Poppi Co-Founder Says Creators Now Demand Equity From Jetty

Every creator Allison Ellsworth contacts to promote Jetty, her new hydration brand, is asking for equity and advisory roles before signing — a direct consequence of Poppi's $1.95 billion sale to PepsiCo. Ellsworth made the disclosure on the "Hot Smart Rich" podcast published November 11, five weeks after launching Jetty on November 9.

"I'm actually really struggling locking in creators because every single creator I reach out to to work with, they ask to get advisory and to invest because they saw what happened at Poppi," Ellsworth told host Maggie Sellers Reum. "That's like a whole new world that I'm navigating."

She isn't pushing back. "They're so much smarter and they should be asking for these things. They're helping build these brands," Ellsworth said. "They should really participate in the upside as well."

What do the creator deals look like?

Jetty is structuring two "investment plus advisory" partnerships, with terms tailored to each person. The first is deliverable-based: "one to two TikToks a month," a set number of quarterly appearances, a production day and possible use in paid ads.

The second targets a partner Ellsworth called a "thought leader" — less active on social media, making a "best effort" to feature Jetty in a podcast and a book tour. "I really feel strongly it needs to be curated to that talent or investor," she said. Neither partner was named.

The deals raise a disclosure question. Ellsworth said creator-investors should post without brand approvals, so they can "organically work it in to their lives and not have to put hashtag paid on every single post." But the FTC's influencer guidance counts a financial relationship with a brand as a material connection that must be disclosed — equity doesn't exempt creators from labeling.

Where did the equity demand come from?

Ellsworth traced it to Poppi's playbook. PepsiCo announced the acquisition on March 17, 2025, at $1.95 billion including $300 million of anticipated cash tax benefits, and closed it that May. Alix Earle, who starred in a Poppi Super Bowl ad and had 8.6 million TikTok followers as of August, held equity ahead of the sale.

Ellsworth said Poppi signed Earle and Jake Shane "when they were like 90,000 followers and in college." Brands still ask her for access to the pair. Her answer: "They're too big for you now, honey." Her advice is to "go find the next talent."

That guidance lines up with market data. A 5W report published in April found about 70% of productive seeding budgets at CPG brands (consumer packaged goods) go to creators with 10,000 to 250,000 followers — exactly the tier Ellsworth recruited from at Poppi.

What does this change for brands and creators?

The founder-led, social-first playbook — creators, gifting, celebrities on the cap table (the ownership register of a company) — is now "table stakes," Ellsworth said, because competitors have copied it. Jetty's twist is a budget rule: 80% of marketing spend is committed to planned moments like festival season and back to school, 20% is held back to spend when a cultural moment hits.

Equity demands are reaching even self-funded brands. Jetty has no outside investors; Ellsworth and co-founder Stephen Ellsworth have put about $2.5 million of their own money into the company. They're debating whether a first round should come from "celebrity influencers" or "strategics," and CNBC reported November 8 that Ellsworth expects to raise outside capital in 2027.

Jetty is sold at Whole Foods and online at Target and Amazon, per Food Dive. Ellsworth did not say how much equity Jetty is offering creators or whether any will join the round. For practitioners, the signal is blunt: after a $1.95 billion exit built partly on creator distribution, flat-fee sponsorships may no longer be enough to lock in the mid-tier creators who drive CPG discovery.