Digital Social Hour
How This 32-Year-Old Built a $1B Water Company Without Plastic | Shadi Bakour DSH #976
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
Full Episode
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. 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. 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.
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