Ryan Rouse: Scaling Factor and Now Taking MALK from $40M to $100M

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High Stakes Growth

Jetset

29 episodes

3 days ago

High Stakes Growth™ takes you inside the boldest decisions behind today’s most exciting consumer brands. We bring you candid conversations with the founders and CMOs who built them—unpacking the high-stakes moments, tough calls, and game-changing strategies that made these brands what they are today. No fluff. No surface-level insights. Just real stories from the leaders who made it happen. Hosted by Forest Bronzan and Leah Lloyd, they bring a combined four decades of consumer brand expertise to these conversations.

All content for High Stakes Growth is the property of Jetset and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Marketing

Business,

Entrepreneurship

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Ryan Rouse: Scaling Factor and Now Taking MALK from $40M to $100M

High Stakes Growth

43 minutes

1 month ago

Ryan Rouse: Scaling Factor and Now Taking MALK from $40M to $100M

Ryan Rouse is a co-founder of Factor (a ready-to-eat meal delivery brand sold in 2020), and has also served in executive roles at Serenity Kids and Highkey. Today, he's President at MALK Organics, a plant-based milk brand leading the dairy-alternative space.

Expect to hear about:

– Leaving “Safety”: Why Ryan walked away from a lucrative finance career after the 2008 financial crisis reshaped how he viewed risk and ownership.

– Building Factor: Co-founding Factor, bootstrapping through the early years, and how him and his partner grew the business despite capital pressure.

– A Hard Tradeoff: Why Ryan sold his equity in Factor early to support his family, and how he made peace with that decision after the brand sold for $277M three years later.

– Finding His Edge: How Ryan realized his strength isn’t in zero-to-one startups, but in scaling fast-growth brands in the $40M-$200M stage.

– The MALK Journey: Why scaling MALK from $40M to $100M has been one of the most rewarding opportunities of Ryan's career.

Find Ryan on:
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanrouse/
Twitter/X – https://x.com/MaalkMan