How This 32-Year-Old Built a $1B Water Company Without Plastic | Shadi Bakour DSH #976

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 US through microplastics.

It's like 0.5% of our brain matter is microplastics now.

Gosh.

All right, guys, Shadi Bakor 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.

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, your body doesn't know how to.

It's like 0.5% of our brain matter is microplastics.

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 gonna.

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.

The past three years, like it's only ramping up.

You know, it's not like we're like slowing down.

What caused that massive 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 ten, five, ten 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

to get an aluminum bottle of water instead of a plastic bottle of water, right?

Yeah, because there's only one store in the Vegas airport that sells the path water.

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.

Yeah.

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.

Yeah.

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.

It makes sense.

But at the time, it was so convenient to just not have to bring your own bag.

Well, that's the thing, is like plastic might be one of the greatest inventions of all time it's not 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 just doesn't make sense yeah that's way too long yeah so um

um what was i gonna say uh so with your your yours are out of aluminum or what 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 bucks, 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, you know, 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?

Yep.

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 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.

Just 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 we 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, you 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, et cetera, et cetera, coming out of the Silicon Valley.

So once we saw that trend happen, we saw the same thing happening with plastic bottled water.

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 ban.

We were just in there talking to everyone and replaced about four or five million bottles a year going through one of the largest international hubs in the world.

And 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 waking up to the plastic stuff.

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.

But generally, you know,

at that time, 2019, like there weren't, there wasn't really much competition at all for us.

And now it's becoming more and more crowded.

But,

you know, I think you'll see like brands pop up for a short period, relatively short period of time, and then die off.

Just because

the beverage industry is a tough industry.

And

it requires a lot to get to a certain place where you're...

actually sustaining yourself without having to raise capital and just like survive basically right were you raising capital back then or did you self-fund everything no i've been i've been raising capital since day one oh yeah yeah nice always raising capital like there's there's always a conversation being had you know 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 um so you raised money pre-revenue or was it yeah pre i mean pre-revenue i mean i didn't come from money so like

i was driving uber and working at an italian 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 it 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 at, 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 you'd, we would just be like, okay, I'm gonna give you a case of water for free.

And you're gonna give me the best shelving, and I'm gonna come back in a week, and 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 going to sell.

And

from there, we'll continue our relationship.

And that's how we built, you know, in 30 days, we were in every 7-Eleven in Northern California.

And that was like kind of the

nemesis.

That's so legendary.

I always assumed 7-Elevens were so corporate that they had to get product approval and everything.

80% of their products are corporate approval.

20%

they can choose what they want.

Wow.

So the individual store owner has some discretion yes so once we figured that out we actually pivoted away from like the whole foods type stores to 7-elevens

and yeah we thought our consumer was at whole foods because sustainability and you know all those good things that our brand is about but

when you think about so like what we didn't realize is that in a in a grocery store, the water aisle is like a football field and you just get lost on the shelf.

People are not going to Whole Foods to buy, you know, just sustainable bottled water.

They're going to buy broccoli and, you know, food for their kids, lunches for school, and all the other things that they need to get.

So,

yeah, like versus a 7-Eleven, like, you're going in, you're thirsty, it's a hot day, you just go to the fridge, grab a bottle.

It's more of an impulse buy.

And, and so that's why it just worked out early on for us much better.

But again, like, everyone tells you, go after your target core consumer early on and figure out who that is.

Like,

we thought we knew who that was.

We thought it was very obvious, but it turned out to be

very different than what we thought.

Yeah, I would have thought the same.

I would have thought to go to all the healthiest grocery stores and get product placement there.

Right.

Yeah.

And that's what we did.

And the product just collected dust for weeks.

That sucks.

Does it expire ever?

Water?

No, I mean, that's the good thing about water is that it doesn't, it has a best buy date technically of two years, but it doesn't really expire.

But still, like

in consumer packaged goods, half the battle is getting on the shelf, and then the other half is getting off the shelf.

Right.

So it's, those are the two parts of the game.

Right, because you got to pay for the shipping and stuff.

Yeah.

I mean, at the time, we were just shipping it ourselves, essentially.

We were delivering ourselves, but

like, I'm saying you got to get it.

You got to sell it into the store.

You got to convince the buyer that this is going to sell.

And then you got to 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 uh length a product survives in like a whole foods or sprouts

yeah it i think it really depends right on like what category like if you If you look at like poppy and ollipop and these like probiotic, prebiotic drinks, it's a relatively lower shelf life versus like obviously water, you know, 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 into the company?

I mean, 2018, Guy Fieri was actually, no, Vernon Davis was the first athlete investor that came on board.

He's like one of the most humble guys ever.

He's, you know, multi-Super Bowl athlete winner.

Best tight ends of all time.

Yeah.

And

so he invested and then

right after that, Guy Fieri invested.

And

but it was always just like, you know, I never thought I would be working with like all of these.

You know, we have like Kevin Hart, Travis Scott,

you know, Becky G,

like

Michael Jordan, you know

Ninja Fortnite, a lot of cool people that have invested, which I never, you know, 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,

you know, they say like that everyone is only a few layers away from everyone in the world, like we're all connected.

Yeah.

I never really realized how.

how real that was

until, you know, started getting that type of attraction.

but we've also talked to a lot of celebs and athletes that were just not the right people to work with

so

we were we always looked for like that alignment in like

the let's go mentality and like

honestly a lot of celebs and athletes like they try to

you know maybe rightfully so but they try to take flesh when they're when they're doing a deal with a brand And we just said that's not going to work for us.

If you actually believe in us, then you invest.

And

that's the model that we went by.

Yeah, that makes sense because they have a following, so they expect free equity.

But you guys have already done so much revenue at this point,

it's not really there.

Even early on, like, I just always believed that Path is a brand that stands on its own.

So it's like, because,

look, if you look at, there's very few examples of brands that have leveraged, you know, like

Kylie, Cosmetics, things like that, that have done very well with

a big push from celebrity.

But there's so many examples of brands that have gone out with celebs or paid them, you know, so much money and so much equity.

And

it just like it's like an adrenaline shot for their business.

Like it might give them like a quick boost.

But But over the long run, if you don't have a brand and a product that's actually good, then

you can put all the celebrity in the world behind it.

It's just, in my opinion, it's just not going to work.

Agreed.

Very few of those celebrity liquor brands work out long term or drink brands.

I mean, Prime's doing well, but we'll see over time if it can go a distance.

Yeah,

Prime has had.

Had a huge up and then I think it's gone up and down and up and down.

You know, it's hard to tell, honestly, like what's happening under the hood.

You know, sometimes things just look really great on the outside.

And then when you actually try to see what's happening, it's not as good as people may think.

Yeah.

So.

I could see that.

I mean, when I go to the stores, I see them fully stocked, but they seem to be killing it on social media.

So yeah, you never really know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I know they've done very well so far.

But yeah,

they actually use one of our manufacturers, and

every business growing fast-growing business has its challenges.

I'll just leave it at that.

Absolutely.

You guys have to be one of the biggest water beverages in the world at this point.

So I'm assuming people are trying to buy you out.

Like, what's your vision for the future?

Yeah, I mean, we're just having a lot of fun with it right now.

There's just so much demand for our brand and our product in the market because

everyone's looking for that sustainable option.

And when it comes to sustainability, like

we're, you know, we have the highest quality of product.

It's why like Madison Square Garden with the Sphere, they have a 20-year relationship with Pepsi, which owns Aquafina.

And Aquafina has a can, an aluminum can that they put their water in.

I saw that actually.

That's a newer thing, right?

Yeah.

But it's

when...

Pepsi went to MSG and said, why, you know, we can give you a sustainable option that's non-plastic, they're like, this is not a good solution.

You guys are just trying to like kind of

make it work, but it's not, it doesn't work for us.

So I think that's why like we're in all Chanel stores in the United States.

You know, Chanel reached out to us, why SpaceX reached out to us, all these big organizations, because like we've always just really believed in having like a quality product that's actually solving a problem, not just riding a trend.

And we think all of these other single-use aluminum brands are kind of trying to ride the trend.

But at the end of the day, from a sustainability standpoint, reusability is like the

pinnacle of,

you know, sustainability.

Yeah, I try to reuse my bottles.

I have a five-gallon water dispenser at home.

There you go.

Yeah, so I'll fill that up.

There you go.

I mean, I just don't like the plastics, dude.

Yeah, man.

Now there's, so I'd love to find out if this is true.

I'm hearing there's plastics in cans, too.

Certain cans use a layer of plastic inside.

Yeah, so well any aluminum product has a liner.

It's a plastic liner, but it doesn't leach microplastics in the same way as like a PET plastic bottle.

So it's literally a thin layer that's sprayed onto the inside to keep the separation.

But like a recyclability standpoint, it doesn't affect it.

Aluminum is still the most recyclable material in the world.

And even the ink on the outside of any product is not technically not recyclable so it'll well in the recycling process it'll go to the top of the heap and it'll get scraped off but you don't have the same microplastics issues with these cans or products and you don't have the same recyclability issues because actually plastic is not recycled it's actually downcycled so it it loses quality every time it goes through the recycling process so like a bottle will not make another bottle interesting a bottle will make like a toy and then maybe a plastic bag and then it'll end up as microplastics inevitably versus an aluminum bottle or or an aluminum can will end up on the shelf as another product within 60 days of it hitting the recycling bin So it's like super recyclable.

Actually, recycling centers don't make money from recycling paper, glass, or plastic.

They make all of their money from recycling aluminum and other metals.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's fascinating.

Yeah.

And you said plastic lasts 700 years.

So how are they getting rid of it right now?

It's in your belly right now.

They're not getting rid of it.

It's in the ocean.

Yeah.

It's like something crazy.

Like 92% of the surface layer of the ocean is covered in plastic.

What?

Yeah.

So obviously like the ocean is very deep, but like if you think about seagulls and all of the

animals that live on the top surface, like that's what they're eating.

It's terrible.

And I've actually cut back on sushi and seafood, to be honest, because I used to eat it all the time.

Yeah.

I used to go to sushi buffets for like 25 bucks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Totally.

It's

scary.

Like it's you pretty much can't avoid it at this point.

I mean, it's just everywhere.

It's yeah.

I wonder if there's a test to see how much is in you.

Yeah.

I'm sure those will come out eventually.

Yeah, that's going to be a big company.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

I mean, it's scary times.

I feel like you caught the timing really well.

Yeah.

With this company.

And I think, like, I was just with

the CEO of Unilever at Oxford last week.

And Unilever right now is like moving a lot of their products towards reusable products.

So I think, you know,

like.

Definitely there are brands, even major corporations that have seen us and seen our business model and said, like, maybe we should try this.

Because, like, I know for a fact that Pepsi executives early on saw our product and our brand and saw that it was reusable.

And they were like, no, this is not, this is a horrible idea.

It's not good enough.

The margins aren't good enough.

Well, not only the margins, but it's because we're selling a reusable bottle, it's very counterintuitive.

It's like, we're the water company.

that doesn't want to sell you any more water, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Like, buy this and never buy another bottle again, right?

But we believe that consumers are smarter today than they've ever been before.

And they see through all of that bullshit of brands that are trying to, again, ride a trend and just make money off of the sustainability movement versus, you know, if you think of Patagonia, like you know, Patagonia is doing everything they can to be sustainable.

Yeah.

You don't have to like do more research on them because they've built that trust with the consumer.

They've built that loyalty.

Like, I think Yvonne Schinard, the founder of Patagonia, donated all of his shares to like climate change.

I saw that.

It was huge, right?

Yeah.

And

so, you know, they're real.

You know, they're genuine.

They're authentic.

And I think authenticity today in any company is what's going to win in the market.

I agree.

Yeah, because you could have faked it before social media, but now everything's out there.

Yeah.

But it's more long-term.

Like, you got to withstand the short-term ups and downs because like you have brands like, you know,

not to throw shade or anything, but the liquid deaths of the world and things like that that have raised a ton of capital, pumped a lot of marketing dollars in.

And like liquid death is genius marketers.

But, you know.

For us, it's more about like educating the consumer about what we're doing, why we're doing it, how we can contribute to social good overall.

And it's not just through like being sustainable.

For example, we launched a bottle with Rite Aid nationwide for the past two years and launching again next year that's based all around autism awareness.

Like, you know, that may not have anything to do directly with PATH as a brand, but like

we see that as an opportunity to raise awareness about a cause that, you know, a lot of people are really passionate about.

And so the idea of doing like different causes behind our bottle, we're doing a made-in USA bottle that's going you know, that's traditionally just given back to different organizations that, you know, are

important to our nation or to COVID relief or, you know, to to veterans, things like that.

So just always looking for ways to kind of give back and and just be

leave the the planet and humanity better than when we how we found it.

I love that.

Yeah, it's it's it's hard to do that at scale.

I feel like these bigger companies are all about margin and sometimes the ethics is out the window.

Yeah, I think in the short term,

that strategy might win.

But in the long term, like Unilever, for example, to go back to them,

they did a campaign in Ethiopia where

they

actually like cared about the Ethiopian people before they cared about their own own profits.

And they hold more market share in that country than all of their competitors combined because of the strategy that they took.

Because, you know, people want to

work with brands and support brands that are actually

that they

want to support.

So I think in the short term, like the marketing stuff, can win, but like, it's kind of like, have you ever heard of the pet rock?

Pet rock.

I don't know.

SpongeBob.

No, like, like in the late 90s, the story goes, there were these two marketing executives, and one of them is like, I guarantee you, I could sell anything.

And then the other one was like, all right, sell me that rock.

And he went and put googly eyes on it and a smiley face.

And the pet rock became like a phenomenon nationwide.

It was like one of the hottest-selling items.

Wow.

It's a freaking rock.

It's crazy.

So,

you know, but like, you don't really see anyone with a pet rock today.

So it's not something that's going to stand the test of time, I would say.

You know, but these kind of like gimmicky things can

create a lot of buzz in a short term.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a crazy time, man.

You got guys like RFK speaking out against this.

I've never seen politics this involved with the health space ever.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

It's

the health, the whole health epidemic is getting really heated right now.

It's really like there's a lot of debate and a lot of people stepping up and

standing up against

large corporations that have

misinformed consumers.

And like,

yeah, I mean, I saw a statistic yesterday that said we, this is kind of tangent, but like

kids today, the average kid in the US,

spends less time outside in sunlight than a maximum security prisoner.

Whoa.

Yeah.

That's only an hour a week, right?

Prisoners?

Yeah, I think so.

Holy crap.

It's wild.

They're not even spending 10 minutes a day on average outside.

I know.

It just makes me want to like go outside and just like work out there all day.

Yeah.

When I was a kid, I was out there six hours a day.

Totally.

Yeah, I was like skateboarding.

I was, you know, going out.

But it's just, it's just a different world that we live in.

That connection with nature is important.

I feel like we're getting disconnected from that, you know?

100%.

100%.

It's becoming easier and easier to just get stuck behind a screen and just get lost.

Yeah.

You know, it's tough.

Do you see any regulations coming to the plastics anytime soon, you think?

I mean, I think they are coming slowly yet surely to different communities, different cities globally.

As I mentioned, what happened at San Francisco airport, then Los Angeles airport.

So you're seeing different airports ban single-use plastic.

There's a city in Massachusetts that banned single-use plastic.

So it's happening, but I wish it would happen much faster.

And the group I was actually with last week, a lot of them are the guys that created the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

And it's a very like idealistic, like, it's not just about plastic, it's about health, it's about education, it's about everything.

17 sustainable development goals you can Google.

But

yeah, I mean, the things that we need to do as a global community to push ourselves forward, I think needs to accelerate.

And it'll happen, but it's like it requires leaders to step up and like

speak about it.

And I think a lot of those conversations are happening right now, which is great.

I love it.

Let's end off with something actionable.

People watching this can do.

in terms of what helping the environment

be sustainable.

I would say,

geez, there's so many things you could do, but just

instead of throwing things away, trying to find ways to repurpose them.

Like if you have an empty container, you know, turn it into a planter box.

Or if you have a piece of clothing, turn it into a rag to wipe down, you know, to wipe stuff down.

Just like

instead of throwing stuff away, you know, things can have multiple uses and last for much longer.

And I think in this like easy to access stuff economy, we're so used to just like getting 10 boxes from Amazon, using them, throwing them.

And like it just

doesn't make sense, you know?

So if we all do that, just a little bit, it can make a massive impact.

Boom.

Thanks for coming on, man.

We'll link Pathwater below.

Can people buy it online too?

Yep.

Yep.

Drinkpathwater.com and Instagram, all the things.

Awesome.

Yeah, we'll link all that below.

Thanks for coming on.

Come on, man.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for watching, guys.

See you next time.