Capital One featured in Forbes profile of MaryRuth Organics

Every entrepreneur brings a unique set of priorities to a financing transaction. 

For MaryRuth Ghiyam, who founded the vitamins and supplements company MaryRuth Organics in 2014, one important goal was to boost her and her family’s ownership stake. From 2021 to 2024, a private equity firm held a minority ownership interest in her Los Angeles-based company. When that firm decided to exit, Ghiyam faced the challenge of finding the best way to fund continued growth and balance other requirements. 

A team of bankers from Capital One’s Food, Beverage and Agriculture group saw great potential in Mary’s business and sat down with Ghiyam to discuss her plan for the company. In October of 2025, MaryRuth’s closed on a $420 million financing package that was arranged by Capital One and included a significant commitment of the bank’s own capital.  

Ghiyam has built a fast-growing company that today has more than $600 million in annual sales. Earlier this year, Forbes published a profile that charted her journey, from bootstrapping the business on her Capital One Spark credit card to entertaining private equity offers at valuations anearing $1 billion

The following is excerpted with permission from “How The Founder Of MaryRuth’s Vitamin Supplements Built A Billion-Dollar Business,” originally published by Forbes.

By Chloe Sorvino, Forbes Staff Writer

It’s not every day that a bank approaches an entrepreneur and offers to raise more than $400 million in debt to help them control nearly all outside investment in the business, but that’s what happened in August 2025 when 10 Capital One bankers sat down with MaryRuth Ghiyam, the founder of MaryRuth’s, an organic supplements company based in Los Angeles.

“They really went to bat for me,” says Ghiyam, 41, who is co-CEO of the company. (The other co-CEO is Jonathan Klein, who assumed the title in April 2025 after serving as chief legal officer for the prior five years.)

Ghiyam was no stranger to Capital One. After she founded the business in 2014, Ghiyam covered early expenses by racking up thousands of dollars on her Capital One Spark card. Ghiyam says the business, which sells liquid vitamins, gummies and other supplements in more than 300 different forms, has been profitable since day one. 

MaryRuth’s is now an estimated $600 million (trailing 12-month revenue) business with an estimated EBITDA profit of $125 million, or margins of about 20%. Even after accounting for the $420 million in debt Capital One raised for the business (putting in a large chunk itself), Forbes estimates that the company is worth at least $1.5 billion.

“My face is on the bottle. Most consumers think that I’m an avatar or a cartoon, which I like. I use that when we raise money,” says Ghiyam. “I always say, ‘The brand is never about me.’ They don't even know I exist.”

The Capital One deal, which closed in October 2025 and sets the loan due date in 2030, helped the former holistic health coach maintain roughly 97% ownership for herself and her family.

It hasn’t always been easy financially for Ghiyam. When she started MaryRuth’s, she was on the hook for $700,000 of her mother’s personal debt. She didn’t pay herself a salary for nine years.

“It’s not easy,” she adds. “It’s been a long journey.”

Ghiyam was a real estate agent for Douglas Elliman for a few years before she started a private holistic health practice in New York City in March 2013. She found herself advocating for liquid supplements because taking capsules on an empty stomach often leads to nausea. But there weren’t good liquid supplements for sale in stores or online, so she decided to make her own.

Her original concept was she would sell large bottles of a liquid morning vitamin and another for nighttime–one supplement bottle that an entire family could take. “A shot in the morning, a shot before bed,” Ghiyam says. 

Her first product, a raspberry-flavored morning liquid multivitamin, which launched on Amazon in the fall of 2014, “could be ubiquitous–globally, everywhere, all the time, like Coca-Cola,” says Ghiyam. “This should be in everyone's fridge the way that Arm & Hammer baking soda has 95% household penetration.”

During the early days of Mary Ruth’s, Ghiyam says it was her Capital One card, with its $50,000 limit, that allowed her to manage the brand’s cash flow, which could sometimes be negative. That’s because even though the brand was profitable, manufacturers demand cash up front and nationwide retailers require order sizes that can each cost five to seven figures-plus, and products don’t earn back for several months.

By 2019, six years into the business, MaryRuth’s was bringing in $23 million in annual revenue. Then the pandemic had more people than ever both buying supplements and shopping online, which boosted sales nearly three times over to $84 million.

But Ghiyam “still didn’t think we were safe.” She had no idea about how valuations worked. “We weren’t thinking about multiples,” she recalls.

In 2021, all of that changed. Fort Worth-based TPG Capital approached Ghiyam, whose business had grown over 60% to $135 million in annual sales. As she recalls, TPG offered Ghiyam a deal that valued her business at $250 million, or a multiple of 1.85 times sales.

“We didn't even have a banker,” Ghiyam recalls.

She then fielded more offers, and the valuation doubled. She recalls Boston-based private equity firm Summit Partners valued the business around $500 million, as did Los Angeles-based Butterfly Equity. New York City based alternative asset manager Blackstone bid higher at about $525 million. Ghiyam turned down Blackstone, she says, because their deal would have had her “step down day one.” She was going to sign with Summit and Butterfly for 20% stakes each, but then Summit dropped out. In August 2021, Ghiyam agreed to go with Butterfly, which got about 40% and ultimately valued the business around $400 million.

Ghiyam says the investors “demanded excellence” and helped the business more than double annual sales to more than $270 million by 2023. “They are tough graders and never really told me that I was doing a good job, but it made me work so hard,” Ghiyam recalls.

Just two years into the deal, Butterfly Equity, which has also invested in the restaurant chain Qdoba, baby carrot processor Bolthouse Fresh Foods and Duckhorn wines, told Ghiyam that they “needed to sell” and “give money back to investors,” according to Ghiyam. 

Butterfly denies this. Butterfly says the firm wanted to exit because the business was performing well and had received some interest from potential buyers, so they decided to explore a potential transaction. It’s still a short hold, even by private equity standards, where firms typically look to exit within three to five years. 

At first, Ghiyam and the board decided they wanted to sell to Boston-based Advent International, she recalls, but then the $94 billion (assets under management) buyout shop never placed a final bid. (Advent declined to comment.) Ghiyam recalls that “they didn't believe we could do the numbers we said we could do, but we actually crushed them.” (The business projected it would hit $89 million in EBITDA in 2025, and MaryRuth’s actually ended up topping $100 million in EBITDA for the first time that year.)

“Sometimes rejection is protection,” Ghiyam says. “We’re a highly profitable company. We still had a failed process.”

Butterfly continued to push for an exit. Eventually they secured a deal where New York City based King Street got a little under 3% ownership and Butterfly rolled over $50 million into King Street. Ghiyam also bought more shares, ending with 97% ownership.

Yet the financing rollercoaster wasn’t over. Ghiyam soon heard from Paul Baisley at Capital One, a managing director who heads up food and beverage deals for its commercial bank. MaryRuth’s ended up with $420 million in debt on its books, but given its high profitability, that wouldn’t be too much trouble to pay down.

Baisley, whose division has deals worth a total of $6.8 billion in debt across 130 different borrowers as of December 31, 2025 (updated from $7 billion across 140 borrowers in the original Forbes publication to reflect year-end 2025 data*), says MaryRuth’s impressed him as one of private consumer packaged goods companies that is “actually doing better” than larger, publicly traded ones.

“What I loved about MaryRuth and her approach is, it's very data-driven. She talks about the green shoots, following where her clients want to play,” says Baisley. “If people are pivoting to creatine, she can pivot to creatine. If people are focusing on more gummy bears, she can do that. If it's a liquid vitamin, she can do that. She's very good at finding those green shoots.”

The concept of “finding the green shoots” is one that Baisley now employs regularly with his team and other founders. “We've been with her from the beginning,” says Baisley, “we think she's got a long runway and that this is just the beginning.”

Capital One’s Food, Beverage & Agriculture team delivers extensive commercial bank solutions, specialized investment research and centralized underwriting across the entire food value chain. We directly support producers, processors, manufacturers, distributors and retailers through strategic acquisitions, corporate recapitalizations, debt refinancing and business expansion strategies. Accelerate your company’s growth with tailored financing from our Food, Beverage & Agriculture team at https://www.capitalone.com/commercial/industry-expertise/fba/

 

* Capital One reported data as of 12/31/2025.