Northeastern student creates ‘next generation’ sports drink

As a high school track star, Lamar Letts took his health for granted. His diet was high in sugar, he says, and late-​​night junk food binges were common. But while he knew he was eating poorly, he never truly con­sid­ered the food he was putting into his body until his senior year, when he was diag­nosed with myocarditis, an inflam­ma­tion of the heart muscle. The con­di­tion con­fined him to many months of bed rest and forced him to end his promising track career. And when he finally returned to the gym to resume light work­outs, he had an epiphany.

“As I started to get back into fit­ness, I imme­di­ately real­ized that I didn’t need or want the extra sugar that was in the food I was eating,” recalls Letts,DMSB’17, now a fourth-​​year busi­ness major at North­eastern Uni­ver­sity. “I started to dilute tra­di­tional sports drinks with water, but it became very tedious.”

This, he says, moti­vated him to create his own sports drink, a healthier option for the serious ath­lete. With the help of a food sci­en­tist and a U.S. man­u­fac­turer, he even­tu­ally designed Hylux, what he calls the “health­iest and most prac­tical sports drink on the market.”

Made with all-​​natural ingre­di­ents, Hylux Sport con­tains less sugar than Gatorade, more elec­trolytes than Vit­a­m­in­Water, and more potas­sium than a banana. Along with Hylux water, its berry mix, straw­berry kiwi, and lemon lime fla­vors are cur­rently being sold in Boston gyms and health clubs, including UFC Gym, Republic Fit­ness, and Velo-​​City. And it’s also for sale at Wollaston’s, Northeastern’s campus grocer.

Letts recently launched a Kick­starter cam­paign to raise $10,000 to redesign Hylux’s bot­tles and labels, which retailers say look too sim­ilar to those of Gatorade and Vit­a­m­in­Water. And his long-​​term goal is to sell the sports drink to big box stores like Wal­mart, to see star ath­letes quaffing it after scoring touch­downs and hit­ting home runs. As he puts it in a pro­mo­tional video, “My dream is to bring Hylux to an even bigger audi­ence. I need upfront cap­ital for a large pro­duc­tion run that will help us meet demand and intro­duce Hylux to more people.”There is a phil­an­thropic com­po­nent to the busi­ness model: Three per­cent of all pro­ceeds from Hylux water go toward pro­viding clean water in devel­oping coun­tries through Water​.org, a non­profit co-​​founded by actor Matt Damon. “Clean water is a com­pli­cated issue, one I care about a lot,” says Letts, explaining his phil­an­thropic deci­sion to donate a por­tion of his sales to charity. “And I felt that Water​.org is the most qual­i­fied non­profit in the space.”

Per­haps none of this would be pos­sible if not for IDEA, Northeastern’s student-​​run ven­ture accel­er­ator. Over the past sev­eral months, IDEA has awarded Letts $10,000 in gap funding; hooked him up with a public rela­tions agency; and con­nected him with an intel­lec­tual prop­erty lawyer, who helped him settle a legal dis­pute over the startup’s name.

“IDEA has enabled me to get insight from people in the field while learning a lot about run­ning a busi­ness,” says Letts. “I love the com­pe­ti­tion in the sports drink field and it’s def­i­nitely where I want to stay.”