Prediction Open AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 3/5 debate potential 2/5

Liquid Death aims to become a multi-billion dollar beverage-entertainment hybrid

Mike Cessario · Liquid Death CEO Mike Cessario: How I Turned Canned Water to a $700M Company | E968 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jan 20, 2023 · at 1:00:48

Mike Cessario is the founder and CEO of canned water brand Liquid Death. When asked where Liquid Death will be in five years (by 2028), Cessario lays out his vision for scaling the company into a multi-billion dollar entity.

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“I like to think that we're, you know, Not that far off from what you see in a brand like Monster or Red Bull, you know, just a, you know, much bigger brand known for sort of blurring the lines between being an entertainment company and a beverage brand. Like, look at Red Bull. It's, they have a very specific genre of action sports entertainment, but most people you think of Red Bull, you think of both the entertainment side and the beverage side. And I think that that's ultimately what our goal is. Like, how, how can we become a multi-billion dollar beverage company that is also in service of creating really great entertainment that people would consume even if they didn't consume the beverage?”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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Assertion Not checkable as stated
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