The Marketing System Poppi, Chomps & Kodiak Used to Scale—And the One Your PE/VC Firm Will Love

The brands everyone knows now didn’t win by chasing channel level ROAS. They won by building a marketing operating system that tied every dollar to growth, distribution, and profit. As you expand from DTC into retail and omni, the game changes fast: tradeoffs multiply, retailers push for more spend, velocity targets get aggressive, and finance starts asking harder questions about reinvestment rates and EBITDA. In this on stage session, Bradley Keefer from Keen will join emerging brand leaders to unpack how breakout brands like Poppi, Chomps, and Kodiak Cakes scaled with confidence by moving beyond siloed optimization into systems thinking—connecting marketing, sales, and finance in one plan. You’ll learn practical benchmarks and decision frameworks for reinvestment rates that support distribution growth, how to balance short term velocity with long term brand building, and how causal measurement and scenario planning make it easier to justify budgets, diversify your mix, and protect profitability. If your brand is growing and your marketing decisions still live in spreadsheets, this session will show you the next level.