The Stupidest Deal of All Time (by Laird)

🧠 Takeaways:

Today, I’m breaking down Laird Superfood’s comically awful acquisition of Navitas + why Laird is the worst run biz of 2025.

1. Laird Superfood is losing through Product diversification, not concentration.

2. They already have too many products. Why do they need more?

3. Scaling 2 sub-scale brands is harder than 1. Why do this at $35m?

+ The 20 tools we used to 2x Coco in 10 months last year.

LBAB Community: Coco AI’s Tech Stack

The Tech stack we used at Coco AI to 2x in only 10 months (20 tools):

We love + recommend:

1) ChatGPT - Too many things to list

2) Lovable - Product Prototyping

3) Lindy - Zapier replacement

4) JIRA - All dev and general PM

5) Github - Storing code base

6) Meow - Bank (+ Finance OS)

We use:

7) Google Cloud - Database

8) Google Workspace - Emails, Cal, Docs etc.

9) LinkedIn - New Customer acquisition

10) Crisp - CS tool

11) Vercel - Dev infra

12) Sentry - Dev infra

13) Twilio - Dev infra

14) Notion - Internal Documentation

15) Webflow - Host our marketing site for now.

We use, but I hate:

16) Deel - HR platform for intl employees

17) HubSpot - CRM

18) Docusign - Contracts

19) Inngest - Dev infra

20) Zapier - Basic integrations/automations

If you have any recommendations to replace anything in 16–20, please send them my way. I can’t stand any of them.

I’ve thought about Migrating:

1. Our Marketing site -> Lovable

2. Zapier -> Lindy

3. Docusign -> Google’s native document signer

For HubSpot, I’d love to see the new age CRM that actually does a better job of integration calendar booking, note taking, tasks, and follow-ups through AI into the CRM. 

HubSpot’s AI has been ass.

Let me know if this is helpful. Happy to share more here.

Let’s Examine This Biz

Note: As always, none of what follows is legal, tax, investing, financial, or any other sort of advice. And I was never here.

Laird Superfood will be delisted before 2027 if they don’t go bankrupt first. What started as a brilliant Influencer-backed DTC supps brand with a COVID boom has completely lost its way and is being improperly run as a public biz.

• Share price: $3

• Market Cap: $35m

• L5 Performance: -92%

• P/E Ratio: N/A

Laird isn’t a bad biz, but it is insane to see the wild strategies + comical compensation in public markets.

Financial Summary

2024 Financial Statements (YoY Comparison)

Sales: $42m (+27%) 👍
Gross Profits: $17m (+71%) 🤘
OPEX: $19m (-6%) 😐

Net Income: -$1.8m (+86%) 👍

Link to Company’s earnings

TLDR Analysis: Getting better but what??

• Good Sales Growth YoY as they focused more on the core products. 👍

• Gross Profits sling shotted by Growth + decreased COGS. 🫡

• Still unprofitable because OPEX load is absurdly high for a biz of this size. 🤢

HALF of their OPEX (46% of Rev) is G&A (aka salaries and benefits)! 

For context: Best-of-breed G&A as a % of Rev for brands I’ve seen of this size is 6–10%. But it’s not like they’re burning money on growth. Marketing & Sales is 24% of Rev.

But they decided to load up on $50m of convertible debt to buy a $20m brand???

Let’s TLDR This Biz

The Players:

1. Laird sells good-for-you products. Mostly Coffee add-ons (Creamers/Mixers).

   1. It’s actually hard to categorize them since they’re so all over the place.

2. Navitas sells expensive superfoods (Chia seeds, açai, cacao).

3. Nexus Capital are the only real players in the room + own some Consumer OGs:

   1. Toms, Dollar Shave Club, SugarbearPRO, Natural Balance, FTD.

The Deal Terms:

• Laird is acquiring Navitas Organics for $38.5m (cash).

• Laird is raising $50m in convertible equity from Nexus Capital to do it.

Quick Reminder: Laird’s WHOLE BIZ is only WORTH $35m.

I’m completely speculating, but this deal has “MBA friends bailing each other out” written all over it. 

I can't, for the life of me, figure out why this deal got done.

Let’s Break Down This Deal

Here are the 3 reasons why everyone on the Laird Board needs to be fired for approving this deal.

1) Terrible Acquisition Reason

I’m so confident this will fail for 2 reasons: 

Reason 1) They had the gall to put this quote in the Acquisition PR.

“The Navitas Acquisition is expected to bring clear synergies and value creation through the integration of complementary supply chains, sourcing networks, and distribution channels. Further, the Navitas Acquisition is intended to drive scale and expand reach across e-commerce and retail partners.”

What this jargon fart really means: “I have no idea what I’m doing running this biz, but I get a bonus if this goes through.”

Reason 2) The stated acquisition reason: Diversification.

Another real quote from the PR: 

“This acquisition represents a meaningful step forward in our strategy to build a scaled, diversified platform in functional nutrition”.

How? 

HOW is acquiring a Chia Seeds + Cocoa powder reseller diversification? 

Guess what Laird already sells?

What about Navitas is worth taking on 2x your market cap in debt?

Takeaway: I just can’t even with this.

2) Too many products to scale

Laird’s problem isn’t a lack of product diversity. It’s a lack of meaningful scale in any of their product categories.

91% of Laird’s Q3 2025 sales are from Coffee Creamers and Coffee/tea products. AND that’s consolidated from last year (81%).

They already tried expanding into Hydration (12% of Sales, -42% YoY) and Snacks (11% of Sales, -15% YOY)

Instead of focusing + doubling down on wins (+ their core brand, Coffee), they’re stumbling in the dark, buying branded Chia seeds.

The global TAM for:

• Coffee Creamers: $5B

• Coffee: $200B

Laird did $7.7m in Creamer sales in all of 2024 (0.154% of the TAM) + $4m in Coffee sales (0.002% of the TAM). 

ALSO. Sorry 1 more thing. 

JUST SELL WHAT NAVITAS SELLS. 

It’s Cocoa Powder/nibs and Chia seeds. Buy the same bullshit, slap your logo on it. It CAN’T COST $38.5M.

Takeaway: When you hit it big in a big market. Go so much longer than you think you need to.

3) Scale vs. Brand Management

Laird clearly doesn’t have the resources, focus or skills to properly scale 1 brand. 

How are they going to scale 2?

AND that is after integrating the second brand to get all of those sweet, sweet synergies. 

Laird needs to cut their catalog to 20% of the current selection (down to 10–20 SKUs) and figure out how to get to $100m+.

Ryze Superfoods (mushroom coffee additive) is rumored to be a $300m Topline brand, AND they launched after Laird.

At Laird’s scale, it’ll be too hard to split the marketing budget, team focus + inventory commits (50% of biz is wholesale) to scale either Laird or Navitas into a real biz.

Takeaway: Scaling gets more expensive until you hit real scale.

Final Thought

Something that grinds my gears about Laird aside from this absolute M&A whiff is ludicrous G&A costs.

How on God’s green earth does a company with 47 employees have $9m/yr G&A line in their P&L? 

That’s an average salary of $197,851.255/employee. 

Is everyone pulling up in a Porsche to work?

1/3 of the biz either works in Operations or Support. So I will ask again 

HOW does a $43m Topline biz have $9m (21% of Rev) in G&A costs?

This is the most ridiculous way to lose money I’ve seen recently. Maybe ever.

If they didn’t already have a massive PE backer, I’d say let’s rally the troops, take this thing private, and get it back on track.

But it looks like someone is willing to fund these shenanigans.