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My First MillionMy First Million

Moiz Ali On Selling His Natural Deodorant To P&G For $100M, Investing In Manscaped, & Holding Cash

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) sits down with entrepreneur and former CEO of Native, Moiz Ali (@MoizAli), to talk about how he turned Native into $100M, the companies he's investing in now and where else he's finding investment success.

Shaan PurihostMoiz Aliguest
May 17, 20221h 33mWatch on YouTube

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At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Moiz Ali’s playbook: quiet execution, DTC discipline, and cash-heavy investing

  1. Moiz Ali explained why he kept Native quiet pre-exit, citing fear of public failure and a desire to avoid attracting competitors into the natural deodorant category.
  2. He and Shaan discussed how a business’s competitive advantage can start as a simple bet and evolve over time through product strategy, fragrance velocity, marketing tactics, and brand expansion.
  3. Moiz Ali described why he invested in Manscaped and what he thinks made it work: clear positioning, a strong name, and standout branding that earns attention.
  4. Moiz Ali criticized common DTC operational errors—especially over-hiring, wasteful overhead, and weak grasp of CAC and paid growth fundamentals—while sharing scrappy operator behaviors he used at Native.
  5. The conversation shifted to Moiz Ali’s investing posture, including a large short-term bond/cash position, mixed experiences with private wealth managers, a cautious stance on crypto, and a long-term “never sell” approach to real estate.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Staying quiet was a deliberate strategy to reduce embarrassment risk and competitive attention.

Moiz Ali said he avoided PR for Native until after the sale because he feared public failure and believed being loud would attract copycats and “jinx” success.

Competitive advantage can be discovered and refined after launch, not fully defined upfront.

Moiz Ali described how Native’s “one thing” evolved over time—from simply being aluminum-free and sold online, to emphasizing frequent fragrance launches, pantry-loading behavior, marketing/bundling, and becoming a broader better-for-you brand that could extend into multiple categories.

Manscaped paired simple positioning with memorable brand execution to earn attention.

Moiz Ali said Manscaped’s success came from positioning a familiar product as purpose-built “for your balls,” plus differentiated branding, naming, and attention-grabbing stunts (like the South Beach barge and the upside-down heart billboard).

Operational discipline in headcount, spend, and marketing metrics separates strong DTC operators from weak ones.

Moiz Ali said common DTC mistakes include over-hiring, wasting money on “beautiful offices,” and founders not knowing core acquisition metrics like CAC; he contrasted Native’s small team at high revenue with seeing brands with large teams at low revenue.

Hands-on immersion can reveal product, operational, and cost insights that dashboards won’t.

Moiz Ali described unscalable-but-informative operator habits: personally emailing every customer for feedback, scheduling outreach after the return window, hosting in-person consumer questioning sessions, packing boxes himself to understand shipping/weight thresholds, and staying close to manufacturing and QC issues.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

We're not gonna fail publicly. If we fail, it'll be really quietly.

— Moiz Ali

Things were working so well, we're like, okay, we don't know how this is working so well or why this is working so well, but we better not go around thumping our chest saying this is working really well because, one, I believe it'll jinx us, and I believe in jinx, and two, other people will just start copying us and doing exactly what we're doing.

— Moiz Ali

I said, "They keep giving us muskets in a war that's being fought with, like, nuclear weapons."

— Moiz Ali

You know, I've walked into offices where people have 20 pe- you know, there'll be 20 people doing $2 million or $4 million in revenue, and I'm like, "What are all of these human beings doing?"

— Moiz Ali

Real estate, I think of myself as a pr- Like, you know, I will never sell any unit, uh, in, in real estate.

— Moiz Ali

Read the available transcript
Operating quietly and avoiding PRFear of failure and copycat riskEvolving competitive advantage in DTCFragrance strategy and pantry-loading behaviorManscaped positioning and brand stuntsCommon DTC mistakes: over-hiring, overhead, weak CAC trackingScrappy operator tactics: customer emails, packing, manufacturing immersion, consumer sessions

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SPEAKERS

  • Shaan Puri

    host

    Co-host of My First Million; entrepreneur and investor.

  • Moiz Ali

    guest

    Founder of Native deodorant, which he sold to Procter & Gamble; angel investor (e.g., Manscaped).

High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.

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