Few recent college graduates take investor calls. Even fewer take them from the back room of a department store while searching for women’s designer pumps.
That’s what Andy Gay did to get his flavored-water business Cirkul off the ground after launching it in 2015, says his co-founder Garrett Waggoner. The Tampa, Florida-based company most recently obtained a $1 billion pre-money valuation — as of a funding round in 2022, according to a Cirkul announcement — and ran a 30-second Super Bowl commercial on Sunday, featuring comedian and actor Adam DeVine.
Cirkul bills itself as somewhat of a hybrid between electrolyte drinks like Gatorade and instant drink mixes like Crystal Light, meant just as much for moms trying to keep their kids hydrated as athletes mid-workout, says Waggoner, 34, the company’s CEO. A company spokesperson declined to share Cirkul’s annual revenue, but said the business is currently profitable.
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In Cirkul’s early days, Waggoner also worked other jobs to pay for living expenses: as a professional football player in Canada and car valet during his off-seasons, he says.
His company’s product — a reusable water bottle that holds disposable flavor cartridges — represents a medley of trends, including cult-favorite bottle brands like Stanley and flavored-water videos on TikTok. The customizable flavor cartridges turn water into zero-calorie, zero-sugar electrolyte drinks, energy drinks and tea. Some flavors include non-sugar sweeteners like stevia and sucralose, commonly sold under the name Splenda.
“It’s a lot of fun to see a phenomenal product that was just an idea in Andy and I’s head show up for customers and just delight them,” says Waggoner.
From the gridiron to pitching investors
Waggoner and Gay met as teammates on Dartmouth College’s football team in 2010. Waggoner played safety, Gay was a quarterback and the pair struggled to cleanly deposit sports drink powder into the narrow openings of their disposable water bottles, says Waggoner.
“I looked at Andy, and I said, ‘Andy, what if you just had something you popped in a bottle and just drank it?'” Waggoner says.
The idea wasn’t quite new: Nuun, which makes low-sugar electrolyte tablets that dissolve in water, has existed since 2004. Liquid IV’s electrolyte powder packets, narrow enough to fit inside a small water bottle mouth, hit the market in 2012.
Still, Gay and Waggoner entered their idea into a startup competition at Dartmouth in 2013, where they finished second and won a People’s Choice award, taking home $16,000, says Waggoner. After graduating, the friends kept designing their product, pitching it to investors and figuring out the logistics of bringing a water bottle and flavored syrup combination to market.
At one point, they lost $5,000 to a firm that made them a non-functional 3D-printed prototype, says Waggoner: “It was an expensive lesson, certainly, at the time.”
A ‘shocking’ rise in popularity
Between 2017 and 2020, Cirkul won some investors over, raising roughly $7.5 million over two fundraising rounds, according to PitchBook data. The company’s products hit the shelves for the first time in 2018.
Then, the company went viral on TikTok — by chance, Waggoner says — with users posting videos of themselves trying different Cirkul flavors. The popularity didn’t quickly fade. When Cirkul launched in Walmart in 2022 with seven to eight weeks’ worth of inventory at each store, its products sold out within a week, Waggoner says. (He declined to disclose the specific number of units sold.)
Today, the company has more than 1,000 employees and warehouses in Tampa and Salt Lake City, says Waggoner. It has raised more than $100 million to date, according to PitchBook.
Its biggest upcoming obstacle: Staying relevant as the trends that helped it become popular churn, especially in an industry where consumers tend to move through fads fairly quickly, says Alex Frederick, an emerging tech analyst at PitchBook.
“I’m sure you’ve observed consumers move through whatever the latest, hottest brand is, whether it be Hydro Flask, Yeti or Stanley … It is challenging for any company to maintain consumer interest,” says Frederick.
That challenge is particularly relevant to Cirkul, since its water bottles rely on its patented cartridges to function properly. Currently, though, Waggoner says customer demand is high enough to absorb his company’s focus.
“The rate people have adopted the product and loved it was, I’d say, shocking,” Waggoner says.
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