From Sir Kensington's to Hu: Mark Ramadan on Scaling Brands and Surviving Acquisitions
Hard-won lessons on feedback, acquisitions, and why successful brands start with something familiar and make it irresistibly different.
Mark Ramadan brings a unique perspective to the world of consumer brands — he's been both the founder who built from scratch and the CEO who stepped in to scale someone else's dream. As co-founder of Sir Kensington's, he witnessed the brand's journey from startup to Unilever acquisition. Later, as CEO of Hu, he navigated another successful exit to Mondelez while protecting the founders' original vision. Now, as an investor and board member, Mark has developed insights on what makes brands break through, how to handle acquisitions gracefully, and why "reinventing classics" remains the strongest pathway to consumer success.
We talked about hard-won lessons about leadership transitions, the emotional challenges of building versus stewarding, and why feedback — no matter how uncomfortable — is essential for growth.
On taking on the responsibility of someone else's dream: When you're a founder, for better or for worse, there's a permanent emotional connection to your company that you just can't turn off — 24/7, 365. There's a shadow quality to that, and there's a good quality to that. Being able to step into someone else's business helped me be more objective. I think emotion can be a great benefit when you're leading a business, and it can also hold you back from making decisions that you know are right, but might be painful.
The biggest difference was not feeling unemotional, but being able to feel the emotions while also being objective in making decisions. That was really hard at Sir Kensington's because everything was brand new to us. Every person we hired was our responsibility, and every big decision affected so many people—it felt very personal.
So being able to make better, objective decisions was a really nice unexpected outcome of helping to lead someone else's business.
On early mindset shifts at Hu: The biggest shift is that it wasn't my business. Part of the reason I felt such conviction in taking the job was because Jordan and Jason weren't doing this for disingenuous reasons — Hu represented the lifestyle they wanted to live. It was coming from a true, genuine place.
Not being there at the beginning put me in a position of having to catch up with them and learn as I went — what inspired this mission, what's consistent with it, what's not. When you're a founder, the mindset is "I am part and parcel of the business," so what might seem obvious to you may not be obvious to the rest of the company until you start writing things down.
For me at Hu, it was almost the opposite. I had to learn over time how this business came to be and how it represented the founders. Only then could I figure out the no-touch areas — that's not my purview.
The biggest mindset shift was understanding I was there to help them fulfill the mission, but not to reinvent the story.
On the successful exit of Hu to Mondelez: I had the fortune of selling Sir Kensington's prior to this, so I knew what was really hard the first time. The single hardest thing for me and Scott was not acknowledging the dramatic amount of change that was going to happen. Acquirers do a very good job of saying "we're going to leave you alone, nothing's going to change," but of course, it's never like that.
The biggest mistake we made at Sir Kensington's was not preparing ourselves and the team that real change was going to happen — just pretending like it was going to stay the same. With the Mondelez deal, we vowed not to make that same mistake. We tried to be very honest with ourselves and the team that change was going to come, and we'd do our best to preserve what made the company special — the team, values, culture, products — but we weren't going to bury our heads in the sand.
By planning for the worst, when the worst didn't happen and something else happened, we were mentally prepared. We had our heads on a swivel rather than constantly being shocked by the other shoe dropping.
On what the most successful brands have in common: I have a bias toward "reinventing classics" — picking a space that's familiar enough and worthy of reinvention. It's not impossible to create brand new things, but most companies that cross the chasm into mainstream adoption have picked something like popcorn, chocolate, or soda that already has nationwide penetration but needs someone to think about it differently for a new generation.
Second, the product has to be actually really good and differentiated. In food, that means it has to taste good. People don't shop with benefits in mind or a checklist of macros—they mostly shop with their stomachs and tongues. They want really good stuff that tastes great that they can afford and integrate into their life.
Food is such an emotional experience. Getting too far into science or newness raises the bar to break through. You have to start with something familiar, then put a twist on it that's actually good and unique. If you're the ninth person to put a spin on something, it won't stand out.
On advice for a founder thinking about bringing in outside leadership to expand their business: I think it can be an incredible opportunity. The odds that a founder is exactly the right type of leader to go from zero to one, and then to scale, and then even further, is pretty low. That's not a knock against founders—it's just an incredibly complex skill set.
My strongest recommendation is to recognize your "ikigai"—where your passion intersects with business needs and what you can be paid to do. If that's not being CEO, which is a highly logistical, tactical, managerial job as a company scales, there's strength in saying, "I'm best suited to do these things" and bringing in a partner.
There's a book called Traction that talks about two types of leaders: the visionary leader and the integrator. Think Steve Jobs versus Tim Cook. One is not better than the other—the best companies have both. Get out of the mindset of "I can be everything to everyone" and into "where am I best suited to give my talents and gifts."
On trends in the natural food space: I don't live in trends like some others might. I think there will always be companies developing new ingredients and specialty supplements, but there will always be a huge market — both consumer and acquirer market — for taking big, sleepy categories and doing something different.
Think about pickles: 10 years ago they were boring, and now there are snacking pickles. Same thing, just smaller and packaged differently for a different audience. That's an example of a category that's been around forever but needed to be expressed differently for the current generation.
What I think about is: What are the categories that have been around for 50 to 100 years that will be around for another 50 to 100 years, but need to be expressed differently? That's where there's always evergreen opportunity.
On valuable lessons learned from a challenge: I'm a big believer in communication and feedback. It's easy to hear that "feedback is a gift," but it's hard to actually do that, especially as a leader. The biggest lesson that's made me more successful is recognizing that to get honest feedback about yourself, you have to:
Surround yourself with people who aren't afraid to give you the truth
Give them the structure to provide you the truth all the time
Be willing to listen to it
Most CEOs never actually do all three steps. They hire yes people, or they hire honest people but never create a review system, or they dismiss the feedback as irrelevant. The best leaders are humble enough to say "I'm still on the growth journey."
I've been burned so many times by not listening to what investors, board members, or acquirers were saying — thinking I had a different perspective or heard it differently. But people are trying to give you the gift of feedback all the time. You just have to listen, and the more you listen, the more you'll get it.
Also, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. When you're making deals or closing fundraise rounds, that's when emotions are happiest, so it's easy to fall into being overly optimistic. All the people you like will leave, all the rules will change, all your forecasts will be wrong.
The more you can be ready organizationally and culturally for bad news and bad turns, the more resilient you'll be. Constantly getting surprised by bad news is just an unhealthy habit. Right when you're closing the deal, everyone is at peak happiness — it's all downhill from there.
And here's another truth. The bigger and more profitable you are, the more control you have over your destiny. If you're acquired and not profitable, if your margins are lower than the company average, you'll always be taking orders. That's just how it works.