Broadening Lenses to Create New Categories

Olipop Co-Founders Ben Goodwin and David Lester have been on a decade-long journey towards creating and owning the functional soda category. When they launched Olipop in 2018 investors questioned the wisdom of using a soda brand to enter the natural products space. Today, just a few years after launching, Goodwin and Lester are spearheading one of the hottest emerging beverage trends in the market and disrupting the soda category for the first time in nearly 40 years. Goodwin and Lester believe that by keeping ahead of market trends, entrepreneurs can gain the opportunity to create brand new categories to then take command of. 

Key takeaways:

• Don’t look for trends. Instead, ask yourself what meaningful human problem you can solve.
• Perseverance. Goodwin and Lester have devoted the past decade, which has included one failed venture, to finally deliver in the beverage space in the way they’d hoped to.
• Do your homework. You must understand the dynamics of the category you are in. Learn the rules, identify one big one, and break it hard. In our case, that’s been the ingredients panel.
• The future of the beverage industry is functional. Consumer behavior is shifting and shoppers are saying, “This is delicious, but what does it do for me?”

Ben Goodwin, Co-Founder, Olipop

David Lester, Co-Founder, Olipop