Exclusive Interview: Co-Founders Connor Saeli and Mike Xhaxho Talk Waterboy, Creating Their Brand Identity, and More

Have you ever had one of those nights when you drank a little too much and spent the next day with tons of regrets, swearing that you’ll never drink again? For many of us, that may be an all-too-familiar feeling. And then the next twenty-four hours are spent creating a cocktail of Pedialyte, ginger, and Emergen-C, searching for a bit of relief. But what if there was a healthier and more effective way to treat your hangover? Well, that’s exactly why co-founders Connor Saeli and Mike Xhaxho started Waterboy.

Offering two different hydration products, one for hangovers and one for athletic recovery, Waterboy products have over three times the electrolytes of top competitors, zero sugar, ginger, L-theanine, and Vitamin B and C, and come in a variety of flavors including strawberry, lemonade, fruit punch, and lemon ginger.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Connor and Mike about founding Waterboy, creating their brand identity, and more!

PC: Connor, how did this partnership initially form? How did you both come up with the concept behind Waterboy?
Connor: When we last chatted, it was about a different business, but I sold that in December 2020. Around the same time, I was actually talking to this girl who Mike was also talking to, supposedly at different times. Who knows? The timelines are up in the air, but she actually connected the two of us together because we’re both in the entrepreneurial world and we’re really interested in health and wellness.

Mike had this idea, so we met and got coffee here in Austin. We aligned on what we were trying to do, and I loved the idea and what his vision was for it. We started working together from that point.

PC: Mike, you both built such a presence on TikTok and leveraged that to do some demand testing. How did you know that was the right platform for the brand to differentiate itself?
Mike: When COVID happened, I was a consumer of the app and saw where I was spending a lot of my time and where I felt like a lot of people were spending their time, and figuring out how to leverage that. Instagram felt like your reach depended on the size of your channel, and we were a new brand that no one knew about. It was about figuring out which platform would allow us to get a lot of eyeballs, even if we’re a new and up-and-coming brand. That was the beauty of what TikTok had to offer—you could be a nobody, but as long as the content itself was good, people would watch and share it.

PC: Connor, as you were saying, you’re no stranger to entrepreneurship. What did you learn from your previous business venture that you’ve now been able to bring over to Waterboy?
Connor: The last venture that I did was mostly myself. It was a very lonely journey being an entrepreneur. Having someone to lean back on, fall back on, bounce off ideas, and tackle different things has made this a lot easier, more enjoyable, and a lot more fun. It’s definitely stressful at times, but for both of us, it’s been helpful having each other to talk about different things versus making these executive decisions on our own. To me, that’s probably the biggest thing.

Also in the first venture, I put a lot of emphasis on myself promoting the product and putting the message out on social media. But with this one, I wanted to do it differently. When we tackled the approach of how are we going to market this, it was less of, “Hey, how much are we going to pay X, Y, Z influencers to post this? Or what content can I make to post about this?” and more, “How can we turn the brand into an influencer and have a good presence, whether that’s on TikTok, Instagram, or any other platform.” We wanted to have people come to our channel for entertainment, fun, and laughs, but also to learn about the product. That’s really the approach we took from the beginning, and it ended up being very successful for us.

PC: Mike, Waterboy has such a distinct voice and branding. How has the company evolved over time and found its personality?
Mike: I don’t know how much we’ve shifted our personality over time because from the very beginning it’s been, “Hey, there’s this product. You’re meant to consume it around fun times in your life.” A lot of other brands are really serious, whether that’s because they’re owned by a bigger conglomerate, or they feel like they have to be very serious to communicate their product’s benefits to us. We wanted to keep it lighthearted, fun, and entertaining while taking our product seriously. As we’ve grown, we haven’t lost that sense of playfulness. To me, that’s probably the worst thing that can happen—that as we get better, we lose who we are because we tried to play it too safe and almost forgot what got us here to begin with. We might have tweaked messaging slightly from our learnings, but the main vibe of the brand has relatively remained the same from the start.

PC: Connor, while many businesses have struggled during the pandemic. Waterboy has thrived. What has been the key to that success?
Connor: In times of COVID or any other economic situation, you have to get creative with your marketing and what you’re doing. The cool part about this story is that we really started this business with no money. We both put a little bit of our own money into it because we were creative with how we were marketing it and what we were doing. We didn’t have to use any of the money that we invested into it because we started making TikTok videos. Those did really well. We were able to capture all of this interest in phone numbers and emails and then we decided to do a presale. That sold out within a day, which funded our whole first production round. We shipped out a month later. A lot of companies have gone into stealth mode and don’t talk about the products or what they’re doing, and ultimately launch without doing any marketing.

They’ve already paid for all the inventory and all this infrastructure. Then it’s like, “Wait, why did we not get any orders when we launched?” Well, it’s because you didn’t market the business. You didn’t get any interest in what you were doing. That is something that we tried to do differently and put a lot of emphasis on.

In times like COVID or other situations, you have to get creative with what you’re doing and try to work with what you have.

PC: With any business, there are going to be growing pains. What’s one thing you each know now that you wish you knew when you started Waterboy?
Mike: Fortunately and unfortunately, most of our growing pains have been around supply. If I could go back in time, in hindsight, I feel like we’ve grown really fast, but we could have grown even faster. It’s easy to look backwards, but what I would have done earlier is look more at production facilities and capacity rather than wait for that to slowly expand with our current places. It would have de-risked that, and we would have been able to get more supply on hand faster.

Connor: For me, I can sum it up in one sentence: “Stay in your lane.” There are a lot of businesses that either try and do everything or are really good at one thing, whether it’s podcast advertising or advertising on a bus or working with influencers. Sometimes when you look at those things, it’s like, “Why are we not doing that because X, Y, or Z brand has done a really good job at doing this?” Sometimes you end up going into those areas without a lot of experience and without the ability to actually get a positive ROI out of it.

I think for us, it’s been about taking a step back and being like, “These are the things that are really working. Let’s focus on those. Let’s put more energy and effort into it and really grow it.” Then, when we have maybe more team members or more capacity, we can test these different things. But yeah, the biggest thing has been staying in our lane and diving more into what works.

PC: Having been on this journey for three-plus years, is there anything that’s surprised you about this experience thus far?
Mike: I want to say the targets that we hit. We visualized them from the start. Some of the roadblocks and challenges weren’t anticipated, but really with anything, we figured out how to pivot and move forward. For example, the first product that we were going to launch with—you’ll see if you look at all of our handles and socials—was Waterboy Can. We actually were going to make a can drink and then realized we couldn’t. Within a day, we made the switch to powder and moved forward. I don’t know if there’s anything that’s quite taken me by surprise. Anything that may have been an outlier, we just figured out how to deal with it.

Connor: I would agree. There are a lot of things that you have to adapt to as time goes on, whether it was us being a can originally and having to pivot to powder or even now, exploring the retail route a bit and having those conversations. It’s interesting to learn about how that whole industry works and how it’s different than our direct-to-consumer business. But I would say every day there’s probably some sort of surprise.

PC: Having been friends before you started this company, have you learned anything new about your respective business partner?
Mike: I’ve learned some personal things about Connor. [laughs]

Connor: Say something personal. Throw it out there.

Mike: I’ve learned that Connor likes his shorts really short and his socks really long. I’ve learned that if Connor ingests a gram of gluten or dairy, he’ll probably pass away.

Connor: You opened up this can of worms, so let me toss it back. I’ve learned that Mike gets frequent spray tans.

Mike: That is not true.

Connor: That is true. I have other employees to back me up on that one. Also, not that there’s anything wrong with this, but twice a year, he shaves all his limbs and everything.

Mike: Not all of them. I’ve never shaved my arms before. I’ll throw that out there.

Connor: Okay, just legs.

PC: There are so many exciting things in the works for the brand, including Waterboy Can and merch. What’s ahead for the company? What are some of your long-term goals?
Connor: We’re about to blow this thing up.

Mike: It’s so hard to think long-term because right now the day-to-day is so busy. Obviously, we have a big picture. We launched with a product to help someone recover after a night out and then next was a product to help someone recover after a workout. Our goal is rather than make a one size fits all hydration production, let’s make hydration functional and add ingredients specifically for when people need them. With that comes different points in somebody’s day or life when they need the product. That’s on the product end. On the marketing end, how can we continue to have fun with the brand, connect with our consumers, and build a loyal audience? That’s really the big-picture view.

Then, the other big item too is realizing availability is key. If someone needs that in an hour or in five to ten minutes, how can they get it? Especially some of the products that are a last-minute purchase decision or maybe not very thoughtful or mindful of. But that comes with growth in time, and we’ve been able to cover quite a bit of ground in two years. So, I would say that’s the long-term goal and view. It’s more or less what Connor said earlier about doubling down on what’s working and figuring out different areas that we can test and explore on a smaller scale before we dive in further.

Make sure to follow Connor (Twitter/Instagram), Mike (Twitter/Instagram), and Waterboy (Instagram/TikTok).