Interview with Daniel Cray - Co-Founder of Phizz

This week we caught up with Daniel Cray, Co-Founder of Phizz to talk about the inspiration behind the brand, challanges and much more.

What inspired you to start Phizz?

It started on a flight from Australia to the UK, discovering you can lose up to six litres of water: which is a major contributor of jet lag. At the time, I was working in comms with pro sports teams and noticed they weren’t using sports drinks, but gastro rehydration meds to recover. That sparked a deeper dive into how hydration and electrolytes impact not just muscle performance, but energy, focus, and immune defence - things that were beneficial to everyone, not just athletes. Co-founders and I linked up with a neuroscientist Dr Paul Anastasiades, and that was the beginning of Phizz.

Can you take us back to the early days — what were some of the biggest challenges you faced getting Phizz off the ground?

We had no black book, no retail experience, and not much capital, just conviction and hustle. We were working from a kitchen table in a west London flatshare, convincing labs to produce for us, emailing airline execs directly, pitching accounts with 3D renders before we had samples.

Every early wins were earned by a go big or go home attitude and a lot of resilience. One of the hardest parts? Saying no to distractions. In 2021, we launched a gut health range, but realised it pulled us away from our core mission: hydration. Delisting that product was tough, but one of the best decisions we made.

Who is the “Phizz” customer today, and how has that evolved?

Our mission is to make electrolyte hydration part of your daily routine, just like coffee or skincare. We’ve often attracted ‘solution seekers’; travellers, athletes, or anyone chasing better performance or recovery. But today, our core customer is someone who’s proactive about their health. They might be a parent, an office worker or someone who justs want to feel sharper each morning. Hydration isn’t just a fix, it’s foundational. As people realise its impact on energy, focus, mood, and immunity, we’re seeing Phizz become a daily habit.

If you could achieve one thing with Phizz in the next five years, what would it be?

We want to grow the hydration enhancer category into something mainstream: a £150m category in the UK by 2030, where electrolyte hydration is understood and used daily. Phizz has become the UK’s #1 selling electrolyte tablet, and our mission is to lead the shift from reactive hydration to proactive, daily wellness. But we won’t do it alone, growing the category means welcoming more brands, more formats, and more education to help consumers see hydration as foundational to how they feel, think and perform.

Success for Phizz is being the brand that helped drive this shift, in the UK and globally, and get more people getting more out of their water, every single day.

What’s one piece of advice you wish you’d received when starting your entrepreneurial journey?

Build with both colour brains. Red brain is emotion, intuition, passion — it gets you going. Blue brain is calm, rational, structured — it keeps you going. I wish I’d realised sooner that as a leader, you need to operate more often in blue brain than red. Sometimes slowing down to think clearly is the fastest way forward.

What would your ideal day in London be like?

I wake up to a clear sky — around 7am (I’m not quite in the 5am club when I’m in central London). Kick things off with a Phizz, naturally. Then it’s a gym session with mates, followed by a cycle to Tanner Street in Bermondsey for some tennis. We grab a great coffee nearby, and in the afternoon, someone hosts a BBQ at theirs with good food, good tunes, and a sunset that keeps the day rolling.

To find out more about Phizz click here.

Photography courtesey of Phizz