May 26, 2022

Selling Deodorant for $100M and How to Find Your Best Competitive Advantage | Moiz Ali on My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri

Check out My First Million Podcast Episode Page & Show Notes

You don’t have to know exactly why your business works until well after it’s launched
- “You can say ‘I don’t know’ or ‘the same as everyone else’ to all questions as long as you have that one thing” – Shaan Puri
- Your business is going to change and evolve anyway, so don’t let anything prevent you from getting it started in the first place
“I don’t know anything about deodorant, but in six months, I’m going to know everything there is to know” – Moiz Ali
- Nobody is an expert when they start! Apply this to any idea.
Every Direct to Consumer (D2C) business should know its customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- And then, constantly improve on it! “If you’re completely divorced from customer feedback, you’re setting yourself up for disaster” – Moiz Ali
Ask more questions like this: How do you think about (blank)?
- Responses will be more honest and open-ended rather than numeric and analytical
Feel good unconditionally, force the good out of the average
- Think about the DMV. If you want five-star service, be a five-star customer.

Moiz Ali (@MoizAli) is an entrepreneur and former CEO of Native, a natural deodorant brand that is aluminum-free, paraben-free, vegan, and cruelty-free.
Moiz and Shaan explain how the right competitive advantage can turn a simple idea into a multi-million-dollar business venture.
Host: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP), no Sam (@thesamparr) on this episode!

Raised $500,000 to start Native and sold it to Procter & Gamble for $100 million
Didn’t do any PR and kept success quiet for as long as possible:
- Didn’t go around thumping their chest. If it failed, they wanted to fail quietly.
- Was a early-mover in the natural deodorant space, and wanted to keep the competition pool small for as long as possible

You don’t have to know exactly why your business works until well after it’s launched
- It’s going to change and evolve anyway, so don’t let overthinking prevent you from getting started
- Anecdote: Moiz tells a story about how they invited Native customers to answer questions about why they liked the product. Many liked the deodorant’s probiotics, but Native/Moiz didn’t know that that would be an advantage before asking.
- “If you’re completely divorced from customer feedback, you’re setting yourself up for disaster—unless you’ve created a flywheel that you know exactly how it works” – Moiz Ali
“You can say ‘I don’t know’ or ‘the same as everyone else’ to all questions as long as you have that one thing” – Shaan Puri
- Shaan explores the idea of repackaging an Indian-style chip into a bag that is more marketable to America
- Same product, one change
Manscaped: “a simple plan executed well” – Shaan Puri
- Rewording – they’ve created a product specifically for your balls, even though there’s not much innovation that differentiates this electric razor from one designed for your face
- Branding – unique and attention-grabbing advertising, they have a billboard in NYC right now that is an upside-down heart emoji, which makes it look like testicles

Over-hiring
- The Goldman Sachs standard is $1 million in revenue per employee
Spending money on dumb things
- A beautiful office doesn’t often have good ROI
Poor marketing
- Every D2C company should know their customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- “If you don’t know those numbers, you’re being grossly negligent with your business” – Moiz Ali

“I don’t know anything about deodorant, but in six months, I’m going to know everything there is know” – Moiz Ali
- Nobody is an expert when they start!
General curiosity is lost on most people
- Moiz tells a story of when he asked a hotel entrepreneur an hours worth of questions at a Super Bowl party, but that same person wasn’t even curious enough to ask why Moiz was also at the Super Bowl party
Ask more questions like this: How do you think about (blank)?
- Responses will be more honest and open-ended rather than numeric and analytical

Shopify’s motto is to ‘arm the rebels’, but it is giving us muskets in a war that is increasingly being fought with machine guns.
- Moiz is down bad this year—see for yourself in his twitter thread.
Moiz’s investment breakdown:
- $10 million in private equity
- $40 to $50 million in cash or short term bonds
- $25 to $30 million in real estate
- $10 million in real estate as an LP
- $10 million in startup investments
- $10 million in stock market
The current market environment has caused Moiz to be more reactive than proactive

“Everyone who bought in 2019, you look like a fucking genius” – Moiz Ali
Real Estate is the one market where Moiz has a true long term view
- Doesn’t intend to ever sell, his children will inherit the real estate rental business
- Slowed down from purchasing one unit a week to one unit a month until confirmation of market (in)stability – “If it crashes, no one will be more excited than me…I’ll quadruple down.” – Moiz Ali
Moiz bought most of his real estate through auction
- This is risky but some of the best returns are made on hard-mode

If you want five-star service, be a five-star customer
- Take the DMV for example. If you walk in with a good attitude, you’re more than likely going to encourage better service.
Feel good unconditionally, force the good out of the average