WORTH WATCHING:
Stick Your Nose In
The Advantage · Mike Wystrach × Oliver Trevena · 46 min
This week I sat down with Oliver Trevena, co-founder of Caliwater, a cactus water made from prickly pear. He started it with Vanessa Hudgens, a friend of 17 years.
At 21 Oliver was a theater kid in England, about to leave on a cruise ship tour singing and dancing. Walking back from a club one Friday night, he was attacked and left with basically no teeth and no jaw. He took the compensation, 13,000 pounds, and moved to LA. He says it was the worst thing that has happened to him, "but without a doubt, the best thing."
Somebody offered him a TV hosting gig and asked if he had done it before. He told them of course, loads. "Complete lie." Next thing he was on a red carpet interviewing people, and that turned into his own show and the big award shows.
WHAT I LOVED ABOUT IT:
He was modeling for AllSaints, one of his favorite brands growing up, and ended up in the mix with the ownership group talking about bringing it to the US. "Just because I stuck my nose in," he said. "Instead of just sitting on the sidelines being like, I'll take a picture, you get involved."
His reps did not love it. "You gotta pick a line. Are you doing business or are you doing entertainment?"
He kept both. Once the business side was paying his bills, he was not walking into auditions needing the job to pay rent. He calls that having a Plan B, and he thinks it made his Plan A better.
I could not agree more. That has been my biggest argument with founders taking secondary. Some old school investors want founders so hungry they can barely get by. Tell me a real life situation where that works. When you are in a high stress environment, you do not show up as your best. I always tell people you are the most attractive when you are in a committed relationship, because you are not trying to get anyone.
THE LINE THAT STUCK
"You start with this door, there's always a couple more doors off to the left and right that you could probably open and might lead to something else."
He said it a few seconds before telling me he never went to business school. Watch him explain it →
MY 20-SECOND RECAP
if you do not have the full 46 minutes
→The product has to speak for itself. Caliwater has a long list of famous backers who put in their own money. Oliver: "no friend is giving me money for something they don't like."
→A third and fourth competitor can be good news. When more cactus waters showed up, Oliver called his lawyers to ask if he could sue. They told him, "no, this is amazing." Same thing at Freshly. People told us the space was crowded, and it kind of was, with Blue Apron and HelloFresh in it. It is super hard and expensive to educate the consumer, and they were doing it too.
→He kept it flat. Retailers and friends kept asking for carbonation. Caliwater never added it, and now hydration is trending.
→Poppi was not an overnight win. The headline was the PepsiCo sale for nearly $2 billion, about seven years after it launched. Oliver on the years before it: "They don't write about that." Caliwater is launching in Walmart nationwide, years after friends and possible investors first asked him why it was not in Walmart.
→There is a cost. Oliver told me it is hard to take care of his mental and physical health at the pace he is going.
PRO MOVE
Pick one company you already work with or buy from. Email someone there this week and ask how the business actually makes money.
