David Johnson

CEO & Co-Founder of Genexa

David Johnson is the CEO and CoFounder of Genexa, the first clean medicine company that makes medicine with the same active ingredients people need, but without the artificial ones they don’t. Genexa offers cleaner, effective, over-the-counter medicines spanning all traditional categories of OTC medicine, including pain and fever, cold and flu, and digestion and allergy, with products for infants, kids, and adults alike. We talked to David to discuss Genexa’s clean products,

By Jada Hogue

their effectiveness, and advice he would give to other trailblazing entrepreneurs.

What do you believe makes Atlanta a good place for companies to be headquartered?

When deciding to relocate Genexa’s headquarters in 2020, we went through a nationwide search. We ultimately chose Atlanta because of its vibrant business community, leadership in the manufacturing space, and its diverse and dynamic talent pool. My co-founder and I felt that Genexa

We’re a privately owned, people-centric company, and the big pharma companies in this category don’t have that flexibility. They are understandably focused on their bottom lines and have used the same artificial inactive ingredients for years. Change takes time, but between the innovations we’re bringing to market and the shifting desires of consumers, we feel confident that we are moving in the right direction to create the clean products people want and deserve.

What do you believe are the major problems with modern medicine?

I think competition is important for every industry and allows for more innovation that ultimately benefits the consumer. I am very grateful to the many retailers that have embraced the innovations we are bringing to the industry by giving Genexa shelf space and allowing us to expand our retail presence so that customers finally have a clean choice in their medicine aisles. We’re currently in 45,000 storefronts across the United States and counting.

Was getting adequate funding an issue when starting Genexa? If so, how did you all overcome that issue?

Last year we closed a very successful and oversubscribed financing round, breaking the record for the largest Series A in consumer pharma history. When we sat down with investors and talked them through what we were doing as well as the larger shift to clean that every other consumer segment was experiencing, they recognized the opportunity quickly.

We are fortunate to have many notable celebrities invested in the company as well. Hollywood has traditionally been ahead of the curve when it comes to wellness movements. Celebrities from Gwyneth Paltrow to Donald Glover have signed on as investors. Having celebrity investors in the company has provided new platforms for bringing education and awareness around the clean medicine movement to new audiences.

Can you describe a discouraging experience you’ve had when starting Genexa and how you overcame it?

After finding a manufacturer that gave us a chance at research and development, we proceeded to fail at our first few attempts to create a clean delivery system. It was very discouraging, but we never lost sight of our mission.

We persevered and believed that we could deliver a clean product to consumers without loosening our standards. Today, we’re very proud of the robust Ex List we have created and published on our website detailing all the unnecessary inactive ingredients we promise to never put in our medicines.

What are some personal qualities that you believe led both yourself and Max Spielberg to success?

Neither of us had any industry experience before we started Genexa, allowing us to bring a fresh perspective to our work. We’re also very determined people and have persevered through a lot of roadblocks which has been critical to our success thus far.

What are some of your long-term business goals?

Our goal is to develop a clean option for every over-the-counter medicine that is currently on the market. Beyond product development, we’re hopeful that long-term our innovations will have significant ripple effects on the industry and be a motivator for the FDA to rethink what ingredients we deem to be “safe” in the U.S., as compared to the European Union and other governing bodies that have already banned some of the ingredients that are commonly used in our over-the-counter medicines in the United States.

How did you handle and overcome rejection in the company’s early stages?

You must take everything in stride. If making clean medicine was easy to do, someone else would have done it by now. Our children and our families have been key motivators to keep going. Becoming new dads was what inspired this idea to begin with – we knew that kids, and people everywhere, deserved real choices - clean options without all the common allergens, artificial dyes, sugars, and more.

What is some advice that you’d like to give trailblazing entrepreneurs?

Do something that makes you uncomfortable. To be a true disruptor and challenger brand, you must do something different and get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Genexa’s products are available in Walmart, Target, CVS, Kroger, Target, Walgreens, Whole Foods, and Sprouts, as well as online at Genexa.com and Amazon.

Follow on Instagram and Twitter @Genexa.