I train nearly every day. I care about what goes into my body the way I care about what goes into my businesses: inputs decide outputs. And for years, as a customer, the supplement aisle has irritated me more than almost any other category I buy from.
Proprietary blends that hide doses. Labels engineered by lawyers. Formulas built around what’s cheap to source rather than what works. Influencer brands that are a logo, a contract manufacturer’s stock formula, and a launch video. The industry runs on the fact that the customer can’t see inside the capsule.
That gap — between what the category promises and how it actually behaves — is exactly the kind of gap a brand should be built in. So I’m building NUMEN.
The bet
NUMEN is a bet that a meaningful segment of people who take their performance seriously are done with mystery blends and are willing to pay for the opposite: full transparency on what’s in the product, why it’s there, and at what dose.
Premium, in this category, shouldn’t mean prettier packaging on the same white-label powder. It should mean the formulation itself is the product — ingredient selection, dosing, and sourcing decisions a customer could audit if they wanted to.
What building it in public looks like
I’ve built consumer brands before — custom cut-and-sew apparel taught me that “we actually make the thing properly” is both the hardest and the most durable positioning there is. Cut-and-sew meant controlling fabric blends, patterns, and construction instead of slapping a logo on blanks. NUMEN applies the same instinct to formulation.
I’ll be documenting the build here: formulation decisions and the reasoning behind them, sourcing and manufacturing realities, packaging and brand development, and the honest economics of launching a consumer product in 2026. Founders launching their own products should get real numbers and real tradeoffs from someone in the middle of it, not a highlight reel after the fact.
The standard
Written down so it can be held against us later:
- No proprietary blends. Every ingredient disclosed at its actual dose.
- Formulate for effect, not for label copy. If an ingredient is there, it’s there at a dose chosen deliberately — not sprinkled in for marketing.
- Third-party testing, with results the customer can see.
- No claims we can’t stand behind. Supplements support training, sleep, and consistency. They don’t replace them, and NUMEN will never pretend otherwise.
A brand is a promise kept repeatedly. In this category, the promise that matters is simply: what’s on the label is what’s in the product, and it’s in there for a reason.
Launching 2026
NUMEN launches in 2026. The build-in-public series starts now, here and on X. If you want to follow a consumer brand getting built from formulation up — the decisions, the costs, the mistakes — this is the place.
Tyk Sullivan
Serial entrepreneur in Tampa, Florida. Founder of Plutus Capital and NUMEN. More about Tyk →