Peter Rahal

A CBS NewsCBS NewsCBS News is the news organization of the U.S. CBS system, part of Paramount, providing news coverage through television, the web and streaming. Its history extends from radio newsgathering to television and digital platforms; its signature programs include CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes and Face the Nation, and CBS News 24/7 is its streaming news service.Open the full entry and Associated PressAssociated PressThe Associated Press is a cooperative news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it is the oldest and largest news agency in the United States.Open the full entry story of October 6, 2017, gave his age as 31, as did the Daily Herald on the same day; ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry gave his age as 40 in an article of September 25, 2026. In an interview published in September 2026 he said that he was 40.⁠[1][2][3][4]

He grew up in Glen Ellyn, IllinoisIllinoisIllinois is a state of the United States that borders Lake Michigan and the states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Iowa; its capital is Springfield and its largest city is Chicago. It was admitted to the Union on December 3, 1818, as the 21st state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 12,812,508.Open the full entry. Shaw Local wrote in February 2015 that he, Jared Smith, Sam McBride and Jessie Stewart all grew up in Glen Ellyn, attended Ben Franklin Elementary School and Hadley Junior High together, and graduated together from Glenbard West High School in 2004.⁠[5][2]

An alumni article of DePaul University’s business school relates that Jared Smith said he had known him since first grade and that the two were childhood best friends.⁠[6][7]

Chicago magazine’s profile, published in December 2017, states that he is the youngest of his mother Lynda’s three sons and that his father, Norman, ran the family company Rahal Foods, an Oak Brook–based distributor of fruit and vegetable concentrates; in elementary school his mother took him to be tested for a learning disability, and the result was a pronounced case of dyslexia. The article says he went to Glenbard West High School, played various sports growing up and played competitive rugby in his 20s; a photo caption in it has him at age 2 in 1988, and the article adds that his great-grandparents were Lebanese immigrants.⁠[8]

Food Business News describes his father as a food industry executive. The episode description of NPR’s How I Built This states that the family business was Rahal Foods and that he did not join it. On the DealMakers podcast he said that there were business owners on both sides of his family and that family and business were intertwined as he grew up, although the family did not use the word “entrepreneur”; he said that the family still runs a brokerage or distribution company for industrial juice concentrate, that his credentials were not good enough and the timing did not work for him to join it, and that he is in fact grateful for that. In that episode the host, Alejandro Cremades, said that the family was originally from Lebanon.⁠[9][10][11]

In the 2026 interview he said that he had been in the food business since he was about 12.⁠[4]

On the DealMakers podcast he said that he was diagnosed with dyslexia in grade school and struggled through school. In the 2026 interview he recalled that as a child he was labeled “disabled” because of his dyslexia, that he could not read well, and that he overheard teachers, in conversations with his parents, asking “is Peter stupid,” which gave him a deep motivation to prove that view wrong; he said that this is why he does not readily agree with any authority, that in school it took him about ten times the effort to get a C or a D, and that his pain tolerance, his resentment and his anger are all tied to that experience. He also said that his parents were good to him and that he did not want to make it sound as though he had suffered that much.⁠[11][4][4][4]

In a 2018 interview with Entrepreneur he said that his family is made up of dyslexic entrepreneurs and that dyslexia is his biggest competitive advantage, because it builds empathy and holistic thinking. Food Business News writes that he associates the condition with strengths in pattern recognition, deductive reasoning and creative thinking.⁠[12][9]

The October 2017 and January 2018 issues of Tiger Tales, the newsletter of Wittenberg University’s Office of Alumni Engagement, both list him in the section “Alumni In The News” as “Peter Rahal ’08” (class of 2008).⁠[13][14]

Chicago magazine’s profile states that when he applied to college he was rejected by Denison University in OhioOhioOhio is a state in the Midwestern United States; its capital is Columbus. It joined the Union in 1803 as the 17th state, the first carved from the Northwest Territory, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 11,799,448.Open the full entry even though he was a legacy, and so attended Wittenberg, in the same state; in 2008, a week after graduation, he flew to Belgium to work at a fruit-processing plant, hoping to gain the experience he would need to join Rahal Foods. The article says he also spent a stint in Lebanon, where he took business classes and explored his cultural roots, and that on returning home he found he was not wanted at Rahal Foods.⁠[8]

On the DealMakers podcast he said that he had tried entry-level jobs that did not suit his strengths and that he had tried starting a couple of other ventures before RXBAR; when the host mentioned a donut and coffee shop among them, he answered “Exactly.”⁠[11]

He said that he had worked at Mondi Foods, supporting regional sales and business-to-business marketing, in the Belgian market; the host put the length of that job at over a year or so. The idea for a protein bar, he said, actually started in Belgium, where there was no protein bar and nutrition bars hardly existed, and where he experimented in his kitchen with protein balls and protein bars.⁠[11]

Back in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, he said, there was no bar made wholly of real foods; he did not have a good job and wanted to be part of a good company, he had always been interested in nutrition, health and wellness, and he began experimenting in his kitchen on weekends with a date-based fruit-and-nut protein bar of simple ingredients.⁠[11]

The episode description of NPR’s How I Built This states that in 2013 he was an avid CrossFit fan who saw that his gym sold no snack matching its paleo focus, and that he recruited his friend Jared Smith to make a protein bar. Food Business News writes that in 2012 he saw a gap in the market for a protein bar with no grains, dairy, soy or refined sugars.⁠[10][9]

On the DealMakers podcast he said that he and Jared Smith got connected around August 2012, that the product was launched in March 2013 and that the company was formalized in November 2013. The DePaul University article states that the two developed the concept in August 2012, spent about eight months on the recipe, designed the first label themselves in PowerPoint, and quit their jobs in March 2013, when RXBAR officially launched. Shaw Local wrote in February 2015 that the idea began in April 2013; a 2024 NOSH article states that he founded RXBAR in his parents’ basement in 2012; Forbes writes that the two began making RxBar in his parents’ kitchen in 2013; and the David website states that he started RXBAR in 2013 in his parents’ basement with the aim of making the first paleo-friendly protein bar.⁠[11][6][5][15][3][16]

Accounts of where the first bars were made differ: CBS News and the Associated Press name his parents’ kitchen in Glen Ellyn; the Daily Herald’s opening names a basement and its body text a small kitchen; the NPR episode description states that the first RXBAR was made in a Cuisinart at his parents’ home in suburban Chicago; and Food Business News writes that the two went through more than 100 attempts in a red KitchenAid mixer. He himself said on the DealMakers podcast that the product was developed in his parents’ kitchen and in the kitchen of his Chicago apartment, and that commercial production began in his parents’ basement.⁠[1][2][10][9][11]

Food Business News writes that the recipe was roughly three egg whites, six almonds, four cashews and two dates, and that the two sold the bars out of Tupperware at CrossFit gyms in the area. In spring 2013 he and Jared Smith each put in $5,000 in start-up money; CBS News and the Associated Press relay his statement that the two started with $10,000 and did not go to investors.⁠[9][2][6][1]

Entrepreneur writes that in 2012, when the two were making bars in his parents’ kitchen and discussing funding, his father said that they should stop talking and sell a thousand bars; Food Business News writes that his father advised them to forgo raising capital and to go out and sell hundreds of bars. On the DealMakers podcast he said that his father helped finance most of the company early on with personally guaranteed lines of credit; in the 2026 interview he said that his father and his partner’s mother guaranteed a line of credit. Chicago magazine’s profile mentions $500,000 borrowed from his father and notes that it has since been paid back.⁠[12][9][11][4][8]

Food Business News writes that in RXBAR’s early days he fired his mother for attaching product labels incorrectly; asked about this on the DealMakers podcast, he said that he could not accept labels that were not on right and that “my mom couldn’t cut it.”⁠[9][11]

The DePaul University article states that the company first rented a 1,000-square-foot manufacturing space on Chicago’s West Side and within 18 months expanded into the full 7,000-square-foot facility, and that the two handed out samples at gyms, grocery stores and other events on weekends. The brand story on the RXBAR website states that in March to April 2013 the two founders quit their jobs and moved production out of “mom’s basement” into a small rented kitchen; that from April to October 2013 they made their first hires and became known on the CrossFit circuit; and that between November 2013 and March 2014 the brand was recognized by Whole30.⁠[6][7]

Entrepreneur writes that at first the two avoided traditional grocery stores, where competition was heavy, and concentrated on CrossFit gyms, starting in Chicago and expanding to Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Indianapolis, and that early sales were made door to door, by telephone and by email; for the first two years his own cell phone number was printed on the packaging. He said: “Service has always been a value of our business.”⁠[12][11]

On the DealMakers podcast he said that revenue in the company’s first year was about $2 million and that the team grew from 5 people to 12, among them friends from high school; he said that the company sold directly to consumers, was paid before it shipped and kept little inventory.⁠[11]

The brand story on the RXBAR website states that between March and October 2014 the company began shipping by the pallet and the truckload and updated its label. Shaw Local wrote in February 2015 that Jared Smith said the company was selling up to 150,000 bars a month, and that he himself said the long friendship strengthened the partnership and that there were no trust issues between them.⁠[7][5]

He called the original packaging, which he had made in PowerPoint, “ugly.” NOSH writes that the new packaging was designed by the design group Scott and Victor, and that before the redesign RXBAR was sold only online and reached $6.5 million in sales in just over a year, growing 400 percent year over year. Entrepreneur writes that the new packaging was unveiled at Expo East in 2015, emphasizing the small number of ingredients; he said that “no B.S.” became a kind of master claim for the product. The first grocery customer after the redesign was Wegmans, followed by Whole Foods and Publix, and Trader Joe’s gave RXBAR its first national coverage. He said that at the time of the rebrand many people in the investor community said to him that it was a mistake, because the business itself was not broken. NOSH writes that the food influencer known as “The Food Babe” and others worried that the packaging was unclear: the front of the blueberry bar read three egg whites, six almonds, four cashews and two dates, while the back listed dates as the largest ingredient by weight; NOSH adds that six almonds denoted the equivalent of six almonds, not necessarily six whole almonds crushed into the bar.⁠[12][17]

On the DealMakers podcast he said that revenue was $6.5 million in the second year and $31 million net, or $36 million gross, in the third, by which time the team numbered about 50. The NPR episode description states that by 2016 RXBAR’s sales had topped $36 million.⁠[11][10]

Entrepreneur writes that in January 2017 he and Jared Smith debated whether to keep the company as a family business or to join a larger company in order to scale, and that they explored their options in March. On the DealMakers podcast he said that the two hired a banker in March to arrange meetings and announced the sale process to the whole company at a town hall, which he called the best decision they made. NOSH writes that the investment bank was Piper Jaffray and that negotiations took six to nine months.⁠[12][11][17]

On October 6, 2017, Kellogg announced that it would buy Chicago Bar Co., the parent company of RXBAR, for $600 million, with completion expected by the end of the year; the announcement came days after Kellogg had hired Steven Cahillane as chief executive the previous week. He said at the time: “We couldn’t have dreamed of this opportunity.” On the DealMakers podcast he said that signing was on October 6, that the deal closed at the end of October and that the price was $600 million. The NPR episode description states that the two founders sold the company to Kellogg in November 2017.⁠[1][2][11][10]

The Daily Herald names him, Sam McBride, Jared Smith and Jessie Stewart together as the four who started the company and states that the founders would continue to lead the company after the sale. NOSH writes that after the deal RXBAR would operate independently and keep its Chicago offices and team, that he would remain president and chief executive, answering to Deanie Elsner, president of Kellogg’s snacks business, and that any change to the packaging would need his approval.⁠[2][17]

NOSH writes that he said the company had never been built with a sale in mind and that he had always answered no when investors and employees asked; he said that he did not want to pursue a round of investment, on the reasoning that a private equity group would add only “a check,” while money from a large company’s venture arm would be “muddy,” and he worried that such a company would eventually want to buy the business outright in a lengthy, gradual process. He expected that within about two years, once distribution was established, growth would depend more on marketing and innovation than on new retail doors. Entrepreneur writes that he said he was nervous before meeting the big food companies and then found them great and respectful; the leadership team did not want to retire, and Kellogg’s approach was not to replace founders.⁠[17][12]

A few days after the announcement he said that about six months earlier the company had reached a “tipping point,” that selling outright was the best option, that Kellogg could contribute distribution, research and development, in-store execution and global reach, and that he intended to work with Kellogg long term; he said that RXBAR wanted to become a snacking platform and that its bars would still be made by its existing manufacturing partner.⁠[18]

Entrepreneur writes that RXBAR had net revenue of $130 million in 2017, sold 105 million bars, was carried in 125,000 locations in the United States and employed more than 100 people. Food Dive writes that when the deal was announced Kellogg said RXBAR would generate annual net sales of $120 million. On the DealMakers podcast he said that gross revenue in the year of the sale was $161 million and that the team numbered 85 to 100 at the time of the sale. A related item dated August 16, 2017, on the FoodNavigator-USA page states that RXBAR’s new line for children was available in 3,000 stores in the United States.⁠[12][19][11][18]

Forbes estimates that he took about $230 million after tax from the sale. In the 2026 interview he said that when the RXBAR deal happened he did nothing and simply carried on the next day.⁠[3][4]

Food Business News writes that after the Kellogg transaction he launched Litani Ventures, an investment company that partners with food industry start-ups; NOSH wrote in 2020 that Litani was technically started in 2017, right after the sale of RXBAR. Forbes and AgFunderNews both describe Litani as his family office.⁠[9][20][3][21]

Food Business News writes that Litani is pronounced “lit-TAWN-ee” and means “humble lion.” The Litani website defines the word as “Humble lion”: an individual who combines the seemingly paradoxical characteristics of emotional and intellectual humility with confidence and grit.⁠[9][22]

NOSH wrote in 2020 that Litani had invested in 20 companies across 22 rounds, 19 of which closed in 2019, most of them in the second half of the year; the portfolio comprised Olipop, Juneshine, Mush, Spero Foods, Haven’s Kitchen, A Dozen Cousins, NuMilk, Cove, Stryve, Hippeas, Three Wishes, Papa’s Pops, Cure Hydration and Malibu Mylk, and the most recent deal, closed a few weeks earlier, was an investment in Banza. Checks in seed rounds typically ran from $50,000 to $250,000, and growth-stage investments could exceed $1 million; Jared Smith, his RX co-founder, had also joined Litani.⁠[20]

In that article he said that he looks for “valued-novelty,” that he does not invest in brands built on a passing fad and that for the time being he would not invest in CBD or cannabis products, on account of high valuations and an unstable market. He said: “Investing is kinda like being a tourist. You go to Barcelona, you walk the city and learn and then you leave.” He said that he planned to launch another brand eventually and was looking at new categories with less competition and more defensible concepts, such as technology.⁠[20]

Food Business News writes that his portfolio held more than 15 businesses across snacks, beverages and condiments, and that he screened investments on two criteria: whether the product was novel and whether it offered value to consumers. Alison Cayne, founder of Haven’s Kitchen, said that he texts her before an important meeting or call to boost her confidence, and Ashley Thompson, founder of Mush Foods, called him “an incredibly kind mentor.” Food Business News writes that he thinks of himself not as an investor but as a resource and advocate for start-ups; he said: “My long-term goal is to eventually start another business.”⁠[9]

The January 2018 issue of Tiger Tales, the alumni newsletter of Wittenberg University, states that he had been named to the Crain’s Chicago Business 40 Under 40 list.⁠[14]

NOSH writes that at Expo West in 2018 the company expanded beyond bars for the first time with single-serve packets of RX Nut Butters. Food Dive writes that Kellogg executives said RXBAR’s distribution more than doubled in 2018 and that its sales grew 180 percent in measured channels. Food Business News writes that RXBAR surpassed $200 million in sales in its first year under Kellogg’s ownership; among the milestones of RXBAR that he listed was going to the United Kingdom and Canada.⁠[23][19][9]

In August 2018 NPR released a live episode of How I Built This in which the host, Guy Raz, interviewed him at the Athenaeum Theater in Chicago.⁠[10]

In December 2018 RXBAR laid off 40 employees, about 20 percent of its staff. The company said at the time that it was proactively reorganizing to better support its business objectives in 2019 and beyond, that the reorganization was unrelated to Kellogg and that RXBAR continued to operate as a standalone company within Kellogg. Food Dive relays his later statement in the Chicago Tribune that the company had miscalculated its personnel needs. The layoffs came as RXBAR announced its first expansion into the United Kingdom.⁠[24][19]

In January 2019 RXBAR recalled products for undeclared peanuts, and it later widened the recall after customers described allergic reactions to further varieties.⁠[19]

In March 2019 Chicago Bar Company was renamed Insurgent Brands, and the RXBAR brand became known simply as RX. He stepped down as chief executive and stayed with the company to concentrate on product development; Food Dive describes his new role as focused on vision, strategy and innovation. Jim Murray, until then chief financial officer, became president, the company no longer had a chief executive, and Sam McBride stepped down as chief operating officer to become an adviser. He said that he was an entrepreneur who needed novelty and that his previous role did not match his strengths and interests.⁠[23][19]

At the same time the company introduced RX Oats cups and TIG, a brand of savory bars made with chickpeas, lentils and rice. He said that both products had been in development before the Kellogg acquisition, and: “We have to experiment”; otherwise, he said, the company would either die or be like everyone else. NOSH wrote in 2024 that TIG was short-lived.⁠[23][19][15]

On the DealMakers podcast he said that he had stepped down “last Friday,” that “My job here as the CEO is done,” that Jim Murray was now president, that he would continue to support the business and that he needed to go and build another company. In the same conversation he said that after the Kellogg deal the company’s revenue doubled and its organization grew from 100 people to roughly 220, and he also put the headcount at that time at about 205.⁠[11]

Accounts of when he left differ: Food Business News writes that he remained chief executive for a little over a year after the acquisition and then moved into a founder’s role focused on innovation and strategy; NOSH wrote in 2024 that he led the company as chief executive for 18 months after the sale; NOSH wrote in 2020 that he stepped down as chief executive in 2019 to become an adviser to the company; and Forbes writes that he left RxBar in 2018.⁠[9][15][20][3]

Of his departure he later said: “Leaving RxBar was hard because it was my whole life,” and “When I left the company, I lost my organization.”⁠[3]

Forbes writes that he moved to Miami after leaving RxBar. On the Taste Radio podcast in 2024 he said that once he was done with RX he moved to Miami “to sort of reset.” In the 2026 interview he said that he was living in Chicago when RXBAR was sold and moved to Miami after the acquisition; RX had been his identity, he had just been divorced and he needed a change of environment, so he looked at a map of the United States and chose Miami as the place to reset, invest and formalize a family office, with the ultimate goal of relocating to wherever was best for starting his next company.⁠[3][25][4][4][4]

In the interview he said that the divorce came after the acquisition and that the cause was not stress but hubris: everything he had done had succeeded, which gave him a “success bias,” and with career success achieved he wanted to start a family quickly and moved too fast. In the conversation the two men put the span from meeting through marriage to divorce at about nine months.⁠[4][4]

He said that moving into investing after the sale was the natural thing to do: he studied asset classes, how to build a portfolio and how to underwrite deals, read, talked to people, and spent his time where he had the greatest advantage, in consumer packaged goods and early-stage private companies, from seed to growth stage. He said he quickly found that the skill that matters most in investing is getting an allocation in the obvious deal, and that he did not want to chase people for allocations; in running a business a decision brings feedback at once, whereas in investing five years go by before one knows whether it worked.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

He said that he had assumed entrepreneurs in food and beverage all had the same tenacity as he did and then found that this was not so; as an investor he felt handcuffed in the back seat while someone who did not know the way was driving, and it was not a good sign if he, not the chief executive, was the one pointing out a company’s problems and urging it to go faster. He said it took him about a year to work this out, that his thought was “I need to get back in the game,” and that he was far too young to be retired.⁠[4][4][4][4]

He said that he had several false starts: he looked at recycling garbage, at synthetic biology and at other consumer packaged goods, and each time he moved toward starting and then pulled back. The reason, he said, was that once he commits he is all in and burns his bridges, his friends drift away and his health suffers, and he wanted to start a family first; he added that in those attempts he either depended on something else or did not have the time to learn the product deeply enough.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

He said that at first he was under the influence of Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry and felt that he should not be merely the food guy and needed to prove something, and that he later accepted that protein bars were his line; if he died, he said, his gravestone might read “protein bar guy,” and he was comfortable with that.⁠[4]

He said that during his hiatus as an investor he wanted to find a wife and start a family, that he doubted Miami, and Miami Beach in particular, was the place to look for a wife, and that he then bought a place in New York and moved there. On the Taste Radio podcast he said that he chose New York because it was the best place to build his next business.⁠[4][25]

NOSH writes that the five-year non-compete agreement he had signed with Kellogg expired in October 2022; in the 2026 interview he gave the date as October 6, 2022. He said that when the non-compete had about a year left to run things came together naturally: he had a deep knowledge of food and knew exactly what to do; he first put his personal life in order and found his wife, and then started what is now David.⁠[15][4][4][4]

Forbes writes that after the non-compete expired he worked on a new bar with Zach Ranen, tinkering with it for at least a year.⁠[3]

AgFunderNews wrote on September 19, 2023, that Humble Growth, a New York-based growth equity investment firm, had closed a $312 million fund; the firm was launched by three veterans of consumer packaged goods: Andrew Abraham, founder of Orgain; Nick Giannuzzi, a lawyer for consumer brands; and he himself, as managing partner. Investors in the fund included Nestlé Health Science, VerlinvestVerlinvestVerlinvest is a family-backed evergreen investment company headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, that invests in high-growth brands in consumer goods, health, consumer technology, and lifestyle. It has been a long-term investor in brands such as Vita Coco, Oatly, and Tony’s Chocolonely, and in 2021 it invested in the New Zealand admissions consulting company Crimson Education.Open the full entry, Mike Repole, Gary Hirshberg, Paulo Lima and Sean Lang, and the fund planned to write checks of roughly $10 million to $40 million for food, beverage, health, beauty, vitamin, supplement and apparel companies with at least $20 million in sales.⁠[21]

In that article he said that the firm writes about one check a quarter, that seed investing in consumer goods and a venture strategy borrowed from technology do not work, and that the firm prefers companies about three years old that have shown product-market fit; he called more than $300 million for a first-time fund “a tremendous amount.” He said that humility is “a misunderstood trait” and that he looks for founders who care more about getting it right than about being right; he said that he personally lacks the technical experience to underwrite alternative-protein and cellular-agriculture companies, and AgFunderNews writes that Humble Growth was not focusing on that area.⁠[21]

He recalled that he had once tried to raise money and in the end never did: in the first meeting the investors assumed that he could not be the chief executive, which he found patronizing, and the problem was a misalignment of values. He also said that capital constraints at RXBAR had forced creative and efficient marketing, and that having to prioritize profitability earlier is painful but can be a good thing, because such businesses are not technology companies and their unit economics should work early.⁠[21]

NOSH wrote in 2024 that Humble Growth’s website no longer listed him as a founder and that his 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 page showed that he had ceased to be a managing partner as of that month. In November 2026 the founders page of the Humble Growth website listed only Andrew Abraham and Nick Giannuzzi.⁠[15][26]

In 2024 he announced David in a LinkedIn post as a brand of high-protein, low-calorie, blood-sugar-friendly foods; NOSH wrote the next day that the name was a nod to a masterpiece by Michelangelo, that the first product was a protein bar with 28 grams of protein, 160 calories and zero grams of sugar, and that it was set to launch by the end of 2024. In the post he wrote: “I’ve always been obsessed with bars, so this will naturally be our first product,” and “Humans aren’t perfect, but David is.”⁠[15]

NOSH writes that his LinkedIn profile also named him as co-founder and chief executive of Linus Technology, described as a food technology company built to help consumers achieve their protein consumption and weight management goals; David’s co-founder and president was Zach Ranen, previously a private equity analyst and the founder of the online bakery start-up RAIZE.⁠[15][3]

Before its launch David raised a $10 million seed round led by him, with participation from Valor Siren Ventures, the physician Peter Attia and Andrew HubermanAndrew HubermanAndrew Huberman is a neuroscientist and host of the Huberman Lab podcast.Open the full entry; Forbes writes that the money was raised a month before David bars went into stores in September 2024. In the 2026 interview he said that he first put in $2 million of his own as pre-seed money, enough to get the product to launch, and then raised $8 million at launch for working capital; he said that he brought in outside money because he wanted people who had been good to him to take part, among them Valor Equity Partners, with otherwise only a few friends, and that at the time he thought the company would raise nothing further.⁠[27][25][3][4][4][4]

In the interview he said that he spent about six months planning David’s brand identity; David’s values are intelligence, beauty and discipline, rooted in the symbolism of Michelangelo’s sculpture of David, and the sculptor’s chisel stands for intelligence and discipline. He said that people eat protein bars to change their body composition and that he wanted a body-composition brand of more refined taste that was not a weight-loss company; when he turned 35 he looked around and saw that everyone he knew struggled with weight and wanted more muscle.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4]

The “Our Story” page of the David website, written in his name, states that David was built around three principles: eating sufficient protein, avoiding excess calories and minimizing added sugar. On the Taste Radio podcast in 2024 he said that if David is not four times the size of RXBAR it will be a failure.⁠[16][25]

AgFunderNews wrote on May 29, 2025, that David had raised a $75 million Series A round led by GreenoaksGreenoaksGreenoaks is an American investment firm co-founded by Neil Mehta in 2012 and known for concentrated, long-term investing; it made an early, large bet on the Korean e-commerce company Coupang and has invested in companies including Wiz, Stripe, Databricks, and Anthropic. In May 2026, it co-led Anthropic’s $65 billion Series H funding round with Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, and Sequoia Capital.Open the full entry, with participation from Valor Equity Partners, at a post-money valuation of $725 million, and that the bulk of the capital would fund the acquisition of the food technology company Epogee; NOSH writes that the financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Epogee makes the fat substitute EPG (esterified propoxylated glycerol): plant oils such as canola are split into glycerin and fatty acids and reconnected with a food-grade link, the result resists the enzyme lipase, and it supplies 0.7 calories per gram against 9 for ordinary fat.⁠[28][27][29]

In the antitrust suit later brought by EPG customers, the order of February 4, 2026, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York recites, from the plaintiffs’ second amended complaint, that David completed its acquisition of Epogee on May 9, 2025, for $75 million.⁠[30]

He said that David accounted for about 90 percent of Epogee’s revenue and that securing supplies of EPG was “mission critical” for David; Epogee’s team would be retained and run at arm’s length as a subsidiary, and for the short term all of its capacity was taken up by David’s demand. He predicted revenue of $140 million for David’s first year and said: “I think that probably makes us one of the fastest growing food brands in history.” NOSH writes that David expected to surpass $100 million in revenue in its first year, was in more than 3,000 retail locations and came in eight varieties, each bar with 28 grams of protein, 150 calories and zero sugar. AgFunderNews writes that about 75 percent of David’s calories come from protein and that it began as a direct-to-consumer brand, expanded to 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 then began building distribution in physical retail.⁠[28][31][27]

In the 2026 interview he gave his account of the acquisition: as soon as David started he negotiated a supply agreement with Epogee that covered a change of control and gave David most-favored-nation terms on price and on inventory, so that any available inventory was David’s. He said that from the start he saw dependence on a single supplier as a danger and expected it to end either in extortion and litigation or in David buying the company; in February, about six months into David’s existence, the other side proposed that David take the company over. He said that David bought the whole company, paying half in equity and half in cash; he praised Epogee’s founder and said that the technology had required so much cash that the founder was gradually diluted and the company came to be run mostly by older lawyers.⁠[4][4][4][4]

In the interview he said that $85 million was raised for the acquisition, from Greenoaks and Valor; AgFunderNews gives the Series A as $75 million, and the page of a 20VC episode dated August 8, 2025, states that David had raised over $85 million from Greenoaks, Peter Attia and Andrew Huberman and that the latest round valued the company at $725 million.⁠[4][28][32]

He said that he had not been taking calls from investors, which he considered a poor use of time, and that he had his own capital to finance the company; only after a friend asked twice did he speak with Greenoaks, and he said on that call that this was not a technology company and that it would grow on profitable sales and a line of credit. Later he began receiving messages from former RXBAR colleagues, about 20 in all, saying that a firm was offering to pay them to describe what kind of leader he was; he said they should take the calls and the money, thinking at the time that someone was looking for dirt on him, and learned only afterward that it was Greenoaks carrying out diligence when there was no deal on the table. After the chairman of Epogee came to discuss a sale, he went back to Greenoaks and Valor himself; he said that Valor had a conflict of interest and could not lead.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4]

He said that he did not run an auction because, first, the company did not need much money and only one or two investors, and second, an auction means many management meetings and a stream of diligence questions that would consume the resources of a company growing very fast; the price of that choice may have been an extra $100 million of valuation, he said, but he did not really care. He said that he invests in every round, that being both chief executive and investor is a conflict because he could lower the valuation for himself, and that he therefore tries to keep the two roles apart; he said that the company’s governance is set up so that he has control.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

AgFunderNews writes that from March 2025 Epogee informed customers of shortages of certain types of EPG and said that supplies would return in May; the complaint states that EPG became unavailable to the plaintiffs on March 25, 2025. On May 29, 2025, Epogee emailed customers that, following its acquisition by David, it would no longer accept new orders and was winding down existing accounts.⁠[31][33]

On June 2, 2025, three Epogee customers, OWN Your Hunger, Lighten Up Foods and Defiant Foods, sued Linus Technology (doing business as David Protein), Epogee and him personally in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, case number 1:25-cv-04544. Relying on federal antitrust law and New York’s Donnelly Act, the plaintiffs alleged that the defendants had acquired Epogee to exclude competitors and create an artificial monopoly, and they sought a temporary restraining order barring any restriction or denial of EPG to existing customers. The complaint further states that when the plaintiffs asked about remaining stock they were informed that David had bought and stockpiled at least two years of EPG capacity, and that at least five other food manufacturers had made or were planning layoffs, product discontinuations or closures because EPG was unavailable. The court’s order of February 4, 2026, records that the plaintiffs filed, together with the complaint, a motion for an ex parte temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, and that on June 4, 2025, the court declined to grant the temporary restraining order ex parte.⁠[31][33][30]

In a court filing David said that it was under no obligation to sell EPG to the plaintiffs, that Epogee holds four patents covering the process for making EPG and that patent holders are not obliged to sell their product to third parties; David said that it too had been an Epogee customer but had negotiated a long-term supply agreement. On June 17, 2025, Judge Victor Marrero denied the motion for a temporary restraining order in a 12-page order, finding that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits.⁠[33][30]

In the 2026 interview he said that the main lesson of the episode concerned communications: all that went out was a notice of the acquisition stating that without a supply agreement there would be no supply, the company let Epogee manage part of the communications, and the job was done terribly; he said he could have handled it with more compassion, for example by calling the entrepreneurs. He said that three or four other companies were buying the ingredient and that he had no sympathy for their not having signed a supply agreement. He also said that the founder of one of those customer companies was later recruited to join his company.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

Accounts of David’s first-year revenue differ: Forbes estimates about $100 million; The New Consumer writes that David passed $100 million in sales in its first full year on the market; and the guest biography on the Masters of Scale website gives $130 million for the first year and adds that David reached more than 16,000 retail doors within two years.⁠[3][34][35]

AgFunderNews writes that in the summer of 2025 David went out of stock on all of its items. In the interview he said that the company was constantly out of stock: it was growing 300 to 400 percent a year, raw materials have to be bought and converted into finished product, some raw materials take a long time to obtain, the dairy market was very tight, and matching supply with demand was a constant difficulty.⁠[36][4][4]

He gave this account of how the company came to sell cod: in the comparison table for its website David ranked first on the share of calories that come from protein and first on everything else, and since he distrusts any chart on which one product is first throughout, the team looked for a food with a better ratio than David’s gold product, found only boiled cod, and listed cod first and David second. About halfway through the first year he found the idea of yet another flavor boring and decided to sell fish in earnest; he said that $55 frozen cod sold online did not find a market but worked very well as a communication tool that centered the conversation on the ratio of protein to calories, and that it had nothing to do with the stockouts of the time. In November 2026 the David website was selling canned Atlantic cod.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][37]

On February 4, 2026, Judge Victor Marrero, in a 32-page Decision and Order, granted the motion of the defendants, Linus Technology, Epogee and him, to dismiss the second amended complaint, dismissed that complaint and denied the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction requiring continued supply of EPG while the case proceeded; the order allowed the plaintiffs to file, within 10 days, a letter brief of no more than five pages seeking leave to amend again. The complaint pleaded claims under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, Section 7 of the Clayton Act and the Donnelly Act; the judge held that the plaintiffs had not plausibly alleged that the defendants’ conduct harmed competition in the relevant market that they themselves identified, and AgFunderNews writes that he also noted that they had defined the market inconsistently. A spokesperson for the plaintiffs said that they remained confident in their case; AgFunderNews writes that he did not immediately respond to a request for comment.⁠[30][38]

The New Consumer wrote on February 13, 2026, that David had its headquarters in Manhattan and that he planned to add products and brands, as soon as that year, under an umbrella brand called Medici, the new brands leaning toward health, forward on protein and built on the EPG technology; the article also states that David had run a billboard campaign in New York featuring Julia Fox with the line “Men disappoint. David satisfies.”⁠[34]

Forbes writes that Zach Ranen left the company at the start of 2026 and is apparently working on a new business. In the 2026 interview he said that his co-founder was very helpful in the beginning but is no longer at the company; he said that founding teams seldom make it to the end together and that the people a company needs at different stages of its life are usually not the same group.⁠[3][4][4]

AgFunderNews wrote on April 3, 2026, that the judge had given the plaintiffs leave to file a third amended complaint, in which they defined the relevant market as “high-CFP” protein bars, meaning bars in which roughly 50 to 75 percent of calories come from protein, and alleged that the defendants held all sales in that market; the losses claimed by the three plaintiffs together came to about $449,000 in research and development, $107,000 in lost confirmed sales and more than $85,000 in specialized inventory written off.⁠[39]

AgFunderNews wrote on April 17, 2026, that David had increased manufacturing capacity for EPG five-fold and was in talks to supply EPG to consumer goods companies in the United States and abroad; in the first quarter of 2026 David expanded to nationwide distribution with Target CorporationTarget CorporationTarget Corporation is an American retailer incorporated in Minnesota and headquartered in Minneapolis, with common stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange.Open the full entry and Walmart and launched at CostcoCostcoCostco Wholesale Corporation is a U.S. membership warehouse retailer that began operations in Seattle in 1983 and is headquartered in Issaquah, Washington.Open the full entry in the 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 region, and it planned to enter the ice cream aisle later in the year; Mitchell Culler, a former principal scientist at Kraft Heinz, had become director of research and development at Epogee in the fall of 2025. He said: “Business is good, we’re ahead of our plan, and we’ve built redundancies on supply, so we are in a good position.” He predicted revenue of more than $300 million for 2026.⁠[36]

In the same article he acknowledged that none of Epogee’s customers had a long-term supply agreement before the acquisition; the plaintiffs say that such contracts were neither offered nor solicited. He said that at the time of the acquisition David’s demand was 120 percent of Epogee’s capacity and later 150 percent, that David obtained its supply under an agreement with a most-favored-nation clause on inventory, that it had not yet sold EPG to third parties and that none of the companies it was talking to were direct competitors. Of the lawsuit he said: “They sued us, so we have to go through the [legal] process,” and he said that in retrospect the supply issues with former customers could perhaps have been handled differently.⁠[36]

On May 1, 2026, David filed a motion asking the court to dismiss the third amended complaint, stating that the plaintiffs had now tried four times to plead a viable complaint and that it should this time be dismissed with prejudice; David said that consumers shop for protein bars, not “EPG-based or high-CFP protein bars,” that none of the three plaintiffs had sold such bars, and that David had kept its price of $3.25 a bar since its commercial launch.⁠[40]

On June 2, 2026, at The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is a U.S. news publication founded in 1889, with a focus on business, finance and economics. It is published by Dow Jones, part of News Corp.Open the full entry Global Food Forum, he said that the company would move to the name Medici for a parent company with different business units beneath it. He said that the company had launched ice cream the day before, that the next brand, Hall Pass, a business in low-calorie, low-sugar confections, would launch in the fall of that year, and that a fourth business unit would be in salty snacks, with no target date; he was also considering a quick-service restaurant concept built around breakfast, which could involve low-fat donuts and which Food Processing describes as further out.⁠[41]

At the forum he called EPG “a non-nutritive fat” and the main lever in David’s ratio of protein to calories; he said that relying on a single supplier had long been a problem for the company and that the acquisition of Epogee changed the company’s vision, and that large companies avoid expensive new ingredients because “Big companies don’t want to cannibalize their best SKUs.” Of the antitrust suit he said that Epogee’s capacity was about 2 million pounds while David’s need was about 2.5 million pounds.⁠[41]

Food Processing writes that a separate class of plaintiffs, who had hired independent laboratories to test the bars, sued on the claim that David bars contain up to 83 percent more calories and 400 percent more fat than stated; the company said that it used calculations compliant with FDA rules, which count only the calories and fat that the body actually absorbs. The article states that this case was either dismissed or dropped by the plaintiffs in March 2026. He said that the bigger problem was public opinion, particularly a video on TikTok comparing David with the bars in the film Mean Girls, and: “To go viral you have to be entertaining.”⁠[41]

AgFunderNews wrote on September 3, 2026, that Medici Brands, the parent company of David, had raised a $250 million Series B round at a valuation of $2.25 billion, co-led by Greenoaks and Valor Equity Partners, with participation from him, ICONIQ and Imaginary Ventures. Forbes writes that he invested $20 million in the round, 8 percent of the amount raised, and that it was the largest deal in the food industry that year to date.⁠[42][3]

Forbes wrote on September 25, 2026, that he was Medici’s biggest individual investor, with an estimated 70 percent; Forbes estimated his net worth at $1.9 billion and wrote that the round had lifted him into the ranks of billionaires. His Forbes profile showed a real-time net worth of $1.9 billion as of November 11, 2026. Forbes writes that he declined to comment other than to joke that he was broke; the article quotes one unnamed investor as saying that he does not have to go out for capital because capital comes to him, and another as saying that he sees opportunities that other people do not and, once convinced, really goes for it.⁠[3][43]

AgFunderNews writes that Medici was on track for more than $300 million in revenue that year, from a standing start in 2024, and Forbes writes that Medici says this would make it the fastest food company to reach that milestone; that David was listed in 35,000 stores, including 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, Target Corporation and Costco, and had expanded into frozen desserts in July and ready-to-drink protein shakes in August; and that he expected David to be profitable in 2026. Medici had also introduced HallPass, a candy brand, with the vast majority of its day-one distribution at Walmart; Forbes writes that HallPass launched at Walmart in August. Medici’s second new brand is a chips brand called Rowdy.⁠[42][3]

In November 2026 the Medici website listed three brands: David, HallPass and Epogee. Forbes writes that Epogee’s EPG is made from canola and palm oils, required human clinical trials and holds “Generally Recognized As Safe” status from the FDA, and that both David and HallPass use the ingredient; Forbes also writes that the round valued the company at an estimated 7.5 times revenue, more than double the multiples at which RxBar in 2017 and Kind in 2020 were sold.⁠[44][3]

The same AgFunderNews article states that Lighten Up Foods had settled its claims with David, each side bearing its own legal costs; the founder of Lighten Up Foods said that Peter Rahal had offered him a supply agreement so that he could start making his sauce again, and the founder of OWN Your Hunger, another plaintiff, said that Lighten Up Foods had settled through a supply agreement. At that time the judge had yet to rule on the third amended complaint.⁠[42]

On September 20, 2026, David SenraDavid SenraDavid Senra is the founder and host of the Founders podcast, on which he reads biographies of entrepreneurs to discuss starting and running businesses and making personal decisions. He began producing the show in 2016, partnered with Colossus in 2022, and in 2025 launched David Senra, a long-form interview show under his own name.Open the full entry published a conversation with him on his YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel under the title “Product Mastery, Pain Tolerance & Relentless Ambition | Peter Rahal of David Protein, Medici & RXBAR.”⁠[4][45]

The conversation covered, in order: his turn to investing after the sale of RXBAR and why he was unsuited to being an investor; the move to Miami, his divorce and his wish to start a family; his return to protein bars and the non-compete; David’s positioning, how a brand is built and the reason for the name; his preference for hardship, his childhood dyslexia and the anger that came from it; the company’s output, its stockouts and the cod campaign; treating the organization as a product, the company’s values and the recruiting of former founders; the acquisition of Epogee and the lawsuit that followed; how the two companies were financed, his dealings with Greenoaks and Valor Equity Partners and his reasons for not running an auction; his habit of looking only at problems; the name Medici and the decentralized structure of business units; and the flat organization, the departure of his co-founder and his definition of the chief executive’s job.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4][4][4][4][4][4][4]

In the conversation he said that the company was only two years old, that it was running at an annualized rate of more than $400 million and that it would do $300 million that year; its products were protein bars, frozen products, a ready-to-drink beverage and a confection in three formats, and another brand would launch in November. He said that he believed the company was the fastest-growing food company in history, and that the day after the conversation was the company’s “birthday.” He said that the company had no need to raise money at present and would do so only if a need arose.⁠[4][4][4][4]

In the interview published in September 2026 he said that the suit had been dismissed three times, and that for the plaintiffs’ claims to have merit the case would have to become a landmark in intellectual property.⁠[4]

AgFunderNews wrote on November 3, 2026, that Judge Victor Marrero, in his final order on the case, had dismissed it on two grounds: the plaintiffs had failed to plausibly define the relevant product market, and even if the “high-CFP protein bar” market were the relevant one, they had not plausibly alleged that David’s conduct harmed competition in it. The judge wrote: “David bars are protein bars that are reasonably interchangeable with other protein bars.” A representative for the plaintiffs said: “We respectfully disagree with the court’s ruling,” and added that they stood by the concerns that had led them to bring the case and had no further comment for the time being.⁠[46]

As of November 2026 the “Our Story” page of the David website is signed “Peter Rahal, Founder & CEO, David Protein.” His Forbes profile describes him as Medici’s founder, chief executive and largest individual shareholder.⁠[16][43]

The experience listed on his LinkedIn profile: marketing at Mondi Foods in Antwerp, Belgium, from May 2008 to July 2009; co-founder, chief executive and president of RXBAR from November 2012 to March 2019; managing director of Litani Ventures since November 2017; managing partner of Humble Growth from July 2022 to January 2024; founder and chief executive of David since March 2024; and chief executive of Medici Brands since August 2025.⁠[47]

In November 2026 his Forbes profile gave his marital status as married, his residence as Miami, FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, and his citizenship as United States.⁠[43]

On the Taste Radio podcast in 2024 the host, Ray Latif, referred to his “impending nuptials,” and he spoke in the episode of “now that I have a son.” In the 2026 interview he said that when he takes his son out he refuses to use a stroller and always carries him.⁠[25][4]

On the Taste Radio podcast he said: “I’m definitely very introverted. I don’t really want to be famous or anything.” He said that happiness is irrelevant for entrepreneurship and that he does not really care about it.⁠[25]

In the 2026 interview he said that he always chooses the hard path and, when he exercises, the most painful exercises, that he likes being strong and doing hard things, and that he finds something spiritual and gratifying in suffering once he is through it; physical suffering is easy, he said, whereas building a company brings emotional suffering and many tough conversations.⁠[4][4]

He said that he carries a great deal of resentment and anger, that if he does not harness it he becomes a bad person or is unhappy, and that physical exertion and company building are his way of channeling it productively; in the period when he was an investor he was deeply unhappy because he had nowhere to put it. He said that he has tried psychedelics and therapy and that the feeling is still as if tattooed on him; he said that he is not proud of it and did not choose it.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

He said that he is not good at tapping into his emotions on the spot, that he is sensitive and gets angry but harnesses this in his work; he said that he loves the fight and loves “healthy conflict,” and also that he hates birthdays.⁠[4][4][4]

Forbes writes that he has said he has invested at least $50 million in about 100 businesses, among them the ready-to-eat oats brand Mush and Olipop, which is now valued at $2 billion; he formerly held a stake in the popcorn company LesserEvil, which The Hershey Company acquired for $750 million in 2025. His Forbes profile also lists an article of June 8, 2021, on the Series A round of JuneShine Hard Kombucha, in which he was an investor.⁠[3][43]

In 2023 he said that large consumer goods companies have a poor record with fast-growing brands, giving as examples Campbell’s with Bolthouse Farms, Coca-Cola with Zico and Honest Tea, Hershey with KRAVE and Dean Foods with Uncle Matt’s Organic; he favored brands tied to a media channel or to a celebrity with a large following, because they cost less to bring to customers, and gave MrBeastMrBeastMrBeast, born James Stephen Donaldson and commonly known as Jimmy Donaldson, is an American video creator, television producer and entrepreneur. He began running a YouTube channel in 2012, later founded Beast Industries and the snack brand Feastables, and launched several charitable fundraising campaigns. In June 2026, his main channel became the first individual creator’s YouTube channel to reach 500 million subscribers.Open the full entry’s Feastables as an example. He called 2010 to 2020 the “glory days” of food investing and said that valuations were inflated in 2021 and had since come down.⁠[21]

In the 2026 interview he said that the company does not want to tell people what not to eat but to make their favorite foods “smarter”; the protein bar is the wedge that brought the company to scale, from which it moves into other categories. He said that the company is competing with businesses such as Nestlé and that he wants to build the most important food company of the 21st century; for the next four or five years it will probably only create brands of its own, he said, but he would not rule out acquisitions later.⁠[4][4][4][4]

He likens a brand to a human being, with a name, parents in the form of its founders, values, a vision, a tone of voice and a circle of friends; as an example he said that David’s partnership with Andrew Huberman is a fitting one. He said that brands are very fragile and that carelessness about quality ends them quickly. The David website lists Andrew Huberman and Gabrielle Lyon, founder of Muscle-Centric Medicine, as each a “David partner.”⁠[4][4][4][37]

He said that there are two fundamental things in a company, people and product; he treats the organization as a product, secured by four processes: whom the company selects, how it trains and onboards them, whom it promotes and rewards, and whom it lets go, all organized around the company’s values. The values he named were the courage to seek truth, humility (which he defines as freedom from pride and arrogance) and entrepreneurship; he said that people who come from large corporations often generate data and surveys to cover themselves for their decisions, which he calls “fake work.” He said that new employees learn the company’s values during onboarding and also pack boxes, that the most talented people in the company are former founders and that he recruits such people deliberately.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4][4][4]

He said that the group has been reorganized as a hybrid organization: David and HallPass are each a business unit with its own sales, marketing, supply chain and finance, operating semi-autonomously and running its own profit-and-loss account, a third business unit is about to be set up, and shared services sit at the level of Medici; asked how many business units there are, he counted to four. He said that he chose the name Medici because he loves history: the Medici were not themselves the makers but created the conditions for the Renaissance and identified Michelangelo, Donatello and Galileo, and the people at the Medici level of the company likewise create the conditions for the business units; at the forum in June 2026 he said that these Renaissance patrons were the ones who enabled the sculpture of David. He said that this structure duplicates staff and costs more but that the main design objective is speed; he has said to the whole company that if it loses its entrepreneurial spirit and its way of operating, he will leave.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4][41]

He said that the organization is very flat and that he has about 25 direct reports; he used to think seven or eight was the most one could have and now thinks that having many keeps him closer to the problems. He said that the heads of the business units are typically former founders and must at least be product leaders.⁠[4][4][4][4]

He said that his role is chief executive and that his standing responsibilities are five: the management team and its performance, getting and continually renewing product-market fit, organizational health and culture, alignment on strategy, and cash and fundraising; beyond these he calls his main job “reactionary leadership support,” meaning that when a problem arises he drops what he is doing, works out what is wrong, fixes it and then gets out of the way. He said that a flaw in his style of leadership is that he does not acknowledge wins and is preoccupied only with what is wrong, so he hands the marking of such occasions to others in the company.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

Entrepreneur wrote in 2018 that his advice to new entrepreneurs was to see a problem and design a product to solve it, to be value-based and not rule-based, to be proactive and focused, and to remain humble; on the DealMakers podcast he said: “make sure you’re solving the right problem and defining the right problem.” Asked on the Taste Radio podcast in 2024 whether RXBAR had succeeded merely because of timing, he answered “Partially” and then said that the statement was false: the success came from a great many good decisions and a great deal of will, and was not an accident.⁠[12][11][25]

A leader must understand the product personally: he said that a company whose leader has to pick up the phone to get the product fixed is in trouble, and that the leader has to understand the product deeply and be able to fix it (video at 10:32).⁠[4]

What matters most in building a brand is time: he said that a brand’s identity can be dynamic as it grows but has to be carried consistently over time with a product and service of really high quality (video at 14:24).⁠[4]

Growth comes from facing hard things: he said he learned early that when one faces tough conversations and situations there is growth on the other side (video at 21:32).⁠[4]

If you use an ingredient with a single source, sign a supply agreement first: he called this fundamental (video at 48:04).⁠[4]

A consumer goods company should make economic sense quickly: he said that in consumer packaged goods the profit-and-loss account and the unit economics should work early, so a company should be capital efficient and should not raise much money unless it is going to acquire a company (video at 50:48).⁠[4]

In a financing, see that every stakeholder can make money: he said that he does not push the valuation to the maximum and wants investors to find the deal sound by their own underwriting (video at 56:50).⁠[4]

Think of a business as a river: he said that as long as it is flowing all is well, and that anything blocking the flow has to be dealt with at once (video at 1:01:10).⁠[4]

Look at duties, not titles: he said that he dislikes the titles “founder” and “co-founder,” which in his view imply privilege; everyone in a company has duties, and what counts is whether they are done well (video at 1:15:09).⁠[4]

RXBAR: Official website: https://www.rxbar.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[48]

Litani Ventures: Official website: https://www.litani.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[22][9]

Humble Growth: Official website: https://www.humblegrowth.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[49]

David Protein: Official website: https://davidprotein.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[37]

Medici Brands: Official website: https://www.medicibrands.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[44]

Epogee: Official website: https://epogee.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[29]

X: Public account: https://x.com/PeterRahal (opens in a new window).⁠[45]

LinkedIn: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-rahal-037bba43 (opens in a new window).⁠[45]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/peterrahal (opens in a new window).⁠[45]