The Exchanges

Q How many of your content best work versus don't? What's the ratio? Is it like the classic, oh, 10% work and 90% don't?

A No, I think we have, um, we have a really healthy track record. It's like almost every, you know, like we call like big thing has, has essentially hit. And I think that's it. And that's just because of our approach to how we think about these things. Like we don't like, you know, for instance, like that Superbowl commercial with the kids drinking beer, we didn't just come up with that out of the blue. It was, we were seeing on social tons of people were posting photos of their kids with liquid death, thinking that it's funny. Like there was hundreds of them like, oh, this is a thing that people think is funny. Let's just turn it into Something else funny, and it's sort of like, you know it's gonna work, because you're basing it on something that you know to be true, versus just like, hey, I wonder if people would think it's funny. That kids are drinking Liquid Death. You know, that, that, that's different.

AI assessment note: “almost every, you know, like we call like big thing has, has essentially hit.”

Q Does the criticism grind you? Does it hurt you? Like when I get criticism for whatever, um, happens often, um, uh, it, it hurts me. I'm like sad. Does it hurt you? And how do you develop that thicker skin to respond and reflected in a like bluntly continuous positive way?

A Yeah, no, you're right. It's hard. Like anything, it's like we're human beings. Like there's not, we don't, you know, we, we work hard on things. And when you see that somebody Totally shits on your idea or your product or whatever. Yeah. You have this initial emotional reaction of, uh, to it, but I think what we've had to do and what I've even had to help train our marketing team on is like being able to take a step back and look at everything in context. Like if we post something and we have. 10,000 likes on it. And in the comments, there's five negative comments. 10,000 people said, this is awesome. Five people said they did it. 10,000 to five is a pretty good ratio, no matter how you, how you strike it. Imagine you're a football team in a giant stadium. There's 50,000 people, and they're all screaming and chanting your name, and their faces are painted, and like, they love your team, but then there's a small little section That doesn't like your team. How much should that actually affect the team on the field? Like they don't care. You don't, you don't care about that. Look, you have a whole stadium of people. This is their whole livelihood. They love you. Those couple little people, like you're not going to ever please anybody. So I think in social, you're in this very small thing where you just see a number and you see these comments. And because, uh, the internet, the wa…

AI assessment note: “take a step back and look at everything in context”

Q Not at all, but I want to 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?

A So that wasn't really the origin. 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 DCs, they understood it, but a lot of, VCs, investors, like they didn't get it. Like they were like, ah, canned water. Yeah. What's that going to 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 was all because the, they just get things mixed up. Where that came from was monster energy. Used to sponsor a alternative music tour in the late nineties and early 2000 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, doing pretty well in the nineties 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 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 tou…

AI assessment note: “So that wasn't really the origin.”

Q trust TwentyVC so much, regardless of if you know the guest, you don't know the guest, you will listen, because you trust that we will curate for you. That's my, that's my goal. Um, penultimate one, you can go back to the early days of Liquid Death. You're sitting down with Mike Junior. Um, what do you advise Mike at the founding of Liquid Death, knowing all you know now?

A Yeah, I, I don't know. It's tough to say. Like, I mean, it's like all the things that, all the tough, wrong decisions you've made are kind of what help you better approach the other things, you know. It's like, but I guess it's really understanding, um, How raising capital, like, how much you're going to have to always raise capital. You know, it's like, you get excited, oh yeah, we're gonna raise, then it's just like, you're almost constantly raising as a startup, especially in beverage that's very capital intensive. It's like, you have to get to a certain level before A beverage company can become profitable unless you're selling a nine dollar can of something that's got 80% margins on it, which no one's doing. Being smart about how you do that and when you do that and all of that, I think, like, you know, I didn't know much about any of that going into it. You just kind of, in the early days, you sort of You know, you kind of have to lean on other folks that you trust to make the right decisions there. And I think we made a lot of the right ones, very few of the wrong ones, but yeah, it's like that side of the business, like thinking about dilution and the intricacies of how, what happens to the shares and those kinds of things, like as you're a growing company going through rounds, it's like. Most people going into that don't know much about that, and I think the more you k…

AI assessment note: “understanding, um, How raising capital, like, how much you're going to have to always raise capital.”