Founders should build to last, not to exit

The Grüns deal validated something strategics have been signalling for a while: they're willing to move earlier and pay up for fast-scaling, digitally native wellness brands with strong unit economics, brand equity, and a clear hold on a consumer trend — in this case, functional nutrition.

The pace at which Grüns scaled is remarkable, and Unilever's willingness to pay $1.2 billion for a two-year-old brand will rightly make founders pay attention. What it should not do though is change how founders build.

Validation, not a playbook

Founders are increasingly seeing exits as achievable at an earlier stage, particularly if they can position themselves as category leaders rather than just revenue generators.

My advice hasn't changed: don't build for the exit. Build for relevance and resilience. Own one or more consumption occasions and become part of consumers' daily habits.

The best outcomes come when founders create brands with real staying power — exits tend to follow naturally when acquirers see long-term fit.

What actually makes a brand acquisition-ready

When we assess whether a brand is becoming genuinely attractive to a strategic buyer, four things matter:

• Brand equity and differentiation. Something that clearly resonates with a defined consumer cohort to start, and can broaden to a wider consumer base over time.
• Repeatability of demand. High retention and frequency, not just top-line growth.
• Scalable unit economics in D2C.
• Multichannel presence. Be where the customers are already purchasing in your category.

None of these are short-term strategies to chase an exit. They're what makes a business worth running and therefore also what makes it worth buying.

Where founders go wrong

The most common mistake is optimising optics over substance. Buyers are smart — they can see through it.

In practice, that looks like top-line growth chased through unsustainable paid-media spend, revenue numbers that don't hold up against retention and purchase frequency, or scale that hasn't been pressure-tested against real unit economics.

Marketing is an investment, not a cost. One example of the mistake is investing for growth at any cost — over-spending on Meta to chase it.

European brands can travel

Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez recently called the US "the only market that gives you both critical mass and brands that can travel internationally." I don't fully disagree. The US offers unparalleled scale and a highly unified consumer market, which makes it easier to build recognisable brands quickly.

But European brands can absolutely travel — we just need to be more intentional about positioning and localisation. Several of our portfolio companies have grown across multiple EU countries very successfully.

For a challenger brand starting out in Europe, Germany and the UK are the two markets to build strong foundations in first. Both offer meaningful size and strong consumer demand for challenger brands. Once you have real traction in those two, scaling across the rest of Europe becomes a much more manageable problem.

Options follow substance

If you build for scale, resilience, and repetitive behaviour, you will have options when the time comes to pass the baton to a larger company. That's the version of acquisition-readiness worth pursuing.

Niccolo Manzoni is co-founding partner of Five Seasons Ventures, a Paris-based VC investing in iconic and sustainable consumer brands.