Walk into any supplement aisle, and you will see the same promise repeated over and over: more muscle, better recovery, faster results.
Protein powders have been around for decades, and by now, the formulas should be perfected. But after spending years around professional athletes, celebrity trainers, and people who treat performance as part of their everyday lives, it became clear that something was missing.
The issue was not the idea of protein itself (protein is fundamental to recovery and strength, after all). The problem was the disconnect between how supplements are marketed and how people whose bodies depend on them actually use them.
That realization led to a simple question: if the existing options were not built for the realities of performance training, why not create something better?
What Athletes Taught Us About Transparency
Before working on nutrition products, I spent years in and around the performance world and the training community surrounding it. I saw firsthand how seriously athletes treat what they put in their bodies.
For elite performers, nutrition is not something they casually think about. It is as much a part of their training as the physical components because it impacts their recovery and physical consistency with performance. Even small changes in diet can influence training results, recovery time, and even injury over time.
Yet the supplement industry has historically operated with very little transparency. Ingredient lists can be confusing, sourcing is often unclear, and marketing language tends to make sweeping claims that are difficult to verify.
Athletes, however, do not think that way. They want to know exactly what they are consuming and why it is there. That mindset shaped our approach. If we were going to create a protein product, it had to meet the same standards athletes bring to their training.
Why Conventional Supplements Did Not Make Sense
The more we looked at existing protein powders, the more we realized how inadequate they were. Many formulas rely on heavy additives, artificial sweeteners, or filler ingredients that serve manufacturing goals more than nutritional ones. Others prioritize flavor and shelf stability over digestibility, which can lead to gastrointestinal issues for athletes.
That approach may work for mass-market products, but it does not work for professional athletes who think deeply about their nutrition. When someone is pushing their body through high-intensity workouts and hours of training, the goal is not just to consume more protein but to support recovery and performance in a way that feels sustainable.
We realized that if we followed the traditional supplement playbook, we would simply be adding another product to an already crowded shelf. Instead, the challenge became building something that reflects the standards people inside the performance community actually expect.
Building a Product From Real Performance Needs
Most supplements are built around trends and buzzwords in marketing narratives, but those products are designed first to sell. Performance is secondary.
We approached it the other way around.
The starting point was understanding how people actually use protein during demanding training schedules. Recovery, digestibility, and ingredient quality are all crucial. When you build around those needs, the product becomes different from what you typically see in the supplement aisle.
For example, plant-based proteins have often been dismissed by athletes because earlier formulas were difficult to digest or lacked a complete amino acid profile. But plant-based nutrition has evolved dramatically, and new sourcing options make it possible to meet performance standards while also aligning with broader health and sustainability goals.
That evolution created an opportunity to rethink what a protein product could look like.
Saying No to the Easy Path
One of the biggest lessons in building a product is learning when to say no. In the supplement industry, there is constant pressure to follow what is already selling well by copying existing formulas, adjusting the branding, and relying on marketing to carry the product. While this approach is faster and easier, it is also why so many products feel interchangeable.
We chose a different route. But doing so meant spending more time evaluating ingredients, questioning assumptions, and resisting shortcuts that would have made the process simpler.
For founders, this is a familiar tension. Building something meaningful often requires ignoring conventional wisdom and a lot of patience.
The Broader Lesson for Entrepreneurs
Looking back, the decision to create a high-quality plant-based protein product was never really about supplements but instead about recognizing a gap between what a community needed and what the market was offering. That gap exists in nearly every industry, but the challenge is paying attention long enough to see it.
Entrepreneurs often talk about disruption, but many successful ideas begin with something much simpler: listening. For my team and me, the insight came from years of conversations with athletes and trainers who were already thinking deeply about nutrition and performance.
When you listen closely to how people actually use products and what frustrates them, you begin to see opportunities others overlook. And that’s where you can start creating a product that can take your idea from a small business into an empire.
Josh Malin co-founded RISE311, a company that creates innovative, quality, plant-based proteins. He also became well-known for his efforts to raise awareness about the hazardous nature of heavy metals found in protein supplements. He then became a strong advocate for supplement safety and transparency.
Josh works with co-founder Jason Walsh as champions of small-batch production, high-quality sourcing, and product formulations that are designed to deliver real-life performance and recovery. He spends a great deal of time teaching customers how to evaluate safety tests and label claims, and how to assess the quality of different proteins.
