Smart water bottle startup LifeFuels has dried up.
Founder and CEO Jonathon Perrelli has decided to shut down the company after seven years, he said in a post Thursday on LinkedIn, citing the coronavirus pandemic's "crippling" effect on the business. The bottle was billed as a way to keep track of a person's water, mineral and vitamin intake through a connected app, with people able to purchase pods that the "rugged" container could inject into the water.
“The world of startups is an onerous one in the best of times. The challenges that many small businesses have faced with the pandemic over the past year has been crippling and LifeFuels is no exception. While the outcome for our customers, our team and our investors is so very disappointing, we can’t help but also be proud of bringing the world's first smart nutrition bottle, pod, and app trifecta to life,” he wrote.
He said the company is still exploring “alternative scenarios” for its intellectual property, but it has ceased sales of its bottles and “pods” containing various flavors and add-ins.
The public message comes just a few months after the company saw complaints on Twitter about orders being canceled and refunded or otherwise unfulfilled in the middle of December. The last tweet from the LifeFuels official Twitter account was on Dec 31.
Founded in 2014, LifeFuels created several prototypes before it began selling the bottle and related products in 2019. The company had 55 employees in March 2020, according to data from LinkedIn. There have been a string of departures over the last few months, including a senior director of engineering as well as a series of marketing and engineering staffers, according to the platform. The company’s general counsel also left in December, LinkedIn shows.
The company had received some big backing over the years, including from Keurig Dr. Pepper Inc. (NASDAQ: KDP), which partnered with and invested in LifeFuels in early 2019. While the terms of that deal were not disclosed, one source with knowledge of the agreement at the time pegged the Keurig deal at $20 million, although it was unclear how much the company ultimately invested.
By the third quarter of 2020, however, Keurig said it was declaring an “other-than-temporary impairment charge” for LifeFuels “as a result of continued losses, ongoing liquidity concerns and a lack of a buyer," according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company noted in the filing that its investment in LifeFuels was “fully impaired,” and it recorded an impairment charge of $16 million.
Keurig had billed the investment as a way to reduce waste and emissions by commercializing a reusable, portable drink maker. In a September 2019 questionnaire, the beverage giant said it owned a 26.7% interest in LifeFuels and that the company's 2018 valuation was $19 million.
