He Sold A Company To Coca-Cola for $200 Million, Repurchased It, And Has Now Co-Founded A $600-Million AUM Private Equity Firm
When you hear about startup journeys, you often expect Silicon Valley dorm rooms, tech hacks, or venture capital from day one. Mark Rampolla’s path couldn’t have been more different. He journeyed from a Pittsburgh childhood to the Peace Corps in Costa Rica.
Eventually, Mark founded and sold ZICO Coconut Water to Coca-Cola, demonstrating his sense of adventure, conviction, and resilience. In an exciting interview on the Dealmakers Podcast, he talks about his experiences with selling a company and then repurchasing it.
Roots in Pittsburgh
Mark grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the youngest of six kids in a working-class family. Life was simple, money was tight, but there was joy in community, sports, and the freedom of outdoor play. Entrepreneurship wasn’t in his bloodline, and no one in his family was in business.
The closest role model was a family friend who worked as a salesperson for Maxwell House Coffee in Southwestern Pennsylvania. That small exposure planted the earliest seed of curiosity about business.
However, it wasn’t until Mark went to college and met friends who grew up in business families or who were interested in business, that he also started to develop an interest. Even then, entrepreneurship seemed weird to him.
A Detour into Corporate America
Like many of his generation in the 1990s, Mark believed the way to make an impact was through corporations and corporate tech. He interned at IBM during college, teaching Lotus 1-2-3 to clients while helping small Silicon Valley companies integrate and sell their software to clients in Wisconsin.
Yet Mark quickly realized the corporate suit-and-tie world wasn’t for him. Instead, he took a leap into the unknown by joining the Peace Corps in Costa Rica. He hadn’t yet caught on to the concept of the tech revolution.
Looking back on his decision, Mark recalls that his parents were activist Catholics with a strong sense of community service and a commitment to helping the poor. Later, he attended a Jesuit college, and the aspect of social service deeply resonated with him.
Mark also had an adventurous spirit and remembers visiting a career fair and interviewing for some corporate jobs. That’s where he noticed the Peace Corps stand and opted to check it out, more attracted by the possibility of an adventure rather than anything else. He wanted to get out of the country and explore.
The Peace Corps: Lessons in Life and Perspective
Living in and experiencing a world outside the US gave Mark a unique perspective. Prior to visiting Latin America, he had these projections, imaginations, and stories about how low-income people lived.
Getting by with $187 a month in a small Costa Rican village, Mark saw firsthand that happiness wasn’t tied to money. He discovered communities filled with joy, resilience, and entrepreneurial spirit, despite lacking material wealth. He also saw the early indications of sustainability at work.
Mark enjoyed meeting entrepreneurs and learning more about the family businesses they ran. These interactions laid the foundation for him in many ways and planted the seeds of his company. Hiking across Central America over three months, he noticed something that would stay with him.
Even in the most remote villages, Coca-Cola was everywhere. The realization struck: what if the reach of business and the power of infrastructure could be harnessed to deliver more than just sugar water? During those years, he tasted fresh coconut water for the first time.
The idea would stay dormant for a decade, waiting for the right moment.
From MBA to Corporate Expat
After returning to the U.S., Mark earned his MBA at Duke. At the time, entrepreneurship wasn’t celebrated the way it is today, and with a six-figure debt looming, security felt more important than risk. Even so, he decided to stay on the corporate path and tour through Asia.
Eventually, Mark joined International Paper, where his Peace Corps background made him an ideal fit for managing businesses across Latin America. The company was looking for candidates with an MBA who could join, receive training, and potentially lead a group of small businesses they had globally.
But corporate life came with golden handcuffs: great pay, housing, cars, and schooling for his children. By then, Mark was living in El Salvador with his wife, Maura, and two daughters. A lifestyle that was comfortable but stifling. He realized he didn’t want his boss’s job, or his boss’s boss’s job.
Mark started to think about his career progression and began to face uncertainty. International Paper was based in Memphis, Tennessee, and although he had lived there for a few years, it wasn’t what he wanted for the long term. Undoubtedly, he learned a lot about paper and packaging.
However, Mark was ready to try something more stimulating. That frustration sparked a new line of thought: What if I started something myself? With it came the fear of embarking on a new career trajectory that would result in him giving up his comfortable and secure lifestyle.
The Birth of ZICO
Mark began brainstorming ideas--everything from rolling up the dairy industry of Central America to entering trucking at a time when the Central America Free Trade Agreement had been signed. He recognized that trucking was going to be in high demand.
Mark explored a wide range of products, including options from Latin America. For instance, clothing, food, chocolate, and more. But he also built a set of personal and business criteria to guide him:
Was the industry big enough? · Were the margins attractive? · Could the business endure long-term? · Would it energize him every day? · Would it be something his daughters could be proud of 20 years down the line? · How would the business fit into his lifestyle?
Eventually, Mark eliminated trucking and rolling up the dairy industry to focus more on food and beverages. That’s when coconut water resurfaced. Healthy, refreshing, tied to his love for Latin America, it checked all the boxes.
Raising the First Million
Mark had no fundraising background and no wealthy network. However, he had established trust with Latin American business families during his tenure at International Paper. They approached him, saying, “We know you’ll leave corporate one day to start something; we’ll back you.” That support gave him confidence.
Mark raised $1M primarily from a group of Latin American businessmen, quit his job, and moved his family to New York. International Paper owned between 51% and 80%, and local families owned the remainder. He had these families on his board of directors.
Storytelling is everything that Mark Rampolla was able to master. The key is capturing the essence of what you are doing in 15 to 20 slides. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley legend (see it here) where the most critical slides are highlighted.
Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that founders worldwide are using to raise millions below.
Within six months, they were technically bankrupt. The next five years were a grind: raising small rounds every year, hustling for distribution, and trying to stay alive.
Mark recalls people telling him that he needed to get into Whole Foods or get a celebrity or athlete to endorse the brand. Although the strategy was effective, it took some time to gain traction.
Cracking the Market and Getting Noticed by Coca-Cola
ZICO’s breakthrough came not from spreading thin, but from going deep. The team focused narrowly on New York City, targeting Bikram Hot Yoga Studios as their beachhead. Post-workout recovery made coconut water indispensable, and word of mouth spread.
Soon, ZICO wasn’t just another beverage; it was a cultural trend. Mark realized that his idea was legit when Coca-Cola came knocking. By 2008, four years after ZICO Launched, Coca-Cola had acquired Vitaminwater for over $4B and wanted to avoid missing the next big beverage trend.
Coca-Cola established Ventures and Emerging Brands to connect with upcoming founders sooner. They noticed ZICO--specifically, not just coconut water in general, but ZICO--appearing on their nationwide trend maps, alongside beverages, fashion, music, and culture.
Mark’s focused strategy had worked: he had captured the exact influencers Coke wanted--young, active consumers in New York, LA, Boston, and Miami. That validation was the turning point.
Partnering with Jesse Itzler
Around this time, Mark connected with Jesse Itzler, entrepreneur, marketer, and master of cultural buzz. Jesse invested, brought in celebrity backers, and opened doors ZICO couldn’t have accessed alone. His zone of genius--embedding products into culture--supercharged ZICO’s momentum.
At the time, Jesse was working behind the scenes to bring out his own coconut water. He had approached Coke around the same time Coke had approached Mark. The Coke team loved ZICO and wanted to back the brand, but wanted assurance that he could create adequate buzz and excitement.
Essentially, Coke wanted to be sure ZICO could scale. That’s where Jesse came in as an investor, bringing in a bunch of celebrities and athletes. He also brought in his marketing support team, which helped build engagement.
The Exit to Coca-Cola and Later, Repurchasing the Company
Despite the rapid 100% year-over-year growth, scaling with Coke wasn’t smooth. ZICO competed with Vita Coco, a company that was also undergoing negotiations with Coke. The beverage giant struggled to fit ZICO into its structure: was it water, juice, or something else?
ZICO was a comparatively smaller $50M company. Distribution hiccups led to out-of-stocks, and sales didn’t accurately reflect actual demand. In the initial years, ZICO was distributed in just two markets--Miami and LA.
As Mark recalls, he wasn’t happy with the progress. “Without getting into the weeds, the Coke algorithm couldn't handle the disparity in the high velocity and small consumer base,” he says.
Mark eventually confronted Coke with three options: invest $20M worth of capital without dilution within 45 days, but with the option to buy it.
Alternatively, consider negotiating to buy the company or letting Mark buy them out. After tense negotiations, Coca-Cola acquired ZICO outright for a little over $200M.
Mark knew the brand could have been worth more if they had waited longer. However, the sale represented a milestone for both him and his investors. “We made it. We hit the mountain. We’re successful. I’m free,” he recalled. Yet what followed would challenge his definition of success.
Years later, Mark and his partners bought back the ZICO brand for a fraction of what Coca-Cola had paid, just 2% of the original price. Remarkably, he now projects that the company will soon reach the same performance levels it had at the time of the sale.
Freedom, Failure, and GroundForce Capital
Alongside this entrepreneurial journey, Mark transitioned into the investment world as a co-founder of GroundForce Capital, a firm now managing over $600 million in assets. His operational experience has proven invaluable in guiding the founders he backs.
But Mark’s story didn’t end with financial freedom. Selling ZICO brought him face-to-face with a deeper question many entrepreneurs wrestle with: What comes after the exit? He realized the belief that achieving external goals automatically brings happiness was misleading.
Beyond the Poster Child of Success
For years, Mark fit the narrative of the “poster child” entrepreneur: quit corporate America, built a company, sold it, and walked away with wealth. He threw himself into angel investing, making more than 40 investments, and eventually started his own fund.
But beneath the surface, Mark recognized he was acting out of fear, ambition, comparison, and unconscious drives. He candidly admits that the very traits that helped him as an entrepreneur--relentless drive, risk-taking, and optimism--created blind spots as an investor.
Those blind spots cost Mark millions of dollars. The realization was sobering: many of the strengths that build great founders can hinder them as investors.
Personal Struggles and Unprocessed Emotions
Mark also faced personal challenges after the ZICO exit. Though happily married for over 20 years, he and his wife struggled in the aftermath. Despite therapy and attempts to repair their relationship, years of unprocessed emotions made it difficult to reconcile.
Looking back, Mark acknowledged that during the early days of ZICO, he had consciously suppressed fear, self-doubt, and insecurity to survive as a founder.
Mark says, “I remember meditating and telling myself I didn’t need my emotions, that I could float above it all. And it worked--until it didn’t.” After a decade of suppressing his feelings, they resurfaced, affecting both his personal life and his investment career.
Mark realized that what isn’t processed emotionally doesn’t disappear; it comes back, often with greater force.
Doing the Inner Work
Determined to confront these patterns, Mark embarked on a six-year journey of therapy, analysis, coaching, reading about neuroscience and spirituality, studying, and attending retreats. He immersed himself in personal development.
Through this inner work, Mark learned to identify and challenge limiting beliefs, process emotions effectively, and ultimately free himself from patterns that had once held him back. Through setbacks, such as losing his home in the Palisades, he chose not to bury the pain, but to fully experience and process it.
Mark describes those moments of sadness, anger, and grief as essential to the healing and growth process. The result was a newfound sense of freedom that surpassed even the exhilaration of financial success.
A New Mission: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Freedom
Today, Mark’s mission extends beyond business. His book, An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Freedom , distills these lessons, weaving together personal vulnerability and professional insight. The core message is clear: inner work is often the foundation of outer success.
Mark emphasizes that entrepreneurs must confront insecurities, fears, and doubts if they want to achieve lasting impact and fulfillment. The response from readers and fellow founders has been powerful.
Many have reached out with a common refrain: “Thank you for sharing that. Me too!” For Mark, creating that space for openness and honesty has become just as important as building companies or managing capital.
Mark’s work continues through GroundForce Capital, his writing, and his speaking, but above all, through his commitment to helping entrepreneurs find freedom, both in their businesses and within themselves.
Mark Rampolla’s story isn’t just about coconut water; it’s about freedom, courage, and the belief that business can deliver more than profits. It can create impact, build culture, and change lives.
Mark’s Peace Corps experience shaped his entrepreneurial vision through service and perspective. · Living in Costa Rica taught Mark that happiness isn’t tied to money and inspired ZICO’s idea. · Mark left corporate comfort at International Paper to pursue meaningful entrepreneurship. · ZICO’s breakthrough came from focusing narrowly on yoga studios as a launch market. · Coca-Cola acquired ZICO for $200M, but Mark later repurchased it for just 2% of that amount. · Post-exit struggles revealed the need for inner work, therapy, and emotional growth. · True entrepreneurial freedom lies in combining business success with inner fulfillment.
Original Version
Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty, hello everyone and welcome to the DealMaker Show. So today we have ah a founder, of you know, that is quite an amazing founder. I mean, I'm actually, you know, a big a fan and and also I was a customer, you know, of theirs. I mean, I bought, you know, their drink every day, all day. You know, i remember especially after...
Alejandro Cremades: A night out, you know, it came in handy. i And today I think that his story is super inspiring. I think we're all going to learn a lot. I'm really excited about this. ah And again, building, scaling, financing, exiting, also rebuying again, you know, like the previous company. know Brace yourself for quite the um for quite the episode.
Alejandro Cremades: But without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Mark Rampolla. Welcome to the show.
Mark Rampolla: Thank you, Alejandro. I'm happy to be here. I'm a fan of yours as well on the show, so it's great to be here. I'm honored.
Alejandro Cremades: So originally born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you?
Mark Rampolla: Oh boy, life was white life was simple and easy in Pittsburgh in that era. You know, I was a big sports fan then. Everybody was fanatical. life yeah My family didn't have any money. We weren't poor, but nobody in the neighborhood had any money.
Mark Rampolla: So it was just a great place to grow up. I i could be outside all day, go play for for hours at a time. And I loved growing up that way. Youngest of six kids.
Alejandro Cremades: So how does this whole idea of entrepreneurship, do you think for you it developed over time or you had people in the family, you know, you were born with it? You know, how, what does this whole thing come from?
Mark Rampolla: I was definitely, maybe I was born with it, but I wasn't raised with it. Not only entrepreneurship, but business. There was no one in my family that was in business at all.
Mark Rampolla: And even in my neighborhood, i remember the only, bit I've thought back on this, the only true business person I can remember that was any family friend was a guy who was the Maxwell House Coffee, if you remember that brand, salesperson for Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Mark Rampolla: That was it. But I do remember he had just a little bit nicer house, just a little bit nicer car. He was kind of a salesy type guy. And that planted a little bit of a seed, but it really wasn't until I went to college and met friends that grew up in business families or had an interest in business that I began to even take an interest.
Mark Rampolla: And even then, entrepreneurship seemed weird to me. yeah This is the 90s and it just was not... I felt like to change the world or have an impact or make money, the place to be was corporations. And that's what I went after.
Alejandro Cremades: Well, I mean, corporate tech sounds like it was your thing in the 90s. So I guess how was that journey like for you and what was your big takeaway?
Mark Rampolla: You know, my it's been ah it's been a ah circuitous journey in many ways. So I started, i wound up getting an internship with IBM during college, suit and tie days, um ah basically teaching Lotus 1-2-3 for those that are older than a certain age, the prep precursor to Excel, to their customers.
Mark Rampolla: And interesting also, i was I was helping little tech companies from this weird place called Silicon Valley, integrate and sell their their software to IBM customers in Wisconsin, right? But ah it didn't click for me that there was this whole tech revolution.
Mark Rampolla: And I was not a suit and tie guy. So I quit that to join the Peace Corps and became a Peace Corps volunteer in Central America.
Alejandro Cremades: That's amazing. I mean, how did you get that calling? You know, um all of a sudden, you know, like switching and and and finding yourself in in Latin America. i mean, that's quite the shift.
Mark Rampolla: Yeah, that's a great question. It's, boy, when I look back on that, I think in many ways that would be, that was more characteristic of my family. Although no one traveled, my my My parents were activists, and very Catholic, but an activist Catholic, like Jesus was a radical. We go out and we serve the poor.
Mark Rampolla: We help. And so that that was planted in my mind. I did go to a Jesuit college and there's some aspect of social service there. And so i think that resonated.
Mark Rampolla: But also, I think I had an adventurous spirit. I know had an adventurous spirit. and And that was, i remember, going down a career fair with all these little booths back in that day.
And I was interviewing for some corporate jobs and I wasn't exactly getting a crazy positive response. My grades weren't great. My test scores weren't great. I could look back now and see I really had ADHD pretty seriously.
Mark Rampolla: But then I saw this little teeny booth of with a a little table with a Peace Corps stand. And that resonated with me. As much for the adventure as anything.
Mark Rampolla: Get out of the country, start to explore. I've never been out of the country, didn't speak any languages, and this just sounded like something fun and adventurous.
Alejandro Cremades: So obviously for you being able to see, you know, more of the world outside of the U.S., s I'm sure that that gave you quite a bit of perspective, because especially when you're in Latin America, it's not as comfortable as being in the U.S. So I guess, what do you think that opened up for you in terms of perspective?
Mark Rampolla: Oh, it changed my life, Alejandro. You're absolutely right. It it just, it opened up the world to me and it helped me see one of the things, a couple of things I saw. one was I had all these projections and imaginations and stories I told myself of what, you know living a place like that and and and frankly, what poor, how quote unquote poor people might live.
Mark Rampolla: What I found was, man, they were ah happy living their lives, had same dreams and hopes as anybody else. I also quickly had, you know, didn't grow up like I meant to with any real money, but I made $187 a month.
Mark Rampolla: Now living in, this was Costa Rica pre-Zipline in four seasons. That was enough to live comfortably. I rented a teeny little house. My daughter saw it some years later and said it was a shack. It was, but I was fine. And so I had a great time. And so I didn't build any association of money and happiness. It was like, like I can get by on on that.
Mark Rampolla: I also saw early... um early indications of sort of sustainability work. And I loved seeing early, you know, I did meet a lot of entrepreneurs. I met family businesses. So that that laid a foundation for me in many ways. And I'll tell you one thing I remember that years later would come back.
Mark Rampolla: I remember hiking into some of the ah most remote villages across Central America after the Peace Corps. backpacked across Central America three months. You could get a place where it's mud roads. You can barely hike there.
Mark Rampolla: And what would I see? Coca-Cola. And I do remember even thinking back then, wow, what would it be like to leverage the power of business, the power of that sort of infrastructure to do more than just deliver sugar and water somewhere?
Mark Rampolla: you know And so that that seed has sort of stuck with me. It wasn't until years later I thought about about yeah the beverage industry or coconut water. But there was some seed around that. And of course, I tasted coconut water there for the first time, right? You're at the beaches, you're running around, did have it as a hangover cure, did have it as a mixer. so it just was part of my life.
Alejandro Cremades: So obviously, as they say, you know, ideas, they're dormant. We don't even know that they're there. Right now, in your case, you ended up coming back. You do your MBA at Duke. But typically when people do their MBAs, you know, they go at it and, you know, they start their first business or they have the business plan, you know, it's the final paper, you know, kind of thing.
Alejandro Cremades: But in your case, you decided to, you know, keep going on the corporate side and and and and take a ah tour through Asia. So why was that the case?
Mark Rampolla: Yeah, great question. Look, even then, i would say the the world has shifted. So so even in the late 90s, entrepreneurship was not what it is today. It just wasn't. And so there were a few few students in my class that were interested in it, but not a lot.
Mark Rampolla: And I'll own, i'm I'm influenced by those around me. I also think... there was ah an insecurity in me. And and that was and part driven by the fact that I had 100,000 plus in debt coming out of, knew I would have that coming out of grad school. So I wanted a job, I wanted a paycheck. I was in a relationship, I'd fallen in love. So I started kind of thinking, I need security, I need security.
Mark Rampolla: And so I took I took this opportunity that came up. Right. And again, i wasn't top of my class back then. I can tell you, interviewing and mentioning that I went to the Peace Corps after IBM.
Looking back, if we’d learned to communicate and process emotions better, things might have been different. In the early Zico days, I realized if I really felt what was inside—fear, self-doubt, insecurity—I might not make it. So I consciously buried it. It was almost like I meditated myself into cutting off my emotions. It worked—until it didn’t. Ten years later, everything came back.
What you don’t process comes back. I carried that into my investment career. Now with GroundForce, we actually have $600 million under management and a great team. I realized I had to do my own inner work.
So I spent six years in therapy, analysis, coaching. I studied neuroscience, history, spirituality, did retreats, and slowly broke free of limiting beliefs, self-doubt, and learned to process emotions.
I began to feel freer than ever. Even through tough times—like losing my house in the Palisades this past January—I handled things differently. Instead of just powering through, I let myself feel sadness, anger, and process it.
Now I’m divorced, living in a modest rented house, and I feel freer than I ever have. That’s why I wrote An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Freedom. I realized I spend most of my time with entrepreneurs on personal struggles—their insecurities, their doubts, what shows up in board meetings and with teams. The inner work leads to outer success.
What I want now is to help people achieve personal freedom so they can bring their greatest gifts to the world.
Alejandro Cremades: I love it. Mark, I’m sure a lot of people listening are inspired by your story. What’s the best way for them to connect with you, whether on the investment side or around your book?
Mark Rampolla: Thank you for asking. LinkedIn is good for me—I’m not super active, but I check it. I also have a personal website, markrampol.la, that’s focused around the book. GroundForce Capital is the investment firm.
The book goes on sale on Amazon October 7, and it’s available for pre-order now. I’m loving the response. I get so many amazing stories. The most common one is, people tell me, “Thank you for sharing that. Me too.” We all want to be seen and heard.
We all have these struggles, Alejandro. I’m committed to opening up space to talk about them and ultimately to deliver even better results.
Alejandro Cremades: I love it. Mark, thank you so much for your contributions to the venture ecosystem and for being on the show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.
Mark Rampolla: Thank you, Alejandro. The honor has been mine. I really appreciate it and enjoyed it.
