He Reinvented Toothpaste. Now He’s Building a Coffee Brand with Robert Downey Jr. with Craig Dubitsky

Consumer VC #361: Craig Dubitsky, Founder of Happy

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Listen on Spotify, YouTube

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Hey friends,

On today’s episode, I chat with Craig Dubitsky — founder of Hello Products, early force behind Method, and now co-founder of Happy, the coffee brand he’s building with Robert Downey Jr.

Craig has built brands in some of the most entrenched categories in CPG: cleaning supplies, oral care, lip balm, and now coffee. His edge isn’t better features. It’s emotional innovation.

This might be the longest interview I’ve done. I’m grateful how generous Craig was with his time. I loved hearing his point of view on building brands.

We talk about how Hello started with a simple observation: why are toothpaste boxes covered in extracted teeth and fear-based messaging? Instead of “kills” and “eliminates,” Craig chose one word — Hello — and flipped the entire tone of the category.

With Happy, he’s doing it again. Not positioning coffee as fuel or ritual, but as a delivery system for happiness. And that mission goes deeper than marketing. Happy partners directly with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), puts mental health resources on every package, and even gave NAMI equity in the company.

We also dive into how Craig met Robert Downey Jr., why Downey is a true co-founder — not a spokesperson — and how they built blends together across time zones while Downey was filming overseas.

If you care about building brands people join — not just buy — this episode is packed with insight.

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Here’s what you’ll learn in today’s episode:

✅ Why “common” categories are often the biggest opportunities
✅ Why overanalyzing kills great ideas
✅ The power of naming and emotional positioning
✅ How Hello disrupted oral care
✅ Why Happy put NAMI on its cap table
✅ What real celebrity partnership looks like
✅ How to expand into retail at scale
✅ Why simplicity is much harder than it looks

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro

• 02:00 Craig’s early career & first entrepreneurial instincts

• 05:00 The idea behind EOS

• 10:00 Making lip balm emotional & design-led

• 15:00 Scaling EOS into mass retail

• 20:00 The power of playfulness in branding

• 25:00 Founding hello products

• 30:00 Reinventing toothpaste & oral care

• 35:00 Competing in commoditized categories

• 40:00 Packaging as a strategic weapon

• 45:00 How to win shelf space in mass retail

• 50:00 Why most brands overcomplicate messaging

• 55:00 Emotional connection vs functional benefits

• 01:00:00 Retail relationships & long-term brand building

• 01:05:00 Mistakes founders make scaling too fast

• 01:10:00 How Craig evaluates new ideas

• 01:15:00 The origin of Happy Coffee

• 01:20:00 Rethinking coffee positioning

• 01:25:00 What Craig is doing differently this time

• 01:30:00 Lessons from building multiple brands

• 01:34:00 Advice for consumer founders

• 01:37:00 Final thoughts

Thanks for listening!