Andy gay

From idea to launch it took about six years. For example, new water bottle companies have made a huge impact on the market by creating trendy bottles that serve as fashion accessories that are even sold in clothing department stores. Upon graduating from Dartmouth College in 2014 with a degree in Film and Media Studies, Andy worked in retail while he continued to develop and improve Cirkul with Garrett.

So keeping the bigger picture in mind is extremely important.

The Future of Cirkul

Since this interview, Andy Gay and Garrett Waggoner have expanded Cirkul beyond direct-to-consumer and debuted on the shelves of domestic Walmart stores. They brought on a great design team to develop the current product we have on the market.

How did nay-sayers attempt to rain on the Cirkul parade?

The most common critique we’ve heard since the inception of the idea is that the product and concept are great, but we’re both too young to run a company because we lack the necessary experience.

Refocusing on solving a problem "made us ground everything we did in the customer's actual need, which is gold," he says.

Other pieces of advice were less effective, he says, or simply weren't applicable to the type of business Waggoner and Gay wanted to run. Looking at the current market, people not only want a great performing product, but also want products that fit their image or lifestyle.

Read more about their journey as entrepreneurs in developing their product.

Here’s our interview with Andy Gay and Garrett Waggoner, co-founders of Cirkul.

Did your entrepreneurial path receive any pushback from family or friends?

Normally when you go against the grain of a “normal” path after graduation you will get push back from the people closest to you.

His co-founder Andy Gay worked in the women's shoe section of a department store, Waggoner adds.

Together, they sought advice from anyone and everyone. Once you achieve the functional design, product design has a huge role on market acceptance, especially in a crowded market like beverages. Keurig’s done an incredible job changing an entire industry and we’d be very fortunate to become a part of people’s everyday lives – saving them time, money and calories.

What’s the most significant lesson you’ve learned, personally and business-wise, from this venture?

The biggest lesson we’ve learned so far, both personally and business-wise, is patience.

What did you learn from that experience?

We were fortunate to have great success during the crowdfunding campaign, selling more than $150,000 in a little over a month and shipping out 5,000 bottles and 40,000 cartridges on the first day of launch.

 

This campaign helped us gain a better understanding of our marketing strategy, messaging, and best target audiences.

They tried outsourcing their manufacturing, for example — a common practice for consumer product companies — but struggled to find a factory that would work with Cirkul to produce a novel product.

"Most folks in the beverage space do cans and bottles, so when approached with something unique, they all declined to lean in," Waggoner says.

We’ve experienced most of the ups and downs a startup has in getting off of the ground. Hardware certainly can require more capital and prototyping time.

In a total of three years, we conducted all of the research and completed the R&D process. We’re looking to offer a new and improved, personalized way to drink more water and stay hydrated during the day.

Product design for us comes in two parts.

First, it needs to be designed in a way that’s easy to understand for the customer. We believe everyone’s beverage should be unique as they are. His Indonesia-based coffee chain, which brought in more than $100 million in sales in 2023, broke into the already-saturated coffee market by creating customized menus for different countries and tailoring items to local tastes and price points, Tirtanata said in May 2024.

The strategy ran counter to the conventional wisdom of using a standardized global menu, which many other chains do, he noted.

"The next Starbucks is not going to look like a Starbucks, the next McDonald's is not going to look like a McDonald's.

We’re taking a natural, flavored beverage and making consumption sip by sip.

Although our business model is similar to Keurig, our products provide completely different benefits to the customers. Cirkul's manufacturing currently takes place in warehouses in Tampa and Salt Lake City.

Don't 'let yourself get pulled by different ideas'

Other entrepreneurs agree: You need to figure out when to listen to someone's advice, and when to break from conventional wisdom and trust your gut.

"When you're just getting started in a small business, it's easy to drown an opportunity if you let yourself get pulled by different ideas," billionaire entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban told CNBC Make It in March.

Successful business owners take other people's feedback seriously while filtering out bad or irrelevant advice, Cuban added.

Kopi Kenangan co-founder and CEO Edward Tirtanata offers similar advice: Don't ever sacrifice what makes your business unique.

If you have an idea for a product, contact our team. Andy and Co-Founder Garrett Waggoner (CEO) hatched the idea for Cirkul in the college locker room while playing football together at Dartmouth. We’ve combated this by surrounding ourselves with experienced advisors and a great team at Cirkul.

At what point did you make the commitment to burn the boats and dedicate yourselves to success of the venture?

We burned the boats and have been working full time on this for 7 years now.