Unfinished Business

Every episode, Alex and Lee talk about how fast Hulken is growing. This one is about what that growth actually costs. For the first time, they get candid about the messy middle of scaling a bootstrapped, vertically integrated brand: chronically out of stock on their bestsellers, rerouting inventory away from their own website to protect retail relationships, and discovering that the model that bui...

Justin Allen co-founded TUSHY a decade ago to solve a problem most Americans didn't know they had. No roadmap, no comparable brand, no playbook… just a bet that if you made toileting joyful enough, people would come around. They did. Now, ten years in, Justin is asking harder questions: What does brand even mean when the media landscape has completely fractured? How do you build creative at sc...

Two things have been true at Hulken since year one: no dropshipping, and only say yes to collabs that actually earn it. On the eve of launching their most complex product development yet (a full pattern collab with Posh Peanut), Alex and Lee sit down to work out, on camera, what they actually think now. This is a solo episode. No guest filter, no rehearsed takes. At $50M, the playbook isn't fi...

Most founders building consumer brands think DTC is the goal. Allison Luvera knew from day one it was just the testing ground. Getting into Whole Foods, Costco, Safeway, and Total Wine with five employees and a patented box wine format was a three-year plan built on intentional price testing, customer research, and unit economics priced for retail before she ever walked into a retailer. Allison is...

Greta Meyer started Sequel in a college classroom. She and her co-founder identified a physics flaw in the tampon that nobody had fixed in almost 100 years, and spent years navigating FDA clearance, manufacturing partnerships, and a medical device regulatory process most founders would have quit on. They launched DTC, spent almost nothing on ads, and built their brand through partnerships instead....

Suze Dowling has seen the inside of more DTC brands than almost anyone. As co-founder of Pattern Brands, a multi-brand home goods portfolio she's been building since 2018, she doesn't just run one brand. She runs five at once on a shared services team, which means she watches the same mistakes play out across categories, price points, and growth stages, over and over again. The biggest one...

We turned the mic around. For the first time on Unfinished Business, Alex and Lee are interviewing someone from inside Hulken, their own Chief Brand Officer. Tara Seruya has been working with Alex and Lee for over a decade. They first met at Ivy, their first company together. When Hulken came along, Tara came with it. She's the person behind every brand decision that resonates: the Supreme col...

Seven people. $50 million in annual revenue. One brand that somehow manages to feel like it's everywhere. If you've ever wondered how Hulken actually works (the operating model, the org chart, the tools, the strategy), this is the episode. This week on Unfinished Business, there's no guest. It's just Alex Schinasi and Lee Rotenberg, co-founders of Hulken and co-hosts of this show,...

They cooked dog food in a rented kitchen in Queens. Their friends thought they were insane. That was 2018. Today, Spot & Tango is a 100% direct-to-consumer, subscription dog food company doing $120-130M in revenue and growing 60% year over year. This is all with zero retail shelves, 95% subscription, and a $35M factory they built themselves to protect a category they invented. Dylan Munro is t...

The DTC era of "raise money first, ask questions later" is over. And Ben Cogan saw it coming. Ben is the co-founder of Hubble Contacts, one of the original DTC brands, which grew to $100M+ in revenue and earned him a spot on Forbes 30 Under 30. He then founded Mockingbird Strollers (now in Target), Agora (a DTC acquisition firm with $120M raised and $200M+ across its portfolio), and Bean...

He's seen the balance sheets behind the brands your feed tells you are crushing it. And what he's found? The gap between the press release and the spreadsheet is bigger than you think. Nate Rosen is the co-founder of Express Checkout: the media company covering CPG, consumer brands, and retail with the kind of depth and honesty the industry doesn't always love. With a twice-weekly Subs...

Most marketing decisions aren't driven by strategy. They're driven by ego. That's the honest (and slightly uncomfortable) truth that Brooke Yoakam, founder of AvidAI and the brand analyst behind @thebrandblueprint_, dropped on this week's Unfinished Business. And she's not wrong. Brooke has been an entrepreneur since she was 13. She built GiftPocket, a customer acquisition plat...

She spent two years building one product. Went through 207 prototypes. Filed 4 patents. Heard 2,500 nos from investors. And now has 200 of them. That's Steph Hon, founder and CEO of Cadence: the modular, magnetic, TSA-compliant capsule system that's redefining how people carry their routines on the go. Made with recycled ocean plastics. Built with a philosophy that hasn't wavered since...

Season 2 of Unfinished Business is officially here and a lot has changed since we wrapped Season 1. When we first started this podcast, we were still at Clay. Hulken was growing, but it wasn’t our full focus. Over the last year, we left venture-backed SaaS, went all in on Hulken, hit $50M in revenue, launched nationwide in Target with an end cap, expanded across Asia, opened our first office in Ne...

Melanie Travis didn’t go to fashion school. She didn’t work at a legacy brand. She didn’t have a co-founder, a warehouse, or a team. What she did have was a miserable experience swimsuit shopping for a company retreat and a hunch that other women felt the same. In this episode of Unfinished Business , Melanie joins Alex and Lee to share how she turned a universal frustration into Andie Swim , a na...

No guests. No prep. Just us. In this episode, we sat down together — two co-founders, two moms, two longtime partners in life and business — to talk about what’s really keeping our relationships strong. And what’s absolutely not. We covered: – Why Alex has never farted in front of her husband in 10 years (yes, really) – Why French kissing still matters (even after a decade) – How to maintain attra...

Liz Teich and her brand The New York Stylist is the real deal. A New York fashion stylist with nearly 20 years of experience, a loyal online following, and a sustainable wardrobe philosophy that actually makes sense. In this episode, Liz sits down with Alex and Lee to talk about how she built her business, her brand, and her confidence… without chasing trends or cutting corners. We cover: The pers...

Tieghan Gerard built one of the most beloved food brands on the internet. Today, Half Baked Harvest has over 6 million followers across platforms, four bestselling cookbooks, a candle line, a sold-out national tour with Williams-Sonoma, and a fiercely loyal community that shows up for everything she creates. But the story behind the brand? It’s chaotic, personal, and deeply real. In this episode o...

Victoria Brito has lived many lives: ballerina, global fashion model, queer icon, and now podcast host. But beneath the resume is a story of resilience, reinvention, and radical self-trust. In this episode of Unfinished Business , Victoria opens up about: Being raised by a single mom and mentored by Pelé (yes, that Pelé) What it takes to stay grounded in industries built on performance Her viral r...

What do branding and dating have in common? More than you’d think. This week on Unfinished Business , we sit down with creative director and wellness advocate Alex Sall to talk about what it really means to show up as your authentic self—in business and in love. We get into: How to build a brand that actually feels like you Why confidence is the real secret to success (on Hinge and on Shopify) The...

Alex and Lee are back with a brutally honest look at what it’s really like to build a profitable, non-venture-backed brand. They reflect on: Scaling Hulken to $30M+ with a tiny team Saying no to VC—and why they’re not looking back What it means to build a “Kleenex-level” brand in a world of dupes DTC strategy, community magic, and the power of going slow Plus: They tease new product drops (carry-o...

Would you post about your period online to build your business? Nadya Okamoto did—and that’s just the beginning. In this episode of Unfinished Business, we sit down with Nadya Okamoto, the fearless founder of August, a Gen Z brand that’s flipping the tampon industry on its head. We talk about: What DTC brands get wrong about Gen Z (and why “Hey Bestie” doesn’t work) Why she posted 5,500+ videos to...

What do ballet and building a company have in common? Way more than you’d think. Megan Fairchild is a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, an author, an NYU MBA grad, and a mom of three (including twins). In this episode, she gets radically honest about the pressure to perform—on stage, at work, and at home. We talk about: 🩰 Perfectionism as a tool, not a personality flaw 🧠 How to give and...

What if you could build a multi-million dollar company from a coin, some cellophane, and zero outside capital? Alexandra Fine did exactly that. She’s the Co-Founder and CEO of Dame Products—one of the most iconic sex toy brands in the world. In this episode, Alexandra gets radically honest about: 🔥 Starting her company in her grandma’s pool house 🔥 Prototyping her first product using plastic fro...

💡 “Give up right before you drown—but only after you’ve had Wim Hof training.” 💡 Jonathan Bush, co-founder of Athena Health and now Zus Health, has seen it all—building a billion-dollar company, taking it public, getting fired, and now starting again from scratch. In this raw and unfiltered conversation, Jonathan shares: 🚀 The brutal truth about being a founder (and why most people shouldn’t do...