David Vanderveen and Peter Griscom sit down with Shahab Elmi, Co-Founder & CEO of Cymbiotika, to discuss how the wellness brand scaled while protecting the product standards that shaped the company from the beginning.

Shahab has spent decades building companies across retail, technology and consumer products. At Cymbiotika, that experience has shaped a disciplined approach to growth: protect the product, surround yourself with people you trust and keep moving through the periods when the business gets hit hardest.

The conversation traces Cymbiotika's path from a bootstrapped DTC business launched around COVID to a major omnichannel brand expanding across Target, Whole Foods, Sprouts, Walmart, Sam's Club and TikTok Shop. Shahab shares how limited capital forced financial discipline, why the company refused to water down formulas as it scaled and how new funding will support inventory and brand storytelling at a much larger scale.

The Competitive Intelligence Report from Social Commerce News gives brands a practical framework for understanding what their marketing actually caused and where the next dollar should go.

In this episode of Verified: The Social Commerce Podcast, David Vanderveen and Peter Griscom break down the difference between attribution and incrementality and explain why platform-reported ROAS can create an incomplete picture of performance.

They walk through how demand moves across TikTok, Instagram, Amazon, DTC and other channels and how operators can account for halo effects and cannibalization along the way. The conversation also covers geo tests, holdouts, a 90-day measurement roadmap, AI agents for continuous testing and the data foundation brands need before pursuing CAC financing.

The report is designed as a working operator resource: build the baseline, run the tests, calibrate the results and use the findings to make better allocation decisions.

Chapters

0:00 The Competitive Intelligence Report from Social Commerce News

1:48 Attribution vs. incrementality

4:05 Where did the sale actually come from?

6:36 Why platform dashboards can mislead operators

7:54 How Meta and TikTok take credit for conversions

9:50 Measuring demand across multiple channels

11:16 Choosing where to spend the next dollar

14:46 The false confidence of closed-loop social commerce

15:36 Measuring halo effects and cannibalization

16:20 Demand creation vs. demand capture

18:08 How to design an incrementality test

21:07 Why one test is only one data point

22:09 The 90-day measurement roadmap

24:08 Common incrementality testing mistakes

27:51 How much should brands spend on testing?

28:51 Short-term ROAS vs. long-term brand building

31:01 Finding repeatable signals in the noise

33:55 Using AI agents for continuous testing

36:55 Why measurement matters for CAC financing

41:09 Growth requires constant experimentation

43:48 Why your business can never be treated as static

46:26 Awareness, engagement and conversion across channels

48:49 How to use the Competitive Intelligence Report from Social Commerce News

Download the Competitive Intelligence Report from Social Commerce News and find every episode at SocialCommerceNews.com/verified

Ben Witte is the Founder & Co-CEO of Recess, the brand that pioneered the relaxation beverage category and has since expanded into Mood, Mocktails, and Supplements.

In this episode of Verified: The Social Commerce Podcast, Ben joins Peter Griscom and David Vanderveen to explain why he believed consumers needed an alternative to both energy drinks and alcohol—and how that conviction became an entirely new category.

He discusses why Recess focused on marketing a feeling instead of an ingredient, how launching direct-to-consumer validated the category before retail, the lessons learned from the CBD regulatory collapse and COVID, why Recess evolved into a platform brand, and what founders should know about creating a category instead of simply competing for market share.

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

0:21 From Silicon Valley to founding Recess

3:17 The insight that created the relaxation category

5:17 Why being an industry outsider became an advantage

7:04 Marketing a feeling, not an ingredient

10:16 What Ben got right—and wrong—about the original thesis

12:10 Creating a category versus capturing market share

16:36 Why Recess became a platform brand

20:37 Building for the long term with investors

24:10 Turning the CBD crisis into an opportunity

28:25 Growing through organic content and community

33:15 Lessons from fundraising and navigating difficult markets

41:23 Bringing in an operating partner to scale

45:32 Why Mocktails became the next category

50:19 Advice for founders building brands today

53:08 Where to find Recess

Subscribe and find every episode at SocialCommerceNews.com/verified

Puneet Nanda is the founder and CEO of GuruNanda, one of the top-selling brands on TikTok Shop. A serial entrepreneur who first built success inventing the Firefly toothbrush, he reinvented himself in his late forties as one of TikTok's most prolific founder-creators.

In this episode of Verified: The Social Commerce Podcast, Puneet joins Peter Griscom and David Vanderveen to tell the story of the accidental viral moment that started it all, why he became his own creator instead of relying on influencers, and what it actually takes to win on TikTok Shop.

He gets into how much of the growth comes from content versus owning the supply chain, why he created a category and sat on it for nine years, the difference between the TikTok customer and the Instagram customer, his advice for founders who haven't gone viral, and what he is betting on next.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:30 From India to Dr. Fresh to GuruNanda
2:00 Inventing the Firefly toothbrush and reinventing categories
5:04 Becoming a "Hollywood production company"
5:26 The accidental viral moment that changed everything
10:31 Content, supply chain, and "if I don't touch the soil, I don't buy the oil"
13:00 Creating a category and sitting on it for nine years
14:02 Becoming his own creator: "a hundred influencers myself"
15:09 The TikTok customer vs. the Instagram customer
17:43 Advice for founders who haven't gone viral
20:21 The TikTok Shop hacks he thinks are nonsense
22:41 What breaks if TikTok Shop vanishes tomorrow
23:36 What he is betting on next, and using AI to build products
26:18 Where to find Puneet

Subscribe and find every episode at SocialCommerceNews.com/verified

Dr. Kellyann Petrucci is the naturopathic doctor and New York Times bestselling author who turned the bone broth diet into a nine-figure wellness brand. In this episode of Verified: The Social Commerce Podcast, she joins Peter Griscom and David Vanderveen to discuss the idea at the center of everything she has built: compounded trust.

Dr. Kellyann was doing content commerce before it had a name, building an audience through books, PBS specials, and television, then converting it into a durable, lasting business. She breaks down how to build and scale a personality-led brand, the channel mix behind the business today, what QVC taught her that now translates to TikTok live, how she sells while staying compliant, and what she would do differently if she were starting over today.

In this episode:
0:20 When media became the engine, not the marketing
1:19 The personal story behind the brand
3:47 From personal problem to an audience of millions
5:02 Building a personality brand on compounded trust
6:34 Going omnichannel and how it changed marketing spend
8:02 What QVC taught her that translates to TikTok live
12:06 Selling effectively while staying compliant
15:03 What she would do differently starting over
16:36 Pioneering a category and the cost of being first
19:12 Where she would invest if revenue dropped
21:05 Why she seeds every launch with a book
23:43 Advice for founders building a media-first brand
25:14 Where to find Dr. Kellyann

Subscribe and find every episode at SocialCommerceNews.com/verified

In July 2026, Prenetics' IM8 secured $1 billion in growth financing from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund — with no equity, no dilution, and no shares issued. In this episode of Verified: The Social Commerce Podcast, recorded live at the Social Commerce Summit in New York, Danny Yeung tells the story behind that financing and the cohort economics that made it possible.

Danny Yeung is the founder and CEO of Prenetics and the co-founder of IM8 with David Beckham. In this episode of Verified: The Social Commerce Podcast, recorded live at the Social Commerce Summit in New York, he breaks down how IM8 is building a consumer brand on trust, subscriptions, and recurring revenue while most of the category chases the next platform or creator trend.

Peter Griscom and David Vanderveen get into the $1 billion non-dilutive financing commitment from General Catalyst, the retention numbers behind it, why David Beckham joined as a co-founder rather than an endorser, and how Danny runs a $200 million brand with roughly 60 people.

In this episode:

0:00 Introduction
3:26 The $1 billion General Catalyst financing, explained
6:25 How non-dilutive financing actually works
8:06 Subscription economics and cohort math
11:00 LTV, average order value, and quarterly subscriptions
13:01 Why Beckham is a co-founder, not an endorser
14:38 The celebrity equity playbook
17:30 The AI-generated ad that hit 200 million views
18:07 How IM8 uses AI across the business
20:39 Running a $200M brand with 60 people
22:32 Why IM8 launches products so deliberately
25:43 Close

Subscribe and find every episode at socialcommercenews.com

Welcome to Verified: The Social Commerce Podcast

Social commerce is reshaping how brands build, sell, and scale — but most of what you hear about it online is noise. In this debut episode, hosts David Vanderveen and Peter Griscom cut through the hype to share what's actually working, what's failed, and why data-driven verification is the missing piece in most marketing strategies today.

David and Peter bring decades of combined experience — from David's journey scaling a brand from energy drinks into social media dominance, to Peter's deep background in performance marketing and influencer partnerships. Together, they unpack the real mechanics behind scaling a business globally through social platforms, the most common (and costly) mistakes brands make in social media marketing, and how AI and shifting e-commerce regulations are changing the game.

Expect honest conversations about connecting performance marketing to real revenue, balancing short-term sales with long-term brand building, and why "real data" beats vanity metrics every time.

In this episode:

• The evolution of social commerce and its impact on brands
• Common mistakes and hard-won lessons in social media marketing
• Why data and verification are the foundation of marketing success
• Leveraging social platforms for global brand expansion
• The intersection of performance marketing and influencer collaborations
• How AI and evolving e-commerce laws are shaping business growth

New episodes feature real operators, real numbers, and real stories from the front lines of social commerce. Subscribe and follow along as we verify what's actually working.

Subscribe at socialcommercenews.com.

Verified: The Social Commerce Podcast

Most social commerce coverage is built for the algorithm. Verified is built for the operator.

Each week, hosts Peter Griscom and David Vanderveen break down what is actually happening in social commerce: the platforms gaining ground, the brands scaling faster than anyone expected, and the numbers that hold up when you look at them closely.

Griscom and Vanderveen go long with the brand founders, agency builders, platform executives, vendors, and independent thinkers who are actively building in social commerce. These are working conversations about what is working right now, what is not, and what practitioners need to know to stay ahead. The kind of conversations that get past the highlight reel and into the real numbers, the real failures, and the real playbooks.

Produced by Social Commerce News and the Social Commerce Summit, Verified covers the full ecosystem: DTC brands, TikTok Shop operators, creator commerce, affiliate marketing, live selling, platforms, agencies, and investors.

If you run a brand, build on social platforms, or invest in the category, this is the show that keeps you current.

New episodes every week.