THE NEXT BET
Boston or Bust
America was thousands of miles away and nobody there really knew us. We decided to go anyway.
boston or bust
By the time we started seriously thinking about America, DRNK was already selling there.
Not theoretically.
Not in the exciting startup sense of:
“The US represents a significant future growth opportunity.”
Actual bottles.
Actual customers.
Actual money.
We were selling on Amazon USA and Walmart online, and sales were good enough that Mishal and I started having the dangerous kind of conversation entrepreneurs have when something begins to work.
“Maybe it's time.”
Time for what?
Time to stop treating America like a distant marketplace we shipped products into and actually launch DRNK there properly.
A dedicated website.
A proper US operation.
A real American banking setup.
Maybe even a headquarters one day.
We had our eyes on New York and Boston.
There was something wonderfully ambitious about discussing where DRNK's US headquarters should be while sitting in Dubai running a company that still occasionally required us to solve problems with the financial sophistication of checking whether there was anything left to sell.
But this time things were different.
We had sales.
We had inventory.
We had a US company registered in Wyoming.
Wyoming.
A place neither Mishal nor I had ever been.
I couldn't have pointed to Wyoming on a blank map with any degree of confidence.
But legally speaking, DRNK lived there.
America is amazing like that.
You can own a company in a place you've never visited, selling products to people you've never met, while sitting nine thousand miles away.
So far, Amazon and Walmart payments had been coming through Wise, and from there we transferred the money into DRNK's bank account structure.
It worked.
But if we were going to launch properly in America, we needed a real US bank account.
This did not strike either of us as an especially difficult problem.
We had an American company.
America had banks.
Banks generally enjoy companies because companies have money.
This felt like one of those rare business problems where all the pieces naturally wanted to be together.
We were wrong.
First, we thought:
Fine. The company is in Wyoming. We'll open the account in Wyoming.
Apparently not.
Then: Fine. We'll open it in New York.
No.
Boston?
Also no.
Anywhere?
Not really.
The problem, we discovered, was that banks like their customers to exist.
Physically.
In front of them.
I needed to be there.
No problem.
I could get on a plane.
There are significantly worse business assignments than:
Fly to New York, open a bank account.
I would see New York.
Check out Boston.
Look at where we might eventually base the company.
Eat some food.
Open an account.
Fly home.
Easy.
Then came the next piece of information.
Being physically present wasn't enough.
I apparently needed to be a permanent US resident.
And I needed a Social Security number.
I had neither.
This seemed like an unnecessarily aggressive response to someone wanting to deposit money.
But fine.
I went anyway.
Because by this stage in building DRNK, I had learned that the phrase “you can't do that” generally means one of three things:
You genuinely can't do it.
You can do it, but nobody knows how.
Or you can do it, but you're going to have to annoy a lot of people first.
I had two weeks.
New York was exactly what New York is supposed to be.
Times Square was buzzing.
People everywhere.
Lights everywhere.
Energy everywhere.
The kind of place that makes you feel like absolutely anything is possible.
Except, apparently, opening a bank account.
I went from bank to bank.
Six in total.
I spoke to agents.
Relationship managers.
Branch staff.
Bank managers.
I explained DRNK.
I explained Dubai.
I explained Wyoming.
I explained Amazon.
I explained Walmart.
I explained Wise.
I explained that we were trying to properly launch an American business that was already selling products to Americans.
Everybody understood.
That was almost the worst part.
Nobody looked at me like I was insane.
Nobody said the business didn't make sense.
Nobody said there was something suspicious about what we were doing.
They listened.
They nodded.
They sympathised.
Then they said:
“We can't help you.”
This happened over and over again.
At some point I started feeling like I wasn't opening a bank account anymore.
I was auditioning for one.
Hello.
My name is Yasir.
I would like the privilege of giving your bank my company's money.
Here is the incorporation paperwork.
Here are the marketplace statements.
Here is proof we are a real company.
Here are the products.
Here is my passport.
Here is everything except the one number you actually want.
No Social Security number.
Thank you for coming.
Next.
I took the train to Boston.
THE BREAKTHROUGH
If New York felt like ambition turned up to maximum volume, Boston felt different.
Older.
Sharper.
More restrained.
More walkable.
More DRNK, somehow.
I went to Union Oyster House and had clam chowder.
Legendary.
For a brief period, I stopped thinking about banks.
Then I remembered I had flown across the Atlantic to open one.
Back to work.
More branches.
More conversations.
More very polite versions of no.
My two-week window was disappearing.
And this is where business becomes strange.
You spend years worrying about products.
Customers.
Pricing.
Advertising.
Inventory.
Competitors.
Then suddenly the future of the entire US launch depends on whether one person sitting behind a desk is willing to listen to your story for five minutes longer than the person before them.
Eventually, I met a bank manager who did exactly that.
She listened.
Really listened.
Not just to the documents.
To the story.
How DRNK had started.
Why the bottle was shaped the way it was.
Why we hated single-use plastic.
Why we planted trees.
Why we were trying to build something in America.
Why I had flown over from Dubai and spent the better part of two weeks walking into banks asking strangers to please let me become their customer.
At some point we stopped talking like banker and applicant.
We just talked.
She hated single-use plastic.
Good start.
She liked the tree-planting side of DRNK.
Even better.
Then she saw the Slim bottle.
And she loved the shape.
There are moments in business where years of strategy collapse into something absurdly human.
You can have the pitch deck.
The legal structure.
The projections.
The marketplace data.
The trademarks.
The incorporation certificates.
And the thing that finally creates a connection is:
“That's a really cool bottle.”
She asked about the colours.
I showed her.
She liked Coral.
Then she did something the previous banks hadn't done.
She tried.
She made phone calls.
Asked questions.
Looked for a way through rather than a reason to stop.
Eventually she told me:
“Come back tomorrow.”
Those four words sounded better than any investor offer I had received in months.
I walked out trying not to get excited.
By then I had heard too many versions of maybe.
Maybe the compliance team will approve it.
Maybe head office can make an exception.
Maybe this document will work.
Maybe tomorrow.
Entrepreneurship is basically learning to distrust the word maybe while simultaneously building your entire life around it.
The next morning, I went back.
But I didn't go empty-handed.
I brought her a Coral Slim Steel bottle.
Technically, I'm sure banks have policies about gifts.
If anyone from compliance is reading this, it was a water bottle.
Relax.
I handed it to her.
She smiled.
And then, after weeks of phone calls, forms, meetings, explanations and six banks telling me some variation of the same thing—
we opened the account.
I sat there while everything was set up.
Documents signed.
Details confirmed.
App installed.
Login working.
DRNK's American bank account was now on my phone.
That's it.
No dramatic music.
No champagne.
No television cameras.
Just a banking app.
I stared at the screen.
And felt ridiculous levels of satisfaction.
Because sometimes the big milestones don't look big.
Sometimes building a company is raising investment.
Sometimes it's launching a product.
Sometimes it's signing a major customer.
And sometimes it's sitting in a bank branch thousands of miles from home thinking:
Holy shit. The app works.
The next morning, I flew back to Dubai.
We now had the US company.
The marketplaces.
The bank account.
And a growing customer base.
For the first time, launching DRNK properly in America didn't feel like one of those things we talked about doing someday.
It felt real.
Of course, if you've read the first two chapters, you already know what happens whenever Mishal and I start saying things like:
“Okay. Now everything is finally falling into place.”
Something usually catches fire.
We just didn't know what yet.