John Sherwin | Hydrant
JOHN SHERWIN
Co-Founder of Hydrant, a wellness brand company providing a balanced mix of electrolytes, minerals, and vitamins to integrate proper hydration into one's everyday routine.
What Is Hydrant?
Hydrant is a consumer wellness brand helping to bring proper hydration to the forefront of one’s daily routine in order to live a more healthy lifestyle. Backed by scientific research, Hydrant’s proprietary formula utilizes minimal ingredients to make it work fast and taste delicious for consumers to use throughout the day to stay hydrated. The brand has two product lines, Rapid Hydration and Caffeinated Hydration, available in convenient single-use powder packages sold online in bulk or via subscription directly on its website.
Hydrant prioritizes using natural ingredients and a reduced amount of sugar to create a real taste where possible, along with caffeine enhancements in some of its products to give consumers an extra energy boost. A single stick of Hydrant has more electrolytes and 7g or less of sugar. It’s important to the brand that it only includes ingredients that make sense, nothing superfluous. In a conscious effort to be more sustainable, our consumers are using less single-use plastic by adding Hydrant into reusable bottles and cups.
What Is Your Background? What Led You To Starting Your Own Company, And How Did You Choose This Space?
We started Hydrant to solve the problem of dehydration under the pressures of daily life. My co-founder Jai was working long hours and pursuing his MBA, while I had been on the start-up grind in Silicon Valley using my biology background from Oxford to try various approaches to defeat my daily dehydration. Collectively, the coffee, energy drinks and gallons of plain water weren’t good enough, so we came up with a better way. Our commitment to creating a better, science-driven hydration product is delivering a better-for-you solution across the country.
What Have Been Both Your Favorite And Least-Liked Parts Of Your Entrepreneurial Journey? What Have Been Your Most Challenging And Most Exciting Moments For You And The Company?
The entrepreneurial journey is one that, while it does have its ups and downs, teaches you and forces you to take steps towards personal growth and professional development. This has been my favorite part of this journey. When I decided to embark on the path towards building Hydrant I had no idea of the growth, not only as a leader but, as a person in general that would come from it. For example, communicating more clearly in every context was a skill I was forced to work on that ultimately made me a better person. As you become committed to what you’re building and love, sacrificing free/social time is necessary in order to produce and create the product/brand/idea you want to be as successful as possible.
The most challenging experience with the brand is our production runs. Typically, when a product initially comes off the line it isn’t 100% what you expected, or want, and more trials must be made. It’s easy to become discouraged when this is the case, but it’s more important to make the most out of the situation, fix whatever issues arised, and come out with an even stronger win. The most exciting moment for the brand so far was going on live TV to announce our seed funding round. The whole experience, from waking up super early to take the subway uptown to meeting investors and my co-founder, Jai, in a dark silent room, was a wild ride with a ton of adrenaline and great results (sales).
What Was The Fundraising Process Like For You?
While the fundraising process is never easy, we now have great supportive investors who believe in the overall mission. Through the process, we had to be creative in our fundraising strategy by not using a pitch deck, an indication that our product and long term goal resonated with investors and our sales plus growth has shown the opportunity within this market.
We have raised $5.7M in Series A funding, bringing Hydrant’s total investment to date to $8.8 million. Coefficient Capital led this round with participation from Rx3, who joined earlier investors Soma Capital and Sixers Innovation Lab, among other funds and angels including Jonathan Keidan (Torch Capital), Scott Norton (Sir Kensington’s), Michelle Cordeiro Grant (Lively), Jesse Merrill & Anders Eisner (Good Culture) and Michael Cline (Fandango).
It Seems Like Every Day Another Beverage Brand Pops Up. Once You Have A Product, Is It All About Marketing? How Do You Successfully Promote A Brand In This Category Despite The Market Being Saturated With So Many Beverage Products?
Hydrant differentiates and prides itself on its intense focus on customers, not solely about what they have to say about our product but, experiences and problems within their day to day lives. With that in mind, our core product has gone through changes in formulation since launch. We want to build a long relationship with customers, rather than just convert a quick sale with something that sounds trendy and exciting. Instead, we focus on the question of how we can help build this into their daily routine and keep existing customers happy by building products from feedback. To do this, we plan on continually launching different products with new and exciting functions that improve their lives.
What Are The Top Three Most Important Skills A Modern Day Entrepreneur Needs In Order To Be Successful? What Advice Do You Have For Entrepreneurs Who Are Just Starting Out?
The top three most important skills a modern day entrepreneur needs in order to be successful are:
Self awareness
Quality communication skills
Treating yourself not only as an owner/founder but as an investor.
Without self awareness, it can be very difficult to grow as a person and leader - and it’s underestimated how much growth is necessary for a successful business. The essential skill of communication and relationship building is important in terms of communicating clearly. Unfortunately, every mistake, expensive or not, has been a result of bad/miscommunication. Thirdly, holding an investor mindset is exceptionally important because it is so hard to grow a business if you’re investing poorly in all the wrong things. It’s important to familiarize and slightly perfect the investor mindset in order to successfully place your money into the right channels.
My advice would be to launch a product faster than you feel comfortable with. If you’re not slightly embarrassed with the first product, you waited too long to launch. I was a perfectionist - with Hydrant’s original SKU (lime + lemon lime flavor) I spent months to get it to perfect, but at the end of the day was just wasting time. What the product needed was feedback from paying customers, aside from friends and family who are most likely always going to say they love it, in order to truly improve the product. This goes hand in hand with CPG.
How Did You Come Up With Your Company Name?
I spent a lot of time writing down possible brand names with no constraints and then categorizing them. For me, I thought tree names would be interesting, and luckily, we didn’t go that route. From there, it was about which domain names / trademarks were available and I narrowed down the possibilities through that process. Hydrant has the first 5 letters of hydrate/hydration and sounds like both of those. People also intuitively get what product is from the name, we were able to get trademarked, and the rest is history.
If You Can Have A One-Hour Meeting With Someone Famous Who Is Alive, Who Would It Be And Why?
David Attenborough. The work this man has done for the planet is incredible, and the amount of education and awareness he has brought to people about the natural world will be hard to ever surpass. Not to mention the joy and wonder of being exposed to these elements of nature that most of us can only dream about.
What Is Your Favorite Quote And Why Does It Resonate With You?
“The North Wind made the Vikings” I believe this is a paraphrased old Scandinavian proverb. It basically implies that hardship creates strength in those who endure it. This particularly resonated in the earliest days of Hydrant where every small opportunity was something we would try out, and failure was regular. It reminds me to keep pushing on even when the going gets tough.
Who Is Your Role Model?
I have many role models, for lots of different reasons. I certainly look up to James Dyson, for his innovative mindset in many different areas of life, and for his early persistence through challenges at Dyson.
What Do You Do In Your Free Time?
The job that I have is intense mentally, so in my free time I try to disconnect as much as I can in a way that will energize me mentally. Getting some kind of exercise and spending time with a few people and connecting meaningfully. Of course, in these times, that would mean spending time with immediate family, whether that is Facetime, etc.
How Do You Think Your Industry Will Change Post-COVID?
People are going to get more comfortable with purchasing online, we’ve already seen this happening but people are forced to accept this at an accelerated pace. For starters, it forced the older generation to buy things they typically wouldn't buy online. As a digitally native brand, that's great for us however I don't think retail is losing its place in the world. Retail is just as important for the discovery (new brand and new products) as it ever was. We remain excited to see where that will go.
What Does Success Mean To You?
I believe that there are two main elements to success. The first is developing and delivering a product and experience that exceeds expectations, while delighting customers. The second step is building a culture that fosters a strong team where people have the ability to grow personally, professionally, and feel empowered to do great things at Hydrant and beyond. We truly invest in our internal culture and team for the success of, of course, the business but just as equally the individuals who make it all possible.
