How Magic Mind Turned a Spreadsheet Into National Retail Domination

“Everyone who said I was too early, they got on my investor updates.” Can product market fit be created, or can you only position yourself to catch it? William Hicks (Co-Founder & CEO, Magic Mind) joins Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) and Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) to unpack how a Silicon Valley spreadsheet of nootropics became a national retail brand. This episode gets into the real mechanics of product market fit at scale. Raising a seed round took dozens of rejections. Hicks kept those investor relationships warm for years afterward. From there, DTC gave way to national retail distribution. Merchandising discipline mattered more than ad spend. Subscription retention gets a breakdown too, along with the honest math behind CAC payback and lifetime value. Powered By Fulfil https://9ops.co/fulfil AppLovin https://www.9operators.com/paid-growth https://applovin.com/9operators Shoplift https://shoplift.ai/operators SARAL https://calendly.com/maxx-getsaral/op... ShipHero https://9ops.co/shiphero-titans Chapters 00:00:00 Tasting Magic Mind Max 00:03:30 Mike’s AFib Discovery 00:06:11 Defining True Product Fit 00:23:41 Why Banks Fear Consumer 00:37:58 Chasing a Seed Round 00:46:51 Why It Became a Shot 00:59:31 Cracking the Publix Code 01:10:47 Wholesale Beats Meta Ads 01:25:03 Magic Mind’s Scale Today 01:27:47 The Spreadsheet Mistake 01:33:28 Fixing the Creator Team 01:39:05 Titan 10 Rapid-Fire Questions