3The Eye-popping Return on Authenticity
“Weirdness is what sets us apart, gets us hired. Be your unapologetically weird self. In fact, being weird may even find you the ultimate happiness.”
—Chris Sacca, venture investor, company advisor, entrepreneur, and lawyer
AFTER AN INCREDIBLE career in advertising, in which he was named Ad Director of the Decade and won countless awards, my friend Alex Bogusky stepped down from the advertising agency with his name on it and founded a private equity firm called Batshit Crazy Ventures.
One of the investments Batshit Crazy made was into a company called “Liquid Death.”
Disruption Takes Courage
Liquid Death is the story of how one guy went “Searching for Meaning in a Nihilist Can of Water” (Lee, 2023). The company has a $700 million valuation with $130 million in annual sales, as I write this, after only three years, with the motto, “Murder Your Thirst.” According to Lee, the company turned online comments from its biggest haters into a series of music albums. Liquid Death partnered with Martha Stewart to make a $58 candle in the shape of a severed hand. It made and sold a $182 limited edition enema kit (yes, an enema) in partnership with Blink-182 drummer, Travis Barker. In other words, the company's marketing, by any measure, was batshit crazy, and it got the attention of retailers, consumers, and investors.
“If you don't want to drink (alcohol), this is way more fun,” cofounder and CEO Mike Cessario told Bloomberg (Lee, 2023) after ...
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