In short
Consumer VC Podcast Episode Summary
Episode Title
Why The Supplement Industry Is Broken and How Momentous Plans to Fix It with Jeff Byers
Host
Mike Gelb
Guest
Jeff Byers, CEO of Momentous
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Key Points
Introduction
- Mike Gelb introduces Jeff Byers and Momentous, which focuses on high-quality human performance supplements.
- Jeff's background includes being a former professional football player and founding Amp Human before acquiring Momentous.
Jeff's Transition from NFL to Entrepreneurship (00:40 - 04:31)
- Jeff discusses his proactive approach to planning for life after football, which was influenced by injuries that limited his playing time.
- He initially worked in finance but quickly realized it was not the right fit, leading him to pursue entrepreneurship in the biotech and supplement industry.
The Birth of Amp Human and Momentous (04:31 - 07:46)
- Jeff founded Amp Human, which began as a biotech company focused on a transdermal delivery system for supplements.
- The project evolved into creating performance-enhancing products, notably the PR Lotion, designed to improve athletic performance through bicarbonate delivery.
Challenges and Innovations in the Supplement Industry (07:46 - 14:17)
- The conversation highlights various challenges in the supplement market, including:
- Trust and transparency issues regarding ingredient sourcing.
- The commoditization of supplements and the lack of rigorous regulations.
- Jeff emphasizes the need for clarity in the supplement market for consumers to make informed choices.
Acquisition of Momentous and Future Plans (14:17 - 25:37)
- Jeff discusses the rationale behind acquiring Momentous and how it allowed them to scale and offer high-quality products.
- The merger provided access to a strong network in professional sports, aiding in the distribution and credibility of their products.
Navigating the Supplement Market (25:37 - 33:25)
- The discussion shifts to how Momentous can maintain a competitive edge by focusing on quality, scientific backing, and building long-term trust with consumers.
- Emphasis on the need for rigorous third-party certifications to ensure product quality.
Sourcing and Trust in Supplements (33:25 - 34:12)
- Jeff explains the importance of sourcing raw ingredients and the issues with ingredients often coming from regions such as China, which may not have the same quality standards.
Challenges in the Supplement Industry (34:12 - 34:29)
- Key challenges include lack of regulation, transparency in sourcing, and the commoditization of products.
- Jeff discusses the implications of using low-quality ingredients and the broader impact on consumer trust.
Importance of Protein, Omegas, and Creatine (46:23 - 53:08)
- Jeff outlines the fundamental supplements he believes are essential for health: protein, omega fatty acids, and creatine.
- He stresses their importance for maintaining lean muscle mass, cellular function, and overall health.
Momentous' Approach to Supplements (53:08 - 58:04)
- Momentous focuses on creating high-quality products backed by scientific research.
- The company prioritizes transparency regarding ingredient sourcing and manufacturing practices.
Building Trust and Transparency (58:04 - 01:02:26)
- Jeff emphasizes the importance of building consumer trust through transparency and quality assurance in product offerings.
Recommended Reading (01:02:26 - 01:06:21)
- Jeff shares books that have inspired him:
- *The Comfort Crisis* by Michael Easter - Focuses on the importance of doing hard things to evolve.
- *Rocket Fuel* - Discusses the dynamics between visionary and integrator roles in business.
Conclusion (01:06:21)
- Mike wraps up the episode, thanking Jeff for sharing his insights on the supplement industry and the mission of Momentous.
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Key Concepts
- Trust and Transparency: Essential for building consumer confidence in the supplement industry.
- High-Quality Ingredients: Importance of sourcing and rigorous testing to ensure product efficacy and safety.
- Fundamental Supplements: Protein, omega-3s, and creatine are highlighted as critical components for health.
- Consumer Education: Need for increased awareness regarding supplement sourcing and the differentiation of products.
Final Thoughts Jeff Byers emphasizes that the supplement industry must evolve to better serve consumers through transparency, rigorous quality standards, and scientific backing. Momentous aims to lead this change while maintaining a commitment to high performance and integrity in nutrition.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Hello, I'm your host, Mike Gelb, and this is The Consumer VC, where we discuss the intersection of venture capital and consumer innovation. This show is brought to you by Propeller Industries, the leading strategic finance and accounting partner for venture stage companies. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe on YouTube or whichever platform that you're listening on. And if you want the full experience, subscribe to my newsletter at theconsumerbc.com. I send fundraising updates of all the latest deals in consumer that week, and you'll receive new episodes straight to your inbox. All content and episodes are for informational and entertainment purposes only.
0:38It is not investment advice. Our guest today is Jeff Byers, who is the CEO of Momentus. Momentus produces high quality research-backed supplements and helps simplify what are the core supplements you should be taking every day. I love this episode. I don't think we've ever had a story quite like this. And I really appreciate Jeff being so open to talking about it. So Jeff originally founded Amphuman. Amphuman is a human performance company dedicated to helping athletes of all levels reach their potential. And he later ended up acquiring Momentus and taking over Momentus. We talk about that journey, starting one company and then acquiring another company, why Momentus became an attractive acquisition target to begin with, how that whole transaction came to pass, why he never thought originally he didn't set out to actually run a supplement company, and his overall approach to different sales channels and growth.
1:39Without further ado, here's Jeff.
1:47Jeff, thanks so much for joining me. I know it's been a long time, and this has been a long time coming, but thanks so much for bearing with me. How are you doing? I'm doing great, thanks. excited to be on here. Oh, well, really, really appreciate it. I, I, I, I am as well excited to have you. So you were, you were a pro football player. You went to USC. I also went there fight on, uh, what was it like transitioning from, you know, pro football into having a normal job or at least going into business, transitioning into business after you retired? Yeah, that's a, That's a really loaded question.
2:25Go Trojans. We're not very good right now. It's kind of sad. But I would say I transitioned out of football. I was pretty unusually equipped to transition out. Early in my college career, I had football taken away from me from injuries, etc. And really got to think about what life after ball would look like for me. So I took a very different approach and was very proactive about post-football. I will say I only worked a normal job for like a year post-football. Like being an entrepreneur early stage is not a normal job. And founding a company and being the CEO, like I skipped a ton of steps. And some of it was just gritting your teeth and some of it was right place, right time.
3:10And so right after ball, I got into finance, realized really quickly that it was not my jam. tried to take kind of a lateral slash maybe a little vertical move in it and just was like, that wasn't it either. And just like realized I wanted to build something. I wanted to be a part of an early stage company. I wanted to really, right, like go back to what I loved about sports was like insane amount of accountability, really high stress, right? Ability to work in really high functioning teams and achieve at a really, really high level versus just be right. A cog in the system, which was not what I was really passionate about.
3:50And I just love this, this feeling in the belly of just like, right. Lots of pressure, lots of stress, you control, you can control and you just run as hard as you can, um, to make that happen. And then, you know, I would say like call it the last six years of momentous, six and a half years momentous and then three and a half years of uh the biotech i was at uh before that is not normal like i just the ride is not what people do well let's dig into um the not normal let's dig into well i mean also becoming an nfl player is also not normal uh as well but let's dig into the other part of the not normal the um when you the what was the inspiration uh and how did it begin the starting Amphuman?
4:32And also why dive into, why start a health and nutrition company? Yeah. If we kind of go a little backwards, like never wanted to be a supplement company or a sports industry company, that was never the goal. I actually fought it for a really long time. But if we go way back, right, my first kind of foray, I joined an early stage biotech where I met my co-founder, Erica Good, who's our president in the org right now. And I knew nothing about science, right? Like I took, I was, I got my MBA at USC like you did. I took oceanography in undergrad. That was like my science outside of high school. And joining an early stage biotech is like employee four.
5:18That was a very science heavy org. And organization was a really big step into my uncomfort, like being uncomfortable. And if I knew what I do now, I would have never joined that company because they were way earlier than I ever imagined. I just didn't understand what that was like. But I joined early in the company, had like an executive role, right? Not because my experience warranted that or business acumen. And it was because we had this cool idea to create a potentially consumer-facing product with the technology we're developing medicine. And number two is they needed help. Like, they wanted some help raising some capital.
6:04Right? And both those things of, like, a consumer-facing application was in sports. Check. Had lots of relationships there. And B, right, out of my finance world, also playing the NFL, I knew people that had capital. And so it was, like, this really interesting. They took a risk on me. I took a risk on them and jumped really deep into it. That kind of spun off this passion project that ultimately became what is now Momentus, is what the public sees as Momentus. But we started using this technology. It was a transdermal delivery technology. We're using it to deliver drugs. And like really early, right?
6:42Really, really early. They're now in, you know, phase two clinical trials and doing some really cool things. But they're still working. But this Prashen project, this consumer-facing thing that ultimately became, right, one of our products, PR Lotion, which is a really niche-y product, like, totally, like, we thought it was going to be huge, right? Like, all, I think, early things, it's like, you find, like, oh, it's going to be so much different than it is now. But we got a lot of early traction with that product. We got early clinical research and data behind it that was like, oh, it's doing something that's never been done before, right?
7:14like having an impact and we had really really good elite athlete elite performer feedback um and so we got in early days into like elite special forces and twitter france winners and right like marathon champions and things like this that uh like we're just working with the most elite elite and some of that had to do with my background but this technology had really cool implications and was showing good results both uh right both in clinical research but also in practice. And this is the PR lotion, right? This is PR lotion. And so basically like not to nerd out a little bit, but like PR lotion delivers sodium bicarbonate or bicarbonate into the body.
7:53And that's just baking soda. Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. But bicarbonate is what helps regulate acidity in the muscle. So when you think about when you train really hard or you go really long, you produce acid, right? People call it lactic acid, right? You produce acid. And that ability to clear that acid is one of the limiting factors in our ability to go hard or for longer, right? So a more basic muscle is more efficient, right? And can go longer and harder. So it's really, really avatations to do this. The challenge is when you take sodium bicarbonate orally, it causes a massive GI issue.
8:31If you remember when you were in sixth grade and you made the volcano with baking soda and vinegar. That's your stomach, right? And that happens. And so like, when you think about enhancing performance, massive GI distress, like typically does not enhance performance. It makes you crap at pants, right? And so this whole thing, like sodium bicarbonate has been well known, well studied, well used. If you get the timing wrong, it has problems and it's not practical for a lot of different athletic uses so that's kind of the gist of what pr lotion did and it like been studied for now like six decades right our body naturally produces bicarbonate we just can't produce enough hard to take isogenously like super commonly known substance etc so we're doing something really unique and we have this you know vision that it could be an awesome product for like weekend warriors and all of that It just turns out like the use case is pretty small and the experience of the product, right?
9:34It's not like a Juergens lotion. It was like a big, thick sunscreen. And it was just unless you're doing really hard, really long things, it wasn't crazy practical to use. But but anyways, we got all this and it was, you know, called something else in the biotech. But basically it got far enough in the biotech that we had enough kind of commercial support, interest, etc. that we're at this point of like, what do we do with this cool product? Right. This is a biotech working on drug, drug delivery versus a consumable company, like a consumer biotech. Very different things. It's like working in labs and like doing clinical research to like, we need to produce inventory, create a marketing campaign, like strategy, all of this.
10:20And so it just wasn't like they weren't compatible and the investor base wasn't compatible. either. And so I was like, what do we do as an executive team? What do we do with this product or this technology for these other use cases? And we weren't far enough along to sell it, nor did they want to sell it, like truly sell it. Right. It was like a damn shame to kill it. It was like, we're doing really cool things. And so I was like, what do we do? And I was like, why don't I, you know, and my co-founder spin it up. Right. And we could create a company around this. And, you know, the vision was we can create the next great human performance company.
10:57What the hell does that mean? Don't know. Still trying to figure that out. But it sounded really cool. And that was kind of our early pitch. We had this, right, this proprietary technology, patented technology to deliver a known substance to the skin. We were at the forefront of high performance working and doing the coolest things, investing in clinical research. And we had won a government innovation contract super early. That helped fund us. That matched private investment of dollars that really, really drove us into making a commercial product. But it was being at the forefront that made it really special for us.
11:33And so that was in 2018 when we spun it out and started this company called Amphuman, which is still the underlying entity behind Momentus on there. But what we found out, like a lot of people, is the product was awesome and people loved it, but it didn't translate to a big group of people, right? It translated to enough and people were interested, but we needed more. The total addressable market just wasn't nearly as big as you thought it would be. Yeah. And we had visions to use this technology to deliver other things and all this. And it just turned out that the market didn't need that, right?
12:15You don't need to, you know, put another vitamin or something on your skin instead of digesting it. Like it's easy to absorb things through the GI system. And so it's like, right, we found a great use case that wasn't able to take isogenously, right, through the GI system. But most things aren't that way, right? And so it's like, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Like protein is a good example, like no need to deliver protein topically, you just eat protein. And so anyways, what we had though, Mike, was this unprecedented access in this ecosystem. And, you know, that was between pro sports, elite military, and kind of this really upper class of, you know, what I'll call weekend warriors, like really, really upper class of like people really invested in, in their athletic performance.
13:11Think of Ironman, but not professionals. You go to Kona and participate in Ironman. That was our core consumer outside of pro and college sports. It was like, what do we do with this brand that we had? We have access. We looked at buying a bunch of different companies. We looked at hardware, software. You're looking at buying different companies because you have a lot of access when it comes to when it comes to um people that you know really have to care about health and nutrition right whether they're weekend warriors and um uh weekend warriors even you know in the military or or or other ways how do we leverage that into a big total addressable market into a big into much bigger so so essentially finding products that actually can service a much a much more wide-ranging people.
14:11Okay. Exactly. And we looked at a bunch of different things. And this is where we never wanted to be a supplement company. We had a board. And I remember there was the board meeting me for COVID at the 2019. And it was like, let's go into supplements. It's a supernatural fit. And I'm like, hell no. Right? And it's like, we're a consumer biotech. We're doing things that have never been done before. like this space, that space is not cool. Like it takes, right. Anybody with, you know, a dog can start a supplement company, right? Like it's not hard. It's like, and it's dirty. Like my perception, like there's not, like there's some good players, but a lot of not great players in here.
14:54And it's like brand first, not science first, not being at the forefront. It's like, let's just build a brand to make money. Right. And not product. Did you ever think, I know that supplements were, I guess, temporarily off the table or you didn't think that supplements made sense, but did you ever think that maybe if you did do supplements, it made sense to build it yourself? Yeah. So that's kind of where, so COVID hits, right? And we actually acquired another technology and we had a huge TAM. And it turned out we couldn't commercialize it. We couldn't scale it up. Like it just didn't go from the lab to commercialization.
15:36I had really cool clinical research behind it. And we tried to commercialize it. We literally could not manufacture it at scale, like outside of a lab. Just way too expensive to manufacture it? It just didn't convert into a scale up. Like it's just some of the tech just like you couldn't scale it. And so it was like never able, like the market was there, right? Like we just couldn't replicate the clinical results at scale. Just couldn't do it. Right. And that was hard. And we we bet a lot on that. Like we invested a lot into that. But we always had this, you know, supplement thing on the radar.
16:22And I had a friend mentor that was like, why do you not want to go into the space? bad and i'm like i just don't like it's not who we are like part of it was my ego it's like we're doing we do clinical research we're funded by the government like we're all like we're so like we're innovative like it was almost like we were above it like my ego said that and he was like dude you've been using supplements your whole life as a professional and elite athlete like that just means there's an opportunity to do something different here right like if you don't relate to any of the companies and you feel like there's a lack of trust that means there's there's something missing in the market because you're not the only one i like don't think of it as i don't want to think of it as like this needs change and there's an opportunity to build something special so you asked did we try to build it ourselves we started down that path and i realized really quickly it's really easy to make a supplement company really easy really really hard to do it right like incredibly hard to do it right um and it was kind of like one of those epiphanies of like how unauthentic to our brand of like a leading high performance company like working with the best have won a government contract to actually just like build it ourselves and just like have another me too protein powder or have another like not with the right routes and like how slow is that ramp to do it right and do it good rather than not so it was like one of those epiphanies is like it's gonna be really slow to do it the right way authentic to what was amp human and i'd gotten to know one of the board members for this company called momentus right they were a little smaller than amp was at the time and momentus was born in Pro College Sports.
18:16They built a sports nutrition line with the top dietitians in the world, right? Essentially. It's like, how do they do that? And they had incredible penetration into that space, like really pretty unprecedented from that. But that was the majority of their focus. They were looking to how do we expand beyond it, right? And the founder of that company, Matt Wan, and a handful of others did an incredible job creating incredible products, Right. And focusing on that one space. Their board, they knew they wanted, they needed to go beyond. And Matt was a younger kid at the time, but very successful entrepreneur now.
19:00right like when you look at what he built and like how he positioned it but they were looking to how do we right change leadership and they were a little too small to like really bring in a high-powered new executive team and it was just like in this kind of weird spot they were in a good spot as a business but not like not a great spot and like how do how about momentous or how about amp human requires momentous um and that was early 2021 like q1 end of q1 of 2021 we started those discussions of like what happens if amp human buys momentus and it became really clear it was the best path for us to go fast we can buy know how we can buy really high quality products and understand the certification the sourcing and all of that and like just cut through a lot of it and have an authentic story like we work with 150 pro and college sports teams with these products right now.
20:00Right. And so we closed that deal in, uh, essentially July 1st of 2021. On the product specifically for supplements, what impressed you most with Momentus when you were, when you were engaged with them and, and found out about this, this company that might be up for sale? I think there were like, there were a couple, a couple of things. Like first off they had, the core essentials in their product line and how they design them from quality of ingredients, where those ingredients are being sourced from, was really, really powerful. And the manufacturers that they had chosen, which were pretty hard for an early brand to get into.
20:44There's a lot of manufacturers in our space. Some are great, some are bad, but to get two good ones, sometimes as hard as an early brand. And then number two is they had all the certifications that mattered in the space, right? Like, realistically, a lot of people say they're third-party certified. Very few of them are very rigorous. And what Momentus did is they had the absolute peak of the pinnacle of rigorous of third-party testing. Like, what is actually on the label is in it, in the right amounts, period. And it doesn't contain anything bad, right? Banned substances. So it's not just label claim.
21:24It's called NSF certified for sport. And like, it has nothing to do like sport. It just means it's been cleared to be in pro and college sports, but it is really the highest standard of certification that you can get in our category. And that was really important. And then number three is they had the validation of the product, right? Being an ex-pro athlete, you don't bring things into the locker room that aren't high, high quality and, right, proven to work. And so that whole thing, it's like they had like what you could see from like quality of ingredients, how they manufacture, all that stuff, to certification, to actual proof that they are in the best places, right?
22:05Prove those other things. Because there's a lot of brands out there that are great, sports-focused, but they don't do any business in pro college sports. And that's because likely the products don't live to the standards that are required. And for me, if we were going to go into the space, we're going to make the highest level products possible. That is a requirement. And that's what they had. So that's kind of how we got to it. And they had so much opportunity. Clearly, we were able to build on it. So, so totally can see the opportunity by building, you know, a super high quality, a product that, that they have with Momentus.
22:48And it's certainly fair to say a much more maybe accessible product than, than you all had originally with like the PR lotion, right? Just a much larger, much larger TAM. And they also had access though too, right? Because they also were working with, with college sports. Yeah, they were working with college and pro sports, but they had a very different vision, right? When I would say that of like, they were trying to make really, really high quality products, right? I'm trying to disrupt this category, right? Like we're trying to do it better than it's been done before. Invest in clinical research, change policy, right?
23:27Like really, really think about it and not go down the same playbook that has been played in our category for a very long time, right? Right. Like the goal and what we had that they that they didn't. They had incredible access in pro and college sports. It was this ecosystem of high performance outside of it, of the influential people. And I would say this mission to really do it very differently. Right. And break some of the molds that we have. Like we were looking at this category of like, how do we disrupt? How do we disrupt the shit out of it? Not just take market share. Right. Like we we were coming in from a perspective of consumer biotech of like working with the Department of Defense on bespoke problems.
24:11And how do you optimize certain things in here? Like very, very different approach. But what we're able to do is like leverage amps, like really deep ecosystem of high performance and combine with Momentus is like deep penetration and high quality build of products with big TAMs and smash them together. And what that gave us was people like Dr. Huberman. And what that gave us was people like Andy Galpin and Stacey Sims and Kelly Starrett. It's like all these people that were around and knew of AMP, right, that we had gotten close to at AMP Human because of our work in the DOD or clinical research.
24:51like because a lot of these are at the tip of the pointy spear then we gave them an opportunity with all these products that were built and used by the best to say hey we're different and we have the best supplements we de-risk that category a lot for them right whereas like we are like we're committed to science we're committed to advocacy we're committed to innovation right also we have protein, creatine, omegas, big TAMs, big, big TAMs that they can get behind. And a lot of them hadn't worked with companies in our category because our category is messy. And they're like, ah, we just won't do a lot, or I'm not like in love with it.
25:32And so we were able to kind of smash the two together and create, right. One plus one equals a lot more than two. Well, I also like backing up a little bit, just talking a little bit about the supplement category, when you were a professional athlete and even, you know, in college and also an elite, you know, high school, um, uh, high school player, one of the top recruits, um, in the country, how did you approach even buying supplements? Um, and how did you make those decisions for yourself in terms of what you actually should put in your body? That's a great question. It evolved over time for sure.
26:06And I'll say like in the early two thousands, when I was in high school, you know, 2000, 2004, I was in high school, was just taking anything I could to gain weight, right? And how do I recover, et cetera. But that was like really early, early days of what I will call like sports nutrition and all of that. But you can throw Gatorade into this mix. Like Gatorade is sports nutrition. Gatorade is a supplement, right? Like electrolytes, however you want to define it. Like I would call that in this category that we play in, right used incredibly heavy but didn't there wasn't any of this NSF there wasn't any of this like everybody kind of knew like oh supplements are you know they started in bodybuilding like but who knows like how do they how do they go what do they what like what do you use and so it was kind of a cluster I will say like you kind of went in the store and listened to what people told you you should do and those guys were 24 year old gym rats right um and probably made bad choices that didn't have like either wasted my money or took things that weren't probably the most beneficial or didn't do anything or potentially did bad things right um on there go to college fast forward and like that um that tightened so much meaning like there was now control in college of like hey you get tested you get tested for banned substances like you have to do these things.
27:36And my early days in college, there was a lot of impermissible things, not banned, impermissible, meaning that the teams could not give them to you. And that has opened up drastically over the last decade and a half or so. But like, they couldn't give you omega threes. They couldn't give you some of these things. And now that it's grown, but like, what I learned is like, there is a real place for proper supplementation, right, of nutrition or other foundational things that matter, right? And I dabbled in a bunch and I'm a performance nerd, right? And like I gravitated towards the strength coaches and guess what?
28:18They were into this space and they talked us through it and like gravitated towards the PTs and all that and just learned a lot and knew there was a role. but it was still like you still just aren't sure like it's always been like what is actually good for you does it actually have what it is in it like you know then as a consumer you kind of just buy low cost you fast forward to nfl really strict and they started like nfl like gave you a lot more things but they this was like my time nfl was 2010 to 2014 and it was like the birth of like nutritionists being on staff and providing supplements and nutrition more regularly and geared towards players.
28:57But what you see there is like, they were only bringing in a couple brands. Right? And they were being very thoughtful on what and how to give. You didn't have 50 things, like four things that they gave you. Right? And it was like the most important things that drove the biggest impact, right? And it was this like cutting through kind of the BS wild west. And what pro sports showed me was like, there is a difference between good companies and bad companies. The challenge is like, when I came out, like, I didn't know where to pick. And I didn't really relate to a lot of the companies like as a brand, right?
29:37Like, it's like some of the really high quality companies make great products. They feel like a pharmaceutical company, like that. I don't like, that's not somebody who's helping me achieve my life goals or performance goals. Like I don't think of it. And so like, how do you build a brand? And so you have like, you have almost like brands for brand sakes, and then you have really high quality products. And like, how do you bring that in the middle to have like, you have a brand that stands for something and you have the best quality products and you meet all of that. Like, like there's just this, like there was this big divide for me as a consumer in it, which is why I didn't want to go into the space.
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30:13It's like, A, I don't trust it or B, I don't relate to it. Right. And it's like, but I still buy the things and it's like, you kind of buy them. Like, I think I'm buying something good. Um, anyway, so long winded answer. Definitely. This episode is brought to you by propeller industries. If you run a high growth business and your focus on profitability, extending your runway, and improving your operational efficiency, you probably need a finance and accounting whiz that will grow with you. Well, instead of hiring someone full-time, what would be cost-effective is working with Propeller Industries.
30:46Propeller Industries is the leading strategic finance and accounting partner for venture stage companies and has partnered with over a thousand startups and high-growth businesses across consumer products, consumer tech, and enterprise. Some of the brands that they've worked with are Liquid Death, olipop hymns farmer's dog away movie pass and giphy propeller also provides specialized support for fundraising and m &a with transaction advisory services propellers ta team of former investment bankers and investors can step in on more of a project basis when pursuing full-scale financing and m &a there's a link to propeller industries in the show notes if you want to learn more information no for sure how well no no not at all not at all how how did you think about as well um penetrating the NFL or penetrating, you know, college sports and actually having Momentus be the preferred supplement vendor per se of teams in the, in, in sports.
31:44So imagine that's pretty probably challenging in, in, in terms of, in terms of actually becoming like a trusted partner for. Yeah. I would say like, first off, you have to have the right products. Second, you have to have the right ingredient and sourcing story. And third, you have to have the certifications. None of that matters if you don't have the relationships. Right? Like those are all givens and then you have to go build the relationships in those teams. And so the relationships are a big deal. Right? And again, like a lot of these people who are like, these aren't buyers. Like these are dietitians that are working with the athletes every single day.
32:27Like like buying supplements is a secondary. They have to do it, but it's not their primary. Their primary job is making sure the team can perform. Like they don't have buyers that are like buying these things. Right. Right. Like they're just like sometimes Ph.T., sometimes, you know, masters in in sports science and nutrition, whatever that may be. Like they just don't, like this is their secondary, like they don't know a lot. And so it's like, how do you help them and support them in the right ways? Got it. What was, what is your approach to, and I know this from Amentus on, on the actual sourcing side and the sourcing, you know, raw ingredients, also the manufacturing.
33:10And what do other supplements brands maybe get wrong and where we as consumers can obviously become more educated when we even see labels or supplements? And maybe we actually can't see what's behind the scenes. I kind of boil it down to a couple of things. When I think about the supplement space, why do I want to be like the anti-supplement supplement company? And what does that mean? Like, but like, I think there's a big lack of trust in the space. Like most people are like, yeah, I know these things can be good for me, but what, you know, and like, are these good companies, they know there's not a lot of regulation, not sure how much, then there's a transparency of like, what is actually in it?
33:55Where is it coming from? Doesn't exist, which leads to lack of trust. And then there's this big piece around clarity and like clarity is noise. There is so much noise, right? Like, Mike, you walk into the store, you walk into any grocery store, there's probably a whole half of an aisle of a grocery store dedicated to this category. What do you do? Where do you start? What's important? And so it's like this lack of trust, transparency, and then a massive amount of noise, which lacks clarity. Right. And so, like, that's what's wrong with this space. Right. In my opinion. So you go back to transparency.
34:32This was really eye opening to me. and it continues to be eye-opening to me, is the majority of the raw ingredients from our category are coming from places people would be surprised. Like a lot of raw ingredients come from China, right? And I'll give creatine monohydrate as an example. There is one non-Chinese creatine monohydrate manufacturer in the world. One. It's called CreaPure. They're out of Germany, right? If you don't source your creatine from them, you are buying Chinese creatine. Don't care if it says made in the USA. There is no creatine made in the USA. None. Zero. Consumers don't know that, right?
35:23And I think that is a problem, right? When we think about those things. When you think about other things in health and wellness, food, like these better for you things, it is transparency and clarity. It's like, here are the four ingredients. Here are this. Here's that. Like the supplement space and sports nutrition space is so far behind that, right? It's like so far, it's not better for you. You don't know where they're coming from. Nobody's going to the store and buying organic apples from China. Like that doesn't exist, right but it happens in our space and they're the it's one of the very few categories that you put in your body that you don't know where things come from right and you don't like and you actually don't have the confidence that's what's in it is in it um and so i think that is a a really big challenge that to uncover right in our space of like people don't talk about it because consumers in our category have been a low, lower price wins.
36:26And I think that is problematic. Whereas like, that's not happening in health and wellness in any other category. Nobody's like, I'll go to the cheapest doctor ever. I'm going to buy the cheapest. Like I want to buy health food. I'm going to buy the cheapest health food. I'm going to go buy the cheapest at the grocery store, the cheap, like that is, that is never the healthiest, but our category is the only category that have done that. And so it just led to a lot of systemic problems, my, my belief. And there's a lot of great companies that do it well, but the category is massive. And I think until we have these conversations and help raise this category, because it just, it's a matter of choice and consumers dictate with their wallets and consumers follow.
37:14I mean, businesses follow consumers' wallets. And if we can show this, it only is going to make – the category is big enough for so many players. It's massive. And let's just raise the bar. Anyway, so box it. What's wrong with buying creatine that's sourced in China or even supplements that are sourced in China? I think it comes down to, A, right? And if you don't certify your product, you don't know what else is in it, right? Like the Chinese supply chain is very convoluted in terms of like where things are coming from. Creatine, the manufacturing process is not very clean. It's not like it's a byproduct of of Coke.
38:02Like Coke is in like, you know, making iron or coal. It's a byproduct of that. And that is like that is a problem. Also, it's a very, very dirty manufacturing process. So, A, you don't really know where things are coming from, right? Like, the purity is close enough, right? I would say close enough. However, there's been some cases where it hasn't been. But if you do the proper certifications as a company, it should be safe, right? But it's that transparency and quality. Like, is there anything wrong with an apple coming from China? Maybe, maybe not, right? Like it's just like they have different practices of manufacturing and producing things than we do in the West.
38:44That's not right or wrong. But I believe consumers should make a choice right on there. And like there's a lot of things that are great that come from different places in this world. But food and things we put in our body are not always those things. And again, it's not that it isn't materially different. No, but I don't like consumers don't know that. And when you don't know those things, consumers actually care. And when you find out, trust degrades, right? But also, if you're not third party certified by a top body, you don't know. You fundamentally do not know, right, if it is because a lot of these other companies, like these are the same companies that make and sell pharmaceuticals that could be, right, cross contaminated and other things.
39:34And so it's like, there is a lot of challenges. And I just fundamentally believe manufacturing is very different. And it is like the process that's used in Germany is a very different process that's used in China. And it, like the product is essentially the same that comes out as creatine monohydrate, but how you get there is different. So I guess based on your experience, the Chinese supply chain in your mind, it just tends not to be as transparent when it comes to creatine production or even supplement production. And that's really like the main. When it comes to a lot of the raws, it's like you don't actually know where it's coming from.
40:07And it could be coming from different factories. It could be coming from different regions, different farms. And it's also from our perspective, like it's not a consistent supply chain, right? Because you don't have visibility into it, which is really, really hard in our category. And it's like you're buying creatine from a distributor who's buying it from a Chinese distributor who's buying it from multiple factories in China, right? Right. That. Right. It's just like for us, like. We know exactly where the factory is. We can go visit that factory tomorrow. Right. If we so choose. That is a very different relationship.
40:50Which supplements do you think are much more commoditized or commodities or commodities versus ones that actually are differentiated that you really should be paying attention to which brand you actually choose from? I'm going to throw this one back at you. Beef is a commodity. Right. But if it's grass fed or. There's a very different subset of beef. There's prime beef. There's choice beef. There's select beef. There's grass fed beef. There's natural beef. Right. Like all of these things. There's different cuts of beef. Right. Like, so like, I, that's a dangerous thing to say. Like, I will say most of our industry is commoditized.
41:30Right. Meaning it's coming, like, it just, that is what it is. But the actual quality that you actually can get. So these actually are differentiated products. If we talk about protein, like, if we just go to, like, whey protein. Yeah. Or milk, like, let's start with milk protein. Whey protein isolate. Commoditized. Right? But you have milk protein, milk protein isolate, whey protein concentrate, whey protein isolate. Right? Like, so you have all these different forms. It's like the different grades of beef, right? And then it's like, where are you sourcing this from? Like, what is the pure, like, what is it?
42:08Like, you can get 94 % WPI, whey protein isolate, which is 94 % whey protein isolate. You can get 89, you can get 85, right? Like, you can buy, you as a manufacturer, we can buy different grades of it, right? And so, like, whey protein is probably the greatest commodity, right, when you think about that. So it's just like there is, right? Just like when you go to the store, like apples are a commodity, but you have organic apples, you have Fuji apples, whatever, right? Like you have all these different choices and consumers understand that better in food. But fundamentally, our category is just like protein is protein.
42:44It's like whey protein concentrate is different than whey protein isolate. Also, if you choose to sweeten, like what are the other ingredients in there? Like we as a brand have chosen to never use artificial sweeteners or artificial flavors, right? Sucralose is one of those. And sucralose is an engineered sweetener. But like lots of studies, hey, is it materially bad for your health? No. it isn't good for your gut biome right like it's shown to destroy right good microbes in your butt in your gut and and more importantly increase the bad microbes why would you why would you put something in a product that's meant to be taken daily that has potential implications to your gi system that is actually like now that we know it's like your gut biome is incredibly important And so it's like, but like, that's the difference.
43:43It's like, yeah, it's a commodity. Asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, right? Like in there, it's like other ingredients, sourcing, right? Quality, what's the grade that you're looking at? It's just like the consumer doesn't understand it because nobody can, nobody's talked to the consumer about it. Yeah. What are other ingredients besides sucrose that maybe folks should watch out for when they're actually thinking about which, let's say, protein products that they should be getting? Yeah. I mean, I think just fundamentally, whey protein isolate is going to be the highest filtered whey on the market, right?
44:24It's really looking for how many actual ingredients are in the back. Like if it's a laundry list of ingredients, it's the same thing. That's like going to the grocery store and buying the most highly processed foods. Like you don't need a ton of ingredients in your whey protein, right? And it's something that we take a lot of great pride in is like, how do you have the least amount of ingredients that make a high quality product? So I'd say that's sucralose. So artificial sweeteners and artificial flavors are really important. And the least amount of ingredients that you can find in there. And now, right, like if you like unflavored for us has whey protein isolate and prohydrolase, which is a digestive enzyme, which helps enhance absorption.
45:07That's all that's in our unflavored. Now, with flavors like you had cocoa and some salt and some other like natural flavors in there, stevia and monk fruit as like natural sweeteners. but I would just say like it's just looking at the back of the label and it's it's the same thing if you're going to go like like highly processed food versus minimally processed food it's like you want a clean label right that you that you can look at and then I would say it's like way like consumers don't understand the difference between whey protein concentrate and isolate and isolate is right oh like it's like buying prime beef versus select beef there is a difference right absorbability right flavor all those things like it matters um and so that's you know if you're doing something in my perspective you're doing something for your health and longevity like an investment of another 10 so you know is actually not that much but our consumers have been we've been trained to look at our category as a commodity.
46:15Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Thinking about the 80-20 rule when it comes to supplements, which 20 % of supplements do you think that delivers 80 % of the benefits or ones that it makes sense to actually take every day? Yeah, you're stealing my lines and I love it. But I really believe in this 80-20 rule across the board in life, in how we operate. Like 20 % of what we do drives 80 % of the value, right? Essentially is the model. One of the unique things we've had at Momentus is like, I'm not a crazy innovator or, right, sports scientist or any of that. What we've been able to do is we sit at this really cool nexus, right?
47:03Between practitioners or like the people who are pro in college sports, to scientists, to like the trendsetters or tastemakers that are setting the tempo of health for the next 15, 20 years. Like we sit in the middle of all this. And so what we've been able to do is create a really, really powerful, right, portfolio. My goal is not to have 300 products, nor is it to have one product that does everything. I just fundamentally believe that's wrong. But then it's like, what does this group all really recognize as like the most important impactful thing. So we call the three because this is the question I ask.
47:43I would ask, if you had five things, what would you do? And I ask this of the ecosystem that we have. And of those five that everybody would come back, three were always the same. Protein, omegas, and creatine. No cross-reactivity. Really, really hard to get from your diet or from your lifestyle. And they are the biggest levers you can do when you think about health and longevity, right? Help maintain lean muscle mass, help cellular function, and important for brain health. All things that are really, really important. So like how do we maximize our ability to maintain our lean body mass, which is one of the largest indicators, and train and recover from training?
48:30That is a huge thing. And it's hard to get enough protein. It's like 0.8 to 1.2 grams of protein, depending upon who you talk to per pound of body weight of like, if you're an active adult, that is a lot of protein, right? It's a lot. It's a lot of protein. And it's like, it's not practical to consume it all. Now, do you have to have it? No, but to be optimal and like as a active fit adult, right? That we're trying to like close the gap between lifespan and healthspan. Those things are important and lean body mass is important. So, so those are the three things that, that it's like, that's your foundation.
49:04And I struggle with people that are like, what about this? What about this? It's like, those are shiny objects. And those work for, right, corner cases. But a lot of things can be solved with behaviors first. Like, we have a great sleep product. Sells really well. But if you aren't doing the fundamental lifestyle and behavior changes for sleep, it actually, like, no pill is going to fix your sleep. Right? Can it enhance it? Yes. But you're better off investing in behaviors for sleep than taking a pill. However, protein, creatine, or omegas, those are essential nutrients. Really hard to get from your daily diet.
49:52Magnesium, L3 and 8, apigenin. Those things are awesome. They can help you sleep, but you don't actually need them to sleep. Right, right. That makes sense. I mean, like having a good routine, maybe not enough screen time, for example, right before you go to bed and other kind of habits that actually get you in the mood, your body realizing that, okay, it's bedtime, that you're kind of programming your body to actually go to sleep naturally. That makes a lot of sense in terms of the 80-20. So protein, protein omegas, and then also creatine as the big three per se. And I agree with you. I mean, I try to have one gram per pound every day, but it is so challenging or can be challenging.
50:45to actually get it it's an easy way so to augment that's all it is right like like is there a max is there a max you can have probably of a powder or no i mean you're gonna like right like don't like anything right if you do too much of anything like i'm sure if you consumed all of your protein all your protein by powder that's not you'll probably have some gi issues yeah right like Because guess what? You need fiber in your diets. You need fat in your diet. You need all these other things. Everything else that kind of comes to you is solid protein. This is supplemental, right? Like nothing that I said should take place of a well-balanced, good diet.
51:26If you're like well-balanced, good diet, like that is, right? Like that's like sleeping and moving. Like those things are like requirements of being a human. So I think it's such an interesting thing. And then everything else just cascades beyond that. But if you like master the things that if you do for long periods of time have big impacts. Now, sometimes you need to augment with this or that. Like I'll do collagen for an example. Like collagen has really awesome data around connective tissue health, right? Joins, ligaments, tendons. I play professional football. I've had a ton of surgeries, right?
52:01I've torn a ton of ligaments and tendons. That is a limiting factor in my life. I need to do as much as I can to increase like the longevity of my wheels. Mike, I don't know your background, but my guess is you have a lot less miles on that car than I do. Right. And so therefore, collagen rises up to my level of like that goes right below my big three. Not for everybody. Right. And sometimes it's just like, hey, I tore my ACL scheme. I'm going to do this pre surgery and post surgery. Right. And that's all you need. But it just depends. Once you get below that, it's what are your goals and what are your limitations that you need to look at?
52:47And that's where I think the challenge in our space is people are getting swayed by here's this one thing that does everything. Like the magic pill is exercise and sleep. That's the magic pill. The problem is it's not a pill and they're actually way harder than you think. But I think it's quite clever because I was going to ask you, should supplements be individualized versus general? But it seems like you all at Momentus, you do a pretty good job in terms – I mean, an awesome job – of showing kind of like these are kind of like the core things that you should really focus on. and you also bundle them in creatine, omegas, and then also protein.
53:39But then as well, we have these other options, the other products that actually might be tailored much more maybe individualized in terms of what your needs are, which I think is actually quite kind of clever in terms of having a routine, having a supplement routine for everybody, but then based off of maybe other areas they might be struggling with, here's maybe some more kind of individual ones too. Yeah. As you look through our portfolio, like right below the big three, we kind of have like athletic performance. We have like daily wellness or essentials, right? Like things like vitamin D and iron or zinc and right.
54:15Then you have, right. What we call cognitive longevity, which is, which is powerful. Then we have sleep, right? And our goal is to have the 80, 20 for all of those categories. What is the 20 % that drive the most amount of impact for people in those categories. Like, not have everything for sleep and not have, like, one thing for sleep. But have the core, right? And if sleep is something that you need to help, you need a little help with, let's have what's right in there. That has good data, right? That can have an impact, right? But, like, the not be everything. And, like, let's help guide people into that.
54:52But it does come down, like, and so when I think about, you know, people always ask me what should I do, right? They ask me three questions. What the hell is Momentus? Oh, you're just a supplement company. What makes you special? And then it's, oh shit, what should I take? And that what should I take is where the Momentus 3 came from. Because without knowing you, Mike, the big three, the Momentus 3 are the only things I want to talk about. Master those. But then it comes down to like, you know what you care about. What are your limitations? What are you trying to achieve? And then you go that next level down and pick those.
55:29But I can't just say, well, you should take, you should be taking Iron and our sleep pack and this. It's like, our sleep pack's great. Maybe you sleep awesome. I sleep really well. Like, awesome, awesome. Like, I don't, my sleep is not my challenge. So guess what? It's not relevant to me, right? And so like, I can't tell you, I don't know you enough to know like that is an opportunity to, right, take your foot off the brake by helping you sleep a little better. Don't know. So, and then I think, like, there was this whole thing, like this push to extreme personalization. I think it's really hard.
56:06I think it's unsustainable for a consumer. Because, like, hey, if you get 0.9 grams of protein per pound of body weight versus one, it doesn't matter. Frankly, right, like, as long as you're in, like, a 10 % range, you're fine. 20 % range, even you're probably fine, right? Like if you make it so constrictive and so tailored and so personalized, it takes everything. Like what's the point of being healthy if you can't have fun and have some freedoms and eat a pizza? I don't know. Like that sucks. That's not fun. But the point of life is to live and why you invest in your health and wellness is to do more of what you love and have more smiles and laughs, right?
56:54Like, I don't like we like, it's just like so extreme. And I think it's so narrow minded to be like, we know exactly here. Here's your magic thing, Mike. And it's like, that doesn't take into a kind of like, maybe your blood work says that, but realistically, like you might have other, Like, it's just, we are complex beings. And I just, I don't think like a one, like truly personalized custom thing is what matters. I think you have to figure out what works for you and what's the biggest breaks. Because you also only have so much bandwidth, so many resources, right? And what you will do habitually for long periods of time is the most valuable.
57:37And that might be, I'll take omegas and creatine, but I hate fucking protein. Excuse me. So you don't do it. But guess what? That's better than you taking omegas, creatine, and protein for three weeks, stopping for six, starting for three. Right? What are you going to do consistently over long periods of time? Stick to it. Yeah, that's a really, really fair point. I should think here's a little bit too. Obviously, when you acquired Momentus and became Momentus, you bridge this gap of having all this unique relationships with thought leadership, also being able to penetrate the fitness community and the nutrition community in many different facets and ways.
58:26How do you leverage that? And as well, the inter-human partnership that happened a couple of years later as well, how do you think about taking all this thought leadership that you've built and trust that you've built more importantly, and actually translating and actually building out a consumer business? How are you able to do that? It's actually been, it's hard. I'm a, like my background's not in marketing or brand or content or creative, right? What I care the most about is the Momentus Standard, which is this 15 tenant thing that we built, our ecosystem, right? The people we surround ourselves with.
59:09And we've honestly like what's been so valuable for us is we've never been a marketing company first. We built a brand organically through our people, right, through our ecosystem, through the Hubermans. And that's developed trust. I believe the next step for Momentus is to not just have everybody else say that they trust us. It's to exude trust and become the leader in the space, right, by sharing these stories and by talking about the industry. in a different way and trying to take away the noise and add trust and transparency. And like to your question, it's like, hey, you should just know where your creatine comes from.
59:49I don't, like, does that change people's buying habits? I don't know. But I believe the transparency and sourcing is important for consumers to know. I care. I know a lot of other people do. I still make some choices. But I like to know those things, right? Right. And and so, you know, kind of kind of back to that is. We've done it really organically, a lot of people like, oh, man, your brand and your marketing is so good. And it's like. There's five years where you looked at our website and like when I pitched our business to investors are like, you know what you're doing? Like, nope. But look at all the amazing things that we have.
1:00:32right like we built a brand in the hardest places to penetrate and that brand is now coming to life and i think that's for me like holding that very precious like this being at the forefront of high performance is what will create longevity and momentous right rather than another flash in the pan in this industry that is very very common like what's the next trend or the better flavor this or that, right? Like what we want to do is create a longstanding leader in Momentus in this space, right? Long after I'm probably here is like, how do you instill standards and how do you instill doing it differently and better than it's ever been done before into a brand?
1:01:14And that's what it's been known for. And this is not happens in a week, right? It doesn't happen in six years. It happens over a decade, right? Like it, like always working to do this. And so I just, I don't know, like, I believe what we have to do in our next great thing to take it is, right, like leverage our external and turn it to internal to turn us to like that people are looking at us as a leader, right, versus, right, like, Stacey Sims and Huberman and all these other people like that lifted us up. How do we, right, rise into our own, right, and create change and be different? because most of our consumers don't know our backstory.
1:01:57Most of our consumers don't know, right, as an example, like we've been working on a pre-workout for three years, right? Most of our consumers don't know that we pulled the product off the market. That was about$400 ,000 of net profit a month. And we just gave that up because we did not believe in the science of that product anymore. We're like, those are the stories that we haven't told. And they're important to tell. What's one book that's inspired you personally and one book that's inspired you professionally? So I'll admit, I read occasionally. I listen a lot. Right? On there. One of the books I love more than anything, full disclosure, he's a partner of Momentus.
1:02:47Michael Easter is The Comfort Crisis. i just like i fundamentally like you read that book got me in a rucky like so good how you how we evolved like just doing hard things and like how do we not like it's just something that resonated so deeply with me and i just think really defines some of the the state that we're in as a world as a society um on that a book professionally that was really powerful for me is called Rocket Fuel. And we follow this operating system called EOS as a business. And Rocket Fuel basically is the definition or defines this duo leadership role at the top between an integrator and a visionary, right?
1:03:37And how those two become the strongest dynamic in a business. And so like you kind of got from me, like my background is not in implementing process or making P &Ls. My skill and passion is around innovation, science, sales, like, right, external, like how do we live and show the dream and the vision of what this is? Like I create a lot of energy for the team, set the tempo. Then you need this person behind. How do you harness the energy, put processes in place? So that book Rocket Fuel, really for my co-founder and I, my co-founder came from McKinsey and Company, like, right, one of the ultimate, right, grounds for like business strategy process, right?
1:04:25And her and I have this visionary integrated relationship that is really, really powerful when unlocked. Now, like any co-founder relationship, it can be challenging. Like that, when we read that book, it was like, that is us. And it allowed us to like take apart what we were doing as a business and say, where are our zones of genius? And how do we focus on that? Like, Jeff, you do this. I do this. Erica, you do this. I do that. Right? And that was really powerful. So I would say like most meaningful business book for me was that. I don't like honestly, like leadership books and things like that.
1:05:02Don't not that I don't love them or don't like I just I actually don't love them. Like it's like learning about leadership from a from a pro coach or a Navy SEAL. It's like that's a very different thing than running a company. Like when you're a Navy SEAL, you have the 50 most badass humans in the world that will literally die. It's a very different type of leadership than, oh, I have a 24-year-old marketing manager. Yeah, totally different. It's just like, it's like, it doesn't comprehend, right? And it's like my football, on a football team, there is some leadership traits, but that team, like, they don't all translate because you have the 1 % of the 1 % of the 1 % that will do anything.
1:05:50And in a business, you have this great diversity, right? of people that are just like, it's my first job. I hate what I do. I'm doing it. To people who are like, I'm all in on the mission. To a founder that is so different. It's just like this completely different. Anyway, so I haven't like, I've learned a lot on leadership by doing and seeing from my past life and like morphing what it takes. But it's very different. Final question. Requires a very short answer. It says that you work, well you do work with 31 of 32 nfl teams that helps deliver p performance who is holding out what's the team that's holding out nobody nobody 32 of 32 you're now 32 of 32 okay phenomenal phenomenal okay that's great um jeff thanks so much for your time i really appreciate it no thank you mike and there you have it jeff thanks so much for coming on the show it was tremendous having jeff on i really hope you all enjoyed it i certainly did if you're loving the show please subscribe at theconsumervc.com to receive a weekly newsletter of all the latest deals that are happening in consumer and of course an update of any time we have new episodes you'll be the first one to know about it thanks again for listening
1:07:20Thank you.
From the publisher
Thank you to our presenting partner –– Propeller Industries https://www.propellerindustries.com/ Propeller Industries is the leading strategic finance and accounting partner for venture-stage companies. Our guest today is Jeff Byers, CEO of Momentous. Momentous produces and sells best in class human performance products. Previously, Jeff Byers founded Amp Human and later acquired Momentous, merging the two companies. He’s also a former professional football player and played at USC in college (Fight On✌️) 00:00 Welcome to The Consumer VC 00:40 Introducing Jeff Byers and Momentous 02:02 Jeff Byers' Transition from NFL to Entrepreneurship 04:31 The Birth of Amp Human and Momentous 07:46 Challenges and Innovations in Supplement Industry 14:17 Acquisition of Momentous and Future Plans 25:37 Navigating the Supplement Market 33:25 Sourcing and Trust in Supplements 34:12 Challenges in the Supplement Industry 34:29 Transparency Issues in Ingredient Sourcing 37:30 The Problem with Chinese Creatine 40:49 Commoditization of Supplements 46:23 Importance of Protein, Omegas, and Creatine 53:08 Momentous' Approach to Supplements 58:04 Building Trust and Transparency 01:02:26 Books that Inspire 01:06:21 Final Thoughts and Conclusion Subscribe to Our Newsletter: https://www.theconsumervc.com/ Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Hjm74Z... Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast... Follow on Twitter: / mikegelb Follow on Instagram: / mikegelb Follow on TikTok: / consumervc
