Rootless - Why Food-as-Medicine is the Future

Rose (00:01.2)
Hello listeners to the story of a brand. I'm so excited to be here today. I'm Rose Hamilton and I am your host for the day. And I am just so excited about the conversation we're about ready to have here and to share with you a story that I've been a part of for a little while. I have on our show today, a client of mine, the CEO and founder of Rootless, whose name is Sachi Singh. And she has a very amazing, an amazing story to begin with in terms of how she began her product line. But more importantly, the impact that she's having on the universe is very exciting. And it's time to get her story out there and amplify all the good work that she and the rootless team are doing, because I think they're really setting themselves up for great success here. So Sachi, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you.

Sachi Singh (00:54.786)
Thank you for having me. What a great way to start a Friday.

Rose (00:58.38)
Yes, yes it is. So Sachi, let's get started with a little background on you. How did it come to be that you founded this amazing business called Rootless? Tell us a little bit about the background, like where your roots come from, no pun intended, and how you got here.

Sachi Singh (01:13.966)
we love puns, Rose. So all the puns intended, please. Please, thank you. I think that's one of the fun parts about working on a seaweed brand. There's never a lack of puns. So thank you. I'm so excited to be here. So excited to have this conversation with you and really also highlight some of the amazing work we did together because I think.

Rose (01:16.06)
you

Sachi Singh (01:35.438)
we started to work together at this really beautiful, pivotal moment in the business. And I think that's starting to bear fruit now. So it just feels like a nice full circle moment. so a little bit of background about me and my story. I'm originally from India. I moved to the States for undergrad. So a long, now a long time ago, I'm pretty early in my career, stumbled into the climate and ocean space. So I've been doing climate and ocean walk for over a decade, for 13, 14 years. And

You know, I think back on it and in retrospect, I feel very lucky to have found my calling and my purpose at the age of 19. And I think I spent really my professional life, the decade of my professional life trying to find my theory of change. You know, I figured this is the space I want to be working in. This is the kind of impact that I want to be having in the world. How do I as a human make the most leveraged impact?

And I was always really interested in systems thinking and systems design. So it was interested in this concept of levers, you know? So I worked in think tanks, I worked in academia, explored philanthropy as a lever. explored, I went to my, I got my master's in environmental management from Yale. So was kind of deep in academia for a few. I worked on climate adaptation. I worked on climate mitigation. lived in...

Samoan the South Pacific for a couple of months doing ocean's work. So really have done, you know, a little bit of everything. And the thing that I was really called to a couple of years ago was the lever of consumerism. You know, I think we know that we all buy a bunch of stuff. Like I think in our DNA today, we are all consumers.

Rose (03:20.732)
Everybody's a customer, everybody's a consumer.

Sachi Singh (03:24.29)
We're all consumers. So my theory of change was, is what would happen if we could leverage consumerism, if we could leverage this, know, $30 trillion of consumer demand that lot of women specifically are investing and generating in. What if we could leverage this to create value in a regenerative supply chain that is good for people and, you know, particularly good for the planet and

That was sort of the inception story of Ruthless. I discovered seaweed as my, you know, heroin ingredient. And I really truly believe seaweed could be the future of food and future of farming. And I think what we're trying to do with Ruthless is tell a new and interesting story about it. Make it sexy. know, kind of bring it, bring this ancient, beautiful.

healing medicine into the modern diet in a way that's easy, accessible, convenient, whole food, bioavailable, and really use consumerism to create value in that supply chain that can really have an impact on planetary health.

Rose (04:37.168)
That's amazing. And you know, I just want to go click back on something that you said about the systems learning. You know, how does systems apply when you think about consumers? How does it apply to the way that you look at business uniquely? Because it's not as though you came out of this with extensive background in seaweed. So I would imagine you've had to pull on a lot of different skills to get here because you are really truly inventing something.

Sachi Singh (05:04.014)
Well, it's such a good question. No one's ever asked me that before. I think something as the thing that always called to me about this work was climate change is a complex issue. It's not even complex. Actually, it's a super wicked problem. It's like in terms of complexity, it is the most complex in kind of the hierarchy of systems level, systems design and systems thinking.

I find that after doing a decade of this work, found that the climate narrative was pretty disengaging to the consumer, to the common person, including myself. It's full of doom and gloom. It's fear-based storytelling. There's no storytelling, really. And I think we've actually done a huge disservice. As a climate person, I think we've done a huge disservice to ourselves by not...

Rose (05:52.604)
We are up to spirit.

Sachi Singh (06:03.03)
by not telling better stories, more hopeful stories about what a future can be that is truly climate resilient and better for people and planet. I think in like, just the space felt heavy. And I thought food could be a really interesting way to bring a complex, super wicked systems problem down to a person's values. And I think, as a storyteller, we all know.

that values are the way that you connect to people. Values are ultimately the core lever for individual behavior change and individual behavior change is the core lever for movements, right? So I love this work because we can boil down this very complicated, hard to understand, disengaging doom and gloom story to something that is hopeful, that is making you feel better, that is engaging with your values.

That's hopefully pulling you into this beautiful story of a regenerative, you know, food future that is better for communities. That's better for farming communities. That's better for the planet. That's better for your kids. So I really, really love this idea of, you know, bringing systems issues that are so disengaging down to something that is as simple as things that you put into your body to fuel yourself.

Rose (07:27.632)
Yeah, and I think what you do such an elegant job of is simplifying. And I think what might be useful for people to understand is, if you look at the vitamins and supplements landscape, the health and wellness landscape, there's a myriad of products. Like this is just a really entrenched space now, and you could spend millions on things to make yourself feel better, look better.

anti-aging, it's the whole beauty category, the food category. Like you touch so many different things. And I think the notion of seaweed, it's interesting. Like you see seaweed chips in the grocery store, you see seaweed, but talk to us from an educational standpoint, why is seaweed important to the body? What is it about iodine that is very important for people to have? And how have you thought about...

the formulas behind your products. us a little bit about those products. I think they're fantastic. So I want everyone else to hear about them too.

Sachi Singh (08:23.534)
to do.

I love it. Also my favorite question. So seaweed is one of the most nutrient-dense and diverse foods on the planet. Saying the word seaweed is actually like saying the word plant or vegetable. There's over 12,000 species. You can actually eat all of them. You might not want to. Over 12,000 that we know of, there's way more that we haven't even discovered yet. But broadly we're talking

Rose (08:45.401)
thousand species.

Sachi Singh (08:56.046)
The nutrition profile of it is quite astounding. So broadly, we're talking high quality protein, dietary fiber, insoluble fiber, prebiotic fiber, vitamins, minerals, trace elements, bioactives. And to me, the really interesting research is what happens when you eat seaweed regularly. So when you actually look at studies that are done in the blue zones that are done on East Asian...

populations who have seaweed as part of their traditional diet. I'm talking Okinawa, Japan, South Korea. The rates of incidence of metabolic syndrome disease is lower. And in no way am I saying, you know, seaweed is the silver bullet to longevity, but it is a part of the diet of the people who are living the longest in the world. And I think the thing that draws me to the story as well is

Rose (09:39.27)
It's true.

Sachi Singh (09:48.448)
I love the fact that it wasn't made in a lab. There's actually studies to show that it's all natural and there's one study actually to illustrate that maybe seaweed is the world's oldest food. So it has been used as a food, as a healing medicine, medicine literally since the beginning of human civilization of time. And only now is the medical community and the scientific community catching up to why.

So a few of the things that we're learning in kind of recent research and literature is the first piece, and I think the most important is seaweed. All species are the most potent natural bioavailable source of iodine, as you had mentioned. So iodine is an essential mineral that is required by your thyroid to make T3 and T4 hormones, which every single cell in your body used to convert food into energy.

So the way that I like to describe it is the thyroid is the battery of your body and it needs to be charged with dietary or supplemental iodine. For the first time in recent history, particularly in the West, we're actually iodine deficient. So there was a study that was published in the Lancet in October of 2024 that said that five billion people around the world, that's 68 % of the world's population is not consuming enough iodine and over 60

Rose (11:13.372)
68. Did I hear that right? 68.

Sachi Singh (11:15.854)
68 % of the world. I'm going to throw some stats at you because this is you know, this also kind of threw my brain into a tailspin and was also very validating because I've been saying this for a little while now. So over 75 % of North American women are not consuming enough iodine. Iodine deficiency is the leading cause of preventable brain damage in children. That's a WHO stat.

Iodine deficiency has impacts on women's health, writ large. If you're not getting enough iodine, your thyroid is working less efficiently and effectively, which means everything else is working less efficiently and less effectively. It's like biking really hard on a bicycle that has flat tires. So you could be doing all the things, but the symptoms of iodine deficiency and subclinical hypothyroidism are sluggish metabolism, midsection weight gain.

dry skin, dry hair, dry eyes, hormonal acne, your extremities are cold, you are tired all the time. Just this like in your bones, know, fatigue, exhaustion feeling, and no amount of sleep can kind of fix it. what kind of the final piece of this is that the way that we used to consume iodine in the West was through iodized salt.

And I think, know, a little homework exercise for anyone who is watching and listening, look at your salt. There's a very high likelihood if you're using, you know, the Maldons or the flaky salts or the new sea salts or Himalayan salts, there's a very high likelihood that it is not iodized. So what has happened is that we just have this vast population of women who are not consuming enough iodine and it's making them feel crappy. You know, it's making them not.

feel like themselves and the impact of this gets particularly amplified during major hormonal changes. So in pregnancy, post-partum, egg freezing, if you're thinking about conception, that's a big one. And then in peri and postmenopause. So the one kind of takeaway that I would recommend for everyone is make sure, and men have thyroid too, so men need to get iodine too, but thyroid issues.

Sachi Singh (13:34.016)
impact women more than impact men. So make sure you're eating enough iodine. Seaweed is the best natural potent source, bioavailable source of iodine. And then in addition to that, there's a whole bunch of other stuff. There's bioactives that are being studied for their anti-farsenogenic, anti-viral, anti-tumor impacts. There's all kinds of studies about the impact of seaweed on your skin, both topically and as a beauty from within, ingestible. Seaweed can help you lose weight.

regulating the metabolism control center of your body, there's adding putting fiber into your body, there's a pretty high likelihood that it's going to start to use energy and kind of run through energy a little bit more efficiently. So and then you're less tired. I think that's that's kind of the biggest piece of education that I've tried to do, which is you don't always have to be tired and you don't always have to be exhausted. And there's natural bioavailable food as medicine.

healing modalities that exist to help.

Rose (14:37.104)
Well, now talk to me a little bit about the actual product itself and how on earth do you go about getting seaweed as an ingredient? Choosing it sounds like there's millions of strains of it. So how do you decide as a formulator of the product, how do recommend people consume it and where do you get it from? And are all seaweeds equal?

Or is there something unique and special about seaweed that people should really know about? Because I'm sure if I went on Amazon and plugged in seaweed, I'd find all kinds of versions and functions and formats. But talk to us about the bites, because I think that they're the most fascinating thing that you've created that make seaweed actually quite a tasty experience.

Sachi Singh (15:26.464)
Absolutely. So, you know, when I started playing around in my kitchen, in my brother's kitchen, just after I quit my job about a little over four years ago, I was doing a lot of research and consumer research about what the Western adoption of seaweed was. And what I found, and I continue to find, is that it's a snack, you know, so you get the nori sheets, which are delicious.

But it is polarizing. Some people like it, some people don't like it. What I found interestingly actually is a lot of kids love the taste of the nori kind of snacks and sheaves. So, just something interesting there. So there's snacks and then there's the cultural cuisines. You're eating seaweed as part of sushi or kimbap or seaweed salad as part of East Asian cuisine.

But what I was finding in the research was that it's this regular consumption. It's the daily consumption of a diversity and density of C-weeds that is having, you know, all of these metabolic syndrome impact, impacts on metabolic syndrome disease. when I was, you know, playing around, alchemizing it, I guess, in my brother's kitchen, because he had a KitchenAid, I wanted to find a way that everyone could

the health benefits of a daily dose of seaweed, regardless of whether they like the taste and texture. So it's funny, I joked that it was like a cheese on broccoli strategy, know? I rolled the thing around and it's actually funny Rose now thinking about it. The first conception of the product is me and this was like the scrappiest, you know, just like throwing some stuff together. The first ever daily, daily bite that I made, didn't even call it that at the time.

was maybe like 80 to 90 % of the way there in terms of what our current formulation is. So it's kind of funny to look back and reflect on that. basically we created this date, almond, seed and seaweed little bite. So the idea is you'd eat one a day like you would a supplement and the behavior of a supplement, except unlike supplements, it's whole food bioavailable nutrition. So it's giving you your daily dose of seaweed along with

Sachi Singh (17:41.24)
you know, over 50 macro and micronutrients in quantities that your body can absorb it and actually utilize that nutrition. And interestingly, which is another thing that supplements cannot do, it's giving you both macros and micros. It's not a lot. It's like a little bit of everything, but there's very few things outside of like real, I would even say there's nothing outside of real and whole foods that can give you that food synergy, right? Like that full.

complex ecosystem of macros and micros and coincides and go backwards, et cetera. So we created five, at the time three flavors expanded into a five flavor product line. And it's a subscription based business model. So in your first order, you get this, I have no idea actually, you've got this tin as well as a monthly pack of bytes, so 28 bytes as they are, know, synced with your cycle.

You eat one a day, you feel great in many ways and I can share what those are and then you subscribe and you know it's kind of an easy direct-to-consumer business model. The major thing that I was trying to do when I was formulating was make sure that the seaweed was regeneratively sourced, know, sustainably harvested. Like we're doing all of that unsexy work on the upstream on the supply chain to make sure that

It's coming from clean water, it's un-polluted, it doesn't have any heavy metals in it. So we're doing a lot of that work to it. It's helping farming communities, it's having the planetary impact. So we're doing all of that upstream due diligence to ensure that the CBD you're getting is clean and good for the planet and good for your body. And then on the nutrition side, I wanted to ensure that you were getting your entire daily dose of iodine.

while the nutrition facts panel has a little bit of everything in it, a little magnesium, a little zinc, a little protein, a little fiber, there's some prebiotic fiber in there, it gives you 100%. So 150 micrograms of your daily dose of iodine, again, in a way that your body can absorb it. So that was the first conception of the product and we had that on market for about three years. And just about a month ago,

Sachi Singh (19:53.538)
we launched what I'm super, super proud of, which is kind of this new generation of product, which is the same bites, same flavors, but there's five different species in there. And we created what we're calling the rootless proprietary blend in order to give you that density and diversity of species. So you as a consumer can access.

all of the bioactives from red seaweeds, from green seaweeds, from brown seaweeds, the fucoid and the fucosanth, and there's sea moss in our bites, you so you're really getting like access to this, full, exactly a full spectrum seaweed experience. And then on the supply chain end, they're all harvested and cultivated in different methods. So we're really trying to build,

Rose (20:18.972)
you

Rose (20:28.934)
full spectrum.

Sachi Singh (20:45.222)
resiliency and robustness in the supply chain and we want to be responsible stewards of this North American seaweed economy as well so we're not overly reliant on one species.

Rose (20:53.82)
Yeah, that's really important. You know, when I first started working with you, you were figuring out how to ramp up the supply chain, but more importantly, you were figuring out what if changed would make the product better. And one of my favorite things in working with you that like right away I identified was the research you had done. And one of the things I asked is we always do and come in and start to evaluate a business is show me all your data, show me everything that you've got, show me all the marketing clatter.

Let me experience the product. Let me go through this journey. What I thought was so fascinating was the hand done manual efforts around getting feedback from consumers. And I thought that you did that really smartly, that now you've built upon it, which I would really love for you to talk about. And then in addition, you used your investment community.

as your beta testing community. So, so many people that I will talk to will say, research is so expensive. Research is this or that. Influences are expensive. But what I think you did so smartly was how you raised the money on the front end produced you your entire advisory group because you had all these female investors who were all giving you feedback and you had mechanisms to capture it. It wasn't fancy. It's not like it was some expensive fancy system, but you were just really intentional about staying close to the consumer.

Sachi Singh (22:04.75)
Okay.

Rose (22:15.706)
And so many of the founders who I work with, find who may have left a company and it's been bought by someone else. What I notice tends to be the biggest challenge is the beginning stages of the business were so the founder was so intimately close with the customer, like in the hearts and minds. And then as you scale and you grow, you get away from that. But you've almost custom built in a focal point of always having your customers at.

table with you. And I'd love to hear you talk about that story. It would inspire you to go and get the research, how you got the research, how you got people to fill out journals, which I thought was novel surveys. Do tell about that part because I think it's pretty, it's unique and it's something that I would wish for every CPG company to be thinking the way that you are around.

Sachi Singh (22:43.48)
Don't him.

Sachi Singh (23:03.204)
Absolutely. And thank you so much for the question. think the one point I'll make is, or one of many, is I think that that water out intentionality. I think at the core, what I'm building, what my team is building, what we're building together is an intentional business.

You know, I think a lot these days about value creation. I'm fundraising, know, valuation is at the top of my mind and the value that we're creating is at the top of my mind. you know, I kind of, I keep having to go back to kind of the first principles of the work and the brand. And I will say, I've actually started to even think about it as like,

the work because I think this is deep work, like deep impact driven work that we're doing to change hearts and minds and behaviors and all the things through the vehicle of food. But I really go back to this idea of like, who are you creating value for? And I think, know, one of the early pieces of advice I from a founder friend was

And I'm a first time founder, so I don't know anything. I learned everything on the job, which you can do, I will say. You can do it, I would encourage you to do it because we need more disruptors in the system. So one of the early pieces of advice I got was your primary job in that zero to one product market fit phase of the company, which we all go through, is spending time with your customers. And I really dipped that to heart.

In the first year, would say, you we launched in 2022 and the first year was truly a beta year. You know, we put a product out there that had never been done before. We really like sat with our customers and got feedback and figured out who they were, why they were coming back. I have maybe like 30, 40 pages of notes where I was doing deep one-on-one interviews with our subscribers and I can actually, I know them by name. You know, like there's some of them are still in our funnel. Some of them are investors and

Sachi Singh (25:14.764)
I just thought that it was the most beautiful way to understand who you're resonating with, whom you're resonating with, why, how did they find you, why did they come back? And I would encourage every single person who is starting a company to spend that first zero to one phase with as many people that are buying your product and not buying your product as possible because it's gold. And nothing can replace the feedback that your customer is giving you.

Rose (25:31.921)
Okay.

Sachi Singh (25:44.428)
I think that was kind of always the guiding light. And what we started to do then is just play a little bit. We're doing this in versions. We're doing versions of this still today, in the early days, in 2022, we started this concept called rootless labs where we said, ultimately we're trying to create value for you, for the customer. So tell us what you want.

we'll try and do it for you, know? within reason, like within kind of the boundary conditions of what we believe is the product we need to be putting out there. So, we did a bunch of weird stuff, Rose. We like, we developed two new flavors with our customers. We sent out a bunch of products. We had them try it. We had them taste it. We had them give us feedback. And these are people who both enjoyed the Daily Bytes and did not enjoy the Daily Bytes. So, I really wanted to have people in the

in the mix who are not just supporters, know, who are like, yes, I believe in the brand, but like, I don't like the way this product tastes. And I'm like, that's gold, because I need to get you to take this product every day, you know, and I don't think there's, I genuinely don't think there's a better way to develop products these days. So I think that core philosophy has continued to be a part of our DNA and

To be honest, anytime I sense that I particularly am kind of moving away from being as customer centric, I need to like snap back because that's where I find a lot of my joy as well. But we've done so much cool stuff and it's all been driven by our people. So in 2023, after getting testimonial after testimonial, I actually get emails personally from women telling me how this product has changed their lives. And I'm not being...

or facetious or hyperbolic, truly, this is something that I hear all the time. And when we went back into the data and we recruited 36 women, 34 of whom were over the age of 40, and we said, be on the protocol. So eat one bite every day for a month, and then through weekly symptom surveys, report on your hormone imbalance symptoms.

Sachi Singh (27:56.654)
So they got five surveys, a baseline, then four weekly. 100%, and you know these numbers, 100 % of these women felt less severe, less frequent, or completely stopped feeling the symptoms that they came in with. And the kind of buckets of symptoms were 97 % of women who came in with hormonal dryness and acne felt better. 86 % of women who came in with just chronic fatigue, that like, you know, in your bones fatigue, felt better.

Rose (28:10.981)
is.

Sachi Singh (28:24.846)
83 % of women who came in with bloating and stomach issues and constipation felt better. it was actually that was the turning point for the company where we were like, okay, there's something about mindfulness, like sitting down, eating your bite, ritualizing it, paying attention to what your body is telling you, having tools to help you pay attention to what your body is telling you and eating an efficacious whole food product.

that's really helping women feel better in a time in their lives where they're feeling pretty shitty. So that was sort of the genesis of what I am calling, you know, Ruthless 2.0, which is feeling like the new direction of the company.

Rose (29:10.444)
What, as you've been building it over the last several years, what would you say has been the most surprising to you in the journey?

Sachi Singh (29:22.35)
That's such a good question. I'll say do things.

I have honestly been very surprised at how...

how quickly this product can help women feel better. Like I think these, some of these stats, I mean, just, you know, to be super honest, it's a food is medicine journey, right? So like what you have to do is eat it consistently, eat it every day. You're getting a little bit of really nutrient dense, nutrient dense nutrition. If you're iodine deficient, you know, it's giving you a daily dose, but it's a, it's a, it's like, I'm from India. I believe in Ayurveda, you know, it's an Ayurvedic philosophy of like this.

and it helps your body heal itself, but that sometimes it takes time. We would start to see, because we're doing a lot of this data-driven work, we're tracking the way the women are feeling in surveys, with testimonials, we're doing deep dive interviews with them. You can feel a difference as quickly as immediately or in three days or in two weeks. And I think the fact that...

If your body can snap into its snap maybe back into balance so quickly with just such a simple, efficacious food as medicine tool. I thought that that would really surprise me. Like I was like, wow, that is truly the power of food as medicine and truly the power of seaweed. So I found that to be surprising. I think on the flip side of that same coin.

Sachi Singh (31:03.602)
What I'm struggling with and what I find surprising as someone who, you know, I'm an immigrant, I grew up with this food as medicine philosophy. So I'm not a big supplements person. I'm finding it surprising how novel the food as medicine concept is in the West. You know, like we do a lot of education about why food based nutrition is better than.

pill-based nutrition. There's this beautiful study on food synergy and it basically says nothing can recreate the nutrition of an apple as it relates to the impact of an apple's nutrition on chronic disease. Like nothing, no amount of human ingenuity, engineering, nothing can recreate what nature intended an apple to do in the human body.

And I find that so beautiful conceptually. And I think I'm surprised by how much education it takes to kind of get a consumer to be in that mindset.

Rose (32:17.596)
It does. And as you've grown over time, how have you been able to keep the staff moving, keep the overhead light while you're in the building phase and in the scaling phase? How have you looked at talent and building the culture up around Rootless?

Sachi Singh (32:27.328)
Ahem.

Sachi Singh (32:35.158)
It's such a great question. And you know, I think, I think about this all the time, especially in the context of the future of work and AI. My philosophy, we have a tiny team, like a tiny, mighty women led team. My, and I've made mistakes. I have made, I've made mistakes. I've hired, you know, I like as with I think any early, you know, founder journey or early business journey, you don't really know what the needs are and they emerge as you're building. So.

I have definitely, you know, I think some of the, some of the hiring can people related mistakes just like cut the deepest. So, not to say that I figured it all out, but, or we'll ever figure it all out. But my philosophy is if we can get a super mission aligned, smart shop group of people who are at the core of this machine, we can do anything.

like you can always hire in specialized talent. know, we're doing, example, we're doing, we're acquiring customers through paid social. So we need somebody who can technically go in, do the media buying, know, kind of build the funnels, et cetera, et cetera. So I think you can, you can out, we have an amazing CX customer service resource who is incredible, you know, and, mission aligned, mission driven, and, know, has a specialized skill set, but

I think my philosophy to kind of full-time versus in-house versus outsourced talent is I just, I want to work with people, with women who are really committed to the work, know, to big systems changing work that we're doing. I want to inspire them. I want to unlock them. I want to make sure that their skills and our skills are complementary. I want to...

enable them with the tools that AI can give us. And then I want to unleash them into the world. And I actually like I would rather like do the seeds, plot the infrastructure, know, do the inspiring, do the best, do the dot, mission aligned, and then just like completely step out of it. So that's my dream. And I'm working towards it.

Rose (34:50.672)
Well, and I think it's fascinating because you do have a big educational story. So this is not like an impulse purchase. So then the natural question for me is how do you decide distribution? Because there's some DTC brands that will race to retail first, which we know can be very expensive. And if you haven't built the brand, you can get shelf space maybe, but then the real problem is how do you stay on shelf without the continued investment?

And then there are those who choose the DTC front first. And this is something that I admire very much about your approach is you go DTC and you learn and you get the kinks out of the way and you figure out the acquisition, that retention ready acquisition strategy that we talked a lot about so that you make sure you know before you go and expand the spigot and you have a lot bigger checks to have to support around inventory and around supply chain.

Sachi Singh (35:47.318)
something.

Rose (35:47.9)
It's so capital intensive. So how have you thought about the balance between that and giving yourself enough time to learn versus chasing every dollar? I mean, that's a delicate balance, short-term versus long-term thinking.

Sachi Singh (36:03.084)
Absolutely. And I will say it's tough. I think it's also challenging when there's kind of one defined or there's a more narrowly defined path to success in our industry. So what I've actually been doing is

Trying to reorient people to think about, and I'm fundraising, right? So I'm telling the story over and over again in a way that is like legible to the kinds of investors that I want to attract, which is also like vision aligned, mission aligned. It's just like, I want to this thing with you, you know? we better be intentional about this now that we're getting into. What I'm trying to reorient us as is we're not a snack CPG traditional food rep.

Food is the vehicle. We have the foundations of a unit economically viable business. We have a good LDV to cap. have good set of margins. early, but all of that foundation, we have product market fit. We know who's buying our product and why. We have these crazy retention numbers. So we are actually more of a supplement company, a supplement business model than we are truly a snack, high volume, like off the shelf.

retail product. you know what I'm telling the story, I'm like, and you know, not everyone can be an athletic greens, but look at what athletic greens has done. Look at what vital proteins did, you know, those are the footsteps in the playbooks that we're trying to emulate and, you know, innovate within, not just pure sit on shelf as a snack seaweed brand.

And fundamentally, think that requires a little bit of retooling, you know, because, because we're food. So, you know, I have to kind of continue to tell that story. And I think the other piece that we're trying to also lead into is this, like, we just launched an app as part of this big, you know, ruthless 2.0 era that we're ushering in. And a part of that is like, creating an ecosystem of

Sachi Singh (38:12.322)
digital service around this woman who is very, very menopausal, mostly creating ecosystem of service that can help her feel seen, heard and validated in her journey. And if nothing else, give her the first step to make herself feel better. And it is as you know, because anyone working in the menopause space or anyone who is experiencing menopause or perimenopause knows it is a why it's a wild wild west out there. There's so much information. You're constantly bombarded with, you know,

hormones, no hormones, supplements, no supplements. Women spend 13 billion dollars annually on perimenopause symptom relief. So it's a complicated space, it's a big market. And what we're trying to say is like, the first thing you should do is start and we can help you just get started. So we're trying to create like maybe additional revenue streams through our app really.

build out like this digital ecosystem of service around her to help her feel better. So the cl- we're actually a little bit closer to like consumer tech, like the aura rings and the biohackers of the world with the product as opposed to just pure, kind of CPG. with that, you know, framing in mind, like we have a retention heavy business model, you know? So when I, when I'm thinking about our, sorry,

Rose (39:36.412)
It's very predictable when you have a heavy retention, which is great from an investment standpoint because it can get you comfortable and stable with your growth plans.

Sachi Singh (39:40.959)
Exactly.

Sachi Singh (39:47.776)
Exactly. And you know, I think the proof is in the pudding. Like if people didn't like the product, they wouldn't come back. And I think, you know, that's why we're building where so we've hit a million in sales. And 69 % of that is from repeat purchases. And I think that is 69%, which is wild. I mean, you know, the

Rose (40:03.356)
I know. And 40 is a good number. 40, 50 is a great number, but to be at 69. Now the question is how do scale it? So how are you getting the word out there and scaling it knowing you're not invested, you don't have heavy investment right now, you've had light investment. How are you thinking about the fundraise and about the go-to-market plan?

Sachi Singh (40:10.539)
Thank

Sachi Singh (40:15.446)
Only? Exactly.

Sachi Singh (40:26.222)
Uh-huh.

Sachi Singh (40:30.016)
Exactly. It's such a good question. And I think we're also on at the like our digital marketing ecosystem is at an inflection point, you know, there's like everything is changing. I think the kind of ground is shifting from underneath us. So we're trying to figure out to your question about, you know, distribution. Where is our woman? You know, where does she get her information? What is she reading? Who does she trust?

And how do we show up in those spaces and literally just tell the story? Honestly, it doesn't require lot of like convincing. What I try to do is tell the story authentically and just get you to try the damn thing. Try it, pay attention to your body, see how you feel. If you feel great, continue. If you don't feel great, that's fine, you But the likelihood of you feeling great is pretty high.

as evidenced by all the data that we have. you know, I think I'm trying to show up in places that are adjacent to this very specific menopause space, if that makes sense. Like, I was just talking to somebody yesterday about...

Like what podcasts are women over Fatih listening to? Everyone's listening to Mel Robbins. How do I get Mel Robbins to talk about seaweed, you know? So it's actually like, just went to an event. I do a lot of, you know, thought leadership and speaking and panels and education. So I do a lot of in-person stuff. I was just at this beautiful fashion event and the conversion, like very crudely, the conversion that came out of that was wild.

because it was this like beautiful space where women were just like feeling taken care of and feeling like they deserve beautiful things. like, I think there's, it was just, you know, on Reddit, the perimenopause subreddit thread is a 52,000 member thread. And people are in there posting every single, I would say, every day, multiple times a day. So this woman is out there, you know, I think the creativity and

Sachi Singh (42:37.698)
and she's hungry for solutions and she's actually looking for non-medical treatments either in addition to or to substitute her, you know, pretty expensive hormone replacement journey. I think that's where some of the like fun and creative and like that's where we play, you know, like let's go to where she is as opposed to I think the kind of very traditional school of thought around like.

Paid social is the only way to grow your funnel, which is what we're doing now, but it needs to be paid social and this and affiliate and TikTok and brand and this and that. And that's how you build a flywheel, really.

Rose (43:14.37)
It's an ecosystem. It really is. If you were to look back, if you were to look back at your early days in the journey, what do you feel like is a couple of your biggest lessons learned as a leader? Because as they say, it's lonely at the top. And when you're starting something, it's not like you're in an organization where you have

Sachi Singh (43:16.098)
totally.

Sachi Singh (43:30.35)
Hmm.

Rose (43:37.436)
tremendous support everywhere in an entrepreneur's journey. Every day is a challenge. It's just a question of which challenge on which day. So, what are the things that you've learned along the journey that either surprised you or are things that you think would be important for people to know and to give some thought to?

Sachi Singh (43:44.622)
problem.

Sachi Singh (43:50.955)
Okay.

Sachi Singh (43:57.955)
Such a good question. I think so I started Rootless when I was 30. I'm 34 now. It was my first first time founder. Like name everything. I don't even think I had actually managed people directly before I started the company. like I was on every single learning curve there is.

And I think what I've learned over the last four years is, and what I really encourage people to do, and I really encourage women to do is, like, find a way to talk to your gut. You know, I think, like, we know so much more than we think we do. We are capable of so much more than we think we are.

And like, I think, I mean, I can't speak from the male experience, you know, so just not to exclude the male experience, but just like from what I'm seeing, the woman's intuition is deep and it is loud. We just have to find a way to hear it. And I think that's been a big learning, that is probably been the steepest and the hardest and the most painful learning curve for me.

where I realized that I actually don't need a lot of... I don't need more advice. I just need to be able to know, to tap into the things that I already know. Because no one knows your business like you do, right? And I think especially when it's coming from this deep values and your why, and it's like in your DNA, and you're spending time with your customer, I think you know more and you're capable more.

than what you think you do or know. So that's my first piece. I think everything is loanable. know, I think like, especially now with AI or anything, like you literally have the world of information at your fingertips in a way that's digestible and easy. Exactly. So I think the question for me is like, then what? You know, like, how do you build more

Rose (46:01.574)
So true.

Sachi Singh (46:14.766)
closely in alignment with your values. How do you, been thinking, I'm kind of, I joke, I'm in my like, let's break some shit era. you know, I'm like, how do we kind of break things and remake systems that were not designed for us in the first place, you know? And given that, you know, we have access to tools and technology and learning and people, like it's so.

That's something I've been thinking about and I really encourage people to think about before you start anything, like really get aligned with what you're building, what your values are, spend time doing that deep heavy walk and everything is launable. And then I think the third thing is like, this is a harder one too, it's like, it's all about the people around you. know, it's like, ultimately you're creating value for your customer who are people.

you are creating value for your shareholders, who are people. You're creating value for yourself, you're creating value for your team. So I think I'm really trying to reground myself in the fact that like people make or break this experience, you know, I that a little bit more existentially. So invest in them and like find time and ways to like unlock them.

I think that's where the magic happens.

Rose (47:39.108)
I know we're getting close to the end of our time, but if you were to look back at your younger self and give some advice, what would you say? I'm sure there's a lot of people in the audience who, like you, are either thinking about or have started businesses or in midst of scaling. I mean, you've been at it now for a significant amount of time, so there's lots of things to have learned along the way. And it's not like you had a day job.

Sachi Singh (47:50.67)
gosh.

Sachi Singh (47:58.766)
you

Rose (48:06.064)
that you just moved out to do it single shingling on your own, you actually are building a company, which is a very different approach to this. And you're trying to solve some pretty significant world problems of helping people feel better. Nobody needs to wander around being exhausted and tired and not feeling great if there's really an iodine deficiency. So like you're doing some really hard work. So looking back to yourself, what would you say that you know now that maybe you didn't know back then?

Sachi Singh (48:34.03)
That's such a good question. I would say, I mean, this is even like to my six month, you know, my six month old self, or six month, 2024 self. the lessons keep coming. I would say a few things. I think to just to kind of echo that point, like, I think I would tell myself that I'm, know more and I'm capable of more than I think I am.

I would tell myself to trust my gut way more and be convicted in it. know, like there's a lot of people to give you lot of advice, especially I have found as a female founder, as a woman of color, like people give me a lot of advice, sometimes unsolicited. Most of the time unsolicited. And if you don't have like conviction in your gut, you tend to listen and maybe take, make decisions that were not right for you. So,

Definitely launder trust your gut a little bit sooner than you did. And then I would say, invest in operating from a place of abundance and wholeness for and from yourself. I think I've struggled with multiple cycles of burnout and I'm actually kind of in the pit of one right now, like a big meaty existential one.

And I think, you know, it's a privilege to be able to do this work and be in a space where you can really create value for people and impact the way that people live their lives, you know? So find joy in that and don't be being old into like these external, know, milestones are important, but I think these external validations of your worth and the company's worth create value in the way that is aligned with

you, but it needs to come from a place of abundance and wholeness for yourself. So I wish I'm doing that right now, but I wish like, I don't know, 10 years ago, I had really internalized that lesson for myself.

Rose (50:44.528)
Well, it gives you the grounding to be able to pack the punches. That's for sure because you need to be able to be bold. You've got to have the foundation built. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else that you'd want to share or anything else you'd want our listeners to know while you have the opportunity before we close.

Sachi Singh (50:51.064)
Totally.

Totally.

Sachi Singh (51:08.137)
Yeah, think, you know, something I've been thinking a lot about is, so, you know, I call, I have, as of late, have been calling ruthless my experiment and hope. I think this is all a grand experiment. You know, I'm trying to figure out if we can jujitsu this thing, if we can actually leverage consumerism to create something, which is, which can be bad, you know.

to create something good that is helping us create a better, healthier food system and that's helping us create an army of women who are feeling better in their bodies. think that's such a beautiful mission and kind of vision to work towards. So the deeper I'm getting in this experiment of hope, honestly, the larger the remit of the vision and the work. And something I've been thinking lot about and I would love

as this is a call to action or just a seed to plant with your listeners is how do we as women make more of an impact with our dollar, you know, and with our decision making? Like I really am fundraising and I'm having these deep existential conversations with me, my gosh, you know, we're like, how do we build the scape table differently? How do we get more women to think about their

wealth differently, to think about their money differently. I want more women on our cap table. know, part of the fundraise last year is we actually got, we raised close to half a million dollars from our community. So over 65, I have two closer to 100 investors in my SBB. Over 65 % of them are first time female investors and a lot of them are our subscribers. And the minimum check size was $500. So you literally...

can put in $500 into a... We have people who have spent over $1,000 with us buying the product, but with $500, you could actually have equity in a company that you care about and that you believe in. And we can create value together. Our wins are your wins. And therefore, from a marketing perspective, it's like you're incentivized then to bring your whole tribe into the ruthless world because it's actually creating more value for you and it's helping your people feel better.

Sachi Singh (53:29.71)
I think a lot about regeneration and regenerative systems. And it's now gotten, it's gone from food to women's health to financial health, which is a big one. So, you know, I think we're, we're sitting in the middle of the largest wealth transfer in history. It's a $30 trillion wealth transfer and it's

driven and generated and going to a lot of that wealth is going to be owned by women. I think the status 28 % of women feel empowered to like know what to do with that. So my call to action is if you consume things, you are an investor. So how do you invest your dollar, your time, your resource, your energy into things that you truly believe in?

And really use your purchasing power to change systems, hopefully for, and design them hopefully in a way that serves you and serves your kids and serves the next generation.

Rose (54:33.424)
That's amazing. Really amazing. Well, this has just been so, I mean, so many good nuggets and all going back to the systems as levers or levers and how you think about the consumer. I mean, those are just pieces to me that are embedded and inherent in the business that you're building and it's going to help you maintain sustained growth over time.

I applaud your work and I'm sure people will be very interested in hearing more. So how come people get in touch with you? Where did they find you?

Sachi Singh (55:06.68)
great question on the internet, where you can go to our website, is getrootless.com. And then I'm on LinkedIn, we're on social media, we're just starting to spin up our TikTok. But I think LinkedIn is probably the best way to get in touch with me personally. And I think, know, my auto action is like, let's break some shit together and let's build some stuff together. It can be fun.

Rose (55:37.444)
Yes, it can be. Well, hopefully your tribe will continue to grow. And I'd love to do a part two of you with you down the line, because I think you're going to have a lot more to share, especially as you move into this next part of the journey of growth. So many more lessons to be learned. But thank you for the time today. I really appreciate it.

Sachi Singh (55:45.869)
for the

Sachi Singh (55:53.72)
Absolutely.

Sachi Singh (55:57.39)
Thank you, Rose. What a fun and beautiful way to tell the story and really reflect on this journey, which has been a wild one. So I really appreciate the opportunity.

Rose (56:08.592)
You're just getting started. can tell. Okay. Well, thank you. I'm going to count us down. Three, two, one. And Ramona.

Sachi Singh (56:10.402)
Just getting started.