The $1b acquisition of Grüns by Unilever earlier this year has had a variety of
By Drew F · October 30, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
The $1b acquisition of Grüns by Unilever earlier this year has had a variety of ripple effects throughout the industry, some good - some bad; summarized below
Good:
- Unit economics. Chad Janis has officially popularized the focus LTV:CAC, and the industry needed someone who orchestrated an exceptional outcome to be the voice of authority in making us all focus keenly on unit economics.
- BizOps function. Gruns did an exceptional job on building out a business operations team. I have gotten countless inquiries as to how they did this, and while I dont really know, its a super sharp model most brands should follow and will be better businesses for it.
- People & culture focus. Slowly but surely, we are all realizing the importance of building a killer team. I did a podcast with a PE executive search professional Jeremy Cohen who said it nicely: 'every thing a founder has done to get to this point has gotten a positive feedback loop from constraining costs, applying that notion to talent is what can turn a potentially good outcome into a bad one'
There is still a big hurdle for founder led businesses to get over in attracting top talent and being willing to pay for it. I think gruns also proved this point.
Bad:
- everyone now wants to be a gruns. I wish it were possible to aptly describe how unrealistic being a gruns is. many will die trying
- LTV:CAC. while the popularization of this metric is generally a positive; more tactically gruns has popularized a '36 month' LTV duration. Very, very rarely do I see brands who have strong enough retention to underwrite 36mo LTVs; gruns was, again, special in this regard. Most brands are more like 12 or 24mo at best.
- valuation expectations. Founders tend to see the last deal and think 'thats the multiple i should get' when really the multiple they should get is probably 9x ebitda. Exceptional cases here can conflate expectations and its important for founders to stay grounded.
Overall -- as I was writing this there is way more good than bad and this deal has been very much on the net positive to the industry by a wide margin; but i am seeing more and more brands take it at face value vs trying to dig deeper and seeing what they can really learn and how it applies to their business