E124: Employee Number Four to a $1.2B Unilever Exit: Katie Cirulli’s Story

“It was the most fun role I think I’ll ever do!”

How do visionary founders build teams to protect their time for big ideas?

Katie Cirulli (Chief Emerging Brands Officer & fmr. President, Grüns) joins Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) and Cody Plofker (Advisor & fmr. CEO, Jones Road). She joined Grüns as employee four and rose from Chief of Staff to her current role. Before that, she spent years at McKinsey and Meta. She explains why founders need integrators, and how AI powers Grüns.

She walks through the chief of staff role she built with Chad Janis. The CPM arbitrage test was an early swing that never scaled, unlike the LTO strategy that followed. Grüns now runs five emerging brands through dedicated marketing pods. Paid media, creative, and CRO, all guided by the same paper wall mindset.

Powered By

Motion
https://9ops.co/motion-runneth

Haus
https://www.haus.io/operators

NeonPixel
https://9ops.co/neonpixel

Richpanel
https://9ops.co/richpanel-mops

Proppel
https://9ops.co/weareproppel

Aftersell
https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops

Chapters
00:00:00 Life After The Exit
00:03:36 From McKinsey To Meta
00:10:42 Building Data At Ruggable
00:18:55 Landing The Job At Gruns
00:24:27 The Chief Of Staff Role
00:31:44 Visionary Vs Integrator
00:38:03 CEO Of Your Own Domain
00:45:27 Becoming Gruns President
00:54:00 Move To Emerging Brands
01:02:04 Pricing & LTO Swings
01:07:32 How Grüns Rolled Out AI