Vita Coco CEO Mike Kirban on Why Your Competitive Advantage Is the Speed of Your Recovery

The speed at which you get up and recover is what makes you successful.

BY ELIZABETH GORE, CO-FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT @ELIZABETHGOREUS

Vita Coco CEO Mike Kirban. Illustration: Inc; Photo: Getty Images

Running a small business is often a series of high-stakes improvisations. For many entrepreneurs, the goal is to find a market, build a product, and scale as quickly as possible.  

But what happens when you introduce a product a market has never heard of? What happens when the world’s largest corporation decides to become your direct competitor? 

The beverage industry is famously difficult to break into. Data from the Beverage Marketing Corporation shows that the U.S. liquid refreshment beverage market reached nearly 36.4 billion gallons in volume in 2024. This underscores both the size and intensity of competition in the category. While the market is massive, it can also be unforgiving for new entrants. Research from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that about 20.4% of businesses fail within their first year. 

On a recent episode of The Big Idea podcast from Yahoo Finance, I sat down with Mike Kirban, co-founder and executive chairman of Vita Coco. Kirban did not start with a formal business plan. He started with a conversation at a bar and a realization that a staple of the tropical world, coconut water, was missing from American shelves. 

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Here are five takeaways from Kirban on building a category from scratch. 

1. Education is a boots-on-the-ground effort. 

When Kirban launched Vita Coco, most American consumers confused coconut water with thick, creamy coconut milk. There was no existing genre for the product. To bridge this gap, Kirban focused on functional benefits like electrolytes and potassium.  

The real work, however, happened in the aisles. Kirban and the team posted up in yoga studios and in natural food stores — standing in the aisles handing out samples and talking to people about the hydration benefits. 

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