48-year-old started with $75,000 in savings and multiple maxed-out credit cards—and built a $1.1 billion company
Vita Coco started with a leap of faith, a $75,000 investment and "several" maxed-out credit cards.

Today, the bestselling coconut water company is worth $1.1 billion. But it wasn't born out of a Silicon Valley startup lab. Rather, co-founders Michael Kirban and Ira Liran first thought about going into the coconut water business after a chance meeting in a Manhattan bar on a cold night in 2003, when two Brazilian women told them the beverage was what they missed most about their homeland.

Liran ended up falling in love with one of those women, and moving to Brazil. When Kirban visited them, he realized just how popular coconut water — which has a salty-sweet taste and high levels of hydrating electrolytes — was in the Southern Hemisphere, especially compared to the U.S.

The two friends decided to jump on what they saw as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

"People in Brazil were drinking it for everything," Kirban, 48, tells CNBC Make It. "They were drinking it at the breakfast table. They were drinking it on the beach. They were drinking it after a workout ... We're like, 'There's got to be a consumer in the U.S.'"

Liran and Kirban struck a deal with a supplier in Brazil to produce their first shipment, for $75,000. They paid mostly with Kirban's money, which he'd obtained by founding and running a real estate software business after dropping out of college. That software business still exists, and Kirban still helps run it on the side, he says.

The shipment got held up at the border by U.S. officials. The co-founders hadn't realized they needed to register it with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which meant they had to divert it to the Bahamas, where Kirban says he "sold it door to door" at bars, grocery stores and even "people's homes."

It was only the beginning of Vita Coco's long journey to financial success, with more stumbling blocks along the way.