This episode examines a smart water bottle startup that spent years and significant VC funding building a $200 hydration monitoring device before testing market demand, contrasting with the speaker’s own $80K mistake building an inappropriate version of LandPricer without early user feedback.
Key Takeaways:
- Solutions Without Problems Fail Regardless of Engineering Premium hydration monitoring targets a problem consumers don’t actively seek to solve, similar to how early LandPricer versions solved non-existent user needs.
- Crowdfunding Validates Demand Before Build Costs Kickstarter campaigns with concept products and stylized mockups test market response for under $10K versus years of development spending.
- Obvious Flaws in Others’ Businesses Mirror Your Own The ease of identifying another entrepreneur’s mistake—no customer validation after two years—reflects identical blindspots in one’s own decision-making.
The smart water bottle team faced potential smartphone-based competition that would eliminate their $200 hardware entirely, demonstrating the critical importance of technology trajectory analysis before committing resources.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to Get Serious. So today, again, a bit more from the mindset perspective, but also, you know, key just entrepreneurial lessons, and that we all fall victim to far too often, including myself. So I wanted to run over a scenario where I was catching up with a friend who I hadn’t heard from, from
years actually. It attended my wedding four-ish years ago, since then we just fell out of touch for one reason or another. And he actually reached out to me working on a consumer medical device business and wondering if I could intro him to somebody who’s LinkedIn.
connections with him like I have not been in touch with this person for many years. I don’t work in the healthcare space anymore. I pay still a lot of attention to it. But you know, professionally, a lot of those connections have just, you know, weakened over time. But you know, hey, feel free to text me. And I wasn’t really expecting anything more than that. But we set up a call and I reviewed his deck and
basically what they’re trying to do is build a smart water bottle. mean, really sexy product with the key features, being able to measure, hydration, very effectively. All that data gets pushed to a mobile app. also has a lot of the various, physiological measurements that like, or rings have for instance, blood pressure.
heart rate, SPO two, et cetera. and, their goal is to sell this more as a premium product. and you know, people and improve people’s hydration status overall. but he’s been working, you know, and the team behind this, like they’re definitely solid. have previous exits behind them, consumer medical devices, like you can ask for more than that.
Like the science, the engineering is all solid. but, you know, me looking at this business and I’m like very, you know, health oriented, fitness focused, et cetera. I, I, it, in my mind was kind of thinking, I told them as such, you know, this might be more of case of, you know, trying to, create a problem.
well, create a solution for a problem no one is really…
actively considering or trying to solve, is something that I think every entrepreneur runs into in some form or fashion. If you ever try to start a service or a product, which is basically all businesses ever. And I certainly ran into that again. It’s always the key thing where it’s so much easier to point this issue out for somebody else’s business versus your own. just have blinders on like within land price or
itself, you know, I probably spent a year on a version of the product that was inappropriate for the industry at large. And my own thoughts on how it should be oriented were just incorrect. And I should have gotten user feedback way, way earlier. I’ve talked about this at length. You know, we had to away from what we had initially built in, you know,
dropped to 80 grand on that initial version of the product and much to my chagrin. It’s a lesson I learned in the past and I just didn’t take that into account again this time. And so now it’s like, okay, yeah, I really need that user feedback as early as possible before you commit more resources, time and monetary toward anything. So in this case, like the smart water bottle, mean,
My old friend had been working on this as a co-founder for a couple of years and his VC firm had already cut some checks. I don’t know for what amounts, probably significant. And they didn’t have any customers yet, nor did they really understand their customer profile at all, just because nothing
nothing has really been tested. know, they’re anticipating doing a Kickstarter launch later this year.
you know, gin up some excitement around the property, or not property, but the product. I see how much my mind is on real estate there and kind of go from there. But I thought there were assumptions on, know, like lifetime value of the customers, all TV and, you know, the total addressable market were really significant. And, I was just marking, like,
I’m really fitness forward, focus on my health, but like, wouldn’t pay for a hydration advice. Like if I’m thirsty, I’ll just drink more water. And I thought, okay, yeah, as people get elderly, you can’t rely on your physiological sense to encourage routine.
drinking of fluids like those just become weaker signals over time. like, okay, yeah, that could be a more interesting market segment to go after. But fact remains is like, you know, you guys been working to build this product for years now and who knows how many sunk dollars and time into this thing. And you have no idea.
if it’s actually solving a real problem that people are willing to pay for. Yes, like we can admit, yeah, most of us should probably be more hydrated overall, but is it something people are gonna open up their wallets for and change habits enough to invest in, know, a $200 water bottle? that, that’s the bigger question here.
And, I was also like, you know, I was using perplexity and like, yeah, are there other devices like this? And, you know, there’s not a commercial development yet, but like there was a more recent research study where, you know, they could detect hydration just via a smartphone. It’s like, you know, if that becomes a consumer product, like who wouldn’t just use that instead of a water bottle, you know, that’s cost 200 bucks. Maybe you have like a $5 a month app.
And, know, you just have your smartphone next to you. So you have to be, uh, you know, aware of where I don’t know the technological progress is going here, but to me, it was just so obvious. And I had worked in crowdfunding marketing campaigns before that was, um, you know, close to like 10 years ago. And so to me, like the route would have been, you know, that that’s the thing with some of this crowdfunding, you don’t Kickstarter get on Indiegogo.
And you know, have maybe a proof of concept product. can just stylize it doesn’t need to have all the functions, but like, here’s what we plan to have it, you know, plan to do with it and just market it to all your different segments and see, okay, can I get any, dollars and felt like that, that’s the whole point of crowdfunding. It’s like, you figure out, Hey, does this idea actually have merit, to throw a lot more resources at this?
And you know, I actually build and deliver it to you know, whatever market segment actually responds to it but you know pre-building everything for years and Not having done and any testing is like man Look, I feel for you guys because I’ve made that same mistake Yeah, I would love to have that 80 grand back. I don’t know. They probably spent a lot more than that bigger team longer length of time
But again, it’s just more of a lesson of like, sometimes things are so obvious looking at somebody else’s business versus your own. And just to understand, yeah, you probably have some blinders on for certain things within your own business and just to be able to take your own medicine sometimes when you look at somebody else’s. I wish anybody who tries to undertake an entrepreneurial journey and…
build their own dream and product and service, whatever. I’m always going to be rooting for those type of people. It’s just a kinship, so long as we have a base similar ethical standpoint of course that goes without saying, but we should probably all remind ourselves of that even more so that I…
just don’t want to see people get stuck in just nasty hurdles for no good reason. Because, you know, again, life is short. You only have a few swings to really, really make something work and, you know, test as early as possible. Don’t commit extra resources until you actually know that there’s something there. So hopefully this helps within your own business and what to keep in mind here.
reminder for my own self and yeah again if you’re looking for funding SeriousLand.Capital, Land Daily Diligence Facebook group for zero cost review your land deals and LandPricer.ai which I just mentioned has a lesson learned, the most reliable land pricing tool on the market, soon to be on the market. Subscribe and share, talk to you all next time. Bye.
