Liquid Death CEO Mike Cessario: How I Turned Canned Water to a $700M Company | E968

(instrumental music plays) People that you think are alternative culture, all these guys do is drink Monster Energy and eat bacon. It's like, no, these guys don't drink any of that. I went to a school where recess would be canceled for shootings. Like, we would find heroin needles on the ground in the playground. We want the takeaway to be, "Oh my God, that was probably the funniest thing I've seen today."

Kids in beer commercial style. (laughs) We're sitting there in Liquid Death's office, this is funny.

If there are people who truly love something, there has to be people who truly hate it.

Mike, I am so excited for this. I've been such a fan of the, the Liquid Death journey for quite a while now, so thank you so much for joining me today.

Yeah, no, thanks for having me on.

Not at all, but I wanna start with a little bit of context. So, how did Rockstar's hydration problems, which is what I heard was the origin, lead to the founding of Liquid Death?

T- so that wasn't really the origin. (laughs) It's, it's funny, like, it's... Like you said, uh, you're not a journalist, and, uh, you know, so much of the early days of Liquid Death, like, the, the story was shaped by, you know, journalists who didn't fully get it. I mean, a lot of people didn't get it in the early days. Like, you know, Science, some of our early VCs, they understood it, but a lot of VCs, investors, like, they didn't get it. Like, they were like, "Oh, y- canned water? Yeah. W- what's that gonna do?" So most people, when they Google stuff, they see the old press articles, and there's everything from saying that I used to work at Netflix, which I never did. Uh, oh, it, it was all because the... You know, they just get things mixed up. Where that came from was Monster Energy used to sponsor a alternative music tour in the late '90s early 2000s called the Warp Tour, and it was in partnership with Vans, the shoe company. And this was, like, the early energy drink days. I think Monster launched in 2002. Red Bull was, you know, it, doing pretty well in the '90s, and energy drinks were basically buying up all of the alternative lifestyle culture because, you know, nobody was giving money to punk bands and skateboarders and snowboarders and, and those kinds of people back then. Energy drinks did, but the bands who were on the tour, they didn't like drinking energy drinks. Like, they, you know, they're on tour, you're outside playing, like, you kinda wanna drink water or, or, you know, they wanna drink beer. They, they don't wanna drink, you know, energy drinks. So obviously, Monster didn't want, you know, your spot, you're, you're this growing brand, you're sponsoring this thing, it, it doesn't help you if the brand is drinking bottled water on stage. You know, the coolest guys in the place are not drinking your product. Th- they found that that was not gonna be helpful to them. So, what they did was they made cans of Monster that looked exactly like Monster but it just had water in it, and they would give that to the bands to drink. It was not for sale. You know, clearly they were not in the water business, they were in the energy business. Um, but when all the kids in the crowd were watching the bands, they, it looked like the bands were drinking Monster. So they're like, you know, as, as a marketing thing. And I was friends with some of these bands and, you know, was hanging out with, you know, backstage with them, and I remember just thinking like, "Man, that's kind of a really, uh, sneaky marketing thing." You know? Like, it's like, oh, all these kids think these guys are just pounding sugar and whatever, when in reality these guys are drinking water, uh, and, and, and not. So that was like the first thing that kind of planted the seed in my brain of, you know, how come healthy products don't market in the same fun, irreverent way as unhealthy products? And it's like, you look at what are the, what are the brands that really invest a lot of money in youth culture, humor, explosions, fun? It's alcohol, soda, candy, fast food. You know, Bud Light, Cheetos, Snickers, Skittles, like, all the junk food does all the fun marketing. Healthy stuff is very quiet. You know, they more market to, like, an older demographic. Th- th- they don't do anything fun. But the reality was, like, a lot of these guys in, you know, that played in bands or people that you think are alternative culture and, "Oh yeah, all they do, all these guys do is drink Monster Energy and eat bacon." It's like, no, these guys don't drink any of that. Most of them don't drink that stuff. They care about health. Half of them are vegan. You know, the oth- you know, a, a huge percentage of them are sober and don't drink alcohol. But it's been these brands that kind of still use them and own them from a marketing standpoint, and, and that was more what sparked kind of my thinking of Liquid Death, 'cause I was into health at the time. My friends who were playing in these bands, they were into being healthy. And I think that was more of the seed, not so much like a Rockstar hydration problem. It was, oh yeah, how come there's not more healthy brands that have just as much fun with marketing as, as these unhealthy brands? It didn't make any sense to me. And then eventually that became Liquid Death years and years later.