💪 Sean Frank on why the world needs more of you

📊 Connor Rolain with AOV and upsell benchmarks

💀 Mehtab Bhogal how to keep new ad channels alive

🤑 Mike Manheimer wants to get you ready for Q4

🗞️ Top five headlines from this week in consumer news

Mike Manheimer Postscript, CCO

Leaving Yotpo? We’ll Get You SMS-Ready Well Before Q4

Yotpo is exiting the SMS and email business to focus on reviews, loyalty, and UGC. Here are my thoughts …

It was a really tough week for customers of Yotpo SMS and for the company as a whole.

While I respect their decision to focus on what they do best, an unexpected migration like this can definitely take a toll on brands — especially so close to Black Friday.

For anyone looking for a new SMS provider, here’s what Postscript is offering.

It’s simple and straightforward.

You’ll get a best-in-class tool with amazing people supporting you the entire way. That’s the service Postscript is known for. We’ll make sure you are ready to roll before the holiday season.

To be clear, this inclusion is sponsored.

However — because Ridge, HexClad, Lomi & Pela Case, Jones Road Beauty, and Grüns (one of the most popular recent guests on the podcast) all trust Postscript with their SMS — here are a few unsponsored posts from the leaders at those brands.

Sean Frank CEO, Ridge

Professor vs Practitioner

When I was 17, I was the assistant manager of a suit store.

The other assistant manager was named Jack. Jack was 30, had 2 kids, and was WICKED smart.

Old guys would come in and just reminisce about the good old days with him.

He could talk about sports, investment, history, and war.

Had an opinion about everything.
He was an intellectual.

Would read the NY Times (and we lived in the middle of nowhere Washington state).

But here is the thing-
Jack and I made the same amount of money.
$14 bucks an hour in 2011.

Jack would tell me about investments, what was happening in Afghanistan, what I need to do with my life.

And he was right.
He was knowledgeable, courteous, funny.

But that's because he was a professor…

He did not know how to take his knowledge and experience and do something with them.

One time Jack told me about his friend from high school.

Was dumb as a door knob.
Couldn't pass his exams and had to drop out.

He ended up getting a job as a ditch digger, subcontracting for the city.

Well that guy got really good at digging ditches.

Worked his way up, leading a whole team.

He knew everything about digging ditches for the city.

Then he left and started his own contracting company.

He learned how to do everything, might as well do it himself.

That guy was a millionaire by 30.

When Jack told me about it, I thought Jack would feel like s***.

When I asked him how he felt about his buddy he said:

Thats where he is wrong-
I am not a smart guy.

I like doing things and making a dollar.

What the hell is the point of all this?

Jack was a professor.

He loved the theory, the debate, the excitement AROUND things. But he never practiced anything.

To make any money in this world, you need to be a practitioner.

You need to remove yourself from the theory and get into the applied world.

“Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face”

Don't be the person booing from the cheap seats.
Or really, your couch.

Someone running a restaurant knows more about business than the fresh MBA grad.

But for some reason, we usually respect one (the grad) and not the other (the restaurant runner).

Anyone trying something deserves your respect.

If you are reading this, you are already practitioners.

So this advice is pointless to you.

But we all have someone in our life who needs to hear it.

JUST F****** LAUNCH SOMETHING ALREADY​
​
Your thing is never ready.

Failure is fine, but doing nothing isn't.

If you want to start something, it is always better to start now.

The world needs them-
We need more practitioners.

It needs more of you.

Connor Rolain HexClad, Head of Growth

2025 Benchmarks Are Here, Just in Time for Q4

When you’re planning for Black Friday, Cyber Monday … average data won’t cut it.

Aftersell just dropped a full-funnel benchmark report built from +40k ecommerce brands — including insights from Jones Road Beauty, True Classic, BRĒZ, and more.

My team at HexClad contributed also.

Some standouts:

• Checkouts with trust + rewards hit $2.69 RPS
• Rokt Thanks added $1.13 in pure profit per order
• Top post-purchase offers converted at 13.43%

And probably my favorite, DTC brands with 3 upsells drove 20x more revenue than those with just one.

If you want to build your funnel leading up to the holidays and especially when the big days arrive …

This is the data you need.

Save it. Share it.

Use it to plan your next steps.

THE FEED

​Bold Creative Wins Where Budgets Can’t​

​How We’re Iterating on Tentpole Campaigns & Structuring the Content Teams That Power Them​

Mehtab Bhogal Finance Operators

Why Every New Ad Channel Dies in Your Hands

Across our portfolio of companies at Karta Ventures, we’ve seen this play out dozens and dozens of times.

You’re a $10–$20M brand trying to grow to +$50M, but you can’t seem to crack any ad platforms other than your hero channel. It goes something like this …

Let’s say you run a DTC brand built on Meta. Mr. Zuckerberg has got your business to $15,000,000 a year in revenue.

You decide to launch a new channel. Your media buyers are thrilled. They’ve always wanted to spend on YouTube.

Thirty days in, platform reporting shows you are nowhere near what you see on Meta; if in-platform performance is this bad …

You compare it to Meta, which shows a blended 5x ROAS and looks like a hero. So you slash the new channel, as it’s only performing 20% as well as Meta.

Oops, big boo boo!

Say you run a brand selling a product with a longer consideration cycle. The time from first exposure to purchase:

• 20% within 30 days
• 40% in days 31–90
• 25% between 91–180
• 15% take 180+ days

If only 20% of your eventual purchasers convert inside 30 days, even if the new channel ultimately performs identically to Meta, your best possible observed ROAS inside a 30-day evaluation window is ~20% of the long-run number.

So if Meta’s true long-run 5x translates to only 1x inside 30 days, pulling the plug at day 30 is like giving up on your new apple tree two days after planting the seeds.

To understand this, here’s our word of the day …

 Adstock 

Adstock is the residual, decaying effect of advertising exposures on current and future sales.

Ads load memory, familiarity, mental availability, and intent into the market. That stored intent bleeds into purchases over time.

If you only credit conversions that happen inside a short attribution window like 7DC, you ignore the tail of revenue that spend unlocked. Mature channels, Meta in our example, are benefiting from years of accumulated adstock.

New channels have zero adstock. Of course, they look worse at day 30. Need to figure out your consideration cycle?

You can do this a few ways:

• Run an email or post-purchase survey and ask how long your customer knew about you before purchasing
• Use a multi-touch attribution (MTA) system; most have directionally correct data but they’re not 100% reliable
• You can use upstream data like branded search impressions through Google Search Console
• Geolift holdouts paired with MMM are the gold standard, but very expensive if you’re not $75M+ in revenue

Let’s walk through an example with numbers.

Core assumptions

• Meta 180 day ROAS = 5.0
• Gross margin = 60%
• Spend test = $50k over 30D

Purchase-lag distribution from surveys and our multitouch attribution system

• 0–30 days: 20%
• 31–90 days: 40%
• 91–180 days: 25%
• 180+ days: 15%

30-day dashboard results

• Observed revenue so far ≈ 20% of long-run
• Expected long-run revenue = (Spend)(True ROAS) = ($50k)(5.0) = $250k
• Observed 30D revenue = (20%)($250k) = $50k
• Observed 30D ROAS = $50k/$50k = 1.0x

If you cut now, you “prove” ROAS is only 1x and shut it off.

At 60% gross margin, that’s $120,000 gross profit gone. Worse, you never build the cumulative awareness base that would have fed future repeat and referral volume.

I am most comfortable scaling when lag-adjusted ROAS ≥ hurdle, quality metrics in-line or better, and I keep seeing channel-specific CAC falling with more spend + optimization.

During the test, tracking quality metrics is a good way make sure you’re at least headed in the right direction. Session length, email capture rate, quiz completions, cost per incremental branded search session, etc.

A helpful way to view this all if you’re a visual learner is to build a spreadsheet showing cash velocity and gross profit payback.

A simple model could include something like:

• Spend outlay at Day 0 = $50,000
• Gross profit recovered by Day 30 → $30k (60% of $50k rev) → -$20k cash delta
• Gross profit recovered by Day 90 cumulative → +$90k total GP (30k+60k) → +$40k net vs spend
• By Day 180 = +$127.5k cumulative GP
• Full tail = +$150k cumulative GP → 3.0x gross profit return

You now have everything you need to judge new channels sanely:

• Lag buckets
• Maturity multipliers
• Cash payback ladder
• Quality metrics

Use them and you’ll stop nuking the very spend that breaks you out of your plateau.

The Trends

Curated by the editor of CPG Wire, this week’s five biggest consumer-news headlines.

1. Bachan’s Hires Bankers, Explores Sale: Axios​

Fast-growing Japanese barbecue sauce brand Bachan’s has hired Centerview Partners as the company explores a possible sale. Justin Gill launched the brand in 2019 which has become a staple at retailers like Costco, Walmart, Target, and Kroger.

Bachan’s bootstrapped until 2021 before raising $17M from the likes of Prelude Growth and Sonoma Brands Capital. The company expects sales to exceed $100M this year, up from around $70M in 2024.

2. Celsius Delivers in Q2: Business Wire​

Celsius purchased Alani Nu for $1.8B earlier this year because sales of its flagship energy drink brand were slowing. That bet paid off in Q2 as Celsius reported that net sales surged 84% to nearly $740M. Celsius the brand even recovered some of its earlier swagger with sales rising 9% in the period.

The company now commands 17.3% of the US energy drink category which puts it in third place behind the long-reigning champions Red Bull and Monster.

3. Prelude Growth Bags $600M: PR Newswire​

Prelude Growth Partners, a leading consumer-focused growth equity firm, secured $600M for Fund III. Since debuting in 2017, Prelude has backed a number of winners like Sol de Janeiro, Banza, Westman Atelier, and Bachan’s.

Prelude Growth also announced two very different investments last week: Amylu Foods, a manufacturer of all-natural chicken products, and OneSkin, a biotech skincare brand.

4. AG1 Continues Impressive Evolution: Athletech News​

After offering only one flavor for 15 years, AG1 just released its daily nutrition supplement in three new ones: Citrus, Berry, and Tropical. This marks another big win for Kat Cole who took over as AG1’s CEO last summer.

Cole has turned AG1 from a single SKU, single channel business into a multi-SKU, omnichannel beast in a relatively short period of time. Super impressive.

5. Doughlicious Secures $5M: FinSMEs​

Doughlicious, a UK-based manufacturer of novel frozen desserts, raised $5M in funding from The Angel Group, Rich Products Ventures, and existing investors.

Kathryn Bricken launched Doughlicious in 2017 which produces cookie dough-enrobed gelato bites. Since making its debut in late 2023, Doughlicious has expanded its retail presence which now includes H-E-B, Target, Whole Foods, and Wegmans.

 👀 Indeed 

We’ve got some big things coming in the months ahead.

A ton of the Operators will be at Beanstalk in NYC at the start of Sept … followed by not one but two more live online events before we close out the year.

Plus, Mike Beckham knows something you don’t. And he almost spilled the (secret) beans!

If you want to pile on your support, I wouldn’t mind you giving the Operators Podcast a follow on LinkedIn while you’re there.

Finally, most of you wrote back last week that you’d like us to start breaking up the newsletter from one per week into two. But I’m still curious if you have an opinion:

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff 🤓 Executive Editor

Disclaimer: Special thanks to Postscript + Aftersell by Rokt for sponsoring the newsletter.

​Read online | Unsubscribe​