so I'm actually writing a block post about that right now. Just because it's something that I think is timely. We I actually, three years ago I got laid off from my last startup on September 25th, 2017. Um, and I started cheating. It goes three weeks after that. It's almost been three years today. Tomorrow will be three years on the day that I got laid off from my last startup job, and basically I've been fired three times. I'm a terrible employee. I don't take orders. Well, I have always wanted to work for myself and do my own thing. And, um, you know, I worked with some great manager that works, um, terrible ones. And I think in terms of like, what led me here, it was just always grabbing at the next opportunity, taking the next chance, moving to Connecticut for my first job at a school, then Seattle for my second job. First start up job on day, then jumping in the car and driving 19 hours down to Denver in 20 15 Summer. 2015 on opportunity. What? The startup that was going through an accelerator called Techstars or anyone familiar techstars. Andi. I did that summer in 2015. That changed my whole career trajectory in terms of understanding the start up world fundraising. Uh, you know how to start a company from scratch? How to pitch your company kind of network on building some hard skills in terms of business seven sales. And then 2.5 years after that, before I got laid off that job along with all my friends, I learned everything I know about consumer behavior branding, pricing theory five came instrument logistics. Um, you know, freight forwarding international logistics. I learned about retail selling health through, have negotiate contracts and did all that about 2.5 years. And then when I was 27 3 years ago is when I started my own company. Cheats and giggles. Andi October will mark three years in business.Oh, sure. I mean, in terms of what inspired me to work on sheets and giggles was I was basically enamored with the business model. And so when you get when you get laid off of one piano Monday, um, right, you basically ask yourself. Okay, well, what happened? What? What Didn't work, what bombs with this on. But that was basically the question that I had to answer. And so I looked at all the stuff about formalities that my last business that I wasn't the CEO of that wasn't the founder of, but it was on the mountain team up and running business development for, and I basically looked at all the different pieces of the business that would suboptimal So, for example, we had to build our own marketplace instead of entering into an existing one. We had to compete against entrenched large market leaders instead of going into a field that was highly fragmented. Was a lot of smaller players. We had a supply chain with 26 different components spread across a dozen countries. Eso I wanted a vertically integrated supply chain with one or two suppliers on day. Then there were a few other pieces and it lasted at least was. I wanted a very differentiated brand and very flat, boring space because the last company I was at it was a very serious brand. In a very serious base was a wearable tech company to try to fight against sexual assault and violence. Really wonderful mentioned. We save lives and I really love my time in that company. Um, but I really wanted to do something. I'm more of a funny, naturally funny dude on. I really wanted to do something that could leverage just my copyrighting my comedy chops, and I was really inspired by your name. Mike Dubin, who is the founder and CEO of Dollar Shave Club Way, actually went to the same university, Emory University in Atlanta. Hey, was No. Four grad. I was in 2012. Grad Andi. I was really inspired by the way that he, you know, didn't do, didn't want to sell razors for a living like No, the guys in Casper want to tell Nationalist for a living. Know that I grew up wanting to sell that fees for a living like, but when you look at the business model was extremely encounter. It's a massive, highly fragmented commodity market is your brand deferentially royalty and probably traditionally physically else you could bring it online with more direction. Senior model on. There were no good sustainable options in the industry, and that was also another big draw for me. Was I really wanted to sustainable products? And so she giggles. We sell you go up this Lyles out that sheet so they don't use any cotton. They don't use any polyester things. About 96% less water than cotton sheets doing their production, less energy, no insecticides, no pesticides. And then, obviously, as opposed to Polly, they use no plastic, no, you know, petroleum in their production on. So I was really enamored with the product, and it's also a much better product test for it. I'm doing this from bed e Think it's very fitting, Andi, I was s So really it was a business model first play, and that's what I advised every young entrepreneur entrepreneur. Any age to do is to come up with a business model that you feel very compelling that you feel you will be the best of the world at for me. That meant a consumer brand, uh, in a very boring space that I could do something differently

well, the elevator pitch is, I think, very straightforward. We sell sustainable bed sheets and I love that s o sheets and giggles We sell bed sheets that are made from eucalyptus trees instead of cotton on day are soft on the more reasonable than more pooling more, more hurricane we are entering into our third year sales fourth year in business We have grown, I think 2 to 4 x year over year. For our first three years in business, we've raised over $2 million from Will benefit. Just like techstars. Another wonderful people. Andi, I've got a what kind of team based here in Denver as well as the most folks in California, Florida and Texas Onda were growing rapidly year over year and approaching profitability as well, which is extremely important. Um, just elevator pitch in terms of the problem that resolving e think that that's actually if I could be completely one. I hate that question because I think that it encourages people to think that they can only start a company if it's solving a some type of like, you know, very personal problem. And I've seen people waste hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars and years of their life, building a solution for a problem that they personally have or personally perceived the market doesn't want to desire on DSO. I really can't stand that question. So I apologize for the kind of rant there. The problem that we're solving, if you need to define it, is that the chief market is a sort of legacy marketplace. Everything is cotton. Everything is polyester. There are no good sustainable options in the market. Place is a very old industry with old players who you know mostly cell in your bed, bath and beyond and your targets online on Amazon. And so and then also with that could be all honest as well. A lot of the director consumer startups in the betting space that I can't stand them. Bowling Branch Parachute Brooklyn in You know these guys they sell cotton Chief, they're making for 10 bucks. I think approximately I'm not transplant or anybody for, you know, $200 a set like they're ripping people off. Our manufacturing cost of three or four times higher than there is in our prices are lower, and so you know, it's something that bothers me. Just look at the industry space in terms of people getting ripped off because they don't exactly know what they're buying and why from these other companies. And they're buying based on the brand affinity and the brand these companies have defined instead of actual product and how good it is. Um, and so it's unsophisticated consumer, and a very massive state space that doesn't have any good sustainable option is how I define the problem on then. Also, the space is boring beyond all reason. Eso were also solving that problem, but I don't think ourselves very seriously. We sell cheap on the Internet on. But if I am talking to students today, if there are students out there that are that are listening, don't fall for the bullshit of, you know, a company being like, You know, our mission is to change the way that people engaged in other cultures like no, you sell to places on the Internet and that's okay. But like, you know, you're not changing the way cultures engages each other or like we're changing the way that people like approach personal hygiene like no, you sell toothbrushes on the Internet like relax. Eso you know they will trick you as a 22 year old 23 year old. These threats Consumer companies will trick you into working for $35,000 a year in customer service in San Francisco, where that's not a livable wage because you're part of some grandiose mission like No, get what you're worth. Get paid working a good company, have fun, make sure they have good time off policies. Make sure that they have good work. Life balance on def. They do get along the way. Fantastic. And if I could just brag about my company for a second. Donated $40,000 to Colorado's Kobe 19 Emergency Relief Fund, we planted tens of thousands of trees. We plant one for every order we've saved hundreds of thousands of years of drinking water, comparative cotton sheets production with our sheets production. And we also donated tens of thousands of dollars of sheet sets to Denver's homeless shelters in the beginning of the Kobe 19 outbreak in order to isolate separate symptomatic individuals from the general population to avoid the larger spread. So we do plenty of good. I love what we do. I'm obsessed with doing good and having fun and being successful at the same time. But we don't really talk about that stuff to too much. We don't brag about to too much because it feels disingenuous and we thought that she's on the Internet, that's it.

Yeah. So the first few weeks were basically just me and my, um, underwear in bed typing on a computer. So I really didn't think so much. Um, but no. The first of these through October 2017 I think I was actually in Japan time decompressing, uh, from getting laid off 1 p.m. On Monday from a company that I really cared about. Andi, I started incorporating company October 19.13. And so that was really actually really the timing that basically was catching my breath. I was moving into a new apartment. I got to go home for Thanksgiving and for Christmas, to see my family and my little nephew and I have a niece is, Well, Andi, kind of, you know, just reassess what was important to me. Um, at the time with my life. And I basically did three poor things that Q 4 2017. I wrote a business model that felt extremely passionate about that. I could be the best in the all that. I then created the financial model where I basically figured out the pricing that I was going to charge the cause that I would have the shipping cost variable, basic variable cost place prospering students in business school, straight forward stuff. And there's a great financial model startup rocket financial model we will add to find great started financial model for any company. Um, and I modeled it out. I said, can I make money off this? The answer is yes. I set my initial goal as I wanted to make $3000 a month or they pay my rent and pay my bills and be completely independent and tell everybody else that off. Um, and, uh, that was my goal on. And then I started telling people that I really cared about and then I really trusted. And there were mentors of mine that, you know, about this idea that I had and the initial reactions were like sheets and was like, What are you talking about? Um, you know, and that there were people that really trusted me and really thought that I was gonna do something different and unique. They gave me, you know, friends and family and people that I worked with past coworkers of mine, they $50,000 friends and family around February 2018. For the first few weeks, you can hear me walk through business model, financial model material researching design. I created a logo. I got my website set up, you know, wrote some copy. Initially, I wrote my first vlog post. I sent that out first week of January 2018 s o the first, you know, three months. We're really just doing all the three things when you're starting a business where anything for free. Andi. I would encourage people to do that to make sure that they feel very good about the business model of the financial model and the company. The brand, the real they do a brand identity map. You know, things like that don't cost you cash. And then once I raised $50,000 in friends and family, you know, 15,000 there from accredited investors that I knew trusted me. I told them, Look, I'm not going to spend a single one of your dollars until I am convinced that this is going to work so well. What everybody should do is set up multiple inflection points where they're going to realize whether or not it's a successful failure on defense, a failure. You have to be prepared to brush off the resume and go do something else. And so I was very compared to say, All right, this is a fairly experiment. That's okay, Andre were multiple inflection points where I would know that. And so the first big one was, um, we want to basically, uh, gather emails ahead of a crowdfunding campaign. We need that. We were gonna do crowdfunding in May 2018. That's my second date. And may 1st for a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. Um, and basically working backwards from our goal. We want to do $100,000 crowdfunding campaign going to go a campaign on pre orders Way basically knew to do that. We needed $30,000 on day one. That's how crowdfunding math works. You work backwards from years old, 30% in the 1st 24 hours. Generally, we want Thio on. Then I knew our average order value is gonna be around 100 bucks. 71st set of sheets. I have a personal 1.5 $600 average order value. And so if I need $30,000 on day one, then that means that I need 300 customers at $100 apiece on day one period of story. And if an email with on a marketing perspective reasonably converts at about 3% then if I need 300 customers on Day one, most of them come. Crowdfunding are going to come from that email list. Then I in 10,000 emails, period point, simple blinders on. So starting in February 2018 I went to go get 10,000 emails of interested parties who like the brand and like idea, and we're interested in the box. I created landing pages using a software called Kickoff Labs. Very keep a Swell Shopify. In order, Thio gathered emails on a very simple landing page. I've shot photography in February 2018 with a friend of mine who only hard for 500 bucks for the full day for photography. Got all my friends in there with models. We were in bed drinking whiskey is smoking cigars and playing with dogs and eating pizza. We're having a ball with our first photo shoot, and then I set up landing pages with that content. I wrote a bunch of snappy uh, copy, and we ended up capturing 11,000 emails in eight weeks ahead the Crowdfunding campaign. On day one, we did $45,000 in crowd funding and we end up doing $284,000 in crowd funding for the 45 days in the