A day studying outdoors on Dartmouth's campus, mixing Gatorade powder in a Dasani water bottle, has turned into a full-blown startup that just received over $6 million in funding.
"We thought of it as an invention, a gizmo, a gadget — we never had aspirations to start a compony," said Garrett Waggoner, the co-founder of Tampa-based Cirkul.
He and fellow co-founder Andy Gay dubbed their idea — a water bottle with a flavor cartridge — as simply "the water bottle project" to each other, but decided to enter Dartmouth's pitch competition. Ultimately, they won the undergraduate portion and took second in the People's Choice portion.
"It was really neat to beat out the alum and we got a cash prize, I think $16,000," said Waggoner, who was raised in Sarasota. "So it became this thing of, 'This made sense.'"
The duo graduated and started their "classic gritty entrepreneur story," according to Waggoner, with him working as a valet and Gay selling women's shoes in Nordstrom while working to launch Cirkul. The company launched in 2018, first in Boston before moving to Tampa full-time.
The company sell is simple: a shatterproof, BPA-free bottle that takes in flavor cartridges, which can be controlled to dispense more or less flavor with a twist. The cartridges range across 43 flavors and six lines, including caffeinated, teas, coffees and electrolyte packages. All blends are zero calories, no sugar and no artificial flavors.
"The way we look at it, we want to give people options and make it convenient to have great flavored water," Waggoner said. "We have customers bring their own water and then use the cartridge to enhance their water, because at the end of the day, it’s about getting them to drink more water."
The company recently raised a $6.6 million Series A round, which will be used for product development and new employee hiring. The company is cash-flow positive and has roughly 100 employees, based in Tampa and Boston.
Cirkul was also largely unaffected by the coronavirus pandemic. While other local companies had to slow or halt production due to manufacturing or product issues overseas, Cirkul is entirely self-operational.
"It was really beneficial being able to control our destiny and outcome by operating our own manufacturing plant and fulfillment center," Waggoner said. "We're very fortune with the team doing a great job throughout Covid and continuing to do so."
Now that the funding is received and 2021 is on the horizon, Waggoner is looking toward getting Cirkul in major retailers versus solely relying on online sales.
"We've grown a lot and do a lot of business — it's definitely been tunnel vision getting profitability, and now that we have done that, it's just taking a breath," Waggoner said.
