It's 11:47pm and I'm on hour fourteen at my desk. The coffee from this morning is in a mug six inches from my keyboard, cold and probably growing something. I have a pitch deck open, a Slack thread with our co-packer, and a half-edited Amazon listing in another tab. Tomorrow I fly to a buyer meeting at 6am.
This is the job. If you're reading this, you probably know.
I built my last company, Moskinto, to ten thousand U.S. doors before I started Drizz. I've shipped CPG out of garages, pitched investors on three hours of sleep, and DJ'd a wedding the same weekend I onboarded a new distributor. So when people ask me what the best energy for founders is, I don't answer with a marketing brochure. I answer with what's actually in my bag.
The direct answer
The best energy for founders and remote workers isn't a brand — it's a format. You need three things that most cans, shots, and pills don't give you at the same time:
- Dose control. A founder's day has spikes (pitch at 10, board call at 2, dinner at 7). You need to be able to add 30mg, 65mg, or 130mg of caffeine on demand — not commit to a 200mg can at 9am you can't undo.
- Caffeine paired with L-theanine. Published research shows the combination improves attention and reduces jitter compared to caffeine alone. Founder work is cognitive endurance, not a sprint.
- Zero sugar. Sugar gives you a fast lift and a faster crash. The 2pm dip you're trying to avoid is often the 9am Red Bull catching up.
That's why I built Drizz the way I did. 65mg of green tea caffeine per squeeze, L-theanine and taurine in every serving, fits in any drink. But the format point stands no matter what brand you choose.
Table of contents
- The founder's day isn't shaped like a workout
- The 2pm dip — what's actually happening
- Stacking with coffee vs replacing coffee
- Zoom fatigue and over-caffeination
- Pitch-day adrenaline management
- Travel, TSA, and the founder's go-bag
- My actual daily protocol
The founder's day isn't shaped like a workout
When I trained for my first Ironman, the energy plan was easy. You know the bike segment is going to take five hours. You know transition is at hour two. You dose accordingly.
A founder's day is the opposite. It's chaos. You wake up thinking you'll write copy for two hours and instead spend the morning on a co-packer call about a labeling defect. You planned a slow afternoon and now you're prepping for a buyer meeting that materialized at lunch.
This is why a 200mg energy drink is a bad fit. You're locking in your caffeine load before you know what the day will actually demand. By 1pm, when the real cognitive lift shows up, you've already burned your runway and you're starting to crash.
The format that works for me — and for most of the founders I trade notes with — is smaller doses, more frequent, taken in response to what the day is actually doing. That's a behavioral argument before it's a product argument.
The 2pm dip — what's actually happening
The afternoon crash is real and it's not just in your head. Three things are stacking on top of each other:
1. Post-lunch glucose response. If you ate anything with significant carbs, your blood sugar spiked and is now correcting. Research from Mayo Clinic shows this dip is sharper if the meal was simple carbs and sugar with little protein or fat.
2. The post-lunch dip in your circadian rhythm. Your body has a built-in alertness dip in the early afternoon. This happens whether you eat lunch or not — it's biological, not behavioral. Most of us amplify it with bad lunch choices.
3. Cumulative cognitive load. If you've been on calls or in deep work since 8am, your prefrontal cortex is genuinely tired. This is the part most founders ignore.
The wrong answer to the 2pm dip is to throw 200mg of caffeine and a Snickers at it. The right answer, in my experience, is a smaller dose of caffeine, a short walk, and water. I'll often add one squeeze of Drizz Boost Energy Drops to a glass of cold water around 1:30pm — 65mg, no sugar, paired with L-theanine. It lifts the dip without setting up an evening crash.
Stacking with coffee vs replacing coffee
I get this question a lot: do I replace my morning coffee with Drizz, or stack them?
Honest answer: I stack. I love coffee. I'm not trying to give it up — I'm trying to manage total daily caffeine without giving up the morning ritual.
Here's the math I run:
- Morning espresso (double shot): ~120mg
- Mid-morning cup of coffee: ~95mg
- That's 215mg by 11am. Already half my FDA-recommended ceiling of 400mg.
If I drink another two cups in the afternoon, I'm at 400+ before dinner, and I'll be wired at midnight. Caffeine has a half-life of about five hours, which means the cup at 4pm is still half-active in your bloodstream at 9pm.
So I cap coffee at two cups before noon. From there, if I need a boost, I switch to Drizz. One squeeze in water or sparkling water at 1:30pm. Another at 4pm if I have an evening work block. Total caffeine for the day: around 345mg, well under the ceiling, and spread out enough that I can still sleep.
That's the playbook. Coffee for ritual and warmth in the morning. Drops for control and precision in the afternoon.
Zoom fatigue and over-caffeination
Zoom fatigue is a real thing — Stanford research identifies four specific drivers, including excessive close-up eye contact and the cognitive load of watching yourself on video. Add over-caffeination on top, and you're cooked by 3pm.
I noticed this during a stretch last fall when I had back-to-back-to-back fundraising calls. I'd front-load with a big coffee and a can of something. By call four, I was vibrating, talking too fast, and missing what investors were actually saying. Bad combination.
What works better, in my experience: a moderate baseline. Caffeine sufficient to be sharp, not enough to be wired. The L-theanine pairing helps — the combination has been shown to improve sustained attention without the jittery edge.
If you're doing four hours of video calls, don't pre-load 300mg of caffeine. Take 65–100mg before the block, drink water, and add a second small dose midway if you need it.
Pitch-day adrenaline management
Real Talk: on pitch day, you don't need more energy. Your adrenaline will handle that. What you need is to not be wired on top of adrenaline.
I've made this mistake. I've walked into investor meetings on three coffees plus a Red Bull and immediately known I was going to talk too fast. Adrenaline alone gives you focus and urgency. Adrenaline plus 350mg of caffeine gives you a panic attack disguised as a pitch.
My pitch-day rule now: normal coffee in the morning, no extra caffeine within two hours of the meeting. If I need a final lift to be sharp, one squeeze of Drizz — 65mg — in water about 45 minutes before. That's it. The L-theanine takes the edge off so I'm focused, not frantic.
This is one of those founder things you only learn by getting it wrong a few times.
Travel, TSA, and the founder's go-bag
If you're a founder, you're on planes. A lot.
The reason I built Drizz in a 60ml / 2oz bottle isn't a coincidence. TSA's 3-1-1 rule caps carry-on liquids at 3.4oz (100ml), so a 60ml bottle clears with room to spare. Fifteen servings in something the size of an eye drop bottle. I throw it in my Dopp kit and don't think about it again.
This matters because airport coffee is unpredictable. Sometimes you have a Starbucks at your gate, sometimes you have a 5am flight in Boise and nothing's open. Having 15 doses of controlled caffeine in my carry-on means I'm not at the mercy of whatever burnt drip is available.
The other piece: red-eye flights and time zones. When I fly to Expo West or a buyer meeting on the East Coast from Dallas, my circadian rhythm gets shoved around. Being able to take a small, precise dose at the right moment — instead of slamming a 200mg can — makes the rest of the day recoverable.
If you want to dig into the broader category of energy drops, I've written more about the format and how it differs from cans and shots.
My actual daily protocol
This is what I do on a normal working day. Not a prescription — just the data point.
- 6:30am — Double espresso (~120mg) with breakfast.
- 9:30am — Cup of drip coffee (~95mg) while answering email.
- 12:30pm — Lunch with protein and vegetables. Try to skip the heavy carbs that set up the afternoon dip.
- 1:30pm — If I'm in a deep work block: one squeeze of Drizz (65mg) in cold sparkling water. Walk for 10 minutes.
- 4:00pm — If I have an evening commitment or a flight: one more squeeze (65mg) in water.
- 2pm hard stop for any new caffeine if I want to sleep at a normal hour. (I move this earlier on training days — see my notes on endurance dosing if you train and work full-time.)
Total: roughly 345mg on a working day, spread over eight hours. Comfortably under the 400mg ceiling, with the back half coming from a format I can dose precisely.
That's the protocol. Try one bottle. You'll know within a week whether the format fits your day better than the can does.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Consult your doctor before starting any new supplement, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, or have a medical condition.