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THE ACQUIROR CONFERENCE 2026

DTC A

DARLINGS

How Breakout Brands Scale to $100M in < 3 Years

Jeremy Horowitz

Because Ventures · Let's Buy a Biz

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THE ERA

New Consumer Breed $100m in < 3 years

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THE PERSON TALKING:

Jeremy

Horowitz

GP, Because Ventures · Creator, Let's Buy a Biz

Because Ventures

PE fund — acquiring Shopify-native consumer brands

50k Followers

Let's Buy a Biz newsletter · letsbuyabiz.xyz

linkedin.com/in/jeremyhorowitz1

Connect · Questions · Follow the research

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RHODE SET THE BAR

$250M

2024 Revenue

$20m

2024 Profit

30,000

Retail Locations

2 Yrs

100m in Rev

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RHODE SET THE BAR

$212M

Revenue (Yr 3)

$1B

Acquisition Price

10

Products at Exit

3 Yrs

Founded to Exit

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LIQUID DEATH Showed Virality is Planable

$313M

2023 Revenue

$1.4B

Valuation

4,000%

Revenue Growth (3yr)

133k

Retail Doors

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"Is this a Shopify brand

or an Amazon brand?"

That question is dead.

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I call them

DTA Brands.

FEATURING

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DTC BRANDS

Dominate All Channels. Sell Across Channel.

TikTok

Organic & Paid

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5 Pillars of DTA Brands

Comfrt

Viral drops built on creator-first supply chains.

TTS AFFILIATE ARMY

True Classic

Build Ads customers engage with. Let the algo Find the Targeting

Algo Determined Content

Grüns

Single SKU, infinite creative surface.

ALWAYS ON OFFER

Jones Road Beauty

Fewer products. Higher intent. Stronger LTV.

RADICAL SMALL CATALOG

Young LA

Engineered scarcity that turns fans into buyers.

MANUFACTURED URGENCY

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$300M+

Run Rate

2 Years

Time to Scale

$70M+

From One Ad Format

#1

Hoodie Brand on TikTok

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THE SYSTEM (STEAL THIS)

Comfrt built a self-recruiting affiliate army

that runs without the founder.

[SLOW — shift from hype to explanation]

"Here's how the machine actually works. And this is the part you can steal."

"Comfrt has their affiliates recruit other affiliates. They’re sourcing 3-4K new affiliates/content creators per day. Those affiliates go into a Discord community. They get weekly coaching calls. They never get scripts. The founder's philosophy: people can smell when content is scripted."

"Then those affiliates produce content — organically, in their own voice on Tik Tok Shops. The Comfrt team finds and that content and scales it as an ad into every platform simultaneously. TikTok, Meta, Snapchat, AppLovin, Pinterest.

The content feeds every algorithm. The algorithms finds the customers. And more Affiliates."

[PAUSE 1s]

"It's a flywheel. The system doesn't need the founder to run it. It needs a Discord, a coaching cadence, and a budget for affiliate acquisition ads."

[DIRECT EYE CONTACT]

"Hudson's math: 10 good affiliates equals $1M/month in revenue. That's installable into any business."

[PAUSE 1s]

"So Comfrt proved a massive creator engine can power a massive ad budget. But here's the next question — what do you actually tell the algorithm to do with all that content?"

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COMPONENT 2 — CREATIVE IS THE TARGETING

$500M+

Cumulative Revenue

$0

Manual Audience Targeting

6 Months

Time to $100M

150+

Ad Variations Live

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TRUE CLASSIC

The Creative System

"The creative controls who sees it. The algorithm does the rest."

♂ MALE AUDIENCE

♀ FEMALE AUDIENCE

FITS

"Finally a shirt that fits big guys"

UGC Testimonial · Pain-solve

DEMO

"The fit test — 3 shirts in 60 sec"

Product Demo · Curiosity

ASPIRE

"Built for guys who lift"

Lifestyle Visual · Identity

GIFT

"I bought this for my boyfriend…"

Gift UGC · Gift buyer

PROOF

"He wore it every day last week"

Social Proof · Confidence boost

NUDGE

"The upgrade he doesn't know he needs"

Occasion Hook · Partner shopping

⚡

Their CEO, Ben Yahalom who came from Meta's Emerging Disruptors team, so this guy had visibility into every brand advertising through the platform — he calls this 'creative is the new targeting.'"

Here's what that looks like in practice. 100% of True Classic's Meta budget runs on Advantage Plus Shopping Campaigns. They never circle an audience. They never tell the algorithm who to find.

Instead, the creative controls the audience. A UGC video featuring a woman naturally skews toward women. A gym-focused video reaches fitness buyers. You don't target the audience. You make creative FOR the audience, and the algorithm does the matching."

[DIRECT EYE CONTACT]

"Here's why I love this as an acquirer: It simplifies the process and when you combine it with Comfrt’s Affiliate army strategy you have a repeatable scalable process to scale ads."

[PAUSE 1s]

"True Classic let the creative find the customer. Jones Road Beauty is running the Tik Tok pipeline internally and externally to scale just as fast.."

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COMPONENT 4 — RADICAL ACCOUNT SIMPLICITY

$100M+

Revenue

3

Meta Campaigns

80%

Repeat Purchase Rate

2x

YoY Growth

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JONES ROAD BEAUTY

The System (Steal This)

Small Catalog. Lo-Fi Educational Content.

5 Hero SKUs

The full catalog. Nothing extra.

● Miracle Balm

● Face Pencil + Just a Sec

● Each one teachable on TikTok

Lo-Fi TikTok

Teach customers how to use it.

● Raw, authentic format

● Founder / educator POV

● "How-to" hooks convert

Meta Everywhere

Best content → paid across all surfaces.

● TikTok → Meta repurpose

● Winning creatives → scale

● One video. Every surface.

Jones Road proved you don't need a big catalog or big budget — you need the right content and the willingness to press record.

The playbook is simple. Keep the catalog small. Promote the hell out of it on social. And scale the winners everywhere."

[PAUSE 1s]

"Jones Road's content engine starts with lo-fi TikTok. Bobbi Brown. iPhone. Bad lighting. Sitting at a table teaching people how to use a product. No scripts. No production budget. Just the most credible person in beauty picking up a Miracle Balm and showing you what it does."

"Those videos tripled the business practically overnight."

[PAUSE 1s]

"And then the scaling happens. When a piece of content wins on TikTok, they move it to Meta. Then Snapchat. Then everywhere else. TikTok is the testing ground. Every other channel is the scaling mechanism. They never go the other direction."

So you've got a small number of products getting a massive volume of content — all tested on TikTok first, all scaled across channels when they prove out. That's economies of scale on both sides. Fewer SKUs means lower product costs. Scaling proven creative means lower customer acquisition costs."

[SLOW]

And here's what makes Jones Road the exception in this entire talk.

[PAUSE 1s]

Every other brand I've shown you today is always running an offer. Always discounting. Jones Road almost never runs a sale.

[PAUSE 2s]

They don't need to. The catalog is so tight, the content is so efficient, and the unit economics are so strong that they can sell at full price

[DIRECT EYE CONTACT]

A small catalog promoted aggressively on social, creative tested on TikTok and scaled across every channel, margins strong enough that you never give away a dollar in discounting. That's what catalog discipline actually buys you.

[PAUSE 1s]

Jones Road simplified the catalog and let the content do the work. Grubs is making sure all of that content is converting.

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ONE PRODUCT, INFINITE ANGLES

$100M

ARR

14 Months

Profitable

$500M

Valuation

1

Core Product

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Grüns

THE SYSTEM (STEAL THIS)

Always On Offer. Gruns is 52% Always.

Pop-up: 52% off on entry

PDP: 52% off, always live

Go to getgruns.com right now. The first thing you see — before the product, before the reviews, before anything — is '52% Off.' It's everywhere. The homepage. The popup. The product page. The checkout. Every single touchpoint is screaming a discount."

"And you know what most people in this room would say about that? 'That's going to destroy the brand. You can't discount a premium product 52% and maintain brand equity.'"

[PAUSE 1s]

"Except Grüns is one of the most recognized, most talked-about supplement brands in the country right now. $500M valuation. Profitable at 14 months. They didn't destroy the brand — they built it. The discount IS the brand experience. The offer is what gets people in the door. The product is what keeps them."

[DIRECT EYE CONTACT]

"Here's the insight for acquirers: most portfolio companies are leaving money on the table because they're terrified of discounting. They're 'protecting the brand.' Meanwhile, Grüns is plastering 52% off across every pixel of their site and building a $500M business faster than almost anyone in the space."

"The offer never stops. And neither does the growth."

[PAUSE 1s]

"For anyone in this room who's got a portfolio company running 20+ SKUs with a 'protect the brand' discount philosophy... this is the counterargument. Tighten the catalog. Pick your winner. Position it six ways. And always — always — be making an offer."

[PAUSE 1s]

"Grüns multiplied one product into six businesses and had the guts to discount it aggressively the entire time. YoungLA conversion focused simplicity in a completely different direction — they turned scarcity into a sport.”

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COMPONENT 5 — MANUFACTURED URGENCY AT SCALE

$300M+

Revenue

72 Hrs

Avg Drop Sell-Out

500+

Creator Partners

$0

Paid Media (Launch Yr)

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YOUNGLA

The System (Steal This)

Biweekly drops, intentional scarcity, and affiliates who compete to promote every release.

01

Biweekly Drop

New Limited products always

02

Affiliate Competition

Affiliates aggressively promote new releases.

03

Intentional Sell-Out

Limited inventory is the strategy.

04

Drop = Must-Attend Event

Customers wait online for the next drop.

YoungLA doesn't run promotions. They engineer anticipation.

Here's why. YoungLA runs a biweekly drop model. New products every two weeks. And they intentionally understock.

[PAUSE 1s]

If you aren't online at 12PM PST when an item drops — it's gone before you get there. They took Supreme's playbook and applied it to gym shorts. Sounds ridiculous. $176M last year.

But the real engine isn't the drop itself — it's what the drop does to the affiliate network. The affiliates compete with each other to promote each release. Every single drop becomes an event. Affiliates are racing to post first, drive the most sales, get the most commission. That competition generates massive organic reach across every platform simultaneously."

[SLOW]

Think about that for a second. YoungLA doesn't create urgency with ads. The affiliates create urgency by competing with each other. The brand just ships on a consistent biweekly schedule and manages the affiliate program."

[DIRECT EYE CONTACT]

"That's not founder magic. That's an inventory calendar, a product team that ships on time, and an affiliate manager running the competition. That's installable

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THE COMPOUNDING EFFECT

Run 2–3 of these simultaneously

01

⚡

Build an

Affiliate Army

Outsource OPEX to Creators
Source Winners from data
Constant pipeline of new.

Comfrt · YoungLA · True Classic

02

🎯

Aggressive Scale

Tight Catalog

Angles > Options.
Better Cash turn
Compounding economies of scale

Grüns · Rhode · Jones Road

03

💸

Always On

Offer

Offers never stop
Don’t need to change
Bundles - Good Alt

Grüns · True Classic · Comfrt

So. Five brands. Five components. But when you zoom out, three patterns repeat across all of them."

[PAUSE 2s]

"Pattern one. Build the affiliate army. Comfrt, YoungLA, Grüns — massive micro-creator networks. Not celebrity deals. Not paying someone $500K to hold a product. Volume plays with relatable people producing real content. The infrastructure is the moat."

[PAUSE 1s]

"Pattern two. Tighten the catalog. Rhode did $212M with ten products. Grüns hit a $500M valuation on one SKU positioned six ways. The marketing surface area in DTC today cannot support 40 products. Every single brand that hit escape velocity did it by scaling winners — not launching more."

[PAUSE 1s]

"Pattern three. Always make an offer. None of these brands are precious about discounting. They are always promoting, always giving the customer a reason to buy now. And before anyone says 'that erodes the brand' — Rhode had 34% EBITDA margins. This is conversion engineering, not brand erosion."

[PAUSE 2s]

"The brands running two or three of these patterns simultaneously are the ones that break out. Look for that in diligence. Install it post-close."

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