 I mean I guess rewind like maybe a year before starting it like I like I said was working remote in my home kitchen had been drinking this weird drink we ended up winding down that startup and I joined a tech company in person like was working in an office environment now and was around a ton of caffeine addicts basically if you go into any office it's probably 10 out of 10 people drink coffee and like eight out of ten probably will tell you they drink too much of it and I would bring in this hydro flask and people were just like what the fuck is that and I'm like it's mud it was just like a joke like I just looked like people were like grossed out by it they're like if that's not coffee so that's gross and I love like playing into that and sort of like challenging that a little bit but every time my fellow employees would be like oh man I'm like trying to switch out like weenoff my afternoon cup or drink less or quit all together like that type of thing and I was like this is insane that like everybody drinks this stuff and most people who drink it are probably somewhat addicted to it and also most people who drink it want to like rethink their relationship with it whether that's quitting or that's just like drinking less and I was just like that's absurd that just means that that culture and marketing is like controlling people into into how they act and behave in a similar way that maybe like tobacco did and so that's kind of like planted the seed where I was like that's really interesting and so I started giving making some for people in the office and like just seeing what they thought and people were like oh my god is amazing like I've been wanting something like this like tea just never quite cut it like this that and that and so fast forward a year of working there it just was starting to become like overwhelmingly obvious that like there was an opportunity here and I think there was two things that contributed like one I was in LA in LA sort of at the tip of the spear in regards to like progressive health and wellness and like mushrooms at that time three four years ago weren't as popular as it is today like not nearly like it really hit a curve around that time and then also that company happened to be an e-commerce a subscription tech company so I was leading the design team and learning the ins and outs of subscription e-commerce and how to build community how to build retention and how to track it but also how to design for it so all of a sudden I felt like I had like a very unique skill set that could launch this product that could fit a massive market and so May of 2018 literally over the weekend I grabbed my computer and designed the brand the packaging coated a front-end I know how to do some front-end code so I coated like a front-end website on the Squarespace e- editor and put up an Instagram post and said we're not mad at coffee we're just disappointed and it was just me like I didn't even have product yet like I didn't have anything I was just like I was excited to work on something that that was my own and for the first time in my career like I had worked on side projects I had co-founded two other companies but both of them were tech companies and I didn't know any back-end development so I always needed other help on everything that I did or was joining other people like an already started company and there's the first time where I literally could do the whole thing like I could make the product I could design the brand I knew enough to build the websites you could work with these themes and I was like I don't need anybody and I just felt like I was unleashed like I was just like moving so fast and everything came very intuitively the brand was live now and all of a sudden like orders started to come in and I was like okay what do I do at the time I had no financial stability like I was in debt a little bit of debt but I didn't have any money to sink into it but I just knew it was gonna work like I just knew it and so I opened up a credit card and got started and I ordered I basically was I just ordered more of exactly what I was making for myself so I ordered the same from the same suppliers on Amazon I bought more of it and I got some jars and some stickers and just started small and started fulfilling orders and being had had even worked in the tech space for a while I knew that once I launched well I knew that I needed to go the VC route I needed capital because I didn't have my own and because of that I knew that once I launched like it was on like every month I needed to beat my numbers and when you're pitching to the investors like it's just like trying to convert a customer as well like you want to reduce friction and you want to make this like us just a seamless yes and to do that and that initial in the early stages of a company it's it's almost more simple than in the later stages where you just need to have an amazing growth slide it just needs to go up into the right and it just needs to show you continued growth and if there's any like dips that's just one more thing that you got a like like why did it dip and you're like well I had my job got busy and this that's like where are you committed like I was all in and so I just started to go and I was fulfilling orders in my house then moved to a commercial kitchen within six months we were doing six figures in monthly revenue just like I was working full time at my previous company I would hire all my friends who in LA there's like a lot of just actresses and like models and whatnot that had these like interesting time like they just had so much time that they needed little side jobs so they come over to my house package boxes and I'd come home on my lunch break and go and take them to the post office go back to work come home go to the commercial kitchen mix mud just like I was just on fire it was insane to think about what I was doing but ultimately was just trying to get this thing off the ground and we had progress but it got to the point where I probably needed like a month more to prove out like retention growth some some metrics and I would like timing wise I was completely maxed out like I didn't have enough time to put into it to keep up with orders and then financially like I didn't have the money to keep up with orders really so like I couldn't quit my job to free up time because then I wouldn't have cash and I would have to like wind down the business and I called up a previous co-founder of mine who had been sort of my like therapist and advisor through these first six months of launching mudwater like watching from afar and helping on on finances and business and I was just like pretty much on the verge of tears and I was like told him the situation I was like I don't know what to do I like if I continue I'm gonna have to like probably slow down growth or wind down the company and if I quit my job I'll have to wind down the company because I'll run out of money and he was like dude I'm not an investor but I'm wiring you $25,000 it's pretty much all I have and I'm gonna stop helping you if you don't accept it and tomorrow you gotta go quit your job and we're doing this uh and he like hung up and just texted me he's like look at your bank account like let's go and it's pretty much what happened his name's paul de joe and he's uh our current co-founder and COO and yeah went left my job and uh we went out and went on a fundraising mission and uh we closed that fall so um I guess it was probably two three months after that point we closed just over 1.1 million