Orca co-founder Michael Moriarty on building energy water in clear cans and going viral on Amazon

billboards going up in Manhattan very very soon. And so campaign rolling out with AdQuick over the summer. summer campaign first billboard campaign. Well, we have our next guest in the studio, Clem from Conduit. Welcome to the stream. And there's someone with you. Would you mind both introducing yourself?

How you guys doing? I think you're live. I think we're mixed up here. They're the next guest. They're the next guest. This is the Orca team. Okay. I was like, uh, are these guys in the same place? Sorry. Uh, let's just do it live. We'll flip these. You guys are here. Let's go. Let's give it up for the Orca team.

Thank you for having us. Thank you. This is the Orca team. Uh we have had uh we've talked about you multiple times on the show. We both goed marketers. We've both worked in consumer package goods. Very excited to talk about the product.

Uh why don't you give us the update, introduce the company, introduce yourselves, and break us down for how things are going. Yeah. So, I'm Michael. This is Nash. We we make Orca. It's an energy water packaged in this. Oh, wow. Stunning. Yeah.

We we started because we were solving a problem with energy drinks, which is that they all tasted like candy to us and really sweet. And after drinking them every morning for years, we were like, why can't we just take all the caffeine and put it in water? And so that started us on our journey.

Two years ago, it took us a really long time to put it in this can. Um, which we've covered on Twitter and it's gone kind of viral. The Wall Street Journal wrote about us. I think that's how you guys find out about us probably.

Um, we launched on Amazon finally in March of this year and things have gone a lot better than we anticipated, a lot quicker than we anticipated. And so now we're in the middle of a fund raise and sort of looking to hit the ground running here. That's amazing. Isn't it strange with consumer package goods?

You're like the company's ripping, but you're like you're like, wait, why are like why does it feel like we're going broke because we need to buy so much inventory? Yeah, it's uh it's tough getting supplier. will be in. Give us give us a quick backstory on making making it.

I I feel like you people love the packaging and then you've also caught heat for it online from You invent it yourself. Did you invent this in a cave with a box of scraps? Yeah. A lot of people that have never built anything standing on the shoulders of giants. They hate standing on the shoulders of giants. Yeah.

We uh from the offset, we knew that the product had to be in clear packaging because we wanted to show the consumer what was inside. Yep. Uh compared to our competitors. And when we saw the clear can, we were like, "This is it. It's perfect. It's shaped like an energy drink. You can see what's inside.

It uh it tells the story of the product like right off the bat. " Um, and we had started actually teasing it online before we launched and like saw that it was going viral.

And so when we had all these manufacturing issues and like spent a full year and tons of money and time trying to figure it out, that was our north star. we knew like if we can if we can figure this out, it's the perfect packaging. Um, and so yeah. Yeah.

So, you stayed away from I I imagine there were offtheshelf clear bottles available from like, you know, Fiji or Dani. Like there's probably an an industrial complex for just clear plastic bottles. Just regular bottles of water. Yeah, just regular bottles of water.

Uh, but you wanted something that fit the energy drink uh kind of shape and dimensions. Is that were you thinking about like if you get into a convenience store you need to slot into the same form factor as like Red Bull and Celsius because I feel like it's always hard when you come in.

Oh, we we we have a really cool square can. You want to innovate but not too much. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I think a lot of it was just identifying what category like the category placement from the beginning and we kind of think of ourselves as creating a new category which is energy water.

And so when we were thinking about the packaging, we thought that while we knew we wanted it to be clear, we thought that a normal water bottle would be too far in the water direction and a a normal can would be too far in the energy drink direction.

So this was like the natural perfect middle ground that like Nash said, just you see it and get what the what the product is. Yeah. You also don't want confusion if somebody picks up it and they think, "Oh, this is just a nice refreshing bottle of water.

" Like they might people might be okay if like, oh, it's sparkling, but if there's 100 milligrams of caffeine in there, you're like, "What the hell, dude? " Yeah. talk talk about the marketing strategy to date.

I I remember seeing one of one of your campaigns which was this was the guy just reading off the the signs, right? Am I right there? Is that Corbin Blue? Not just any guy. Not just any guy. Yeah. Yeah. Like that was the wildest. Yeah. Break that down. How'd that come together?

Give us all the numbers like what was the result? If you could share like Yeah. Anything about that, we'd appreciate that. Yeah. I think we're just kind of trying to do stuff differently uh from a marketing standpoint.

And so like when we when we were thinking about the launch video and did research on like what makes a successful launch video, it was like very short to the point optimized for conversion, whatever.

And we were like, "All right, like well what would the exact opposite of that be and it would be having Corbin Blue list road signs for 9 minutes? " Um, so yeah, we're we're Have you guys won any awards for that yet?

Yeah, I feel like this could be in like ad week or like some sort of like ad ad uh Yeah, big ad probably hates you guys because you're you're tearing up the rule book, you know, you're throwing it out. It's great.

Similarly, on our Amazon page, if you go to our Amazon and just scroll down, instead of like a like a brand section, it's just a full explor exploration of Napoleon's withdrawal from Moscow. And that's awesome.

We've been meeting with like Amazon agencies that we're about to bring on and they're like, you know, love what you're doing here, but maybe not the most optimal. Like we we hilarious. Like, you don't understand. We're we're playing on a different level. Yeah. Pull it up this right now. This is great.

So, what So, what um what you you guys cooking? I mean, it's it's like great when you go viral, you have a good idea, it hits, and then the attention fades. So, you kind of just have to figure out how to keep Are you guys like working on building that muscle of of how do we do this kind of thing multiple times a year?

What does that look like? Definitely. And and a big part of the raise is building revenue we can scale. So, like online advertising, so like you said, we don't have to hope that we go viral every week. Um, and then launching into retail here in Southern California. Uh, speaking of muscle, who's that behind you?

Where where are you guys? That's such a funny mural. We are uh we're in the attic. Okay. Our house. We've got three roommates. Nash's downstairs. I sleep in that bed. This is an influencer named Jake Shane. We sent influencer gift packages. We sent a case of Orca and then like an AI photo of their dad jacked.

We sent We sent him jacked, but he was out of town and so we just kept it. We're like, that's great. Breaking through. Good. Good. Yeah. Most people think, "Oh, yeah, you use AI to market. " And it's like, "Oh, you chopped up your B-roll a little bit. " Uh, this is a What were you guys doing before this? Yeah.

Uh, we were both in tech. We were We were uh buddies at Georgetown. Yeah. Let's go. Let's go. Let's give it up for Big Tech. You said buddies where? Georgetown College. Uh, amazing. Well, we got to get some here in the studio.

But we've been I mean this is the amount of caffeine I mean we were on the show before you tasted it cuz I know you you're unbiased but I know that that can play a factor. Well now we're biased because we like you guys.

We're going to have to give he's returning to the fact that that matina yerba mate tastes like it was made by someone. Yeah. This is the only this is the only category of of like partner that we don't have exclusives on because we we just we're connoisseurs of energy energy.

It's kind of like how The Economist, the back of the Economist is a different high herology, a different watch brand every single uh every single edition. Every single show should have a different energy drink percolating through the show. We love it. Uh but thanks so much for coming on, guys. We will talk to you soon.

Good luck with the fund raise. Good luck with distribution. Get hopefully see you guys around LA sometime. Yeah, we'll see you soon. Later. Bye. Um we are working on bringing on more people, but let's go to the timeline and let's do some ads. Let's tell you about Wander. Find your