The Exchanges

Q Tell me about that. Where are you seeing the strong results on paid acquisition?

A Yes, you know, we started off, uh, predominantly in digital, so focusing on your digital channels across social, Facebook, uh, predominantly as well as search and contentable and outbrain really dug our teeth into those, you know, when you go through these cycles, what generally happens is you want to launch a new channel, test it, and then see how much scale you can find in that channel. Um, that's what we did for, let's call it the first, you know, six to seven months while we were focusing on acquisition. Recently, we've, uh, forayed pretty heavily into audio, uh, seeing a lot of, Great results on the audio side, uh, particularly in podcast actually, as well as a Sirius XM and terrestrial radio, which is sort of normal car radio.

AI assessment note: “seeing a lot of, Great results on the audio side, uh, particularly in podcast”

Q And how did you, I mean, so, so you didn't really do any of it. Did you just give them a scope, like a scope of work and they found the person or how did you like vet the person to make sure they were legit before you started paying them?

A Yeah. So what they do is, uh, they bring candidates to you and you interview them, and so we held a couple interviews. One was just with myself, who is not, you know, I'm not technical by background. That was more just conversational. Do we think we can work with this person? Can we project manage him or her? Um, is there, you know, is there a language barrier? Which there is not. Um, they actually pre-screen everyone. So, you know, they accept about two percent of applicants into their pool anyways. And so, you know, they would say that that's sort of the first screen Um, in the process. And then after we spoke with them, we had our other developer who helped build a lot of the website sort of have a more technical based interview.

AI assessment note: “they bring candidates to you and you interview them, and so we held a couple interviews.”

Q And how are you, I mean, do you have a bunch of full-time tech people on staff and if not, how are you getting the code developed?

A Yeah, absolutely. So, we are not a super tech-heavy team, actually. We have used, uh, TopTool, which is sort of an outsourced, an agency that helps you find outsourced developers, um, who are super talented. We've worked with someone from, uh, through that service since we've launched, and he actually built a lot of our code base. We had, before we launched, we had someone who was friendly to the company build a lot of, a lot of the backbone. Uh, we've been working with that TopTail developer, and we're in the process of building out, you know, a smaller tech team in house. I think what's, you know, important from our perspective is you really can get a long way and build a lot of the tools that you need without massive tech, you know, infrastructure.

AI assessment note: “we are not a super tech-heavy team, actually. We have used, uh, TopTool”

Q How did you find, so this is one thing people, so is TopTail like one of these kind of sites that has, I guess, freelancers on it?

A I mean, how does it work? Correct. So what you do is, um, they actually have a, a very interesting process where you can source developer. You sort of tell them this is what we need. Um, you can source developers on a full time, part time, or hourly basis, and they will go out, find developers internationally who have great skill sets in, you know, whatever language you're using or whatever framework you're using. Um, you interview them and then you just sort of work with them. Everything is paid through top tool. So it's super simple. On the processing side. And it's been great because they actually, you know, if that guy goes on vacation, they can sub someone else in for them. Um, and it's been a great experience for us.

AI assessment note: “Correct. So what you do is, um, they actually have a, a very interesting process”

Q Interesting. And last question on this, cause I'm, I'm going through kind of this process right now. Why did you decide to go with, I mean, there's a lot of these companies out there, like, you know, Upwork and all Freeland, all this, all these other sites. Why'd you go with TopSole?

A Yeah, so we, we did look at Upwork, and we've done some smaller projects with developers through that system. Um, Topsel was, for us, the most user-friendly service for a group of founders that didn't have technical backgrounds, so we found them to be, you know, they, they held our hands enough that we felt comfortable with the process. We felt like the quality of the candidates was very high, and, you know, we sort of, they also give you an initial period in the beginning where they're sort of risk-free. You can, you know, if you don't like The person you're working with over the first, I don't know what it is, 10 or 15 hours, you actually can get, get your money back. I mean, it just sort of eliminated a lot of the risks we saw, and then we were lucky and found someone that we liked working with.

AI assessment note: “Topsel was, for us, the most user-friendly service for a group of founders”

Q a lot of consumer products I talk to, the, the, the important thing they focus on are, like, reorder rates. And things like that. That's just not the case in the mattress business until you maybe have other products to offer. Right. I mean, you don't, you haven't put any algorithm together to try and predict the next time someone's going to purchase their second mattress from you. Have you?

A No. So you're correct. The, you know, something like churn is not. Something that we focus on as greatly as a lot of other e-commerce companies or a lot of e-commerce brands for sure. You know, I think our daily focus is on building, building the brand, finding scale in various acquisition channels as we launch new channels and really improving customer experience and product. Um, you know, we, our biggest advocates are our customers and that it's important to us that that customer experience is as positive Um, as possible, even if, you know, even if your product experience isn't positive, we want your customer experience as a whole to be really positive. Um, and so that, that would be our main focus, I think, today.

AI assessment note: “No. So you're correct. The, you know, something like churn is not.”