"It's So Easy" - The Naive Bet That Took On A $350 BILLION Industry

Shadi Bakour had negative $400 in the bank and 15,000 unsold bottles of water collecting dust in an investor's warehouse. Eleven years later PATHWATER is in every Chanel in the US, in all 50 states, and has kept more than 750 million single-use plastic bottles out of landfills and oceans. In this episode he breaks down the parts most founders never talk about: the year he made zero dollars driving Uber and waiting tables, the morning he and his co-founder mapped every 7-Eleven in Northern California at 4am, the free-case shelf-space deal that worked every single time, and how the team got into San Francisco International by booking flights on Expedia and cancelling them — every day, for months — just to get past security and pitch the retailers inside. He also explains why being "super naive" was the advantage, why he'd rather get a fast no, why Coca-Cola and Pepsi left them alone for years, and the one metric he runs the company by instead of revenue. Want more Matt in your life? Of course you do!  (https://www.instagram.com/mattebertcc/) (https://www.facebook.com/MattEbertCC) (https://twitter.com/mattebertcc/) (https://www.tiktok.com/@mattebertcc) (https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-ebert-7169a5180/) Get paid while you learn on the job at Crash Champions: https://step.crashchampions.com/ 0:00 Cold open 1:07 Intro 1:51 Growing up, immigrant parents, hating consulting 3:15 The CVS parking lot idea 5:31 "We were super naive" and why it helped 8:25 The 10-year-old calculating a doctor's revenue 11:03 Zero dollars, driving Uber, waiting tables 14:38 Negative $400 and 15,000 bottles in a warehouse 16:57 The 7-Eleven pivot: every store in NorCal 18:49 The free-case shelf-space play 20:38 Why Whole Foods failed and 7-Eleven worked 21:50 The JP Morgan moment he almost took 24:19 90 employees and dividing the roles 25:32 The SFO takeover and the Expedia hack 29:48 Why a fast no is better than a slow maybe 33:23 Kevin Hart, Guy Fieri and the first celebrity yes 36:48 What stops Coca-Cola from copying this 39:02 Salesforce, Chanel and 1,200 co-brand partners 42:54 Learning to be extroverted on purpose 46:04 Brainwashing himself on the commute 46:44 $27K year one and taking seven people to Tony Robbins 50:03 "You are the bottleneck for your business" 51:12 What he would take back 52:47 Paul Polman and the 10-billion-bottle goal 56:27 Would he ever run a public company 58:35 Fatherhood, swim lessons and the phone lockbox 1:02:24 Who he would champion