Episode 287: Eliza Becton, Sean Grundy, and Frank Lee - Founders, Bevi

Fate, luck, destiny… whatever you call it, it seems very apparent that all three founders of Bevi were meant to build a company together. They all shared a common interest in sustainability, a desire to build a company, and experience in a field that had water at its core. Eliza grew up sailing and was always interested in ocean stewardship which led her down the path of evaluating different ideas where she could leverage her industrial design knowledge to build a product that could make an impact on the bottled water crisis. Sean spent three years working in an environmental non-profit and worked on wetland conservation projects in China and later attended MIT Sloan and was president of the MIT Water Club. Frank comes from entrepreneurial roots and worked for an irrigation startup before meeting Sean in China only to learn that they would be attending MIT Sloan together that fall and ultimately roomed together. So, when investors ask themselves - why are these founders uniquely qualified to build this company… I don’t know if you could ever find a better founding team. Bevi is disrupting the beverage industry with its bottleless water dispenser for offices and commercial spaces. The company has over 5,000 customers and has raised multiple round of funding, include a $70M Series D last year which was led by Cowen Sustainable Investments. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * The story of how a Bevi machine ended up in HBO’s Silicon Valley. * The background story of each founder and more info on how the three came together to start a company. * A brief history of the bottled water industry and the staggering number of plastic water bottles that are sold each year which is massive. * Early foundational years of building Bevi and early interations of the machine while figuring out product market fit. * Scale of the business and the launch of the counter-top version, plus some insight into the possibility of a consumer version. * Navigating the pandemic and how some critical decisions ended up benefiting the business over the long term. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.