The Exchanges

Q Three years. So you decide, that's run its course, and I'm gonna do the next thing, and it turns out that you either met or you knew Ben Horowitz, the, one of the partners of Andreessen Horowitz, and he convinced you to become an entrepreneur in residence there. How did that happen? How did you meet?

A Yeah, so when, um, so Ben Horowitz, he was on the board of Foursquare, so they were one of Foursquare's largest investors. Um, I had known Ben, not very intimately, it was just, um, kind of as board member, um, and he knew of the work that I did. Um, so when I told Dennis that I was leaving the company, Dennis reached out to the board, told him that I was leaving, and then Ben reached out to me a day or two later. He said, Tristan, I get it, right? I understand. Um, you should not be an entrepreneur in residence, right? And he gave me his reasons why. And he said, but if you're going to be an entrepreneur in residence, you should do it with us.

AI assessment note: “Ben Horowitz, he was on the board of Foursquare”

Q Um, this is a question from, uh, Vincent Brathwaite. Um, out of the, out of all the books that you've read, one, which one influenced the way you do business and which one influenced your personal life?

A Oh, interesting. Um, it's probably only one business book that really helped me think about how to be a better, just CEO day to day. Um, and it's High Output Management by Andy Grove. He's very good at distilling why you need quantitative And qualitative metrics in the assessment of your people or output, et cetera. I think personally, you know, one of the best books that I read was, um, race against the machine. Um, you know, you have this one percent, 99% issue going on. Uh, and the, the idea is that folks at the top are leveraging technology in ways to make them a hell of a lot more productive, right? While folks in the 99% are not. Um, so how can I actually help to close that gap, uh, to ensure that we're all participating in this new innovation economy? And the reason, you know, one would think that that's, like, um, impactful as a business leader, but it really does change the way I think about everything, right? Um, the types of businesses I want to create and to whom. Um, the respect of diversity around the world, right? And its impact on, um, consumerism among other things. Uh, it has fundamentally changed the way my kind of world view is now, right? It's, it's, um, and it has impacted other things that I read, right? Um, and I'm more choiceful and purposeful in the things that I do, recognizing, um, this very important issue, which I think is one of the most important…

AI assessment note: “it's High Output Management by Andy Grove... personally, one of the best books was Race against the machine”

Q So you end up going to work for Foursquare after you, after you graduated from?

A Nope. Um, it was actually, it was in between my first and second year of business school, so I worked full time at Foursquare during my second year of business school. And Foursquare gave me a gift. You know, because I was so early there, I felt as, it was as much as my company as everybody. It's like it was a family there. We were doing something completely different. You know, we had folks like Facebook trying to come after us, and that felt, that was energy. I loved it, and I felt like my work wasn't done. Um, so, you know, Dennis was kind enough to let me work on the West Coast, to allow me to get a platform for people to know who I was, Um, after I graduated, he didn't ask me to come to New York. He was like, yeah, you can stay out west. The company was growing.

AI assessment note: “Nope. Um, it was actually, it was in between my first and second year”

Q Um, what, what do you remember about, like, your neighborhood growing up as a kid? Was it, I mean, I don't know, what'd you do? Did you?

A You know, it's funny, I, I didn't do much because I couldn't do much. Like, my father was killed when I was three years old. I don't remember too much about him other than the fact that he was killed when I was three years old, um, which is a little bit telling to kind of the type of environment that I did grow up in. Um, so, you know, I lived probably the first six, seven years of my life, uh, in Jamaica, Queens, New York, 40 Projects, Um, and by the time I turned around seven years old, we moved to Flushing Queens to another project, uh, kind of development, and it was much of the same, right? Uh, and my mother was like, you're gonna be the one. You're not gonna go through this stuff. Um, so it's very disciplined. Stay home. Get your studies done. You're not going outside. When I snuck outside, she caught me. I got in a lot of trouble. But, um, you know, that was really kind of my life, right? Um, get to school. Get home. Do your work. Repeat.

AI assessment note: “lived probably the first six, seven years of my life, uh, in Jamaica, Queens”

Q philosophical question for all of you. It's sort of a broad question, which is, how important is it for the idea to be Completely new, totally innovative, or, or can it just be a slight, a slightly elegant tweak as, as, as I was describing earlier? I mean, if somebody's coming up with something, does it have to be something totally, completely new? Does that even, is that even possible?

A I don't think it's a requirement of try building to have newness. Try building just requires soul. It requires values alignment. I mean, our innovation existed a hundred years ago. I don't think newness matters. Um, in fact, it's like that, um, that couple in the Midwest running an HVAC business for their local community that everyone calls on when they need their HVAC fix, right? Like that's tribe building, and you can build something really successfully for that. And I think the thing that matters most is how big do you want it to be? Because not everybody wants it to be that big. And that's a really important nuance that needs to be respected. Um, newness is, is not necessary. Soul is.

AI assessment note: “I don't think it's a requirement of try building to have newness.”

Q Right, so, so at this point, before you even have a prototype, right, what was your sort of value proposition? Because there were products on the market for razor bumps, and you could get shaving cream that was designed to ameliorate that. Issue. Um, but what was the problem with those products in your view?

A Here's my pitch. I would walk people through this story. I always have to go to a retail store. At that retail store, you have aisle 15. Aisle 15, if you look up, it says ethnic beauty aisle. The ethnic beauty aisle is always next to aisle 14, which is beauty aisle, which never made any sense to me. I have to walk down that aisle in the ethnic beauty aisle, which is never really an aisle because it's a shelf. Um, and then there are products in packages that are dirty, um, with kind of old folks in it from the seventies with, like, jerry curls on it. Um, and, and, and this packaging has not changed. We laugh. So, so here's what's, what's really, really interesting. This is exactly what I tell people. I walk them through this whole story and the VCs laugh. And the first slide that I show them are photos of the packaging. They all shut up. Right? Because it hasn't changed. I don't Photoshop those things. Now, what's the pitch? Folks of color spend more money in every single health and beauty category than anyone else. Um, folks of color, or especially when you consider black folks, yeah, I'm one of them, uh, the most culturally influential demographic group on the planet. When we think about folks of color, not only we'll be the majority of this country in 2030 years, we are the majority of the world. Right? Um, so, if you're a VC, right, why wouldn't you invest in that? And it wa…

AI assessment note: “and then there are products in packages that are dirty, um, with kind of old folks”

Q And were the first few months there hard for you?

A Um, academically, yes. We get to the school, and I realize I don't even have a computer. Um, and, you know, all of my other classmates had computers, that sort of thing, and, you know, I went to, I believe it was the English professor who was my advisor at the time, and I remember he took me to, like, this basement where all the used textbooks are, and then there was this old compound Hack, like, Presario computer, um, that we had to, like, haul out and take it to my room. Um, so academically it was very tough because I wasn't equipped, uh, with the tools to compete, but over the years that kind of accelerated in one way.

AI assessment note: “academically, yes. We get to the school, and I realize I don't even have”

Q were selling. You had websites. You had, um, find a barber. You, you had barbers do videos. You had videos of men using the razors and testimony of how these really beautiful videos, um, and kind of men talking about how, you know, this is the thing that I have been waiting for. Yeah. I mean, was the idea also to kind of build a self-care sort of Lifestyle brand?

A Yeah, yeah. Um, six months before we started and started shipping, we actually launched what was called at the time Bevel Code. Bevel Code is this kind of online digital magazine talking about styling, grooming for men of color. Think about this for a second. You know, I'm, I'm 35 years old right now. I still to this day do not know where to go, with the exception of Bevel Code, as a black man, to know what moisturizer to use for my face. GQ, Esquire, all that stuff. It does not exist. Um, and we're serving kind of this consumer by telling these stories, not only what moisturizer to use for your space, um, but what it's like to feel like when you wake up with razor bumps in your face and you got an interview that morning, right? Like, these are stories that need to be told, need to be scaled, and people should hear it because it's real.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, yeah. Um, six months before we started and started shipping, we actually launched”

Q Yeah. So much of what your like brand is about is human connection, like people touching their faces and people kind of showing people how to use your products. And I mean, does some of that change? Does, does that human touch and human connection change?

A I hope not. I'm still gonna be going to my barber, right? Getting my haircut, because I sure as hell need it. Um, but, you know, I think those norms are thought of on both sides, right? Um, you know, there's a principal and client relationship, right? Um, that my barber has with me. As I have a principal and client relationship with our consumers, we need to be thoughtful about how we package things, right? Um, you know, she might need, my barber might need to be thoughtful about the sanitizing stuff, right? All that jazz, right? But we just need to think about the secondary, tertiary impacts of, um, you know, how we interact with our clients, which is good for everybody anyway. So, you know, I'm hopeful that it does change for the better, but it sure as hell will change.

AI assessment note: “I'm hopeful that it does change for the better, but it sure as hell will change.”

Q So at some point you come up with this idea for a razor to just describe, first of all, before you tell me how you pitched it, how did the idea come to you?

A This is the first idea that came to me actually. And it was the culmination of 15 years of experience. I, when I went to boarding school for high school, you know, it was in Lakeville, Connecticut, right? There's no retailer nearby. If you went, um, you know, if I had to shave, you know, you'd get the peach fuzz on your face, right? It's like, oh, it's the rite of passage time. Um, and I'll never forget, I went to, I believe there's like a CVS type store, um, uh, in the area. And you pick up your multi-blade razor with the shave gel, because, you know, I didn't have a father at home to teach me how to shave, my brother didn't shave, that sort of thing. Um, took it home to the dorm, shaved, woke up the following morning, my face completely broken out in razor bumps. I was like, what is this? I'm never shaving ever. That was the last time I had shaved until I started Bevel. Um, so, uh, what did I use? Um, I used for 15 years this thing for folks who are not familiar with it called a depilatory cream.

AI assessment note: “it was the culmination of 15 years of experience”

Q Because they just didn't believe in, in the potential?

A It was a multitude of things. I think, um, you know, you start to get into a weird vicious cycle when you're raising money, um, You know, if there's one investor who's unwilling to kind of give you the money, other investors aren't willing to do it. And if you're not raising the money, you can't kind of spend as much on innovation and marketing anymore, which makes it harder to raise money. Like, you get into this, like, really weird cycle. As a result of that, also in 2018, we had to lose some really wonderful folks, right, in the layoff. Like, because we couldn't, the company needed to thrive. And this is all happening as, like, revenues are still kind of, like, growing. It's like this weird, Thing. Anyway, at the beginning of the year, we started to get a ton of interest from all the CPGs.

AI assessment note: “It was a multitude of things. I think, um, you know, you start to get”

Q Like, how are you continuing with production and deliveries? Procter & Gamble is the mothership now, which in a lot of ways has built resiliency, right? If you were a startup on your own, you might be in big trouble right now. Having Procter & Gamble behind you actually gives you some stability and security. So how are you dealing with Producing the product and getting it out to customers.

A Yeah. So, I mean, this idea of stability, security. Rock Don't Gamble has been around for a 180 years. They've seen this sort of thing, right? They started as a smaller company and became something that was not small. Um, so the ability to learn around what resilience really means for a company that's been around for so long is an inspiring one to me. So I wanted to kind of make that, make that clear. Um, as far as production, um, we are subject to the same issues that most others are. Um, you know, we have one product right now that's on delay until June. It is one of our kind of top products, right? Um, it's actually our T-blade, uh, that connects with our trimmer. And we're finding ways to kind of get it to our consumers more quickly. But again, this goes back to being transparent with your consumers about what's going on. And fortunately we're in a position where everybody can understand.

AI assessment note: “we have one product right now that's on delay until June”

Q How are you able to reassure people who are nervous about, I don't know, their job prospects or their economic situation? Like, are you guys able to retain everybody and avoid layoffs for now?

A Oh yeah, we have. Um, you know, we're fortunate in our partnership with Procter & Gamble. We're very, very fortunate, but also recognize that not everyone has that luxury. Even though it feels unprecedented, it's not unprecedented. Uh, we've been through all types of recessions. Um, You know, it's a lesson for all of us, uh, to learn how we can prepare for situations like this, whether it be kind of cash preservation, um, you know, ensuring that you have a kind of tight, loyal, excited, hopeful, mission-oriented team. Um, and the rest is, you know, you just got to do the work, right, and follow a strategy that matters. Um, you know, the thing that I can say at least is be hopeful and know that, you know, this is temporary. It might last a little bit longer than expected. Um, but it is temporary and there is light at the end, I believe.

AI assessment note: “Oh yeah, we have. Um, you know, we're fortunate in our partnership with Procter & Gamble.”

Q we're all balancing different, you know, different situations. You've got kids at home and you've got to look after them and run a business and stay productive. I have to say that I have been a lot more productive lately. Every moment of the day is work and being with my family. It's, it's kind of intertwined, but like for you, how are you able to kind of stay productive?

A Yeah, I remember when I was in high school, um, there was this exercise that was given to us, um, and, you know, the exercise was very simple. It had a sheet, it had every hour of the day from midnight to midnight, and then you just block out what you're doing during those times, right? So eight hours of that time is sleep, let's say four hours, five hours of that time was class, um, then another, let's say three hours of that time was studying, right? There's still leftover something like 6:07 hours of the day that can actually be used productively. Uh, and you realize how much time is wasted, uh, doing things that you don't necessarily need to do. You know, throughout this time, you know, I have my sons at home. I have to, you know, do their continuous learning, that sort of thing. But also I had to realize for myself, I am not a trained pre-K teacher. I do what I can and we make best efforts, my wife and I, um, to do as well as we can. Um, but during the times, those 6:07 hours of free time that you don't really recognize, you know, it's taking care of yourself, right? Forget about productivity and work because that's already accounted for in those hours that we hadn't talked about. Take time for yourself. What is the hobby? I read a lot and I make time for myself, right? Um, you know, when I mentioned a little earlier how we, you know, you have to model the way and block ou…

AI assessment note: “block out what you're doing during those times, right?”

Q Here's a question from Michael Peterson. Um, what advice would you give to somebody starting out in this current climate?

A Yeah. Um, you know, I think we talked a little bit about this during, uh, the, how I built this episode live. Um, it's know your why. Right. This is really an important time, uh, to not start a business, just to start a business. And, you know, one theme during our conversation guy was really feeling like you're uniquely positioned to do the thing that you're doing. And, you know, it's not necessarily the financial potential benefit of doing that. It's, um, the, the happiness and the joy that you find in times of, um, great success and potential failure, right? You persist. And it's really critical, um, that you actually know your why is why you're doing it, right? And it sounds so simple. It sounds almost aloof. Um, but I can't tell you how many times folks don't really understand the answer to that question. And when you kind of answer it for yourself, ask yourself it again. Answer it again and ask it again, right? Um, and yeah, everything will fall into place if you feel that you're uniquely positioned to do the thing that you're doing, right? This stuff will pass, uh, and you will have acquired a bunch of learnings to be more successful on the other side.

AI assessment note: “it's know your why. Right. This is really an important time”

Q Yeah. Tristan, this is a question from, um, Chris Beers. How do you think this pandemic is going to change your business?

A Yeah, I think it's, um, I try and take a kind of more Global worldview, right? Um, I'm a part of Procter and Gamble, right? In 70, eighty billion dollar revenue company that serves five billion people around the planet, right? Um, but let me go back to, you know, this idea of humanness. The way we interact with each other, right? After this, are we going to keep shaking each other's hands? Um, you think about the comfort of working from home, you know, this idea of four day work week, five day work week. Now you can't work from home. You can't be more productive. Some people actually might like it, you know, um, you know, what does this mean for, you know, um, our appreciation of each other, right? I am craving for human interaction right now. I really, really am. Right. Um, but it, it, it makes you realize the things you took for granted before. Um, and we're all gonna have to actually expect everything to change.

AI assessment note: “let me go back to, you know, this idea of humanness.”