Fully Baked #24: Fiber Sticks

💡 An idea we’ve got a gut feeling about

🔬 We validated this idea ourselves in 106 minutes

🚀 The go-to-market playbook for this product

🤑 What do the unit economics look like?

⚔️ How the competitive landscape looks

❓ Our verdict: is this a go or no-go idea

95% of American adults don’t hit their recommended daily fiber intake. That’s ninety percent of a country walking around with a nutrient deficiency. Wild.

Yeah, there are fixes to this already on the shelves, but those brands have the vibe of your grandad's medicine cabinet. Nobody has made fiber something you'd actually want to be seen taking. LMNT did it for electrolytes, why not do it for fiber? Here’s the idea.

A premium fiber stick brand, built exactly the way LMNT built electrolytes. One hero product, 10g of plant-based fiber per stick, zero filler, tear it into water and go.

Brand first, formulation second. Bold identity, in-your-face tagline ("Get your sh*t together"), packaging that pops on a shelf next to the beige incumbents.

Start with sticks, expand into gummies, RTD drinks and travel packs once the subscriber base is humming. Recurring purchase, high margins, high LTV.

The global fiber supplements market is projected to grow from $11.26 billion in 2026 to $21.17 billion by 2034 - a big, boring, compounding market… perfect for innovation.

The Vitamin Shoppe reports fiber category sales up 20% year-to-date, with searches for psyllium husk up 150%, and nearly 70% of Americans say they're actively increasing their fiber intake. Demand is booming.

PepsiCo's CEO told investors "fiber will be the next protein", and Whole Foods named fiber a top trend for 2026. There’s something here…

5 waiting-list signups from €40 in ad spend - roughly €8 per lead, with name, email and phone number captured. Real strangers raised their hands for a product that doesn't exist.

3.3% click-through rate on a completely untested, first-draft ad. For context, that's a very strong CTR for cold Meta traffic. The hook ("95% of Americans are fiber deficient") does the selling on its own.

The funnel leaked everywhere, and that's the bullish part. 58 link clicks converted to signups at under 10%, on a landing page Darragh himself called an awful experience. Fix the page, test a few more creatives, and doubling or tripling that conversion rate is very realistic. €8 leads on a broken funnel means the real number is much lower.

Ring the waiting list. Every smoke-test lead gets a personal call from the founder with a discounted pre-order and a money-back guarantee. Ten pre-orders beats ten thousand impressions.

Live in the fibermaxxing conversation: gut health TikTok, r/HealthyFood, GLP-1 communities. These people are already searching for the product. Show up with the coolest answer.

Seed sticks to mid-size gut-health and fitness creators. LMNT built a nine-figure brand largely off podcast hosts who genuinely used the product.

Paid social is the proven engine here. Layer in TikTok Shop and subscribe-and-save from day one.

The catch: every supplement brand on earth is fishing the same Meta pond, and CPMs only move in one direction. Paid gets you started; an owned audience (newsletter, community, founder-led content) is what keeps CAC from eating you alive.

Core subscription: $45/month for 30 sticks, LMNT-parity pricing at roughly $1.50 a serving. Premium positioning is the whole point - competing on price against the big boys in this space is a sure way to lose…

Founding pre-order: 50% off for waiting-list leads, money-back guarantee. You're buying proof of demand, not margin.

Target CAC: ~€35-40. The smoke test delivered leads at €8; assume 1 in 4-5 leads converts once the funnel is fixed and you land in that range, which is respectable for supplements.

LTV: at $45/month with supplement-typical gross margins north of 70%, even a modest 5-6 month average retention gives you $225-270 in revenue per customer and a 3:1+ LTV:CAC ratio. Every extra month of retention is nearly pure profit.

Metamucil (P&G) - the incumbent giant that owns "regularity" and the over-60s. Lesson: massive distribution, but a brand frozen in amber. Its customers' grandchildren are your market.

Supergut - prebiotic shakes and bars riding the GLP-1 wave. Lesson: they chose meal-replacement complexity over a single hero SKU. LMNT proved that one perfect stick beats a product buffet.

Big Food - Coca-Cola launched Simply Pop, Pepsi has a prebiotic cola, Nestlé shipped a fiber-loaded GLP-1 shake. Lesson: the giants validating the category is great news, right up until they own every shelf and Super Bowl slot.

Nobody has built the LMNT of fiber: one hero stick, a bold identity people wear like a badge, education-led content and an owned audience. Metamucil has the pharmacy, Big Food has the soda fridge. The "cool, premium, direct" lane is sitting empty (for now).

Have an idea you want feedback on? DM me to discuss it or book in for Office Hours here.

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