How IM8 founder Danny Yeung is standing out in a crowded supplement space

Dietary supplements are in. From vitamin D and fish oil all the way to creatine and colostrum, over 100,000 different supplement variations serve as the foundation for a $70 billion market in the United States alone.

A boom in the wellness industry since the pandemic has provided a lasting tailwind (it was worth $6.8 trillion in 2024, according to the Global Wellness Institute), and a favorable regulatory backdrop hasn’t hurt either. The FDA does not preapprove dietary supplements, which under the US Dietary Supplement and Education Act are categorized as foods rather than as pharmaceuticals, before they’re sold. As a result, most regulatory action takes place after products are already on the market.

More broadly, the trend toward holistic health and lifestyle choices has proven fertile ground for entrepreneurs, athletes, and innovators of all stripes. Enter IM8: Co-founded by serial entrepreneur Danny Yeung and soccer icon David Beckham, the daily nutrition drink powder has been on a tear, surpassing $108 million in annualized recurring revenue (ARR) just 11 months after launching late 2024.

Revenue Brew spoke with Yeung about how he’s using credibility and effective partnerships to ensure long-term growth.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The supplement space is known for being saturated and unregulated. How have you approached the market to break through the noise?

We knew going into it that we wanted to set the bar very high. That meant starting with a great scientific advisory board…We went out to recruit the best we could. These are physicians, scientists, and professors from the Mayo Clinic, from Cedars-Sinai, even the former chief scientist of NASA, so we had an amazing scientific advisory board to start with. Then we then had all these individuals create the formulation with the best ingredients, best actives, best form factors. We came up with 90+ ingredients and we made nutrition and supplementation easy.

How do you market reliability to consumers?

Before we launched the brand, we ran a clinical trial with San Francisco Research Institute, a 90-day trial that showed the efficacy of the finished product.

The reality in this industry is you can claim whatever is in your dosage, but no one checks…We’re saying: Don’t believe us. Believe in the certification, the third-party trials that we’ve done with very reputable organizations.

Do you think that the presence of bad actors and lack of regulation in the supplement industry are an advantage or liability for your company?

We’ve been able to establish trust and credibility, and we don’t rest on that. That’s why you haven’t seen us launch product after product; we want to be very deliberate and strategic.

There’s a lot of entrepreneurs in this category looking at this from a very short-term lens…My thinking in terms of how we operate this brand and company is not just trying to get it to a certain stage and sell it; it is to build a long-lasting company for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years.

Are all the investments you’re putting into the scientific board and making sure that you’re very credible signaling your long-term intentions?

100%. Again, running these clinical trials, these are expensive investments. If we’re thinking that’s one or two years, it doesn’t work. The math doesn’t pan out, so we are thinking long-term.

Can you tell me a little bit about why these uniquely structured athlete partnerships have been so important to growth?

All of these were very intentional. We’ve been very fortunate and grateful that we didn’t seek out any of these partnerships ourselves. It wasn’t like, “Hey, we want Aryna [Sabalenka], we want Giannis [Antetokounmpo].” They came to us.

These are not just cash transactions. These are basically a combination of equity and cash, and these are all multiyear deals. They weren’t interested in just doing something short-term. We also weren’t interested, and I’ve become personal friends with all these individuals.

Your brand is now shipping in 46 countries, with an emphasis on credibility and quality. How do you make sure through all that growth and scaling that everything stays up to snuff?

There’s always been certain challenges here and there. But with each one of these challenges, the key thing is just to overcome it very fast. Get the right people, right teams in place…This is my fifth company I started from scratch.