Nov 20, 2023 · 1h 53m · news
Matteo Franceschetti: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | E1084 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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In this comprehensive interview, Eight Sleep co-founder and CEO Matteo Franceschetti breaks down his highly structured philosophies on startup execution, data-driven hiring playbooks, and organizational operational excellence. He details how he transitioned a hardware company into a life-saving preventative health platform while sharing actionable insights on sleep optimization and personal health.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 19.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 4.5 Guest teaching 5.8 Guest disagreement 2.4 Harry pushing back 3.4
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:21:30 Rejecting the tolerance of B-players
When Harry pushes back that fast-growing companies inevitably contain B-players who dislike being stretched, Matteo firmly rejects the premise, stating that anyone who does not want to fulfill their full potential does not belong at Eight Sleep.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 1:11:55 Refusing written agenda requirements as speed frictionHarry aggressively pushes back on Matteo's mandatory memo policy, arguing that forcing written agendas before quick discussions slows down company execution velocity.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 18:24 Reframing the mattress business modelHarry questions the long-term viability and LTV of mattress companies due to 7-to-10 year replacement cycles. Matteo schools him by revealing Eight Sleep sells only the pod cover accessory, transforming a commodity purchase into a high-margin recurring technology product.
Harry holds his own ▶ 6:21 Demonstrating VC mastery over hardware unit economicsHarry displays deep VC expertise by pushing past high-level metrics to dissect hardware unit economics, breakdown of BOM/COGS, channel CAC, and contribution margin requirements.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coming Up: The Future of Sleep Tech | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry introduces the episode and asks about the origin story of Eight Sleep. Matteo outlines his vision for transforming mattresses into preventative health platforms that can compress sleep and detect diseases. | |
| Raising Capital and the Reality of Hardware Investing | 6 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Harry demonstrates VC expertise by probing hardware startup economics, BOM, and acquisition channels. Matteo details the mandatory unit economics criteria required for hardware sustainability, such as gross margin above 50% and CAC below 20%. | |
| Reversing Growth at Any Cost | 5 | 6 | 3 | 3 | Matteo explains the danger of growth-at-all-costs metrics when unit economics are upside down. He describes setting a hard top-down cap on CAC and forcing the team to adapt despite executive pushback. | |
| Testing Velocity and the Seven Touch Points | 5 | 6 | 2 | 3 | Harry asks about channel attribution and price elasticity. Matteo explains how asset testing velocity lowered CAC by 75% and refutes the idea that lowering prices reduces CAC linearly. | |
| Raising Prices and Prioritizing Cash Flow | 6 | 7 | 3 | 5 | Harry challenges the mattress business model due to low purchase frequency and poor LTV. Matteo corrects him by revealing Eight Sleep sells only the pod cover rather than mattresses, vastly increasing TAM and repeat purchases. | |
| Unlocking TAM with the Smart Cover | 5 | 5 | 3 | 6 | Matteo recounts nearly running out of money during their Series A when an investor backed out over a missing LOI. Harry aggressively pushes back against that investor's lack of conviction in the founder's vision. | |
| Finding Vision-Aligned Capital Partners | 5 | 6 | 2 | 4 | Matteo explains that top-tier investors like Keith Rabois and Founders Fund already shared the sleep-tech thesis, eliminating the need to educate them. Harry notes the tension between selling long-term vision and maintaining grounded operational realities. | |
| Crafting Simple and Effective Messaging for Eight Sleep | 4 | 5 | 3 | 5 | Matteo discusses using the 'grandma rule' to simplify brand messaging down to core benefits. Harry pushes back on Matteo's insistence on seeing multiple options before making decisions, arguing single well-reasoned choices drive faster execution. | |
| Impromptu Communication and Balancing Tone | 5 | 6 | 2 | 3 | Matteo highlights Keith Rabois's 'barrels vs ammunition' concept and explains why Eight Sleep uses opposing metrics to balance speed and quality. Harry asks how counter-metrics apply to media businesses. | |
| Building a Culture of Velocity: 'Eight Sleep Speed' and Aggressive Deadlines | 4 | 6 | 3 | 4 | Matteo describes 'Eight Sleep Speed' and how he pushed his executive team via a Sunday memo to increase velocity by 30%. He shares an example of reducing a project timeline from one month to three days by cutting non-essential requirements. | |
| Pitfalls of Hiring Executives from Large Companies | 5 | 6 | 2 | 3 | Matteo breaks down why hiring big-company executives fails if they are accustomed to growth-at-all-costs environments. He explains Eight Sleep's mandatory take-home homework assignment for all candidates regardless of seniority. | |
| The Hidden Cost of Rushed Hiring | 5 | 7 | 3 | 4 | Matteo shares that Eight Sleep hires only about 1 out of 100 candidates and maintains a default 'no-hire' stance with a CEO veto. He breaks down his standard 5-question interview framework used across thousands of interviews. | |
| Analyzing Career Gaps, RIFs, and Candidate Judgment | 6 | 6 | 3 | 5 | Harry introduces the issue of job 'bouncers' and questions whether candidate RIF explanations hide underperformance. Matteo emphasizes candidate judgment in picking companies and discusses managing low performers. | |
| The Power of Written Agendas and Memos | 4 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Matteo outlines his strict rule requiring written memos before every meeting and running meetings solely through Google Doc comments. Harry asks what distinguishes a effective memo from a poor one. | |
| What Happens When You Fail to Prepare an Agenda? | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | Harry roleplays coming into a meeting unprepared without an agenda due to personal chaos. Matteo strictly enforces his rule, stating the meeting would be canceled on the spot unless resolving an active P0 incident. | |
| The Real Value of Preparation and Board Decks | 5 | 6 | 4 | 6 | Harry argues that written memo requirements slow down operational speed and criticizes 'disagree and commit'. Matteo defends memos by explaining that 90% of a board deck or agenda's value lies in forcing clear thinking during preparation. | |
| How Hyper-Growth and COVID Reshaped Eight Sleep's Culture | 4 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Matteo discusses culture breakdown during rapid hiring and COVID. He shares Sequoia's 'demanding and supportive' leadership framework, asserting that an executive's role is to stretch employees beyond their perceived limits rather than seek affection. | |
| World-Class Coaching and the Djokovic Analogy | 5 | 6 | 4 | 6 | Harry challenges Matteo's Novak Djokovic coaching analogy, pointing out that growing companies inevitably hire B-players who do not want to be constantly pushed. Matteo refutes this, insisting B-players who resist growth do not belong at Eight Sleep. | |
| Managing Frustration through Real-Time Feedback | 4 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Harry asks about managing CEO frustration and losing one's temper. Matteo advocates for immediate, real-time feedback over waiting for formal periodic reviews. | |
| Debunking the Static Bedroom Temperature Myth | 4 | 7 | 3 | 3 | Matteo debunks static 68-degree bedroom temperature recommendations, explaining that body temperature follows a U-curve requiring dynamic thermal regulation. He also details the physiological damage alcohol inflicts on sleep architecture. | |
| Managing Sleep Disruption and Late Nights | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Matteo warns against late-evening workouts due to elevated heart rates. He shares Peter Attia's 80/20 Zone 2 and Zone 5 cardio split and discusses his 16:8 fasting routine. | |
| Secrets to a Successful Marriage with a Co-founder | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Matteo discusses co-founding Eight Sleep with his wife, Alexandra. He shares how they maintain professional and personal boundaries by segregating work topics to Slack and personal topics to WhatsApp. | |
| Quick Fire: The Bed as a Preventative Health Platform | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | In quick-fire questions, Matteo outlines Eight Sleep's three structural advantages over wearables: physical surface area, continuous wall power, and high longitudinal compliance. | |
| Quick Fire: Active Recovery on Vacation and Ten-Year Vision | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Matteo details his 4-day 'active recovery' vacation strategy and outlines his 10-year goal to build an iconic public company that saves one million lives. Harry closes by praising the actionable management insights from the interview. |
Statements from this episode (115)
Franceschetti: An executive's job is pushing people, not being loved
“Your job as an executive is not to be loved. It's to help your people achieve more than what they believe it was possible.”
Eight Sleep aims to detect cancer using its bed technology
“We want to detect cancer by using some of these technologies.”
Franceschetti: Beds will become life-saving preventative health platforms
“Your bed will become the most powerful preventative health platform in the future and will save your life.”
Franceschetti: Sleep tech will allow people to compress sleep to six hours
“Because I believe we will compress your sleep over time. So you might, Be able to sleep only six hours and get more rest than when you were sleeping eight hours.”
Franceschetti: Would not have started Eight Sleep knowing its true difficulty
“If I knew what we would have to go through, I don't think any human being would do that.”
Franceschetti: Founders must be naive about how hard starting a business is
“You need to be naive and you need to believe that it's a hundred X easier, and then you need to have the stamina while shit comes to handle it.”
Eight Sleep sold 6,000 to 8,000 pre-orders coming out of YC
“Because we already sold 6008 thousand units in pre-orders, we were one of the hottest YC startup at the time.”
Franceschetti: VC aversion to hardware startups is justified 98% of the time
“They are justified 98% of the times.”
Franceschetti: Hardware works if you want to build trillion-dollar companies
“So if you want to build trillion dollar businesses, hardware works.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep faced severe financial trouble before fixing unit economics
“Meaning as a company, we have been in trouble a bunch of times until when we really fix our unit economics.”
Franceschetti: Hardware startups must maintain gross margins above 50%
“And so, okay, what is your gross margin, which comes after the bomb and the cogs, right? And what is included? And after that, that needs to be Really be above 50%. Yeah. And probably the best is 55, 60.”
Franceschetti: Top hardware companies keep CAC below 20% of retail price
“Yeah, I think for great companies, I know our CAC is really, really good. It needs to be below 20% of the price.”
Franceschetti: Relying on 12-month subscription payback to cover hardware losses usually fails
“So a lot of companies, they will tell you, oh, okay, I don't know, my gross margin is 30% and then I spend 40% because then I have a subscription and in 12 months I get the payback. That most of the times doesn't work. And the reason is, substantially, you nee…”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep has been profitable for two quarters
“And we have been profitable for two quarters now.”
Franceschetti: Strict CAC caps enabled Eight Sleep to deploy millions in efficient channels
“By forcing my team, our team, With this structure, we were able to unlock channels that we were not using at the time, and now we can deploy millions of dollars in these channels at an extremely efficient CAC.”
Eight Sleep reduced Facebook and Google acquisition costs by 75%
“Facebook or Google CAC now is probably, I think it's like, 75% lower than what it used to be two years ago.”
Eight Sleep blended CAC hits four-year low despite rapid growth
“The blended CAC is around 50% lower. So this is the fourth year in a row where the company keeps growing, and we're growing really fast, and the CAC is at the lowest it has ever been.”
Matteo Franceschetti's rule of seven touch points for converting buyers
“So we call it the rule of the seven touch points. So it's another rule I came up with, which is substantially you want to surround your customers and you want them to see your brand seven times before they pull the trigger.”
Eight Sleep generates 30% to 40% of revenue from word of mouth
“I mean, for us specifically, word of mouth is the most incredible, right? Because you start having 30, 40% of the revenue just coming through word of mouth, and that is insane at our scale.”
Franceschetti: Cutting product prices does not linearly reduce customer acquisition costs
“And the reason why I think is wrong to just be obsessed with price reduction and time is often your CAC will not change linearly with the price. Meaning if you reduce the price of our product by 20%, the CAC is not going to go down 20%.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep raised prices in 2021 with minimal demand impact
“When we had to readjust our unit economics, we had to increase prices. We did it in 20, 21, and the impact was minimal.”
Franceschetti: Consult profitable traditional founders for pricing advice, not Silicon Valley
“When I want to talk about pricing, I talk to Italian, very successful companies that have been profitable since day one. I don't talk to many Silicon Valley guys.”
Franceschetti: Price wars in physical goods ruin startup business models
“Once you get in a price war, prior with the physical good, you're in real trouble, because then the business will not work.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep mattress sales generate single-digit percentage of revenue
“So essentially, all our business is just the cover. We don't sell the mattress. If you go on our website, there is just the pod cover. You can add as an accessory, the foam part, which is the mattress. But you're talking about single digit percentage of our re…”
Franceschetti: DTC mattress brands failed due to commoditization and price wars
“Mattresses, they have incredible unit economics. The main problem of mattresses are two. One is a commodity. And so what happened with some of the D to C brands, it became a price war because anyone could sell the same product and unit economics didn't work.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep has no direct competition and high repeat purchases
“We have no competition and our customers, many of them, they buy literally every new generation that we sell. So repeated purchase for us is pretty high.”
Eight Sleep had only two weeks of runway during Series A
“We had a couple of weeks to fix it, or we were in trouble, and we fixed it.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep Pod grew to hundreds of millions in four years
“The current product that is a hundred percent of our revenue launched literally Four years ago, 2020 19, right? So this thing went from zero to hundreds of millions in revenue in four years, which in hardware is really rare.”
Franceschetti: Elite VC backing directly enables startups to hire top talent
“I think there are, Multiple gems that we have in the company that join because you have these people behind. And so they just say, okay, this vision must be real if these people are behind these guys.”
Franceschetti: Sleep technology will become a trillion-dollar business
“And so I don't have to convince him that technology will, can enhance your sleep, and there will be a trillion dollar business in the space.”
Franceschetti: Startup unit economics can always be solved with operational excellence
“Fixing unit economics is possible, it's human. It's just hard work of an operational excellence. And so you just need to hire the best people and you will do that.”
Franceschetti: Writing is the best way to build clarity of thinking
“The best way to develop clarity of thinking is writing, right? You need to write, because once you start writing your thoughts, you understand there are many things that are not clear, or that You still don't know you didn't develop.”
Franceschetti: Paul Graham and Keith Rabois excel at explaining complex ideas simply
“You see people like Paul Graham or Keith or Boyce, right? They are some of the greatest at expressing a very complicated concept with few words in something that I call it the grammar rule by something that my grandma could understand.”
Franceschetti: Use aspirational images with simple language for value propositions
“I think you play, for aspirational, you use images, right, and you try to position very premium, something that you really dream of, but in terms of words and the value proposition and the benefit, You need to be very simple.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep's temperature feature improves sleep quality by 20%
“For us it's temperature, right? It's the game changer. And so I have this device that I can install on my bed that heats and cools each side of the bed and improves my sleep by 20%.”
Franceschetti: Lack of clarity stems from undeveloped thoughts and insufficient data
“Because they didn't think enough. They believe, they know, they believe they have a thought, but they didn't develop it properly, and they don't have enough data to support it, so they're confused. At the end of the day, the opposite of clarity of thinking is …”
Franceschetti: Decision proposals must present multiple options ranked by impact and effort
“I never like to see one option. I want to see multiple options, and you tell me why we are not pursuing the others, and we are pursuing this. I want a picture, a portfolio, and then we pick one based on impact and effort.”
Eight Sleep conducts all internal decision-making asynchronously in writing
“For us, everything happens in writing async, so we don't lose time.”
Matteo Franceschetti reserves daily calendar space for impromptu team calls
“I would say probably 20% of my meetings is impromptu, and so I just randomly call, and so I actually allocate time in my daily calendar to make sure that I have bandwidth to just randomly call my team and discuss things.”
Franceschetti: A company's project capacity equals its number of 'barrel' leaders
“Output usually is a function of how many barrels you have. Barrels are people in your company that can get everything done from zero to completion, right? And you have barrels and ammunition. Barrels can lead anything from zero to completion. Ammunition suppor…”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep requires paired counter-metrics for every company initiative
“We don't do anything at eight sleep if there is not an opposite metric.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep requires newly discovered bugs fixed within 48 hours
“So usually if something come up, we need to fix it within 48 hours. If that doesn't happen, we must have a very strong reason, and I want to read about that reason.”
Franceschetti: Big-company executives default to quality over startup speed
“The key usually with senior executives where You really need to push them because, in particular, if they come from big companies, they are more skewed towards quality and reliability, while instead you want to be bold and just ship something, 80%, take the ri…”
Franceschetti: Rigid bi-weekly goals kill startup agility
“The biggest thing is what I told them is they need to stop being too rigid on Bi-weekly or monthly goals, because if they're too rigid on that, when things happen and in a startup things happen every day, they are not agile enough to fix them.”
Franceschetti: Startups overthink pricing changes and overestimate their brand reach
“A hundred percent disagree. I think we overthink because the whole point is you're a startup. How many people really know your brand? Even if you're big, if you're growing well, you know, you're not Apple, right? And so don't fool yourself thinking that you ar…”
Franceschetti: Growth-at-all-costs execs fail in CAC-efficient startups
“If you find people that were able to scale a business from a hundred million to a billion, but at the time where it was growth at all costs, and they join your company is designed around CAC efficiency, it will be really hard for them, right? They have already…”
Franceschetti: Big tech execs lack the pirate mindset startups require
“If they come from very large companies, the requirements compared to a startup are very different. We are pirates. They are the Navy, right? These people need to be able to launch a new product in two days, just because they want to test it and be fine with th…”
Eight Sleep requires all job candidates to complete homework projects
“Everyone has to do homework. Anyone who joins the company, they have to, we give them a project. They need to work on that at home and they will present to a panel. I don't care if you are the senior executive and you are the CFO of Amazon. If you want to join…”
Eight Sleep requires three 'strong hire' ratings to hire candidates
“So when you talk to a person and they sleep, there are three ratings. There is pass, hire, and strong hire. We don't hire anyone if there are not three strong hires.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep operates under a default 'no hire' rule
“We are a default and no hire. The default is if you come to a sleep, we don't hire you, unless you really blow our mind.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep's 2019 rushed hiring led to high failure rates
“So, we hire really fast in 2019. I would say we probably screw up a large percentage of all the people we hire, because we had that approach.”
Franceschetti: Pain of hiring wrong person far outweighs delaying hire
“And so, what we learn is the pain that you go through If you hire the wrong person, is probably the next bigger than delaying the hire by a couple of months.”
Eight Sleep hires an average of one candidate per 100 interviewed
“We, on, on, on, on an average, we hire one out of every hundred people.”
Franceschetti rejects 50% of final-round candidates over cultural alignment
“And then there is my final step, which is still fifty-fifty, and sometimes I feel so bad as a CEO, but if I don't click culturally with the person, I still pass, and I'm close to 50% pass.”
Franceschetti has interviewed thousands of candidates using the same playbook
“And I run all the interviews with the same playbook, and that helps me because now I have seen thousands of candidates with the same playbook, the same questions, right?”
Franceschetti: Inability to cover five jobs in 25 minutes indicates candidate fluff
“With the great people in 20, 25 minutes, I can go through five jobs there. Fast. There are some people where you go through two jobs in 30 minutes, and that is another red flag because you can't.”
Stebbings: Candidates staying 1.5–2 years only deliver six months of actual work
“I hate bouncers, I call them, which is, as you said a couple of times, five, six jobs. I'm like, if you're somewhere for a year and a half, and another for two years, and another for a year and a half, with ramp time and leaving time, You basically did six mon…”
Franceschetti: Multiple candidate RIFs reflect poor company selection judgment
“I think even though you want to see a pattern, I see sometimes people that have been part of three RIFs. But you know what you need to think there is, let's say there is a RIF after a year, or even six months, sometimes you see it, and you see this happening m…”
Franceschetti: Top performers rarely care about job titles
“Some of the best people, they don't really care about title.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep never promotes ICs to manager without prior squad leadership
“We don't make anyone a manager unless they already led a bunch of squads successfully. So my step is you will never become manager immediately, right? Going from IC to manager. You need to be a manager before you are formally a manager.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep only considers title changes for top performers
“If you are a top performer in the company, probably you're at the point you're not asking for a title change, but if you do, that is the only case when we consider it.”
Franceschetti: Studying operational playbooks weekly is time well spent for founders
“But it makes the difference. I can guarantee you that is time that is well spent.”
Eight Sleep uses a three-tier annual compensation structure
“What we do today is we have three levels of compensation increase. Based on you're a top performer, you're okay, or there is no change if you're a low performer.”
Franceschetti: Terminate low performers immediately once adjustment attempts fail
“If you spoke to the person, if you gave them the time to adjust, and if that didn't happen, Now you pull the plug.”
Franceschetti refuses internal meetings without a written agenda or memo
“I will not take a meeting with anyone in the company if I don't get an agenda slash memo.”
Franceschetti: Training employees to write great agendas takes six months
“And usually probably takes at least six months to develop someone to write an incredibly good agenda.”
Franceschetti: Tasks without explicit deadlines are due the same day
“In my mind, if people talk to me and they don't set a deadline, it's the same day.”
Franceschetti: Sunday work for high-stakes Monday fundraising is non-negotiable
“If I have a major massive meeting that could drive a, Multi-million dollar fundraiser at seven a.m. On a Monday, I think is not debatable. I'm doing the best for the organization and for the job of hundreds of people.”
Franceschetti: Reading speed is the best indicator of an agenda's quality
“The speed at which I can read an agenda is indicative of how good is the agenda, because I can go through it really quickly.”
Franceschetti: Effective meeting agendas should be concise, not long documents
“The point of the agenda is not about being long. No one wants to read long documents.”
Franceschetti spends one hour daily reviewing meeting agendas before starting work
“I say usually an hour every day before I start working just to review all the agendas of the day.”
Franceschetti: Agenda writing skills are built through trial and error, not training
“And at the beginning, you will write something that is long, that is not clear, is not data-driven, and the executive will help you. But it's trial and error.”
Franceschetti: Preferring meetings over agendas stems from lack of writing practice
“That is the typical answer of someone who didn't write agendas.”
Franceschetti: 90% of board meeting value comes from deck preparation
“The board deck, the biggest value of doing a really good board deck is not for my board, it's for me. It pushes me to think about creating a story of why this quarter was so good. What were the reasons? What really happened, right? Preparing for questions. 90%…”
Eight Sleep holds weekly executive meetings with a dedicated 'lessons' section
“So usually, so we have an executive meeting every Monday. There is a section in my agenda called lessons.”
Eight Sleep conducts quarterly post-mortems and pre-parades
“We do also post-mortem, and a pre-parade every, every quarter.”
Franceschetti: The 'pre-parade' quarterly goal-setting framework comes from Sequoia
“Yeah, it comes from Sequoia, the pre-parade, So, substantially, you celebrate the quarter. This quarter will be successful. This next quarter will be successful if. And you write it down. And then at the, when the quarter ends, you see the pre-parade, and you …”
Franceschetti: Everything at Eight Sleep is public internally except compensation
“Everything is, everything, this is another rule from Keith, I think, from the, his time at Square, where, so essentially everything is public in our company except comp. Usually comp, you don't want to share it, but everything else is shared.”
Eight Sleep uses Amazon's 'disagree and commit' framework for product decisions
“We use the thing that comes from Amazon that is disagree and commit, and I do sometimes in product, right? Not always, but sometimes I decide to disagree, but I raise my hand and I say I disagree and commit, but I'm disagreeing.”
Franceschetti: CEOs must retain control over high-impact decisions that can kill the company
“If this is a thing that can kill the company and has, I don't know, a legal background, I used to be a lawyer, I'm not gonna delegate the thing, right? And probably if it can kill the company, I'm not gonna delegate that thing, right? I wanna be very, very inv…”
Franceschetti: High performers want empowerment but expect CEOs to make hard calls
“The best minds, they wanted to feel empowered, but they also sometimes want to feel the pressure to say, I'm fine. I'll follow you. But this is your call.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep's culture broke during rapid hiring due to hire quality
“Yeah, I think when we hired a lot really fast, we didn't, the culture broke a little bit, and it was because of the quality of the people.”
Franceschetti: Executives hurt employee careers by being overly nice
“This is a mistake a lot of executives do because they want to be loved. They want to be sometimes soft or too nice. You know, they don't want to stretch you.”
Franceschetti: A-players want coaches who relentlessly push them to improve
“The best players, the A players, think of Djokovic, the tennis player, right? What he wants from his coach is to get the most out of him, to improve every single detail.”
Franceschetti: Employees stuck in unstimulating, repetitive roles will eventually leave
“If you just let them be, and they just do a repetitive job, these people will leave.”
Franceschetti: Executives fail if direct reports do not know their performance rating
“If I call person X that reports to you, do they know if you rate them incredibly good, good, or meh? Yes or no? And if the answer is, I don't know, then you're doing a poor job as an executive. The most important thing is people should always know what you thi…”
Franceschetti: Suppressing immediate employee feedback harms leadership performance
“If I have a problem, I tell you immediately. It's also my character. I learned that if I don't do it, then I almost keep the thing inside for too long and it's actually negative.”
Franceschetti: Leaders must manage intensity without sacrificing velocity and feedback
“You need to start controlling yourself, and so even in, in measure, you know, how you share things. But I think if people understand first that you have always the best intention, and if they see the point, it's way easier for them to understand it. Then somet…”
Franceschetti: The human circadian cycle can be trained substantially
“Your circadian cycle can substantially be trained.”
Franceschetti: Almost everyone requires seven to nine hours of sleep
“A rule of thumb is between seven and nine hours for everyone, except very, very few people that have a genetic modification and can sleep only three, four hours.”
Franceschetti: Manipulating body temperature before bed is highly impactful
“Playing with your own body temperature before bed is is really impactful.”
Franceschetti: Thermal contrast therapy before bed meaningfully improves sleep quality
“Playing with your own body temperature before bed is is really impactful. And so let's say you're in a hotel or you have a larger home and you can have a sauna and an ice bath. If you do that before going to bed, it's gonna help you sleep better, meaningfully,…”
Franceschetti: Hot showers trigger core body temperature drops that prepare for sleep
“The way it creates is it starts warming up your body, then your body needs to dissipate the heat from the bathtub, and so the core body temperature goes down, so it's actually counterintuitive, and that is when your body prepares for sleep, because the second …”
Franceschetti: Sleeping at a static 68 degrees all night is wrong
“You hear a lot of people say, oh, you should sleep at 68 degrees. That is wrong. And the reason why it's wrong is 68 degrees might work, I don't know, in the first part of the night, but not in the second part of the night. Your body temperature changes during…”
Franceschetti: Human body temperature follows a U-curve during sleep
“The temperature drops at the beginning of the night. It's like a U-curve. It drops at the beginning of the night, so immediately as you fall asleep, it goes down, and then 2:03 hours before you wake up, the body temperature rises, and so your body is preparing…”
Eight Sleep runs internal daily sleep score competitions among employees
“We have an internal competition with sleep data inside the company, so there is a sleep fitness workup that is just inside the company, and so we compete with the sleep score every, every day”
Franceschetti: Alcohol is the single most impactful disrupter of sleep
“So the most impactful thing of everything is alcohol. Alcohol is massively, is gonna disrupt your sleep massively.”
Franceschetti: Consuming alcohol typically reduces sleep quality by 20%
“Usually, you lose probably somewhere around 20% sleep quality with alcohol.”
Eight Sleep has 100,000 customers using its devices every night
“Now, now we have 100,000 of customers sleeping on these devices every single night in their home.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep dataset reveals sleep insights unknown to academic scientists
“And so we are discovering things That literally no other professor or scientist can know just because of the scale.”
Franceschetti: Stop drinking coffee at least eight hours before bedtime
“In general, the rule of thumb is you shouldn't because I, it takes around eight hours For the coffee to really leave your body, right? So usually I don't have a lot of coffee but if you have coffee, you should stop drinking coffee at least eight hours before b…”
Franceschetti: Avoid late-day exercise to allow body temperature recovery before sleep
“But so you don't want to do exercise or it's not recommended to do exercise in the second part of the day because you accelerate your heart rate. You accelerate your body temperature, right? So you create a bunch of changes inside your body, and then your body…”
Eight Sleep CEO Matteo Franceschetti sleeps nine hours every day
“I mean, sleep, I sleep nine hours, right, every single day.”
Franceschetti: Heart rate recovery speed indicates overall cardiovascular health
“There is a couple of metrics that few people know, but they are very helpful. That is heart rate recovery. I don't know if you ever heard it but substantially you can use a, an app called Zones. That gets the data from your Apple Watch. You want to see how muc…”
Matteo Franceschetti follows a ketogenic diet and eats once daily
“I'm on a keto diet. I usually eat once a day just for dinner.”
Franceschetti: Long-term consistency matters more than daily perfection
“You shouldn't be perfect every day. This is something I learned from a video of Tom Brady, but what you want is the consistency. It's less about cheating one day or another day, but if you zoom out and you look at how you manage your things, are you consistent…”
Franceschetti checks Eight Sleep's daily revenue dashboard first thing every morning
“Every day, the first thing I look at, right or wrong, probably wrong, but it's revenue of the previous day. I receive a looker dashboard, right?”
Franceschetti: Most consumers abandon wearable tech within 3 to 6 months
“A lot of wearables, people stop using them within three to six months.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep processes 1 million nights of sleep data weekly
“And so if you fast forward, even just now, for us, understanding what happens across a million nights, it happens in less than a week.”
Franceschetti: Eight Sleep models product evolution and experience on Tesla
“One is Tesla, and the reason why is because of how obsessed they are with the customer experience, right? They are minimal, they are simple, they, the product evolves with software, and so we use Tesla a lot as an example at Eight Sleep”
Franceschetti: Companies should focus on 'honoring customers' over 'customer obsession'
“It's really the word honoring your customers that I really love. It's not customer obsession, not Jeff Bezos mentioning a call said customer obsession to me. It's honor your customer.”
Shorts cut from this episode
▶ Eight Sleep's Product Rebrand That Made MILLIONS 🤑 · 20VC w (@23:32)
▶ How Eight Sleep CEO builds his team with “the grandma rule” (@28:30)
▶ Secret to high-end marketing of products · 20VC with Harry S (@13:38)
▶ The Single Biggest Mistake Every Executive Makes · 20VC with (@0:08)
▶ Why I A/B Test My Vacations — Eight Sleep CEO Matteo Frances (@1:50:18)