Sküma: From an Idea to a Half a Million Valuation in 18 months
Interview with Alexandre Mahe, CEO of Sküma
Tell us about Sküma. What do you do?
Sküma is compact counter top device that recreates commercially sold mineral water from tap or impure water. Our tag line is: One world, One water — it emphasises our goal of promoting tap water consumption and discouraging the purchase of bottled water all around the world. In simple words, Sküma is the Sodastream for mineral water.
What is your startup’s origin story?
The company was born in February 2019 in response to the ever increasing demand for bottled water. During my childhood, I was fortunate enough to have grown up in almost every continent. This particularity allowed me to notice first-hand differences in consumer behaviours around the world. Water is a great example of how one commodity can be sourced and consumed in various ways depending on which country you decide to take a closer look into. In China, most people boil their tap water, countries like Mexico only drink bottled water and others like Canada mostly drink tap water. We want to offer a solution for people who want to preserve the benefits of drinking bottled water (mostly peace of mind) but without the plastic. The bottled water industry has no place in society in 2020!
Had you been involved in the industry before this startup? What is your background?
I am an industrial engineer by trade and Sküma is actually my second company. My first every company Omex Solutions was founded back in 2016 in Montreal (Canada) and was also dealing with water treatment and purification. Our idea at the time was to make a device that would recreate contact lens solution (used to clean, store and disinfect contact lenses) from plain tap water.
What’s unique about your company? What are the key differentiators between you and other players?
Water mineralisation devices have been gaining a lot of momentum lately with companies like Mitte raising $10.6 million in their last round of funding. Sküma is different in its way of purifying and mineralisating the water. We use reverse osmosis technology to purify the water from virtually all contaminants and then we use a liquid mineralisation technique to add the specific minerals back into the water. The water produced by Sküma is unique in its ability to recreate almost any famous mineral water brand like Evian or Volvic. This technology also allows us to add vitamins in the water in order to achieve a product that not only reduced bottled water consumption, but that also caters to mineral deficiencies. Our device also costs only $160 compared to the $500 mark for all our competitors.
Take us through a day in your life. What does the typical day look like?
Writing and answering emails is not the most exciting thing in the world but it is the biggest part of my day. Each day, I tend to spend about 3 to 4 hours a simply going through emails. Most of these emails concern product development, marketing, task management and supplier coordinating. Like most people I then workout at around lunch time (when the gyms are not on lockdown of course). For the second part of my day, I mostly spent it on meeting with the team members and subcontractors, making sure everything is moving at a right pace.
What has been the most challenging part of growing your company?
Delegating tasks is most definitely the hardest part for any startup founder. When you first start developing your idea, it seems that everything would just be easier if you had more money to spend on better service providers. But, once you actually get into what it really means to be startup founder, you start to realise that everything you seem to commission or delegate is never done as you expected it. This realisation builds up a sort of paranoia around delegating and you end up just doing everything yourself. Doing everything yourself might seem like a better idea but that is simply not feasible when the workload increases. Finding the right balance between delegating tasks and doing everything yourself is the most challenging part of growing a company.
What has been your best marketing channel? What are some channels you are looking to explore next?
We have been running facebook ads for over a year now and have achieved really good results. It took some time to get the hang of it but our results are generally fantastic with cost per click rates of $0.09 and cost per acquisition of $0.86. However, we have recently been exploring taking advantage of Pinterest and their very illustrative platform, which is showing very promising early signs.
What apps do you use that you would recommend to others?
Like for many startups, our main project management app is Asana and is one of the best project management softwares out there. I would highly recommend any early stage start-ups to make the switch to Asana since it is also a great tool when it comes to fund raising. Potential investors can easily track the progress that has been made as well as the general efficiency of the team. Having a well managed Asana interface will drastically increase your odds of raising funds as an early stage startup.
Do you have a book, podcast, or Youtube channel you would recommend to other Entrepreneurs?
This might not be the most conventional answer but I am an avid listener of the Joe Rogan experience podcast on youtube. Being an entrepreneur is not only about accumulating knowledge in your specific industry. It is about opening your mind to new ideas that, for all you know might impact your business in a way you would have never imagined. From industry leading scientists to sport commentators, the Joe Rogan experience, provides you with that opened mindedness each week. I would encourage any current entrepreneur or inspiring entrepreneur to regularly tune in, you never know what new interests you might develop!
If you could go back in time to the day you founded your company, what advice would you give yourself?
I started my first startup when I was an 18 year old engineering student in Canada. I had all the tools required to successfully launch my first product including initial funding from friends and family, a team of engineers and personal motivation. However, after trying to launch the product for 3 years, I decided to close the company due to lack of funding . Upon reflection, I noticed that what actually made the project fail was not the poor quality of the work delivered by our subcontractors, or even the lack of experience from our team. The lack of personal discipline was to blame. At the time, my sole objective was to complete at least one task each day, which gave me a sense of accomplishment. Although I had this feeling of satisfaction, the project was not being developed at the rate necessary for a successful launch and thus failed. If I could go back in time, I would definitely ask myself to be much more disciplined.
What’s something you’ve learned from building your business that someone else can learn from?
Being committed to a particular project or idea you have is what sets apart people who want to be entrepreneurs and real entrepreneurs. Everyone has ideas that have commercial value in society (even a pet rock sold millions of units on Kickstarter). You just need to find a “decently” good idea and stick with it!
