#483 Matteo Franceschetti on Improving Your Sleep

Matteo Franceschetti is the cofounder of Eight Sleep, the world's leading sleep enhancement company. In this conversation, we discuss sleep fitness, how to improve your sleep, the importance of getting the full eight hours, and the product suite of sleep enhancement devices that Eight offers. ======================= OKCoin.com is the leading crypto exchange for both beginners and experienced users. You can fund your account in under 2 minutes, and get access to the most advanced trading engine, all while paying the lowest trading fees in the industry (0.1%). Visit www.okcoin.com/pomp and open your account today. ======================= Own crypto in multiple exchanges and wallets? Sync them to CoinStats so you track and manage them from one place. Track 8000+ coins and 300+ exchanges all from the Coinstats platform. Try it for free or go to coinstats.app/pomp and get 40% off your premium subscription. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 120,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Matteo Francescetti is the co-founder of Eight, the world's leading sleep enhancement company. In this conversation, we discuss sleep fitness, how to improve your sleep, the importance of getting the full eight hours, and the product suite of sleep enhancement devices that Eight offers. I really enjoy this conversation with Matteo, and I think you will as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is OkCoin. OkCoin.com is the leading crypto exchange for both beginners and experienced users.

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  They're a regulated US-based exchange where you can fund your account in under two minutes and get access to the most advanced trading engine, all while paying the lowest trading fees in the industry. OkCoin.com really prides itself on the user experience and making sure that you can do everything you want on the exchange, fast. They also happen to be very innovative in their thinking around the product suite. I recently had on Hyder, who runs growth for them, and I've also had the CEO. When you listen to them talk, you can tell that they care. So head on over to okcoin.com/pomp and open your account today. OkCoin's also been funding Bitcoin development, and you know that's got a safe, sweet spot in my heart.

• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

  So, go to okcoin.com/pomp and open your account today. A leading, regulated, US-based exchange, okcoin.com/pomp. Next up is CoinStats. If you own crypto in a lot of places, like me, you know how difficult it can be to keep track of it all. That's why CoinStats is one of my favorite apps. Whether you keep your crypto on hardware wallets, mobile wallets, exchanges, liquidity pools, or somewhere else, CoinStats lets you track it all in one place on your iPhone, Android, Apple Watch, or computer. You can see all of your transactions and your profit-loss history, and you can get advanced analytics on your portfolio's performance.

• 2:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Try it for free, or go to coinstats.app/pomp and you'll get 40% off your premium subscription. Again, if you have crypto in all these different places, you gotta have something that can keep track of everything. And if you're gonna use something, use CoinStats. Everywhere that you have crypto, you can see it all in one place. You can see your transactions and your profit-loss history and also get the advanced analytics on your portfolio. Try it for free or go to coinstats.app/pomp. Coinstats.app/pomp. Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 120,000 investors about business technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while

• 2:57Anthony Pompliano?

  sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Matteo. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:40Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got a special treat for you. I've got Matteo here. Thank you so much for doing this, sir.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks for having me. I'm happy and excited.

• 3:51Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, let's go through your background. Before you started Eight Sleep, you had like two or three other lives. You did not grow up in the United States, and then you've built a number of other companies. Can I walk us just through your background?

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, so when I was a teenager, I was an athlete. I was playing tennis tournaments. That is how I was spending my life. And then graduated in law, joined two large law firms.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  And then I became an entrepreneur, started two companies, both of them, they were in solar, so in renewable energy, climate change. And then I got into health and performance again with Eight Sleep.

• 4:29Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. And where were you doing the other companies in Italy?

• 4:34Speaker 02

  One in Europe, one in the US.

• 4:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you start Eight Sleep, the general idea is sleep fitness. I want to start there. Just what is sleep fitness?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we are really trying to reinvent the concept of sleep. Sleep is not something passive that you have to do and is a waste of your time. Sleep is like going to the gym. It's something you need to do to be healthy, to be fit. So go to bed, take your time, recover, let your body and your mind recover. So then in the morning, you will be fit and you will perform at your best. There is a tagline that we use for Eight Sleep, that is, we fuel human potential to better sleep.

• 5:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you think through that, I think most people say, okay, I have to sleep for eight hours. I wish I didn't have to sleep for eight hours. I'm not doing anything productive. Talk through kind of how you, you know, and Alex and your third co-founder, when you went to go start Eight Sleep, like what was the general idea of what you could do to actually improve this for people?

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there are two things we really want to do. We want to compress the sleep and we want to save your life. Compressed sleep means what if you could sleep only six hours and get more rest than when you were sleeping eight hours? And then I can tell you how we can do that. But so we want to give you two hours back of your life every day. Second, because it's still six hours, which is a lot of time, how can we make that time productive? We will scan your body in order to identify early signs of illness, like even cancer. So going to bed will be more valuable than going to your doctor. Every night it will be like going to your doctor.

• 6:20Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you think, let's start with kind of compressing time first, right? Everyone is told since they're a little kid, get eight hours, get eight hours. And the thought process is you need eight hours of sleep because that is what allows you to actually recover and kind of let the body do what it needs to do. How do you think you could compress that from eight hours to six hours, yet have people just as rested or more rested than they are today?

• 6:48Speaker 02

  The reality is, when they tell you, "Oh, you need eight hours," it's sort of bullshit. And sorry for the word. The point is, we don't use technology to enhance our sleep, right? And so, we go to bed and we expect to wake up refreshed. And more or less, rule of time, you need eight hours. But the reality is this: so, you will get around 20% REM, if you're lucky. It could range between 17 and 25, call it 20. You will get 20 of deep sleep, again, 17 to 25, but let's call it 20 plus 20. 60% of your time, or 50% of your time, is light sleep. Light sleep is an inefficiency of your body.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  You don't really need it. What you need, really need, is REM for your mind and deep sleep for your body to recover. So, our goal is to compress the amount of light sleep. And if we cut that in half, that is how we gain two hours.

• 7:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so, let's talk a little bit about, there's REM, there's deep sleep, and there's light sleep. When you go to sleep, what happens to the body?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, the first part of the night is about deep sleep. Deep sleep is usually what you need to really recover at the physical level, your body. Then, once your body has recovered, the second part of the night will have a prevalence of REM. REM is studies for your mind. It's the moment where all the information that you have received during the previous day gets reorganized and saved in your brain. REM is also when you dream. And so, the body gives, first, most of the attention to deep, because the physical body needs to recover. And then, only once that is done, it gets more into REM.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  But the reality is, you go through cycles, or 90-minute cycles, of light sleep, deep and REM. But the percentages change based on what I just told you.

• 8:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, in those cycles, you're literally going from light to deep to REM. Is it good or bad to have more or less cycles, right? Like, is it something where if I go through three cycles, then that's okay? But if I got five cycles, it's better? Or is just one cycle okay?

• 9:13Speaker 02

  At the end of the day, what you need is a certain amount of deep REM. And usually the cycles tend to be quite standard, so around the 90 minutes, unless you have some special dysfunction. And so the key at the end of the day is to get this 20% plus deep sleep out of the eight hours, so you can translate that in minutes, and the same for REM. So for example, in my case, if I get anything below 18% of deep REM, I start struggling during the day. I'm not in my peak performance. Anything above 20%, I'm like a lion and I can't get anything done that day. So that is what really matters. And the amount of light sleep is still just in inefficiency of your body.

• 9:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, and so when you think through this kind of company mission of, we want to compress the amount of time that you sleep. You mentioned compressing the amount of light sleep, so not really touching deep sleep or REM, but cutting from maybe four hours to two hours, right? In terms of this light sleep. Is it possible to extend or kind of elongate the deep sleep and the REM as well? So you almost get some of it is compressed on the light sleep side, but also elongating the time for deep and REM?

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Yes and no, meaning the key for us is for you to achieve this, let's call it 20%, just faster. Once you have the 20%, you feel great. You don't really need more than that. And so the key is how do we get you there faster? And so we will help you fall asleep faster. We will help you get deep sleep sooner rather than later. And we will try to extend that percentage across these 90-minute cycles.

• 10:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And you are literally like the foremost expert I know on sleep. I, as many people now know, throughout 2020, spent a bunch of time trying to figure out how to get better sleep. I am a full-on convert. If this was a religion, like I would be all in. I would go to church every day and tell people like, yes, sleeping more absolutely has this positive impact on your body and your mind. What are some of the tips and tricks that you think through in terms of helping people?

• 11:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Get better sleep, but not products that you provide. So is there things that they can do with their lifestyle before bed? Or maybe even during sleep that they can actually get better sleep or get more rest?

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'll tell you our products, right? What everyone can do. So first, if you talk to any sleep doctor, the first thing they would tell you is sleep consistency. So try to go to bed at the same time. More than anything, wake up at the same time every day, even on Saturday and Sunday. Because if you just sleep in, you're just jet lagging your body. And then on Monday, you will struggle again to wake up. While instead, what you want to do is you want to train your body to wake up every single day at that time. Doesn't matter what the time is, it just needs to be always the same. And then if you can, try to go to bed at the same time, but on that you can be more flexible. Then, second thing is what I call thermal shocks.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  So one thing I do and I love is you could do a shower. And you keep switching between hot and cold 10 times, 30 seconds hot, 30 seconds cold. This thermal shock will really help you relax. At least, obviously, it's very personal, but with me works really well. Another option that you have, if you have access to that, is a sauna and ice bath. But even just a shower works great. Orange lights. So I have Philips you in my house. You can set what are called routines. And so, starting at 7:30, my lights start dimming down. And they're first they switch to orange, and then they keep dimming down. And by 9:30, there is no more light in my house.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  And so, orange lights helps you develop a melatonin. And the fact that lights keep dimming down will help you understand that not time for bed, but time is coming. You can try some supplements. You can use melatonin. I use it from time to time. Some people use CBD. Or you could also try magnesium. Magnesium will not have a direct impact on your sleep, but it will help you relax your muscles. And then personally, I do some mobility exercises before going to bed. For the heaps for the body, just kind of not relax and open up your body before you spend eight hours on the bed.

• 13:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so each one of those things, I think, could have a positive impact alone. But when you put them together, obviously, it can be quite advantageous. The one thing I didn't hear you mention, but I know we've talked about before, is just like actually tiring yourself out during the day to go to sleep. Talk a little bit about if you do that, like what the advantage for that is.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, a couple of things. Yeah, the best way is, yeah, you you want to work out or you really want to make sure you're tired. But one thing I notice on my body is if, for example, I work out later in the afternoon or in the early evening, then you reactivate your body and then my sleep is not that good. So if you can, try to work out in the first part of the day or by lunchtime. But don't do it at 6:00 PM, 7:00 PM, or 8:00 PM. Because otherwise, that will reactivate your heart rate. So it will take time for your heart rate to really stabilize and relax again. You will start producing more heat, which will make more difficult for your body to fall asleep.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  The other two big things that have an impact on your sleep are caffeine and alcohol. Caffeine, the rule of thumb is stop drinking eight hours before going to bed. Then our data shows that everyone is different. So you might, you know, suffer caffeine more than I do or vice versa. So test it. And the last one is alcohol. I stopped drinking in April 2018. And, you know, we spoke about that. Alcohol has an impact on deep sleep, on REM, on your body temperature, HRV, and also your heart rate at rest.

• 15:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Explain more about the alcohol, because I don't think people really understand this, right? There's a lot of people who say, oh, when I get drunk, then I pass out. No, I fall asleep. It's amazing. But what's kind of happening from a physiological standpoint when you put alcohol in your body before you try to sleep?

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, so from a physiological standpoint, you have this sense where, oh, it's gonna relax my mind, my mind stops from racing, and then I can fall asleep. But the reality is, the quality of sleep that you will get is low quality. And so in the morning, when you wake up, your HRV, which is a heart rate variability, and it's a good metric to determine how rested you are, would just be lower than expected because that had an impact on your heart rate as well. The other big thing is, in particular, as you get older, you will see that alcohol has an impact on your body temperature. And so if I drink, I will start feeling hot in the middle of the night.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  And so that will be an additional thing that will impact my sleep quality. So overall, you don't feel it, you just think that it's relaxing you, but at the end of the day, the type of sleep you get is poor.

• 16:48Anthony Pompliano?

  So you stopped drinking in April 2019. I haven't drank all of January. We're recording this towards the end of January, and I feel amazing. Definitely has improved my sleep, so I can kind of speak to that. But you still drink coffee, and so how do you think about caffeine in general for you? Do you drink in the morning, and then you stop at a certain time? Do you limit yourself to how much you drink?

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm Italian, and so I drink espresso. And I drink three espressos that more or less are the equivalent of one cup of coffee, American coffee. And I have one early in the morning, around nine, then I have one around 11:30, and the last one by two. One thing I started doing, because I wanted to reduce the caffeine intake, was to switch to decaf. And so I still have three espresso, but they are decaf. And so usually with the decaf, you are just intaking one-third of caffeine compared to a regular coffee. And so at the end of the day, it's something like if I was having only one espresso for the whole day.

• 17:53Anthony Pompliano?

  That's super interesting. And then you mentioned working out as something you do in the morning. Is there certain types of exercises that are better or worse for sleeping? Should I think about it in terms of running or other cardio-type exercises versus weightlifting? Or is it all kind of the same, it's just burning calories?

• 18:13Speaker 02

  So for for sleep itself, it's probably all the same. At least we don't have data about that yet. What I can tell you is when you think in terms of longevity for your body, you should think in three dimensions. The first one is high intensity interval training. So spike your heart rate as much as you can. Let it drop, spike it again. You will see incredible results immediately in your biometrics. Even if you just use an Apple Watch, you will be impressed. Second, you wanna do weight training or you wanna really build the muscles. There is plenty of medical evidence that weightlifting is really good

• 18:56Speaker 02

  for your longevity and for your body long term. And the third one is mobility. So you wanna make sure as you get older that you maintain a good mobility, which will be extremely key when you start getting into the seventies or eighties.

• 19:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, makes sense. So we've talked a lot about what you can do during the day or before bed. You at Eight Sleep really solve the problem of what people can use at night, right? And what are the products that you could actually use to get better sleep? Maybe walk us through just what that product suite looks like today.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the biggest factor impacting your sleep quality, which we didn't mention yet, is temperature. Fifty percent of the couples, they fight around temperature. And the reason is it's pretty simple. Temperature is different for each of us. When you hear people saying, oh, you should sleep at sixty eight degrees is wrong. And the reason is your body temperature changes during the night. And so the temperature of the environment and the temperature of the bed need to change accordingly. So a fixed temperature will never work. It will not work for you, it will not work for your wife, it will not work for myself. And so that is what we developed. We developed a technology that changes the temperature of your body during the night based on your biometrics.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  And there is medical evidence that through temperature adjustment, we can improve your sleep performance. You can fall asleep faster, you can get up to twenty percent more deep sleep, you can get more REM. And our data shows that we are also reducing cost and turns and wake ups by thirty to forty percent.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  So ninety-six percent of our customers are reporting better sleep with our product.

• 20:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you think about how the product works, I have one, it's amazing. I sleep colder than plane of sleeps, but how does the product itself actually work? There's a mattress, there's a pod cover, but just walk us through kind of what those products actually are.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there are two form factors. You can buy the whole mattress and call it the Lamborghini of the mattresses or the sleep performance. And then there is the mattress cover, so you can retrofit any dumb mattress. Let's say you don't want to change your mattress, you like it, you just bought it. You just want to put our technology on top of it, now you can do it. Technology is the same across the two devices and it does two main things. First, dynamic temperature control, so we can change the temperature of your body during the night. And each side of the bed can have a different temperature. Second, the technology comes with embedded sensors. So we are able to track everything about your heart rate, your respiration and your sleep.

• 21:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you've got the temperature regulation going on, it's basically taking water and it's putting it through this kind of cover, right? And that's what is being chilled or potentially even heated in some situations?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the temperature can range anywhere between fifty-five degrees and one hundred degrees. It can be really cold or really hot. Ninety percent of our customers, they are kind of in the middle, so they don't need that extreme temperature. Some customers love to get into bed and find it extremely cold. Usually men like not to find the bed really cold, while instead women like to find it warmer. But obviously it depends, it depends on your, of the gender, on your body fat, on your age. For example, women in menopause, they have hot flashes and so they want the cold bed. So we are able to adjust based on all these different needs.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  But the other key thing is we will change the temperature during the night. And so usually as soon as you fall asleep, we'll try to cool you. And in the second part of the night, when you tend to have more red, we will try to provide thermal neutrality. The reason is this, when you are in REM, you're dreaming, right? And so your brain deactivates a lot of body functions, including temperature control. If your brain feels that the environment is too hot or too cold, it will not let you get into REM, because you could die if you were like in a storm, right? And so the key for REM is thermal neutrality, where your brain understands that the environment is safe and it can let you fall into REM.

• 23:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when this is happening, how much of this is, "I have to be a genius and understand my body and set the temperature and also the different times through the night correctly," versus you'll tell me, kind of proactively, "Hey, many people like you are likely to want, you know, plus or minus degrees at certain times in the night."

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there are two tiers, right? Right now, we are in the first tier. And the first tier is about suggesting you what you should set as a temperature, right? So this is the recommended temperature for people of your gender and this age. Plus, we see environmental changes. So let's say that the weather in Miami changes, we will provide a different recommendation. But the end goal that is going to come in a couple of months is temperature autopilot. That is one of the most requested features. And so we will be able to control the temperature for you. So set it and forget it, we will maximize the temperature for you. And then in the near future, there will be different modes or profiles,

• 24:41Speaker 02

  where you will be able to say, "Look, I want to optimize this thing." Let's say a lower heart rate. That is what we will be able to do for you through machine learning and AI.

• 24:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and super smart, right? Because basically, you've got this product out with all the customers. You're gathering data because the sensor's in the bed. You've got a very slick kind of mobile phone application. And over time, you're just learning, right? And it's very similar, you know, I've talked before about like Tesla and the fact that they've got all these cars on the road and they're just gathering data. And so they're so far ahead that everyone else with the data, that that ends up being a pretty significant advantage.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're collecting, I mean, we have already collected several millions of hours of sleep, right? And the database keeps growing. Obviously, we are in compliance with all the rules, anonymized and aggregated data. But yeah, we are learning. We are becoming one of the largest sleep databases in the world. And based on this data, we can become better and better at optimizing your sleep.

• 25:45Anthony Pompliano?

  So for the people that use the existing products, either the mattress or the mattress pod, what is the kind of, you know, normal response to people? Is it longer sleep? Is it deeper sleep? Like, what are some of the things that you see in the data that people get as a benefit?

• 26:04Speaker 02

  So the most obvious already today are they are falling asleep faster and they are getting more quality of sleep. In particular, we are reducing toss and turns and we are reducing wake-ups by up to 40%. So a really meaningful number. And so they really have this higher sleep efficiency, I would say, so they can wake up more rested in the morning.

• 26:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I want to talk about the future products and some of the things that you think that you guys will be able to do over time. So today, you've got things that make you sleep better, but you mentioned already, there's a whole nother kind of mission to the business and your vision, which is being able to turn the time that you are asleep into more productive time. Talk a little bit about kind of what you're envisioning and hoping to build in that perspective.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so first, we want to reinvent the front factor of the bed. To me, it's unacceptable that with millions of people are still sleeping on a piece of damp foam that has been the same for 2,000 years. That doesn't work. So the way your bed looks will be different soon. And we will start controlling a lot of different environmental factors, not just temperature. We will control everything to optimize your sleep and make sure that you can sleep faster. So when you

• 27:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Real quick, when you said you're gonna change the kind of the shape of the bed or the or the bed as an actual form factor, I don't know how much you want to talk about what exactly you're gonna do, but just give people a sense like, are you gonna try to turn the bed from laying horizontal to vertical and people are gonna stand up and sleep, or what, how do you think about that?

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's tricky between what I can say and what I cannot say. What I would say is this, we want to control all the environmental factors that impact your sleep quality. So we want to have your back while you're asleep, and we want to make sure that we help you sleep faster, that we track your health, and we also help your body to regenerate and sleep and live longer. And this is connected to the second piece, that is the health piece. The beauty of what we do is we have a lot of space, because the mattress is pretty big, and our AOV is high. So adding sensors for 20 bucks or 40 bucks is not gonna move our margins.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  This means that we can keep adding sensors that are valuable for our users, in order to be able to track more biometrics and have a better understanding of their health.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  A friend of mine, now she just recently lost her dad, because he had cancer. And they discovered this cancer a couple of months before he ended up dying. That to me is unacceptable. Right now, we don't have any control in what is going on in our body. And so I want to solve and fix that problem. And there is a product that is your bed, that you use every single day for 10 years. And so you're, you're not sleeping there, so you're not moving a lot, you're resting, and so it's the perfect environment to scan your body every single day for the next 10 years. And we will see how you're aging, and we will see if there is any early sign of cancer or any other reasons.

• 29:32Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you think through that, is this something that you'll be able to scan and you'll like stream to a doctor? Is it something where you'll be able to tell maybe variations of the biometrics and then just tell people, hey, something seems to be off, you should go see a doctor? Like, how do you kind of look at people basically taking the information that you're able to monitor and glean and actually turn it into something that might be useful for

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, obviously, there are a lot of rules and regulations, and we'll be in compliance with that. But oversimplified the latter is what you just said, right? The key will be to see if there is anything off compared to your baselines. And if there is, we will notify you and we will give you the advice to go and talk to your doctor. The end goal is not to replace the doctor. We actually want to enable the doctor to have much more data about what is going on in your health and be able to act sooner rather than later to save your life.

• 30:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I'm a huge fan, as are many people on the internet. And it seems like you guys have been able to build somewhat of a cult following. Obviously, if you help people sleep better, maybe it's just they're in a better mood. And so they naturally have this affinity for your product. But also, you have this kind of aspirational goal and mission in terms of not only making people sleep better, but also helping them to live healthier, longer lives on top of that. What do you think is driving that kind of cult following online? And is there anything specific that you guys have done that was more intentional to kind of help build up that following and that loyalty and engagement?

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think we did a couple of things. First, we have a very different perspective of sleep. It's not to sleep like being comfy on a Sunday morning with waffles on your bed. That is not us, and that is not me. We are about performance. We are about, okay, this is time to recover. It's like going to the gym. It's gonna be eight hours today, hopefully less in the future. But this is a moment where you need to take care of your body to then perform at your best. And I don't think there is any other company that thought of sleep like a sort of fitness. And that is why we invented the name Sleep Fitness. That is one. And I think second is...

• 31:59Speaker 02

  I really think we are a 2% of our product vision. And customers start understanding that we are a cutting-edge technology company. We're not a mattress company, we're not a mattress cover company. We are really trying our best to introduce technology to enhance our recovery and sleep. And I don't think there is anyone else there. There are wearables, and they are doing a great job. But I think wearables, they stop at the data. They just try to recommend you something based on the data. The difference in our case is, we are gonna do the job for you. While you are asleep, our machine learning models, they're working for you to optimize your sleep performance.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  So we are into this together, and we will keep developing technology to improve your life and give you two hours of life back per day.

• 32:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, when you think about giving that two hours of life back, is the idea that people will be awake and functional and can kind of go do other things? Is it, no, it's gonna take an hour to get ready for sleep and kind of, you know, actually fall asleep and it'll take an hour to wake up? And kind of like one of those alarm clocks that almost, you know, slowly wakes you up with light and sound? How do you kind of think about that two-hour savings and what people will do with it?

• 33:17Speaker 02

  So, I think the end goal is to really give you two hours back that you can spend with your loved ones or that you can spend doing whatever matters to you. At the end of the day, I mean, the whole point of how the company started is because I started wondering, why do I need to sleep eight hours? Can I sleep four hours and work harder or do other things? And that is when I started reading now clinical papers, and I understood that the eight hours is not written anywhere that we need eight hours. We need that amount of deep and ram. And so to me is, if we can make our bodies more efficient without compromising our health, without compromising our longevity,

• 34:02Speaker 02

  then I'm 100% for that. But today, if you were sleeping six hours or five hours, you were doubling your risk of heart attack. You were doubling your, you know, the risk of high blood pressure. You were risking of dying earlier. So all that, I'm not open to it. And so through technology, we are trying to find the compromise between these two benefits.

• 34:27Anthony Pompliano?

  We didn't talk about food. Is there anything there, whether it's before you go to sleep or when you wake up, that has an impact on sleep?

• 34:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so definitely, I mean, my advice is try to eat a couple of hours going before going to bed. Obviously, the heavier you eat, the worse. There are a bunch of studies that have also shown that carbs will help you fall asleep faster, but the quality of sleep you get will be lower. And so try to find the right compromise. The most recommended diet is the Mediterranean diet, which is kind of balanced with also olive oil and fish and avocado veggies, all that kind of things. So definitely, there is a direct correlation between sleep and nutrition.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  The other interesting correlation is if you're sleep deprived, you will start craving more junk food. There are some changes that happen in your hormones. So there is plenty of medical evidence of why that is happening. So it's not just you that you have this placebo effect that you're craving pizza if last night you slept four hours. There is really something happening in your body. And so it's really important that you try to sleep at least seven hours, seven to nine hours per day, to really make sure that you will also lose weight because you will keep your diet healthier as a consequence of feeling better.

• 35:55Anthony Pompliano?

  If we fast forward 10, 15 years, what's the hope for where sleep is? Is it a mattress in every bedroom and you're scanning people's bodies? Or kind of what do you think, you know, 10, 15 years from now is the kind of the holy grail?

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the concept of sleep thinness will be mass consumer, right? So people will think of sleep like going to the gym. We will have sleep enhancement devices. You might call it beds, but they are really sleep enhancement devices. And preventative health will be huge, right? You will be able to know if there is anything wrong in your body, six months, 12 months, even years before you would do today. And so you will be able to live a healthier and longer life just because of that.

• 36:49Anthony Pompliano?

  So if everyone calls it a bed, which is B E D, and you call it a sleep enhancement device, which is S E D, is that a, an intentional, just changing of one letter in there?

• 37:02Speaker 02

  That's good. You just give me, you just give me an idea.

• 37:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. All right. When you think about the one person that you would love to have eight sleep in their hands, who's the one person in the world that you don't believe has the product yet, but you would love to put it in their hands?

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Well, that is a pretty good question.

• 37:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Mateo will never say, I had a great question. He'll say, I had a pretty good question, though.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Um, I don't know. I mean, I, I, I think there are multiple people, top athletes, but if I could pick one, I don't have a name, but any doctor who is a surgeon, because he can save lives. So if we can fuel his or her potential to better sleep, we might be able to start saving lives sooner to them.

• 37:58Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a great answer. I ask everyone the same three questions, and then you get asked me when to finish, but one of the questions we already talked about. So the first question is, what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 38:13Speaker 02

  Um, obviously, I'm, I'm biased on that. Why We Sleep. And, and I think the reason is this, it will open your eyes. It's not a book, I'm not affiliated with, with that, so we don't work with Matthew Walker. But I think it will open your eyes about the importance of sleep and how sleep can impact your longevity and your health. I, I think very few people, including myself, who are not aware, were not aware of that.

• 38:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's a fantastic book. I highly recommend it. And if people don't want to listen to the book, you can just listen to him talk. I think he went on Rogan and a couple other podcasts, did a great job there as well. The second question I usually ask is people's sleep routine. Maybe for you, what time do you go to sleep and what time do you wake up?

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, you know, I go to sleep early. You, you often make fun of me. But yeah, between nine thirty and ten, I'm usually in bed by ten, I'm, I'm asleep, except when I, when I have been there with you and Colina, and you give me up at night.

• 39:13Anthony Pompliano?

  So you don't actually go to sleep that early, 9:30, 10:00. Like, I try to, you know, go 10 o'clock would be like a good time to go to sleep. But I do laugh when we're trying to meet up for dinner and I feel guilty. I'm like, hey, do you want to meet at 8:00? I'm like, oh, but then he's gonna try to run out at 9:15 to go home to go to sleep.

• 39:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Last question, aliens, are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 39:37Speaker 02

  100% believer. They exist and I will fuel their potential through better sleep.

• 39:44Anthony Pompliano?

  I have not had anyone offered to give aliens a sleep enhancement device. You might be the first.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  I will give them an S E P, no, S E D device.

• 39:57Anthony Pompliano?

  As long as they have money and they're willing to drive revenue, then they're in the total adjustable market, right?

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I should talk to my head of ops and see how we can ship to them. But we will figure it out.

• 40:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I, for those that don't know, Keith Raboy from Founders Fund now is on the board at Eight Sleep. So I would love to see the reaction when you tell Keith, hey, Keith, we're going to increase the total adjustable market because we're going to start to incorporate the alien population as customers.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  You know, Keith always says, if you have a new proposal, is this gonna add a zero to your top line? And I think the aliens can add a zero to the top line, so.

• 40:39Anthony Pompliano?

  He does say that. That's great. All right, you could ask me one question to finish up. What you got for me?

• 40:46Speaker 02

  How many hours do you sleep a night?

• 40:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm eight hours now. I used to not be. You know this. I used to be, you know, five and a half, maybe six, and I was, I was great. I actually, we're recording this today, and today is the day, one of the two days of the week where I do a bunch of podcast recordings. And I slept seven hours and 20 minutes last night after being on an epic run of eight to nine hours. And I was telling Polina today when we went to go get lunch, like, I can feel like I am not rested, which is crazy because seven hours and 20 minutes historically would have been, you know, the equivalent of me sleeping like eight or nine now. But it's, once you get used to the good life, she said, it's hard to go back to the bad life, which I agree with.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Actually, there is one thing I always recommend to people. And is this, try to sleep one hour more per night for one week. Just one week, commit for a week and you add one hour per day to your sleep. And after that week, you tell me how you feel. If you don't feel great, we'll figure it out and I give you some money back. But if you feel better, then you will decide to stick with that.

• 41:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think that you tell people that because you know that they'll feel better, which is cheating. Uh, where can we send people if they want to buy an Eight Sleep mattress? Or if they want to learn more about the company?

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, go to eightsleep.com, eight like the number but in lech, so E I G H T sleep.com. And you can also follow me on Twitter. Um, I mean, the homepage of the website, so there is where you can find my Twitter.

• 42:26Anthony Pompliano?

  So I was gonna say, you're up in your Twitter game. I see now all of a sudden you're going viral. So people should definitely go follow you, follow you on Twitter. Um, I think you and my brother may be having a competition on who can write better threads at the time.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  He's another level. He give me tips and we are a thread one on one with me and he's the coach, so.

• 42:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't tell people that because then everyone's gonna be DMing him, asking him to help them. He's gonna come back and say, it's all Mateo's fault.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, actually, so he gave me the tip and that day I just published the eight hacks to improve your sleep. We were already working on that, but it's funny because now we posted the thread like three hours after I spoke to him. And I got almost 5,000 likes. And so he texted me saying, you see, I told you that threads work.

• 43:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't let him take credit for your hard work. He's been doing that in my family for literally 20 years. He's been taking credit for everyone's hard work, so don't let him steal that from you.

• 43:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Thank you so much for coming and doing this. I'm obviously a huge fan. Uh, I sleep with the product every night, couldn't recommend it more to folks. So head on over to eightsleep.com and let's do this again in the future.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you for hiring me.