Jun 12, 2023 · 1h 13m · how-i-built-this
Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Harry’s co-founders Jeff Raider and Andy Katz-Mayfield about challenging the entrenched shaving monopoly dominated by Gillette. They detail their journey from an audacious million-blade purchase order to acquiring a century-old German factory for $100 million and building a profitable multi-brand enterprise.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 32.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 2.4 Guest teaching 1.4 Guest disagreement 0.3 Guy pushing back 0.3
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:11:11 Andy challenges Jeff's luck narrative
Andy directly dismisses Jeff's modest attribution of success to luck, arguing that starting two multi-billion dollar companies requires deliberate determination and hard work rather than chance.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 32:58 Guy challenges upfront million-blade commitmentGuy presses hard on the founders' risk posture, directly questioning whether they actually possessed the millions required when they legally committed to buying a million blades.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 28:29 Founders educate Guy on metallurgical steel restructuringJeff and Andy walk Guy through the complex physics of blade production, explaining how heating and flash-cooling in football-field ovens fundamentally alters the steel's molecular composition.
Guy holds their own ▶ 7:25 Guy details Warby Parker's founding rosterGuy demonstrates deep mastery of the guests' corporate history, citing specific co-founders and past show interviews to frame the conversation's trajectory.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early Careers and Bain Internship | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz traces the founders' early careers at Bain & Company and private equity, establishing an easygoing, biographical rapport with no conflict. | |
| Jeff Raider and the Founding of Warby Parker | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Guy demonstrates detailed background knowledge of Warby Parker's founding team from past interviews, asking Jeff to reflect on the early business school incubator days. | |
| The Frustrating Drugstore Shaving Experience | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Andy recounts the frustrating Santa Monica drugstore experience buying overpriced locked-up razor cartridges, setting up the brand's origin story. | |
| Investigating the Shaving Industry | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy prompts the founders on their exploratory research phase, noting Gillette's huge margins and corporate dominance. | |
| The Unexpected Complexity of Blade Manufacturing | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Andy educates Guy on how razor manufacturing fundamentally differs from standard commoditized CPG due to complex IP and strict metallurgical precision. | |
| Mid-Show Break and Call to Follow | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Mid-show commercial break and host monologue setup, requiring zero host expertise/pushback scoring. | |
| Discovering Feintechnik and Metallurgical Science | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Jeff and Andy school Guy on the detailed physics and chemistry of blade fabrication, explaining how heating and cooling football-field-long ovens alters the steel's metallurgical composition. | |
| Journey to Eisfeld and Securing a Million-Blade Deal | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | Guy presses the founders on their boldness, questioning how they committed to buying a million blades before raising a dollar of venture capital. | |
| Committing Full-Time and Naming Harry's | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | The guests describe deciding to quit their day jobs and brainstorming the friendly Harry's brand name and distinct orange handle aesthetic. | |
| Seed Funding and Complex Global Supply Chain | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Andy walks Guy through the multi-country logistics network spanning Germany, China, and New Jersey required to assemble their initial shave sets. | |
| Launch Day Surge and Stockout Chaos | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Jeff recounts the viral launch surge driven by Uncrate press that led to immediate stockouts and the founders growing out their beards in solidarity. | |
| Customer Feedback and the Audacious Idea to Buy the Factory | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | Guy points out the audacity of trying to purchase a $100M factory just two months after launching the company. | |
| Mid-Show Teaser: Cross-Cultural Mergers | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Mid-show teaser and sponsor announcement segment. | |
| Integrating German Manufacturing with Startup Culture | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Andy details the cultural friction of integrating fast-moving American tech iterate-on-the-fly startup culture with disciplined, planful German manufacturing engineering. | |
| Achieving Vertical Integration Against Gillette | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy asks about rival upstarts like Dollar Shave Club, but Andy reframes their competitive lens entirely toward market giant Gillette. | |
| Scaling Capacity and Reinvesting Capital | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 | Guy probes whether the capital-intensive blitzscaling approach was wise, and Jeff justifies the funding by pointing to physical factory construction. | |
| Retail Expansion to Target and Gillette's Counteroffensive | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | The guests explain capturing over 50% market share at Target and legally countering Gillette's attack ads with verified retention data. | |
| Establishing Harry's Labs and Multi-Brand Expansion | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy summarizes the Harry's Labs incubator initiative and the founders explain their long-term vision of becoming a modern multi-brand CPG holding company. | |
| The Blocked Edgewell Merger | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Andy explains that the proposed $1.4B Edgewell merger originated as Harry's trying to buy Schick rather than a traditional startup cash-out. | |
| Team Rally, COVID-19 Resilience, and Profitability | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Jeff explains how the FTC block and subsequent onset of COVID-19 propelled DTC and Flamingo demand, bringing the company to EBITDA profitability. | |
| Reflections on Hard Work, Privilege, and Luck | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | Andy playfully pushes back on Jeff's modesty regarding luck, differentiating systemic privilege from the relentless grit required to build two unicorn brands. |
Statements from this episode (26)
Raider took student loans to fund Warby Parker despite sponsored Wharton tuition
“I'd worked at Charles Bank, as we mentioned. They had paid for me to go to business school, and then I'd agreed to come back afterwards for a couple years, and so I had business school paid for it, so what we did, what I did was took out loans that otherwise I…”
Razor blade prices were historically inflated by an effective monopoly
“There is a single player that really dominates this industry. And that was also true of Warby Parker. And one of the reasons why prices were so inflated is that there was effectively a monopolist.”
Gillette sold to Procter & Gamble for over $50 billion
“Gillette who had dominated the industry had sold to Procter and Gamble for like over fifty billion dollars.”
Gillette was one of the most profitable CPG companies ever built
“Before they sold, they would report their, you know, kind of financials. They were like one of the most profitable CPG companies ever built.”
Razor blades require complex manufacturing unlike other commoditized consumer packaged goods
“Most consumer packaged goods are reasonably commoditized. There's probably a hundred manufacturers, you know, throughout the world that can make, or, you know, thousands that can make soap or, Hairstyling products or whatever. And razor blades, not so. There i…”
Razor blade manufacturing complexity comes from high-velocity precision edge grinding
“The grinding process, Which is really where the secret sauce of razor blade manufacturing comes in. It's the actual grinding of this very thin steel to get that edge and get that shape is a very hard process to perfect, and to get billions of these things made…”
Harry's founders signed a contract for one million blades before raising capital
“And then we committed to buying a million razor blades. Like, we signed a contract to buy a million razor blades, which for them at the time was, like, a meaningful number.”
Multiple early Warby Parker investors passed on investing in Harry's
“But we had a bunch of Warby Parker investors who, I, you know, in retrospect are gonna do great on Warby Parker, who invested early at Warby Parker, not invest in Harry's.”
Consumer hardware like razors cannot launch with a software-style minimum viable product
“There isn't really like an MVP here. Like we need this thing to work out of the gate. Like it's a razor. We need the product to be good. We need the inventory.”
Equal co-founder equity is crucial for aligning long-term economic incentives
“I think that's actually been really important for us to like having the same economic incentives all the time, same ownership. Like it's just good, you know, equal partnership. That's I'm really glad we did that in retrospect.”
Despite category trends, Harry's did not originally launch as a subscription business
“We always thought of Harry's as a brand first, and so the way that we started was not on subscription, actually, but we made these shave sets.”
A feature on men's blog Uncrate crashed Harry's website shortly after launch
“We sent him a sample, right after we launched I just got an email from him that says, hope you have a good server, son, and then he posted the link to the Uncrate article, and like, our whole website, like, blew up”
Meaningful physical product improvement is difficult without owning the manufacturing process
“It's, it would be really difficult to meaningfully inflect product improvement without actually owning the manufacturing process.”
Harry's raised $100M in debt and equity to buy its German manufacturer
“And so we were able to get commitments for. Sixty five million dollars of equity. We then went to Germany to raise. Thirty five million dollars of debt, which was a whole different challenge to convince these, like, very conservative German bank lenders to len…”
Harry's generated up to $10M in annualized revenue before buying its factory
“We went, you know, from a, you know you know, a sort of technology enabled startup You know, that was doing, I don't know what we were doing at the time, Jeff, you know, five or ten million dollars of revenue on an annualized basis to like a fully vertically i…”
Agile software-style testing and iteration methods do not work in manufacturing
“And of course, in a manufacturing environment, like, you need to be more planful. You can't just, like, test and learn things on the fly. On a website, you can do that stuff.”
Harry's was the only vertically integrated direct-to-consumer shaving company
“I think we sort of at one point said, said we were kind of the only truly vertically integrated company in the shave industry and that we literally grind steel and make razor blades and deliver them to your door vis-a-vis our own kind of e-commerce platform.”
Gillette held a massive 70% global market share in the shaving industry
“Gillette globally had, you know, 70% market share, like truly insane.”
Over half of Harry's early capital funded expanding its German factory
“I would say at least half of that capital, those kind of early rounds of capital went to Germany to you know, sort of build out the factory, the plan.”
Harry's captured over 50% of Target's razor category market share overnight
“When we launched in Target, we took over 50% market share of the category at Target overnight.”
The majority of customers in every Harry's cohort have remained subscribers
“Every cohort of customers since the beginning of Harry's, the majority of customers who try Harry's stay with Harry's.”
Expanding beyond shaving into all consumer packaged goods removed Harry's growth cap
“Even if we got to, you know, huge market shares everywhere, like there's going to be some cap on our growth and shave. And so if we thought about it, we thought, Hey, like, you know, if we could increase our addressable market, not just to kind of men's groomi…”
Harry's evolved its corporate vision from a single brand to a next-generation P&G
“The vision really evolved from, hey, we're gonna build, you know, a next generation Gillette or a next generation Old Spice, you know, from a Harry's brand standpoint to, hey, we're gonna build a next generation, you know, Procter & Gamble. Like, we wanna, we …”
Harry's initially explored partnering with private equity to acquire public competitor Edgewell
“I actually talked to a couple private equity firms about, because Edgewell was a public company, but a reasonably small public company, about trying to buy them
Take them private and fold it into our business.
That was actually how it started.
And we could nev…”
Harry's achieved profitability and became EBITDA-positive during the COVID-19 pandemic
“And then our online business, you know, DTC, also started to grow in a significant way because people weren't going to stores, and so I think we actually, we also turned the business to profitability. We were EBITDA positive”