How Bevi Turned Tap Water into a $160M Startup

What if you could help the planet, delight your employees, and save money, all by rethinking the office beverage station? Tune in to this episode to find out how.

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Hello friends! You’re watching, or listening, depending on the platform, the Green New Perspective podcast. This is your go-to place to learn about innovative technologies reshaping our world and marketing strategies that help these tech companies grow in today's unpredictable market.

My guest today is Sean Grundy, the co-founder of Bevi, a company turning tap water into a customizable, eco-friendly experience while tackling single-use plastic. Bevi scaled quickly from idea to booming brand. Stick around to hear how they pulled it off, the marketing tactics that fueled their growth, and how they kept their culture strong while scaling fast.

This episode is brought to you by New Perspective Marketing. For over 20 years, New Perspective has helped future-focused B2B tech companies grow through thought leadership, better-qualified leads, and strong pipeline development. Ready for smart strategies and measurable results? Visit npws.com to learn more.

Q: Can you start by telling our audience a bit more about yourself and how you started Bevi? What’s the origin story that people might not know?

Yeah, so about myself, I honestly don't have the most interesting background. I was born in New York, grew up between New Jersey and New York, and studied philosophy in college, which in retrospect, may not have been the most practical choice.

I worked for an environmental nonprofit for a few years because I was motivated to do something in conservation. Then I went to business school, aiming to combine an environmental mission with a scalable and impactful business. That’s when I met my co-founder, Eliza. We were both living in Boston, and the idea for Bevi actually came from her.

Bevi designs beverage machines that purify tap water, store natural ingredients, like flavors, vitamins, and CO2 for sparkling water, and allow users to create a variety of drinks without wasting single-use bottles and cans. We’re a mission-driven company aiming to eliminate single-use plastic bottles through a practical solution.

Q: You’ve scaled fast from startup to B2B success. What was your first “we made it” moment?

We’ve raised over $160 million in venture capital, but our first real round was $2 million in 2015, led by Tamarisk. That round allowed us to move into our first office, a terrible basement space in a rough part of Boston, but it was still a major step. It felt real at that point.

Q: Can you measure the environmental impact of your machines, for yourselves and for your customers?

We can estimate it pretty accurately. Our machines are internet-connected to help manage replenishment of flavor concentrates, CO2, and filters. But that connectivity also lets us monitor usage data in real time.

By tracking total volume dispensed and knowing that Bevi typically replaces fridges stocked with bottled and canned drinks, we can estimate the number of bottles and cans we’re saving. Using life cycle analyses, we translate that into carbon footprint estimates. We share this data with customers, who often include it in their sustainability reports. To date, we’ve saved over 750 million single-use bottles and cans, and we’re aiming for a billion by year-end, though it won’t be easy.

Q: Since you come from the NGO sector, how do you get customers to actually care about sustainability?

I actually don’t mind if they don’t care. Many customers buy Bevi not for sustainability, but for cost savings, time savings, or because employees like it. And I think that’s great.

When I pitch, I lead with sustainability. But our sales team usually gets to that later, after talking about the economics, convenience, and wellness benefits. If we only sold to customers who cared about sustainability, we’d be much smaller. The truth is, if a product has genuine environmental benefits, it usually has other advantages too.

Q: Do you think that shift in communication, toward cost and convenience, was key to your marketing success?

Definitely. We started out heavily focused on sustainability. Now, we focus more on business metrics like cost and time savings. Sustainability is still part of the story, it’s a great extra, but it usually isn’t what closes the deal.

Interestingly, many of our initial contacts inside companies are employees who care about sustainability personally, even if they aren’t the decision-makers. They bring us in. But when it’s time to sell to the budget owner, the pitch has to be about ROI.

Q: Which marketing channels have you doubled down on as you’ve grown?

Events. Even though they’re hard to track and expensive, we’ve found them incredibly effective. Bevi is an experiential product, you need to taste it, explore the interface, and play with the customization. That’s hard to convey online.

At a recent event in Phoenix, someone tried our product for the first time and immediately told us to move forward with their order. Our CRM may show that they came from a cold outreach, but the event was the closer. So now we’re doing a trade show or event nearly every week.

Q: Speaking of events and COVID, your machines track office habits. What trends are you seeing with return-to-office?

Gradually, more people are going back to the office. On average, people are in the office about two-thirds of the time, or roughly three days a week. There are regional differences, New York and Boston see higher in-office presence than San Francisco, for instance.

We’ve also noticed that when people do come in, they’re staying longer, more usage before 9 a.m. and after 5 p.m. than pre-COVID. Companies are also watching what their competitors are doing before making their own RTO decisions.

Q: How did you maintain your mission and culture as you scaled?

Early on, people joined because they believed in the mission. We had no product, no revenue, just an idea. It was a leap of faith.

But as we grew, from 5 to 150+ people, some joined more for the opportunity than the mission. That’s inevitable. Still, we screen for alignment. If someone shows up to an interview with a plastic bottle, it’s an automatic red flag. We also try to educate our team, like pointing out that tap water is often safer than bottled, and run internal sustainability events like our Earth Day initiative.

Ultimately, we want team members who care about both the mission and the business. Being mission-driven is great, but we also need people who can build and scale the company.

Q: What’s the next big opportunity that excites you?

International expansion. We recently launched in the UK and Ireland, and it’s going well. If it continues, we’ll open in more countries.

I’m also excited about our upgraded machine launching this summer. And in general, our product roadmap is full, everything from better carbonation and flow rate to more beverage variety and healthier options.

Q: Final question: What’s your number one piece of advice for leaders scaling fast?

Get the right executives in place for each stage of growth. The ideal leader from $1M to $10M in revenue isn’t always the one to take you from $10M to $50M or beyond.

Early-stage, you need functional masters. As you scale, managerial and organizational skills become critical. Look for leaders who are great at hiring, training, aligning teams, and communicating, both verbally and in writing. Your success depends on stage-appropriate leadership.

Q: Where can our audience learn more about Bevi or get in touch?

Visit bevi.co. And if you want to reach out directly, my email is shan@bevi.co.

Thank you, Sean. This has been a pleasure.

Thanks, Dunja. I really appreciate your time today.

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Thanks again, and see you in the next episode. Bye!