Nosh Live 2024 Replay: Inside The Mind Of A Triple Industry Threat

Most entrepreneurs wear many hats within their own businesses. Shawn Bushouse, former president of emerging brands at Nestle Health Science, is well-versed in that balancing act having helped lead startups from their first purchase order to an exit. He has gone on to manage portfolios of fast-growing brands such as Vital Proteins and Orgain in addition to, most recently, spending some time on the other side of the table as an investor.

“Seeing it from the acquirer’s perspective is super interesting because there’s this element of the difference between a good business and a good business for us,” he said during Nosh Live. “I may understate how much sophistication and quality is in portfolio management… it is pretty important to run really great businesses because you never know where you are going to line up in the lifecycle.”

Bushouse also details the juxtaposition between the risk-oriented mindset needed for an entrepreneur to grow their business and how that lens is often reversed once the brand joins a strategic with a house of legacy brands to protect and grow responsibly.

In this video, Bushouse describes how his priorities have changed as he has moved from the role of operator to acquirer to investor, what he believes makes for a solid capitalization strategy, where he thinks the climate for investment is heading and how entrepreneurs can best position their businesses for long term success.