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This week, we sit down with Marisa Poster, the co-founder behind PerfectTed, the matcha-powered energy brand that's become Europe's biggest in under five years.A caffeine-addicted finance grad with an ADHD diagnosis she was too ashamed to admit, Marisa discovered matcha face-down in a university library after one crash too many — then moved to London and found a country that didn't sell it. Forty-five days after landing, she and her co-founders (her husband Levi and his brother Teddy) had incorporated the business. Five years on, PerfectTed is Europe's #1 matcha brand — stocked in 40,000+ points of distribution, valued at over £140m, and one of the largest matcha buyers on earth.From a matcha latte that never made it to market, to a can you can't miss on a supermarket shelf, this is a masterclass in turning a niche obsession into a mainstream category.Marisa breaks down why she treated Dragon's Den as a pure marketing play — studying every pitch that ever pulled all five offers, and memorising the exact glue on her labels in case a Dragon asked — and why she still chose Steven Bartlett's money over bigger names. She gets candid about hiding her ADHD for years, convinced it made her less credible as a founder. And she shares how PerfectTed scaled nationally on almost no paid ads, by turning supermarket shelves into billboards.She also addresses the elephant in the room — the global matcha shortage — with maybe the most honest line a founder's ever given about their own success: "I don't want to say we caused it, but…"Strategic, candid, and packed with brand lessons you won't find in a marketing textbook.Timestamps:00:00 Building Europe's #1 Matcha Brand00:50 ADHD, Anxiety & Finding Matcha in a Library03:54 Moving to London to a Country With No Matcha05:49 Why the Energy Category Overlooked Women13:01 45 Days to Incorporate & the Pivot to Cans16:18 The Name "PerfectTed" & Buying From People21:08 Dragon's Den Packaging & the "Healthy Energy" Pivot24:08 Why the Brand Is Green: Nature's Neutral27:14 Building With Her Husband & His Brother30:54 Why Fun Is a Prerequisite for Success34:20 Kickstarter Selling Out in a Day36:49 Treating Dragon's Den as a Marketing Play40:21 Choosing Steven Bartlett: "Take Smart Money"43:36 No Paid Ads & the Global Matcha Shortage45:48 Cracking Retail: Shelves as Billboards51:16 What's Next: Protein Lattes & New Categories53:33 The Heinz Collab TeaseFollow us across our socials:Twitter: https://x.com/happystackhqLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/happystackhqInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/happystackhqCheck out the HappyStack website: https://www.happystack.com/Stack the odds. 🥞#ecommerce #podcast #founder #business #happystack #thelockin

This week, we sit down with Aimee Connolly, the founder behind Sculpted by Aimee — the Irish makeup brand on track to become Ireland's first billion-dollar beauty business, still 100% owned by its founder. ___Follow us across our socials:Twitter: https://x.com/happystackhqLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/happystackhqInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/happystackhq___Check out the HappyStack website: https://www.happystack.com/Stack the odds. 🥞

This week, we sit down with Ashley McDonnell, the Galway-born founder building Ireland's first luxury goods group (VYKO) after a decade inside LVMH and Puig.Ashley walked into Christian Dior at 22 as a data analyst, ended up doing €70 million in solo travel retail sales, then spent five years scaling Puig through Europe's biggest IPO of 2024. Now she's back home and raising €50 million to do something nobody has ever done, turn Ireland into a global luxury powerhouse.From the inside playbook on how LVMH, Puig and L'Oréal actually print money, to why every fashion brand you know is secretly a fragrance business, to the €1 billion Irish luxury market that's been quietly funnelling out of the country for decades. Ashley breaks down the VYKO Group thesis, the 500 Irish brands she's scanned, and the playbook for building an Irish LVMH from the ground up.

This week, we sit down with Lucie MacLeod, the founder behind HairSyrup the Sunday Times Founder of the Year who built a built a million pound empire after being rejected by all 6 dragons on Dragons Den. Lucie's story is chaos turned into strategy. She started mixing hair oils in mustard bottles in her student kitchen, gave away her formula on TikTok, then deleted her viral account. When thousands of people begged to buy her products, she ignored them. Her parents said absolutely not. She did it anyway. From a £3.99/month website to the Dragon's Den experience that everyone saw on TV to turning rejection by all six Dragons into 22 million profile views and a 66% revenue jump. Why she refuses to chase viral tactics, deliberately runs an 8-10% affiliate model in an industry that does 80-90%, and told her TikTok account manager she'll never make £2m on a live - and doesn't want to. Raw, funny, and packed with lessons you won't find in any startup playbook.

This week, we sit down with the founders of Spot & Tango, one of the few DTC brands that scaled to nine figures without chasing growth at all costs. Russel and Dylan break down how they went from cooking dog food in their kitchen to building a $100M/ year pet food company, why they chose to own manufacturing instead of outsourcing, and how they perceive profitability as a responsibility and not a bonus. From being prudent operators to dog lovers we talk about the moments where things nearly broke, the risks most founders avoid, and why they believe discipline beats speed when building something that lasts. Honest, opinionated, and packed with real lessons, this episode is about building a durable consumer brand, making hard decisions early, and staying focused when the pressure to move faster is everywhere.

This week, we sit down with Lukas Pakter, the 24-year-old founder behind Haus, Trybe, and Outliers. Lukas has built a personal brand generating millions in revenue, and in this conversation he walks through his actual playbook—why audience quality matters more than size, and how the right mentor helped him scale from £100K a month to £100K a day. We cover his approach to content, the systems he's built to scale beyond himself, and the realities of growing modern ecom businesses. He also gets honest about nearly going bankrupt, taking a deal everyone advised against, and the lessons that shaped how he operates today. Practical, direct, and full of specific insights you can actually use.

This week, we sit down with Aimee Smale, the inspiring founder behind Odd Muse. In four years she's taken the cult British womenswear brand from a bedroom startup to a £30m business. Aimee opens up about spotting the gap in the market for accessible luxury, quitting ASOS without a plan, and quite literally dismantling her bed to make room for a desk. From making £10 logos and packing orders herself, to designing the blazer that changed everything, this is a masterclass in betting on yourself.Aimee speaks candidly about online pile-ons, media attacks, and why the last year has been her hardest yet. She also breaks down the decisions that shaped Odd Muse’s growth, and why she believes Odd Muse can be a £100m brand, even if she doesn’t want to take it there alone.Honest, high-stakes, and full of lessons you won’t hear in a pitch deck. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro & Early Years of Odd Muse 12:00 Taking Impulsive Risks 14:55 Importance of Building a Rounded Skillset 19:30 How One Hero Product Can Change Your Life 22:20 Importance of Being Your Own Customer 28:00 The Influencer Moment That Changed Odd Muse 33:30 Founder-Led Marketing 37:00 Dealing With Online Trolls Over The Last 12 Months 46:08 Why She's Now Stepping Back & Hiring a CEO 53:25 How Moving to New York Changed Her Mindset 55:30 The Strategy Behind Odd Muse's Retail Stores 01:01:30 Growing the Wholesale Business

Season 3 kicks off with a heavyweight episode.This week, we’re joined by three operators who’ve collectively spent more than £100 million on Meta in the last 18 months - and who sit behind some of the UK’s fastest-growing consumer brands. Jack Rubin, founder of Purdy & Figg, the DTC cleaning brand now generating £50M+ in annual revenue. Olly Hudson, a co-founder of Soar With Us, the UK’s largest DTC growth agency. And returning fan-favourite Matt Kelly, founder of Spacegoods, back after one of our most memorable episodes. This conversation is exactly what brand owners talk about over a pint (or three). We go deep on: The real state of Meta ads right now How AI is reshaping acquisition Why doubling down on your influencer strategy is no longer optional What it actually takes to scale a modern DTC brand in 2025 If you’re looking to sharpen your customer acquisition strategy over the next 12 months, this is the episode you’ll want to binge.

Meet Olivia Jenkins - the founder behind the fastest-growing jewellery brand in e-commerce.In 2020, she was burnt out, broke, and dealing with the recent loss of her mum. Alongside her partner Jack, she channelled this grief to start D. Louise — a multi-million pound jewellery brand now loved by thousands of women across the UK from Molly-Mae to Maya Jama.In this unfiltered episode, Olivia shares how she turned a side hustle into an eight-figure business.Chapters00:00 - Trailer01:10 - Introductions02:10 - Launching a brand with zero experience 08:30 - The importance of customer-centricity 10:24 - Sourcing and selling her first products13:20 - Bootstrapping the first drops 18:55 - Taking the leap full-time, & working with your partner24:50 - Black Friday: The day everything changed25:50 - Bringing Gymsharks ex-CEO on board29:50 - Importance of authenticity in collaborations33:40 - Handling negative reviews and customer experience35:10 - What made D.Louise stand out in a saturated market44:30 - Future categories and avoiding distraction47:00 - Why big brands can't copy D.Louise52:40 - Shifting Behaviours: Women buying themselves jewellery54:00 - The big vision for D.Louise56:30 - Rebranding: Telling her mother's story through design

Meet Grace Andrews, the 28-year-old Marketing Director behind the world's biggest podcast - Diary of a CEO. Grace joined Steven Bartlett as DOAC's third employee in 2020 when the podcast had just 8,000 subscribers. Through trial, error, and in Grace's own words 'lots of naivety' she built the marketing playbook that scaled the brand to more than 1 Billion listens in just four years. In our chat with Grace, we deep dive her playbook for building the world's biggest podcast while also diving into the top social media tips and trends for 2025. Not one to be missed!

Meet Michael Corcoran and Dave Morrissey. Mates, drinking buddies, and two of the UK's leading social marketers. Michael is the marketing genius who turned Ryanair into the world's leading airline on social, clocking up more than 1 billion organic impressions in 12 months. Now he's building Slice, a consultancy agency where he's helping some of the UK's top brands cut through the noise and grow on social. Dave has spent the last three years leading out e-commerce at TikTok where he has helped the UK's top DTC brands scale their revenues through TikTok Shop. In this unfiltered chat, we deep dive on the strategy that built Ryanair into a global leader on social, how brands can level-up on TikTok, and some hot takes on the future of social. Not one to be missed!

Bio. George Kruis and Dom Day aren’t your average founders, they’re former international rugby stars who went from scrums and stadiums to supplements and Sainsbury’s. As ex-Saracens teammates, their journey from elite athletes to co-founders of wellness brand ‘FourFive’ is full of unexpected pivots, hard-won lessons, and big wins in both the worlds of e-commerce and retail. In this episode, George and Dom get real about the moment they knew they had something special with FourFive, how they tackled the transition from rugby to retail, and the mindset shift that came with life after sport. From leveraging their athlete networks to landing shelf space in major retailers, they unpack how they found their “unfair advantage” and built a trusted name in the crowded wellness space. Including the challenges of scaling and building a brand around a highly regulated product, CBD. They talk Shopify, subscriptions, investor relationships, and even the science (or lack of) behind whether FourFive can really cure a hangover. We say it can. If you're a founder, athlete, or someone in between, this one’s packed with energy, insight, and inspiration. And a good load of laughs too. Timestamps 0:00 Trailer 01:30 The Back Heel Conversion 02:56 The Aha Moment for FourFive/ The Idea for FourFive 05:10 Transitioning from Rugby to Entrepreneurship 07:55 Finding the Right People and Support 09:15 Lessons in Communication 09:52 Preparing for Life After Rugby/ Tapping into your Network 14:18 Lean into your Skillset/ Finding your Unfair Advantage 17:17 Getting into retail/ Sainsbury's 20:43 The Ecom Pivot 22.06 The Parallels between Sports Teams and Businesses 29:35 Goal Setting 31:49 Is FourFive a Hangover Remedy? 36:53 Challenges of being in the CBD Space 40:17 Shopify + Subscriptions 43:38 Influencers and Investors 46:15 Jack's POV

TikTok isn’t just for lip-syncing teens anymore. In the last three years, a host of social-first brands have broken-through to become multi-million pound businesses. Their secret? Content. And nobody in the beauty space does it better than Daisy Kelly and Glow For It. In just four short years, Daisy has taken Glow For It from a small side-hustle in her mum's kitchen, into a brand doing six figures a day on TikTok Shop.Daisy is the latest guest in the pub to chat about the brand's origin story, her playbook for success using TikTok Shop, the importance of authenticity when building a community, and how Glow For It recently sold a product every 19 seconds.. across a 12 hour TikTok Live! If you’re looking to crack TikTok in 2025, this isn’t one to be missed.

Some know Spencer Matthews as a Reality TV Star. Others know him as a World-Record Holder. But beyond the public eye, Spencer's journey over the last few years from overcoming addiction through to founding 'clean alcohol' brand CleanCo is one fit for a movie. Spencer is the latest guest into the pub, and this one is (quite literally at times) barking mad. Sharing stories from his early struggles with alcohol and the inception of CleanCo, through to his extreme physical challenges and family life, this is definitely our most inspiring episode yet.

Some of the world's best ecom brands were founded by a bullish founder from the comfort of their bedroom. But, Connor Martin must be the first to manufacture and sell fragrances from his! Connor founded The Essence Vault in 2019, with humble beginnings at local street markets in Belfast. He's since grown the brand to be the UK's largest online fragrance business, turning over more than £50 million per year. From becoming the first UK brand on TikTok Shop, to building out a 300 person team, Connor is one of Europe's sharpest brand operators. He joined us to chat through his journey, playbook, and to share some hilarious stories along the way.