Kat Schneider (Ritual) - $50 and a Suitcase to Nine Figures, and Fixing the Supplement Industry
On this episode, Ritual CEO and Founder Kat Schneider joins us to unpack:
- Arriving in Brooklyn from Crimea at four and a half with $50 and a suitcase, living in a welfare hotel, and the lesson she took from her parents: your circumstances don’t determine who you become
- Losing her first job out of college when Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the moment she realized she loved the decks and design more than the financial models
- Why she left running Troy Carter’s investment fund while four months pregnant, and what happened when she told him she was starting a company (he became her first investor)
- Walking the supplement aisle pregnant, unable to find a prenatal she trusted, and the “founder gut” instinct that led her to chase down the owner of the four-letter domain ritual.com until he agreed to swap
- Why she threw out her first round of branding, the first money she raised, and the story behind the Ukrainian yellow and blue she didn’t realize she’d chosen
- The investor who told her she could “either start a family or a business, but not both,” and why pregnancy, postpartum, and perimenopause were dismissed as niche when together they make up the whole women’s health experience
- Why the supplement category exploded from 4,000 to over 100,000 products in 30 years with almost no regulatory updates, and why “clinically studied” has no legal definition
- What it takes to put $5 million into human clinical studies, why they’re harder and more expensive with women as subjects, and Ritual’s commitment to clinicals on every product by 2030
- The prenatal study on folate vs. folic acid, and the postnatal study showing how a mom’s supplementation affects the quality of her breast milk
- How Ritual got SB 646 passed in California, and what the team is pushing for in Washington on heavy metal limits, clinical claims, and ingredient transparency
- Why Kat launched with a multivitamin and waited two years to release a prenatal, and how her earliest customers are now entering perimenopause
- Why she says running a business in this category is an “onion parfait,” and what a theater program taught her about not letting her daughter quit
- Biking her three kids from Hollywood to LAX with luggage in tow, and why her daughter told the team they’re now working for the six-year-old
Learn more about Ritual at ritual.com
