#10 - Using $1k to Build $100M Deodorant Business

**Moiz Ali** (0:04)
At some point, we tried to raise more money, and the investor was like, the entire natural deodorant industry is something like $30 million a year. So why would anyone be interested in investing in a category that only has $30 million a year run rates?
And I was like, if the natural deodorant industry is $30 million a year, we're the entire natural deodorant industry. We're doing $30 million a year at this point.

**Shaan Puri** (0:31)
Okay, I gotta say it, this was my favorite episode of the podcast. What you're about to hear is a episode I just recorded with Moiz Ali. He is the founder of Native Deodorant, which is a natural deodorant brand. It's basically a $12 stick of deodorant. My wife just bought it. She doesn't know that I know Moiz. She bought it because she didn't want to use deodorant that had aluminum in it or parabens, all kinds of funky chemicals that you see on the back of a deodorant stick. So this is the story of how he started it from his brother's dining room table, essentially where he was doing the packaging, he was doing the sales, the marketing, the customer service as a one-man show for a very, very long time. And over two and a half years, he built this company raising very, very little money, mostly because investors were kind of just laughing him out of the room, like, okay, you're starting a deodorant company? Like, what is that? And so he sold it two and a half years later to Proctor & Gamble for $100 million.
I liked this episode, not just because the story is great and the tactics that he shared are actually quite insightful, but because he's a very entertaining guy, very charismatic. In fact, there's a portion at the end of the episode where he is talking about how some people who didn't believe in him, and he named some names that we had to bleep out. So we left the story in, but we had to bleep out the names, which is a podcast first. But I think you guys are gonna love this episode. Let me know what you think. As always, you can tweet at me, I'm at shaanvp or email me puri.shaan at gmail.com. Love to hear from you guys.
All right, enjoy this episode.

**Moiz Ali** (1:51)
Good.

**Shaan Puri** (2:00)
Native deodorant, you build a deodorant brand, of all things.
You build it from scratch, from a dining room table, you build an actually good enough business where Proctor & Gamble, one of the biggest companies in the world, looks at it, makes an acquisition, and buys Native deodorant for $100 million. So that's the end, but we're gonna rewind to the beginning. The beginning is what? Set the scene. So where are you when you have the idea for Native deodorant?

**Moiz Ali** (2:25)
So I'm in New York City, running another e-commerce business. I'm buying like Axe deodorant from a Dwayne Reid at 14th and 3rd in New York City. You know, I've lived in the same place for like four years, and so I'm really familiar with this place.
I go buy it, I'm waiting in line, I flip over my deodorant, and I can't pronounce a single ingredient on the back of that thing, other than the word aluminum.
And you know, I've been seeing this problem for the last four years since I've been buying the deodorant from Dwayne Reid.
And you know, I'm an attorney, I'm not a dumb guy. I know how to read English, and I can't pronounce a single one of these words. And so I'm like, if this product is gonna stay on my body all day, every day, you know, I put it on right after I get out of the shower. It's on my body for 23 hours and 45 minutes, and it'll be on my body for 23 hours and 45 minutes for the next 60 years. I should at least be able to pronounce some of the ingredients in this thing. And so that's really where the problem starts. And then my sister gets pregnant, and you know, she's telling me how she's using Dove, and she's like, I'm really scared of Dove because I'm about to start breastfeeding, and what happens with the ingredients in my Dove, and do they like get into, you know, my baby as a result of me using this antiperspirant. And so I'm like, okay, now this is a, not a hair on fire problem, but a problem large enough for me to solve. That's how Native starts.

**Shaan Puri** (3:41)
So my wife is currently eight months pregnant, and she started using Native, and she was like, yeah, I just bought this like $12 deodorant.