Born on a Nurse’s Night Shift, Tiki Bev Aims To Be the Health-Conscious Water Enhancer

Katherine Abando
Katherine Abando is a lifestyle writer and social media producer from Los Angeles. Her coverage interests include internet culture/tech and Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) identity. She enjoys learning about emerging entrepreneurs and digital trends that pop up on her social media feed. Follow her on Twitter @kaband0.
Tiki Bev

Stephanie Wilson is familiar with stress and exhaustion. The 30-year-old entrepreneur is also a full-time night nurse who spends much of her free time working on her fledgling company.

The idea for her startup came from her experience in health care, where workers are worn down after long days and nights, especially during the global pandemic.


"I've always had a hard time staying hydrated," she said "I know my co-workers have a hard time with that as well and I hated plain water."

Wilson saw an opportunity. She canvassed her colleagues and came up with Tiki Bev, a liquid enhancer aimed at frontline workers — and anyone who needs a boost. The startup soft-launched in October 2020, aiming to be the healthy, eco-conscious alternative to liquid water enhancers.

"Everyone needs an immunity boost. You know, as nurses, we never get enough sleep. And we always need more energy," she said.

Even with the pandemic, the global market for water enhancers was valued at $2.6 billion in 2020 by marketing analytics firm Research and Markets, which estimated that would grow $6 billion by 2027, as consumers focus on health-conscious and low-calorie beverages. Kraft and Dyla are big competitors in the space with products such as health-focused Stur and MiO, which advertises itself as a way to turn water into a "flavor-packed vessel of motivation."

Wilson said the more she started to look more into the big product names and common ingredients in many enhancers, the more she realized how bad some of them are for you. Aspartame, sucralose and polyethylene glycol are common in many products, she said. They're also entirely artificial.

Stephanie Wilson

Tiki Bev founder Stephanie Wilson

"A couple of these ingredients in the certain liquid enhancers are found in, like, paint thinners," Wilson said. Instead, she aims to make Tiki Bev the natural, health-conscious competition. The company uses stevia and promotes immunity, energy and sleep, she said.

At the moment, Tiki has one product available, a Vitamin C, orange flavor immunity booster. Two more — a passion fruit formula for boosting energy and a pear flavor enhancer to help consumers sleep — there's no exact launch date for those products, but Wilson wants to everyone keep an eye out.

Wilson thought of running Tiki Bev back in her native Ohio, but decided instead to stay in Los Angeles because of the city's proximity to the beach and its focus on healthy living and environmentalism — all of which she sees as key to Tiki's brand.

In February, Wilson found her way onto Amazon's "Two Minute Pitch" show, a competition show hosted by serial entrepreneur David Meltzer on which founders pitch their companies in order to win exposure and cash.

Tiki Bev won the $50,000 prize, which has helped get their product back into production after some investors backed down from their pre-seed funding round.

"It's great to say that you were on a competition show. David Meltzer is a big name and business," Wilson said, "It helps kind of show credibility that we were able to do that and bring home a win for such a small company, especially when we were competing against other big names, people that have been in business much longer than us."

Wilson was able to land a spot on Manos, a Google-backed accelerator aimed at Latino and Latina entrepreneurs, where she got some help learning how to start a business, structure the company and find investors.

Ultimately she wants to distribute the product in a biodegradable bottle and focus on becoming a full-time entrepreneur and solve the problem of her original customers.

"Nursing is a stressful job and if Tiki can help boost your vitamin intake to help you stay healthy, keep you energized, or help you fall asleep after a stressful shift, we have done our job."

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly from LA’s EV Scene

David Shultz

David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly from LA’s EV Scene

I’ve been on vacation this past week, so of course there’s been a ton of news in the Southern California EV world that I missed. I’m not even supposed to be back online until Tuesday, when I’ll be covering SXSW in Austin, Texas. But so great was the deluge of news that I’ve holed up in a Starbucks off of I-70 to whip up this little recap for you. Here we go.

Rivian

I covered Rivian’s Q4 earnings in last week’s newsletter. The results weren’t particularly pretty, with the company suggesting production guidance of just 50,000 units for 2023, which was below what many analysts had forecasted. But then, on Friday, Rivian employees told Bloomberg, that internally the company was saying it might be able to hit 62,000 units in the fiscal year. Shortly after that, however, Rivian announced that 50,000 vehicles was still the official target and that the larger figure had been taken out of context by employees. The company’s share price has fallen 24% since the earnings call.

But wait there’s more: Rivian had previously announced that it intended to lay off 6% of its workforce, and last week we got some more details about where those cuts will come from. The Palo Alto office is slated to lose 240 workers, and 204 look like they’ll be cut from the Irvine HQ, according to reporting from Carscoops.

But wait there’s even more: Rivian also announced today that it would recall 13,000 of its vehicles for issues related to an issue with the seatbelt that could prevent the passenger airbag from functioning as intended. This won’t be Rivian’s first recall, and it surely won’t be its last. Recalls are common and necessary in the automotive industry, but the news comes at an inopportune time for the EV maker.

Lastly, Rivian announced yesterday that it intends to raise $1.3 billion in cash to help it through the coming scale up phase. As I pointed out in the Q4 earnings article, the company’s current cash burn rate looked a bit too aggressive to bring Rivian into 2026, when the R2 platform is expected to launch and provide a pathway to profitability for the EV hopeful. An additional $1.3 billion helps to narrow that gap.

Vinfast

Some good news from Vinfast, actually. The company has delivered its first cars to US customers. Since its 999 SUVs arrived in the United States back in mid December 2022, the delivery process has been delayed by software issues with the vehicles. Last week, however, Vinfast announced that it had delivered 45 VF8s to customers. When the rest of the shipment will be ready for delivery is still unknown, but hey, it’s something. The news comes just a week after Vinfast cut its advertised lease price for the vehicle by a whopping 50%, which if you’ve been following dot.la’s coverage, brings its price much more in line with its value compared to competitors. Whether it’s enough to sway US consumers to take a risk on a new technology produced by a mostly unknown foreign brand, remains to be seen.

Mullen

On March 1st, Mullen’s top financier, Terren Peizer, was charged with insider trading by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Peizer and Mullen have a long history and Peizer has served as CEO of both Ontrak and Acuitas Holding Group. Back in April 2022, Hindenburg Research highlighted Peizer’s large stake in Mullen (29%), and his numerous ties to finance guys who’d found themselves in prison for various sorts of fraud. Now it seems the SEC is taking a look into Peizer himself. According to reporting by InvestorPlace, the agency has charged Peizer with selling $20 million in Ontrak stock while in possession of “material, nonpublic information (MNPI) concerning the company’s largest customer.” Whoops.

Meanwhile, Mullen announced today that it would showcase two new electric delivery vehicles at the NTEA Work Truck Show that’s ongoing this week. The press release contains images of the same class 1 cargo van that Mullen acquired when it purchased Electric Last Mile Solutions last fall, as well as a Class 3 low-cab forward delivery truck. How or where Mullen plans to make these vehicles at scale, remains unknown. But CEO David Michery said that both vehicles are coming to market later this year. Mullen would likely need to raise huge amounts of capital to bring manufacturing capacity online to deliver any meaningful volume of product, but the company does have multiple factory assets.

LA Venture: Toba Capital’s Patrick Mathieson on How VCs Can Better Support Founders

Minnie Ingersoll
Minnie Ingersoll is a partner at TenOneTen and host of the LA Venture podcast. Prior to TenOneTen, Minnie was the COO and co-founder of $100M+ Shift.com, an online marketplace for used cars. Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google. Minnie studied Computer Science at Stanford and has an MBA from HBS. She recently moved back to L.A. after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California. In her space time, Minnie surfs baby waves and raises baby people.
LA Venture: Toba Capital’s Patrick Mathieson on How VCs Can Better Support Founders
Patrick Mathieson

On this episode of the LA Venture podcast, Toba Capital Partner Patrick Mathieson discusses his thoughts on investing in SMB platforms, gross revenue retention, and other things he looks for when investing.


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