Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
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Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 5 5.00
Q What are, what are some of the things that you, cause I'm assuming you had some face time with Howard Schultz, who's been on this show before. What are some things that you, you learned from him?
A I learned that this thing inside of me, which is mission-based and values-based, was an important factor in whatever I did next, and so he validated that that could be true and be, have success through that, and I had the good fortune of walking into stores with him and seeing that he started to get on the line when there was a line taking orders, right, that he was just part of Starbucks regardless of Him, whatever role that he was in. Um, I also learned that he saw things before other people saw things. He had a gift about spotting a trend. Um, I will never forget it was the fall of 2007, and we had an investment meeting in Seattle, and he walked in and he said, we need to slow down our investments. Now you remember that bank collapses happened in the fall of 2008.
AI assessment note: “I learned that this thing inside of me, which is mission-based and values-based”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q You, it is the year that you founded Madison Reed, named after your daughter. But what did you, what did you start to do? I mean, I'm assuming you start to buy some Hair dyes, and just test them out, and find a pain point, or something you could improve on.
A Yeah, so I'm a believer of synchronicity in life, and so while, I can't make this story up, while I'm thinking about this, my wife, who turned gray at 25, who spent every 10 days sitting in a high-end stylist chair, because she doesn't want to be gray, um, was saying a lot of things about, what are, what do you think is in hair color? Like, I'm doing it this often. It doesn't feel that good. Like, it smells, it burns, it's kind of crazy. Uh, I'm in Whole Foods. Doing a Saturday morning shop. And she texts me and says, do you mind buying me a box of hair color? And I text back, at Whole Foods? She says, yes. I said, well, where, where is it? And so you go, I go over to the beauty section and, you know, have to, uh, there are six shades. I say, this is not high quality. Like, why are you going to do it at home? She said, well, at Whole Foods, it must have better ingredients. And so I buy a box with dust all over it, meaning it's been sitting there a long time, of the darkest black hair color that I can find. And the next stop on the Saturday morning errands was Walgreens. And I was picking up prescriptions and happened to walk down the hair color aisle and turned, and if you've ever looked at it, it is crazy. There is no, there's no product differentiation. It's all 10 dollars. It's just an inferior consumer experience. And I bought 30 boxes. Randomly. Just put them in my basket …
AI assessment note: “And I bought 30 boxes. Randomly. Just put them in my basket and went home.”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q home, you know, or they'd have an option. The third thing was you were really leaning into early into AI. You guys were like, you, I think you really thought and maybe even still think of your company as Almost like an AI company that, that using the tools that were available, and they weren't as good as they are now, to, I guess, to help people choose the products?
A Yes, the, we have a technology-enabled company. We all know that a busy woman lives her life with her phone, and so the camera, you, you know, we talked about taking a photo. The camera became something, and is something where we Let you take a picture, and on one side of your hair, you see your natural color, and then you can swipe and see Madison Reed colors and see what you might look like. When somebody uses that, they convert 30% more than any other customer that doesn't use it. Um, and in addition, um, the same quiz is given to every customer on their first Madison Reed hair color bar visit, because we have a belief That we should allow you to go to any one of our 95 locations and have the same outcome. And so if we don't log in the color that the stylist puts on your hair, that wouldn't be possible.
AI assessment note: “Yes, the, we have a technology-enabled company.”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q Alright, so, so in, um, uh, 2014, July of 20 14, you were ready to launch. You got a website, ready to go. What was the launch plan? How were you gonna get on people's radars?
A So we had hired a PR agency that was pretty well known in beauty, and, uh, we had developed a launch plan of getting a very famous stylist to tell people that this was Efficacious that this was salon quality hair color that they could trust and use at home, and we had a big, what would now be called an influencer event in their salon in New York City, and lots of press came. Lots of people let us do their hair, believe it or not, and it was very, very successful, and so now all of a sudden all of these blogs All of these magazines, all the online magazines and content are saying, this hair color is amazing, and you can buy it online, and it's got, it's better for you. And so initially, the first bang, if you will, was really PR and influencer-driven.
AI assessment note: “we had developed a launch plan of getting a very famous stylist”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q lot of co-founder success stories happen because of luck. I really do. It's like marriages. But, um, you know, some people have certain strategies for figuring out, is this person going to be the right fit? What, what do you think happened? I mean, were you just, do you think you were mainly focused on sort of resume and credentials rather than, is this person the right fit with me?
A I think that all four of us were the right cultural fit with each other. Like, we wrote the values of the company together, and they're still the values of the company, so there wasn't a difference of, if you will, what, how we wanted the company to operate, or how we treated people, or what were the values. I think that I Did not get the level of expertise that one needed to be in a technical business like this. So, you know, one co-founder was focused on finance and the supply chain. And a supply chain part of this business is really a big deal, especially when you have product coming from Mindly. And what I thought was that his experience would suggest he knew how to do that, and that started to fall apart as soon as the company scaled.
AI assessment note: “I think that all four of us were the right cultural fit with each other.”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q for a variety of reasons. I mean, you know, there's uncertainty in the economy, and, and there's competition, tariffs, all kinds of things going on. I mean, did you, when you, when you started this process in 2013, Did you think that it was something that you would probably sell or it would get acquired in about within about 10 years or, or, or was that not on your mind?
A I thought it would take 10 years. I thought that this kind of category, because you have to build your reputation and efficacious feedback, you know, really different than a razor, right? This is like, you've altered my appearance. So now I gotta figure out whether I'm willing to give you the business to take that risk. So I thought it would be slower. I also thought that we had a chance to build something that was a legacy, an iconic brand that changed the industry. Remember, we're using the same box of hair color in our hair color bars that we sell. It is not a different product. It's the same. So we're an omnichannel business where the box of color we think is superior. Um, would I have predicted this curveball now? No. So I, just like every other entrepreneur in growth stage company, because that's what we are, we are more a private equity target, I wouldn't have predicted the IPO market closing. I wouldn't have predicted, ah, some of the instability that consumers are feeling. But my head's down every day, because I want that big outcome.
AI assessment note: “I thought it would take 10 years. I thought that this kind of category”
Partly produced feed
D 2 · C 4 · P 3 · Cm 3 3.00
Q How much did that cost you? You must have given away a lot of free boxes.
A We gave away a lot of free boxes. The good news of our business is it's very high margin, right? So it appeared like a lot of money, but compared to the cost of acquiring a customer, it wasn't a lot of money compared to a Facebook ad, right? So I'll, I'll never forget. Um, one of our engineers early on said, uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna build this thing in the office where a bell would ring. Okay. And the bell would ring every multiple of 58, because our first address was 58 South Park. And the Groupon thing went live on Groupon, and the bell just, there was like three days where the bell was ringing every millisecond.
AI assessment note: “compared to the cost of acquiring a customer, it wasn't a lot of money”
