Brandon Fishman had already learned how to make people buy things online when he encountered a less cooperative audience: the people who might finance his coffee company. VitaCup could attract customers. It could also run through cash. At one point in its first year, he recalled, his credit cards were exhausted and the bank balance had reached zero. A business can be busy right up to the moment it cannot pay for being busy.
His response was a weekend of calls and emails, followed by money arriving on Monday. The episode complicates the familiar entrepreneur’s progress report. Customers, growth, and survival were happening on different schedules. Fishman had to keep all three appointments.
He had come to coffee after co-founding Internet Marketing Inc., or IMI, with Brent Gleeson. Today he is CEO and co-founder of Prime Team Agency, back in the business of helping other brands sell. Between those agencies sits the experience of owning a brand himself. He has had an unusually thorough opportunity to inspect both sides of the invoice.
Before the coffee, the condos
Fishman grew up in Philadelphia, earned his BBA at Emory in 2003, and went on to graduate study at the University of San Diego. Before IMI, there was NewCondosOnline.com, a property advertising business. Selling space on a website meant learning how to bring prospective buyers to it. That capability proved more portable than the property market.
As housing weakened, Fishman and Gleeson moved into marketing services. Their work widened to include search, paid advertising, websites, content, and conversion. By 2015, IMI had more than 100 people and offices in San Diego and Las Vegas. Its clients included Mastercard, Aria, AMC Theatres, and Belkin. The work behind finding buyers had become something other businesses would pay them to do.
Growth gave the agency public milestones. It reached No. 185 on the 2012 Inc. 500|5000 and placed third on the San Diego Business Journal’s 2013 list of fast-growing private companies. The agency credited planning, business development, clients, and talent. That is a fairly sober list beside a dramatic growth ranking. Somebody still has to assemble the team and do the work after the award photograph.
The successful business with an empty bank account
Fishman eventually wanted more of his time concentrated on a business of his own. An agency offers variety; it also divides the working day among other people’s ambitions. In 2017, he and fellow digital marketing executive Roman Bills launched VitaCup. Coffee gave them a product that customers could buy repeatedly, through their own website, Amazon, and eventually retail stores.
His advertising background helped create demand quickly. By the time he returned to Emory’s Entrepreneurship Summit in 2018, VitaCup had reached a million dollars in monthly sales within its opening months. He also described an exhausting search for funding, including an offer that collapsed on Christmas Eve. The sales number belonged in a presentation. The timing of the money belonged in his calendar, with considerable urgency.
It is tempting to let fast sales settle the question of whether a company is working. Fishman’s account leaves the question open a little longer. More orders require more capacity to fulfill them. Advertising has a bill attached. A promising response from customers can increase the pressure before it eases it. The coffee business was supplying a practical examination in the consequences of successful marketing.
The fundraising became part of the work rather than a brief prelude to it. His account also gives credit to his wife, Sydney, for encouraging him through those periods. Sydney’s encouragement appears in his account alongside the calls and emails, as the company kept asking more of him.
The investor who knew him already
One of the relationships that mattered was with Alison Minter at North Castle Partners. Fishman first approached her in 2017. VitaCup was too small for a partnership then, but the conversation continued. When the firm returned, the business had a longer record to examine. Persistence here involved keeping a relationship alive while giving the other person more evidence to work with.
In October 2018, North Castle announced an investment alongside First Beverage Ventures, which had already backed VitaCup. The announcement named both Fishman and Bills as founders. Fishman credited First Beverage with work on retail strategy, branding, and expanding the team. Money arrived with people who could help decide what to do next.
Meanwhile, the IMI chapter reached its own transaction. REQ announced its acquisition in August 2019, combining the businesses into an organization with 120 employees and $50 million in annual revenue. Jason Brigham was IMI’s CEO at that announcement. Fishman’s place in the story is as co-founder and former CEO. The company continued beyond the period when he had been its public face.
VitaCup kept adding its own markers: it appeared at No. 1,619 on the 2021 Inc. 5000. A ranking offers a dated measurement of growth, rather than a verdict on every year that follows. For Fishman, the continuing question was how to turn the first order into the next one.
The customer on the other side of the invoice
Running VitaCup also made Fishman a buyer of agency work. In a public account of working with DimNiko, he described an advertising problem involving creative fatigue and campaigns that needed frequent changes. He credited the outside team with improving how long the creative could run and reducing acquisition costs. Even someone who had sold marketing expertise could benefit from another team’s approach.
That experience helps explain the return to agency ownership. Prime Team’s company profile dates its founding to 2023. Fishman leads it alongside co-founders Ryan Savage and Jason McLellan. Its work covers Amazon, TikTok Shop, and Walmart, where a brand’s fortunes depend on more than a campaign switched on in an advertising console.
In his founder’s letter, Fishman connects Prime Team directly to the years spent operating VitaCup and working with agencies. He emphasizes experienced staff, continuity, detailed reporting, and creative testing. The connection is practical: a client needs to know who will do the work and whether the resulting sales make economic sense. An attractive chart can still leave a difficult question unanswered.
In his recent public advice, he starts marketplace audits at the individual product’s profit and loss. Advertising, fees, fulfillment, and returns can absorb money that the sales total makes easy to overlook. He also argues for testing product images before increasing advertising spend. The advice brings the discussion down to a specific item, a specific cost, and a decision someone can change. There is less ceremony in that than in a growth ranking, but considerably more help for the person who has to decide what to spend tomorrow.
- Sell the serviceInternet Marketing Inc.
- Run the brandVitaCup
- Build the next agencyPrime Team
A 2023 Prime Day recap shows him thinking across those moving parts. He described coordinating roughly 40 influencers to post in a morning window, using Instagram Stories to send people directly to the deal. Email, text messages, video, and advertising joined the effort. His thank-you extended from product development through operations and social marketing. The detail matters because a shopper sees a single offer while a company has to coordinate the machinery behind it. Fishman was discussing the timing of links and the work of several teams, with a sales event offering an immediate test of their preparation.
The founder stops being the hiring system
Fishman’s hiring commentary contains a useful admission. He used to rely on his own impression of a candidate. He later replaced that approach with a sequence that includes a practical assignment using real data and interviews with team members. A founder’s enthusiasm now has company.
He described one brand-manager search that attracted 1,200 applications, with roughly ten candidates interviewed after screening. The exercise asks applicants to analyze information and present their findings. It gives colleagues a chance to assess the person who may join them. It also gives the founder something more concrete than a good conversation to trust.
“Good talent is worth the wait.”
Brandon Fishman, on changing his hiring process
There is a lighter companion to all this seriousness about execution. Fishman once misspelled a client’s name on the opening slide of a major presentation; his salesperson’s proposal contained three spelling errors in its first paragraph. The pitch suffered accordingly. Expertise in persuading people does not confer immunity from proofreading. A company can have the right strategy and still begin by calling the customer the wrong thing.
A smaller screen, a longer evening
Some of his more revealing details are ordinary. In 2023, Fishman described taking instant coffee sticks on trips rather than buying expensive airport coffee. The founder who has spent years selling a daily ritual still notices the price of a cup. He also recorded a sixth-anniversary thank-you to VitaCup customers, stressing the difficulty of competing with much larger coffee companies.
Another public reflection concerned putting his phone away during his daughter’s bedtime. She noticed the difference and asked him to keep doing it. His conclusion was brief: “Work can always wait.” It is a striking line from someone whose early company stories involved urgent calls and money needed by Monday.
The responsibilities remain substantial. His current public writing ranges from marketplace economics to creators and TikTok Shop. But his own accounts now make room for decisions about where attention goes: toward the candidate’s actual work, the customer’s next purchase, the team managing an account, or a child who would prefer the phone put down. Fishman has spent much of his career finding attention for businesses. At home, at least for the evening, he has found a place to give it back.