Ep. 11 / Unleashing Gut Health with Shannon Race, Co-founder of BIO:ME, Fiber-Rich Supplements

0:04Hi, I'm Natasha Jakoboski and this is my podcast professional jealousy where I talk to people I'm impressed by and yes, a little bit envious of. I'm hoping that you too will enjoy hearing about all of their enviable achievements that we can all learn from and be inspired by. Today, I'm talking to Shannon Race, founder and CEO of Biome, a groundbreaking line of clean, fiber-rich gut health supplements designed to optimize digestion, reduce bloating and restore the microbiome um it was inspired by her lifelong battle with ibs um and interestingly shannon also serves as a principal at starshot ventures where she leads investment strategy advises portfolio brands and marketing and brand development um she sits on the board of coia a plant-based protein drink um and in her past has some amazing experience uh on brands like Vital Proteins, helping them scale as global marketing director among other brands.

1:07So, hi, Shannon. Thank you. Hello. Thank you for having me. I mean, I am so grateful to have some time to chat with you. I love the Biome brand that you co-founded, and I can't wait to kind of dig into your career path, which I think is super interesting, and I'm sure a lot of people will be thinking, how do I do that? But let's start with Biome. For anyone who doesn't know it, can you give me a little bit of the, like, what's the elevator pitch? So we are really kind of set on this path to reinvent the fiber category. Fiber is a macronutrient that we really talk about has been long forgotten.

1:53We know a lot about the macronutrients like fats carbs and proteins, but we really have failed to consider the importance of fiber amongst those other macronutrients. So the entire vision of Biome is to bring fiber to the forefront for consumers, help them bridge their deficiencies in their daily diets, and create something that feels more lifestyle and approachable for the modern consumer. Amazing. And they're all powders at the moment? um they're powders and we do have a couple capsule options um but for the most part powders yes yeah um I was interested in so many things about your brand um I love that you start you know it seems like a you can kind of tell the marketer in you because you've got the why the vision talk to me it was a very kind of personal experience the reason to start this um talk about that was Yeah.

2:53Yeah. So I was diagnosed, if you will, I feel like IBS tends to be a catch all for a lot of gastroenterologists who are like, not really sure what's going on with you, but clearly something is causing you issues. And so we'll just like throw you into this more generalized bucket. it. This all happened when I was in middle school and honestly became very much a lifelong battle for me trying to figure out what foods were triggers, what foods weren't, you know, how to take care of my gut and heal it. I think, you know, for many, many years, it created a lot of fear around what foods could I actually eat?

3:36What couldn't I eat? And it wasn't until I was in my early 20s and actually started working at Vital Proteins that I was kind of introduced. Mind you, I grew up in the Midwest. So if you think about, you know, natural remedies for wellness and things like that, not exactly at the forefront of that movement. So being at Vital Proteins was kind of my first introduction to this naturopathic space, the space where you could really leverage food and supplements to heal your gut or ailments that you were experiencing. And it was a massive unlock for me. It completely shifted how I thought about what I was putting into my body and how those things that I was putting into my body could actually heal my body at the same time.

4:29So that was amazing for me. And, you know, throughout that journey, fiber became a resource for me to really help repair and nourish my microbiome. And, you know, it was pretty baffling to me that, you know, for so long, it's been kind of categorized as a, you know, spot treatment. It's if you can't go to the bathroom, you go to your local drugstore and pick up, you know, a psyllium husk fiber powder. And there was really not a lot of discussion around how important it was in your daily diet to actually nourish your microbiome. So that to me felt like, you know, if we're going to talk about probiotics and how important they are for your gut health, we got to talk about the prebiotics and fiber too.

5:16Yeah. I love how your product range kind of dimensionizes fiber. So you start breaking down the elements and kind of benefits that it can give, whether that's immunity, which is at the base of the gut, or it's about, you know, microbiome or gut health, or it's, I saw that you have like a GLP-1 kind of support skew. um and is it all about fiber is it about promoting gut health which which one comes first you know i think that first and foremost it's important to educate on fiber as a whole i think when we look at our diet and eating about a balanced um healthy diet fiber is not ever talked about um and whether or not you know fiber is actually you know doing all of these other amazing things, it is just a critical piece of the nutrition that you need in your day-to-day.

6:19So I think it's important to start there with consumers just so that they can understand, oh, fiber is actually something I should be considering as a massive part of what I'm consuming every single day, just as much as I'm thinking about proteins. And from there, you know, talking about what fiber actually does, how it benefits the body. Because I think sometimes, you know, people get lost in the overcomplication of things. They get lost in overcomplication of different supplements or vitamins or nutrients. And, you know, I think just helping them understand that 95 % of us Americans are not even needing, you know, half of the daily fiber needs that our body requires.

7:10I mean, that's in and of itself pretty staggering. Yeah. What do you make of, I feel like prebiotics, probiotics, prebiotics, especially with things like Poppy and Alipop have suddenly kind of increasingly mainstream. What do you make of all the kind of prebiotic drinks coming out at the moment? Obviously the Poppy sale to Pepsi recently. Yeah. Which good for them. That's really great. It's really good. It was a good number. Yeah, pretty good number. You know, I think that it's important that, you know, we have accessible options for individuals who, you know, may not be taking vitamins and supplements, you know, they can find, you know, some sort of benefit in a food source or a beverage source.

8:02But I think that there with that comes some obstacles for brands like myself, wherein, you know, we're trying to provide products that really do genuinely benefit your gut health, but also provide a really seamless use a seamless user experience. So in the world of food and beverage, oftentimes the fiber sources that are used tend to be really fast fermenting. And what that means is it's like inulin based or chicory root or Jerusalem artichoke heart, the list goes on. And what ends up happening is that a lot of people who might not walk down their vitamin and supplement aisle and pick up a bag of fiber, they'll go to the beverage section and grab this beverage and they'll drink it thinking, oh, fiber, it's great for my gut.

8:54And they'll have an adverse reaction to it, which can create some challenge for us to help re-educate consumers on. There's a lot of different fiber sources and they're not created equal. And, you know, some of them, like, you know, what you might find in beverages or food can cause GI distress. Our formulations do not. They're specifically designed not to. And so it's kind of this push and pull of you want that, you know, mainstream discussion. But then sometimes it can have a little bit of an adverse, you know, effect. So, yeah. Okay. That was very diplomatic.

9:38I try to be, you know, totally. I see it. Um, I I'm kind of interested in, um, how, so obviously you've got this great experience. How long were you at, um, vital proteins for five years, five years. And that was on the marketing side or took, uh, what was your kind of path there? Yeah. So my, my backstory is really funny because I think most people are like, okay, so what did you go to school for? What were you doing early in your career? And I was like, oh my gosh, you'll never guess. But I originally wanted to be an art critic. And then I fell into public relations. And I was working at Vital Proteins very early stage.

10:24I started working there in 2016. We were about 10 employees. I think it was employee number 10 that was hired. And I was strictly the PR manager. I was there to, you know, do my job as in the storytelling circuit and make sure that media was talking about the brand and what I learned through that. And it was kind of serendipitous, but a lot of social media was transitioning to the world of influencers. And, you know, the monetization of the platform hadn't really happened yet, but people were really excited to partner with brands. And this whole idea of storytelling through the media kind of turned into, well, that's a part of it.

11:06But there's this whole other bucket now on social media where you can leverage these expert voices, these, you know, influential individuals to really help tell the story that, you know, the brand may not be able to tell on its own and connect with, you know, communities and really help, you know, people understand the why. And that was a pretty pivotal, amazing, I guess, experience, but finding. And then from there, I built out our influencer program and hired a team to support it once we got it to a place where it was really taking off and becoming a large part of our marketing strategy at Vital Proteins.

11:52And then I was kind of always looking for ways to challenge myself beyond what was the directly in front of me. And okay, if, you know, I can create these campaigns and this content over here, can I extend that into larger creative campaign opportunities? We did, you know, really large out of home campaign. I think it was in 2018, the first one we ever did. And, you know, it just kind of kept building from there. And so, yeah, I kind of worked my way up to being the CMO's right hand and then eventually taking our playbook and applying that internationally when we started to expand. I love that.

12:36So from art critic to PR, I mean, that's one of the things that I'm always so curious about. You know, personally, I kind of fell into what I was doing and then just kind of drifted and ended up in a place that I'm happy with but you know so different than someone like my husband who is like goal goal this right so I always love hearing that other people have kind of like found their way serendipity um what what do you think you've taken what are the biggest things you've taken from your experience at vital proteins into now founding a kind of you know a different but related supplement kind of wellness brand?

13:18I think one of the biggest learnings that I had there was to not be afraid to try something. You know, I think sometimes we, and I've seen this across other brands, I have worked on a number of different brands in the consumer space, but oftentimes you see brands, they almost create their own obstacles or their own challenges because they're so obsessed with ROI. They get so, you know, you know, the KPIs have to be so specific and they almost, it's like analysis by paralysis by analysis, you know, they like just, they can't get out of their own way. So they won't try something for fear that it might not produce XYZ result.

14:02And what you end up doing is you just don't move at all. You're just standing still. And, you know, I was really fortunate that I had a really bullish CEO at Vital who gave me reign to try new things and challenge myself and not everything worked out. But what it did, what it did do was give me failure to learn from. And I think that's often also, too, where people kind of get hung up is they they don't want to fail. Failing is like the quickest way to learn. It's the most exciting way to learn, to be honest, because if you fail doing that, then you definitely won't do that again. But, you know, I think he always used to say, fail early, fail often.

14:47And that just has always resonated with me. And so I carried that into building this brand in a pretty significant way. You know, sometimes things don't work out, but I think it's being able to try them, learn from them and continue to move forward. That's how you progress fastly. fast yeah how have you i mean obviously uh vital proteins when you left presumably was pretty big going international um and starting something new and starting from scratch having to create awareness for something new like how do you market your brand like what what are your biggest uh insights into how to start start from scratch well it's very challenging it's very different I mean, we had gotten when I was leaving, we had just not acquired by Nestle Health Sciences.

15:39We had crazy marketing budgets and to go from that to, OK, we have a set amount of capital. We really have to be smart about how we use it, what channels we're really putting that spend behind and how we want to grow. So it's difficult because a lot of what I learned at Vital really related to awareness and storytelling was very much of what I wanted to dive straight into with Biome. But you have to get a little bit scrappier and figure out where you're going to place your bets because you can't do everything. Um, so, you know, I also too became a little bit more, um, uh, laser focused on the ROI, but it was less of, you know, being held back by it and more of it being kind of the driving force of testing things and figuring out where I could really capitalize on the spend and focus on, you know, how that spend was driving to the channels, my sales channels that I was really focused on so it was just a little bit of a different navigation I would say um any advice new founders how how can they uh what what did you learn that could be helpful from going zero to to awareness I think that I think where founders often forget is the human connection like the component of new consumers really feeling like they're connecting not with just a brand, but they're connecting with a person, the human element of a brand.

17:19In the very early days, I was doing all of our TikTok videos. I was getting on the phone and calling people back on the customer service line, wanting to like really engage and learn. And I feel like you are in and of yourself, in and of yourself, you are kind of the magic of it. And if you leverage that, I mean, it's at no cost to you to, you know, put yourself out there and connect with people. It's a, that's a, I think it's the best place to start, to be honest. So I guess that was an important piece of it for me was all of that. Yeah. How did it feel having to put yourself out there? I mean, that's a big change.

18:07I never did. I never did any of that before. I was behind the scenes. I was, I was, you know, pulling the strings and orchestrating the entire thing way, way, way in the background. So it was a little weird, but you know, it was really, it was really cool to see the community on TikTok and things like that really excited about the videos and wanting to learn more and you know you're I I don't know it was it was also it was it was really exciting so interesting um yeah I think uh another thing that's kind of interesting about your path is from Vital Proteins is that where you joined the Ventures Studio, Starshot?

18:55Yes. So I had a, I left, when I left Vital Proteins, I was actually at another venture capital company for a couple of years called Kavu. And I was working on brand strategy and marketing strategy for many of their portfolio companies. So I had a little bit of a stint in between. Yeah. And then came Starshot, which was the founder of Vital Proteins. This is Kurt's firm. So he's the general partner of this firm. We obviously had stayed in touch after I had left. And, you know, he had been investing in various consumer brands. He really wanted to formalize that into a fund. And he wanted to honestly give individuals that he saw as, you know, rock stars in his world the opportunity to come forward with an idea and incubate that idea through this venture studio.

19:54So I was doing like a number of things. I was helping him form this firm, form the venture studio component of that firm, build my own brand and incubate it through that venture studio. and um you know formalize this kind of investment strategy and work on some of the um investments that he had done so it was a lot of things going on at once yeah I mean that sounds pretty pretty unicorn I mean I can't tell you how many people I have come to me and ask about trying to go on to the VC side and be some sort of strategy and I feel like it it's a dream job for many um any thoughts on how if you don't happen to know the vital proteins founder what's i mean is that a realistic job or is it quite unusual like should people be thinking there are lots of jobs that are at kind of vcs where you can help think about uh investment decisions on the strategy side especially on the marketing and strategy side you know i think it's really interesting because I see more and more now these BC firms, especially in the consumer space, and I would venture to guess beyond that too, really starting to lean on experts that are not traditionally coming from finance backgrounds, et cetera, because investing is very twofold.

21:26Yes, a lot of it is the diligence process where you're looking at financials and financial liability and all of the data around, you know, market size and growth. But there's another component that I felt so strongly connected to when I was at Kabu. And now that I'm at Starshot, which is the consumer side of it and the consumer insights. And those, that is almost like a gut instinct, just, you know, someone who really understands consumer, consumer behavior and what different, demographics of consumers are doing what they want. And that's not always necessarily reflected in the data. There's a lot of intuition that, frankly, goes into it.

22:13You know, there was this, for instance, there was this really interesting deal that came across the table that, in my opinion, was not a smart move because it was, while all the data was there and all the financials were there and it was saying it was a really good deal, to me, because this was happening during COVID, I was like, these numbers just feel really inflated. This is also the whole Peloton story, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, this just doesn't seem sustainable that they are going to continue to grow at this scale. And what happens when, you know, COVID goes away, and all these consumers go back to their original ways of living?

22:55You know, then what happens? You know, I don't, I think that this would be, this would be a bad deal. Well, the deal went through, unfortunately, even though I was like, I wouldn't do it. And much of what I had said happened. Um, which is that, you know, you almost, you just have to understand consumer behavior. I mean, I feel I had had enough experience in the past with some things that had, you know, projects that I had worked on areas where you're like, yeah, I'm sure of this. And then it shifted and you were like, oh yeah, I guess, I guess at the end of the day, all humans want is connection.

23:33Right. So of course they're going to go back to, you know, that way of being. And so, anyway, long story short, it's, I think that these marketing experts, these individuals who see beyond the financial side of it are becoming more and more important for these firms that need to offer a brand or a potential investment opportunity more than just, you know, financial guidance and operations. You know, people are looking for real, you know, almost like 360 kind of support. So I'm seeing this a lot with VCs that are building almost like similar to what we have at Starshot, which we consider a shared resources center, but it's made up of a team of experts and all of the different functions and functions of business.

24:26Yeah. And people want access to those resources, people that are from the industry that have done this before, that are the best of the best in their skillset, they want access to that. Because as a small and growing brand, you typically do not have the capital to support having access to that. So these are all advantages that I now see a lot of venture capitalists looking at as being really important. So you have a mix of brands that you invest in and brands that you're creating? Yep. Yep. We've launched to date six different brands. And then we have, I don't know the exact number of brands that we have invested in, but quite a few.

25:19So for you, what are kind of the fundraising kind of investment? What makes a good pitch for you? Are there kind of like, here are the core things that every pitch deck should have? I think it's really important. I think the founding story is extremely important. I want to see that the founder really has a connection to what they're doing. but beyond that you know I think it's what's the category is it a new category that you're creating you know like vital proteins for instance was a new category it was completely you know there was no collagen real collagen category prior to that is it an existing category what's the saturation in that category what's what are you how are you really differentiating your product what is kind of the the white space opportunity that you've carved out And, you know, then it goes into, you know, market size.

26:18And do you really believe that that market's going to continue growing? What are the consumers that you're really looking to reach? You know, I'm really interested in how we continue to engage young consumers because they are the next and biggest buying generation. So that's really important to me. Are you looking at, you know, a category that's been specifically focused on, in Biomi's case, a much older demographic? And is there opportunity to bring a younger consumer in and really create incrementality in that category? So, yeah, I mean, those are kind of the core things that I look for. And then also, you know, as a firm, we are really focused on quality, cleanliness, and a lot of what I consider table stakes of what modern consumers are looking for.

27:15You know, I want to see products that are really being thoughtful about how they're formulating, why they're formulating in a specific way. um what you know what are they doing to make it easier for the modern consumer to use the product like there's a lot of there's a lot there that uh should be considered as well that was just kind of throwing spaghetti at a wall but there's a lot of things super interesting in terms of your products how did you go about the product development um because you've got an interesting portfolio obviously benefit-based or based on fiber um not necessarily you wouldn't necessarily use uh multiple products or would you yeah yeah the idea fiber is really interesting because we all we all need more of it but a lot of us you know it's all really based on how many calories you're consuming in a day, how much fiber you actually need.

28:19So some people want to, you know, take upwards of 40, 50 grams of fiber a day. Others, you know, they need to start slower and, you know, just introduce maybe like those single dose of daily prebiotic fiber, for instance. And that to them is, you know, getting some good additional fiber benefits in their diet. So you can stack them. But again, it's very person dependent. And it's also, we're talking about the digestive system, we're talking about the microbiome and gut and everybody's so different. And some people have different, you know, reactions to different sources of fiber, some people need, you know, they love the fiber rescue product, because they like that it feels a little bit more like, you know, intense and tough.

29:06And others are like, no, I want something that's really, really gentle. I want to make sure that I'm feeding and nourishing my microbiome, but I don't want, you know, something that feels like it's really, you know, cleaning me out, if you will. Um, so much fiber. Is that possible? Can you ever have too much? No, I think you would just not probably feel the greatest if you did have too much. Um, but I mean, I know goodness I know um some men in fitness who are taking upwards of like 100 grams a day so okay it's food for thought as it were yeah I don't recommend that for everybody just more generally what for you makes a good brand I love your branding um I don't know did you do it in-house or did you work with designers like it's very clean um I love the name like talk to me about how you created the brand and then we'll talk about what makes a good brand yes so I worked with um an in-house designer who works um on all of our Starshot incubated brands um when I was originally thinking about what I wanted Biome to look like Like I was just pulling colors and, you know, looking at kind of the current space and what exists.

30:36And I've always felt in the supplement world, it's so easy to all of a sudden just kind of like get stuck in this land of rainbow colors. And, you know, everything's a solid color, but different colors. And I really loved the idea of kind of keeping things in this world of blues and greens and just colors that really emulated clean quality, kind of happiness, a little bit of joy, but not, you know, over the top. And so I decided I really wanted to stay in that world. and then came the idea of, okay, well, love all those colors. Colors are great, but what do we want the product to stand for? When someone looks at the product, what do I want them to feel about the product?

31:26And when you look at supplements, there's a lot of brands that feel extremely clinical and kind of stale a little bit or sterile. And then there are brands that feel really unserious. And I was like, I want this brand to feel sophisticated. I want it to feel smart and reliable, something that someone can trust. But I don't want it to feel unapproachable. And so it's kind of figuring out how to marry all of those things together so that we, you know, spoke quality and premium but we didn't feel unattainable unapproachable for the average consumer um because at the end of the day i really want this to feel very mainstream yeah um and i yeah here is your consumer now like what what's the kind of profile the main person so we're about 60 % women, 40 % men, ages 18 to 45, which is really interesting because in this particular category, most of the consumers for these legacy brands are like 54 years plus.

32:48So we've kind of created a brand that is sticking in this younger demographic pool. That's really exciting to see because that was the whole point was, you know, I want to educate younger individuals so that they can grow up with hopefully a lot of, you know, insight into fiber and tools for microbiome health that I didn't have when I was younger. Any plans to go into retail? I feel like that's the demographic that FDM is desperately trying to get back into the OTC aisles. we do we actually have two um launches in june and july and some major national retailers so we'll be nationwide and two different national retailers this okay thank you thank you it's very exciting i know what about other other plans for the brand like what are your kind of short-term long-term goals you know I I think it's so funny that you ask that because I'm like all my long-term goals I can say for sure are to get into a lot of mass retail and to continue to, you know, build the awareness side of the brand.

34:18Short term is like, I feel like I'm just trying to get things done every day to make sure that we're set up for, you know, success with a lot of the stuff that's going on right now. But, you know, long term, I just I really want to see this brand be able to offset a lot of the legacy products that have been on the shelves for so long that are we talking about you saw or what what are the legacy people that you think about metamucil citricel benafiber um those are some of the big players but for reasons that i think you know they're just not quality products um and you know i'm really focused on finding ways to help individuals heal their gut.

35:06If the only offerings they have out there, or most consumers have out there, that are accessible to them are, you know, bad ingredients with a lot of, you know, maltodextrin, corn-based ingredients, things like that, that also are taken from sources that contain a lot of glyphosate residue. And, you know, it's not beneficial to consumers. I want to put clean quality products out there for consumers that will actually help them heal their guts and not, you know, potentially create long-term issues. Yeah. Not just help you go be more regular to the bathroom. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Make your microbiome, et cetera.

35:52What kind of thinking outside of like definitely outside of fiber and Metamucil and things like that what are brands that you love generally like what kind of brands um do you know what makes a good brand what are your favorite brands generally I I mean I love I love beauty brands I feel like those have always been my inspiration um throughout my career because I feel they are always pushing the boundaries of what can be and I think it's just when I was at Vital Proteins I would always look to our the beauty brands one in particular that I was so inspired by was Glossier when it was first really getting out there in a big way and they were doing a lot of these like experiential and kind of out of the box out of home campaigns and you know I feel beauty has a lot of um they just kind of don't really have a lot of boundaries um they can do things in a really exciting and um differentiated way and so that was always kind of my north star was looking at what those brands were doing and figuring out like, how do I make this work for a supplement company?