Trip launched in London in 2019 as a CBD drinks brand, founded by a husband-and-wife team. Today it's on track for $200M in revenue, more than doubling year-on-year and CBD accounts for less than 3% of sales.

This week, Kendall Jenner took an equity stake in exchange for signing as global ambassador. The target is specific: only 14% of Trip's revenue comes from the US. That's a nine-figure business built almost entirely in the UK, and Jenner is being brought on to do one job, open America.

The revenue curve is genuinely hyperbolic: $21M, $28M, $69M, now tracking $200M. Coefficient Capital led a $40M round last year at a ~$300M valuation that already looks conservative.

What Trip actually is now: the flagship of a category forming at the opposite end of the $20B energy aisle. Call it functional relaxation. Where energy drinks sell up-regulation, caffeine, taurine, the 3pm jolt, Trip sells down-regulation in a can: magnesium, adaptogens, clean botanicals, built for the sober-curious generation and the sleep economy.

The question worth sitting with: energy drinks took roughly fifteen years to go from niche to a $20B aisle. Does functional relaxation conquer the US as fast, or faster, now that the consumer has already been trained to buy function in a can?

When I first walked into a Blank Street in 2022, I didn't get it either. The company had just been labeled "the WeWork of coffee", a sly dig at a capital accumulator in search of a compelling business.

Last week, Blank Street closed $105M led by General Atlantic, who also recently acquired Joe & The Juice, so they're building a thesis here, including $30M of secondary, at a ~$650M valuation. The business is profitable. ~$150M of revenue. 106 stores across the US and UK. Lines around the block for its latest drops.

The launch thesis was pure efficiency, and we covered it when the brand was first being compared to the Asian pickup-coffee model: automated espresso, sub-350-square-foot formats, $60–75K store openings against Starbucks' $350–500K. That thesis was real, and it's still the reason the unit economics work.

But it's not why people queue. What Blank Street figured out along the way is branding toward matcha culture. Blueberry Matcha. Strawberry Shortcake Matcha. Seasonal drops, cold foam variations, a loyalty program that invites fandom rather than tracking points.

The most telling stat: most sales come after 4pm. This isn't a brand built on morning coffee. It's an afternoon matcha hang with friends. For the sober-curious generation, an $8 premium treat is the new happy hour, which makes Blank Street and Trip two answers to the same question. What does a 26-year-old who doesn't drink do at 5pm? Apparently: matcha, or magnesium.

Almonds. Egg whites. Dates. Peter Rahal rode clean ingredients and RXBAR to a $600M exit to Kellogg in 2017. The whole brand was the label, a handful of recognizable foods and "No B.S." printed on the front.

28g protein. 150 calories. Zero sugar. Now he's riding macros and David to a $2.25B valuation from Greenoaks and Valor.

It's the cleanest single illustration I've seen of how food culture inverted in a decade. RXBAR's brand was the ingredient list. David's brand is the macro panel, and the ingredient list, full of fat substitutes and allulose, is beside the point. The consumer definition of "better" moved from "what's in it" to "what it does for me," and Rahal read the move before anyone else.

The velocity is historic. David launched DTC in September 2024 with a single SKU. Two years later: frozen desserts, RTD shakes, 35,000+ doors across Walmart, Target, and Costco, and on track to surpass $300M in 2026 revenue.

Then the vertical-integration move that tells you how seriously they take it. In 2025, after supply constraints, Medici, the holding company that owns David, bought Epogee outright, the maker of EPG, a plant-based fat replacer that delivers fat's taste and texture at a fraction of the calories.

Medici already has a second act. HallPass in candy: 70 calories, 1g of sugar, launching Walmart-first as the "Coke Zero of candy." Rowdy, a chip brand, is next. The pattern is now explicit, take an indulgent category, rebuild it around the macro panel, launch mass-first.

80% of the customers who bought Every Man Jack's John Deere collection had never bought Every Man Jack before.

Read that again. A men's grooming brand put a tractor logo on its packaging and acquired an entirely new customer base overnight.

David Born has spent his career inside the licensing world, helping consumer brands in the $5–30M range access some of the most recognizable IP on the planet: John Deere, Peanuts, Disney, Batman, Toy Story. The mechanics are less mysterious than founders think. You pay a royalty rate on sales. There's usually a minimum guarantee and sometimes a marketing commitment. In exchange you get decades of brand equity, built-in emotional connection, and a fanbase that would never have found you otherwise.

The math is what makes it interesting. A licensing deal done right functions like a customer acquisition channel, except instead of renting attention from Meta at ever-rising CACs, you're borrowing trust from a brand that spent fifty years building it.

But David is equally clear about the other side. Licensing amplifies what's already there. A great operator with strong margins and real distribution can turn a license into a step change. A struggling business bolting on IP to solve a demand problem usually just accelerates the decline, now with royalty payments attached.

Three things from the conversation worth taking with you:

How royalty structures actually work. Rates, minimum guarantees, marketing commitments, the specific numbers a $10M brand should expect, and where there's room to negotiate.

What makes a brand ready. Margin structure and distribution come first; the license is the multiplier, not the fix.

How to approach an IP holder when you're not P&G. The big houses historically worked only with big CPG. They're increasingly open to digitally-native brands who can move fast and merchandise creatively and most DTC founders don't know that door exists.

🎧 Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify.

Alongside the content, my firm runs restructuring and M&A mandates for consumer brands and occasionally one is a fit for the operators and acquirers on this list.

The business: Shopify-native DTC color cosmetics brand with a differentiated, patent-protected product format. ~$7M net revenue in 2025 (peaked ~$8.5M in 2024). Gross margin in the mid-60s on DTC. ~$85 AOV. ~52% of orders from returning customers.

Why it's interesting:

Strong fits: DTC beauty operators with real performance marketing depth, color cosmetics strategics, and brand aggregators or roll-ups looking for a patented format with a loyal repeat base.

Serious buyers only. Email me directly at [email protected] with a line on who you are and what you're looking for, and I'll share the teaser.

Quick ask: if you could own one of the three brands in this issue, Trip, Blank Street, or David, which one? One word, hit reply. I read every one.

Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/fanbi/