https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-638&utm_medium=podcast
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Adam Gillman co-founded Hiya Health (hiyahealth.com), the kids' vitamin brand that launched in March 2020, stayed bootstrapped, and sold to USANA at the end of 2024 at a reported $260M valuation. He and his co-founder Darren still run it, and 2026 is the year Hiya finally hit retail shelves at Target.
If you're a founder or operator building a subscription DTC brand, this episode is a start-to-exit walkthrough from someone who did it without a single VC check.
What's inside:
- The "single SKU phase": why Hiya sold one multivitamin for 2.5 years before launching anything else, and what had to be true before product two
- Attacking gummies head-on: porous form factors that kill vitamin content, and sugar as "candy in disguise"
- How new SKUs stayed accretive instead of cannibalistic as the catalog grew
- Why influencer was the backbone of a channel mix that hit 25% month-over-month growth in stretches from 2023 to 2025, including creators Hiya has worked with for 3 to 4 years
- "We want this to sit on your counter, not inside of your cabinet": the packaging and sticker-pack decision that quietly built enterprise value
- Disney, Barbie, and Marvel collabs done properly: rebuilding the entire customer experience per license, to the point that existing subscribers repurchased product they already had
- The exit itself: open bidding process, why he can't imagine doing it without an investment bank, and the leverage of not needing to sell
- Lightning round: the metric founders obsess over too much (revenue growth), the one they ignore (gross margin to CAC), and the e-commerce trend he thinks has peaked (creative velocity for its own sake)
Who this is for: subscription DTC founders, operators fighting rising CACs, and anyone who wants to see what a bootstrapped nine-figure exit actually looks like from the inside.
What to steal: Adam's channel discipline. Under $20M in revenue, put the majority of your effort into making one channel work before touching the next one.
Follow Adam: @AdamGillman on X | hiyahealth.com
Timestamps:
00:00 Building Hiya From a Single SKU
08:00 Expanding Products Through Customer Trust
18:00 Why Brand Building Creates Enterprise Value
23:00 Scaling Growth With Influencer Marketing
35:00 Creative Velocity, CAC and Sustainable Growth
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