Executive Interview Series: Jahaan Ansari on On Science, Trust, and Transparency as Performance Levers For Modern Brands

For this edition of our Executive Interview Series, WITHIN’s Founder and CEO, Joe Yakuel, sat down with Jahaan Ansari, Founder and CEO of Gainful. Jahaan is a Forbes 30 under 30 winner and has driven Gainful’s success as one of the most trusted supplement brands in the U.S.

Joe Yakuel: Jahaan, for people who may not know the Gainful story, how do you describe what you’ve built?

Jahaan: Gainful is a performance nutrition brand built on the belief that supplements should be both clean and curated. Our goal isn’t to overwhelm consumers with 100 SKUs; it’s to guide them toward the right fit and build trust through products rooted in real science. Over the last eight years, we’ve scaled to become a market leader in personalized and clean supplements like protein, hydration, and pre-workout, with an emphasis on transparency, ingredient clarity, formulation rigor, and education.

Joe: A lot of brands talk about transparency. You build your brand around it. What does transparency actually mean to you?

Jahaan: Transparency isn’t a slogan, it’s a part of the DNA to the business. It’s how you formulate, how you package, how you communicate, how you price. The supplement industry historically has been plagued by hidden doses, proprietary blends, and promises without evidence. Our approach is the inverse.

If you want to earn trust, show your work. Show your dosages. Show your data. Explain why an active is in the formula, not just what’s in it. That’s where brands win today.

Joe: Your background is interesting because you built Gainful from zero into a nationally recognized brand. Was trust always your primary lever?

Jahaan: Consumers want a brand they can trust. They may not be food scientists or dieticians, but they can smell honesty. We’ve always built with the assumption that the consumer at the receiving end deserves the dignity of intelligence.

Our tone, our science, our packaging, it all ladders to one idea: “We’re here to partner with you. Whatever your goal is, we want to help you get there.”

Joe: At WITHIN, we talk a lot about creative and media operating as one organism, not silos. How does that tie to what you’re saying?

Jahaan: That resonated with me the first time I heard your positioning. Science, trust, and transparency only matter if they show up consistently in the experience, not just the product.

If your product is clinically aligned but your landing page is hype-driven and your ads are clickbait, then the trust collapses at the point of impact. Brands win when strategy, creative, and media all tell the same truth. Consumers reward coherence.

Joe: So when you think about creative today: rapid iteration, TikTok-native assets, UGC, etc., are there lines you don’t cross?

Jahaan: Of course, there are. You can be playful, but you cannot be irresponsible. “Better creative” is not automatically “more sensational.” For us, creative that works is creative that educates. We don’t dumb things down; we make them accessible.

The brands that win in supplements in 2030 won’t look like the loudest ones today; it’ll be the brands that are the most understandable.

Joe: If you had to boil this entire conversation into one sentence, what’s the single most important principle for brands trying to build long-term value?

Jahaan: Trust compounds faster than impressions. Impressions are rented. Trust is owned.

Every single decision, from formulation to ad copy, should be treated as a trust deposit or a trust withdrawal. If you do that, you build a brand that lives longer than the ROAS spreadsheet of the moment.