A Startup's Secret Weapon Retirees

Startup founders champion fresh ideas and new solutions. But as they’re increasingly discovering, they can also benefit from people who’ve been there and done that.

- Liz Brody

Chris Kanik just could not order a damn margarita. It was a Tuesday in 2011, and the restaurant where he was sitting was called Taco Tuesday—which meant the place was bustling and waitresses were nowhere. As Kanik sat at his table staring at his water glass, he had a fateful, if not kind of insane, idea: Why hasn’t someone come up with a packet you can carry in your pocket and dump into water to create an instant margarita, or, for that matter, anything else? Just add water and—kazam! Beer, wine, whatever you want. It would be like an alcoholic Crystal Light. Kanik had a background in chemistry, so he took out a pen and started scribbling some notes.

Flash-forward a day later and a bottle of Everclear at hand, and Kanik was in his kitchen researching his idea. He learned that, in fact, he wasn’t the first thirsty guy to explore this. Others had attempted it but had always been sobered up by state regulations. Kanik was only 27 at the time, working as a struggling comedian and with absolutely zero inventions to his name, but he was undeterred. Maybe, he figured, he could succeed where all these other people failed. So he started making some calls—and would eventually be led down a path of increasingly older generations of partners. First he’d find an inventor a few decades his senior, and then, ultimately, they’d both find a retiree who could hold a true key to their mutual success.