This TikTok sensation sold her startup for $2 billion. Now Pepsi is letting ‘Poppi be Poppi’

Allison Ellsworth admits she’s not the typical founder story. She was, by her own telling, “a solid C student,” a partier, someone who got arrested during spring break and later found herself driving across the country working in oil and gas research. Even now, after selling Poppi for $2 billion, she doesn’t try to polish herself into the platonic image of a consumer founder.

 “I do TikToks in Crocs and socks with my hair in a ponytail,” she told Fortune. “I’m just a normal person.”

Pepsi, the soda and snack giant which bought her company, has taken notice. Since she sold her soda company, “they’ve been really big on ‘let Poppi be Poppi,’” Ellsworth said, adding that “I think they’re actually trying to learn from us.”

The 38-year-old built Poppi into one of the fastest-growing beverage brands in the country by leaning into a kind of marketing that was nimble, quick to respond and often very unserious. In fact, it got into a typical Tiktok-esque scandal by giving out vending machines of Poppi to influencers. But behind that was a deliberate strategy, Ellsworth recalled, one that Pepsi is now trying to understand and copy.

One of the clearest examples is pretty simple: Poppi will just send free cans........

© Fortune