Founder Friday is a content series from SuperAngel.Fund that highlights companies across our portfolio and the inspiring founders behind them.
This week weâre featuring one of the fastest-growing wellness brands redefining the creatine category.
In our 59th edition, meet Dan & Sienna McCormick, co-founders of Create Wellness, the first modern creatine brand.
Dan is an experienced consumer operator with a background in finance, operations, and brand building. He previously worked at Away, served as Head of Finance at Parade, and later joined Not Boring as Chief of Staff helping scale one of Substackâs top business newsletters.
Sienna spent six years at Goldman Sachs before co-founding Create.
But Create didnât start as a market opportunity. It started as a personal frustration.
Dan had been taking creatine for over a decade. He believed in the science but hated the experience. Powders were inconvenient, messy, and difficult to build into a daily routine.
At the same time, Dan and Sienna saw a broader disconnect: creatine is one of the most researched supplements in the world, yet remains misunderstood and culturally pigeonholed as a âbodybuilderâ product.
Together, they set out to change that.
Createâs mission is to improve health and wellness outcomes, with a long-term vision of 100 million Americans supplementing with creatine daily by 2030.
The early days werenât easy.
More than 20 manufacturers told them a true creatine gummy wasnât possible. After months of R&D and iteration, they found a partner willing to build it from scratch.
That persistence led to a breakthrough.
Create pioneered the first creatine monohydrate gummy, transforming an inconvenient powder into a simple daily habit.
The product is vegan, non-GMO, NSF Certified for SportÂź, third-party tested, and built around a science-first brand.
From day one, the brand was intentionally built for both men and women, expanding the category far beyond traditional bodybuilding audiences.
The timing was also critical.
Today, creatine is one of the most researched supplements in the world, yet only ~2% of Americans take it regularly, despite 100M+ Americans participating in strength or fitness routines.
A massive gap and opportunity.
Create has built a loyal and rapidly growing customer base across DTC, Amazon, and retail. Today, the brand is available at Target, GNC, The Vitamin Shoppe, Sprouts & Wegmans, with more to come.
Since launch, Create has emerged as one of the breakout brands helping bring creatine into the mainstream.
A few months ago Create launched Creatine + Electrolytes, expanding beyond core creatine into hydration and performance, two of the largest and most important daily-use categories in wellness.
And recently, the company announced a $20M Series B led by Alliance Consumer Growth, with participation from Unilever Ventures and Impact Capital.
Want to give Create a try? Use code SUPERANGEL25 to get started.
And see what Dan and Sienna have to say in this weekâs Q&A đ
Describe your company in 5 words or less.
Dan & Sienna: Leading Creatine Company.
What was your primary motivation for starting your business?
Dan & Sienna: Only 2% of the population was taking creatine when we started Create. We knew that the other 98% of the population could experience the meaningful benefits of creatine if we made it more accessible from a product, brand, and go-to-market perspective. We just love creatine and wanted more people to discover it.
What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?
Dan & Sienna: Creatine + Electrolytes. This is our newest product that, as the name says, combines creatine with electrolytes. It contains 5g of creatine monohydrate, a balanced electrolyte blend, and taurine. From a practical perspective, so many of our customers are already mixing this up every morning -- we just made it convenient, delicious, and more affordable. From a science perspective, these ingredients are synergistic. Creatine helps you get more out of electrolytes and electrolytes help you get more out of creatine -- they just go better together.
What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?
Dan & Sienna: Pick the right category and make sure youâre able to care about whatever youâre doing within that category more than anyone else in the world for 5+ years. For us, we made a really timely bet on creatine in 2022 -- the category was already decently sized, but was (and is) growing rapidly. And within creatine, we were able to obsess over creatine gummies more than anyone else in the world. Weâd like to say that there was not another person in the world obsessing over creatine gummies on a random Sunday night in 2023, but we were.
What do you love to do in your free time?
Dan & Sienna: Sienna and I love to stay active. We just completed our first Hyrox in January, and are doing the upcoming NYC Hyrox in June. We pretty much stick to the basics: fitness, family, friends, work. We also have a 4 year old golden retriever that forces us to spend most of free time in dog parks throughout the city.
What is the most interesting place youâve visited recently and why?
Dan & Sienna: We honeymooned in New Zealand and Fiji last year. New Zealand is gorgeous with mountains, and beaches, and greenery, and lots of sheep. Fiji is a great place to completely unplug from the world.
What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?
Dan & Sienna: Been really loving Granola. Weâve implemented a policy in our company that every meeting needs to have at least one Granola recording. Weâre building a system where all meeting notes are then saved down, piped into Claude, and then searchable for the team.
What do you want to be when you grow up (besides a successful founder)? đ
Dan & Sienna: The Worldâs Best Family Members.
What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?
Dan & Sienna: The ability to really care about things that we find extremely important, even when everyone else around us finds that thing silly.
Know a founder building something exceptional?
Reply to this email â Iâm always looking to meet great entrepreneurs.
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