Jordan DeCicco

He is the youngest of the three DeCicco brothers; the eldest is Jimmy (Jim) DeCicco and the middle brother is Jake DeCicco. BevNET writes that the three brothers are from Kingston, New York, and the alumni magazine of Thomas Jefferson University likewise writes that they hail from Kingston, New York. The introduction to Creative Hudson Valley’s 2020 interview with Jimmy DeCicco states that the three grew up in Kingston and attended Kingston High School; a 2016 game report of the Philadelphia University basketball team lists him as from “Kingston, N.Y.,” with “Kingston” as his high school.⁠[1][2][3][4][5]

In a 2018 episode of the Smart Passive Income podcast, Jimmy DeCicco said that his youngest brother dreamed as a boy of reaching the NBANBAThe National Basketball Association (NBA) is a North American professional basketball league with 30 teams.Open the full entry and would skip classes in high school to shoot free throws at the YMCA; he said that as a boy his brother would throw a wiffleball up to himself in the backyard for hours, and that he saw this obsessive personality shift from basketball into entrepreneurship. Jordan DeCicco himself said on The Kara Goldin Show that he started to get “an itch for entrepreneurship” in high school and kept taking odd jobs, preferring to create his own work rather than work for someone else: “Always just doing odd jobs and trying to create my own jobs versus going to work for somebody else.”⁠[1][6]

He entered Philadelphia University on a full basketball scholarship, played point guard for the varsity team and majored in business; in the 2014–2015 season he was a reserve freshman on the team. Philadelphia University later became part of Jefferson University.⁠[7][8][9][10]

The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in 2017 that in his freshman year, in 2014, unable to find an energy drink without sugar and artificial ingredients, he made a homemade coffee drink in his dorm room by blending organic coffee with protein and coconut oil, sweetened with organic maple syrup; he recalled: “I decided to make a very healthy coffee.” On The Kara Goldin Show he said that in his freshman year he had basketball practice at 5 a.m. and class at 8 a.m. with no healthy energy options; he loved coffee, but the only option was Starbucks Frappuccinos at 290 calories and 40 grams of sugar, which he would not put into his body, so he began blending protein into coffee in his dorm room with a blender they had got from their strength coach, after which teammates and classmates started asking him for it: “later my freshman year I decided, hey, this might actually be a company.”⁠[11][6]

In an interview with Steve Mariotti published on HuffPost’s contributor platform he said: “I started looking into my diet and it turns out that most of these beverages have 35-40 grams of sugar in them.” The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in 2018 that he was 19 when he began making no-sugar-added energy shakes in his dorm room with a blender and selling them to classmates. Technical.ly writes that he first sweetened the drink with agave and stevia extract and added protein and medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) for sustained energy, refining the recipe by trial and error; he pitched it to his teammates and then to his brother Jake, and it spread on both campuses. The Thomas Jefferson University alumni magazine writes that he tested recipes with his basketball teammates; he said: “At the time, it didn’t taste too great, but it provided me with energy and was a healthier choice.”⁠[12][7][8][3]

The sources differ on when and where it began: The Philadelphia Inquirer gave 2014 in its 2017 article; the Thomas Jefferson University alumni magazine writes that he blended the drink in his East Falls dorm room in 2015, and Good Morning America and a May 2024 press release from Stord also give 2015. Beverage Industry, by contrast, writes that the brothers’ venture began in the basement of Jake’s Georgetown dorm.⁠[11][3][13][14][15]

The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in 2017 that in January 2015 he called his brother Jake, then a business major at Georgetown, to pitch him the idea; Georgetown University’s athletics department writes that Jake co-founded Sunniva with him in the spring of his junior year, and that Jimmy joined as chief executive at the end of the summer after the company was founded. Jimmy DeCicco said in a 2021 interview that when they partnered with Jordan, Jake was a junior at Georgetown and he himself was a recent Colgate University graduate working on Wall Street.⁠[11][16][10]

They named the company Sunniva, which The Philadelphia Inquirer describes as Norwegian for “gift from the sun.” The Colgate Maroon-News writes that, with the help of friends and family, the brothers raised $100,000 to get started.⁠[11][7][17]

At Philadelphia University he was coached by Blackstone LaunchPad (led by its director Zoe McKinley) and by business professor Thomas Fung, who had worked at Campbell Soup for 30 years, and he worked with the Rutgers Food Innovation Center to finalize the recipe and early production, since some of the original ingredients could not be scaled up. Of joining LaunchPad he said: “It was the best decision ever.” Thomas Fung said at the time: “Coffee is a $50 billion business. I believe there’s enough room for everybody.”⁠[8][18]

On August 11, 2015 Technical.ly profiled him, then about to enter his sophomore year, and his product, Sunniva Caffe: a cold, ready-to-drink, organic and fair-trade Colombian coffee in 10-ounce bottles with 22 grams of protein (PhillyVoice, two days later, gave 11 grams per bottle), no artificial sweeteners, and three flavors, natural vanilla, pure cinnamon and natural mocha. It was launching at three Whole Foods stores in the Washington area, with Mom’s Organic Market to follow, and was planned to reach Philadelphia in the fall and about 50 retail and fitness locations on the East Coast in its first quarter. PhillyVoice writes that it was produced in MarylandMarylandMaryland is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States, deeply indented by Chesapeake Bay and bordered by Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia and West Virginia; its capital is Annapolis and its largest city is Baltimore. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on April 28, 1788, as the seventh state to do so, and had a population of 6,177,224 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry.⁠[8][18]

He said at the time: “StarbucksStarbucksStarbucks is a publicly traded coffee company headquartered in Seattle, founded in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegl. Howard Schultz subsequently developed its coffeehouse model and international expansion. It operates company-owned and licensed coffeehouses and sells packaged coffee through partners. Its shares trade on Nasdaq under SBUX.Open the full entry may be great-tasting, but they’re high in calories and have a ton of sugar,” and: “Entrepreneurship is pure innovation and creative thinking.”⁠[8][18]

City of Basketball Love writes that in August 2015, a few days before his sophomore year was to begin, he left the basketball team to work full-time on the business in Washington; he said: “I was just like this look, if this thing’s going to work I have to fully commit to it.” The Thomas Jefferson University alumni magazine writes that he left school after his first year. Jimmy DeCicco, in a 2018 podcast, put it differently: his brother decided in September 2015 to drop out of school, gave up his scholarship and accepted “the Peter Thiel Fellowship” to get the company going; he said that Jordan wanted to be chief executive because the idea was his, while he and Jake thought they should send him back to school, and that there was certainly ego involved. Jordan himself said in the HuffPost interview that he took his sophomore year off to develop the business.⁠[9][3][1][12]

In the HuffPost interview he described the early operation: the team worked 20-hour days, producing, bottling and distributing the coffee themselves; health-department approval required a 20-page report and extensive food-safety testing; at first bottlers would not work with a startup, so they bottled and labelled by hand in a culinary kitchen, and some product spoiled because no shelf life had been established. A Georgetown Law professor connected them with students who volunteered to help; they taught themselves QuickBooks and later hired a firm. They hired, early on, a chief marketing officer who had left a $175,000-a-year job, paying him $40,000 plus stock options: “But we knew we had gaps in our skill sets, so we brought in a CMO very early.” He named the exclusive contracts that Coke and Pepsi hold with campuses and corporations as a serious obstacle.⁠[12]

Jimmy DeCicco said in a 2021 interview that early production ran on a makeshift bottling line in the back of an old Domino Sugar factory in Baltimore, with deliveries to stores in the Washington area. The Colgate Maroon-News writes that in the first year the three brothers hand-brewed, hand-packaged and hand-delivered every bottle, and that their local Whole Foods stocked 400 bottles, which sold out in four hours; Jim DeCicco said in Good Morning America’s article that the company’s first store was a Whole Foods Market in Washington, and Beverage Industry writes that the first sale was made at the Georgetown Whole Foods Market. On The Kara Goldin Show Jordan said that the company first sold in only 15 to 20 stores within about 30 miles of where they were producing and living in the Washington area, following advice from Honest Tea co-founder Seth Goldman to become the best-selling bottled coffee locally first. Jimmy DeCicco, in a 2018 podcast, recalled Jordan saying that he would not go door to door in the dorms to collect case studies and focus groups, and that his plan was to go to Whole Foods.⁠[10][17][13][15][6][1]

The Thomas Jefferson University alumni magazine writes that the company launched as a full brand in 2016 with three employees, all of them brothers; Food Dive likewise writes that the three brothers launched the company in 2016.⁠[3][19]

During his time away he went to the gym daily to work on fundamentals, resting his body and preparing to avoid injuries on his return, and he returned to the Philadelphia University basketball team for the 2016–2017 season. On November 12, 2016, in the season opener of Hall of Fame coach Herb Magee’s 50th season, the 6-foot guard made his first career collegiate start, playing all 40 minutes and recording 13 points, a team-high 8 assists and 3 turnovers as the team beat the University of the District of Columbia 83–78. City of Basketball Love wrote then that the company had about a dozen employees, including a chief marketing officer and a creative director, with his eldest brother Jimmy as chief executive. He said: “It’s great to be back, honestly,” and: “I love basketball, it’s my time to get away from everything, relax out there on the court.”⁠[9]

On December 10, 2016, in a 90–51 win over Chestnut Hill College, he shot 11-of-17 from the field and 6-of-10 from three-point range for a career-high 30 points, the most by any player on the team that season; his previous best was 25 points against Georgian Court University four days earlier.⁠[5]

The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote on January 15, 2017 that, at 21, he was a sophomore and had just been named Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference Player of the Week after a two-game stretch in which he averaged nearly 28 points, shot nearly 70 percent from three-point range and 64 percent from the field, and added five assists, four rebounds and a steal; he had finished his first semester back with a 3.0 grade point average, and he said that running the company had taught him time management, communication and leadership. Stephen Spinelli, president of Philadelphia University and co-founder of Jiffy Lube International, planned an independent-study course in entrepreneurship with him and said: “It really does indicate a person who has discipline.” Georgetown University’s athletics department describes him as an all-conference basketball player at Philadelphia University.⁠[11][16]

The article states that he had stepped down as chief executive and was now chairman of the board, with Jake, 23, as chief operating officer and Jim, 24, as chief executive. The company, Sunniva Caffe Inc., was based in Washington with six full-time and seven part-time employees; its product came in 12-ounce bottles with 10 grams of lactose-free milk protein isolate at about $3.50 retail, with flavors introduced in the fall of 2016 including hazelnut, vanilla bean, dark mocha and an unsweetened black brew, sold at Whole Foods and other stores from Princeton, New JerseyNew JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the eastern United States on the Atlantic Ocean, bordered by New York State, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, with the Hudson River forming its northeastern boundary and the Delaware River its western boundary; its capital is Trenton and its largest city is Newark. One of the original 13 colonies, it became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 18, 1787, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 9,288,994.Open the full entry, to Richmond, VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry; sales were $300,000 in 2016 and projected at $2.5 million for 2017. He said: “We want to take this thing nationally.” The Thomas Jefferson University alumni magazine, for its part, writes that the company hired its first non-relative employee in 2017.⁠[11][3]

On June 16, 2017 the Thiel Foundation named the 25 members of the 2017 class of Thiel Fellows, and he was among them. The announcement states that the two-year Thiel Fellowship provides $100,000 and mentorship from the Thiel Foundation’s network and encourages fellows to pursue full-time entrepreneurship instead of going to college, and that the fellows were selected from thousands of applications from around the world. The list gives him as “Jordan DeCicco (New York, NY),” with the project Sunniva in the field “Health/Wellness,” and describes him: “Jordan founded Sunniva, whose first product, SuperCoffee, blends coffee, protein, and superfoods.”⁠[20][20]

Philadelphia Magazine writes that he gave up his full scholarship to accept the “Peter Thiel Fellowship.” Beverage Industry writes that he won the Thiel Fellowship about two years after he began brewing the coffee, describing it as a two-year program that gives $100,000 to young people who pursue their ideas instead of college.⁠[21][15]

The episode of ABCABCABC (American Broadcasting Company) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It grew out of NBC’s Blue radio network, took its name after becoming independent in 1943, developed into a national television network after merging with United Paramount Theatres in 1953, was acquired by Capital Cities in 1985, and has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. With CBS and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks, and it is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry’s Shark Tank featuring the three brothers aired at 10 p.m. on Sunday, February 11, 2018. Previews in The Philadelphia Inquirer and BevNET wrote that they were seeking $400,000 for a 5 percent stake; Good Morning America, and Jimmy DeCicco in a 2021 interview, give the on-air ask as $1 million for 10 percent (a $10 million valuation), and no investor made a deal. Food Dive writes that the company was turned down on Shark Tank in 2018, and Modern Retail that it appeared on the show in 2018 and did not land a deal. The Thomas Jefferson University alumni magazine places the appearance in 2019 and writes that about 8 million viewers saw it and that the company afterwards grew from four employees to 85; he said: “Shark Tank gave us the publicity we wanted and needed at the time to grow the brand.” The Colgate Maroon-News writes that the publicity helped the brothers raise $2 million in under two weeks.⁠[7][2][13][10][19][22][3][17]

Before the broadcast, at 22, he said of leaving college: “I felt in my gut and in my heart that it was the right move to make,” that he had no current plans to return, and that his parents “weren’t super happy about it” at first. BevNET quotes him: “I dropped out of school, forfeiting a full-scholarship to share this dorm-room dream with the world.”⁠[7][2]

Super Coffee at the time was made from organic Colombian coffee beans, coconut oil and lactose-free milk protein, sweetened with monk fruit and stevia, with 10 grams of protein and as much caffeine as an eight-ounce cup of coffee per bottle, with flavors including vanilla bean, smooth mocha, maple hazelnut and creamy black. He said monk fruit is “naturally 300 times sweeter than sugar” and that many comparable products contain “40 to 50 grams of sugar.” It was sold on AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry and in stores from Washington to New York City, including Wegmans, Whole Foods, Wawa, Acme, QuickChek and Fairway, as well as in gyms such as Equinox, Vida Fitness and Crunch and on some college campuses and in corporate cafeterias and hospitals nationwide.⁠[7][2]

Philadelphia Magazine writes that the company, formerly Sunniva Super Coffee, was renamed Kitu Life in September 2018; Georgetown University’s athletics department writes that the new name is pronounced “key to life,” and that Jake called it a broader brand for many future product lines. Modern Retail writes that the company is registered as Kitu Life, Inc. That month, on the Smart Passive Income podcast, Jimmy DeCicco called his youngest brother an “innovative entrepreneur.”⁠[21][16][22][1]

In November 2018 the three brothers were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for 2019 in the Food & Drink category. Philadelphia Magazine writes that the product replaced milk and sugar with organic Colombian coffee beans, lactose-free protein and coconut-derived MCT oil, at 80 calories and no sugar, inspired by the ketogenic diet; the company had raised $5 million, had about $1 million in revenue the previous year, and was sold at Wegmans, Whole Foods and Fairway. Georgetown University’s athletics department writes that in just over two years the company had reached more than 1,200 accounts, including Whole Foods, Wegmans, Wawa and the cafeterias of Facebook, GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry, Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry and Ernst & Young, had launched the sugar-free, protein-rich Super Creamer line, and planned to put the six-ounce Super Espresso on shelves in January 2019.⁠[21][16]

On the Series A round, Georgetown University’s athletics department wrote in December 2018 that the company had closed a $13.5 million Series A; Jimmy DeCicco said in a 2021 interview that the company raised a $15 million Series A at a $50 million valuation in December 2018, and he also gave $15 million at a $50 million valuation in Good Morning America’s article.⁠[16][10][13]

Modern Retail writes that in 2020 the company signed a master distribution agreement with AB InBevAB InBevAB InBev (Anheuser-Busch InBev) is a multinational brewing company headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, whose brands include Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona. It was formed when InBev, itself created by a 2004 merger, acquired Anheuser-Busch of the United States in 2008, and it combined with SABMiller in 2016.Open the full entry, whose venture arm, ZX Ventures, took a minority stake. The introduction to Creative Hudson Valley’s May 2020 interview states that the company was then worth $200 million; Jimmy DeCicco said in a 2021 interview that its sales were $4 million in 2018 and $55 million in 2020.⁠[22][4][10]

On April 13, 2021 Good Morning America wrote about Super Coffee’s new blueberry latte, with zero added sugar and 10 grams of protein; Jimmy DeCicco said: “My brother Jordan came up with this flavor blueberry latte.” The article states that the company then had 110 full-time employees and nearly 30 products in more than 40,000 grocery stores, with a national distribution deal with Anheuser-Busch, and that, most recently, the actor and comedian Kevin HartKevin HartKevin Hart is an American comedian, actor, producer and entrepreneur known for stand-up comedy and films including Ride Along and Jumanji. He serves as chairman and CEO of Hartbeat, has published a memoir and children’s fiction, and has developed several business ventures. He received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2024 and has been interviewed by School of Hard Knocks.Open the full entry had invested in the company.⁠[13]

In August 2021 Kitu Life closed a $106 million Series C led by Durable Capital PartnersDurable Capital PartnersDurable Capital Partners is a US investment management firm founded by Henry Ellenbogen in 2019. Its legal name is Durable Capital Partners LP and its principal office is in Bethesda, Maryland. The firm invests in public and private companies, focusing on small and midsize businesses with potential for long-term compounding. Ellenbogen is managing partner and chief investment officer.Open the full entry, with participation from Dave Burwick (described by BevNET as a former Peet’s Coffee chief executive and by Food Dive as chief executive of Boston Beer Co.), former Anheuser-Busch president Dave Peacock, beverage industry veteran Clayton Christopher, Nutrabolt chairman and chief executive Doss Cunningham (through his family fund LivWell Ventures), 7-Eleven, which invested $2 million through its 7-11 Ventures division, and another tranche from existing investor and distribution partner AB InBev. BevNET writes that the company had initially sought $70 million at a $430 million pre-money valuation, that about $30 million would cash out its first 20 investors, who were friends and family, that its previous $25 million round had been led by Skyview Capital and came with a master distribution agreement with AB InBev, that it was on pace for $100 million in sales that year, and that it had recently relocated from New York City to Austin, TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry.⁠[23][19]

Accounts of the valuation after the round differ: Food Dive’s brief gives more than $500 million and its analysis section just over $400 million; Modern Retail gives more than $500 million. Food Dive writes that the company stated it had 106 percent revenue growth from the fourth quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of 2021, and that earlier investors included Jennifer Lopez, Alex Rodriguez, Aaron Rodgers, Amy Jo Martin and Patrick Schwarzenegger.⁠[19][22]

In an interview published on August 31, 2021, Jimmy DeCicco said that most of the company’s innovation came from his youngest brother Jordan’s vision, calling him “this quirky tinkerer and operator,” and described the brothers’ division of labor: “He creates the new products, Jake sells them, and I make sure we have the money to do it.” The interview states that the company then had more than 110 employees.⁠[10]

Beverage Industry on October 28, 2021 described him as founder and chief operating officer of Super Coffee, with Jim as chief executive and Jake as chief revenue officer; the article states that Super Coffee, headquartered in Austin, Texas, was sold in more than 56,000 retail locations including Target, WalmartWalmartWalmart is an American retailer founded by Sam Walton in 1962, with businesses spanning physical retail, membership warehouse clubs, e-commerce and related services. Its businesses include Walmart and Sam’s Club, and it has expanded into other markets through international investments; its shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker WMT.Open the full entry, KrogerKrogerThe Kroger Co. is an American supermarket operator founded in 1883 and headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, with supermarkets in 35 states and the District of Columbia. Its planned merger with Albertsons was terminated.Open the full entry, CVS, WalgreensWalgreensWalgreens is an American retail pharmacy chain founded in 1901 that offers prescription filling, vaccinations, health services and everyday retail goods. Its operating company, Walgreen Co., was formerly part of Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) and became an independently operated private company after Sycamore Partners completed its acquisition in 2025.Open the full entry and 7-Eleven, that its caffeinated ready-to-drink coffees had no more than 100 calories, 4 grams of carbohydrates and 1 gram of sugar, with no added sugar, and that the company said it had helped remove more than 4 million pounds of sugar from the American diet. He said: “Our mission is to mass-produce positive energy.”⁠[15]

Beverage Industry writes that Super Coffee launched its “Add Something Positive” campaign in June 2021, opening with a TikTok challenge, “Deliberate Acts of Positivity,” started by the fitness influencer Demi Bagby, and that the brand said it had more than 315 million impressions to date across digital, experiential and social content; its partners included Green Bay PackersGreen Bay PackersThe Green Bay Packers are an NFL professional American football team formed in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 1919 and admitted to the NFL’s predecessor, the APFA, in 1921. A community-owned nonprofit organization, they play at Lambeau Field in Green Bay and have won 13 NFL championships, including four Super Bowls.Open the full entry quarterback Aaron Rodgers, former NBA point guard Baron Davis, Carolina PanthersCarolina PanthersThe Carolina Panthers are an NFL professional American football team representing the Carolinas. Awarded a franchise in 1993, they began play in 1995 and now play at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. They won NFC championships in the 2003 and 2015 seasons. David Tepper purchased the team in 2018.Open the full entry running back Christian McCaffrey, Miss USA 2012 Olivia Culpo and Demi Bagby, and in September the company named the two-time Olympic medalist Gabby Thomas its first health and wellness advocate, to tour the country speaking about the effects of sugar. Its products then included 12-ounce ready-to-drink bottles (Mocha, Vanilla, Hazelnut, Caramel and seasonal varieties), 11-ounce cans (Sweet Cream and French Vanilla), Super Cold Brew Black in 11-ounce cans, Super Espresso in 6-ounce cans (Triple Shot, Vanilla and Caramel), creamers, grounds and Super Pods; a limited-edition Maple Pumpkin flavor was launched that fall as a ready-to-drink coffee, pods and a plant-based creamer, available through December at suggested retail prices of $33.99 for a 12-pack of bottles, $19.99 for a three-pack of creamer cartons and $9.99 for a 10-count box of pods, and a White Chocolate Peppermint variety was planned for winter.⁠[15]

In the article he recalled that after early practices in college “I struggled to find the energy boost for my classes,” so he began brewing his own coffee in his dorm with protein and coconut oil; he said the ingredients give “all-day sustained energy with no sugar, jitters or crash,” and that coffee is a vehicle for “better, different and relevant products.” Of the Maple Pumpkin flavor he said: “We are the only brand offering a healthy, delicious and affordable version”; of the campaign: “Now more than ever, consumers are in need of positive energy”; and he said the company would keep renovating existing products and launch more new flavors in 2022.⁠[15]

In December 2022 Super Coffee named Tyler Ricks, an investor and board member since 2018 who had become president in March 2022, as chief executive; his eldest brother Jimmy moved into the new position of chief brand officer and executive chairman, Jake was chief revenue officer, and he was chief operating officer. BevNET wrote at the time that the company had a 50,000-store national footprint and had grown to more than 100 full-time employees that year, and that it had discontinued about 20 SKUs that year (including K-cups, bagged dry coffee, cans and select creamers and flavors) to focus on its 12-ounce bottled coffee line.⁠[24][25]

The Thomas Jefferson University alumni magazine writes that in the spring of 2023 he returned to the East Falls campus with fellow alumnus Mike Louden Jr., vice president of divisional sales at Kitu Life Super Brands; it describes him as founder and chief operating officer of Super Coffee, with Jimmy as chief brand officer and Jake as chief revenue officer, and states that the company then had more than 100 full- and part-time staff, $55 million in revenue and more than a thousand investors, including Jennifer Lopez, Patrick Schwarzenegger and Aaron Rodgers, at a $400 million valuation. His advice to students was: “Right now, while you’re in school, the time is to ideate.” On leadership he said: “It will be the culmination of people that you have on your team.”⁠[3]

Modern Retail wrote on March 26, 2024 that a pitch deck it had seen showed that the company had sought in late 2023 a $10 million convertible note with a $250 million cap, about half its 2021 valuation; the deck projected about $45 million in net revenue for 2023, down from $54 million in 2022, and described a goal of moving from “dependent on investors” to “self-funding.” The article states that the company discontinued 30 products during 2023, and a former employee said that it went through multiple rounds of layoffs that year. He called the deck “outdated” and “no longer representative of our business,” declined to answer questions about funding and valuation, and said the company’s goal was “to become the best better-for-you coffee platform in the world.”⁠[22]

In early May 2024, when Tyler Ricks left to become chief executive of the frozen-food brand Caulipower, he, as founder and chief operating officer, was named interim chief executive of Super Coffee. BevNET writes that EBITDA losses fell by 80 percent under Ricks; he said that the company had cut personnel by 70 percent and marketing spending by 80 percent, and: “I think we really achieved a lot of what Tyler was brought on to help us do.” Asked whether he wanted the permanent role, he said: “Yes, definitely.”⁠[26][25]

On May 8, 2024 Stord announced in a press release that Super Coffee was expanding its partnership with Stord from order-management software to multichannel fulfillment, including direct-to-consumer and Amazon orders; the release describes him as Super Coffee’s co-founder and interim chief executive and quotes him: “I’m excited for our next phase of profitable growth and efficiency gains.” It states that the company had more than $70 million in sales in 2021 and is headquartered in Austin.⁠[14]

In an episode of the Shelf Help podcast released on September 8, 2025, his eldest brother Jimmy DeCicco said that it was not until May 2024 that Jordan, “the guy who was brewing this stuff in his dorm room,” took over as chief executive, and that he had been chief executive for the previous 15 months; he himself was supporting the company from the board as executive chairman and was now on the venture-capital side, working with Anthos Capital, the company’s largest investor. He said the company had gone from 160 full-time employees to 22, from 65 SKUs to 15, and from nearly $100 million to $50 million in retail sales, that he projected two to three million dollars of EBITDA on the $50 million revenue business, and that the company had been “bootstrapped since 2022”; the episode description states that the products are in more than 70,000 doors.⁠[27]

Jimmy DeCicco said in a 2020 interview that their father was born and raised in Kingston and raised the three brothers in Hurley, New York, and that their mother worked at the YMCA in Kingston; in a 2018 podcast he said that their father is a civil engineer and their mother taught athletic classes at the YMCA. The introduction to the HuffPost interview states that Jordan DeCicco grew up in a family of student-athletes; he said on The Kara Goldin Show: “we were raised very competitively”; in the Thomas Jefferson University alumni magazine he said: “We weren’t born entrepreneurs, but the way we were raised allowed us to become entrepreneurs.”⁠[4][1][12][6][3]

All three brothers played college sports. Jimmy, the eldest, was in Kingston High School’s class of 2011 and played football there, then graduated from Colgate University in 2015, where he was a running back, and worked as a real-estate analyst on Wall Street; the Shelf Help podcast describes him as a former captain of the Colgate football team. Jake, the middle brother, was a business major at Georgetown, is listed by Georgetown University’s athletics department as “B’16,” and was a wide receiver for Georgetown’s football team, ranking in the school’s career top 10 with 142 receptions and 1,609 receiving yards.⁠[13][4][11][9][27][16]

In an episode of Amy Jo Martin’s podcast released on August 3, 2024, the three brothers discussed the values they share with the rest of the company, realizing that the company needed more diversity and hiring an ethics advisor, and the importance they place on mental health; the episode description states that he left his college athletic scholarship and Jimmy quit his Wall Street job to commit to the company, and that the host, Amy Jo Martin, invested in it.⁠[28]

On The Kara Goldin Show (episode 417) he described the founders’ early mindset as “we’re going to bet on ourselves, we’re going to run through walls, we’re going to outwork people”; he said that the core consumer is a woman aged 30 to 35, often a mother, and that customers were then about 60 percent female and 40 percent male. He summed up the experience as “it’s just been seven years of mistakes,” naming a focus on hyper-growth without a tight back end, having “expanded skews way too quickly” during the pandemic, and launching K-cups when consumers did not recognize Super Coffee as a K-cup brand; he added that they had tried to make Super Coffee for everyone, “And that actually made it really hard for us to connect with anyone.” He said investors’ priorities had shifted from growth to profitability.⁠[6]

In the same interview he advised founders to find board members and investors with experience, and said: “don’t be afraid, you’re gonna make mistakes, you’re gonna fail, just keep getting better keep learning.” In the HuffPost interview he said: “By going from the ground up personally, you learn what it takes to make the best product.”⁠[6][12]

Super Coffee: Official website: https://drinksupercoffee.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[29]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[30]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-decicco-620637a5/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/jordan_decicco/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6][28]