Paul Voge (Aura Bora) - Why he decided to found a sparkling water company with weird flavors, How he entered retail during COVID, and What perception he would change when founding a CPG business

Our guest today is Paul Voge, one of the founders and CEO of Aura Bora. Aura Bora is sparkling water made from real herbs, fruits, and flowers for earthly tastes and heavenly feelings. The flavors are definitely one of kind and different like Lavender Cucumber, Cactus Rose, Peppermint Watermelon. I was skeptical at first but when I tried it, I must say I LOVED it. My personal favorite is lemongrass coconut. Paul has a pretty fascinating story about how he started and his approach to building a sparkling water company with out-there wacky flavors that are delicious.

1. How would you define your relationship with Sparkling water before you started a sparkling water company?
2. Did you always want to be an entrepreneur?
3. What was the “aha” moment?
4. What was the first flavor you LOVED that you felt you perfected?
5. How did you think about different flavor profiles/expanding SKUs
   1. I had Seth on last week
6. How did you think about experimenting with flavors? Was this something you did yourself, did you hire/partner with a food/drink scientist?
7. You didn’t have any experience within CPG. How did you go about building your network?
8. Why invest in beverage brands?
9. What was the hardest part fundraising?
10. How do you think about ads?
11. When did you feel like you were on to something?
12. At what point did you quit your job?
13. What was your distribution strategy? Was it to start DTC and then go into retail or go into retail from the getgo?
14. How did you get into Whole Foods?
15. Why did you move from Boulder to San Francisco?
16. What were some of the things you had to pick up on quickly since you didn’t come from CPG prior to starting Aura Bora?
    1. How much should you spend in tradespend?
17. You were in SKUs accelerator, what was so valuable about that experience?
18. It’s March 2020. COVID happens and your cranking, trying to get into stores. Walk us through what’s happening during that time?
    1. How did you approach developing relationships with stores during that period?
    2. How did COVID change your distribution approach?
19. We talk to a number of CPG retail investors on this show that emphasize it’s all about velocity rather than the total number of stores you’re in. What’s good velocity to you? How do you measure success?
20. Why did you decide to go on Shark Tank? What was that experience like?
    1. Was the intent always to take a deal no matter what?
21. What was your approach to raising a fundraising round?
22. How do you think about SKUs and flavor approach today? What’s the strategy?
23. What’s one thing that you’ve been surprised in the consumer response - could be positive or negative. Negative could be more interesting.
24. What’s one book that has inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
    1. Seth Goldman - Mission in a Bottle
    2. Mark Rompolla - Build Something Great
    3. The Last Lecture
25. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
    1. Amateurs talk strategy, experts talk logistics
26. What’s one thing you would change about the CPG industry?