#558 Alexandra Zatarain on How To Get Better Sleep

Alexandra Zatarain is the co-founder and VP of Brand and Marketing at Eight Sleep, the world's first sleep fitness company. Eight Sleep designs tech-enabled products, content and services that make people sleep fit. In this conversation, we discuss sleep science, creating a new category, marketing hardware, building a cult, turning customers into marketers, and building Eight Sleep from scratch. ======================= Public Rec is where indoor comfort meets outdoor style. Their best-selling All Day Every Day Pant is a more stylish alternative to sweatpants, and a more comfortable alternative to jeans. From the couch to the gym to the grocery store, and everywhere in between, Public Rec has you covered. Comfort starts with a better fit. Free shipping. Free returns. Visit www.publicrec.com/pomp and use POMP at checkout to get 10% off! ======================= As one of the largest and oldest Bitcoin exchanges in the world, Kraken is consistently named one of the best places to buy and sell crypto online, thanks to our excellent service, low fees, versatile funding options and rigorous security standards -- but this is only part of the story. We’ve been on the forefront of the blockchain revolution since 2011: http://www.kraken.com ======================= Unstoppable Domains makes crypto easier by replacing your address with [AnyName].crypto. They allow you to send and receive over 70 cryptocurrencies, including BTC, ETH, and LINK with a single blockchain domain. Go to unstoppabledomains.com and get [YourName].crypto to make your crypto life easier. =======================

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. Now let's kick this thing off. Alexandra Zatrain is the co-founder and vice president of brand and marketing at Eight Sleep, the world's first sleep fitness company. Eight Sleep designs tech-enabled products, content, and services that make people sleep fit. In this conversation, we discuss sleep science, creating a new category, marketing hardware, building a cult, turning customers into marketers, and building Eight Sleep from scratch. I'm a proud investor in Eight Sleep, and I'm excited for you guys to hear this conversation. Before we get into

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

  the episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Public Rec. Public Rec is where indoor comfort meets outdoor style. Their best-selling all-day, everyday pant is a more stylish alternative to sweatpants, and a more comfortable alternative to jeans. You know me, there's no way I'm reading about Public Rec right now to you, unless they literally make the most comfortable clothes in the world. They seriously are that comfortable. From the couch to the gym to the grocery store, and everywhere in between, Public Rec has you covered. Comfort starts with a better fit. You can get free shipping and free returns if you visit publicrec.com/pomp. Again, publicrec.com/pomp, and use code

• 1:26Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  They continue to support Bitcoin developers, so you know they've got a soft spot in my heart. Go to kraken.com today and see why they've been around for so long and how they've grown so large. Last but not least, are my friends over at Unstoppable Domains. They've been longtime supporters of the podcast, so you should go support them because they support me. Unstoppable Domains has teamed up with OKX to make crypto simpler by supporting .crypto domains on their exchange. Unstoppable Domains allows you to receive over 70 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Chainlink with a single blockchain domain name. This makes it so much easier for millions of users to send and receive crypto by using their

• 2:51Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:34Anthony Pompliano?

  they support us, go support them. Let's get into this episode with Alexandra. I hope that you enjoy it.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:08Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. We've got Alex from Eight Sleep here. Thanks for doing this.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you for having me.

• 4:13Anthony Pompliano?

  You're living in Miami now, which is awesome. I feel like this is where everyone's moving.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  If you're not here, where are you?

• 4:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's just start with your story. So we've had Mateo on the podcast before. I feel like he sits on Twitter all day long, does nothing, and just tweets nonstop about sleep is important, which it is. But you are one of the other co-founders of the business. So what did you do before Eight Sleep?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so before, right before Eight Sleep, I was living in New York and I was working at a financial technology startup. It was really a startup. It was a really different business. We were targeting, building technology, targeting independent wealth advisors. So totally, totally different space, still working very much kind of like that side of marketing. And I was kind of the right hand of the founder and CEO. And then when Mateo came over and, you know, we're married. So we've been together for like 10 years, pre-Eight Sleep. And when he came over, I've been thinking about this thing around sleep. And he was talking to Max, our other co-founder, around building the technology. They eventually thought, well, we want to bring this to market and we want someone who can build a brand and market to consumers.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Do you want to join us? And I don't know what was going through my mind. I think I was young and naive and I trusted them. And I had never done consumer products or anything like that, even though that was my passion. It was something I definitely aspired to do. So I left my comfy job in finance in New York and we all moved to San Francisco to start the company.

• 5:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you guys moved to San Francisco specifically to start the business?

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, we thought, well, it's like a hardware company. We want to be in the middle of Silicon Valley. Max, our other co-founder, was based there. And we thought, well, we want to be there. We want to network. We want to meet everyone. We want to have that experience. We thought we were going to be there forever. We're like, San Francisco's the thing. That's the place. Okay, let's pack our things. And we did a year there. It was very fun. We did a lot of amazing, very much Silicon Valley experiences. But then we ended up moving back to New York.

• 5:59Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the most Silicon Valley experience you had?

• 6:01Speaker 02

  I mean, going through YC.

• 6:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, okay. That is literally the...

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is it. Like, you know, you're all grown up and you're like going back to the accelerator and whatnot. But that was great. I mean, it was an amazing experience. It really changed the trajectory of the company.

• 6:13Anthony Pompliano?

  How was it being a hardware startup? Going through Y C, which I think is mostly known for kind of being a software accelerator.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, we actually had applied two times before and we had not gotten in.

• 6:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so two denials, third time's a charm.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was really because the third time at that point, Y C was trying to get in more hardware companies. You know, so that was key because we really thought, well, we're probably not getting in because we have this business that first hasn't proven itself because we hadn't launched the product to market. And second, it probably doesn't kind of fit what most of Y C investments look like. But eventually we got in, which was great, and we got in after we had already launched on crowdfunding. So we did our first product on Indiegogo. That was a huge success. We did over a million dollars in pre-orders. And so it was probably easier for them to take the bet on these people who had never built a hardware product. Because also like we were not really founders that had that background. So there was a huge risk. But it was super fun to get in. There was a small group, probably at our badge, maybe 10% of companies were hardware.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  So, you know, there were a few of us and we were pretty close and like there's still a bunch of us that are still alive and thriving and growing. But it was great. It was really fun to be around other people who were kind of building the same type of product.

• 7:19Anthony Pompliano?

  How did you get a million dollars of pre-sales?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, it was insane.

• 7:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I figured it was. All right. So like this is a company with no brand, nobody knows about it. You have to convince people sleep is important. Like there's so many uphill battles. So how do you do it?

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was really the first big test. I was super nervous because it was, you know, very few of us. And we, I was in charge of like launching this crowdfunding, which I had never done and getting all these orders. And so I spoke to as many people as possible who had done it before. And, you know, at that time, this was like early 2015, there were a bunch of companies in hardware that had found success in crowdfunding. So there were people you can talk to, you know, and ask them questions around like, how do they do it? What did they focus on? And so we probably spent while Max and like the like one or two engineers we had on the team were focused on building the prototypes of the product and testing and all that, I was focused on building the campaign. So it was probably four months that we spent doing that.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  And that was just like 100% of my time. Just what's a strategy? We knew we wanted to get to a million because there were a lot of companies that had gotten there. So we thought we can make it. And the first thing That we did was talk to as many people as possible about their sleep. So we had this apartment in San Francisco and that was our office. It was on Second Street and Soma.

• 8:33Anthony Pompliano?

  This is not your apartment. This is the office.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Well, no, this was our apartment too. This is where Mateo and I were living. So we were living in the office.

• 8:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  And then the, the, our bedroom was a demo room. That's where we would put all of the new technology. Like God forbid that the engineers built something that would like, I don't know, shakas or something in the middle of the night. We were trusting them. They would put every new prototype on our bed. So we were the first people to try it. And then in the morning, our team would arrive and we were like five people and they would arrive and everyone had a key. So we had to be up and ready by like 7:00 AM because people were arriving very early. And then we would work in the living room. So we just like moved all of furniture and like that was where Eight Sleep started.

• 9:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Amazing.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  So that is where we launched our crowdfunding and we, one of the things that we did before that was talk to as many people as possible about their sleep, which is kind of funny because at the time there were no like sleep companies, you know, that some of the beds in a box were starting. And so there were some conversations around sleep, but not in the way that we were approaching it. We're like, hey, tell us everything about your sleep. What are your problems? What can we fix for you? Just, you know, we knew that from, the reason why we started was because Mateo had us, had his sleep problems. So we didn't know if other people had the same problem. So we had to discover that. And so we would bring as many people as possible into that office, bring them into the bedroom, show them what we were doing and then ask them questions. And then people start opening up.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  It's like, hey, I have different preferences of temperature with my partner and how I struggle to fall asleep or toss and turn a lot. I don't like the comfort of my bed. Like whatever would come up, we were just like absorbing it. And then as we started crafting a pitch for our product, then we would bring it up to them and say like, hey, what do you think about this? And so we were basically doing our own like customer discovery and at the same time, like this sort of market validation to understand how we should position the product we had at the time. So when we launched on Indiegogo, our pitch was we were making a mattress cover to make any bed smart.

• 10:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Ah, got it.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Which is, you know, super product driven, very techie, very different from what we talk about today. It was almost one of the biggest learnings actually that I've had in the process of building Eight Sleep as a brand was that sort of transition between talking about it as a product, like, make your bed smart and more like, hey, achieve sleep fitness. You know, like, what's the benefit in the end for the end user? And not just like, what's this geeky product? Which that worked amazing on Indiegogo because the community definitely responded to it. Yeah.

• 10:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And what do you think drove that like change, right? Was it just talking to people and them telling you like, hey, stop talking about like a smart bed and, and something else? Or was it just over time as you guys kind of refined the pitch? Like, what actually drove that?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was two things. One, it was because that pitch stopped working. Eventually, like ourselves plateaued. You know, post YC, we actually then, um, Mateo and Max moved to China. They built a team there. We started manufacturing. We had to ship all those pre-orders.

• 11:12Anthony Pompliano?

  How long are they living in China?

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, they probably did like four months.

• 11:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, and we hired a team there and, you know, the, the people in our team, um, that started with us five years ago are still with us.

• 11:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  There. So they then ended taking, took over in the process and they came back. But all the while they were in China, I was still in charge of continue to sell, continue to bring in revenue for the company. And it started becoming really hard because we probably went beyond that, like, super early techie adopter that supports something on Indiegogo, right? And so we start struggling like, and that's when you feel like you're pushing this huge boulder up a hill, right? And like, it becomes really hard. And eventually we, um, probably it was, I don't know, a year after we shipped our units, we raced around with Kosla. So Keith came onto our board and when he was back at Kosla Ventures, yes.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  And one of the things, the first things that he told us is that we had to change the positioning of the company. So he had that vision and, and I think it was one of these other turning points for us.

• 12:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Good guy to listen to.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. And, you know, it's hard to take it because when you are so close to your company, you think you know how to talk about it and you've also seen that work in the past. And so the ability to just... Take a step back and look at it from a different side and say, well, maybe that worked. But does that mean that this can actually continue to work in the future? And it's kind of personal, right? It's like someone telling you like, you should change your hair. Like you need to change how you talk about your company.

• 12:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Otherwise you're gonna fail.

• 12:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And did you know exactly what to go change the positioning to? Or did you have to test that a million times?

• 12:51Speaker 02

  So we didn't test it. We went through a very interesting process where we knew that what was happening at the time is we had that product that we launched in credit funding. And then we had launched a smart mattress version. So we were kind of the first in the market to introduce a smart mattress. And what started happening is the smart mattress started selling better than the accessory product, because it was probably an easier concept to grasp, right? Like people buy beds, people go online and they search for a mattress. People don't go online and search for a smart mattress cover. And so we had a very specific place where we could land in terms of like just retail categories. But then people started thinking, well, this is a smart mattress company. Like, oh, this is a company that makes mattresses, but they make them smart.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  And there were a lot of companies building mattresses in the market, many of which at the time wanted to license our technology, wanted to acquire us, right? Because what we were doing was interesting, but we didn't want to get bucketed with them because that's just not who we were. We respect what they do and what they do, they do it really well. But we were born because we believe technology can help people sleep better. We want to use deep tech to help people sleep better.

• 13:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so this is a good segue for a second. Right now, people see it as a mattress. You can buy either the mattress or you can buy what you call the pod, which is basically something that goes over an existing mattress. And people look at it and they're like, oh, this is amazing. I sleep on it. I can make it hot or cold. It's like this thermo regulation, which is a word I learned from you guys. I feel smart now and it makes you sleep better, right? And when I first, I think the very first time I talked to Mateo, he told me, he's like, I'm gonna make it so that you can literally sleep in six hours. But I feel like you got eight. And I was like, you're crazy. And then as I've gotten to know you guys, now I've invested in the business and kind of really understood it. There's this whole vision of the mattress is just a starting point, right? So maybe kind of just.

• 14:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Walk through like if we fast forward 25 years from now, like what is that thing that you're trying to build? So that people kind of understand the difference between a mattress company and then this like sleep fitness company.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So that's why I say we're a sleep fitness company because we are building technology for sleep fitness. And sleep fitness is, you know, how do we make you get you to that state of overall health and wellbeing that is fueled by optimal sleep? So the way that we see it, if we think 25 years from now, we obviously want anyone in the world to be sleeping on a pod on our technology. And what that technology will be able to do is to give you the best recovery possible every single night to the point where it's so optimized that you could potentially sleep six hours and get the same level of recovery you're getting now if you get eight hours. Which is wonderful, right? Because the average American sleeps like six hours and 40 minutes a night. So most people are not making enough time for sleep anyways. So how can we compress it? How do we optimize it? And that can be done through a lot of things around the environment, right?

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Through the temperature regulation, through light noise, oxygen control, et cetera. So there's a lot of things that like physical technology paired with real time data to personalize it around you can achieve. And then there's this other side of it, which is, well, sleep is a core part of health. You're spending a lot of time in bed, even if you're spending six hours every night. What else can we do while you're sleeping to save your life? And that's kind of what someone recently in Twitter said, Eight Sleep has this act one, which is sleep act two is is health. And that really is the long term, like the future of Eight Sleep. Because while you're in bed, there are many things that one we already collect about your health right now. We track seamlessly without you wearing anything, your heart rate at rest, respiratory rate, heart variability.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  We could see with that data, things like arrhythmia, sleep apnea, snoring. So anything, any conditions around like that would show in your respiratory biometrics or your heart rate. But there are other things we can add physically around your bed, around your bed frame to do other things. Can it scan you, your body? Can it do an ultrasound? Can it use radar technology to identify things that may be growing inside your body and your tissues and your muscles, inside your organs? So there's the technology that's being developed by many other companies, not necessarily Eight Sleep, right? But like, it's already there, it's. Proven, we can bring it into the eat sleep ecosystem and start doing health diagnostics or building a blueprint of how your longevity is going, how your health is evolving as you age,

• 17:02Speaker 02

  which is kind of a really new concept for people to think about their beds. And that's why we focus on sleep now, but that is going to happen eventually.

• 17:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I think the two things that, you know, as I've thought more about it, it's like, okay, like, what are you guys doing differently than most other people, right? And I always joke that outside returns come from literally doing something different and being right. We'll see if you're right. I think you are, but we'll see. And there's two different things are one, this belief that you can actually use the dead time. Right? So if I sleep, let's say eight hours a day, right? That's one third of my life. I'm going to end up sleeping. All right. If I'm literally just sleeping, that's not very productive, right? It's productive for me from a health perspective, but there's nothing else happening. What you're essentially saying is like, well, what can we do to you while you're sleeping? That is not disruptive to your sleep. It may actually enhance your sleep and also can provide other value. So this is the whole idea of can we scan your body?

• 17:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Can we, you know, do certain things that are health related? That doesn't require you anything other than, hey, go to sleep, but we'll provide all of this other kind of output. The second thing is in order to do that, you guys are thinking about kind of sleep environment, not as the bed, right? Most people think of it as just a physical bed that you lay on. Maybe they get really crazy and they think about like, oh, I should have some like blackout blinds to make it dark. Right? But like, that's pretty much the extent. And maybe like the 401 level college course is like, hey, have like some music or something to go to sleep to. Right? But there's just really not that much. What you guys are really thinking about is everything from, you know, the oxygen in the room. Right? And so when you start to think about like the nuance and kind of the intricacies of that, you start to say like, well, what would it almost be like an elite athlete?

• 18:38Anthony Pompliano?

  If you were going to put them into an environment and say, this is the absolute perfect environment for full recovery, so that you can compete at the highest level with your physical performance. Well, there's literally what hyperbaric chambers, there's, you know, oxygen injections, like all kinds of crazy stuff that happens. But that is so expensive and so hard for anyone to replicate at home.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:00Anthony Pompliano?

  If you can commoditize that and then bring it to a kind of a mass consumer audience.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 19:03Anthony Pompliano?

  And to me, like, if that happens, you literally change the way that humans are productive because you can literally drastically increase their output when they're awake.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the bet. Exactly. That's the bet is like people who embrace eight sleep right now are because they want to improve their performance. Whatever they do, there's a lot of pro athletes that sleep on it, a lot of celebrities and CEOs and investors, but it's more than that, right? It's like, there are a lot of, say, average people who are looking to feel better during the day. And that they've come to understand that sleep is important for that. And eventually what eight sleep as a brand is building is a movement where how do we bring that same level of like knowledge and cautiousness around sleep to other people who may not realize yet that sleep is that important? How do we educate them? How do we bring them to join this movement?

• 19:52Speaker 02

  And eventually they will embrace our technology and that technology will give them great recovery and eventually could save their lives.

• 19:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and and it's pretty crazy when you start to think about this whole idea of like scanning the body, right? And you could literally say, hey, uh, there's something wrong. You should go get it checked out, right? And then doctors can start to use this information, like all that kind of stuff. All right, how the hell have you guys built this brand, right? So I think that most people, at least on Twitter, have heard of eight sleep. You have a good, fast-growing business, but you're not some incumbent that's got, you know, multiple billions of dollars to deploy from a marketing campaign every year. How do you kind of punch so far above your weight? Like, how have you guys done this?

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we go back to that story where it was, I don't know, 2017, 2018, I get lost in the timeline. But we bring in Cozlo Ventures, we bring in Keith, he joins our board and he says, you need to reposition the business. And I I go back to that point because that determines so much of what we do now as a brand. We went through this repositioning exercise with this approach that is this sort of like DNA-based approach where you go and look back inside the company and you look at why you started. Now, there are many theories out there and like, how do you position a brand? How do you build that? And then maybe the ones that go and test it and go. And find the open white spaces in markets and they put in different sitting statements in front of customers and they ask for feedback, right?

• 21:16Speaker 02

  For us, it was from the inside out. It wasn't from the outside in. And I think that has a lot of value. I really like that. I think that's very authentic. And so especially when you are a business that is still guided by the founders, that makes so much sense because there's a reason why these founders took the bet of starting that business. And so there must be something that's really strong within them of like, why they want to build this company. So what really came out of that exercise for us is Mateo's original kind of vision of what sleep could be and why technology can be valuable for sleep, which you just summarized, right? It's like the ability to use technology to personalize everything around the environment, what that means for sleep. So you could sleep better, you could be fully optimized, and that would mean better recovery.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  And because he had this past as an athlete himself, when he was young, he was a competitive ski racer, competitive tennis player, he was a race car driver. There's always been this sort of a bit of like performance athletic edge to how he has built the culture of the company. Not necessarily a company for athletes. It's just the the mindset of like thinking like an athlete, a person who always wants to be better, who invests in their body, who takes care of themselves, right? So with all of those thoughts in mind, then we came up with the category of sleep fitness. We defined that what we're actually building was not really something in just like the sleep space in general, which, you know, if you look at that space, there could be a lot of companies in bedding, mattresses, pharmaceuticals and all of those things, a lot of services for sure.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  But that we were in this sort of other space and we wanted to build our own space in the category of sleep fitness. And we we love the idea of building our own category because it makes it really fun to kind of set your own rules. We then embraced that concept and we brought it into everything that we do and how we talk about the company, right? We have a sleep fitness score and we defined what is that, how is it measured? And we work with our scientific advisory board for that and to understand and how to also like bring it into the fundamentals of how actually the science of sleep works. And it took a long time to get to where we are now. Terms of like you said, people on Twitter are knowing about eight sleep. But the biggest things that drove that were our consistency.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Staying very consistent in how we speak about the business. We are a health and wellness company focused on sleep fitness. We use technology to help you sleep better and just staying very on on brand. Right. And like saying the same message everywhere where we could and everywhere we were going to talk about the company. How we were talking about it on our website, how we were talking about our products. And the second is product love, like there's not much you could do. Like if you're building a brand, but people don't love your product. It's not really going to go that far, unfortunately. So you just want to make sure that you're also focused on that as you think about making something people will talk about.

• 24:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and it feels like you've really leaned into this idea that turning the customers into the marketing team. Right. Everybody who sleeps on it, they're screenshotting the app, they're posting it. I see Mateo every morning, he's going and commenting and and kind of being competitive of like, what was your sleep score last night? I know that you've posted many, many times about just like what people are actually doing with it. And you have all these great customer testimonials. How much of that is like you have to tell the customers to do this versus just like literally the product is so good that they love it and they want to go do this.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  At the beginning, when we first launched the pod, which was in 2019, that was the first version of the pod. And that was also another kind of turning point for the company.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  We we didn't have to ask people or we didn't really ask people, but we had some early adopters who loved the product so much that would do it for us. So they were kind of in a way because they had a personal connection to us. And maybe there's some of them were our investors, right? They were kind of those early advocates that really supported us out there. And maybe they had a decent enough following that other people were listening. And then what started happening, which is interesting, and I'm sure many other companies have seen that, is that then other people catch on to that. You know, they see that there may be this influential person talking about it. And so maybe they want to talk about it too, because it says something about who they are. I think that's one of the other very interesting things about building a brand as a movement is like you want to build something that people want to up themselves into.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  They want to be a part of because it says something about who they are and that stuff. Definitely how we think about 8Sleep. Like if you sleep on a pod, it says something about you. It says that you're a certain type of person that wants to achieve certain things, take care of themselves, probably wants to perform better, probably is a little bit competitive, probably is somewhat athletic or into fitness and to health. And so that's why people are so open to share their sleep stats, to say that they sleep on a pod. Because they believe that they're part of something bigger than just the bed they sleep on.

• 25:56Anthony Pompliano?

  It's almost this like identity that they've been able to incorporate literally a physical product, but it's not so much the product itself, it's what the product stands for.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Correct, yeah.

• 26:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, now you supercharge this with, I'll call them marketing stunts, that probably cheapens what actually you guys are doing. The one I want to talk about is during Miami Tech Week, which I don't know what the official Miami Tech Week is at this point. I know there was a bunch of debate about this, but there was a bunch of parties recently. And one of them was at a house on the Venetian Islands. For those that aren't familiar with Miami, it's literally an island that's, I don't know, 30, 40 houses on. And it was in the backyard, which is right up against the water. And we're all there, there's a couple hundred people. And next thing I know, there's a float that floats on over, and it just has a massive like LCD screen. And literally, there's an 8Sleep ad that ends up being on this LCD screen.

• 26:48Anthony Pompliano?

  That was cool. But then later on, there's a photo that starts to circulate on Twitter. And the photo is basically this person who hosted the party has like a neon sign, I forget what it said exactly in their backyard. But you, somebody took a photo with the neon sign, and then behind it is this 8Sleep ad. And it was like this like, you know, great photo that everyone wanted to share and be like, hey, come to Miami, Miami's great, whatever. How does that come about? Like, that is such a good moment. How did you guys do that?

• 27:16Speaker 02

  It was, it was fast. It was one of those ideas that you're just like, Okay, should we do it or not? This is kind of crazy. Does it make sense? Does it distract us? Right? As a startup, you're doing a million things every day and you have bigger fish to fry every day. Or so you think, but it was material. He had this idea. He was just, yeah, like driving around to Vespa in Miami like he does. Cause he's Italian.

• 27:38Anthony Pompliano?

  We'll talk about the Vespa.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  And so he saw floating billboards in the bay and this party was coming and you know, it was kind of this, this big thing. And we knew that there were going to be a lot of interesting people there. And he thought, well, what if could we put a floating billboard in front of someone's like private residence, which is very different than just running them on the bay. And we ran it by the organizer of the party and they said, yeah, do it, do it. Like, don't ask for permission, just do it. And we, we did it and we did it in like 24 hours.

• 28:09Anthony Pompliano?

  But I literally know exactly who said that.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  And so that was the only person that knew that was going to come up.

• 28:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, they were the only person?

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. No one else knew. We're like, we kept it secret.

• 28:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And by the way, this isn't the person who owns the house.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  So we thought about that. We're like, well, is the owner of the house going to get kind of like mad at us? Because we're covering the view, you know, if people want to show of their homes and what view they have, but ended up being fine. People loved it and they remember it.

• 28:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so one of the things I have heard people say before, and I think is fascinating is almost like the reason why you would buy a billboard, right? Just like let's say in Times Square or wherever, it's not actually for the impressions of people in the bill, uh, in Times Square at the moment. It's for the photos that then go online and they get the virality online. That felt almost similar here, right? Is like, hey, there's this thing. It's almost like a, kind of like a party trick, right? Where people are like, oh, look at this thing, you know, whatever. They take a photo and they share it online and that's exactly what happened. My question is, who took the photo? Did you guys get the like the perfect photo?

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Not us. No, I don't know who took that original photo, but yeah, it was interesting. And, and that is the whole point is what you're saying. There's a lot of brands that have done it very successfully where maybe they brand coffee cups. Right? And then people take like a photo of their cup. Like there's so many ways to do it where like, how do you insert yourself into culturally relevant moments? Because the other thing that we thought about is, well, what do we say in that billboard? We are a brand that's done for sleep fitness. I mean, I go to bed every night by a time. We were just talking about it, right? So I sleep my eight to nine hours. I don't stay up late. I probably left that party at like 10 p.m. that night, which was like late for me. So I'm not going to put a billboard there that is going to make you feel guilty for having fun.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Right? So it also has to play into something that's relevant for the crowd without it being like the party pooper brand that's telling you to go to bed now.

• 29:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  So there's a lot of considerations to have.

• 29:53Anthony Pompliano?

  What did it say?

• 29:54Speaker 02

  It said, some nights are worth a late night.

• 29:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Ah.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  So Eight Sleep's kind of giving you this, a lot of people, the party sleep in a pod. So it's giving you permission to stay, hey, stay up late, have fun. Some nights are worth it. How many nights like there's they are going to have?

• 30:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  And you want to make the most of it. And yeah, maybe tomorrow you'll catch up on your sleep fitness.

• 30:10Anthony Pompliano?

  So, uh, one of the first times, uh, Plana, myself, you and Mateo go to dinner. We get, I don't know, about halfway through dinner. I think we met around like seven, seven thirty. And all of a sudden, I don't know Mateo very well at the moment. I don't know you super well at the moment. Uh, but I can just tell like Mateo's getting like, like antsy, right? And I'm like, is he excited about dessert? Like, you know, like what's going on? And then I realized he's literally checking his, he's like, I gotta go because I gotta go to sleep.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And I, it just, it, it was amazing to me of like, people who don't know you guys, I think are like, oh yeah, sleep, what, like whatever. But like, you're very, very regimented, right? You're really serious about this. Uh, you test all of the products, right? Some people may have seen online, like literally, I think there was one where you were like hooked up to a bunch of machines before you went to sleep. And so like, how much of this is just you're building a company that serves yourself versus, oh, we think there's a need in the market? Or are those two things the exact same?

• 31:10Speaker 02

  They're kind of the same. So what was interesting is when I started, like in my early years with Eight Sleep, yeah, I was young. I don't know. I was 24 or 25. And I've always been a good sleeper. So it wasn't something that was solving my problem, right? Like I fall asleep in a second. I sleep pretty well. But the more I started learning about sleep and the science of it, and you know, you read the research and you read all the books and you see it in the data. You realize really how valuable it is, right? And, and you see that if you invest in your sleep. Now it's going to pay huge dividends in the future, not just in how you're feeling today. So you want to make that investment. And so for me, it's also kind of personal and that sounds like it's the best thing I can do to take care of my health. I prefer to have a good night's sleep than working out.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  If I have to sacrifice a workout for a whole week because I need to just get more hours of sleep for that week every single night. That is actually better for you. Sleep should come first. People don't realize that.

• 32:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting. You grew up in Mexico.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, where?

• 32:11Speaker 02

  I grew up in Tijuana.

• 32:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. I can't say it like that, so I'm going to let you say.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Tijuana is okay.

• 32:17Anthony Pompliano?

  For those that don't know, Tijuana is not like the greatest place in the world. You've told me some stories about some pretty crazy stuff, like literally. As a young kid, people are trained to not go certain places. Or hey, here's what happened if gunmen show up. I think one time you told me like people would literally check Twitter to see like where shootings are happening in streets, whatever. What about your childhood? Do you think kind of like prepared you for actually building a company? Right? Because I think what's so fascinating about you and Mateo specifically, I know you two best out of the company. Is neither one of you are from the United States.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:51Anthony Pompliano?

  You both have very kind of distinct and different, yet interesting backgrounds and kind of journeys to starting the business. But when I look and I say, okay, like who are these people? It makes a ton of sense. Right? So like, how do you think about like your childhood coming to the United States and all that in terms of like helping you build a business?

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I grew up in Tijuana for 18 years of my life, so I left when I left for college. And I honestly had a great childhood. I think I was just privileged that I grew up middle class. My dad was an entrepreneur, my mom is a physician. And as I, when I was young, you don't realize when you're young, you know, your parents are kind of taking care of most things. But as you start becoming older and you're a teenager, you want to start going out with your friends, right? You kind of start learning the tricks. And what I'd say is certainly the part of Tijuana I grew up in was was great, was safe, thankfully, knock on wood. Nothing ever happened to my family, but when you start growing up and expanding your horizons within your city. You realize that you always need to be cautious. You learn a lot of these sorts of tricks, right?

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Which I think what then it translates into as an entrepreneur is you become very kind of resourceful. You have to figure shit out all the time.

• 33:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Like what are some of the tricks?

• 33:59Speaker 02

  Well, I think there's, there's things around making things happen, right? When you grow up in a country that certainly is plagued with corruption in general, as it happens in Mexico. There, there's, no is never an answer. There's always a way to get things done, right? And so you learn that.

• 34:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's a way of life.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  It's a way of life.

• 34:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  And, and if you don't operate in that way of life, like you're never going to get things done. And so that just becomes like a nature to you. Where like, there will always be a way for me to figure this out. Who, who else can I talk to? And, and to me, that's something that's so natural now, where like when I'm faced with a problem, I always think, well, there must be another solution. And I really think it comes from growing up in that environment. And obviously you see it in your parents too, right? Because that's the way they operate. That's how the way they build their businesses and everything else. So that is the one. And then the, the other key trick obviously is around like personal safety, which when you then start traveling, when you start living alone as a young woman in many other places, it just, it's also second nature to you because that's how you grew up.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Right from how do you dress with things you carry, showing off, you know, just all of these sorts of things are part of how you live when you live in places like this. And the Kwan has gone through many different waves where, you know, the city has been great and maybe the city has gone through tougher times. And so you just learn to adapt and you change your life as well, which for us, you know, 2020, adapting to just maybe being at home and not going out and not going out to parties, not going out to dinners was normal. Actually, my last year of high school was kind of like that because the city was going through a really tough time. There were a lot of difficult situations with cartels, fighting for territory and whatnot. And so we couldn't really go out to like clubs, you know, you're legally, you could go into Mexico when you're 18, but like we couldn't do it.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  And so you have to get together with your friends at home and you have to be careful which streets you take at night to go get back to your own home because there may be things happening. So you build the sort of resilience and ability to adapt to any circumstance because the world around you is really crazy. It's kind of this magical surrealism that just occurs in, in places like Mexico and a lot of countries in Latin America as well.

• 35:57Anthony Pompliano?

  But it's almost, you know, what's crazy to me is like, it's just, again, Way of life.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  It's a way of life.

• 36:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, I think people, the word cartel in the United States, they think like narcos and what they've seen on television. And they're like, oh, my God, this is like horrendous. And then when you actually learn about it, it's almost like, wait a second, this is almost like a shadow form of the police.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like to some degree, right?

• 36:18Speaker 02

  And it's its own business, right? It's its own operation. It's a business that exists there. Certainly, when you grow up in, in, in Duquan, I remember very clearly when I was a child and my mom would ask, like, there's maybe a new kid in school and maybe like you're becoming friends, like, what do their parents do? And at the beginning, I would think my mom's just kind of being elitist or something, you know? But then I realized that she was doing this out of safety because you don't want to become friendly with anyone who may have any ties to, you know, which there are people like that in the city and they have money and so they end up putting their kids in the good schools and so it happens.

• 36:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And is it, you don't want to become friends with them just because you could get caught up in something associations?

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Exactly. You may be, you know, there were a lot of stories growing up, like you may be at the wrong party. You may be in the wrong home as a kid.

• 37:05Anthony Pompliano?

  If you're a kid and you go to somebody's birthday party, for example, and then all of a sudden there's best situation, yeah. It, it, it's, um, it's just a very different life, right? The other thing is you and Mate are married. Plana and I work together a lot and we over time have learned how to do that well and enjoy it, et cetera. You guys not only work together, you live together in the same house. And the, one of the first things you guys ever told us that I was like, wait, what? Like, how do they do that? Is you actually do your one on ones on Zoom.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:36Anthony Pompliano?

  So I want to pick on that specific thing because I think it is a perfect example of like the way you guys have structured the business, right? And so most people who know anything about remote work know that if you're gonna do remote kind of optimized company, everyone has to act like they're remote. And so usually it's in an office, right? Everyone should be on the computer, don't have, you know, 80% of the meeting in person and then 20% of people calling in. It's kind of this weird thing.

• 38:02Anthony Pompliano?

  But literally you guys are in two different rooms in the same house, right? Doing this. So walk through like how you think about operating the business, uh, being married, also living together. And now everyone goes to remote within a year. Like there's just so many moving parts there and it could be super complex, but it actually feels like you guys have not only navigated it well, but actually have optimized the business, you know, in this new environment.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So before starting Eight Sleep, Mateo and I had worked in a bunch of like things on the weekend. Like we never talked about it. We never said, well, are we the type of people who are going to build a business together? It just happened and we have different skillsets. And so we were just kind of complimenting each other. We were coming up with ideas. It was usually him coming up with ideas because like his brain's just on all the time.

• 38:42Anthony Pompliano?

  As he drives around his Vespa in New York.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he's just like thinking about stuff all the time. Like, what do we do this? Where do we do that?

• 38:47Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that we can make fun of him and he's not here to defend himself.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's like us.

• 38:52Anthony Pompliano?

  I love you, Mateo.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  And, and so we were building things and um, we were just, yeah, having fun. It was like things that were going nowhere. And then eventually he had this idea of Eight Sleep. So when we started the company and I mean, it was, it was him and Max are the co-founder and he invited me. They said, well, do you want to join? It was actually interesting. It was Max who invited me because it was different coming from Max than coming from him. Right?

• 39:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Um, so it was Max who had the conversation with me and said, like, do you want to do this? And we talked about it and everything. So I still remember that. And

• 39:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you appreciate that it was Max or did you?

• 39:22Speaker 02

  I definitely appreciated it because you know, it's, it's hard if it's like, it's the two of them. You, you may, you may not know if it was Mateo pushing to have me on board. Right? And so it was important for me to make sure that Max wanted me on board. That he didn't feel like he was compromising just because

• 39:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep. This was his friend.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  I was there. I was exactly. Um,

• 39:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Trust me. I'm pretty sure they're very happy that you joined.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  And I'm very happy to be with them. And, and that was one of the key things for me to join them actually. And I was very honest with them upfront. I said, I have never done what you're asking me to do. I know I have certain skills to do it and I have a passion for it, but I'm doing it because I trust you because you're trusting me. And if I ever cannot fulfill what we need out of this role, I'll step aside. Alright. So, and, and I talk about this often because I think a lot of founders get caught up in that sort of ego. We're like, I'm the founder. I'm here. I deserve to be in this role and I want to be the chief, whatever. And for us, it's always been this very open, transparent relationship of like, we're not here to take on the role. We're here to build the business and whatever we have to do, like we'll bring in the best people possible to do it. And that has happened many times in the company. But one of the key things that now looking back, I think we did really well, Mateo and I, in terms of bringing our

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Doing this business together, even though we have the relationship, was that we don't think about this company and certainly isn't. It's not a family business. So it's not our family company, right? And that reflects in a few things. First is the fact that even though now we very openly talk about the fact that we are a couple, it wasn't something we made part of the identity of the company early on, right? We didn't want people to just know us because of that. And we also had other co-founders. And so having other people around certainly helped because it wasn't just the two of us. And then lastly, bringing other executives into the business as soon as they were needed and as early as possible. So that at that point, also, one of the things Matta talks a lot about is that it's not,

• 41:15Speaker 02

  there's no distinction between the founders and the executives, other than potentially ownership of the business and like maybe have seat at the board, right? But we should, we're all executives here. We all have a function that we have to fulfill, and we should all be judged in the same way. We shouldn't get special treatment just because you were here earlier or you're the founder. And that, all of those things have certainly helped in terms of professionalizing the relationship Matta and I have, because at the end of the day, he's the CEO and I lead growth and marketing. So he's my boss. I report to him. And so then the other things we started doing was how do we manage our one on ones? How do we manage the conversations when they are easy or they're tough? Which was we're making decisions between the CEO and the head of marketing, right? So as much as we can, just treating it in the same way that he does with everyone else. So you cannot bring those conversations to

• 42:00Speaker 02

  dinner table, because you're not having that conversation with someone else at their dinner table. When you talk to Joe Rondo, who's our head of ops, right? You don't go into his dinner table and start asking him things about work. Obviously, for us, it spills over into many more hours of the day, because we love what we do. We talk about work all the time. But there are certain moments where we try to keep it just separate, because we have to. Otherwise, the relationship would suffer.

• 42:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And I think you guys have said this publicly before. What is the saying, like, on WhatsApp, she's my wife. On Slack, she's my co-founder, right?

• 42:31Speaker 02

  We're separate channels.

• 42:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Separate channels. And it almost is like you're putting yourself in a different mindset, right? In terms of how you're going to talk to somebody. But it feels like that has been really beneficial. Actually made this not only work from a work perspective, but also, um, you know, from a, a relationship standpoint, right? It also like provides this environment that allows you to be husband and wife, not co-founders all the time.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, you know, when you're building a business, your business is everything. So I'm also always honest about that. Like you're probably think, both of us are thinking about business all the time. So you have to think about your relationship too, and like how you maintain that because it's just as important. So they're both going to take work and for us, it's been very beneficial actually to do this together. We always think like, I don't know if we would still be here with the relationship we have if we're not building the company together. Because it's been a lot of years, it's been a lot of ups and downs and that ability to understand each other, right? Like if he needs to take a call, like any second, no matter what we're doing, no matter how important it is for personal life.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  I know exactly why it matters to the business right now. I don't even need to ask. I know what he's going through and he knows the same for me.

• 43:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  And so it's been an asset instead of a liability, even though a lot of people talk about like, oh, you don't want to invest in people who are related and companies that are founded by people who are married, because what if they break up? Actually, there's no plan B for people who are building things together. The whole family is invested in that. There's no, no one else's salary or no one else's company is the backup. That's it. And so you're giving it all.

• 44:05Anthony Pompliano?

  I, uh, work with my wife, obviously, and many of my brothers. And we joke all the time, like literally my brother will walk in the room, we can talk shit to each other, we can go at it. And then two minutes later, he's like, you want to go get lunch? Right? And it's just like, there's, um, there's this like, uh, there's no walking away.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Like no matter what we say to each other or do or whatever, like you're still going to be my brother. And so what ends up happening is you almost like get over the like social awkwardness. And like, when people first come around us and they see it, they're like, oh my God, right? Like, I grew up with these guys, like literally we have fist fought many, many times over the years.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Well, that's another thing too, is that these people know you better than anyone else.

• 44:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  And so I find that to be one of the most challenging parts in a good way. Because with Mateo as my manager, no one knows me better in the world right now than he does.

• 44:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  And so he's able to push my buttons in all the right way, also in the wrong ways, but I find it to be a positive because I want to be challenged. I want to grow. And I can do the same with him. If he's facing a problem, I know what's going through his mind, what he's thinking, what worries him, what concerns him. And so you become a great compliment because you know each other in a personal way, which is something you always want to get to know when you're working with someone, when you're managing someone, when you're developing them. And it's hard to do. Most people won't open up. So you have that already. Like you know your

• 45:28Anthony Pompliano?

  It's just honesty. You can be honest. And I feel like most people aren't honest with each other.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Speaking of honesty, one of the investors that you guys have is Keith Raboy, who by all counts is one of the best investors, probably in history in technology. I can't believe I'm saying this because he might tweet that quote, but he's always honest. He's very direct. And I think that that's off putting to some people, but actually founders that he works with and people who really respect him see that as like one of the superpowers that he has. What is it like working with him? And like, what have you guys learned from him?

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, he was definitely honest. I can definitely think a lot of times in board meetings when he has said things that, you know, it's always respectful. So I appreciate that. But I, what I like about the honesty is similar to what I was describing with your manager knowing you is that it pushes you. It challenges you to think, right? When someone tells you something's really good or something's mediocre and you are able to take that in, in the right way and process it, then you'll come out the other side doing things much better. I think that's what we have seen in our relationship with Keith in the past years, which has have been quite a few. And it, there's been so many times when his feedback has been crucial in terms of just how we're approaching different sides of the business.

• 46:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And it feels like you guys and Keith work so well together because when he's honest, you guys understand that he's being honest because he really cares about the success of the business. Right? It would be easy for somebody to get, forget Keith for a second, just anyone being, you know, honest with them and they get offended.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 47:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And instead it's like, no, actually we're all on the same team here. Right? And so like, we need That honesty, right? You and Mateo have it. You guys have it with Keith, other investors, etc. Last question before we get into the rapid fire is Miami. You guys are here.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Full time. You moved in when? August of last year, September?

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, we started like around a year ago. We started coming here. Yeah. And then permanent move was yeah, like November.

• 47:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, November. One pro, one con of Miami so far.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. There's, there's definitely a lot of pros. I've been loving it. I was worried that I would miss New York, but it's been great. Biggest pro, I definitely have to say the sunshine because I had a lot of issues in New York when like you had gray days and it would definitely affect my mood. And I feel like here I'm just much more energized. I want to do things. I work more, it's just, you know, good or bad, it just gives me more energy. So I really, really appreciate the sunshine that is here in Florida year round. One con, Chinese food. I haven't found really good Chinese food. So I am missing that. And there are a handful, but there are not as many as you would find in New York City.

• 48:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Have you heard about the Chinese food taste test that I did?

• 48:15Speaker 02

  No.

• 48:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I went to, he posted this was fine. Sherwin Pichvar and I had lunch and he ordered a bunch of different Chinese foods. And literally it was like, okay, this is Chinese food location, A, B, C, whatever. And we tried them all. We were trying to figure out what the best one is because nobody knows what is the best Chinese food in Miami. So if you are out there and you know, good Chinese food in Miami, please let us know. I have a whole group of friends that are looking for it.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 48:39Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Three questions, then you get asked me one to finish. Most important book you've ever read?

• 48:45Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  I'd probably say When Breath Becomes Air.

• 48:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, that's a great one.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Because when I read it, my dad had just passed away. And so it just became kind of like. I was young when he passed away and I think it really shaped me and how I think about spending a bit more time with family and like people you love and like the process that people may be going through as they know they're going to die soon. Like it was just this very, it just meant so much to me to read something from that other side and realizing I maybe should have made more questions and had more conversations and wanted to make sure that like that doesn't happen with other people in my life before they leave.

• 49:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's a great answer. I love that book. Uh, second question is your sleep schedule. I usually ask people about their sleep schedule. You said eight to nine hours.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 49:39Anthony Pompliano?

  What else do you do other than sleep on the mattress and pod in terms of trying to get good sleep?

• 49:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it varies. So I don't drink alcohol. And then it varies, kind of the tips and tricks. Maybe sometimes I'll do some CBD melatonin dummies if I'm just like feeling like I cannot unplug in the evening. So I'll do that maybe an hour before I go to bed and it definitely helps relax. I use my phone up until the last second, like I'm in bed. So I, you know, it's hard to tell people not to do it, so I do it. But if you can avoid the TV, I actually find the TV to be much more stimulating. So just, you know, try to turn off the TV 10 minutes before, go to bed, relax, read a book, maybe read on your phone, but just the consumption of like media and shows and news can be very stressful in the evening.

• 50:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then the CBD melatonin is just like, that's kind of like something that's soothing that then puts you to sleep?

• 50:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Uh, third question is aliens. Are you a believer or non-believer?

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Oh God, I'm definitely a believer. I mean, there has to be something else out there in the universe. Come on.

• 50:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Do you think that we'll ever come in contact with them?

• 50:46Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 50:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, see, I think they're, I think they're too far away.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  Either because they're coming here or we're going there. I mean, if we want to go and colonize Mars, like eventually we may meet there. Well, maybe somewhere else.

• 50:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The whole Mars thing, uh, I've said for a long time, like that thing's so big. Like, how do we know if there's water or not, whatever? And now like over the last two or three years, like we've got a helicopter that people are flying there. Like they found some ice. Ice, right? Like they're somehow being able to turn the air into oxygen.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:13Anthony Pompliano?

  There's just, you can see like, oh wait, there's a lot more here than people really realized. And so I'm much more bullish, I think, on Mars colonization than people.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And actually, sleep's gonna be a big challenge on Mars.

• 51:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Cause the day length is different. And so adjusting our circadian cycles to

• 51:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  And Mars is gonna be a challenge. And then there's the other thing of like getting people there. And there's like trying to get people into a state of like sleep. So like only putting you to sleep. So that you make the journey and then like waking you up there. Like there's all these interesting things that they've been studying sleep. NASA has been for a while now and see like it's going to be a challenge. So apparently people who are the night owls are going to be able to adjust better.

• 51:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 51:58Anthony Pompliano?

  The sleeping on the way there is what? It takes probably a couple of days to get there?

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know if a couple or more, but yeah.

• 52:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Or maybe weeks, right? So like, would they like put like drug you to go to sleep? Or just like, hey, sleep, wake up, like screw around in the spaceship?

• 52:14Speaker 02

  But it's hard, right? Because like we are, um, our, our cycle is, is so much determined by the sun. Like we're, we're creatures of nature. And so what happens when you get us out of there? Like you probably have to have some technology, maybe a pod, who knows, that is getting into the cycles of light exposure that you need so that you can get in and out of waking and sleep cycles for the duration of the trip. Um, yeah, there's like a lot of those considerations, but it's interesting. Sleep is one of those unsolved pieces for humans to be able to adapt to Mars. Cause you could bring food, you could do a lot of other things, but how do you make sure that our metabolisms adjust is, is a big one?

• 52:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Eight sleep, sleeping for Mars. They got a new tagline. Uh, what question do you have for me to end this?

• 53:01Speaker 02

  What are you most excited about for this year?

• 53:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Most excited for this year? Um.

• 53:08Anthony Pompliano?

  There's so much. Uh, I would say just spending time with friends and family. Like, I feel like after the last 12 months or so, everyone is just like, dude, this was crazy. Right? And some people still saw their family a little bit. Some saw them not at all. Some people literally like left wherever they lived and moved back home or whatever. So everyone had a different experience, but I think just like getting back to normal a little bit of like, whenever you want to go see somebody, you can, and you don't have to worry about like, oh, is there a flight there? Oh, do I have to wear a mask? Oh, do I have to make sure that I have a vaccination? Or like, like, once we get kind of past all this and it's just more of like, okay, Alex, like, what do you want to do? Do you want to go somewhere? Do you want to see somebody? Like, you can do that and you don't have to worry about the restrictions.

• 53:54Anthony Pompliano?

  I feel like that'll just kind of like, feel like, okay, like, we're past all of this.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:59Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you just get to enjoy life.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  I agree. I just saw my family after a year and a half, so definitely felt that. It's been a while.

• 54:05Anthony Pompliano?

  It's better.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  I went back to the Quanah to visit them. So, yeah, it was.

• 54:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Do they have Eight Sleep pods?

• 54:11Speaker 02

  My sister does because she's in LA.

• 54:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  But my, my mom still lives in Mexico, so she was just asking me for one earlier.

• 54:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, we got mom converting.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  As I was there and I was sleeping in her bed with her and I'm like, this bed sucks. You gotta get a pod.

• 54:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Uh, where can people find you on the internet or find Eight Sleep?

• 54:30Speaker 02

  Twitter. Twitter is definitely the place. Find me. I'm easy to find there and eightsleep.com if you want to know anything about our pod.

• 54:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Go get an Eight Sleep. I sleep on it every night. It's amazing. My brother, actually, I think, yeah, my brother has, uh, one of them for sure. And, uh, the first night he slept on, he sent me a screenshot of the app and it said 100% sleep score. And he was like, like, you know, I'm the best, like, whatever. And I was like, dude, everyone says that the first night. And then he was like, wait, really? So I'm convinced for a while that he wasn't a good sleeper, that it was just like a, uh, a bug in the app, but, uh.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  It, it was just to get you excited the first night.

• 55:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  And then you get into it and then you want to keep up.

• 55:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Then the next night it's 60%. All right. eightsleep.com. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 55:12Anthony Pompliano?

  And I'll do it again in the future.