For Lorenzo De Plano, entrepreneurship has never been about following a single playbook.
The entrepreneur and investor has spent much of his career moving between building companies, developing products, investing in startups and identifying opportunities in public markets. His ventures have included DPGW, Solace Technologies, Silicon Farms, and his latest venture, ALP Supply Co., while his work has been featured in Forbes, CNN, Inc., Entrepreneur and Business Insider.
Today, De Plano balances several roles. He is Chief of Strategy at Turning Point Brands and co-founder and CEO of ALP Supply Co., a user-driven consumer brand focused on modern alternatives to traditional tobacco products that he helped build from the ground up.
His experience has given him a perspective on entrepreneurship that is less about having all the answers and more about knowing how to move when an opportunity presents itself.
From Product Development to Entrepreneurship
De Plano’s path to ALP began well before the company even had a name.
He and the team behind ALP began developing the company’s products before formally establishing the brand. In 2024, the team partnered with Neil Patel and Tucker Carlson to develop and launch ALP Supply Co.
The decision to build around the product first was intentional. Rather than starting with a brand identity and then developing something to fit it, the team wanted to determine whether what they were creating was worth introducing to the community.
“I started working with the company before its inception. As one of the company’s founders, I have been fortunate to watch it grow from a drawing I had on a piece of paper to the unique and audacious company it is today,” De Plano says.
That progression reflects a broader philosophy that has followed De Plano throughout his career: ideas are only valuable when a team can execute them.
Keeping An Entrepreneurial Edge
One of the biggest challenges De Plano has encountered with ALP has been scaling without losing the speed that helped the company grow in the first place.
“Scaling the company while maintaining a fast and nimble team is paramount,” he explains.
He refers to this as maintaining the company’s “efficiency edge.” For De Plano, growth should not automatically mean adding layers of bureaucracy or slowing down decision-making. Instead, every new process and hire needs to be considered in terms of whether it helps the company operate more effectively over the long term.
That philosophy also shapes how he leads.
“It takes a village to raise a child, and a company is no different,” De Plano continues. “Our approach is to find great people, have radical transparency, and make fast decisions as a group.”
He does not see the CEO’s role as simply making decisions from the top. In fact, De Plano describes his job in a way that may be less conventional than the title suggests.
“The most important part of the role is to ensure the various parts of the ALP machine are effectively communicating with each other,” he says. “I view the role more as a ‘Chief Communications Officer’ role rather than an ‘executive’ role.”
The distinction is important to his leadership philosophy. As organizations become more complex, De Plano believes the ability to keep teams aligned can determine how quickly a company can respond to opportunities.
Image courtesy of Lorenzo De Plano
The Importance of the Right People
De Plano credits ALP’s growth to a combination of factors, including its partnership with Patel and Carlson, its relationship with Turning Point Brands and the people working inside the company.
For him, the human element is not secondary to strategy. It is the strategy.
He believes a growing company needs talented people who understand the broader objective rather than simply focusing on their individual responsibilities. Clear objectives, transparency and incentive structures help create that alignment.
That approach is particularly important during periods of rapid growth, when companies can easily become fragmented.
For De Plano, the goal is to grow without losing the ability to make decisions quickly.
The milestone that first convinced him ALP had momentum was surprisingly straightforward – “The day we launched.”
For someone who had been involved since before the company officially existed, the launch represented the transition from an idea into something that could be tested in the real world.
Giving Back As Part of the Business
De Plano also sees entrepreneurship as an opportunity to contribute beyond the company’s commercial objectives.
ALP has supported community-driven initiatives including Foster’s Outriders’ trade school scholarship program, the Warrior Dog Foundation, which provides care for retired military service dogs, and nonprofit organizations focused on reforestation.
The company’s approach to philanthropy is tied to the same values De Plano says guide its business decisions.
“We are a value driven company and as a value driven company we want to use our company’s equity to give back to causes that align with our team and community’s beliefs,” he adds.
Rather than treating charitable giving as a separate initiative, De Plano says community involvement is central to the company’s ethos.
That philosophy is something he expects to continue as the company grows.
Looking for Mavericks
The people ALP chooses to work with extend beyond its internal team.
The company has developed partnerships with athletes including Conor McGregor, Joe Pyfer, Son Heung-min and Bobby Dautrich. De Plano says the common thread is not simply athletic recognition, but whether a potential partner shares the company’s values.
“We are searching for mavericks and renegades who are unapologetically themselves,” he says.
That approach fits with De Plano’s broader view of partnerships. The right collaborator, whether an employee, athlete or business partner, should bring something more than name recognition.
They should bring conviction.
Image courtesy of Lorenzo De Plano
Building What Comes Next
De Plano is not particularly interested in treating ALP’s current growth as the finish line.
The company has several projects in development that he says will be revealed in the coming months and years. For now, he is keeping the details private.
He teases, “We are excited to share them with the world when they come out, but for now we want to keep our cards close to our chest.”
His immediate ambition is clear: grow ALP into an industry leader.
But when asked what success means to him personally, his answer goes beyond the size of the company or its position in the marketplace.
For De Plano, success means building companies that create meaningful experiences for the brand’s community, while simultaneously creating value for the company’s shareholders and employees. If the company can challenge established ways of doing business, innovate and disrupt along the way, then to Lorenzo De Plano, that’s obviously a plus.
His career has taken him from selling a company to a publicly traded company for north of $15 million dollars, to leading the product development and new ventures divisions of a large organization, to investing in early-stage companies and finally to building ALP from an idea on paper to one of the fastest-growing CPG companies in the United States.
The common thread is a willingness to move.
Build the team. Make the decision. Learn from the outcome. Then keep going.
For De Plano, that may be the most important part of entrepreneurship: staying fast enough to recognize the next opportunity while building an organization capable of pursuing it.
Spencer Hulse is the Editorial Director at Grit Daily. He is responsible for overseeing other editors and writers, day-to-day operations, and covering breaking news.