The Exchanges

Q Can I ask you a final one, and then I promise we're gonna get to the principles. When you revert back to like the fundraising journey, is there anything you know now that you wish you'd known then, where you'd advise founders having been through all that you've been through?

A Yes. I think sometimes you just think about the firm, meaning, oh, let me try to talk to funders fund to see if you can raise. But if you have a very bold vision, And a very contrarian view of how the world will look, right? Because what we are saying is that your bed will become the greatest preventative health platform in the world. But if you go on our website, you could just say, oh, these guys, they sell some products for your sleep to heat and cool. And so you really need to talk to the right person in the firm, and usually is senior partners or people that not fully understand what you're trying to do. And the other big thing is this. If you look at our, at our history, right, we, we have some of the greatest investors, right? We have Keith, we have, you know, Cosla Ventures, we have Founders Fund, Stray Stevens, we have Valor with Antonio Gracias, right? And what I realized recently is, is not a coincidence. Meaning hundreds of people passed on us, but not these guys. And the reason is these guys, they have a vision that someone will master sleep. Technology will dominate sleep a certain point. So I don't have to convince them on that, right? If you talk to Keith, he already knows. He, he has been talking about this for 10 years. 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. A…

AI assessment note: “you really need to talk to the right person in the firm”

Q Congrats on the year. It's a big moment, so that's awesome to hear. It hit me, Matteo, what was yours?

A Yeah, it was slightly different for me. I'm Italian, and I have never been a heavy drinker, but you know, in Italy, you always drink with every meal, sometimes even for lunch, like a glass of wine. In my case, I really started getting into gin, and different gin tonics, and I started buying a lot of books, About how you can make the best gin tonic. So with my wife, three, four times a week, maybe even four or five times a week, when we were coming back from work, we were just, you know, making a gin tonic to us, and it was like a sort of decompression from the stressful day, you know, you work hard, hard, hard, you finally go home, and to kind of create a gate between the work part of the day and the more relaxing one, you want to create a habit, and that habit was Really drinking these gin tonics. Then we went on vacation for a week, and during that week, we were still stressed. We drank a lot. We were eating a lot, and so we came back home, and we said, look, this is not really healthy. It was also a time where I was really focused on my health, trying to be in better shape and fitter. So we said, why don't we try for a week? Why don't we try for a week to just stop drinking? And one week later, we said, do you miss something? And the answer was substantially no. The only thing we were missing was a habit. The habit of having something in your hand once, you know, you go back…

AI assessment note: “we came back home, and we said, look, this is not really healthy.”

Q Okay. So it's kind of at least 50%, so it's strong, huh?

A Yeah. And the other thing, and this is more mental, is 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. And the reason why this is helpful is, I don't know, one of my executives recently came back and said, oh, this engineer has a great Pedigree. I now work at this company and that company. Uh, I'm not a strong hire, but I think I can, uh, I can grow this person into the role. And I say, no, we are a default, no hire. So unless you are extremely bullish on this person that you believe it would be dumb to let this person go, we don't hire. So I'm, I'm, we just stop here the process and we move on.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. And the other thing, and this is more mental, is we are a default”

Q My word, that's patience, my friend. Can I ask, was that seed round easy to raise? Respectfully, you weren't like Silicon Valley, Stripe, A software engineer, and you were fixing hardware, not a popular investor category, and like sleep, not an obvious category that investors invest in. Was it an easy seed round to raise?

A Yes, and I don't say yes easily because a lot of our rounds have been very, very, very difficult. The advantage we had at the time is that hardware was really hot at the time. There were a lot of campaigns on Indiegogo and other platforms, and so a lot of investors immediately after YC Because we already sold 6008 thousand units in pre-orders, we were one of the hottest YC startup at the time. But that almost didn't happen anymore. So after that, actually hardware became something that very few investors like, uh, in the valley, because it's very complicated. It requires a lot of capital. It's very easy to screw up. And so after that, uh, it became much harder to raise.

AI assessment note: “Yes, and I don't say yes easily because a lot of our rounds”

Q How did they respond? Were they like, oh, Matteo, that's, that's a lot. We're pushing our hardest now. How was their response?

A At first it was mixed, right? Some people say, okay, this guy just keeps pushing for, for velocity for the sake of velocity. But by the end of the week, a hundred percent of them, they were Um, hundred percent in. Actually, one of our executives wrote me yesterday, and he, he called, he's like me, and he said, confession. And he said, at the beginning of the week, I was not really an asshole on, uh, on, on this approach. I think this will compromise quality, and it will have no second order effect on all our engineers, blah, blah. But I thought more about that, and I think we can fix it, and I think this is the right thing of the company. Here are the three things I did.

AI assessment note: “At first it was mixed... But by the end of the week, a hundred percent”

Q If you're a low performer, no change, should you not be moved on?

A Yeah. That would be the first thing I would, I would, uh, discuss with the executive, right? And the reason is, is not because you want to be, you know, you don't want to be fair. Actually, you want to be fair. So what you need to do there is first, you need to talk to the person, right? Because if things are not working, there is always a why, right? Most of the times people are not bad. And so maybe we're not the right fit, you know, as a culture, as a product, maybe we're not the right fit for this time of their life, right? We are very intense as a culture. And so if you're not intense, if you have other things going on in your life, it's highly, no, we should respect that. But at the same time, you cannot be friends with everyone. I always tell my team, right? So you need to pick your friends. And so talk to them, give them an opportunity to improve and raise their bar. If they do it, that is success to me. If they don't, then we need to part ways. But treat them fairly.

AI assessment note: “If they don't, then we need to part ways.”

Q What are those mistakes that you would tell me as a young startup founder listening who sees shiny logos from Apple and Tesla and SpaceX and goes, wow, that's great. What would you tell me knowing what you know now?

A So first, even if these people were really the successful drivers of other companies, In, in other companies, right? Which, which could be possible. You want to make sure that first, the historical time of when they were successful is still similar to yours. It goes back to what I was telling you, right? 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, your company is designed around CAC efficiency, it will be really hard for them, right? They have already been successful, probably they already made money, they have their own Playbook. That playbook doesn't work for you. So you need to find people that were really successful at scaling businesses with a very efficient cock. This is a different game. The second is 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 the customer reaction. If they start thinking about the brand, the brand impact, and this, this, and that, obviously you need to be thoughtful, but you need to take some risks to learn faster. And maybe they reach a point where they were not anymore because that company was way bigger. And it's rea…

AI assessment note: “They have their own Playbook. That playbook doesn't work for you.”

Q Do you worry about it impacting velocity? Like, yeah, yeah, I get it, you want an agenda method, but just for fuck's sake, just get on the call with me and talk, because we need to talk about this CAC. It's not acceptable.

A That is the typical answer of someone who didn't write agendas. It's something like- Think of the board deck, right? 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% of the value of the board meeting is in creating the board deck, not the board meeting. It's the same for the agenda, right? I don't want to come in a meeting where I don't have the information about that cock, right? If we need to discuss that cock, as you're saying, I want to read your thought. I want to read the data. I want to sleep on it. Obviously I don't sleep on it because it's the same day, right? But I want to rest a little bit thinking about that topic. You can't expect me to come to a meeting. I'm not a genius who just shows up and have a magic answer for everything, right? I need to digest it. I need to read the data. Maybe I want more data, and I'll leave you the comment before the meeting, so you add the data. And so then we can run a meeting in 12 minutes instead of three hours and get to a better conclusion.

AI assessment note: “we can run a meeting in 12 minutes instead of three hours”

Q How much does it change throughout the night? Like, significantly?

A Um, no, not significantly, but enough for you to, to really feel that. And so, the, 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 to wake up, which if you think, if you go back to thousands of years ago, it just follows what happens in the night with the sun. Right? If you were sleeping in a cave, right? The temperature drops because there is no sun, and the night comes, and then a couple of hours before sunrise, the temperature starts rising again because the sun starts coming out.

AI assessment note: “Um, no, not significantly, but enough for you to, to really feel that.”

Q What was the hardest thing when you look back and you're like, oh my God, I can't believe we went through that. What was that?

A So many things. I would say there are two major buckets. One, uh, uh, hardware. So I tell you this story that very few people know, but it was immediately after YC, right? We just closed YC. We had our, Seed around, so that part was, was going well. But, um, what was not happening was manufacturing. We, we didn't have any expertise in manufacturing, right? So we were really naive. And so at a certain point, I go to my wife, Alexandra, who is one of the co-founders, and I say, look, manufacturing is not happening. I need to go and fix it. And she says, oh, ok. And so what do you do? Oh, I'm flying to China. And she says, when? Tomorrow. And she says, when do you come back? Once I have fixed it. And so I came back a few months later, uh, after, yeah, being, being, being there.

AI assessment note: “what was not happening was manufacturing. We, we didn't have any expertise in manufacturing”

Q What are those mistakes that you would tell me as a young startup founder listening who sees shiny logos from Apple and Tesla and SpaceX and goes, wow, that's great. What would you tell me knowing what you know now?

A So first, even if these people were really the successful drivers of other companies, In, in other companies, right? Which, which could be possible. You want to make sure that first, the historical time of when they were successful is still similar to yours. It goes back to what I was telling you, right? 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, your company is designed around CAC efficiency, it will be really hard for them, right? They have already been successful, probably they already made money, they have their own Playbook. That playbook doesn't work for you. So you need to find people that were really successful at scaling businesses with a very efficient cock. This is a different game. The second is 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 the customer reaction. If they start thinking about the brand, the brand impact, and this, this, and that, obviously you need to be thoughtful, but you need to take some risks to learn faster. And maybe they reach a point where they were not anymore because that company was way bigger. And it's rea…

AI assessment note: “if they come from very large companies, the requirements compared to a startup are very different.”

Q My word, that's patience, my friend. Can I ask, was that seed round easy to raise? Respectfully, you weren't like Silicon Valley, Stripe, A software engineer, and you were fixing hardware, not a popular investor category, and like sleep, not an obvious category that investors invest in. Was it an easy seed round to raise?

A Yes, and I don't say yes easily because a lot of our rounds have been very, very, very difficult. The advantage we had at the time is that hardware was really hot at the time. There were a lot of campaigns on Indiegogo and other platforms, and so a lot of investors immediately after YC Because we already sold 6008 thousand units in pre-orders, we were one of the hottest YC startup at the time. But that almost didn't happen anymore. So after that, actually hardware became something that very few investors like, uh, in the valley, because it's very complicated. It requires a lot of capital. It's very easy to screw up. And so after that, uh, it became much harder to raise.

AI assessment note: “Yes, and I don't say yes easily because a lot of our rounds have been”

Q Can I ask you a final one, and then I promise we're gonna get to the principles. When you revert back to like the fundraising journey, is there anything you know now that you wish you'd known then, where you'd advise founders having been through all that you've been through?

A Yes. I think sometimes you just think about the firm, meaning, oh, let me try to talk to funders fund to see if you can raise. But if you have a very bold vision, And a very contrarian view of how the world will look, right? Because what we are saying is that your bed will become the greatest preventative health platform in the world. But if you go on our website, you could just say, oh, these guys, they sell some products for your sleep to heat and cool. And so you really need to talk to the right person in the firm, and usually is senior partners or people that not fully understand what you're trying to do. And the other big thing is this. If you look at our, at our history, right, we, we have some of the greatest investors, right? We have Keith, we have, you know, Cosla Ventures, we have Founders Fund, Stray Stevens, we have Valor with Antonio Gracias, right? And what I realized recently is, is not a coincidence. Meaning hundreds of people passed on us, but not these guys. And the reason is these guys, they have a vision that someone will master sleep. Technology will dominate sleep a certain point. So I don't have to convince them on that, right? If you talk to Keith, he already knows. He, he has been talking about this for 10 years. 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. A…

AI assessment note: “you really need to talk to the right person in the firm”

Q Is it possible to do it without compromising quality? If I can do it today for you and it's 80%, or I can do it in a week for you and it's 90%, which do you want?

A So I want the 80%. And so there is where you need to be clear. It's also one of the points of the Elon Algo on his book, right? About simplifying the requirements. So it's the definition of quality. Quality to me is not perfection, but there is a threshold where if you just ship tomorrow shitty up, then we don't go very far as a brand, right? But if it's 85% there, and then you keep improving, uh, every single day for the next week, and you take it to a hundred percent, a hundred percent, we should do that. There was actually this point that, you know, they taught us at YC where they, if you were going to the YC partners during the YC program saying, oh, I'm going to launch, I don't know, this website in 30 days. Some of the partners, they would tell you, no, you start shipping something tomorrow, and you break that thing down in 30 pieces, and every day you make some progress. And so, we really talk about progress at Eight Slip. How can you do as much progress as possible on a 24 or 48 hours?

AI assessment note: “So I want the 80%. And so there is where you need to be clear.”

Q What are the, Most significant things you think the team will do to reach that 30% speed increase?

A 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. So let's say we discover a bug today. That bug needs to be fixed tomorrow. And it cannot be, oh, but we have this roadmap and we are shipping this engineering feature and we can do it in two weeks. No, they do it tomorrow. And so you need to talk to your engineers and they need to understand the importance. Of fixing these, right? For a brand that is premium and is positioned at 2000 bucks. And so that is the number one thing. We are too, sometimes too rigid with our schedules.

AI assessment note: “they need to stop being too rigid on Bi-weekly or monthly goals”

Q Okay. So it's kind of at least 50%, so it's strong, huh?

A Yeah. And the other thing, and this is more mental, is 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. And the reason why this is helpful is, I don't know, one of my executives recently came back and said, oh, this engineer has a great Pedigree. I now work at this company and that company. Uh, I'm not a strong hire, but I think I can, uh, I can grow this person into the role. And I say, no, we are a default, no hire. So unless you are extremely bullish on this person that you believe it would be dumb to let this person go, we don't hire. So I'm, I'm, we just stop here the process and we move on.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. And the other thing, and this is more mental, is we are a default”

Q Do you worry about it impacting velocity? Like, yeah, yeah, I get it, you want an agenda method, but just for fuck's sake, just get on the call with me and talk, because we need to talk about this CAC. It's not acceptable.

A That is the typical answer of someone who didn't write agendas. It's something like- Think of the board deck, right? 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% of the value of the board meeting is in creating the board deck, not the board meeting. It's the same for the agenda, right? I don't want to come in a meeting where I don't have the information about that cock, right? If we need to discuss that cock, as you're saying, I want to read your thought. I want to read the data. I want to sleep on it. Obviously I don't sleep on it because it's the same day, right? But I want to rest a little bit thinking about that topic. You can't expect me to come to a meeting. I'm not a genius who just shows up and have a magic answer for everything, right? I need to digest it. I need to read the data. Maybe I want more data, and I'll leave you the comment before the meeting, so you add the data. And so then we can run a meeting in 12 minutes instead of three hours and get to a better conclusion.

AI assessment note: “then we can run a meeting in 12 minutes instead of three hours”

Q Have you learned anything about firing? I find it horrible and hard, and I'm terrible at it. Any tips for me?

A Yeah, quite a bit. As you can imagine, I did everything good and bad. I do an agenda. But yeah, I think for you and I, or at least for me, I come from a culture, I'm Italian, right? I come from a culture where in Italy is almost, you, you don't fire, right? So when I, when I moved to the US, it was really shocking to me to think that you, you can, you can let people go. And so I think you need to think in a couple of different dimensions. One side is the organization. And when you think about the organization, you need to do the best interest of the Hundreds of people that work at the organization. So, and so sometimes you take certain decision that obviously can impact an individual, but you need to make sure that you're doing the best for all the other people that have a job in their organization. Then the way you do it, you need to be respectful, right? They're, they're human beings. Again, they go home, they have a family, they have a dinner with their friend, they have their own story.

AI assessment note: “you need to think in a couple of different dimensions. One side is the organization”

Q How much does it change throughout the night? Like, significantly?

A Um, no, not significantly, but enough for you to, to really feel that. And so, the, 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 to wake up, which if you think, if you go back to thousands of years ago, it just follows what happens in the night with the sun. Right? If you were sleeping in a cave, right? The temperature drops because there is no sun, and the night comes, and then a couple of hours before sunrise, the temperature starts rising again because the sun starts coming out.

AI assessment note: “Um, no, not significantly, but enough for you to, to really feel that.”

Q Congrats on the year. It's a big moment, so that's awesome to hear. It hit me, Matteo, what was yours?

A Yeah, it was slightly different for me. I'm Italian, and I have never been a heavy drinker, but you know, in Italy, you always drink with every meal, sometimes even for lunch, like a glass of wine. In my case, I really started getting into gin, and different gin tonics, and I started buying a lot of books, About how you can make the best gin tonic. So with my wife, three, four times a week, maybe even four or five times a week, when we were coming back from work, we were just, you know, making a gin tonic to us, and it was like a sort of decompression from the stressful day, you know, you work hard, hard, hard, you finally go home, and to kind of create a gate between the work part of the day and the more relaxing one, you want to create a habit, and that habit was Really drinking these gin tonics. Then we went on vacation for a week, and during that week, we were still stressed. We drank a lot. We were eating a lot, and so we came back home, and we said, look, this is not really healthy. It was also a time where I was really focused on my health, trying to be in better shape and fitter. So we said, why don't we try for a week? Why don't we try for a week to just stop drinking? And one week later, we said, do you miss something? And the answer was substantially no. The only thing we were missing was a habit. The habit of having something in your hand once, you know, you go back…

AI assessment note: “we came back home, and we said, look, this is not really healthy.”

Q Why do you think people make mistakes on clarity of thought?

A Because they didn't think enough. They believe, they, 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 confusion, and so you have a blurred concept that you're unable to express. Oh, we want to try this channel. Why? And why? And why? No, the five whys. Keep going deeper and deeper and deeper. Do we need to test it now? Right? Think of this, right? They, it just happened, right? They were suggesting, okay, let's test these other channels. And my point is why, right? It was in an international market. We didn't test it in the US. Why would we go there? Oh, because then we, I don't know, we can grow faster, but can we grow faster with all the current channels and just kill them more? Yeah, maybe. And did you spend enough in these channels? And do you already know that there is no margin for incremental CAC? You know, you keep making questions, and as a team, you need to help each other, meaning you will never start with clarity of thinking in anything, so I need help myself. This is just an example where, as a group, we develop our clarity of thinking, but after you debate this, write it down, and send me a blurb or a one-pager about this topic.

AI assessment note: “Because they didn't think enough. They believe, they, they know, they believe they have a thought”

Q No, I, I totally get you and agree. You said about sustaining over years. Final, final one, I promise. Your co-founder is, is also your partner. What's the secret to a successful marriage?

A I tell you a story first. So probably as, as, as you feel that you have understood this, I'm, uh, uh, I'm, I'm always on unless when I'm sleeping about the business, but my wife, sometimes she wants her time where I don't bother her about the business, right? She, she wants to be in her own world. That is how she, you know, digest things and develop ideas. And so sometimes, you know, it's, I don't know, nine PM and, and I want to talk about Some stuff for a sleep. And she said, look, after this time, you, you need to treat me like any other executive and colleagues. So you can't bother me all the time. And so you can talk about work after, I don't know, nine PM, whatever.

AI assessment note: “after this time, you, you need to treat me like any other executive”

Q Why do you think people make mistakes on clarity of thought?

A Because they didn't think enough. They believe, they, 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 confusion, and so you have a blurred concept that you're unable to express. Oh, we want to try this channel. Why? And why? And why? No, the five whys. Keep going deeper and deeper and deeper. Do we need to test it now? Right? Think of this, right? They, it just happened, right? They were suggesting, okay, let's test these other channels. And my point is why, right? It was in an international market. We didn't test it in the US. Why would we go there? Oh, because then we, I don't know, we can grow faster, but can we grow faster with all the current channels and just kill them more? Yeah, maybe. And did you spend enough in these channels? And do you already know that there is no margin for incremental CAC? You know, you keep making questions, and as a team, you need to help each other, meaning you will never start with clarity of thinking in anything, so I need help myself. This is just an example where, as a group, we develop our clarity of thinking, but after you debate this, write it down, and send me a blurb or a one-pager about this topic.

AI assessment note: “Because they didn't think enough. They believe, they, they know, they believe they have a thought”

Q What's the biggest challenge of having them opposing each other?

A It's the best thing ever. Uh, and actually this is a mistake a lot of companies do when they pick only one metric. I'll give you an example in growth. In growth, my team has a goal to grow, I don't know, call it two X year over year. Right? At this CAC. There is a tension between these two. And, but this tension is exactly what they want, right? Because if you just give them growth, they could grow five X year over year. They just spend five X more CAC or three X more CAC. If you just, if they just use CAC, then they're not challenged to figure out how to unlock new channels that can push our growth. And so opposite matters. We don't do anything at eight sleep if there is not an opposite metric.

AI assessment note: “It's the best thing ever. Uh, and actually this is a mistake a lot”

Q How do you feel about title? There's two things I want to discuss. It's title and pay. Title, I find, I'm intrigued. What are your lessons on how successful a hire is, correlated to their negotiation on the title that they want or have?

A So usually, it's bad, right, because Some of the best people, they don't really care about title. I understand that some people, you still want to go home, you know, to your partner, to your friends, and, you know, have some pride of, you know, what, what is your title, in particular if you're moving. But we had experiences where When we were hiring bad in, uh, in a certain point, the VP of engineering changed the title of an engineer. And this guy started coming in completely dressed, like, uh, with, with a t-shirt and the tie the following day, thinking of being a manager. And he was managing like, I don't know, one or two people. So it literally made no sense. But so the, the, the story there is you need to pay attention, meaning sometimes you can play with titles. I don't like it, 80% of the times you can do it, but. It's less about the title and making it clear that you're still an IC versus a manager. And 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. The easiest way for us, we, our teams are structured in squads. There is the engineering team, there is the product team and all that. Then they work in squads. So maybe there is a PM, there is two engineers, and there is a designer, righ…

AI assessment note: “So usually, it's bad, right, because Some of the best people, they don't really care”

Q And so every, every- Do they posit opinions? Do they posit, like, do they say where they want to get to at the end? Like, how are they structured? And it sounds weird.

A So usually there is an executive summary at the top, which is obviously the summary of the key topics with the key data. Then there is, uh, points to be discussed. And then usually there is the, the, the real meat, right? And so this is usually based on OKRs and so, or, or goals. Our goals usually are monthly, uh, four to six weeks. And so let's say you have a goal to grow 1.4 X, a grow to improve CVR and go to reduce a CAC. You have three sections in the agenda. You're, you tell us what is happening in each of them, what we are doing, what's working, and what's not working. This is usually a good framework, right? Summary, what's working, what's not working. Summary, what's working, what's not working. And you support it with data. And then at the bottom, there is an area for action items that the team takes live. And so when we discuss something, we put the action item, the DRI, so who is in charge, and the deadline. And the deadline gets discussed, meaning that is how you enforce velocity, right? It's not Uh, a week. In my mind, if people talk to me and they don't set a deadline, it's the same day. That is how my brain works. And sometimes with junior people, it happened like two Sundays ago. I asked for something because I had a meeting, uh, early on, on, on a Monday, and I asked the thing to the finance team. The person didn't say, oh yeah, I'll get back to you. And then a…

AI assessment note: “executive summary at the top, which is obviously the summary of the key topics”

Q you know, if the, Battery's on fire. What are you gonna do? Call me? I can't fucking put it out. Like, why bother calling me? And I was just like, that's a, that's a very interesting take. Uh, final one. We have a show in 2033. Okay. Um, you, you know, further increased your productivity to all new heights. I just get older. Um, where's eight sleep in 10 years?

A We have saved a million lives. Um, we have, uh, and improved millions of lives, right? Between sleep and preventative health. We're a public company, hopefully by then. Um, and the reason is why I, I think that that will set the right structure to build a long-term business. And a word I use a lot is building a, an iconic global company. Meaning if I think of legacy, And leaving a mark in the world to me is not about not the money is really helping this million of lives and doing it with the brand that is iconic and globally recognized. If you ask me if you had a magic stick and what you want your life to be spent on, that's it. Helping millions of lives with a brand that is iconic and well-recognized globally. Respected, right? Brands. You really stand with that brand. You, you care about those guys. You know that that brand cares about you, and that brand is doing something well for the world.

AI assessment note: “We're a public company, hopefully by then.”

Q Can I ask you a weird question? 2000 dollars. What would happen if you made it 4000 dollars? Have you done price experiments to understand, like, demand sensitivity?

A Yeah. This is actually the perfect question, and I can tell you it wouldn't change too much. Because it's actually going up with prices sometimes is very beneficial for a company like us, and we just did it because, uh, when we had to readjust our unit economics, we had to increase prices. We did it in 20, 21, and the impact was minimal. Yeah. And so, one interesting thing for you to know is, Sometimes I talk to different people about this topic. And so 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. And the reason is these guys, they built, I don't know, one of our investors is the founder of a major fitness company in Italy, right? They make almost a billion dollars in revenue. They're worth a billion. So big business, right? This guy started the company 30 years ago and never raised a penny until when they went public, blah, blah, blah. And so I talked to these guys because this guy is selling fitness equipment for 10 K with a profitable business that generates seventy million in cash every year. And so I want to talk to him because he knows how to make the bottom line work, not the top line.

AI assessment note: “I can tell you it wouldn't change too much.”

Q I get you. What mistakes have you made with operational excellence? When you look back now, and you're like, oh, I can't believe we did that.

A Most of the times is probably connected to the opposite metrics, like you wanna ship, um, Quality of software, right? Sometimes, no, we wanted to improve the quality of our software to make our software more reliable. But then what happens is it starts taking months to, to ship a new feature. Or another example is focus, right? Sometimes my engineers or the head of engineering says, uh, we cannot address a, a bug we figured, we found the last night. This can happen in two weeks because the team is already focused on, on, on this pipeline of products. And my answer is, no, we need to do it Today, I give them a 48 hours, right? 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, about that reason. You always want to find this balance between these two opposite parts of the business.

AI assessment note: “wanted to improve the quality of our software... it starts taking months to ship”

Q What's the biggest challenge of having them opposing each other?

A It's the best thing ever. Uh, and actually this is a mistake a lot of companies do when they pick only one metric. I'll give you an example in growth. In growth, my team has a goal to grow, I don't know, call it two X year over year. Right? At this CAC. There is a tension between these two. And, but this tension is exactly what they want, right? Because if you just give them growth, they could grow five X year over year. They just spend five X more CAC or three X more CAC. If you just, if they just use CAC, then they're not challenged to figure out how to unlock new channels that can push our growth. And so opposite matters. We don't do anything at eight sleep if there is not an opposite metric.

AI assessment note: “It's the best thing ever. Uh, and actually this is a mistake”