll get comfortable with them. But a lot of it is also product as well.

I love that. When you're investing, do any of like macroeconomic environment or indicators factor into your investment, or are you agnostic of kind of where these macroeconomics are? Like, for example, possibly going to the war in Ukraine, a bit of a meltdown in the market. Does that start to taint or move your investment strategies at all?

Yeah, I guess one other thing that I'd say when I'm thinking about investing is oftentimes, like, I'm a user of the product. So if it's like a consumer product, I'll try it. If it's a— like, I've invested in a bunch of e-commerce SaaS businesses. And so, you know, I'm a, I'm a customer of those SaaS businesses and I'm like, is this good? Is this bad? And like, that's a great way to evaluate, is this thing going to be successful? Like, you know, do you use it yourself and do you want to continue to use that?

Love that.

Do macroeconomic indicators matter? Definitely. Like, I've seen valuations come down on SaaS businesses in the past 60 days because, you know, there's a lot more uncertainty in the market. I've seen, you know, a lot of consumer businesses struggle to fundraise in the last 60 days because the market— there's a lot of uncertainty in the market. I've seen real estate acquisitions also get a little bit more scary because there's a lot of uncertainty in the market. Interest rates are rising. And so I think there are absolutely macroeconomic matters Effect of fundraising? Definitely. You'd be crazy to tell yourself if they don't. Yep, yep.

Yeah, I love that answer. Um, kind of piggybacking off of that, do you think there is like a quote-unquote best time to start a business, or is it just ultimately now and fail fast?

Yeah, um, the best time is definitely now. I, you know, like, look, there are def— if you started a business in 2006, just before the financial crisis, It would be a terrible time. Like, you're set up for failure and it's not your fault.

Yeah.

Like, you know, like, very few people have disposable income. People are leaving their homes, being kicked out of their homes. The whole world is coming apart. Everyone's worried about their own security. And like, everyone's treating their own bank account defensively. And so, of course, that's a scary time to start a business. And you're gonna get— like, you're gonna set yourself up for failure. Not set yourself up for failure, but like, you know, you're more exposed to failure just because the market environment is so hard. I think it's really hard to— it's easy to judge that retrospectively. Sure. If you're sitting there in 2006 being like, should I start a business? Definitely you should. And I think if you're thinking that today, now is definitely the time. It's not going to get— people are always— I remember talking to Harry's guys when I was running Native, and they're like, Facebook ads were great and digital advertising is great. If you talk to me, I'd say digital advertising was great in 2017. There's someone today saying digital advertising is great. is great in 2022. You know, like, people, people always say, oh, the heyday was in the past. Somebody is always finding the heyday to be today, like the, you know, the peak of Facebook advertising to be today. And so, you know, I think you've got— at some point you've got to do it. And like, a lot of it is also just like your life. You know, like when I started my first business, I think I was like 26 years old or 27 years old.

Yeah.

I didn't have a lot to worry about. I had to pay rent and put food on my table, but I didn't have kids. I didn't have a family. I didn't have a mortgage. And I remember after I sold that business and before I started Native, I was thinking about getting a job somewhere else. And I talked to a hiring partner at Andreessen Horowitz and I was like, what do you— what should I do? Should I start a business or should I work at Instacart? And he's like, look, Instacart would love to have you, but you're 31, don't have a wife, don't have kids, and don't have a mortgage. If you're ever gonna start another business, now is the time. 10 years from now, when you're— if you're an executive at Instacart and you've got kids and a family, you're not gonna be able to take the risk because it's gonna take too much of your time and you won't be able to give up the check that you need to support your lifestyle, to support your family. And so a lot of it is like personal as well. You know, if you've got that ability right now, you should do it right now. If you're about to have a kid, you have no money in your bank account, and you know, you and your wife are struggling to make ends meet, It's probably not the best time to start a business, you know. Um, and so I think you have to be wary of those personal financial circumstances as well.

I think that's so eloquently put. I do. And I, I couldn't agree with you more. I think you have unique windows in your life that you will not get back that are very attuned to certain situations. And, uh, to your point, like, it just gets harder when, as the responsibility gets higher, the lifestyle creep gets bigger, where it's just like It's just a challenge, right? And then you get more responsibilities start to get piled on where it's one thing for you to have to eat tuna for a week, but to make your whole family eat tuna for a week or like, yeah, it's just really different headspace. Yeah, that can be challenging.

And I think the same goes for like sale processes too. People are always like, why did you sell Native? I'm like, look, Jeff, if Bill Gates was my father, I wouldn't have sold Native. I would have been like, let's see if I can build this into a $50 billion a year business. But, you know, I didn't have that. Look, Bill Gates is not my father, despite how I look. And so, you know, I was like, this is an insane sum of money that's gonna forever alter my life. And I can't— like, you know, 99% of my wealth was tied up at Native at one point. And so I was like, I couldn't continue to have that. Like, I need to diversify that risk.

Yeah, exactly. I love that, man. That's fantastic. Okay, a few more questions, then we'll get into the rapid fire. What do you think the biggest mistakes people make when starting a business? Is it around this kind of timing, non-lifestyle fit, or are there other kind of pitfalls that people can circumvent and not go through?

I think in consumer especially, people are often like, you need to find scalable acquisition channels for consumers. And organic can be a scalable channel. It was for Dropbox, for instance. But it's really difficult. And the longer you wait and the more noise there is in the world, And the less your product is differentiated, the harder it will be for organic channels to work for you. And, you know, I remember talking to a bunch of friends when we were all starting our businesses and they're like, our customers love our products so much. They're the way we're going to get new customers. It's so clear, like they're going to refer their friends and that's how we're going to grow. And that works like, you know, for the first layer, like the first 500 customers you have may be able to get you another 500. But like by the time you have 10,000 customers, it's not like they're continually doing that. And so I think a lot of new founders or first-time founders make the mistake of like, my customers are gonna get me more customers. And it's like, your customers are your customers. They're not your employees. They're not gonna be talking about your product at night next to like, you know, their significant other unless it's really changed their life. And so I think that's tough.

Yeah, I love that. And to your point too, to get the really step change that you need in growth, It's just not going to happen with that word of mouth. There's a certain kind of, I think, ceiling that you hit eventually with this word of mouth that it can get you, like you said, that kind of foundational layer of really— it's almost like the crossing the chasm kind of thing. It'll get you the early adopters and stuff like that, but to get through the chasm and to get to kind of the laggards and the other parts of the market that are much bigger, you need some other growth vectors outside of just that.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I love that. Okay, 2 more. I want to put you into 2 shoes. Okay, first, because this is actually stemmed from your threads, so if you want to parrot your threads, they're fantastic. But if you're running the Canadian behemoth up north, Shopify, what would you be focusing on now?

Software. I would be focusing on how could I— look, can I make network effects across the multiple— across the brands that we have at Shopify? Because if so, Shopify becomes something so much more than it is. Like right now, it's a technology platform. Can it be a platform such that Shopify stores can connect with each other and share customer lists, share direct mailing lists, share like lookalike audiences across the— you know, how can I create network effects within Shopify such that this moat that we have, which exists as a result of us being around for a decade, a huge developer community, a bunch of apps, That moat is great, but it's probably 10 feet wide. You know, a networking effect moat around Shopify would be 1,000 feet wide.

With some crocodiles in there and some spikes.

That's right, yeah.

I love that. Okay, let's go a little bit down south and west to the Menlo Park monster. If you were running Meta right now, what would you be focusing on?

Ad Manager, iOS 14.5. How do we, like, you know, I think, You know, I think the hard part is that business is so big and they're trying— they're doing so much that, you know, if I were Mark Zuckerberg, I'd be like, let me focus on what I was— what I have fun at. And maybe that's the metaverse. And that's perfect. That makes a ton of sense.

Yeah.

But if I were running growth or product or ad manager, I'd be like, how do we fix our reporting? How do we get more data that we like, you know, that we've always struggled to get? How do we get the data that has been removed from us as a result of iOS 14? I think there's a bunch of great— like, you know, I think that they can use UTM parameters for admin. Like, you know, I look at Ad Manager and day 1 results are so off compared to even UTM results, it blows my mind.

Yeah.

I think that they could buy Nielsen and like, you know, Nielsen is still up for sale and just rejected a takeover offer from Elliott. That's a fantastic acquisition. Like, don't you want to know what television ever— you know, think about all the data that Facebook has. They could, you know, get all that data that is doesn't live inside their app and doesn't live on the phone with somebody like Nielsen. They can also get whatever people buy at Target because Target owns, you know, Target sells that data or gives that data to Nielsen. So Nielsen's like, great, this is the product that's selling really well at Target. Wouldn't that be helpful at Facebook? And you could tie credit cards back to that data. And so I think that if I were them, I'd be spending more time on how can I get other sources of information that don't exist within the Facebook app? And then how can I fix the issues that iOS 14.5 has caused?

Yeah, that's beautiful. We'll link— you have a couple threads that you go into a little more detail on both of these, but they're fantastic. The muskets and machine guns was such a beautiful metaphor for Shopify.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah.

All right, Moises, you ready?

It's rapid-fire time. Let's do it.

Tim Tebow, overrated, underrated?

I went to University of Florida, underrated. I love him. He's a terrible— he's not a great NFL quarterback, but He won that playoff game against the Steelers. How could anyone not love him?

OK, I love it. I love it. Law school, overrated or underrated?

Underrated. You know, even— I would encourage everyone not to be a lawyer, but going to law school sharpens the way that you think. Some of my best friends— like, law school is like high school, but you're in your 20s. And my best friends have come from law school, and I really love it.

That's beautiful. Cambridge, overrated or underrated?

Overrated. Freezing cold, gets dark at 2 PM, really tough to live there. I lived there pre-Uber, so like you needed to get a cab to go downtown Boston.

That's terrible.

You know, you've gotta walk through the snow and look around for one. You know, Uber must have changed the game there.

Yeah, I love it. Flash sales, overrated, underrated?

I think they were underrated. You know, great business, you know, And like everything else, like once it grows to a certain scale, the sexiness and cachet is just not there anymore. You know, there were days when Groupon was offering $15 Starbucks gift cards for $5. Like, can you imagine? They were offering $30 Whole Foods gift cards for $15. That's just $15 of free money. And that's a lot of fun and really amazing. And everyone was after that. And then people were like, okay, it's all over. Like, you know, It all ended instantly. And so I think for a time they were underrated. Now they barely exist in any way.

I love that. I'd always joke with people about when Uber and Lyft were coming up, how it was economically irresponsible not to use their services because they were so heavily subsidized at that time.

Definitely.

It was so cheap because they were just going after growth and $20 bills for $10. You can't do that in perpetuity. Uber's P&L showing that, but it was great for the consumer.

Definitely. I remember taking Uber Pools in San Francisco for a while. It was like $2.86, and for like the first 2 weeks, nobody else would get in your pool. I'm not sure why; they just hadn't like figured it out. So they're like, "Take Uber Pool. We won't put anyone else in your car. It'll be $2.86." I was like, "This is amazing. Let's go to the airport and back for fun." Just let's run it.

I love it. TikTok, overrated or underrated?

Underrated. Incredible platform. People are spending a ton of time on there. I don't think it's an Instagram— like, to be honest, I don't think what everyone thinks it is. Everyone thinks it's an Instagram killer. You know, there's like— when you go to a concert, you're likely to post that concert as an Instagram story. I doubt you'd post that as a TikTok story, you know, a TikTok video. And so I think it's a very different use case. And I think Instagram and TikTok can live by themselves. And I don't think TikTok kills Instagram in that way. I think it might eat some of the viewing hours or the time spent on phones, but I think it's a very different use case.

How do you think of it in relation to YouTube?

That's a great question. I think YouTube is more long form, but I think YouTube may be the most underrated part of all of Google. YouTube should be worth more than Google, and I'm shocked that it isn't. YouTube in and of itself should be a bigger platform than Google Search because, like, you know, how many searches is ever— like, you know, it's not like I'm going to 50 new websites every day and I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna think, how are mirrors made? Let's Google that and figure it all out. And if I do, I'm like, let's go to Wikipedia and it'll answer all those questions. YouTube is this discovery platform, massive content platform, bigger than television. So many more hours spent on YouTube than television. I think it just hasn't been monetized correctly. But I think also Google's like, look, we're making so much money. We don't need to make everything work at 100%.

Yeah, totally. Fair play. Fair play. Going to the Super Bowl, overrated, underrated?

Underrated. Super Bowl is one of these experiences. I've been there a few times now. And it's like when you go there, you're like, wow, the eyes of the world are on this game. And there's this incredible sense of energy as soon as you walk in there. where you're like, everyone is so excited to be here. Everyone traveled for this. It's really special. And I've also only gone with my brother, and it's like great family time where we get to connect.

That's cool. Yeah, that's really cool. Kobe Bryant, overrated, underrated?

Underrated. You know, played from 18 to 38 or something like that. What an amazing, you know, that's really special. Pretty spectacular career.

Yeah, I love that. Favorite DTC brand? Yeah, I know, man, right? Crazy.

Favorite direct-to-consumer brand right now? You know, I really like— I've got a bunch, but right now is a company called Jambies, which makes pajama pants. Yeah, it's just like a fun name and fun guys who are going after like this old sleepy category, pardon the pun. And so I really love— I just like the branding of it and it really resonates with me.

I love that.

Yeah, yeah. It's like such a fun— they're like, go home, get into your jambies. Like, you know, jambies is such a good word for what this industry should be called.

Oh, I totally 1,000% agree.

I love it.

Um, favorite meal and why?

Favorite meal and why? Um, good question. I mean, if I'm most likely eating, I'm like most likely ordering takeout or going to a restaurant, it's probably sushi. Just 'cause I feel healthy and clean and like I'm trying to live a little bit more of a healthy lifestyle these days. But you know, my favorite will still be a hamburger. Like I love Shake Shack.

Oh yeah, Shake Shack.

Can't get over that.

Animal fries, love it. Favorite place to travel to and why?

Favorite place to travel to would be Cairo or would be Egypt.

Really?

Yeah, it's really like, I'm not sure, have you ever been to Egypt?

No, I've been to Morocco, so close-ish. And my dad's actually from Algeria, but never been to Egypt or Cairo proper.

Yeah, um, in Egypt, like, there's a pyramid built thousands of years ago across the street from a Pizza Hut, which blows my mind. And then, um, like, you know, there's graffiti in Egypt. Like, I saw some guy who carved his name into Abu Simbel, which is this, like, place in Egypt, um, and he put his name and he put the year 1859. And I'm like, even the graffiti here is ancient.

It's old.

Um, it's bananas.

Yeah, I actually was blown away. I was very naive to— I didn't realize there's actually a straight-shot highway to the pyramids proper right from Cairo, correct?

Yeah, it's like a 20-minute drive from like Cairo. It's not even a 20-minute drive. Like, you can see Cairo proper. It's like going to Brooklyn and Cairo proper is Manhattan, except it's even closer.

They do such a good job of only the angle facing this way. You don't have the actual metropolis in the background. I thought it was just in this total field in the desert nowhere, and it's like right one of the biggest cities in the world. It's incredible.

And it makes sense, 'cause like they had to bring those bricks through the Nile River, and it's not like once they got them off the Nile River, they could be like, let's take them 7,000— let's take them 700 miles over land. Like they didn't have that technology. And so like Egypt still exists on the Nile, and it makes sense that the pyramids do as well.

Absolutely, you're crushing it. Okay, a few more and then we'll close it out. Favorite way to spend your free time?

Favorite way to spend my free time? Outdoors. I really like playing sports. I'm really into paddle tennis, pickleball. I go to Barry's a bunch. So doing like real activities with my body to keep me healthy.

Yeah, I love pickleball. I'm right there with you.

Favorite person to follow on Twitter? Yep. You know, I don't even know this guy's name, but there's some like guy who has like an Indian face that constantly makes jokes. doctor or something. But I really like Sean Puri. Do you know the doctor I'm talking about? I don't even know.

Dr. Parikh Patel. He's the best finance hilarious.

He's hilarious. I remember reading this thing with like, the Peloton CEO was like tweeting after like their stock went down 30%. And he wrote, sir, please make stock go up, not down. And I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever read. I probably laughed for 15 minutes having read that. Having read that. It was so good.

It's a great feed. Yeah, yeah, Sean's also a great follow. Fantastic podcast as well. My First Million really up into the right, didn't it? Yeah, that blew up.

Yeah, it really did. He's great.

Okay, last question. We'll round out the rapid fire. If you could have dinner with 3 people dead or alive, fictional or nonfictional, who would they be? You're at a dinner table, you're sitting at the head, and you get to invite 3 people. Who are they?

Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln. Oh, and I'd have to think about the third one. Maybe like Joan of Arc or somebody.

Interesting. I gotta tell you, I'm incredibly impressed. Usually people at least take a 3 or 4 second pause there. You were on your toes, my friend. That was— that's incredible.

Well, I do look like a cowboy admirer.

That's phenomenal. Moiz, you, you absolutely crushed the rapid fire.

Incredible.

The fast exit, I should have known that your rapid fire, you'd be up for it.

I'm ready to go. Yeah.

Hey, tell people how they can follow you. How can they get involved in your investments or whatever you want to kind of plug here? This time's yours, my friend.

Fantastic. I'm @MoizAli on Twitter. I'm at moiz@moizali.com. That's my email address. And, you know, I invest in a bunch of e-commerce businesses. I buy e-commerce businesses. So if you're interested in selling your e-commerce business, let me know. And if you're, you know, I also do a bunch of angel syndicates. So if you want to invest in e-commerce or like businesses or software businesses with me, let me know and I can set you up with that.

Beautiful, Moise. Thank you so much, my friend. This is absolute blast. This was such an achievement unlocked for me. You're just one of my favorite.

Awesome.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks so much for the time.

Yeah, yeah. You're incredible. Thanks so much.

Really appreciate it.

If you do want to get more involved with Triple Whale, it's trytriplewhale.com. We're on the Bird app at Triple Whale, and then we also have a fantastic newsletter that goes out every Tuesday, Thursday called Whale Mail. Check it out. You can subscribe right on our Twitter app. And then again, Moise, thanks so much again. You are the man. We really appreciate it. Huge, huge fans over here. And that's it, people. 30 in the books, and we'll see everyone on the flip. Thanks again.

Thanks.