Hudson Davis-Ross (also published as Hudson Gaines-Ross) is the co-founder and CEO of Plant People, the Austin-based functional wellness brand whose gummies rank as the #1 best-selling supplement at Whole Foods Market, Sprouts and Erewhon. A Brooklyn-born, Brown-educated serial entrepreneur, he previously co-founded nitro cold brew company RISE Brewing Co. and branding consultancy Crosby Advisory, was COO of wellness brand ALOHA, and launched divisions at Gilt Groupe. He started Plant People in his apartment after he and co-founder Gabe Kennedy bonded over recovery from spinal surgeries, and in November 2025 raised a roughly $7.9M Series A led by private-equity firm Manna Tree.
Rashad Hossain is the founder and CEO of RYZE Superfoods, the mushroom coffee brand he started in his mother's basement in March 2020 and grew into a multimillion-dollar direct-to-consumer company. A Harvard economics graduate who quit a brand-marketing job at Kraft Heinz to build a coffee he would actually want to drink, he blended six functional mushrooms with organic arabica into a product that has racked up more than 175,000 customer reviews. He earned a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Food & Drink list in 2022. Before RYZE he founded Keepspace, a social journaling platform that won a $50K Harvard innovation award and later became the HOW I RYZE gratitude app.