Of gross sales DEFI pledges to fund women-owned startups, even before the company turns a profit.
Tatyana Jones spent nearly 15 years inside the machine, running iconic brands like DOVE Chocolate, Combos, and Theraflu as a marketing executive at Mars, GSK, and Bausch and Lomb. She had the MBA from NYU Stern and the resume most people spend a career chasing. Then she walked away to make a snack that did not exist yet.
The idea came from home. Jones grew up with buckwheat as a daily staple, a nod to her Ukrainian childhood, and she saw an obvious gap on American shelves: nobody was building indulgent, functional snacks around it. So she created DEFI Snacks, short for Delicious Energizing Fitness Indulgence, a 70 percent cacao chocolate packed with sprouted organic buckwheat and 26 grams of protein per bag, using both fast and slow-absorbing proteins.
She built it with a conscience baked in. Jones committed DEFI to giving 1 percent of gross sales to women-owned startups, and she structured it against gross rather than net so the money flows even during the early years before profit. The award-winning lineup has already landed quick retail wins and is expanding.
"She left the safe corporate seat to build the snack nobody else would."
Plenty of executives dream about leaving to build their own thing and never do. Jones used everything the corporate years taught her, then bet it on a category she believed in and wired giving into the model from day one. That is what it looks like to build on purpose.
This is the founder move ANF loves to spotlight. Take the skills the big company gave you, walk out the door, and build the thing you actually believe in.
She spent 15 years building other people's brands. Now she is building her own.