Sep 26, 2022
Sarah Kauss on How I Built This: It’s More Than Just a Water Bottle
These images were inspired by Episode 444 of the How I Built This Podcast, interviewing Sarah Kauss, founder of S’well water bottles. How I Built This is produced by NPR and features “innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists,” looking at the journey behind the movements they build.
Sarah Kauss is a real success story. Starting out as a corporate accountant, she chucked it in a decade ago to start a company that made high-end reusable water bottles. They’re pretty much everywhere these days, particularly in Starbucks outlets. Sales are currently around $100 million, and Sarah raised no outside funding to grow the company.
Here are takeaways of the big ideas the podcast generated, both Sarah’s and our own:
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- To succeed, you’ll probably need to work harder and be luckier than everyone else. Both are hard for different reasons.
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- Design is compromise. Design is removing everything you don’t need from what you do need (this includes realms like price, technology, beauty, psychology, etc.) and somehow making it all work together. When done well, design goes deep and is nearly imperceptible.
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- When designing a business or product, don’t forget women. They make up the majority of the population and drive the majority of consumer purchasing. Creating anything without them in mind is pure folly.
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- Money and status just aren’t enough. What you create needs to be part of something larger, something that comes from deep inside you. Otherwise it’s just not that real or meaningful.
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- A dream is a good thing to have, but it’s only a starting point. Eventually you must execute, and go to market, which is much harder. Dreams don’t come true on autopilot.
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- A product (say, a reusable water bottle) is more than its functionality. It’s the end result of an idea, a worldview, a psychological desire to change the world. There’s a whole lot of human story wrapped up in everything you buy.
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- Often what carries you forward is the understanding that one day you’ll want to look back on where you are now, and like what you see.
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- Often, some of our greatest experiences, our greatest teaching moments are fairly ordinary and boring in the moment. It’s only later that we understand their true value. Education can be expensive (painful, mundane), and usually happens after the fact.
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- Glory comes after the fact (and only sometimes). Success is rarely glamorous at the time. Often it’s actually pretty grim. Embrace “getting there” and make sure you enjoy the actual journey, before you pick the destination.
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- The hardest thing to achieve in business or design is simplicity. Any fool can make things more complicated. Simplifying is the true magic. The fact that it’s so difficult is also what makes it so powerful.
For more content like this, check out our last podcast review featuring Kunal Shah, on core human motivations.
