The Exchanges

Q It also strikes me, um, in this moment in, in the summer of 2025 that, um, like every company, artificial intelligence has a lot of, of promise for you all. Um, where have you all started implementing it where you're seeing results and what's one place that you're especially excited about, uh, the potential for AI with your, with your business?

A So, um, about a year ago, um, we met one of the largest venture capital firms in the country, um, A-sixteen Z, and we started, uh, saying to them that we want to open our business up and be a canvas for your portfolio companies. Um, you've got some amazing portfolio companies. Let's meet the founders and let's start, uh, piloting. Um, You know, ideas and to date with them and others, we've piloted about 80 companies have come in and done pilot examples, um, like real life pilot examples of their technology. To date, we've taken about nine of those forward. So there, a lot of the technology is very early stage. It's just not, you know, in concept, it's great. In application, it's just not well developed enough. But quite frankly, I think nine out of 80 is, is a pretty good number. And where am I most excited about? Today, I'm most excited about it in customer service. I think that today, um, you know, Shark Ninja sells about a 160 different products. Uh, our phones are answered by customer service agents that have to scroll through, uh, you know, pages and pages of information. Uh, I think the ability for us to be able to deliver that to the consumer, that troubleshooting through AI, The possibility is extraordinary. I think it's a enormous win for the consumer.

AI assessment note: “where am I most excited about? Today, I'm most excited about it in customer service.”

Q it's a good product. It's gonna last a long time. You have one blender. You don't need another blender. You splurge on an ice cream maker. Why would you buy another one? And, and, and I imagine you'd have concerns about investing in a company that's creating products that don't have a high repeat purchase to them. Um, was that a concern early on? How did you think about that?

A Okay, so, so, so I'll give you two answers to that question that were like fundamental going back, you know, 1516 years ago. The first is, I think Mark and I recognized early on that you cannot have long-term sustainable success as a single product company. Period. I mean, you're either gonna be disintermediated or you're not relevant to a consumer on an everyday, ongoing basis. You buy a product and you come back four years later when you need another product, which is why today Shark Ninja's in 37 categories. I mean, we wanna sell you two products a year. I think the second answer to your CPG question is this. Our job is to put our products into retirement before their usable life. Our vacuum cleaners last a long time, ok? Our blenders last a long time. But we develop 25 new ground-up products a year, every year. I'm not talking about just repainting something or new knobs, I'm talking about a brand new ground-up product. So our job is, at year two, you as the consumer say, wow, Sharker Ninja's come out with this new product, it's solving this next thing that's my problem. I gotta go put this product into retirement. Maybe I go give it to somebody else. Maybe I go retire it somewhere. It's no different than Apple's business. I mean, first of all, if I think about the iPhone, if I'm a consumer that owns an iPhone, I don't need an iPhone, but there's some. You know, element, yo…

AI assessment note: “Our job is to put our products into retirement before their usable life.”

Q So the world of marketing has changed a lot in the last 17 years since, since you came into the company. What's changed about how you've approached the market given that you just got fewer people watching TV and the economics have changed?

A Well, well, let's start with Every aspect of what we do in the company is centered around, you know, what's right for the consumer. So as an example, we sell through every retail chain in every market that we're in. Why? Because we want to be relevant wherever the consumer chooses to shop for our products. Um, if it's brick and mortar, great. If it's online, great. If it's direct to consumer, great. On the advertising side, it's the same way. We want to be relevant wherever the consumer ingests content. And so if I go back, you know, yes, it was infomercials for a period of time, then we needed to get more reach, and we did have to do 30, 32nd commercials and 15 second commercials. Um, if I go back to 2016, it was Facebook groups. I mean, there were sometimes 30, 40,000 people on a group that would be sharing recipes or things like that about our products. And then it ultimately evolved right before COVID into social media. And now when you say social media, it's not one size fits all. I mean, it's meta, it's TikTok, it's Reddit, you know, it's incredible how many searches are starting on Reddit right now. It's Pinterest, it's YouTube, uh, long and shorts. So, you know, it, it continues to move where the consumer is moving to. And I think that that's emblematic of Shark Ninja. Like we constantly reinvent ourselves. I mean, we were, Europro, the shark steam mop company, and toda…

AI assessment note: “We want to be relevant wherever the consumer ingests content.”

Q So in the United States, even though we've made incredible progress doing part to the work at St. Jude, it's important to note that, that we used to have roughly 80% child mortality for cancer, right? And now it's down to about 20% in, in significant part due to the work that you all have done.

A That is correct. So, 20 to 80 in, in 60 plus years, right? Take the acute lymphoblastic leukemia where the cure was found at St. Jude. When St. Jude opened, it was a four percent cure rate. So think about that. 96 out of a hundred kids who were diagnosed would pass away. So bad that kids were told, parents were told, celebrate half birthdays because your child wasn't going to make it to the next birthday. Ok, it's 94% today. And that initial cure, over 50%, was found at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. So that, that's some of the impact. But what I also then think about is, 20% isn't good enough. So four out of five survive, ok? But if you're the mother or the father of the one, the one really matters, ok? So we've got to do better, and there are certain cancers, um, that, that don't have cure rates, right? There are certain cancers like certain brain tumors that it's just, they're death sentences, ok? So we have to, we have to solve those problems. But then let's broaden the aperture, and let's talk about the globe. So four and five kids around the globe in low and low-middle income countries will pass away from cancer. Four and five kids, so the survival rate is 20%. Well, St. Jude has a plan in this decade to try to raise survival rates from 20% to 60%. So there's about 400,000 kids around the globe that will be diagnosed with cancer, ok? And, and so 20% will only surv…

AI assessment note: “That is correct. So, 20 to 80 in, in 60 plus years, right?”

Q So what are some of the biggest challenges, um, that the company has faced in scaling? You know, has it been licensing, marketing, manufacturing?

A For me, the most cutting and, um, scary one was piracy, uh, and, and that was in 2017. So, and we, we had, Mayfair Games was a great steward. They brought up the game here, um, that brought it through the ranks, as you said, like they were in colleges, um, They were, their marketing was basically from going from event to event, Gen Con, and, and other game, um, events, and, and just demoing one game at a time. And that strategy went really well. And then in 2017, something strange happened on Amazon, seeing the ratings for Catan plummet, where we usually were sort of miffed if we got a four star rating. It was like, oh, what did we do wrong? We really have the aspiration to have five star ratings because we really want to. Offer a premium game to, to players, and what's with these one stars, and it turned out that, uh, piracy was the culprit, and there were massive, uh, it was a wave of piracy, uh, originating mostly from, from China, and then just coming container loads, and then at some point, every fourth or fifth game, uh, was actually a, um, uh, pirated, uh, copy from, from China, and so, uh, that was, uh, And so it took us two years to sort it out, and it was, it was really, um, yeah, that, that was for me personally the, the, the sort of biggest scare and something that set us back for a little bit. We've, we've recovered from it, and it's, it's sort of an, an forever pr…

AI assessment note: “For me, the most cutting and, um, scary one was piracy”

Q So you, you, you came back to the States from your travels. At what point did you say, we're really gonna do this? I'm gonna, I'm gonna launch an ice cream truck.

A Well, I came back to the States from my travels. I went to college. I finished college. Um, I really looked up to my sister. After college, she worked at Goldman Sachs. Then she worked at Neuberger Berman. Then she started her own private wealth management firm, and I looked up to Jenny because she was really responsible, and she made a good living, and I said, I want to do that, and I didn't really think it through because I didn't have great grades, I had done no internships, um, so I said, Jenny, can you help me get a job like one of the ones you had, and she's like, no, you know, she's like, I can try, but it doesn't work that way, and after meeting her one day in the city, I saw Mr. Softy Truck, And in that moment, um, I always say I didn't have an idea in that moment. I made a decision in that moment. So, so that's where the decision piece comes in. For some reason, I didn't say, oh, I have an idea to start an ice cream company. I said, oh, that's what I'm going to do. It was so clear and I was so excited. I saw this Mr. Softy truck and by the way, I don't think this was a great idea, but I said, I'm going to get an ice cream truck and I'm going to learn how to make ice cream. And I'm gonna find the best ingredients I can, and I'm gonna sell that ice cream off this truck.

AI assessment note: “after meeting her one day in the city, I saw Mr. Softy Truck”

Q mean, especially ice cream. It's like, it's heavy to ship. You, you, I mean, you're, you're, you gotta keep it frozen. You can't, you can't not do that. Um, talk us through how you all evolved. Where, where, where did you make a leap either on the brick and mortar side or on the wholesale side? Where you were starting to see that this could be a much bigger business.

A It never feels like we took a leap, actually. I mean, it feels like we're taking a leap this year, going from 70 to a 105 stores in, you know, a single year. Until this year, it was kind of slow and steady. Wholesale, we did not plan on going into, but our first day in business in New York City, somebody from Whole Foods approached the truck and asked us if we did wholesale. And what we did early on, and we still do it to this extent, is You know, we say yes to everything. You know, now it's we say yes to every meeting that might sound interesting. You never know what's going to come of it.

AI assessment note: “It never feels like we took a leap, actually.”

Q I mean, it sounds a lot like a timeshare, but, but what's, what's different about Picasso from timeshare?

A Well, the biggest difference is that with Picasso, you actually own an asset, whereas with a timeshare, you're effectively prepaying for the right to use time in a hotel. So it's kind of like comparing an asset to a liability. The better analog for Picasso would be buying a home with friends. If the three of us wanted to own a home in, you know, Mexico or wherever our dream destination is, the way that we would go about doing that Is we'd form an LLC, the LLC would take ownership of the property, and then we would divvy up the, the calendar and divvy up responsibilities. Picasso's ownership structure is exactly the same, except for you don't have to know the other people, and Picasso manages all the details. We've now been around for four and a half years. We've sold, you know, well over a billion dollars of these Picasso units. We have thousands of owners and operate in, uh, about 40 destinations around the world. What usually happens is about half of the home is spoken for by the time we close. We then take temporary ownership of the other half of the home, and we have great financing partners that enable us to finance that. And then we sell through the remaining interest over a period of about 90 days thereafter. And once the home is fully subscribed by its owners, Picasso retains no ownership in the real estate. So you, as a Picasso owner, get all the upside in the capital …

AI assessment note: “with Picasso, you actually own an asset, whereas with a timeshare, you're effectively prepaying”

Q of what's most helpful right now. Right? Some version of that, like, are you looking for advice? Are you looking for support? Are you looking for me to, right? I mean, there's a, there's a bit of a, um, a process in figuring out what, what's really needed in that moment, right? And, and having been an operator, I imagine that informs how you approach some of this as well.

A It's so true. I, I encourage a lot of CEOs to join a board so they can learn exactly what you just described. When I joined the HP board, I was the COO of TaskRabbit, And the one thing that I learned from that board, the first thing that I learned was, it's not about the advice that you give, it's about the questions that you ask. The best board members in that room ask the best questions. So when I became the CEO, I now had a board that I had to teach how to ask questions. And it was less value for them to me to come in and tell me all the things I should do. I, I'm here every day. I'm running this company every day. You come every three months for the board meeting. Anything you say is probably not going to be as valuable, but what is going to be valuable is the questions that you ask, and so being a good board member for me is about just that. How do you help the CEO and the founder think differently based on the questions that you ask, and ask them, how can How can I support you?

AI assessment note: “it's not about the advice that you give, it's about the questions”

Q The Silent Retreat, um, when, was that something that came to you? Did someone advise you to do that? And while you were there, was there a moment, was there a moment of epiphany of, like, clouds parting, angels singing? What, what, what, what, what was it like?

A My, my coach, I was working with a coach named Joe Hudson at the time, and Joe does silent retreats every year. And so he said, you know, Stacy, you should really do a retreat. And I was like, I don't need a retreat. I got two kids, got a husband. We've been in COVID. I've been sequestered. I'm good. But what was really going on is I think I was afraid of what might happen. Like, could I be alone by myself? And what would happen to the rest of the world? Around me, my immediate world, my family, my kids, my mom, my grandmother, if I was not available for six days. And so I said, all right, I'm going to try this thing. I'm going to do this six days. I'm going to try it. I remember driving to Half Moon Bay and stopping at the Safeway, buying all my food that I needed for those days, preparing to cook. And I asked my pastor, I'm a Christian by faith. I asked my pastor, I said, hey, I'm going to do this retreat. And I said, I'm worried that I'm going to be bored. And I'm not supposed to like engage in social media or anything in the news. So he's like, all right, I'm going to give you some Bible scriptures to read. Like, tell me some things you're going to be praying about. So I give him a list. He fills up this Google doc. So I go in and I'm armed with all my reading and my food. And you know what happened for the first two days? I just slept. My body was tired.

AI assessment note: “I was working with a coach named Joe Hudson at the time”

Q Can you tell us about any of those?

A Um, well, Cheryl at the time, Cheryl Sandberg, who you know is a good friend of mine and mentor, was throwing a lot of opportunities my way, and those are hard to pass on. Less on what they actually were, and more because I loved working with her when I was at Google, and I would have loved the opportunity to work with her again. So that was one of them. The other was, a lot of people sell their company, this is very Silicon Valley, And then go become a VC. And so those opportunities came up to become, take on a real role at a venture capital firm. I did end up co-founding the SoftBank Opportunity Fund during that time, and, but I served on the investment committee. I wasn't an employee of SoftBank, and I said, I'll be on the investment committee, but I'm not going to be an employee, because I said, I'm going to say no pretty much to everything. So that one was a hard one. I didn't really keep my no, but I, Didn't fully go in because I wanted to give myself the space to figure out what I wanted to do and also get involved in something that I thought was important.

AI assessment note: “Cheryl Sandberg... was throwing a lot of opportunities my way”

Q How do you become CEO of Dude Perfect? How does that, how does that happen?

A Uh, you know, so probably started about 10 years ago. I was the head of strategy for the NBA. And one of the areas that I saw there was immense growth and immense opportunity was in the content around the game. Um, and so I took over as our head of content, uh, about five years ago and oversaw all of our social media, our app, uh, and streaming service programming and our documentaries, films business. And it really gave me insight into how The next generation in particular is consuming content and sports content specifically. Uh, and subsequently, you know, we saw, I also saw that, um, Dude Perfect raised, uh, uh, quite a bit of money and it piqued my interest. And, you know, I'd actually met the guys at a YouTube brand cast. Uh, we both.

AI assessment note: “saw that Dude Perfect raised quite a bit of money and it piqued my interest”

Q Was there a point where you went down there and had sort of the, the come to Jesus conversation that let's, let's ask the hard questions?

A Yeah, I went down. It was, uh, early in August. Uh, if you know anything about Frisco, Texas, it was a 108 and a hundred percent humidity. Uh, so I wanted to make the conditions as difficult as possible to ensure we were aligned. Um, but I really, I sat down with them for Uh, one, I went to a shoot day with them, because it's easy to say you're gonna behave a certain way, or you treat your staff a certain way. I, having been around this business for a long time, it's very different. People, uh, especially on a 108 degree days, we're shooting outside, uh, behave very differently when the lights are on. Um, and I wanted to see how they, do they talk their talk, or do they walk their talk when Dealing with their production staff when coming up with creative ideas. Um, so I spent three or four hours just observing, hanging out, watching how they, uh, shoot content, how they tweak ideas when something goes wrong, how they adjust on the fly, how they get other staff members involved, um, and came away just floored at how, um, innovative their approach is in the sense that, you know, They take the best of the creator world, but it's really professionalized and that we have a production, a full on production team and a dedicated art team and, ah, really full scale support. Um, and so it's not the five of them and one person with a phone. This is like real production and they treat it i…

AI assessment note: “afterwards sat down with them over a meal and I asked really hard questions.”

Q who, who are, are scaling companies, are scaled companies, and we're, we're helping our audience, um, Uh, extract those lessons and insights so that they can do the same. Um, I, I just want to scale the challenge for, for our audience here. Is it just a dollars question? If we had enough money, we could do this, or are there other challenges here that we need to solve for?

A So absolutely. If we had enough money, we could do it, but it's a lot of money. It's like twenty five billion dollars a year, which I mean is a lot of money and not a lot of money, right? Like it's like, uh, It's, it's a lot of money in global health. It's not a lot of money necessarily in Silicon Valley sometimes, but it, it would take twenty-five billion dollars a year according to the UN to really eradicate tuberculosis globally. The crisis is really everywhere. I mean, we have 10,000 cases of active TB in the United States every year, so there's no place that's immune to TB, but the, the epicenter of the crisis is India. Almost a third of the people who die of tuberculosis this year will die in India. Um, there's also epicenters in Nigeria, In the Philippines and Indonesia. And so those are the, those are sort of, those are the biggest countries where there's really critical need. The highest rates we see of tuberculosis are in Lesotho, which is a small country in southern Africa where a lot of people work in mining. We know that any exposure to air pollutants makes tuberculosis worse. Also in countries like in West Africa, like Sierra Leone, have, they have very high rates of tuberculosis because they have very high rates of impoverishment. We know that when we cut the rates of impoverishment, even without medical intervention, we cut the rates of TB. It's a resource probl…

AI assessment note: “If we had enough money, we could do it, but it's a lot of money.”

Q John, can we just go, go, uh, Just a little bit deeper on, um, Johnson & Johnson in India. Can you, can you explain, um, what, what happened with the patent there and, and what it means for, for people with TB there?

A Sure. So, Johnson & Johnson had a patent on Badakowin, this great TB drug by, When their patent expired, they filed secondary patents globally, including in India, to extend the life of that patent, which is a very common thing that pharmaceutical companies do. Some activists from India and South Africa came together to file a lawsuit in India to say, actually, this doesn't involve meaningful innovation, and they shouldn't be allowed to file a secondary patent. And they succeeded. And so Johnson & Johnson wasn't able to File a secondary patent in India, which meant that generic competition for bodacolin could emerge in India. The problem was much of the rest of the world, they had succeeded in filing secondary patents, and so, uh, the fight had to continue to make sure that everybody could access bodacolin, but eventually J&J abandoned all of their secondary patents on bodacolin, and today the price of it has dropped by over 55%. What I would do Is I would go to my stakeholders, including my biggest shareholders, and I would say, look, we're going to do something slightly out of the box when it comes to disease in really poor countries. And what we're going to do is when we accept public funding for a drug like binaculine, We are going to charge whatever the heck we please in the United States and Germany and France, and then we're going to, we're going to provide it at cost in…

AI assessment note: “generic competition for bodacolin could emerge in India... price of it has dropped by over 55%”

Q For a reported six hundred and thirty million dollars. Um, uh, why did you sell to Church and Dwight?

A Ok, so, it's always kind of, um, you're talking to all sorts of people, trying to find the best fit, and it's like, all the puzzle pieces have to come together. And so, Trish & Dwight was the buyer where everything came together. Um, I think we were happy with the valuation, we were really happy with, um, their culture and their team. I mean, this is a company where people stay, like, decades. Their capabilities also were important to us because We knew this brand had the potential to be a global brand, but we didn't have the, um, capability to take it to different markets, but they did, and they do. So now, you know, in two years, they've taken us to 50 countries. Um, so all of that sort of, yeah, just came together.

AI assessment note: “happy with the valuation, we were really happy with, um, their culture”

Q I mean, I'm, I'm curious as you were looking at the marketplace and well, obviously there's LinkedIn and obviously there's zip recruiter and other, you know, platforms that do this. This is, this is what they do. They've done this for a long time. Um, what did you see that you could do 10 X better than the existing platforms for job applicants for recruiting, et cetera, in healthcare specifically?

A Yeah, so the first was the vertical focus on just healthcare, right? Um, one of the complaints our customers, our customers have, like the health systems have, is that, um, these horizontal marketplaces, uh, like LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter and so on, are not necessarily customized for healthcare. The reason that matters is there's, healthcare is a regulated industry. Um, you have to, you know, the healthcare workers have licenses and certifications and, and so on, all that, all of that matters. So that was one piece. The second piece was just the, the employers applying to the talent study the other way around. So it was a completely different experience. And you can, as you can imagine, for healthcare workers, they absolutely love it, right? They create a profile, they sit back and relax, they get interview requests, they get to decide which interviews they accept or decline. And it, you know, we're often described by healthcare workers as the, this was the best job search experience of my entire career. We have thousands of five-star reviews across Google and Facebook and the App Store with them describing about what an amazing experience and what a delightful experience it's been. Um, the other insight that we had was just around the automation of, of, of screening and of matching. And that's really what brings an enormous benefit to the employers in particular, as well as to…

AI assessment note: “so the first was the vertical focus on just healthcare”

Q Well, look forward to reading about your acquisition of stepful soon. Um, a few, um, sort of quick lightning round questions, um, for you, uh, when you are stuck, when you are not sure what to do, um, and you've probably talked it through with, with your co-founder Rome, because it sounds like that's, that's your, your first and last, who do you call?

A Um, so I have a whole leadership team, which is awesome. And I, it's a, it's like a luxury, uh, to have an amazing, you know, CFO and, and, and chief revenue officer and, and HR leader and so on. So, and so I have, I have a very strong leadership team that I work with. Um, I also externally, I have, um, advisors and board members. Now, Jeff Jordan and James Joaquin are still two of my key, you know, key advisors, uh, and they're both on our board as well. Um, Um, and then, uh, I also work with, uh, um, the base 10 team as well. They let our series be, they've been phenomenal to work with too. And then finally, just more personally, I have, I have an executive coach, you know, and that's, that's been really helpful too.

AI assessment note: “Jeff Jordan and James Joaquin are still two of my key, you know, key advisors”

Q So I'm guessing if you'd called one of your Harvard Business School professors and said, we're going to move to a B to B model, they would have warned you. That selling in through the HR function is one of the most difficult things to do, and this is going to be an uphill battle. Did you, did you have an instinct that that, that that might be the case?

A I think every single B to B channel you open or, or client you want to serve the, it is indeed an uphill battle. And like, it takes months to sign every single deal. And like, there are a number of people you need to sell into. And like, it's not only HR, it's finance. It's the purchasing area, uh, vendor management, infosec, and you know, I, I guess it's when, you know, when not knowing helps. Um, we just had one case of success, and it was so magical to see. We wanted to see more of those cases, and, you know, we just went for it. Like, there were, there was no other option, I believe, as well. So, you know, it was the only path, and it was working, you know. It took some time, a few months, to get the next client to sign. And to perfect our, our, our strategy. What we found was that it would be very hard to get a company that was very distant from PwC to sign, right? Um, but you know, if you hire people from PwC, if you are competing with them head to head, and if all the other employees of your company are seeing that that's a great benefit, you know, like, That would naturally make the next best client for us to sign. And that became a little bit of our commercial strategy. We went from PwC to the, all, all the other players that compete on the same space and got them as clients as well. So UI came next, uh, KPMG and Deloitte came next.

AI assessment note: “I, I guess it's when, you know, when not knowing helps.”

Q What, what you were obviously catching a wave, which is easier than creating a wave, but you were I mean, this is a massive play. How did you get to that scale that quickly?

A Well, I will say that one of the things that we did very well at Zoom was to understand that there were multiple technologies that we could build that would be reinforcing of each other, but across different commercial, um, verticals. So we had an opportunity around a pizza business that we thought could scale to Domino's Pizza Hut proportions. We had a technology around packaging. Using robots to create compostable packaging. That's a massive industry. We had a technology around logistics, kitchen management systems, kitchen display systems in real time inventory management, which is a big problem to solve in any delivery company. That was a massive business. And so these were all the technologies that we built, um, in parallel. That reinforced each other, but that had huge addressable markets, any one of them. And so I think investors thought there's seven bets on the table. Even if one of these bets is true, it's gonna be a massive business, but we like the odds of, of more than one being true.

AI assessment note: “these were all the technologies that we built, um, in parallel.”

Q Yeah. Um, 20 to 705 years is a lot of growth. Um, Was there a point at which you were hiring dozens of people a month? Like, was there a point where you were just in that hyper growth phase? When was that and what was that like?

A Um, it was a bit in the second half of 20, 21. Um, and it was chaotic. Uh, and I think, yeah, you would see these companies, what do we do? 50 to one 50 that year probably, so tripled. Um, And you'd have these onboarding classes of, you know, at the time, like, 15 people, 20 people, and they felt so huge. And I think it was this moment of, like, we're gonna try really hard to onboard these folks and teach them what Vanta is and does, and it's not gonna go as well as we want it to, and we'll try to pick up the pieces. Um, but it wasn't, it was like, it was a, you know, like, again, you're on the roller coaster, and it is going, and you're hanging on, and you're trying your hardest, but I think also the sense of, like, ooh, this isn't gonna It's not going to work as well as we want it to.

AI assessment note: “it was a bit in the second half of 20, 21. Um, and it was chaotic.”

Q So what was it like when you got here? I mean, to, to, to, you, you, you, you, you land at LAX and what happens?

A So the rule was that I could not leave with one dollar in my pocket because Every citizen, Romanian citizen that own any dollars will be put in jail. So I asked, can I have at least 10 dollars that just in case my husband will not be there, I could make a phone call. Like, no, we'll put you in jail if you have one dollar. And my fear was that, um, I will walk in, in the airport, Los Angeles airport, and I will not, my husband will not be there. Um, and I will not have a coin to make a phone call. Uh, hope, I mean, uh, thankfully he was there, and, uh, I just remember getting out of the airport in the car, and I saw that bright light and the palm trees.

AI assessment note: “I just remember getting out of the airport in the car, and I saw that bright light”

Q So in, in that, in that 2000 to 2010, 11, 12 range, sort of the, the consumer internet is starting to explode. Um, but you know, you've got, you go from MySpace to Facebook and finally Instagram arrives and, and, and changes how beauty and beauty products are marketed. How did you grow the business in that phase before we got to the explosion of beauty on social media?

A So everything was word of mouth. I used to do PR. I used to, to be on every single show, TV show that I could think about it because every, if you think about it, all the, uh, TV anchor, they were, they wanted their eyebrow beautiful. So they used to come to the salon, uh, producers, uh, and, and everybody. So my, my deal was, okay, I will do your eyebrow, but I want to be on, on the show to, Talk about my products and my, uh, my technique. So, uh, that was very important. Plus when I used to travel Sundays and Mondays around the country, before I will go at Nordstrom's, I will go on TV, the national TV, two or three, um, uh, network in, in that specific area.

AI assessment note: “everything was word of mouth. I used to do PR.”

Q weren't nimble enough. They weren't, um, entrepreneurial opportunistic enough. Um, and a lot of companies that reach scale, right. And have a founder have done things one way for a long time. They just, they, they miss it. And that's where insurgents come and take, Take over. But you, you caught that wave. You took that wave. So what, what happened that let you do that? How did that happen?

A So, um, my daughter started working with me and every Sunday and Monday, Saturday night, we'll take our carry on and we'll fly to different cities to promote the product. I used to shave the eyebrows and she used to teach the client how to, I would recommend the color and the products and she used to Tell them how to use them. So after a while, she said, mom, I work seven days a week. I'm only 18. This is like, is this app? Let's, let's, we should have, uh, our products there. We should talk about them. We should post, we should do videos. And I said, Claudia, I don't like Facebook. I don't care how many, uh, coffees people will go like, no, no, no, this is not Facebook. This is a different type of, uh, Social media. Like, okay, let's give a try. So we posted one video and it was incredible. It was a brow, our brow wiz that is one of our most popular pencil, mechanical pencil. And, um, of course we read every single comment and was one comment that said, oh, I wish I would have that pencil. I could buy that pencil. And I answer, I said, can you please send me your address? I will be, I will love to gift you one. And, um, she said, oh, no, you can't, because I live in a small little town in, or village in India. When I read that, I thought, wow, this is something to pay attention to. I mean, I will never be able to reach a person in a small village in India.

AI assessment note: “she said, mom, I work seven days a week... we should do videos.”

Q So what, what scale did you reach with the baby business, and then what ended up going wrong?

A The first, uh, first year we did over a couple million in revenue, two or three million in revenue. And, uh, over the next, uh, few years, two, three years grew to, uh, maybe twenty million in revenue. So, you know, the, the business scaled, it grew. What we messed up was that we started, then we thought, okay, now we validated this business. Let's go scale it. Let's hit, let's hit the gas. What we missed was there's a, Uh, there's, I think a focus that needs to happen on efficiency before you go hit the gas. You need to make sure the business is actually making money, that it can actually truly scale, which scale means like you're, you're actually accelerating your growth faster than you are your expenses. And in that business, we didn't do that. You know, we, we validated that there was a business and there was a need, but we actually didn't build the efficiency that we needed to be able to be profitable as we scaled. So as rapidly as we scaled, we accelerated Losses, which meant go raise more money, and that's a painful process to be in.

AI assessment note: “over the next, uh, few years, two, three years grew to, uh, maybe twenty million”

Q better, better, um, early investor than, than her. Um, Uh, Davis, I'm curious. I mean, you, you, you note that you got a lot of these questions. The world doesn't need another outdoor brand. You know, why did, did you have a, um, a love for the outdoors? Had you grown up in the outdoors? Was it something that was a personal passion? Was that part of the origin here?

A Absolutely. I love the outdoors. My, my dad is an adventurer and, uh, we, I grew up spending a lot of time in the outdoors, camping, backpacking. Uh, we'd go, uh, you know, these different countries that we lived in. We, we, you know, we made our own raft and floated the Amazon river and fish for piranha. We'd go survive on little uninhabited islands and make our own spears and spearfish and eat coconuts to survive. Like I just, I loved adventure. I love the outdoors. I love travel. And so, uh, so I kind of was able to merge this love for the outdoors and this passion and desire to go do good and, and kind of blend these two things together.

AI assessment note: “Absolutely. I love the outdoors. My, my dad is an adventurer”

Q Yeah. So, so let's talk about CADRE. Um, uh, first, just if you could explain in, in, in simple terms, what, what, what is CADRE?

A Yeah. CADRE is a technology driven real estate investment platform. I started the business to democratize access to real estate and ultimately alternative investments. And, um, you know, it's a platform where people can log in, they can invest in either single real estate properties or in portfolios that our team curates for them. Um, and the idea behind Cadre came to me, um, after spending time sitting at some of the most, um, well-known institutions, Blackstone and Goldman Sachs. Seeing how much money and wealth was being created, but for a relatively small part of our global economy, and going back to again, you know, that, um, that questioning of, you know, why is this the way of the world? Why, why can only the one percent of the one percent benefit from access to alternatives? And so I decided, um, to build a business that would be akin to a Blackstone, but with a tech stack behind it for the masses.

AI assessment note: “CADRE is a technology driven real estate investment platform.”

Q What was that inflection point? Was there a moment where you said, okay, I've got enough confidence. I'm far enough along where I, I can, I can leave finance and go do this.

A After, after my first year at Blackstone, um, in their real estate private equity group, I saw what they were doing, um, at a completely different scale than what I was doing. We were buying thousands of homes, you know, on a weekly basis. I was buying, um, you know, one or two, maybe on a quarterly basis. And so I was like, you know, there's no way I'm going to catch up. To where Blackstone is on, on my own, on a standalone basis. Um, I didn't necessarily have the same level of belief that, um, the, uh, the investing that we were doing was going to accrue to the benefit of the community in the same way that if I were to have invested in a community, I know I care about both doing well and doing good.

AI assessment note: “After, after my first year at Blackstone, um, in their real estate private equity group”

Q And I'm keen to hear about the gen four and, and, and what is, what, how my life is going to change. But before we get there, Tom, for those who, who haven't yet worn an aura ring, haven't tried one, what, what, what is the ring?

A Um, so the aura ring is a very small device. It's very light. It's a couple of grams, kind of a miracle of modern technology. There's a ton Of technology packed in here, um, a very small battery, much, much smaller than the battery on your Apple watch. Um, and what it, what it is, is it, is you wear it on your body on this, this side on your body, which turns out to be a really good place for measuring some core biometrics. If you think about it, you ever been to a hospital and they put a clamp on your finger and that's because they're shining light into your body and then determining your pulse ox, which is your blood oxygenation. They're also determining your pulse and other things. That's why they do it there, because that's where the signal is the strongest. It has a seven-day battery life. It doesn't require a lot to charge. It takes about 20 minutes to get fully charged, and it doesn't beep or bloop or talk to you. It doesn't have a screen. It's not trying to notify you about somebody talking about you on Twitter or LinkedIn. It's just very sort of silently, calmly, passively tracking your body in the background, and it's coupled with an app on your mobile phone, and the device syncs your data from your biometrics to the mobile phone, And on the mobile phone, there's a lot of computing that's going on that's making insights about your health.

AI assessment note: “the aura ring is a very small device. It's very light.”

Q So how does Aura help the customer close the loop and actually act on the data to improve their health?

A There's three ways. Uh, the first way is the daily insights that we give you contain kernels of things that you, behaviors that might be healthy for you. So for example, your heart rate lowered late last night. Did you eat a late meal? And that's a sort of a reinforcing an education of, hey, you should eat You know, three hours before you go to bed, because if you go to bed and your body's still digesting, your deep sleep will be reduced and less effective. And deep, deep sleep is how your body repairs and grows. And so if you want to be, you know, giving as much value to each minute of sleep you get, don't eat too early. So, so insights that sort of come up and they come up sort of on a, um, couple of times a day, or, you know, they come up within the experience and a really sort of very subtle way insights is the first way. Second way is this idea of the advisor. Um, and, and the advisor is, um, an AI chat kind of coach that knows all about you and makes recommendations and, and does education and gives you visibility to trends and helps you understand and maybe place a context around that and then makes suggestions. And those suggestions are things that would be better for your health. Um, and then the third way, and this is probably the, the earliest, but maybe it could be compelling, uh, I think is, is something called experiments. And an experiment is basically a protocol…

AI assessment note: “There's three ways. Uh, the first way is the daily insights”