I invite you to follow me in the upcoming four blog posts for an insight into Drinkizz’s entrepreneurial journey. This wonderful startup, which I co-founded in 2019 following my exit from my previous startup in the software industry, is a testament to this experience. I will draw upon the content of my latest book, “The Meta-Entrepreneur,” which organizes the fundamental knowledge every active entrepreneur and employee should have. Regardless of your current role and career ambitions, I invite you to enhance your business management knowledge. Before launching Drinkizz, I had to reassess my purpose as an entrepreneur. After over 20 years in the IT industry and a successful exit, I could have chosen to stop working. However, I still had the energy to start something new.
I then reviewed the fundamental rules of the first element of entrepreneurship, which I call “Motion.” I will detail this more in the next blog post. Thanks to my “Motion”, I quickly realized that I wanted to create a new company, not in my IT field nor with people with whom I had previously done business. I wanted to recapture the feeling of “starting from scratch” like the day I left my working-class suburb to begin my computer engineering career. I wanted to create a company with a positive impact, for everyday consumers to improve their health and provide them access to natural energy.
I also wanted to find an idea that allowed for international deployment with significant exit potential. In my “Motion,” the financial translation of a sustainable business is an important marker of long-term success, not just to make a quick buck and then disappear.
I also realized that I had a good fifteen years ahead of me to achieve this, so I still had time. My decision was made: no procrastination, maintaining a top-notch lifestyle without falling into an easy lifestyle thanks to money, accepting risk-taking and challenging everything, and making the most of the remaining time of life to act with strength. However, acting alone is not the best way to succeed, so I needed to find my co-founder and the idea.
With my powerful “Motion”, I began reflecting on how to engage in order to reach my new goals. I was then in the second element of entrepreneurship, namely the “Engage”. This is where the idea and the co-founder need to be found. Both arrived at the same time, which was lucky for me. I had invested years earlier in organic farms in Vietnam with a very dynamic CEO, Ms. Tyna. She would become my co-founder at Drinkizz! And as her products from the farms were of high quality, we imagined solutions to highlight them in distribution networks and for consumers.
Unfortunately, this kind of business in agriculture is very difficult to grow to a scale large enough to have a global impact on consumers. It requires significant investment in farms and managing long transition cycles of farmers’ practices and lands towards organic. I didn’t want to engage more in this type of activity.
As I am passionate about fitness rooms, I had this question in me about the chemical energy drinks that are regularly consumed. I am not a consumer, but it is true that I often wanted a drink that would give me a natural, organic boost without health risks. A drink boosted with natural antioxidants and protective of my body and brain. In short, I found nothing. At the same time, as I have been working regularly with Vietnam since 2011, I had observed strong consumption of chemical sodas and the arrival of fast foods had accelerated this phenomenon. I also observed obesity in Asia, something well known in the West but new, it seems to me for example for Vietnam.
This is how the idea of developing a revolutionary drink that takes advantage of good ingredients from organic farms appeared with Tyna. I had then identified the idea that allows it to be out of reach of the competition. A product that does not exist in this form on supermarket shelves and whose impact can be global. I also had the CEO to implement this solution with a team, Ms. Tyna. I will explain more precisely, in a future blog post, the somewhat more secret aspects of my “Engage” with Drinkizz, but you already have a quick overview.
My “Motion” and “Engage” were clear and shared with Tyna. I then had to specify the third element of entrepreneurship, namely the “Treasury”. Financing is a pillar of the decision to act entrepreneurially. It is difficult to commit lightheartedly hoping that sales will be made soon enough to not go bankrupt. Imagine Drinkizz’s situation on the first day? It really starts from a blank slate, with bags of ingredients available from the farms and deciding not to sell them on local markets to make a drink whose recipe isn’t even known. With experience, I can assure you that the complexity of our recipe with a dozen ingredients and a natural manufacturing process is as complex as developing software. It took us more than two years before we stabilized a powerful recipe and opened the possibility of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
This kind of journey, even while optimizing costs in Vietnam, is measured in millions of dollars. At the start, I must admit that all my former colleagues and acquaintances in entrepreneurship and finance thought I was crazy and a dreamer. Everyone told me: “it’s too difficult; you’re going to have problems with factories and ingredients; you’re going to be too expensive in a market where consumers have access to cheap chemical drinks they like…”. I had only one answer, the only one that seems right to me as an entrepreneur: “the harder it is to do, the stronger the value proposition and the return on investment will be!”.
Obviously, to succeed in this kind of context, you need unwavering conviction on the vision and a tenacious CEO who won’t give up as long as there is even a slim possibility of bouncing back. This is the role that Ms. Tyna plays. In a future blog post, I will detail a bit more about how we financed Drinkizz for its startup period and the right rules for managing the treasury.
The last entrepreneurial element to clarify before pressing the button to start Drinkizz was the legal aspect. Too often neglected by novice entrepreneurs, yet it is fundamental. What would be the point of being strong on “Motion,” “Engage,” and “Treasury” if the whole doesn’t rest on a legal framework protecting the interests of all stakeholders.
Here, two major difficulties arise very quickly. First, the goal of drafting a shareholders’ agreement, a kind of marriage contract between co-founders, may seem like a lack of trust among the leaders of the company that has not yet started. Co-founders are generally also friends. However, this friendship must not eliminate the written rules of the company’s fundamental governance. I will detail these rules in a future blog post. Here is one that is interesting to understand the importance of this step of formalizing governance: at what level of valuation of the company do the co-founders agree to sell the business, i.e., make its exit. If one proposes $10 million and the other does not consider stopping before reaching $100 million, it is better to know and find an agreement before launching. This legal framework that concerns the shareholders of the company also exists for the company itself. For example, the registered office of Drinkizz is in Singapore with operations that start from Vietnam. I will explain why, from the first day of Drinkizz, we gave this international dimension to Drinkizz even though we had not yet registered our first dollar of revenue.
So, what next?
I have so much to share with you about the entrepreneurial adventure of Drinkizz. I have just sketched here the four elements of entrepreneurship: Motion, Engage, Treasury, and Assurance. You understand, these elements are yours to use. You can also use them to organize your entrepreneurial strategy. I explain this in my latest book “Meta-Entrepreneur ”. Don’t hesitate to contact me to learn more.
In my next four blog posts, I will return to each of these four elements of entrepreneurship to help you better understand them and adapt them to your context. You see that Drinkizz can be an inspiring example for you. So, don’t hesitate to also test our drinks to better feel our DNA.
See you soon!”
Useful links
Organic Nature Energy drink by Drinkizz: O.N.E Drink (Organic Natural Energy ) – Drinkizz Shop
Training Drinkizz : Training session – Drinkizz
Good Energy without delay!
Pierre Bonnet
