Mike, the founder of Liquid Death, explains how he validated the brand on Facebook before ever having a physical product — building more followers than Aquafina and attracting distributor interest within three months using just a $3,000 ad spend and a $1,500 video. He also breaks down the real differences between spring water and reverse-osmosis water, and how a physical can in hand changed the fundraising conversation with Science Inc.
Speakers: Mike (Liquid Death founder), Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Launching on Social Before Having a Product [00:00:00]
Mike: There’s nobody who’s writing me a check for the idea of Liquid Death. They’re like, “You’re stupid, you’re crazy.” We launched Liquid Death in a bit of a backwards way than most beverage brands launch, which was we launched a year before we even had a product.
We launched Liquid Death on social media before we ever had a physical product. Because we knew that with such a crazy idea — people are like, “Who would ever buy this? It’s a negative name, it says ‘death,’ retailers will never carry it” — yadda yadda. So I knew I had to prove it out as a concept on social first, before I could actually make people feel like I was de-risking this thing enough to actually raise money.
So we designed the can to look like a realistic 3D can, we shot a $1,500 video, and then we put it on Facebook. No Twitter, no Instagram — just Facebook. We put maybe three grand in paid media behind the video.
Cut to three months later: we have more Facebook followers than Aquafina. The video has three million views. And we’ve got a range of DMs — “Hi, I am a 7-Eleven franchisee in the Midwest, how do I get this in my stores?” or “Hi, I’m the biggest non-alcoholic beverage distributor in New York City — Big Geyser — how do we talk to a sales representative to distribute this?”
And we didn’t even have a product yet. No idea how we were even going to really make it.
Using Social Traction to Raise a Friends-and-Family Round [00:01:45]
Mike: So then I used all that social traction and distributor interest and retailer interest to start raising a small friends-and-family round so we could actually produce a physical product. Because with cans, the minimums are really, really high. A quarter million cans is the lowest you can actually produce with a can manufacturer, so it’s a little bit capital-intensive just to even start playing the game.
Sam: How much does a quarter million units cost? What would that run you?
Mike: I mean, it all depends what you’re filling in there, but you’re talking maybe $150,000, $200,000, $250,000 just to kind of get started doing cans. So yeah, once we raised a little bit we started producing cans.
Water Sourcing: Why Austria? [00:03:00]
Mike: We source our water in Austria, in the Alps.
Sam: What does that actually mean? Whenever people say “spring water from this mountain” — my head is always like, is this BS? What does this mean? Is it true? Does it matter? Why do you go get your water from Austria in the Alps? Is that just branding, or is there something about water I don’t know?
Mike: Let’s be totally honest — water, for the most part, is water. Like, if you had people blind taste-test Fiji versus Evian versus whatever, can they really tell the difference? Probably not, right?
Sam: I’ve actually done this test many times. As an Evian drinker — Evian versus Fiji taste similar to me. But Evian versus Crystal Geyser, it tastes different. I’ve bet money on it and gotten it right.
Mike: Yeah, and I think the things that affect the taste of water are the natural minerals — how much of them are in the water — and the pH. Is it more acidic or more basic? And those minerals affect how acidic or basic it is.
For us, our water comes from the Alps. It literally goes right from the mountain into the can. Obviously it goes through filters that remove debris, and we put it through a pasteurization process to make sure it’s all clean — but everything in that water is the natural mineral profile that’s been built up probably over hundreds of years in the mountain. It’s naturally alkaline at 7.8 or 7.9 pH. It’s got a nice mineral level and a nice mouthfeel when you’re drinking it.
Spring Water vs. Reverse Osmosis [00:05:30]
Mike: Almost every major water brand in the U.S. — Smart Water, Essentia, Aquafina, Dasani — most of those brands are using tap water. They put it through reverse osmosis, which strips everything out: all the natural minerals, all the bad stuff, everything. So it’s literally just empty water. Then they have to add minerals back in to make it taste good — adding the natural things that occur in water, but artificially, at the factory — to create something that has a decent pH and a decent mineral profile.
Those are kind of the two options.
When you call something “spring water,” it’s very strict from the FDA. You cannot alter the original mineral profile of the water. So even if you take it off the mountain, if you put it through reverse osmosis and strip out the natural minerals and add them back in, you can’t call it spring water anymore — because you’ve altered the original thing.
So our water is just how it comes off the mountain. It’s its own perfect thing. We don’t have to go through the whole process of using municipal tap water, stripping everything out, adding stuff back in, and creating a water.
Shaan: Okay. And I’ve never actually had Liquid Death. It’s flat water, right? Not sparkling and not flavored?
Mike: We have a sparkling version, but we have still and sparkling, yeah.
The Science Inc. Deal and the Physical Can [00:07:45]
Shaan: So just to finish the story — you did the social media proof of concept, then you figured out you needed a couple hundred grand for the minimum production run, you raised the friends-and-family round. Was that from Science, or did Science come after?
Mike: Science came after. We raised the friends-and-family round just to cover the smallest run of product we could do.
Then once I finally had a physical can of Liquid Death for the first time — which was around October 2018 — we had a guy who knew someone at Science Inc. who said, “You guys should really talk to Science, they’d probably be all over this.”
So we went and met with Science and brought the physical can. And once someone could actually hold it — it wasn’t just us showing digital images from social — it made it completely different. They just understood the magic of it. How cool it would be walking around with this. How into it people would be.
So that’s when we decided to do a deal with Science. Over the next two months they helped us gear up our direct-to-consumer launch, and we launched online in January of the following year.