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She Had Zero Connections in the Beverage Industry.

  • Deevo Tindall
  • 5 days ago
  • 5 min read

Six Months Later: $500K and 600 Retail Doors.



By Deevo  •  The Branding Laboratory Podcast


What if the best thing you could do for your startup was walk into 40 breweries with no product, no funding, and no industry contacts? For serial founder Jennifer Millard, that’s not a hypothetical. That’s Tuesday.


Millard is the creator of Maine Love, a fast-growing canned water brand now in 600+ retail stores across Maine and New Hampshire, with $500K in revenue in its first six months. She’s a five-time founder, a Maine Entrepreneur of the Year, and she just sat down with Deevo on The Branding Laboratory to drop the kind of hard-won founder wisdom you don’t usually get until chapter three of someone’s memoir.


Grab a cold one (water, obviously) and let’s dig in.


The Market Gap Nobody Wanted to Talk About


Jennifer wasn’t looking to launch a water brand. She was researching mocktails when she noticed something head-scratching: there was no dedicated section for them anywhere. Mocktail products were lost in the juice aisle, crammed next to sodas, or awkwardly shelved near beer. Undefined. Unclaimed. Invisible.


But the bigger story was what was happening around her. Gen Z is drinking less alcohol — a lot less. Over 60% say they’d choose a flavored, healthy water over an alcoholic drink when given the option. Meanwhile, Maine — home to more craft brewers per capita than any other state in the U.S. — was sitting on some of the cleanest freshwater in the country, with production infrastructure that had slowed down alongside beer sales.


Two trends. One massive opportunity. And Jennifer connected the dots.


Hope is not a strategy. Your distribution matters. Your capital matters. And your clarity matters.

— Jennifer Millard, Founder of Maine Love


The “Water Co-op” No One Saw Coming


Here’s where it gets clever. Maine Love doesn’t own a factory, a warehouse, or a single truck. Instead, Jennifer walked into those 40 breweries (yes, all 40), heard every single one say they were “waiting for beer to come back,” and said: what if you didn’t have to wait?


She helped those breweries meet FDA Good Manufacturing Practice standards for water production — turning idle equipment into a distributed manufacturing network. She calls it a water co-op. We call it genius.


Maine Love produces five SKUs (three flavored waters, one still, one sparkling) using this co-op model. The breweries earn new revenue. Maine Love keeps overhead low. Everybody wins.


She calls this the “Rising Tides” thesis — borrowed from economist Hal Varian’s framework. When Maine Love wins, its brewery partners win. When they win, the local economy wins. When that story gets out, Maine’s broader brand as a place worth visiting (and drinking from) wins.


Asset-light. Community-built. Built to scale.


We don’t add anything to the water. We just remove the chlorine and return it to its original state. This is just water.

— Jennifer Millard


Raising $2.2M When “AI” Isn’t on Your Pitch Deck


Let’s be honest: raising capital right now without the word “AI” in your deck is… a vibe. Jennifer’s words, not ours: “if you don’t have the word AI on the end of your company, it’s very difficult.” And yet, she raised $2.2 million for a canned water brand in Maine.


How? By being ruthlessly intentional about her cap table. She didn’t just want checks — she wanted investors who bring expertise, network, and genuine belief in the mission.


Her investor mix includes:

💼  Private equity operators who love the asset-light model

🏦  An investment banker who structures her debt creatively

❤️  "Lovely lovers of Maine" — brand believers who showed up early

She’s currently closing her convertible note as priced round conversations begin. And her five-year goal? Grow from $500K in Maine to $5M across the 95 corridor. A 10x jump she describes as “ambitious but grounded.”


Why Titles Are Overrated (and a Can in Someone’s Hand Is Gold)


Ask Jennifer about culture and she’ll talk about people before the product, every single time. Her hiring philosophy was shaped by years leading retail teams of 300–400 people: the best hires often aren’t the ones with the best-looking résumés.


She’s looking for work ethic, curiosity, and the willingness to fail fast and recover faster. The person who worked two jobs to put themselves through a solid school? That’s her hire over the 4.0 Stanford grad every time.


Her sales team rule is refreshingly simple: don’t lose money. Within that guardrail, people have real ownership. She runs a condensed Amazon-style team interview loop and gives every employee — regardless of title — access to the same executive coach she’s used for 20 years.


At a company where most of the team is under 30, that investment is a real differentiator.


Titles do not equal power here. A can in somebody’s hand right now is the best marketing I could ever spend.

— Jennifer Millard


What Does the Exit Look Like? (Spoiler: She’s Not in a Rush)


Jennifer has exited four companies before this one — including a sale to Mastercard where she watched her product get quietly dismantled by corporate risk-aversion. That experience changed how she thinks about exits.


Maine Love is structured as an LLC with profit-sharing built in. That gives her the optionality to:

💰  Run it as a cashflow dividend business

🚀  Convert to a C-corp for a future venture round

🤝  Pursue a strategic acquisition

★  Transition to an employee ownership model (ESOP) — her stated preference

But her long-game answer? “Water is forever. Why would you sell a water company when we’re entering an era when water is about to be the new oil?” That’s the kind of thinking that doesn’t always fit the venture playbook. But then again, neither does Maine Love.


📋 Quick Takeaways for Founders

  • Distribution, capital, and clarity matter as much as your product. Neglect any one and your thesis breaks.

  • The Rising Tides model works: build on existing infrastructure, share the upside, and your brand becomes a community asset.

  • Hire for work ethic and learning mindset over credentials. Grit beats GPA.

  • Real agency beats fancy titles. Give your team a simple guardrail and watch them thrive.

  • Build your cap table with intention — investors should bring expertise and belief, not just a check.

  • Structure exit optionality from day one. An LLC with profit-sharing gives you more doors than a C-corp on a VC clock.


About Jennifer Millard


Jennifer Millard is a five-time founder, Maine Entrepreneur of the Year, and the creator of Maine Love, a fast-growing canned water brand rooted in Maine’s legendary freshwater source. She’s previously exited three software companies in the consumer intention space (including a sale to Mastercard) and co-founded Life Factory, a glass container brand sold to Thermos in 2017. She’s building the water economy one aluminum can at a time.

Follow Maine Love: Instagram @mainelovelife  |  mainelove.com


🎧Listen to the Full Episode


Jennifer’s full conversation with Deevo on The Branding Laboratory goes deep on leadership identity, the capital-raising grind, recycling innovation, and what it really means to build power from scratch. This is one you’ll want to share.


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