20VC: Casper Founder Philip Krim on The Right Way To Think About Marketing Channel Diversification, When To Accept Strategic Investors & How To Successfully Build Out Your Exec Team

Philip Krim is the Founder & CEO @ Casper, the global sleep company that launched in 2014 offering perfect mattresses directly to consumers. Since then they have raised over $239m in funding from the likes of NEA, Lerer Hippeau, IVP, Norwest Venture partners and even include Leonardo Di Caprio on their cap table. As for Philip, he is a serial entrepreneur having founded 2 previous startups, launching his first business out of his very own dorm room at the University of Texas. Due to his immense success, he has been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and been awarded a TechCrunch Crunchie award for Best in E-commerce. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Philip made his way into the world of startups and came to launch one of the most successful consumer brands of our day in the form of Casper? 2.) We continuously hear about "the end of retail". What does retail done poorly mean to Philip? How does he perceive the future of retail and retail done right? How does retail fundamentally change the margin structure of an originally online brand like Casper? What does Philip perceive to be the biggest challenge to opening up retail significantly? 3.) Why does Philip think we have seen many online mattress brands struggle over the past year? How has this affected how he operates and executes the plan with Casper? How does Philip think about diversification within customer acquisition channels? How does Philip assess the saturation rate of different distribution channels? 4.) Casper's latest lead investor was a strategic investor, Target. How does Philip think about accepting strategic funds? What was the internal debate and decision-making process? What advice would Philip have to founders contemplating accepting strategic money? How can strategics sometimes have ulterior motives? 5.) Does Philip agree with many former CEOs on the show, the most important role of the CEO is management upscaling? What other functions does Philip consider core? How did Philip think about building out the core of his C-Suite? Does he wish he had done it earlier? What element of the C-Suite was the hardest to hire for? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Philip’s Fave Book: Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Philip on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

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

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  We are back for another Founders Friday here on the 20 Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, as you know, I can be found on Instagram at H Stebbings 1996 with two Bs, and it'd be fantastic to see you there. But to the show today, and I welcome a guest that I've really wanted to have on for a long, long time. He's created one of the world's most successful consumer products of our day, and so I'm thrilled to welcome Philip Krim, founder and CEO at Casper, the global sleep company that launched in 2014, offering perfect mattresses directly to consumers. And since then, they've raised over $239 million in funding from the likes of NEA, Lira Hippo, IVP, Northwest Venture Partners, and even include Leonardo DiCaprio on their cap table. As for Philip, he's a serial entrepreneur, having founded two previous startups, launching his first business out of his very own dorm room at the University of Texas.

• 0:45Harry Stebbings?

  And due to his immense success, he's been profiled in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and been awarded a TechCrunch Crunchy Award for Best in E-Commerce. And I do also want to say a huge thank you to Dennis Phelps at IVP for the intro to Philip's today. I really do so appreciate that. However, before we welcome Philip, thanks to my friends at WePay, let me introduce you to another cool player in the space we love, Big Commerce. Big Commerce offers powerful e-commerce tools that turn shoppers into customers with a range of customizations to serve the needs of fast-growing brand and high-volume businesses. The platform allows companies of all sizes to customize their sites, manage shipping and payments, and list products on the likes of Amazon and Facebook. And you can learn more at bigcommerce.com. And to learn how you can grow your revenue with integrated payments, just like Big Commerce did,

• 1:29Harry Stebbings?

  visit wepay.com/harry. And WePay's got this incredible case study about how another platform, TeamSnap, is working with WePay to make payments its number one revenue stream, more than its subscription business. Again, get that at wepay.com/harry. Now, as a founder or operator, your most important job is also people operations, whether that be hiring execs, developing managers, retaining top talent, and building a high-performing culture. And that's why you need Lattice. Lattice is the number one people management solution for growing companies and helps companies like Asana, Reddit, and Cruise build a really strong company culture. And with Lattice, it's easy to launch 360 reviews, share ongoing feedback, facilitate one-on-ones.

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  Set up goal tracking and even run employee engagement surveys. And Lattice is the only solution that combines performance management and employee engagement. So, operators can make sure top performers are happy. And Lattice is giving away three months of Lattice free to 20 VC listeners. Just go to lattice.com/20vc to receive that offer. That's lattice, L A T T I C E dot com forward slash 20 VC. Build an award winning culture with Lattice, the number one people management solution. However, I'm now thrilled to hand the mic over to Philip Crim, founder and CEO at Casper.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:51Harry Stebbings?

  Philip, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today. Huge thanks to the wonderful Dennis at IVP for the intro, but thank you so much for joining me today, Philip.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me. Very excited.

• 3:01Harry Stebbings?

  Not at all. I'm even more excited, I assure you. But I'd love to get started today by discussing a little bit about you. So, tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups and really come to create the Nike for Sleep in Casper? And what was that aha moment?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Very flattering description. Personally, though, I've always wanted to be in the startup entrepreneur side of the world. And this itch was something I started scratching back in college. When I was a sophomore at the University of Texas, I actually started working on building my first company and have followed that passion ever since.

• 3:30Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely love it. And then tell me, how did that passion then translate into Casper? And what was the desire to change the way we think about sleep?

• 3:37Speaker 02

  So, with Casper, I'm one of five co-founders. Four of us actually met in a coworking space here in New York City where we were working on various ventures. I was working on a mobile marketing startup that helped local businesses generate new leads. And some of my co-founders were also working on kind of a digital e-commerce play in the consignment area. And we all shared a common belief around sleep and how important sleep was. Actually, one of my co-founders, Neil, his dad's a sleep doctor. We had all had varying experiences around buying mattresses and other sleep products. This was also back in 2013, when the rise of Fitbits and Jawbones were really helping people track their sleep and understand their sleep at a much deeper level. And it also was around the time where every week it seemed like new

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Data was coming around, coming out around how impactful sleep was to everything, to creativity, to happiness, to intelligence, et cetera. And we kept coming back to the idea that buying a mattress was still one of the worst consumer experiences in existence. And we ended up having a thesis around it and having a lot of conviction that we could do better. We could help people sleep better by changing the way they think about and buying the products that are critical to getting a great night of sleep. You know, we started with the mattress. That continues to be a large part of our focus, but we always thought about the bedroom holistically and around the variables that influence sleep, including your pillows, your sheets and temperature and light and sound, et cetera.

• 4:57Harry Stebbings?

  And my word, what a journey it's been. And in terms of that buying experience, I want to start today with the news that you'll be opening 200 new Casper stores. But tell me, Philip, from all the headlines we're seeing, you know, the end of retail, the doom and gloom, you've said before that retail done poorly is on the way out. Let's start with that. And what does retail done poorly mean? And why does that necessarily mean it's on the way out?

• 5:19Speaker 02

  You know, this sounds obvious or glib, but retail done poorly means in my mind, not giving the customers what they want. And retail done right is giving customers more than what they want or think they need. And that's what Casper aspires to do. And it really goes back to the founding principles of Casper and what got the founders excited. You know, we loved the idea of a direct to consumer business because it means we could talk to our customers every day and we could leverage that data, that feedback and that love to really build a very unique business and brand. And for us, the direct to consumer model was never about a digital only experience. We always wanted to give customers what they wanted. And in this category, mattresses and sleep products, they are highly considered product

• 6:03Speaker 02

  categories because they make such a big impact on people's lives. And given that, still a lot of people, the actual majority of people, still want to go into a store. They want to touch and feel and learn about these products. And we thought we could create an experience around that that was completely different than anything a consumer had done before, not only in our category, but really we thought about retail even more broadly. And I think that's what we've been able to accomplish with our first endeavor into stores. We now have twenty locations throughout the US and Canada. And they've been doing so well that we're now committed to scaling that to over two hundred stores in the next three years.

• 6:38Harry Stebbings?

  I do have to ask, I'm a bit of a nerd, I have to be honest, if we're totally true. I'm always intrigued by margins and kind of margin changes. From an economics perspective, how does retail fundamentally change maybe the margin structure of your originally D to C business?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  So if you think about the P and L of a retail business versus an online business, there are some different drivers of growth within that business. Online, you have to spend to get traffic, you have to acquire customers through marketing channels. With stores, the storefront themselves are actually doing the brand building and the customer acquisition lift. So instead of spending on marketing, you have to spend on having a storefront and work with a landlord on that front. And so there's a bit of a difference on the P and L there. But what we're seeing is that the stores are having a really great impact to the growth of the business, to the top line. They continue to build awareness about our products and our brand. And the markets where we have stores are actually growing faster than the markets where we don't have stores.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  They're a great acquisition tool because they give a consumer who's online shopping a reason to come into the store and talk to someone and learn about what the right products are and what our philosophy around our product design ethos is. And they have done really well for just giving customers what they want. Our customers, from the day we launched the business on April twenty second, twenty fourteen, were asking us to come try the product, touch the product, feel the product. Every day since we launched the business, we had customers knocking on our door literally to lay on the product. And that's a really important part of this customer journey. And we're really excited to have, I think, locked down a vision for what the stores could do to really create a sense of education, a sense of community, a sense of destination for sleep as wellness. And that's what Casper is hoping to do in the world.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Is really create sleep as the third pillar of wellness, next to exercise, next to healthy eating. Sleeping should be a core part of your consideration and we want Casper to be a part of that journey and really help accelerate that place in the consumer mindset.

• 8:33Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, you mentioned a couple of different elements there from kind of consumer education to the changes in P and L. What elements of opening up retail? Really en masse like you are now with the new plans. What elements are you maybe concerned by or perceived to be significant challenges that you're thinking about a lot?

• 8:48Speaker 02

  I think the element that I'm probably most concerned about is just the level of complexity it brings. And we joke with Casper, we started with a very elegant, simple business model. We had one product line that we took to market through one channel of distribution in one geography, the US. And we've now built an amazingly complex business in that we're operating in multiple geographies. We're in Europe, we're in Canada, we're in the US, and we're operating through multiple channels of distribution. We have our dot com business, but we also have retail stores and we have retail partnerships with folks like Target and Nordstrom's and several others. And so navigating that complexity is something that I'm keeping a very close eye on because it's difficult to do. And it's something where if we get it right, it really does create the next generation of retail experiences

• 9:33Speaker 02

  where a consumer can navigate between online and offline seamlessly. And if we get it wrong, then we create a lot of consumer confusion and it would be bad for the brand and bad for the business. So to me, that's the most important element of how we're scaling the business that we need to get right.

• 9:47Harry Stebbings?

  For sure. In terms of scaling the business there, you also mentioned scaling the product line earlier. I speak to many VCs, they often say that kind of expanding product line and kind of upsell in some ways is symptomatic of not an attractive enough core market. How would you respond to this with the expansion of your product line and kind of that core thinking from maybe the VC perspective?

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Well, so from the VC or investor perspective, the mattress business is a great business to be in. It's a great product category and it has been for decades. And that's why I jokingly comment that if you run into pretty much any private equator, they have a perspective or direct knowledge of the mattress business because they've all owned a piece of it at some point in time. And that's because it's a highly predictable business with really strong consumer demand and the market grows kind of single digit compounded annually over decades. And so it's a fantastic business to be in. We know this year that something like 20 million Americans will buy something over $15 billion worth of mattresses. But then align that with is what we want to do with Casper with the brand and the business. And this really goes back to the founder.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  ...of creating the world's first global sleep brand and sleep is much more than about your mattress. Your mattress is obviously a really critical ingredient to it, but your pillow matters, your sheets matter, your temperature of your sleep environment, your humidity, your dew point, sound, light, all make a big difference to your sleep quality. And we want to be the one stop shop, the end to end brand about helping people get a better night of sleep. And I think our brand has permission to do that. And one thing I don't think Casper gets enough credit for is that we really have an amazing group of truly talented scientists and engineers and designers. They're actually in our San Francisco office, working on bringing next generation of products to market that impacts sleep. And it's a group of about 50 folks, we

• 11:31Speaker 02

  call the Casper Labs program, that really are pushing boundaries about categories that really haven't been rethought of with a very innovative lens in a long time. For example, we created our own weave for our sheets that circulates air at a higher degree than any other sheet we tested. We developed a pillow and pillow design for our pillows that helps pull temperature and heat away from the surface of the pillow. So it sleeps cooler, creates a better sleep environment. And all of our products work really well together. And we learned this from the very beginning in listening to our customers. We could design the mattress that circulates the most air and creates the coolest night's sleep. But if you put someone else's mattress protector or someone else's sheet set on top of that, it would take away from the efficacy of the mattress. And so we very early on committed that we really want to have the full stack of sleep products that

• 12:15Speaker 02

  help you get the best night of sleep possible. These are all great product categories to be in from an investor lens, and they will help us achieve the founder vision of really creating the world's first global sleep brand.

• 12:25Harry Stebbings?

  That's so funny. I was about to ask another kind of often cited concern by investors, which is kind of the lack of product differentiation within the space. But you clearly illustrated that there with the innovation that you're engaging with. So thank you for taking that one off the table. But in terms of the other DC mattress companies, we've seen quite a few struggle recently. I'm intrigued, from your perspective, how do you think about this? And where maybe do you analyze that they've gone wrong? And what takeaways do you have from that?

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a trend that is spot on. We're seeing a lot of our competition kind of lose steam. And I chalk it up to a couple of reasons. And we've seen that really throughout 2018. Which is really why our growth has built this year even faster than our growth last year. Twenty seventeen was a banner year. It was awesome. But Q two in twenty eighteen was stronger than Q two of twenty seventeen. Same with Q one. Q two of twenty eighteen even beat Q one of twenty eighteen. So we've really started to build momentum and hopefully are getting to escape velocity within what has been a very noisy part of the overall category. And I think it's a lesson that I learned in previous businesses where, you know, one was we took a very active approach to diversifying our customer acquisition

• 13:32Speaker 02

  and brand building channels. We were never overly reliant on just Facebook or just Google. In fact, those two channels specifically are a very small part of our mix because we knew the economics were going to get very tough as the space got more and more competitive. And so we saw competitors who did not diversify their business from a customer acquisition or brand building standpoint really suffer as competition has become very strong. I think another area of observation is that oftentimes it takes time for real product innovation and real product quality to become transparent to consumers. So I mentioned the investment that we've made on our product side. We really do believe we have the best products out there, period. Our mattresses are consistently rated the best mattresses out there. Consumer Reports rated Casper the number one brand out there.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  And the reason why is that it takes time to establish ourselves as the real product leaders in the space. And oftentimes a company can launch, talk a lot of game around their product, but not really back that up with either an investment or a quality of product. And we're seeing some of that play out as well. And so we feel really good about where we're positioned. The great news is that the online segment of the overall mattress buying population continues to grow very quickly. It's become a meaningful part of the overall industry and we continue to be the number one market share leader in that space. What's really exciting is we now have meaningful businesses in the offline side, both through our retail doors and through our retail partnerships. And we're going to continue to take meaningful share there. And I think that sets us up to really be the brand

• 14:57Speaker 02

  that is going to continue to drive change in this category, just as we've done over the last four plus years.

• 15:02Harry Stebbings?

  A final element I have to ask. You mentioned the kind of customer acquisition channel diversification there. I'm intrigued. What do you consider to be kind of a healthy ratio between? Organic to paid and how do you think about that balance?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  I think it varies greatly based on businesses, categories and life cycle of a business. So in the beginning, we didn't spend any money on paid advertising. We really helped get the word out about Casper through word of mouth and through press and through content. And that was really effective for us. As the business scales, we now have the ability to invest into building the brand and to getting the word out about Casper. And we have big ambitions about what we want to build for Casper specifically. We want to be material market share owner of this category. And that means we have to invest broadly in order to do that, to make sure that we're educating multiple segments of the mattress buying population. But it really depends on what you want to do with your business.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  If you want to build a small, great lifestyle business that, you know, doesn't have ambitions to really establish a great consumer brand, then you might not need to spend anything on the paid side and you could really build it slowly over time in a very organic fashion. If like Casper, you have very big ambitions and will build a very big brand over time, then investing to do so is what we've decided to do. And we're very fortunate that we have great investors along with us that see our vision and want us to help accelerate our vision.

• 16:23Harry Stebbings?

  You could not have set me up more perfectly for my next question there. Cause I did want to discuss strategic investment. Uh, you had Target lead your latest round. Tell me, strategists are often an issue of debate when it comes to investing for the founders themselves. How did you think about this? And what was that kind of internal decision making around Target and whether that was the right lead?

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Great question. I echo your sentiments that strategists always should be, I think, debated to understand if it's the right fit for the company. And I think part of that debate really is what is the motivation of the strategic? Why would they be making this investment? And we're very lucky to say that Target has been the perfect partner for us. They saw the vision of what Casper wants to create in the world. They saw what we want to do within the wellness landscape. And it actually fit very perfectly for Brian and Kathy's vision for what they want to create with Target. And we've been working very closely with that. And so I think because motivations were completely aligned, because they saw the opportunity that we saw, and because we could help them do more around. This category and do it in a way that's accretive to building Casper and building the

• 17:24Speaker 02

  vision that the founders had for Casper. It's been a perfect partnership and they've been a great strategic partner and we've been very lucky. Of course, that's not always the case with strategics and oftentimes have ulterior motives, but for us it's worked out really great.

• 17:36Harry Stebbings?

  You spoke about ulterior motives there. I'm intrigued, having accepted strategic money and kind of successfully so, what advice would you have for founders who are contemplating accepting strategic money?

• 17:46Speaker 02

  So a lot of times strategic are investing for reasons that are not financially motivated, unlike a VC who usually you know what their motivation is. So, understanding what the motivation is and then what they're looking to solve with the investment, I think is really important. So, sometimes the big company wants to learn technology, IP from the small company and that can work out well if the right commercial agreement's in place, but it could also work out very dangerously. Sometimes the strategic investor wants to learn how the small company operates, but that also can come with sometimes disalignment of interest. And so I really think understanding the motivation from the strategic and then setting up the investment so that interests are as aligned as possible is really important, because when the investment's not

• 18:29Speaker 02

  just about financial motivations, it can often come with strings attached. And sometimes those attachments can play out in odd ways that you might not have intended.

• 18:37Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely, no, I agree with you there. I do have to ask also, we mentioned obviously Target themselves, but I think it's also worthy to discuss the size of the check itself. It was a large round. I'm really interested, how do you think about, when is that right time to go large and really pour fuel on the fire and what you think needs to be in place first?

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Again, I think it varies based on company lifecycle and also on founder vision and ambitions. For us, we obviously were seeing significant product market fit. We really see a path to building a very large company. So for us, a larger slug of capital made sense to really help accelerate our plans across a number of fronts. We were able to accelerate our international ambitions, which kind of checked the box of building the global brand that we want to build. We were able to accelerate our product development initiatives, so we were able to hire more folks for our San Francisco office to really build an incredible pipeline of products that we will be taking to market this year, next year and years to come. It also helped us accelerate our ability to build the brand that we want to build and do so by leveraging some of Target's distribution.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  But building that as our first foray into that channel of distribution for us, where eventually Casper products will be widely available and really help educate consumers that there's a new, better way to shop for a lot of the products that haven't been reinvented in a very long time. So for us, it really was a perfect alignment with where the business was and what the lifecycle was and our ambitions to build a very large company. And we're fortunate to say that the investments we made have paid off in spades. And I think that's why 2018 is such a strong year, even stronger than last year and why the partnership is working out so well. And so it was just the right fit for the company. Taking a large round too early can be dangerous and not taking enough capital late in the game can be too dangerous. And so hopefully this plays out well, but it's a good question that you pose and something we talk a lot about internally and at the board.

• 20:21Harry Stebbings?

  We mentioned the element of the investor base there. I did chat to Dennis at IVP at one of your investors and he discussed the new CFO hire. Tell me, how did you think about this addition to the team and that professionalization at the C-suite financial level? And your thought process around that?

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Dennis is the man and IVP has been a great partner. They let our series B around and we couldn't have asked for better partners for us then. And Dennis is right to highlight how exciting the CFO hire has been for us. So we brought Greg McFarlane on in January of this year and he's already made a tremendous impact on the business. And I have complete confidence will continue to make the right impact on the business for us. Greg has had an amazing career at really Fortune 500 companies. The last 10 years of his career has been as the CFO of public companies. Most recently, he was the CFO of H&R Block, which is a giant multi-channel business, global business at scale. And Greg has really helped us think about what are the right processes? What are the right ways to continue to build this business?

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Both with a front commercial lens as well as a back office lens to make sure that we're scaling effectively and in a bulletproof way. And also with an eye to make sure that we get IPO ready, given his experience on that front.

• 21:32Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, with the benefit of hindsight, would you have made that kind of core CFO hire earlier? I often interview founders and they say, I wish I'd hired a head of talent or head of people earlier. Do you wish you had hired the new CFO earlier in the journey? And what would your kind of advice and thoughts be around that?

• 21:47Speaker 02

  I absolutely wish I had hired Greg and almost all of my leadership team earlier than when we did. You know, the trade off is always at the time, do you find a candidate quickly? Or do you stay patient and find the right candidate? We were in market for a CFO for a good amount of time and it wasn't for a lack of meeting great CFOs that were interested. But we really had a very specific view of who we wanted and the background and the role that they would play within Casper. And Greg has just been a perfect fit on that front. He's had a tremendous impact across the entire business, not just the finance function, although that has been great. And he's just a great operator and that's what we were looking for. And fortunately, that can take a while to find. And so my advice to any founder when they're talking about executive level hires is as soon as you have the inkling

• 22:31Speaker 02

  that you might want to look for that, I would kick off the search and try to get out there as soon as possible. When they find the right hire, they wish they had done it earlier. And so the only way to do that is really to allocate a lot of time to the search and to start it as early as you kind of think you need to be out in market.

• 22:45Harry Stebbings?

  Would you agree with the conventional wisdom that the largest role of the CEO really is management upscaling?

• 22:50Speaker 02

  I think that's one of the main roles of the CEO, certainly building the executive team that allows the business to scale. I think the other bucket is really making sure the business is capitalized for the business plan that you have in mind. But between those two things, I think that's absolutely the core of the CEO role. And I think that's why I continue to spend a significant amount of my team with the executive team. And then if we're running a search for a new addition to the executive team, I definitely plan to allocate a good amount of my time to that. Because getting that cultural fit and getting that skill set fit is so critical to making sure that a business continues to scale, especially if it's a business on a really high growth trajectory.

• 23:27Harry Stebbings?

  I do though want to move into my favorite element though of any episode being the quickfire round. So I say a short statement, Philip, and then you give me your immediate thoughts in about 60 seconds per one. And I'm quite strict. How does that sound?

• 23:38Speaker 02

  That sounds great.

• 23:39Harry Stebbings?

  What motto or quote do you frequently revert back? Back to you, Philip. Mine's ever like, nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Along those lines, I often say like, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want. Meaning every day, it feels like we're out there fighting the good fight and trying to build the company we want to build. There's always circumstances that you want to have improved, or you want to change, or this hire you want to fill. But at the end of the day, you have to go build the business that you want to build with the team that you have.

• 24:06Harry Stebbings?

  What do you know now that you wish you'd known at the beginning of the Casper journey?

• 24:10Speaker 02

  There are so many things that I wish I had learned sooner in my career to help with the Casper journey. I'm not always the most patient of people and patience pays off in a number of different ways. You know, we had mentioned about hiring the right people. Oftentimes, you just want to get a search done because searches can be painful. But you have to stay patient to find the right cultural fit and the right fit for the role that you're looking to fill. I would say the same also goes with investors. Oftentimes, you want to get a fundraising done, or you want to be efficient with your time or focus. But it really is important to get investors on board that have the same vision as you and are fully aligned on what you want to do with the company. And both of those areas and many others are examples of where patience pays off.

• 24:51Harry Stebbings?

  What advice do you commonly hear being given that you disagree with, Philip?

• 24:55Speaker 02

  I guess on the fundraising side, I often disagree with the idea that you need to go out, run a process to get the highest price or valuation. And I think this is another lesson that I've learned in that it's much more important to find the right investors than to optimize just around price. You know, there are a lot of things that go into how you optimize a fundraise. And a lot of people think that it's primarily about economics, and I would say it's primarily not. It's primarily about getting folks that are truly aligned with what you want to do with your company.

• 25:22Harry Stebbings?

  How do you deal with shit hit the fan moments, Philip?

• 25:24Speaker 02

  I would say I am a fairly even keeled person. And so we certainly have those moments quite often. But I think we've developed a culture and a team that doesn't overreact. We try to stay even keeled, we try to stay as rational as possible and make sure that we just find a solution to whatever the problem is that we're facing.

• 25:45Harry Stebbings?

  What's the favorite book and why, Philip?

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Well, again, this isn't a favorite. I'm reading the Elizabeth Holmes story right now, and that one's just shocking.

• 25:52Harry Stebbings?

  Horror show, isn't it? Yeah, I read that.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  And then before that, I think I read that Elon Musk, which is amazing. I mean, Elon's such a fascinating guy. And to see him in the news now is just interesting, given the biography that I read about him. And he's an amazing entrepreneur and a huge visionary and big thinker. And it's just interesting to see that continue to play out now that he's in the the public domain.

• 26:12Harry Stebbings?

  Tell me, Philip, what's the next five years for you and for Casper? And what does that roadmap look like?

• 26:17Speaker 02

  So I think the next five years for myself and Casper are the same in that I want to build, and I believe Casper will become a truly global brand, a brand that you generously echoed in the same vein as Nike or Under Armour. These are brands that have really been catalysts to changes in the consumer mindset and landscape. And I think Casper will do that on a global basis. And so we're going to continue to build the business. We're going to continue to make sure that our products are accessible to consumers all over the world. And coupled with great experiences and great efficacy around helping the world sleep better.

• 26:49Harry Stebbings?

  Philip, it really has been such a pleasure. As I said, I heard so many great things from your investors. So thank you so much for joining me today.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

• 26:59Harry Stebbings?

  My word, what a journey it has been for Casper. And if you'd like to see more from Philip, you can find him on Twitter at P Krim. I do want to say a huge thank you to him for giving up the time today to be on the show. I really do so appreciate that. And Dennis at IVP, I so appreciate the intro. Really is very kind of you. And if you'd like to see more from us behind the scenes here at the 20 Minute VC, you can on Instagram at H Stebbings 1996 with two Bs. It'd be great to see you there. However, before we leave you today, thanks to my friends at WePay. Let me introduce you to another cool player in the space we love, Big Commerce. Big Commerce offers powerful e-commerce tools that turn shoppers into customers with a range of customizations to serve the needs of fast-growing brand and high-volume businesses. The platform allows companies of all sizes to customize their sites,

• 27:42Harry Stebbings?

  manage shipping and payments, and list products on the likes of Amazon and Facebook. And you can learn more at bigcommerce.com. And to learn how you can grow your revenue with integrated payments, just like Big Commerce did, visit wepay.com/harry. And WePay's got this incredible case study about how another platform, TeamSnap, is working with WePay to make payments. It's number one revenue. Stream, more than its subscription business. Again, get that at wepay.com/harry. Now, as a founder or operator, your most important job is also people operations, whether that be hiring execs, developing managers, retaining top talent, and building a high-performing culture. And that's why you need Lattice. Lattice is the number one people management solution for growing companies and helps companies like Asana, Reddit, and Cruise build a really strong company culture.

• 28:27Harry Stebbings?

  And with Lattice, it's easy to launch 360 reviews, share ongoing feedback, facilitate one-on-ones, set up goal tracking, and even run employee engagement surveys. And Lattice is the only solution that combines performance management and employee engagement, so operators can make sure top performers are happy. And Lattice is giving away three months of Lattice free to 20 VC listeners. Just go to lattice.com/20vc to receive that offer. That's lattice, L-A-T-T-I-C-E dot com forward slash two zero VC. Build an award-winning culture with Lattice, the number one people management solution. I cannot thank you enough for your support, and I can't wait to bring you a set of exceptional episodes next week.