Digital Social Hour
How This 32-Year-Old Built a $1B Water Company Without Plastic | Shadi Bakour DSH #976
Fri, 13 Dec 2024
Discover how a 32-year-old entrepreneur transformed a sustainable water company into a $1B business by tackling the plastic crisis head-on! 🌊 From driving Uber to partnering with major celebrities and brands, Shadi shares the incredible journey of building Pathwater - the first reusable aluminum water bottle company changing the beverage industry. Learn shocking facts about microplastic pollution and why we consume a credit card's worth of plastic every week. Get an insider's look at how Pathwater disrupted the traditional beverage market, secured partnerships with SpaceX, Adidas, and The Sphere, and expanded to 70,000 retail stores worldwide. This eye-opening conversation reveals how sustainable innovation and authentic business practices can create massive success while solving real environmental problems. Find out why major venues are ditching plastic, how Pathwater landed in every 7-Eleven in Northern California, and what the future holds for sustainable beverages. Perfect for entrepreneurs, environmentalists, and anyone interested in building a purpose-driven business that makes a real difference. Watch now to learn how one company is revolutionizing the water industry and fighting plastic pollution! 🌿 #pathwaterceo #aluminumwaterbottle #promotionalitems #sustainabledevelopment #waronwaste CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:27 - Pathwater’s CEO on the plastic crisis 01:36 - The history of plastic 04:40 - Starting Pathwater at 22 08:01 - Raising capital and going door to door 13:15 - How They Got Celebrities to Invest 17:10 - Vision for the Future of Path Water 18:55 - Plastics in Cans 21:30 - Long-term Success Strategies 26:45 - Health and Environmental Impact 29:24 - How to Help the Environment 30:20 - Thanks for Watching APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] GUEST: Shadi Bakour https://www.instagram.com/shadibakour/ https://www.instagram.com/pathwater/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the plastic crisis and its impact on health?
It's crazy, honestly. I didn't even realize how bad it was until more and more research started coming out. We eat a credit card worth of plastic every single week in the U.S. through microplastics. It's like 0.5% of our brain matter is microplastics now. Oh my gosh.
All right, guys. Shadi Bakour here today, CEO of Pathwater. I'm sure you guys have seen them around. Thanks for coming on, man. Thank you. Great to be here. Absolutely, man. You were probably one of the first companies to use that material in your water, right?
Yeah, yeah. We were definitely the pioneers in the space, and we're still continuing to lead the pack in terms of sustainability in the entire beverage industry.
Chapter 2: How did Shadi Bakour start Pathwater?
Right. Because it probably costs way more, I'd assume, than plastic to use that.
Definitely. It costs like eight to ten times more to make that bottle. Wow. Yeah.
That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, the plastic, I mean, all this stuff with the microplastics is really concerning.
It's crazy, honestly. I didn't even realize how bad it was until more and more research started coming out. Right. Like, we eat a credit card worth of plastic every single week in the U.S. through microplastics. It's crazy. And that stays in your body for a while, right? Yeah. Like the body doesn't know how to. It's like 0.5% of our brain matter is microplastics now. Oh my gosh.
Yeah. I saw they just found it in brain. Yeah. It's crazy. They're finding it in heart. They're finding it in lungs. Everything.
Testicles. Scary, honestly. So hopefully we can do something about it. But it's going to the crazy thing is that most of the plastic that's been created in the world has been created over the past three years. Wow. So in the history of plastic, you know, it's been around for maybe six, seven decades now. The past three years, it's only ramping up. It's not like we're slowing down.
What caused that massive spike three years ago, you think? Probably pandemic helped out a lot with like Amazon and the stuff economy of just like pumping as many, you know, and then you have fast fashion, you have different things like that, that are just technology allows manufacturing to scale up at a much more rapid pace today than it did even 10, five, 10 years ago.
Yeah. And these companies are just trying to make money, but now all these health effects are kind of a side effect of that.
yeah yeah so hopefully i mean i think consumers are starting to become more aware like you said you literally walk to the end of the terminal oh yeah to get an aluminum ball of water instead of a plastic ball of water yeah because there's only one store in the vegas airport that sells the path water yeah every other store is like you know the plastic yeah plastic pretty much for now for now la has a glass one which is great but yeah most airports and stadiums are just plastic
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Chapter 3: What strategies did Pathwater use to secure celebrity investments?
Yeah, we have a big presence at LAX as well. Oh, you do? Nice. Yeah, so they banned single-use plastic bottles officially beginning of this year.
Oh, wow. Shout out to LA. That's one of the good things they're doing over there. Totally. Totally. Yeah, I remember when, because I grew up in Jersey, they banned, like, plastic shopping bags. I was really pissed. I was annoyed at first, to be honest. But now that I'm seeing all this stuff, I'm like, oh, that's probably a good thing. Yeah, it makes sense.
You know?
But at the time, it was so convenient to just not have to bring your own bag.
Chapter 4: What is the vision for the future of sustainable beverages?
Well, that's the thing is, like... Plastic might be one of the greatest inventions of all time. It's not a bad thing. But we as human beings have misused plastic to think that you can just take a plastic bottle of water, drink it for seven minutes, you toss it, It lasts for 700 years. Wow. It just doesn't make sense.
Yeah, that's way too long. Yeah, so. What was I going to say? So yours are out of aluminum or what's inside your bottles?
Yeah, so it's aluminum. It's a durable aluminum bottle. It's similar. It's pretty much the same bottle that you'll find at REI, Big Five, all these sporting goods stores. Empty for $20, $25, something like that. We sell it filled with water for around $3 or so on the shelf. That's good. So we're in about 70,000 retail stores today across the U.S. and internationally.
But we also partner with a lot of really cool organizations like the Sphere here in Vegas, SpaceX, Adidas, a bunch of others.
It's badass, man. Yeah, you grew this thing to a 10-figure business and you're still really young. 32, turned 33 in November. That's impressive, man. And you started this at 22, right? Yeah. So about 10 years now. Correct. Super young. And was this one of your first endeavors?
It was. I mean, I've had various projects in the past, some with mild success, but nothing to the scale of what we're building with Path. And yeah, I studied finance. I was trying to go into Wall Street. That was my thing. I was trying to make a bunch of money as quickly as possible, to be honest, and create something massive, create something scalable.
And when we kind of were brainstorming something simple, something scalable, we walked into a local convenience store in Northern California where I'm born and raised. And we just looked at the water aisle and started ideating on it. And we're like, hey, what if we just put it in a metal container instead of single-use plastic? And started doing more research, similar to what you said about
how Jersey banned plastic bags. We realized San Francisco banned plastic bags, you know, six years ago prior at the time. And that California banned plastic bags in,
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Chapter 5: How is Pathwater disrupting the beverage industry?
know five years after san francisco did so we saw like a trend coming a lot of trends come out of san francisco san francisco is a very progressive forward-thinking epicenter it's like the silicon valley right you see all these startups facebook etc etc coming out of the silicon valley so once we saw that trend happen we saw the same thing happening with plastic bottled water
Chapter 6: What are the health and environmental impacts of plastic?
And lo and behold, 2014, San Francisco banned the sale of plastic bottled water on public property. And then 2019, San Francisco International Airport was the first major airport to ban all single-use plastic bottles.
and at that time we took over the entire airport we just went in booked a flight on expedia to get through security got through security canceled the flight because there's 24 hour free cancellation every day for six months going up to that band we were just in there talking to everyone and replaced about four or five million bottles a year going through you know one of the largest international hubs in the world and uh that was a huge catalyst for us that's incredible
2019. So they were way ahead of the time because I feel like now people are like waking up to the plastic stuff.
Chapter 7: How can consumers help reduce plastic pollution?
Right. Now you see so many different aluminum bottled waters out there. Right. Still, we're the only ones that are doing it in a reusable container. So it still makes us unique. And the collabs that we do, no one's doing that. Mm hmm. But generally, at that time, 2019, there wasn't really much competition at all for us. And now it's becoming more and more crowded.
But I think you'll see brands pop up for a relatively short period of time. and then die off just because beverage industry is a tough industry. It requires a lot to get to a certain place where you're actually sustaining yourself without having to raise capital and just survive, basically. Were you raising capital back then, or did you self-fund everything?
No, I've been raising capital since day one. Always raising capital. There's always a conversation being had
It probably wouldn't have been possible without raising money, right? Because all the inventory and everything. Oh, yeah. I mean, we raised a lot of money.
Oh, yeah. So you raised money pre-revenue or was it? Yeah. I mean, pre-revenue. I mean, I didn't come from money. So like I was driving Uber and working at an Italian restaurant on the weekends, living at home with the parents, you know. Loading up 60 cases of water in the back of my beat up Prius with literally the bumper was hanging off the back, scraping the ground.
And when we started, I mean, we after took us like over a year to actually just raise a little bit of money, design the product. manufacture it, find the manufacturers, make the website, all that stuff. And then we started going door to door to 7-Elevens and we would just literally show up like we drew a map. We just went on Google, got every 7-Eleven in Northern California, 220 stores.
drew a route between all of them we had three guys two cars and we would just disperse you know 5 a.m show up in the parking lot of these 7-elevens and just sit there with like a red bull and some sunflower seeds literally stake out you know like in a cop movie and wait for the store owner to show up once they show up you just go in and you just make a deal at all costs you know
And if they absolutely did not take the product, then we would just be like, okay, I'm going to give you a case of water for free. And you're going to give me the best shelving. And I'm going to come back in a week. It's gonna sell and when it sells you're gonna buy more. I'm gonna give you a deal because everyone wants a deal but it's gonna sell and From there.
Well, we'll continue our relationship and that's how we built, you know in 30 days ruins every 7-eleven in Northern, California and that was like kind of the Nemesis that's so legendary.
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Chapter 8: What are the challenges of raising capital for a startup?
Right. Because you got to pay for the shipping and stuff.
yeah so i mean at the time we were just shipping it ourselves essentially we were delivering ourselves but but like i'm saying you gotta get it you gotta sell it into the store you gotta convince the buyer that this is gonna sell and then you gotta convince the consumer to actually go in the store and buy it pick it up off the shelf to show the buyers of that store that this product is actually going to move and make them money so that they'll buy more and
Yeah, I'd be curious the average length a product survives in like a Whole Foods or Sprouts.
Yeah, I think it really depends on what category. If you like poppy and olipop and these probiotic, prebiotic drinks, it's a relatively lower shelf life versus obviously water, kind of lasts forever and doesn't require refrigeration. And so there's different layers to it depending on the product type.
Absolutely. When did you see those celebrities and athletes start coming in to the company?
I mean, 2018 Guy Fieri was actually no Vernon Davis was the first athlete investor that came on board. It's like one of the most humble guys ever, you know, multi Superbowl. Yeah.
One of the best tight ends of all time.
Yeah. And, uh, so he invested and then, um, right after that Guy Fieri invested and, uh, But it was always just like I never thought I would be working with all of these.
We have Kevin Hart, Travis Scott, Becky G, Michael Jordan, Ninja, Fortnite, a lot of cool people that have invested, which I never – I had no access to these people, but it was just through someone that knew someone that knew someone. It's actually pretty crazy how – They say that everyone is only a few layers away from everyone in the world, like we're all connected.
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