 What's your kryptonite? Indomie noodles. If you had $1 to spend, where would you spend it? Indomie noodles for the team. Vanessa Pham, co-founder of AumSum. Are you ready to answer some questions? So ready. I love your branding. Who did it and what was the brief? So my sister and I were co-founders. We worked on the brand strategy together, and then we worked with Outline and Agency to bring that to a visual identity, which was to be a loud, proudy, rambunctious. What does AumSum mean? That's exactly what it means. So it's actually based on a Vietnamese word, which means noisy and rambunctious. And that was kind of our way of giving a middle finger to the model minority myth. What's the AumSum elevator pitch? AumSum is reclaiming Asian flavors that have been diluted in the grocery store for so long. We're building kind of the new authority in Asian food CPG. Everything in the packaging seems busy, but somehow it's kind of a good busy. How much did you play around with that until you said thin? We basically threw out all the best practices on packaging right out of the gate. That was the fun we wanted to have with it. So I would say we spent a long time on branding and packaging. It was not an easy feat, but I wouldn't change a thing now. And how many times did you think you had it and then you kept going? I never thought I had it till we had it. What was the big change that you remember doing when you went, that's working? It was like a full new visual identity. We went through like multiple full visual identities, trashed them, scrapped them. It was like in the movies when you like crumple paper and it was that, but with full visual identities. Let's dissect the packaging for a minute. How did you land on such an unconventional font? Just a lot of dialogue and discussion, soul searching on like what we wanted our energy to be and that translated into that font that kind of looks like a tattoo. It's inspired by many different things. Tattoos and then also like the strokes of brush work, but not too on the nose. What's your dream for Omsum? Our dream for Omsum is to be a brand that continues to honor and celebrate Asian communities and the Asian communities we represent while being extremely prevalent in America to be a staple in American pantries. In people of all backgrounds, all ages, that I think is the challenge is like we never wanna be diluted in who we are. That's like the crux of the Omsum magic. How much of your success would you credit to your packaging? Packaging to me is nothing without soul behind it and I think that we do such a thoughtful job, mostly my sister, that's why I can say that, at telling stories every single day about who we are, what we care about, what our values are and the packaging is just helping us tell that story, but I think you really need to be able to peel back the layers and see that kind of genuine, no BS story. You're no stranger to great brands. You attended Harvard, then worked at Bain. How much do you credit those brands for your brand's success? I mean, they definitely played a big part in shaping who I am, but I think that was a very different type of brand credibility than what we're building today. How much of those brands are the real deal and how much of them are reputation? I think that both of them are the real deal. However, I think there are a lot of other schools that are the real deal, that are schools or institutions that are the real deal, that don't get any of that type of kind of aura and prestige around it. So it's not that they're not incredible they are, but there are so many other incredible schools and companies that don't get that type of recognition. So, yeah. You created this brand with your sister. How do you divide and conquer? So she is our creative, basically our creative spirit. So she does everything, community, content, organic and brand marketing. And then I do kind of the full range of other things. So I do product and R&D, performance marketing, fundraising, finance strategy and operations and logistics. And now we're at our flow code, flow question. So this season we have a sponsor called Flow Code. Flow Code is basically a next generation kind of QR technology that you can just take your phone, the camera scans it and you're immediately given to your own custom flow page. They will make one for you. So imagine you're gonna have an Omson one. Everyone will see on their screens there will be a flow code. What would you love your flow code to link to? I would love our flow code to connect to our recipe content. Like we're making a ton of fun recipes with a bunch of different creators and they kind of live on a part of our website that people don't know about. Like a flow code would make so much sense to help people figure out how else do I use this product beyond kind of the recipes that I have in the packaging. Does good packaging make food taste better? Potentially, just because I think so much of taste is bias that people come into it with, but at the end of the day, I still think it's just, it's gonna be tweaking perceptions around the edges. I don't think it's gonna make a good product. I've learned that lots of brands have a certain tribe that really helps fuel their success. Who's your tribe? Without a doubt, it's Asian Americans. That's a community we really wanna do right by. That's who we center in all of our marketing and all of our content. And obviously that doesn't mean we're not inclusive. Like our universe and our community beyond that stretches far and wide, but like our core kind of like rider-dye community just gotta be Asian Americans. How do you and Kim resolve disagreements? I mean, we just hash it out the way sisters do since 1994, that's what we've been doing. So we know how to do it well. Besides sales, what metrics do you look at to determine the health of your brand? I think one of the biggest ones that I'm looking at is a path to profitability, like from day one as a management consultant, I cannot. I just think that I wanna control our own destiny. And so we're paying attention to operational efficiency really early on. What's the best part of the job? Working with my sister. How do you make sure your brand resonates and doesn't just check boxes? I think a lot of brands kind of work backwards from what they think is an opportunity in terms of being a brand. Like, oh, there's a white space as a brand, which I get. And like, of course we take that lens at times, but more often than not, we don't actually come from that place, we rather just look inwards and say like, who do we wanna be and how does that translate into a brand? And what are our values and how does that translate into a brand? So I think it's just a different approach. What's been your biggest investment to date? People, definitely people. Are you a good cook? I like to think so. I saw Omson and a few other cool new brands were able to partner with Disney around Rhea and the Last Dragon. Did that move the needle? For us, that was really a chance to tell a genuine story about the first Southeast Asian princess and what that meant to us. So it was really great bringing that to our community and our community responded really well. Does it have super duper impact on business? Depends on how you define business. If you're just looking at like pure sales, like our own product launches were definitely stronger because they're like net new flavors and products. But if you're thinking like, okay, caliber of inbound partnerships, you're talking about like potential grocery retail wholesale partners, like, yes, absolutely. What's your kryptonite? Indomie noodles. If you had $1 to spend, where would you spend it? Indomie noodles for the team. What's the biggest lesson you've learned so far? As a founder, being very clear about who you are and who you exist for is really, really important. There will be a million people, million and one people telling you you should be this or that. And I think if you listen to all those people, everything gets diluted, nothing becomes powerful or genuine. So being really clear from that on the beginning and having a thought partner in that, like for me, that's my sister. Being young founders, if I didn't have her, I'm sure I would have been led astray, so. Who do you consider your competition? If you're talking like, okay, I'm getting an MBA, who are my competitors? Like other Asian food CPG brands. But when you talk about like the Omsom view, I would say that we don't view it that way at all. We really believe that kind of like rising tides, raise all boats. What acquisition channel has been the most successful? Purely just for us, it's been word of mouth, organic marketing and a flywheel with press. So probably those two channels, but in tandem, not alone. What keeps you up at night and what time do you wake up in the morning? At the end of the day, what keeps you up at night is just people relationships. Like I want to do right by people. I want to communicate clearly. I don't want to be misunderstood. So I really think about conversations and communication very intentionally. And then what time do I wake up? I'm, I start work at nine and I wake up at like 8.15. Work from home or office? Love working from home, but also the team culture is so important. So we're starting to do a couple of days in the office. Vanessa Pham, co-founder of Omsom. Thank you so much for coming on and answering some questions. Thank you for having me and this was so much fun. I'm Ian Wishingrad and I'll see you next time on I'm with the brand.