652: IM8 Founder: What It REALLY Takes to Build a $200M Supplement Brand

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0:39Just head to OmniSend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Okay, guys, I have a crazy interview for you today. You've probably seen their ads, Iron Mate. They are absolutely everywhere. Danny Young, he's the co-founder of Iron Mate. He is going to detail everything that these guys are doing, spending$2 to$3 million a month on ads, how he scaled this business from zero to nine figures in just over a year. One of the fastest growing D2C brands online. We go through landing pages, why they have 50 different landing pages, what their split testing process looks like, how they scale spend, how they lost 400 to 500K in three days.

1:25This interview is crazy. If you have a D2C brand right now, you are spending money on paid ads, you need to watch this.

1:36Danny Yeung:Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan. Danny Young, from selling baseball cards at age 12 to scaling you buy, I buy to nearly a million a month in revenue in just six months before Groupon acquired it in 2010. What do you believe about business that most founders get wrong? I wouldn't say most founders get wrong. I believe there's always multiple ways to create value and create a company. I've just been one that's been always obsessed with product and understanding, is this something that really can solve a problem?

2:27Danny Yeung:So a lot of times people are unrealistic with their idea, thoughts about the product, but number one, it always starts with a product. And if you have an amazing product, then there's a lot that you can build upon with it. But sometimes people, they just think a shady product will work. if you put great marketing to it, right? I think firstly, you have to have a great product. A great product is like baseline, right? You can't even play without a great product. So I think for any founder, you just have to ensure what your product is and what's the USP over an existing market leading product. And be realistic with yourself and realistic with your friends and peers and your employees, then that's the recipe for success as the initial baseline.

3:11Now, you've scaled multiple companies. Your current focus is IMA. We're going to delve deep into that. But before we do, and that's the nine-figure business, you've grown into nine figures in just over a year, which is crazy in of itself. From zero to close to$10 million a month, like crazy, crazy, crazy numbers. So I want to talk about Prenetics. So Prenetics, during COVID, you had launched 40 ,000 PCR tests daily. You were selling 40 ,000 PCR tests daily, generating over 800 million in revenue across three years.

3:56Danny Yeung:Those are crazy times. I mean, to be honest with you, thinking back, those three years, probably the toughest time of my entrepreneurial career because it was literally 24-7 operations right because when you're dealing with covet testing i mean you have to get the results very very fast out to individuals yeah because yeah especially in hong kong we needed to get results you know within a 24-hour period of time right sometimes even 12 to 24 hours right so we had a team of literally like 2 000 plus people on the logistics operations supply chain 24-7 operations for nearly three years. You know, like measured at the height, we're doing 40 ,000 PCR tests on a single day, right?

4:40Danny Yeung:Total-wise, we did 28 million tests across a three-year period of time from 2020 to 2022. And it was just insane, like literally insane period of time where, you know, the origin of that was, you know, April. I remember April 2020, we met with the government in Hong Kong. They're like, hey, we're like, do you guys need any help? They're like, we don't need any help. We can do it ourselves. And then we're like, oh, that's fine. And then I just saw there was some opportunity in the public sector because it was very difficult to get a COVID test. And when we started doing it, we did it in three weeks time.

5:19Danny Yeung:We got a COVID at home COVID test that you send to someone's home, you send it back to our lab and you get results in 24 hours. We did that in three weeks so our capacity earlier on was 100 to 200 a day and we sold out every single day right so the volumes continue and we're just we're just trying to do something to help the community um and then that was april right and then when covid got much worse in july then the government came back and called us they were like hey then when you know the situation's gotten much worse uh you know can you help us with mass pcr testing and they're like okay i was like what do you want us to do right they're like we need to test 300 000 restaurant workers across 16 000 restaurants and i'm like um and how what was the time frame you need to that's to be done they're like we needed to be done in four weeks and then again this is very very different going from 200 tests a day to thousands a day uh you know what i said yes let's do it and we were able to complete 300 thousand tests and this was door-to-door testing right we went literally myself included you know for the first weekend literally walked to restaurants passing out you know pcr saliva kits collecting it bring back to the lab you know working 18 20 hours a day right so it was insane but somehow i don't know how we did it but we were able to yeah do that 300 000 tests in four weeks time.

6:51Yeah, it's wild. So there's a clear through line with your story and the businesses that you build and scale. So I want to get to your current project. But before I do, because iMate is massive, you see it everywhere now. You've got incredible partners behind the branch. You co-founded it with David Beckham. You've got so much going on and this brand is scaling super fast. So I want to talk about why did you decide to list that business on the nasdaq and then bet the company's entire future on launching a consumer supplement brand which is ima like what what happened there man

7:31Danny Yeung:yeah so you know strategically when we're going through covid right again the business was you know very very i would say a decent size right we're doing upwards of 200 million annual revenues and but of course we always knew covid would end someday right we didn't know exactly when this is like 2021 right uh and we're doing massive testing so during the height of this testing we was like hey you know what this is a good opportunity for us to list on the nasdaq yeah so we then got you know ubs city leaders or bankers the dollar was also a great opportunity so we listed on an asset in 2022 because we felt that was a good opportunity to enable us to you know survive or drive post-covid we didn't know when that was and so that's why we we listed the company in 2022 and when we listed there was still covid right and so we had a billion plus valuation when we listed um you know but of course you know post-covid everything came crashing down So, of course, as with any entrepreneur or starter-wise, it's not all like rocket ship growth, right?

8:39Danny Yeung:So we went from billion valuation. Within 18 months, I think our low point valuation, we hit like$40 million. So you can see how fast we're able to grow, but at the same time, how fast that downturn is also. So at$40 million, things look very, very bleak. What was it like with investors, man, like and shareholders? It's tough, man. I mean, honestly, you know, some investors and again, I take a big sense of responsibility and pride because, you know, to be fair, all of my, a lot of my best friends or friends that I've known for 5, 10, 15 years, they all invested in pre-netics, even pre-IPO, during the IPO.

9:28Danny Yeung:and then so that gives another sense of like literally you talk to anyone that knows me am i because i i always have like this intertwined with you know personal and work watch right so they all invested in myself and love it they just invested in me rather than whatever the company was doing right so i sense that responsibility um and but of course you know post-covid you know how do you replace 40 000 tests on a daily basis you can't right and so our revenue dropped off the cliff and we knew we needed to do something very dramatic and coincidentally we're thinking about getting into the supplement space the consumer space you know just given that was also my background at Groupon right but with genetics the last 11 years I was like hey we taken a very clinical and scientific basis from diagnostic DNA testing even PCR testing right so i was thinking how do we merge science with consumer and then so this is where we led to thinking about the consumer supplement space and coincidentally i had a good friend in hong kong michelle laminar uh he knows david very well and me and michelle was at dinner and he was like hey i want to see david in the next few weeks in london yeah and he's like you know do you want to join and like it was like are you sure yeah and like and he's like yeah let's come along okay i was like fine let's let's do it and then i you know went over to london to meet with david and you know that's that's how we got started crazy so what's it like building a company with someone as famous as david beckham because you as well you didn't do what a lot of brands do where you do paid endorsements, like you are strategically bringing on well-known thought leaders and well-known celebrities or influencers, and you're making them equity partners, which is really interesting.

11:28But yeah, talk me through that because yeah, you've co-founded the business with David Beckham.

11:32Danny Yeung:Yeah. So I think, you know, from that first conversation with David, right? So it was never about commercial terms, it was always about a, what was the impact and what was the problem that we wanted to solve, right? Going back to the product side, right? So we knew, you know, when we did our research and et cetera, why is there a big gap in terms of supplements? There's a lot of mistrust in the industry, right? So we started with the product. And again, when we spoke with David and told David, then his own frustrations in the supplement categories that he felt it was also very overwhelming right and that's for david right imagine he has the best doctors nutritionist team around him and he even for him it felt overwhelming and he was also struggling to maintain his daily intake of supplements because he's kind of you know especially showing me his his stack is like you know a dozen or so you know different types of supplements right and when he's traveling then it's also very difficult to maintain that because you have to pack it all a lot of times you forget it's just not an easy thing to do um for the majority of people right and it was like hey you know when we started talking it's like yeah there must be a better way to do this how can we create something where we have a all-in-one solution in a powder format where you can carry it with you anywhere easily shareable easy to travel with and key thing is has to be scientifically backed because that was the key thing david said you know if he has to put his name on something number one it has to be the best in the market because it will get number one heavily scrutinized right and you know that's what we did we saw you know let's do it but at the same time we also brought along the best scientific advisory board you know that was available to us right which the likes of you know dr don musalem from the mayo clinic and professor suzanne de kola from cedars-senai you know dr james green the former chief scientist of nasa so all these individuals and it's also very rare that these guys came together to support one company but a supplements brand which was the first time they've ever done so yeah so i want to talk about growth because it's insane but before we do how did you pull that off like what you said like the amount of expertise the amount of ambassadorship that you have behind this brand is very impressive it builds instant trust credibility it's a it's i think it's a very key ingredient obviously besides having a great product but from a marketing perspective very very strong so talk me how did you pull that off and how did you know it was the right move thinking about the industry as a whole right again you know there's a lot of mistrust in the supplement category even when i talk to people in the industry when i was thinking about this is like everyone told me hey danny don't get into the supplement industry it's extremely competitive extremely cutthroat there's a lot of bad apples here but when i hear that i actually sense an opportunity right so okay if that's the case hey dirt means there's a big big opportunity if we can create a science-back credible product right and again i'm not a scientist but you know the last 10 years i think with Prenetics, it also enabled me to understand how scientists think, what their motivations are, what their pet peeves are, what they actually want to achieve.

15:02Danny Yeung:So I think that 10 last 10 years of being in a very clinical setting really also allowed me to reach out individually to these scientists, right? Because I wanted to have a very broad scientific advisory board with broad experiences you know so everyone can weigh in on their own expertise rather than like a someone that knows it all right and i just you know found them one by one via linkedin internet and just kind of yeah cold call them or send them a message on linkedin and said hey who i am what i have done and again to be fair i think my background you know with groupon as well as the last 10 years that of course it signals credibility as well it's not like this you know random guy that's just yeah out of the blue right so i think that has something to it but you know at the end of the day you just have to find these individuals and you know everyone's willing to hear you out as long as you you know providing them with value right so that's what one thing i always try to do regardless of if it's you know david the scientific team you know all these other ambassadors number one, even if we don't work together, I'm always trying to provide value to the other side.

16:11All right.

16:11Danny Yeung:And so whatever I can do, like make introductions, providing some value on whatever I'm doing, any of the AI stuff that we're doing is just always trying to provide value and be able to provide value. I think ultimately it becomes much greater than just a pure transactional thing. And all of these ambassadors and experts, all of these people, they're equity partners, right? Yes. They all have equity. And you did that strategically. Yeah. I always felt the ambaggist. If we do well, everyone should do well. And I think that was also very important because again, a lot of these transactions are just too transactional.

16:54Danny Yeung:And then And if they believe in it, again, give me an example, even David, right? I'm sure he imagined the last 10, 20, 30 years, so many big brands, companies, etc. They're like, we want to give you equity. But of course, just because you want to give them equity, he's not going to take it, right? Because when he takes equity, that means he has to really believe in it. He can take many endorsement deals. It doesn't really, you know, it's not going to change too much, right? But when he takes equity, that's a signal that he's invested into the brand. He believes in the founder. He trusts the founder.

17:30Danny Yeung:And he trusts the long-term direction of where the brand is going. So I think the equity piece was very important because we didn't just want to have endorsements. We wanted people that truly believed in the brand. And to be fair, that's for every single one of our ambassadors, they have equity. and this in a way is skin in the game. Yeah. And what would you say to founders that want to hold on, want to protect? Yeah. What would you say? It's like, what are you trying to protect, right? I mean, I always tell it like younger entrepreneurs, they're like, oh, you know what? I don't want to give up, you know, 5%, 10 % and et cetera.

18:08Danny Yeung:But then I always felt, you know, even from my own experience, I mean, this is like my fourth, fifth company. I'm very, I would say very flexible with equity. Yeah. because I'd rather have 10 % of a billion or 5 % of 5 billion, right? Rather than 100 % of 50 million, whatever that is, right? So I always tell founders like, hey, if they can provide value, that equity that you give, it makes the pie so much bigger. So I always believe if they're able to take it and they want the equity, then it actually ties in the incentives much stronger. So I would be very flexible to the entrepreneurs listening about their equity.

18:49Yeah, I really appreciate your experience there because I think for many founders, they want to protect equity. And it's, you know, whatever you're doing, man, the whole strategy is paying off. I want to unpack this because I could talk to you all day, right? So let's start with some straight facts. You launched Iron Mate. You generated$581 ,000 in its first month. and that was in that was in December of 2024 so half a million dollar a year half a million dollar a month business in month one then you scaled it to 10 million dollars a month in one year so 10 million dollars a month by December 2025 in one year like that is insane so talk us through what did you do for launch and how you like yeah and we'll delve into the numbers but like what was the key things that you did for launch to just go off the bat like that yeah so um we

19:44Danny Yeung:launched in december 24 i mean that was strictly online right so that was just kind of testing the market uh you know seeing if it works again yeah we had you know 581 i think it was a decent launch yeah and then in january we actually had an official launch where we had a launch event with david in new york he was on the today show we had a you know press conference yeah meet and greed and etc etc right so i i think ultimately that's the value of having such a famous you know co-founder right because basically you know you're able to cut through a lot of noise uh you know for example i mean yeah what was the value of having your product on the today show right so so many people watching right so just him on the today show i think that day we had like a thousand orders right and this was organic right and then so just by that and then january wise i think we yeah went to like million plus in revenue right so every single month we just continue to doubled i think other points in that journey in the first year i think you know in in june we signed up arena sabalenka and then so that also elevated a lot of credibility amongst the athlete sector right because here here's arena world number one tennis players like oh wow you got david and now arena right and she's active right so you know everyone loves arena and her story also resonated very well because jason stacy her performance coach started using the product in january and we didn't even know he was just like he was like hey you know he they wanted a new supplement regime he saw us online he ordered it he took it for a month then he gave it to arena it's like Irina tried it for three months.

21:26Danny Yeung:And I'm sure you know, at their levels, he's monitoring every single meal, every single day, diet, all the changes, how she's feeling. And she took it for three months. And it's just like, hey, she's feeling great. Recovery was significantly better. Energy levels, and she didn't get sick. And then she then had her team reached out to me and we struck a partnership. And that also created a lot of growth for us. and love credibility, right? So, Link, for the first six months, those are like two key pieces. And again, just continue also, you know, doing lots of testing online because we're 100 % DTC, right?

22:08Danny Yeung:One other thing I would share that we did from day one, we shipped to 31 countries from day one. And this was also a big part, I would say, my experience at Groupon, right? It's like, hey, thinking very big and global from day one, you know like you said we went all in where i was like you know i've worked we i know we have a great problem right i think the world deserves this product on a global basis so we didn't just say you know what let's try us and then blah blah blah go to all the markets right from day one we're in 31 countries so logistically it was yeah it was a nightmare to get through uh all these different countries yeah but we did and i think ultimately yeah us is our biggest market canada's i mean uk is now number two, Canada is number three, Australia is number four, Singapore is number five, Hong Kong is number six.

22:58Danny Yeung:And then, yeah, so. Yeah. So, okay. I love you say that because I see so many founders, they launch in just Australia or just America. And I agree when I've built companies, I always go global from day one, two, because why, why not use the power of the internet? You know, like that's the leverage, man. Like that's the scalability. You know what I mean? yeah exactly and if you have one product that can go cross cross boundaries right and yeah and again we're not like we weren't like localizing any of the ads specific for uk canada or hong kong anything like that right so i think this is also the value that we found again you know again we're so grateful that yeah david agreed to be a co-founder but yeah david is a true internet And he's famous everywhere, right?

23:46Danny Yeung:So he's great. And so that made this, you know, also very helpful from day one. Okay. So now this is going to get a little technical, but this is going to be fun because we talked about this offline, you know, because you are a publicly listed company, you have to put your numbers out there. A lot of DTC brands, a lot of companies at scale, they have to hide them or they don't have to, but they choose to hide them. So we can talk about some really cool and interesting things and understand how you're navigating the growth of this business at scale. So the first question I wanted to ask you is you're currently operating roughly at a three to one LTV to CAC ratio over a 24 month period.

24:26So your average order value right now is about$200 with acquisition costs around 220 to 230. So for founders that are struggling with marketing costs, what's one simple way to know if your customer acquisition is actually working? And how have you engineered the economics here? Talk us through that and talk us through some of the challenges you've faced along the journey.

24:53Danny Yeung:I mean, to be fair, to put this simply, it's quite simple, right? If you think about it, right? I mean, number one, you have to have, you have to calculate your gross margins, right? So our gross margins are 60%, right? And then so I think if you look at also another key factor that we look at, especially for early on, is how fast you're recouping that customer acquisition costs. For us, based upon gross margins-wise, it's actually about a four-month period of time. So that means when we're spending$230, we're recouping that in a relatively short amount of time at four months. So that means that we can scale very aggressively when we're operating at a three-to-four-month payback period.

25:29Danny Yeung:right um you know for example hims and hers i know their payback again public information their payback pair is 12 months right so very very long right correct and then so if you're able to operate at a three four month payback period then you can even kind of go aggressive and it also depends on the business model for us you know last year i think early on yeah our our average order value was was about 110 dollars right cac was about 130 dollars but because we are a subscription business and 80 % of our business's subscription, we can afford to have a slight loss on that first order. And then we'll make it up on your month two, month three, month four, right?

26:12Danny Yeung:And then we'll get paid back there. But if you're dependent on, let's say your first purchase has to be profitable, then you need a ROAS of at least two to three S for it to make sense right so for us it works because we are recurring business model so i think every business is different depending on your business model but ultimately you just need to understand the unit economics really really well in every little detail right yeah i agree this is fundamentally key so we recently launched a new community at founder called founder operators and we help d2c brands scale with ads and we created this customized software which we call the founder OS.

26:52And once you plug in the numbers, we can work all of these things out. Because believe it or not, a lot of founders don't know these numbers as well as they should. And this is the key to unlocking scale. Because I'm sure if you guys wanted to spend 30 % less than what you're spending right now, you could be profitable on the first purchase. But you choose not to because with extreme scale, obviously there's diminishing returns. So you have to find a way to make the scale work, correct?

27:19Danny Yeung:Correct. I mean, to be fair, we can be profitable tomorrow if we wanted to, right? I just turned off my new customer acquisition engine because I have enough recurring subscriptions or customers today to be profitable tomorrow, right? But then again, yeah, what fun would that be, right? If we stop scaling right now, right? So we don't want to just farm our existing customer base, right? I believe we have an opportunity to be one of the world's biggest supplement brands in the next three to five years. Yeah, so I think right now we're still scaling on the growth side of things. So let's talk about the scaling.

27:52So your marketing engine currently runs about 2 ,200 plus meta ads that we can see right now.

28:00Danny Yeung:Yeah, public ad library. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And you've got roughly 50 individual targeted landing pages, which is interesting in of itself. So what's the one mistake that you see founders make when it comes to running ads on meta at the scale that you guys are running it at? Like you must be spending at least a few hundred thousand dollars a day right uh yeah total wise i mean right now we're spending like 150 000 to 200 000 a day right now told on meta and google all right um yeah i mean i think the the diversity of our ads and the creative and the volume and the funnels actually allowed us to unlock spend right because i mean giving example like of course right now we're spending a decent amount, but I wanted to, just because you want to spend$150 ,000,$200 ,000, you can't unless you want to hit, you can't if you want to have a decent ROAS.

28:57Danny Yeung:You can, but then if you don't have the diversity of the volume of content, you're just going to get hit with really bad return ad spend. From last year till now, again, we've been always constantly testing in terms of how do we unlock spend right because we know for example this category by default is very very big all right so there should not be a limitation for us our spend as long as our creatives are good right so i would say for the first part of 2026 that's one thing that we really focus on so how do we get our creative volumes much higher and creative diversity which of course manna talks about a lot And it's actually, I think, yeah, prior to, I think late last year, we had about 800 ads running at any given time.

29:50Danny Yeung:Now we have, you know, 2000, right? So this has taken a lot of work. I would say it's also quite complicated process, right? Because just volume enough doesn't work. So talk me through that. Like why so many targeted landing pages and what are the common mistakes founders make? Like even for founders that are perhaps doing$30 ,000 to$50 ,000 to$100 ,000 a month watching this right now, like why so many? Yeah, because basically you have so many different personas, right? At the end of the day, you have so many different personas. So right now, let's say, you know, we'll have a landing page, you know, for Arena.

30:26Danny Yeung:We'll have a landing page for Ollie Bearman, the F1 driver, right? We'll have a landing page, you know, I guess if you're taking GLP-1, we'll have a landing page for recovery. We'll have a landing page for energy fatigue. So whatever the product does, again, people want to see specifics and of their persona rather than just a generalized one for all landing page. Of course, we still have our general page. If you go on our website and go to our PDB, that's a generalized, right? But if you're clicking on an ad that shows Irina Sabalenka, you want to listen to her story. or if you're clicking on an ad that says Ali Behrman, we go give you the story, the background about who he is, why he's wanted to be a part of IMA.

31:09Danny Yeung:So all of that journey, and then that becomes a very authentic storytelling piece. It's all about storytelling, right? Because at the end of the day, we don't want to just sell a product. We want to sell being a part of this community that we've been able to build. And when it comes to angles and creative tests, Do you have a KPI? Just for people to get understanding, how many angles or new angles are you planning to launch per week with your scale? I mean, we'll launch at a minimum two to three new angles and we'll just continue to test, right? Per week. Yeah, per week, right? But of course now there's always a baseline because we already have like a baseline of like a dozen or so different personas, right?

31:50Danny Yeung:So we're just constantly add to it, right? And there's certain ones that, hey, we see, hey, there's more opportunity to scale that. So we're further optimizing things that work, right? So just because something is already working, we're always trying to fine tune that further, right? And there's always a, again, I think we're always trying to do better than yesterday, right? It's like, hey, when we see success, oh, that's great. How do we double down on that, right? And when it comes to, you said when you started, you know, AOV wasn't as high as it is now. Now, is there anything that you can share with our community that they have to be doing or tests that you've ran or anything that when you're looking at other founders, DTC businesses, where it's a common mistake that they make?