A flood destroyed the factory, the FDA shut them down, and the company had almost no cash and then something remarkable happened. Ramon Vela sits down with Alex Whitmore, Founder & CEO of Taza Chocolate, for a deeply human conversation about twenty-plus years of stone-ground, mission-driven chocolate making in Somerville, Massachusetts...

Pet food looks like a food category, but it behaves like a trust category and nobody understands that better than Michael Meyer. Rose Hamilton, CEO of Compass Rose Ventures and co-host of The Story of a Brand Show, sits down with Michael for an operator masterclass that goes far beyond pet food into the deeper mechanics of how premium consumer brands get built, scaled, and sustained...

She left Goldman Sachs, moved to Mozambique for a year, and came back to build one of the most distinct wellness brands in America. Rose Hamilton, CEO of Compass Rose Ventures and co-host of The Story of a Brand Show, sits down with Shizu Okusa, Founder & CEO of Apothékary, for a masterclass in what it really means to build a brand system not just a product line. ...

Most people get their hormone levels tested once a year — if they think about it at all. Marina Pavlovic Rivas, Co-Founder & CEO of Eli Health, is on a mission to change that. Ramon Vela sits down with Marina for a fascinating conversation about the technology she spent nearly seven years building: a saliva-based, at-home hormone monitoring platform that delivers cortisol, testosterone, and progesterone results to your phone in minutes, giving people real-time visibility into one of...

What if the snack in your kid's lunchbox was doing more harm than good? Ramon Vela sits down with Steve Weiss, Co-Founder of Snakkidz, for a warm and eye-opening conversation about the state of kids' nutrition, the problem with processed snacks, and the family business born from one dad's refusal to settle for the status quo. Snakkidz makes chewy, gluten-free, better-for-you snack bars for kids — no dyes, no seed oils, low sugar, and short ingredient lists — and Steve's passion for educating par

He sold the family business, watched someone else run it into the ground, and then bought it back. Rose Hamilton, CEO of Compass Rose Ventures and co-host of The Story of a Brand Show, sits down with Ryan Alovis, CEO of LensDirect.com, for one of the most honest and layered founder conversations the show has ever hosted. LensDirect has been in Ryan's family for a hundred years; from a great-grandfather selling frames off a pushcart on the Lower East Side to one of the most fiercely independent o

Most edible gifting businesses don't work at scale, the logistics are brutal, the margins get squeezed, and the moment quality slips, the whole experience breaks. Rachel Solomon Fascitelli built Boarderie anyway, and it worked. Rose Hamilton, CEO of Compass Rose Ventures and co-host of The Story of a Brand Show, sits down with Rachel to unpack how a finance background, a COVID pivot, and an obsession with operational precision turned a 2,000 square foot commissary kitchen into one of the most im

Ramon Vela sits down with Dan Kessler, COO of The Mind Company, for a conversation that starts with a sobering question: what's actually happening to the human brain right now and what can we do about it? The Mind Company is the only company in the world to win App of the Year twice, from both Apple and Google, and with three distinct apps — Elevate, Balance, and Spark — it's quietly building one of the most compelling mental fitness platforms in the world...

Ramon Vela sits down with Mahsa Vazin, PhD, Founder & CEO of PawCo, for a conversation that's as much about love and purpose as it is about pet nutrition. Mahsa didn't set out to disrupt the pet food industry — she set out to take better care of her dog, Paco. What follows is...

Rose Hamilton, CEO of Compass Rose Ventures and co-host of The Story of a Brand Show, sits down with Ben Zvaifler, Founder & CEO of Cloud Water Filters, for a conversation that cuts right to the heart of one of the most overlooked categories in consumer wellness. Cloud isn't just a better water filter, it's a second-act founder's bet...

Ramon Vela sits down with Ron Schneidermann, CEO of Acely, for a conversation that spans two decades of startup building, a category-defining exit, and a brand-new mission to help high school students conquer the SAT and ACT. Ron is the kind of founder who doesn't just build companies he transforms categories. From scaling AllTrails from a six-person team to a household name, to launching Acely...

Ramon Vela sits down with Arin Schultz, Chief Growth Officer at Naturepedic, to dig into one of the most quietly compelling brand stories in the sleep and wellness space. Naturepedic isn't just another wellness brand riding the organic wave — it's a company built from genuine...

Scaling a company is hard. Changing behavior is harder—and that’s exactly what this business is doing. In this episode of The Story of a Brand, host Rose Hamilton, CEO of Compass Rose Ventures, sits down with Joe Spector, Founder and CEO of Dutch Pet, Inc., for a fascinating conversation about building not just a company—but a completely new consumer behavior. Joe had already built a billion-dollar company with Hims. But instead of staying, he chose to...

In this episode, Ramon Vela sits down with Lauren Hidalgo, Founder and CEO of Aware House — a curated online marketplace built exclusively to support independent, small-batch makers. Lauren shares how frustration with overcrowded platforms like Etsy led her to build something...

Returning guest Yash Chavan, Founder and CEO of SARAL, joins Ramon Vela to announce the launch of SATHI (mysathi.io) — a new affiliate marketing platform designed to eliminate the fraud, attribution failures, and operational chaos that quietly kill brand affiliate programs...

Most Brands Don't Fail Because They Can't Get Into Retail — They Fail Because They Got There Too Soon. In this episode of The Story of a Brand Show, host Rose Hamilton sits down with Ari Bloom, Founder & CEO of A-Frame Brands — the strategic operator behind multiple consumer brands built across 10,000+ retail doors. Ari has spent his career building brands from the...