Running your own business is like a marathon at the speed of a sprint
Your mental health is under constant stress, what I realized early on is it's a very lonely space to do it, because there are very few people who do this.
Quite frankly, you're dealing with more failures than successes than from the outside people see.
I still remember sitting on my balcony with helicopters flying by, with soldiers and machine guns roads were blocked. You know buildings boarded up or you know it was, it was absolutely intense.
20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:
We built the number one vitamin water brand in the UK and Ireland, it was bought by Pepsi several years later.
I worked for Pepsi for 3 -4 years in the UK and then we had this second big adventure together with the same wonderful business partner where we moved to Los Angeles.
I had immediately another and entrepreneurial bug, so I started the first low-cost gym chain in the UK, but I quickly realized how difficult it is to start a company when you don't have a business partner as incredibly fun and smart and nice to work with. So I decided to let that go.
And eleven years later we're still here thriving and building the business. We just increased our distribution footprint with a massive deal in Target which is super exciting.
On topic: vitamins, supplements, the supplements market opportunity in the US
We realized very quickly that the vitamin market was huge in America, yet it was extremely outdated, so this was ripe for disruption, which is why we settled here in LA, which is considered the centre of health and wellness. This is where the trends start they show up first on TV programs, or in movies and then they spread across the world.
It's not a multivitamin that will fix your unhealthy diet, right? The basis has to be right, you should eat your vegetables, your fruit, ideally you got your fiber, etc., that is really an ideal foundation. And then I would recommend to supplement or, as we say, complement with those micronutrients that are hard to come by with a regular diet.
Here in the United States there's a real shrinking of the gut microbiome, because the diets are not very well-balanced.
As you age your digestive enzymes deplete actually and this helps you break down the foods and foods have become more and more complicated, especially processed foods.
On topic: start-ups, entrepreneurial endeavors, INSEAD business partners
If you think about that, we have spent at this point 5,000 days together, which is a long time.
It's a very special relationship to have a business partner for many, many years. They know your real working life from a very unique perspective. It's not the same as having a report or having a boss is not the same as having a life partner, it is different.
When you start something you can develop a bit of luck and you develop opportunities and things that you wouldn't have known were going to start when you began the business
All things INSEAD and giving back
I honestly think that we have profited from the INSEAD connections almost more than anybody else.
We raised our seed money largely through INSEAD alums to get the V-water business off the off the ground.
So a lot of our seed investors were INSEAD, 2 of our board members of V-water were also INSEAD. Several of our INSEAD original investors have continued to support us with the HUM nutrition business in Los Angeles.