Understanding AI Revolution, Uncharted Special

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.
This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead, with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Carol Massar** (0:32)
Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec, live here at Uncharted in Southampton, a pool behind us, lots of people around us. There's a lot going on.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:38)
Yeah, a lot of people drinking poppi too. Did you see that?

**Carol Massar** (0:40)
I did see that.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:41)
Yeah, lots of people are drinking poppi. You know, find a problem and fix it. That's the context of talking about this company.

**Carol Massar** (0:47)
How many times have we talked to venture capitalists? Like they say, that's what people have to do. That's how you have to think about starting a company. And that's exactly what our next guest has done.
And sometimes, it's a personal problem or situation that leads you to creating an amazing company, one that actually gets bought out by PepsiCo for $1.95 billion, and that happened last year. We're talking about poppi. Allison Ellsworth is co-founder of the company, and she joins us here at Uncharted. Welcome, welcome. Nice to have you here with us.

**Allison Ellsworth** (1:15)
Thank you. And hey, let's call it two billion, right?

**Carol Massar** (1:17)
Oh, okay, okay. We'll round up. We're good, we're good.

**Allison Ellsworth** (1:19)
We're gonna round up.

**Carol Massar** (1:20)
It's a lot of money. Tell us, though, I love the backstories. I watch these guys know Shark Tank a lot. That was certainly something that played in. But tell us about how you came to create this company.

**Allison Ellsworth** (1:31)
I think like most great things, I created it because I had a personal problem. I had some gut health problems. I started drinking apple cider vinegar, hated the taste. And I wanted to create something that tasted better. Have you guys ever taken a shot of apple cider vinegar?

**Tim Stenovec** (1:46)
No, I have not.

**Carol Massar** (1:47)
I know lots of people who have, though.

**Allison Ellsworth** (1:48)
It's disgusting. So I went to my kitchen and I created the first version of Poppi, went on to get a deal on Shark Tank. And now we're in every grocery store in the nation. It's wild.

**Carol Massar** (1:58)
It is pretty wild.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:59)
It's a really crowded space and it's hard. I mean, you could walk in into any sort of convenience store or grocery store. And those are the companies that have succeeded in getting the shelf space. Just getting the shelf space is difficult. How did you do that in the beginning?

**Allison Ellsworth** (2:15)
We hired really smart people. So after getting a deal on Shark Tank, our network was opened up.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:20)
So that's where everything changed.

**Allison Ellsworth** (2:22)
And bringing people that know the industry. Beverage is really hard. Someone downstairs just asked me.
They wanted to do a beverage. And I said, one, it's capital intensive. You have to have a lot of money. You're shipping liquid across the US. Manufacturing, shelf life. There's so many things that go into it. And you really want to surround yourself with smart people. And the beverage industry is small. So network, network, network.

**Carol Massar** (2:43)
It's really about who you know in the beverage industry. Because you're fighting for shelf space essentially, right?

**Allison Ellsworth** (2:48)
Yeah. And then you're working with the retailers.
And we were before the time. We were calling ourself Soda. We were revolutionizing Soda for the next generation. And they were like, that's hilarious, you know? And so they didn't know where to put us on the shelf space. Like basically we were in the sparkling water set. We were, you know, in enhanced water. They didn't know what we were. It was hard.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:07)
Well, now the idea of a functional beverage, like everybody kind of knows about that. You guys were early to that, of course. I'm curious what you see out of the landscape right now that is missing. Like if you were to develop something right now, what would it be?

**Allison Ellsworth** (3:17)
Well, I am developing something right now. We're launching in the fall to fit that gap, but what it is, is it has to be better for you. And not so better for you that it's just like, people don't understand that there's a lot of adaptogens and all of these things. Protein is really big right now, but I don't know. Would you like to drink a carbonated protein drink?