Ben Kander: The inspiration actually came out of tragedy. In 2012, my senior year of college, my mom was diagnosed with liver cancer, and within a year she passed away. It was a crazy tragedy that made me realize how fragile life is. We don’t know how long we have on this earth, and my mom saw that firsthand. I wanted to start a business that both gave back to people and gave back to our planet. 

Practically speaking, my girlfriend — now wife — drank more water than anyone I know, and I started drinking more water, too, which really improved my mental clarity and focus. I didn’t have a reusable water bottle at the time, and I wanted to design something that was beautiful and stood out from what was on the market. I’ve always been in love with products that include a natural or renewable resource, so we integrated bamboo, which grows four to five times as quickly as trees do and is actually hard to contain if you don’t chop it down. 

I also wanted to include people in our mission. From the start we’ve donated one percent of our sales to clean water projects in developing countries, even when we weren’t profitable. We’ve partnered with charity: water, which is an incredible nonprofit with unmatched transparency, so we can really track where our funds go and connect our customers to specific projects. 

Overall, I view this business as a continuation of my mom’s legacy. I named it after her. Her name was Ellen, my dad used to call her Elly, and the funds that we donate go to creating wells: Hence the name Welly. I know my mom is most proud when we bring clean water to people around the world, mainly because it supports women and daughters. In many impoverished countries, moms and daughters are the family members who spend hours going to collect water while the men work and the sons get an education. That’s part of the difference that we’re looking to make in the world, and I know she would’ve supported that beyond anything.

I started working for the company that produces Sugar in the Raw, which is a great company to work for. I felt really blessed to have that opportunity, but at the same time I just felt like I wanted to start something on my own. I’m an entrepreneur at heart, and my mom was an entrepreneur and a philanthropist here in Pittsburgh, our hometown. That bug was really hard to resist.

There are people who walk into your life and you are drawn to them immediately. They just have a spark and energy — a light — when they walk into a room. That’s exactly who my mom was. She was larger than life and people just gravitated toward her, and she loved connecting people and helping people. That’s what our business is about. We want to provide a product that solves an everyday need while also helping people access clean water, and that’s just such an emulation of who she was as a person. My mom was also incredibly stylish, and I think our products emulate that, too. They really stand out.