In this episode, we talk to Matt Mullenax, the Founder & CEO of Huron a men's grooming brand.
In this episode, we talk to Matt Mullenax, the Founder & CEO of Huron a men's grooming brand. After spending time at Bonobos in the early days, Matt witnessed first-hand what it meant to build a brand around a customer and fell in love with dtc business models. Huron was built with the same mentality. Hear him talk about his experiences, why he founded Huron, and how he built such an iconic brand.
00:01
The DTC Growth Show
Phil 00:03
Matt welcome and thanks for taking the time to sit down with me and just have a live conversation about you know all the things Huron and and your journey. For everyone listening Matt is the Founderer and CEO of Huron really, really cool direct to consumer brand in the men's personal care space. Started off in skincare recently entered the haircare space. I'm sure Matt could talk a lot more about Huron n in a much better way than I ever could. So maybe, to kick things off, Matt, you want to share a little bit about yourself?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 00:34
Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, happy to kind of give you the not so interesting background on me personally, and how that dovetails into probably the more interesting here on backstory. But so quickly, I'm originally from Ohio, grew up in Cincinnati, went on East for undergrad, graduated in 2008. pretended to be an investment banker for a few months at Morgan Stanley shortly thereafter, quickly realized I was arguably the worst investment banking analyst maybe to evergraze planet Earth. So kind of started looking elsewhere on what might be a little bit better fit for me, ended up kind of serendipitously meeting the guys at bonobos, when they're a team of four, four or five. So join that team pretty early on in December 2008. as kind of a finance and ops ninja slash packed pants and boxes for many hours a day. Yeah, it was a it was a super cool experience. And he was kind of reflecting on that. That was certainly way before the traditional, as we know, at DTC world, right. You know, we kind of summarize bonobos It was a company that sold men's pants online. So, you know, the DTC acronym is much easier and familiar these days. So a few years of bonobos ended up moving to Chicago went back into banking. So I spent some time at UBS in Chicago on their m&a group, and then spent three years at a consumer private equity firm. So kind of the opposite table, a bit of a bonobos, where we were looking at and kind of evaluating early stage consumer businesses. And kind of professionally, that's kind of where I was, you know, you know, the broader personal care category kind of peaked an interest to spend three years at, at this fund went out of capital, and ended up migrating west to grad school at Stanford, which is kind of really where we started to kind of turn the dial up a little bit on on here on And really, the thought for me was twofold. One, kind of going back to what I was saying just a few seconds ago, so it would No, no, we had invested or at least looked at a number of investments kind of in and around the broader personal care category, but largely on the on the female side. So we looked at really cool companies like a drunk elephant and a number of others. And I was thinking, you know, there's so many cool brands out there, amazing messaging, super cool coffee, great Founderer story, packaging, etc. And I'm still a mid 20, something who's buying my neon green bodywash? From CVS, right. So they're just felt like an inherent disconnect. So professionally, there was always a little bit of an intrigue there, I think more relevant more personally, is I was just a kid that grew up with bad skin. Right. So I had, you know, you name it at your local grocery store, I tried it. And then kind of went through the dermatologist world tried seemingly everything that was there to offer, nothing really worked. And then while I was out west for business school, I, you know, kind of wound up walking into a quote unquote, premium skincare store and bought a face wash that I'd probably be embarrassed this day to say what I paid for that. But for whatever reason, that product really resonated, and my skin responded positively. And it was kind of like an aha moment. But I didn't know anyone, personally, that would have kind of jive with that overall experience. So the thought was, could you create some of these products that would rival these more higher end products from an efficacy perspective, but bring them down a little bit more to the masses, right, have a relatable tone of copy, just speak to these products in a way that made sense. So that was always kind of like the longer tail vision, I think, tactically what we did to even see if there was an opportunity, we actually launched a fake brand in q1 of 18, which was super interesting. So we bought a URL, we put up a really crappy site on Wix, and we just kind of sat back and learned. So we ran social campaigns all across the Midwest, kind of ranging and testing coffee from, you know, clean men's skincare to all natural men's skincare, organic and skincare to kind of learn from the top of the funnel side what was working, but then understanding what kind of products that this customer would be shopping for. And I think that was wildly informative to me. Also, someone being incredibly risk averse, like I wanted that third party validation that this hunch that I had for you know, potential company actually would make sense and actually had a little bit of runway so we did that over the course of q1 of a team had a lot of success from that which was which was awesome. So I ended up moving from SF to New York to kind of pursue this full time and when I landed in New York you know, supposed to meet you know, a number of folks for coffee kind of networking, whatnot, but ended up meeting Gentlemen, Matt would eventually be my business partner co Founderer. But his background is he spent upwards of 20 years in product development at Estee Lauder. So building products for the lab series of the world, and Tom Ford, men's and a number of different fragrance brands. And I think, well, I had kind of touched on so many other facets of the business, whether it be kind of performance marketing, or finance and Ops, in analytics, you know, Matt was the guy who knew how to make the product. And that was certainly not my skill set. So I think, you know, we had certainly complementary skill sets from from the get go, but a shared vision around what kind of this new age brand could be for the guy who was still trying to figure out the bathroom. So over the course of 2018, and 2019, we built products, raise some money, we worked on the creative development, with an agency here in New York called gin lane, which is now pattern brands. And then we eventually launched last July, so July 29, of 2019 10:42am. Eastern, but who's counting? And then, you know, we were kind of off to the races from there.
Phil 06:00
Okay, super cool. I love I love the overview. Really, really interesting journey. And I almost want to start back at the beginning, and kind of just dig into like, some of your thought process and learnings and experiences at at the top of it. And you know, I think Bona Bona is it Bono boast or But no,
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 06:18
how do you pronounce it? No, no, both?
Phil 06:21
But no, both? Okay, no, I get it wrong all the time. But they were often with me super early. Within this category. I even remember in like the early 2000 10s, being in San Francisco on a trip and jumping into a store of a nova store and I went in, you actually couldn't take a product home, you could only buy it, and they ship it to and I was like, wow, these guys are living in the future. And this makes so much sense. And, you know, fast forward. Of course, Andy, who's the Founderer there has had, you know, immense success and really was a pioneer in this space. So when you think about that company, in your experiences in that kind of every man role, you know, as you put it, what did you learn? Like, what were some of the takeaways that may be of aid, you know, today as you're on?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 07:06
Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost, kind of unequivocally is this notion of the consumers? Star, right? I mean, I think whether you were a finance and ops analyst, which is what I was at bonobos, or you were a production member, or Andy, or a customer service, Ninja, I mean, the thought was always what can we do to provide a 12 out of 10 experience, and I think for the longest time, but Novus has been kind of one of the golden standard type companies from, from an NPS score perspective. And I think that just becomes as a direct result of so much passion and effort and dedication towards maximizing overall CX, whether it's on site, whether it's if you have an issue, whether it's return. I mean, we used to have customers who would like vacation to New York and spend an entire day at our offices, which was an interesting way of spending your vacation, but one nonetheless. And I think you know, that that was certainly a point of difference. And I think one of the things that we've tried to channel and hear on is, you know, how do we make what is otherwise a fairly commoditized purchase, which is purchasing bodywash into actually an experience, right, which is, what can we do to make this experience from start to finish a 12? out of 10? What can we do on the retention side? What can we do if there's a fumble? on our end, if there's a fumble on the carrier end, you know, all of that kind of reflects back up to us as a brand. So, you know, we tried to pressure test so many different areas of the overall buying and consumer journey, and thinking about what can we do, you know, overall, create the best possible experience that a customer could have, you know, with your own.
Phil 08:42
And so when you think about that 12 out of 10 experience like that articulation, maybe you could break down some like the key elements that stand out that help bring that that to life or maybe a framework that you have as to how you look at it.
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 08:56
Good question. So, our Director of retention, and CX, one of the things we put together a few weeks ago, just kind of reflecting back on, you know, how the first year was for us, so I guess, more than a few weeks ago. But just think about, like, how would you distill that framework? And how do we kind of approach these conversations in these relationships on a day to day basis? And I think one of the things we we came up with, we were pretty excited about is this notion of a jet framework where J's judgment is empathy T is trust, trusting your team members to exhibit really good judgment on hand, how to handle these sometimes one off scenarios, empathy, so meeting the customer where he or she is that if you have a really poor experience, like how can we empathize with that and, you know, come down to their level and kind of understand the frustrations, and really tangible point. And then trust is trusting one another to make really good judgment to make really empathetic decisions, but then reinstalling that trust with the customer. So kind of that framework really kind of summarizes how we approach each individual customers. service ticket that we get or each community inbound we get on our Slack channel or email, SMS response that we receive, you know, that's kind of the frame of mind that we're in when we're, you know, in discussions or engaging with our base.
Phil 10:16
How do you balance kind of systemising, you know, responses to common problems with still applying like a strong degree of judgment and trust with your team, and giving them the or empowering them to apply, you know, solutions to challenges in an empathetic way. And I think it's this challenging balances, maybe like a CEO where you want to operationalize things as much as possible, but not everything can be perfectly systemized. And how do you think about balancing those things?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 10:44
Yeah, I mean, I think CX is an interesting area of the business to explore, because there oftentimes isn't a blueprint. Right. You know, certainly there is for some results, you know, a, you know, the order this order says it left the warehouse two weeks ago, but I haven't received the product. So they're certainly kind of the vanilla answers that we can provide and still providing great value, but but maybe, answers and inquiries that require a little less intellectual horsepower, I think where you exhibit the really good judgment is for me to say to our team, like, I defer to us to what's right, right, whether it's refunding an order and overnighting it one, or copying a product to a really great customer or copying a product to someone who offered really, really great feedback, I think those are for us low cost initiatives to really create a lasting impression. Again, what would otherwise be in a category that could be viewed as commoditized. Right. And I think for, for much of the audience that we're targeting, you know, this is a subset of guys who might have been 20 year dub for men buyers, right, like Namie, another product that guy has purchased for 20 years consecutively, this has become such an autopilot purchase that our biggest obstacles, our biggest opportunity, which is how do you effectuate consumer behavior change? And I think creating that type of experience, surprise and delight, what have you, really is that opportunity to kind of say, like, wow, this brand kind of gets it. And I really like their product, I'm willing to make the switch. And I think that's kind of the spark that we're looking for.
Phil 12:18
And makes a lot of sense. And it's one of those things that I feel like, you know, you can bring to life in a much more clear way for existing customers. How do you think about bringing to life you know, kind of the the brand around the surprise and delight that you deliver to customers? for maybe someone who's never interacted with hear on and maybe they're used to going to, you know, CVS or Walgreens or wherever they pick up their, you know, their body wash? They're just hearing about here on but they don't they don't know that you guys, you know, take these unique approaches. How do you how do you think about incorporating that at the top of the funnel?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 12:50
Yeah, it's a good point. And I think, you know, what would be antithetical to that is to kind of scream that from the mountaintops. Right? It's a really good service. That's more of kind of like a back end experience. So I think the thought is kind of twofold. One is we invested a lot into copy, not necessarily like financial investment, but everything that goes out kind of from us into the into the ether, has really been pretty thoroughly vetted. From a copy standpoint, how do we sound as a brand? How relatable are we? I think a lot of brands tend to use authenticity, and the broader DTC landscape, I personally don't really like that word. I'm more of a proponent of relatable, which is like, hey, we've been in your shoes. Like, I've watched, I've wandered my fair share of CVS and Walgreens aisles looking for products that work, but like didn't really find one, like, here's why we're confident that we could be that brand for you. And I think that first person touchpoint actually resonates quite well. And then secondly, is the opportunity, opportunity to educate, right? So having someone like my partner, Matt, kind of lead our product efforts. I mean, we're dealing with someone who built some of the largest brands in the world, especially kind of in the broader beauty space. So having that, you know, that knowledge base, that skill set on our roster is incredibly impactful. And I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to kind of speak from a point of authority, but have that voice come through as a persona who's like your older brother, right, which is like slightly more experienced than you maybe slightly cooler but not necessarily a no at all, which is not what we want to come across as, but someone that you would look up to and turn to to say had a question for x, like we hoped to be that brand, but that can provide that answer.
Phil 14:34
Really interesting, great, great way of thinking about it. Before I jumped forward, and I want to actually spend some time a little bit later to dive into how how you actually build products and how you think about, you know, and how I guess your co Founderer leads that but before we get there, one thing I thought that stuck out stuck out when I was kind of looking into your background was how you actually went from from bonobos, where you learn some really interesting stuff that clearly has been, you're applying in a really meaningful To hear on but you know, you took us into finance. I'm curious kind of why you took that approach. And and were there things you learnt there, outside of kind of identifying the market opportunity that you highlighted earlier that have influenced, you know, your journey building this company?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 15:15
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, it was just kind of pattern recognition across professional mentors I had at the time, right. So, you know, as I mentioned, kind of earlier on kind of, from Ohio, originally, my mom's a schoolteacher, recently retired, and my dad worked at Delta for almost 35 years. So when it came to this mythical world of business, didn't have a lot of people to kind of turn to. So I looked at folks like Andy Dunn, the Founderer of bonobos, and kind of said, you know, what was Andy's career path to get him to where he was at the time it was consulting, or banking, and then you spend some time in investing, and then maybe go back to grad school, and then hopefully launch your own business. And as I kind of looked around the folks within I, with whom I admired kind of, in my small circle at the time, that was kind of like the common the common background, the common set of skill sets. So I was like, cool, like, I guess this is the track that I'm supposed to be on. So you know, that was kind of the impetus was, you know, go back kind of understand and get a financial background, to understand the X's and O's and things and then hopefully leverage that in a few years to propel yourself maybe to an investor role and and maybe have the opportunity to go to grad school, and then you would have the skill set to go launch your own business now is that the only way to become an entrepreneur like obviously not, it was just kind of the, you know, the personas or the archetypes that I had around me immediately that I thought were obviously really good business models.
Phil 16:40
Got it really interesting. It's always interesting to to see the pads an entrepreneur takes because kind of to your point, there is no right way or standard way. There's so many different ways. And I think this, this kind of path you've gone down is, is quite is quite interesting, and I'm sure has provided a lot of, you know, great experience to help you avoid a lot of mistakes. That may be first time Founderers typically make sure I mean,
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 17:06
that's probably a that's a whole separate conversation, because I feel like I've made no, no few of those, no shortage of those. But I think you know, even going back to the broader entrepreneurship conversation, I mean, there are a million reasons to say no, here's why I shouldn't do it. Right. Yeah. I think, you know, I try and tell people be the voice of Yes, like, be your own cheerleader. You know, I think what I've learned along this journey is a, you learn a ton B, the broader network is incredibly supportive, right? I'm very fortunate to have a bunch of different Founderer friends that I can call on to ask questions about supply chain, or hiring or fundraising, etc. And I think there's just kind of this broader wanting this and willingness to help. And, you know, I think this experience for me personally, has been incredibly fruitful. And I can't think of another job that I've had to date, or I've learned so much in short, such a short period of time. So you know, as I try to encourage people, you know, yes, there will always be reasons to say now's not the right time, for XYZ reasons. But if you can be your own voice of Yes, then you should take the leap.
Phil 18:11
Love that be the voice of Yes, I'm going to be quoting that on twitter at some point. Love that. One thing that has always stood out from here on from from kind of, you know, a seat back or from afar and looking at how you've built the brand has been the high degree of product quality. And people talk about that, it's very clear that here on is an excellent product. Can you walk us through how you how you and your co Founderer, think about product? How you have to think about I guess, product development, because I think we live in a world where it's pretty easy to like, create a low quality product is not very easy to create something that is actually incredible when you purchase it. How do you think about that?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 18:51
Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. I mean, I think, an early stage DTC, there was an opportunity to maybe slide by with a really beautiful website, a great cx really cool branding in a very mediocre product. I think we live in a world today where consumer expectations are far greater than what they were. So for us, I mean, product was something we wanted to lead with, right, I think that was kind of the the straw that broke the camel's back for me, which was I would have never been exposed to kind of broader quote unquote, prestige skincare, unless I had gone through some of these trials and tribulations, right. So it wasn't until I explored some of these more efficacious and coincidentally higher ingredient from a price point perspective products that like my skin responded positively. So for us, Matt and I have always opted into what can we do to make these products as multi dimensional as possible? What can we do to make these products as efficacious as possible? And I think for us, it was never really, you know, obviously there there was some sense of speed to market but I think speed to market and more tricky. There's no industry is you know, the SAS businesses the world etc, you just get get an MVP out and iterate and test etc, right? For us, we had such a high bar of what it meant to put great product into the market. You know, we I mean, we ended up delaying launch by a number of months, because we felt that it was imperative to put products in the market that we were massive fans of and that we were using every day. Because if we weren't, how could we honestly speak to our consumer? And tell that story? Right? It's like, well, if you don't even believe in these products, how are we supposed to, so the amount of time and effort in development that went into these products, you know, was was quite lengthy, and very few expenses, and a lot of time were spared. And a lot of that comes from Matt, his background is just being incredibly tough on on products. And we're very fortunate to work with a great group of product developers, chemists, labs, etc, who believed in our vision kind of early on, and we're willing to take a chance on a on a pre launch business to help create great products.
Phil 21:09
super interesting, you know, what, I'd love to get tactical in some of these conversations. And so maybe a question that comes to my mind is, you know, what is the product development cycle look like? Especially, you know, particularly in the category that you plan.
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 21:22
So, this is all news to me, as of to go longer than that. But basically, the way it starts out is almost like a term paper, like you write a thesis around what you want this product to be, what the claims you want, what the benefits you want, how you want the skin to feel, how do you want the product to perform, what the fragrance might be, what the approximate, you know, cost per ounce may be etc. So you kind of do some monkey math on the costing exercise, you lay out pages and pages of, you know, the sensorial effect, which for us is really, really important, the claims, benefits, etc. You know, you pass that over to the lab, you review, and then you really start iterating on product. And I think for us, again, kind of another tip of the cap term manufacturing partners, you know, a lot of brands will get, you know, a handful of iterations from these manufacturers, right, you know, maybe you get it, you know, maybe the the the manufacturing partner is able to nail it by the third or fourth iteration. I mean, we were in the 40s on some of our iterations, where we're tweaking levels of fragrance by point 00 5%. So So I mean, when you say we kind of get into the nitty gritty of things, you know, we we've kind of firmly stand by it. And there is no experience like listening to my partner, Matt describe fragrance is like unworldly. He's like, you know, after like three hours of where the fragrance is a little scratchy, I'm like, I have no idea what that means. But I'm taking your word for it. But again, long story short, you know, there's so much emphasis that went into the product into the creative into the tone of voice, etc, to not bring a plus plus product into the market would be a disservice to all those other factors in the business.
Phil 23:08
Yeah, totally. And I think you nail it on the head there. It's just like businesses, a system and each piece of that system needs to lift each other up. And when you have a weak link, you need to address that weak link, because it can bring down all these other incredible pieces that you've put together and, and product certainly sits at the center.
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 23:25
Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right.
Phil 23:27
I think one thing I also take away is just like that expertise that your co Founderer has, and how probably how many mistakes you're avoiding because of his expertise and in specifically in the fragrance, space and, and building kind of personal care products. So maybe let's shift to talking about teams and building out a team. You know, I think it provides some interesting insight on how you partnered with your co Founderer. But as you build out your team, maybe what does it look like today? And how do you think about talent acquisition and filling the right folks in the right roles.
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 24:01
So today, we're we were made a small team. So we're only three full time we hired our first employee, Johnny, in March of this year. And he was kind of had the the quote unquote, athlete background that we were looking for. He spent a few years in finance and actually worked for a larger New York based DTC company after that. So I think kind of channeling back earlier but novas days is you find smart, driven, motivated people and throw them into roles and let them figure it out. Right now, obviously, you provide the guidance, the direction, the help when necessary. But you you give a lot of responsibility to those folks and you let them go succeed. And I think that's kind of our mentality where, you know, we have the capability of a small team to do a number of different things. We're very fortunate to work with a great number of partners, not just on the manufacturing side, but we have an amazing creative designer. We have a One developer that are kind of both freelance. So you know, supply chain fulfillment, etc, kind of the list goes on. And the way that we've kind of approached partnerships in general and working with these folks, whether freelancers or actual firms or agencies, is we vet these folks incredibly thoroughly. And then we kind of invite them inside of the brand walls, right, one of the first things I ask when we onboard, a new partner is I will never call you a vendor, like, Don't ever refer to us as a client. Because it's so much more than that. That's me as a very transactional relationship, where you're here to do X, not y, like, Don't tell me anything else. Like no as our, you know, paid social agency, like, we're going to tell you everything that's happening, what we're going to tell you what's happening in the development process timetables for X or Y. Because that's important buy in, because we want you to think proactively on our behalf, as we're thinking about the social strategy, etc. And I think we've really benefited from that type of mindset. And kind of bringing folks inside the brand as as a true partner, and not a vendor client relationship. Right. So I think, you know, outside of that, we are looking to grow the team, we will probably bring on a number of folks in the coming months as we continue to grow and scale, which is exciting. But we aren't just going to go hire 50 people over the course of 2021 and then cut half of them six months. Right, it's an intentional growth process around what do we need? Where are we not the best? What areas? Do we need kind of some outside help? And then who's the right fit? You know, so that's kind of the, you know, the hiring thoughts for the next few months?
Phil 26:42
What are some of the functions that you're looking to build out?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 26:47
Good question. I mean, I think, you know, for us customer experience will always be something that, regardless of where you fall within the hierarchical structure, you will have a hand in when you join here on because I would argue that's the most important function of the business, right? It's not the VP of growth. It's not the head of this. It's literally CX, because you're on the front lines. And so much of that informs so many other facets of the business. It's actually surprisingly quantitative. I was talking to Johnny about that earlier this week. You know, a lot of CS is pattern recognition, hey, what are we hearing from customers? How can we use that data to inform our website copy, or what we're doing on organic, social or even paid. So I think cx will continue to be an area of focus for ours, going forward, infinitely. I think areas where we will also have to supplement is probably on the growth side, thinking about how we continue to explore other channels, how we continue to grow kind of our presence, both organically and through other channels. And then probably a few other areas that we'll we'll tackle along down the road a bit. But those are kind of the tears of focus for now.
Phil 27:58
Well, that and I like that articulation of how customer experience is the most important function, the business and even just the concept of everybody who comes into the organization needs to touch it and feel it and and have some contribution towards it, even if it's not their core role. I think the brands that stand out in today's day and age are the ones that go deep in customer experience. Because if you can build that relationship with the end user, you know, you can get past a couple speed bumps that are almost inevitable in a growing company. Because they know you actually care, they know you you actually give a shit and that there's people behind it. And I think that was some stuff, some of the kind of points you were touching on at the top of this conversation.
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 28:37
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, another kind of framework that we have is, you know, do things that aren't scalable, so that you can scale, right? Like, yeah, a lot of those touch points come through. Cx, like, for instance, in the, in the summer, when it was warm out in New York, we were doing city bike deliveries for local New York City customers, super, so many people got a kick out of that. And for me, it was super fun, because you get to you meet customers who are buying from you a handful of times and buy them a coffee or take a quick port, selfie, or whatever it is. But you know, what better way to spend a few hours but for a lot of people that might Oh, well, you know, I just have my fulfillment center send out, which is totally fine. But you know, what are those ways where we can kind of swing the pendulum back in the direction of a point of difference where the world is moving into a heavily automated world where there's an app for your apps, and everything is, you know, a personalized email reminder to come from this email platform and just like well, what about handwritten notes? Or what happened to hand delivering products? I mean, I think there's, those are opportunities where you can really create winning experiences that are obviously very unscalable over time, but that's how you kind of build your, you know, your loyal audience from the early days. I'm a firm believer in that. Well, that
Phil 29:55
do things that don't scale. I think that's not that idea has come up from some of the most forward thinking sounds So I've spoken to on on this community. And they do it all in a unique way that that makes sense for their brand. And I like your example of jumping on a city bike. Those are the ones that you rent for, like an hour, right? Yeah. Because who else is doing that? Like, you talked about building loyalty and your brand? Like, there's no better way?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 30:19
Yeah, I mean, in the end, it's just fun, right? You get to go meet a bunch of people. And that's a cool experience for them. And, yeah, it's a, it's it's little things that you can kind of take advantage of that. You know, you just kind of lean into
Phil 30:34
totally. So when you were when you were kind of, you know, out of beta in your first launch, or you first launched the brand, but let's talk about some of your early growth channels, super small teams. So I assume you had a direct, your your driving is pretty directly, you know, how did you get your first hundred customers? Your first, you know, thousand customers? What were some of those early channels? And what worked? What didn't?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 30:59
So we explored a number of different avenues. I think, you know, probably everyone is familiar with kind of the Harry's model, right, which is kind of referral program pre launch, you get 200,000 emails, and when you're ready to go, you're ready to go. Right. Well, I mean, that that was obviously a little bit different story for them. You know, we we did have some pre launch traction through email, signups and referrals and whatnot. I mean, I remember on a few separate times, I literally just downloaded my entire personal Gmail contacts list. And we'll just break them up into people I really haven't talked to and forever, it's like, Hey, you remember me, you're interviewing me for this job that you didn't hire before. But a lot in here on now. So you should buy some. I mean, we kind of empty the tank on that front. But you know, you, you do what you can do? Right. So that was that was certainly one of the ways we got some organic traction, I would say, and then, you know, we kind of pulled the necessary lever levers and played in the usual channels of paid search and paid social. So we had a little bit of a Facebook presence, we had a little bit of a sem presence. You know, but kind of coming out of the gates, it's a lot of friends, family, really supporters that are going to back you obviously, but that's when the real challenge begins after that, right. It's okay, you got the wave of your, your early on borders, are activists out of the way, can you go up choir and win eyeballs from other brands, and I think that's where kind of getting scrappy and getting thoughtful and figuring out ways to, you know, drive awareness drive attention. You know, that's when that becomes a pretty in the weeds game. And I think honestly, like a lot of arbitrage opportunity that existed on paid social in 2012 to 2014. Like is no longer there. So what are the other levers that you can pull to, again, bring awareness to the brand, in a category where a lot of guys have been jogging on autopilot for 10 1520 years?
Phil 32:54
Certainly. And so then the question I must ask is, what were some of those levers that you pulled, you know, to to build awareness for the brand?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 33:04
So a little bit of a contrarian viewpoint, but I'm sure some of this has probably come across in our discussions, as far as you know, we wanted to make sure that the the back end experience was super tight. Right. So what does retention look like? What does post purchase email flow look like? What does you know that informational email follow ups look like we wanted to make sure that if you were to take a chance on us for which we are forever grateful that ideally, we would be the brand for you for X number of years down the road, right? So rather than just simply turning on the switch on Facebook, and spending as much money as humanly possible and crossing your fingers and hopefully get a bunch of transactions, it's like, let's build the backend out first, so that we can retain as many of these folks that walk in our doors humanly possible. So that was kind of step one, to be honest, so a little bit of a contrarian approach. And two is, you know, you I mean, early lovers, jeez. I wish I had a great answer. I mean, for us, we do live and exist in a category where sampling as possible. So we get I gave out a ton of samples. I mean, I always carry a backpack with me of like, 50 samples at all times. And I will sling those things out all day and all night, even today. So you know, it was weekends in New York, you pack a bag with 50 things a body wash and see the group go pass out five, see a group go pass out 10 drop them off at a gym, like whatever you can do to just get product in people's hands. I think that's certainly one of the tail ends of our categories just had the opportunity to do that. At bonobos. We weren't really gifting wool pants to a bunch of people on the street. You know, so that's certainly one of the you know, again benefits of this category, but I mean, you just look and say like, Okay, if we don't have a crazy war chest of capital to go spend hundreds of thousands of dollars On Facebook every month, what can we do to win eyeballs? And you just kind of get scrappy.
Phil 35:07
Love that samplings? Actually not something I've heard, be super common. I feel like in your space, you can get the smaller product sizes and get those in as many hands as possible even in an unscalable. It's it, it makes total sense. I love the focus. Actually, you know, you talked about being a little bit counterintuitive, but I actually think it's quite pragmatic and thoughtful that have you focused on the retention experience. And once you get someone you know, walking through that entire post purchase experiences like and maybe you can provide some more color into what that post purchase experience is, is like for those who maybe have never interacted with your brand before and how you've gone about developing and thinking through that.
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 35:44
Yeah, and I would say that it's constantly changing, right? So it's like our, you know, our initial Founderational building blocks are still in place by any means. But I think the intent was, how do we make sure that this is a great post purchase experience. So whether it's kind of email follow up from me individually, or a member of our team, to thinking about educational emails around hey, here's like, the best way to use facewash Are you really don't need to use that much that way the product will last longer. Like I think there's so many little tips and tricks that we can share with our customers to kind of look, they actually are kind of consumer first. Things was certainly a tailwind for us. And obviously, kind of Matt's background. And the knowledge that we could offer a lot of these consumers was certainly a point of emphasis and coming through kind of email campaigns and flows, etc. Second, I mean, once we launched, I was in our fulfillment center on launch day, and I wrote hundreds of thank you notes, right. I mean, that's, again, like probably table stakes for a lot of folks. But for me, like that was really important that it wasn't just the generic clavey over MailChimp, email coming from the Founderer, but it was someone with frantic handwriting, who was probably misspelling a lot of things like actually writing a note and putting it in their box post purchase. So again, like some basic blocking and tackling, but again, in today's world certainly goes goes a lot further than one may think.
Phil 37:19
Yeah, for sure. Especially in a world as you characterize earlier that is increasingly automated.
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 37:26
Yeah, exactly.
Phil 37:29
Have you guys used SMS at all?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 37:32
We have, we're still figuring out the right tactic, I would say. So the way we kind of bifurcate strategy and tactic strategies, like 30,000 foot view, like very high level tactics, like what's, what's the day to day? Right. And I think strategy for SMS for us is how do we continue to offer a plus products and an even better experience? And I think what we've seen from SMS is it's a very engaged base. It's a very engaged medium. But you hear a lot of KPIs, right? Like, well, you get a 99% open rate through SMS for email. It's like, yeah, of course, because no one wants an unread text message, right, but not rocket science. There's a lot of these KPIs are kind of like throwaway facts. I think what we've tried to say is what we're testing now is like, what's the right cadence? Like, what's the right number of SMS messages to send to the community? Before we feel like we're, you know, like, not respecting the inbox, so to speak, and like, we never want to play in that, in that area in that gray area. So what we've tried to do is not just send transactionally driven SMS messages, but maybe a look behind the scenes, or, you know, I sent one a few weeks ago, as we were picking up our new I stick product of like, a selfie, like on the manufacturing floor or manufacturer, like some, like cool behind the scenes stuff, right? And then the thought there is like, does that resonate with everyone? Probably not. But the point is, is like we want to establish upfront that this is a channel that will not purely be, hey, here's 15% off of our new bundle, but it's like, Hey, here's actually a look behind the scenes and kind of how we're building this brand together. And I think kind of sharing some of those insights has been a point that's been fairly well received by a lot of folks within our SMS community.
Phil 39:22
Very cool. When you get responses on SMS, how do you how do you manage kind of the the assuming there's some level of scales, but how do you actually manage, respond being responsive?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 39:33
So before we send an SMS, we actually make sure we're kind of all hands on deck, just in case people want to go a keyboard, keyboard happy, but it's Yeah, I mean, we get a ton of responses, which is awesome. And I think that level of engagement isn't quite the same on email, right? I mean, you get an email you don't really want or you just look, I got school like Marcus, where I think it's text people like oh, that's pretty cool. Like, where's your facility and then maybe we're answering They're like, Oh, cool. Like, we'll be like, have you tried out the new product yet? Here's one feature that we're super pumped about. And it just creates a much more engaging kind of colloquial type conversation, versus maybe more formal on email or other channels.
Phil 40:15
Really interesting. I like that you get everybody on deck ready to go so that when the sea of responses comes through, you can actually manage it, because that's the opportunity. And to your point of, you know, doing things that don't scale, that certainly doesn't scale yet. You're now developing such a meaningful relationship with the with the customer. And you know, actually, I see Ellie here listening in from Ollie pop, and he runs cx there. And we had him on on chalk a few weeks ago here. And he had some really similar points of view around just doing things that don't scale and building an incredible experience for each person and treating them like a person instead of a number. And I get the sense that you guys do that in quite a sincere way.
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 40:56
Yeah, I mean, I think Eli is kind of the SMS savant. So yeah, he's reading the playbook there. I think we're, you know, he's been super helpful for us as a brand friend. And I think what they're building and all the pop is tremendous. And I think a lot of that is attributable to the experience that they offer their customers across a number of different platforms. I think what they do on SMS is pretty impressive.
Phil 41:20
Yes, certainly, I learned a lot on that, on that conversation, I guess, maybe outside of lollipop, which we which I think is a fantastic brand. Are there any other brands that you look up to that you think just doing a fantastic job, that there are elements you try to emulate from?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 41:35
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think there certainly are brands that, you know, we would kind of consider our brand friends, right, where we'd like email communications, we like some of like, the text angles, or approaches that they're leveraging visa de la pop. Yeah, you know, subscription presentation, web aesthetics. I mean, there's so many different metrics on which to kind of collect and chat about whatnot. And I think, you know, we do have a good ecosystem of folks we share notes with and definitely respect and admire. But I think it just depends on kind of what what topic, because I do think, you know, a lot of brands do a lot of different things incredibly well. But I think it just also just kind of circles back to what I was saying earlier around. This is being like incredibly supportive network rely. And I've met a handful of times just to chat around cx and retention and compare notes and whatnot. I think that's, that's super cool to have two different brands operating in two different categories, who can speak very openly about kind of some of the strategies and tactics that they're deploying? Right. Yeah, you know, so it's, it's a, it's a really supportive community out there. And I think, you know, we've been fortunate to, to get to know people like Eli,
Phil 42:53
certainly, and I feel like, it's almost surprising sometimes how much people are just willing to help if you reach
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 42:58
out 100% 100%. And I think like, at the end of the day, not, there aren't a ton of brands who are doing things wildly different, right? It's like, Hey, are you emailing your customers are using MailChimp or clay? Vo? It's like, Hey, are you using SMS? Are you using one of these four platforms? Right? So it's not like every brand is as full stack in house building all their own proprietary tech, it's just not how that world works anymore. But what I think isn't commoditized is the thoughtfulness and the intent behind the scenes. Right. And I think that's where we've been able to learn from, and kind of, you know, understand what some of these other business leaders are doing. And you know, that certainly helped us along our journey.
Phil 43:46
Really interesting. Maybe just on the topic of tech stack, what what are some of the tools that that you have Founder quite useful as you build out here on
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 43:56
so we are on clay vo for email, which has been incredibly helpful for us as we kind of slice and dice our email list to think about, you know, when we're sending out an email, you know, Johnny is our Director of retention CX, I mean, he's a, he's a wizard, when it comes to clay, vo I mean, we have more segments to send to then I would even know what to do with. So it's amazing what he's been able to kind of put together and how we're kind of fine tuning messaging to various customer groups. So we're run klavier for email. Yod posts has been really, really big for us. On the review side, I think customer reviews are really, really important in our category, because the switching costs while the price point isn't high, kind of the loyalty is right where, again, for a lot of our consumers who enter here for the first time, they're trading up from a brand that they might have been using for the past 15 years. Like what other products have you been using for the past 15 years? like yeah, are you still wearing Old Navy Carpenter jeans? Like, maybe not, maybe, maybe not though, right. So you think about like, what are some of the habits that haven't evolved over the past decade and a half. This is one of them. So how do we think about kind of pushing that consumer over the edge say, okay, fine, I'm willing to give this brand a chance. I think he uses it through social proof. And reviews are a great opportunity to do that. So yeah, po for us has been really impactful. And then I'm trying to think if there's any others that were, I mean, geez, we have so many partners that we're obviously very, very fortunate to work with. But honestly, I think those are, those are two that come to mind as being kind of standouts. Very cool. Um,
Phil 45:35
we're getting to the last 15 minutes, I usually keep the last 10 minutes open for the community to kind of come up on stage and ask you a question directly, I'll unlock the stage at that point. Maybe we'll dive into another topic before we do that. So anyone who's listening in if you have a question for Matt, I'll open up the stage in five, five minutes or so be really cool to get someone to pop up and ask a question or two. But one thing, and I only know what's public and I took a look at crunchbase, I noticed you guys have kind of taken a more modest approach and how you finance the business, which is super interesting. What I was able to see was you've raised a million bucks from some really interesting angel investors. One of them that stood out was the CEO and Founderer of RX bar, which which I think we all know how to really incredible exit. I'd actually just love to think of here how you think about both financing through Iran? And what as well as how you think about building out the cap table? for the for the business?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 46:28
Yeah, really good question. I mean, I think, I think for us, the way we approach fundraising is, ideally, we're looking to kind of cross the chasm from being a brand to being a business, right? And what do I mean by that is kind of, you know, a brand has great branding, and has amazing customer loyalty, retention, etc. But a business is self sustaining, right? And how do we get to a point where we're pocketing? 30 cents of $1 of every dollar of revenue we generate? Right? And I think for us, like profitability has always been kind of infused into the DNA of here on how do we think about efficient acquisition spend? How do we think about keeping a nimble team nimble, an agile team? How do we think about understanding the capital that leaves our business? And what is it ultimately going towards? Because for me, if it's not going towards winning a customer, we better have a high degree of conviction that's adult that's $1 well spent. So that's kind of like how we're thinking about kind of capitalizing the business in general. And then secondly, from kind of constructing an investor base. You know, I've been fortunate to get to know a lot of great Founderers, in business leaders throughout my career, whether it's Andy bonobos, Peter, our x bar, etc. And we wanted to kind of construct this cap table with a lot of these folks who have built brands before, who could help us grow and scale by kind of avoiding costly missteps, right? It's, I wouldn't hire someone at this stage because of XYZ reasons. Or I wouldn't pursue this channel yet, because ABC. And I think having kind of that base to kind of bounce ideas off of was incredibly helpful for us in year one, as we were such a small team is basically Matt and I, again for the first eight months. And I think that kind of value operational add, was something that we'll look to kind of build upon, you know, going forward as we grow and scale.
Phil 48:21
Very close, I love the focus on profitability. And I think maybe there isn't a right or wrong way to build a business. But, you know, having intent behind the strategy is quite important, because you may make decisions in a very different way. Have you thought about debt capital from like platforms like clear bank or Shopify capital, there's like a new one that pops up every day, it seems.
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 48:43
Yeah. And we, we have worked with some of those partners. And I think it's, you know, the, the non dilute non dilutive capital is certainly a great way to scale. And I think, to your point, they're becoming more and more players that are entering that scene that would allow an entrepreneur even an earlier stage to say, Hey, I don't want to give away 30% of my company at you know, in the second inning, or even the top of the first. And now there's opportunities to kind of flex and say, okay, we may not be, we know, we may not do a million dollars of revenue in our first seven hours, but we feel like we're growing things with the right cadence and with the right intent, and kind of with the right mindset that will allow us to be in a much better position 369 1218 months from now. And I think, again, that's kind of where we're trying to figure out is, you know, where are dollars going? How can we continue to remain lean and mean, but also, how can we continue to provide great value and kind of grow here on at a clip that we're super, super excited about?
Phil 49:46
Do you set targets like from a growth standpoint on an annualized basis? Or are you more focused on profitability with each dollar that comes in?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 49:55
I mean, we certainly have monthly targets and whatnot. You know, I think The numbers on the Excel sheet or our numbers that will never be right. Right? So it's Yeah, it's right
Phil 50:07
as they can be right?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 50:08
as right as they can be. But I think it those do a good job of kind of keeping you in check and understanding what the budget is and where you can deploy. And, you know, if you do decide or if you can unlock a little bit of value in one particular channel, do you have the wiggle room to lever up a little bit? So I think it provides kind of a fundamental basis from which to jump from. But yeah, I mean, those numbers are, are largely placeholders.
Phil 50:35
Very cool. If you're a DTC Founderer listening right now, you know, not give any advice on how they should think about, you know, maybe their first round of capital. Yeah, I
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 50:47
mean, it's Look, it's a, it's different by brand, right. And there, there will be some people that will want to raise as much money as humanly possible so that they can go on to do XYZ. And maybe there are brand specific goals that maybe aren't a huge focus of ours. So I really do think it's case by case dependent. What I will say is approaching any fundraising process with intent, right, it's understanding what you want to get out of this process from a partner from $1 amount from a dilution standpoint. Or to, you know, maybe dilution doesn't matter. And you just like, hey, I need to do whatever I can to get to, you know, to get a million bucks in the bank. So I can go execute XYZ, but but that's still kind of wearing a hat of intent. So I think, you know, again, just kind of channeling that thoughtfulness, that vision that focus that intent to then go execute on on a raise, you know, it's tough, because there will certainly be ups and downs, you'll get a ton more nose and you will get yeses, right. But that's, you know, all it takes is a really good 29 minute conversation for someone to say no, but I'd like to introduce you to person x, who then goes and lead you around. So it's this notion of, you know, staying positive, staying appreciative, being grateful for people's time following up being diligent. Understanding that no is part of the game and kind of rebounding and staying on the course.
Phil 52:11
Great advice. I just unlocked the stage. If anyone wants to jump up, you just tap the talk. I think it's a speaker talk on the top left. Sometimes people come up sometimes they don't sometimes it's awkward for a second so I'll lean into the awkward silence for for 10 seconds. Please feel free anyone who's listening in to jump up and ask not a question. Okay, if someone else if somebody else has something, I'll leave the stage open to pop up. I've got kind of just two more kind of general questions and then I think we can we can wrap up this has been super insightful. Oh, Chelsea, you came up. You have to come back. Maybe feel like Chelsea accidentally clicked been? Okay. All good. Chelsea, I see you're back here. If you want to come up, please feel free. Oh, good. Also, I
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 53:07
will say if this is not the forum, people can just email me directly. I'm mad at us here on Comm. So I'm happy to field any questions or talk through any thing with folks if that's more comfortable for them? Love that. I
Phil 53:20
appreciate you sharing that. Thanks. Not. So my last two questions. First one would be and I asked these two to pretty much everybody that comes on. When you look 10 years out? Where do you think the direct to consumer ecommerce space goes? What do you think it looks like in 2013? Geez,
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 53:40
I don't even know what it looks like in 2021. True? It's a really good question. I think honestly, that's probably one of my biggest areas of improvement is kind of taking my head out of the weeds a time to kind of thinking about bigger and broader vision. I think certainly new channels were emerge, right? Where brands won't feel maybe as constrained to paid social or mainly Facebook and Instagram. As the case in 2019, I think wholesale will become increasingly important. I think kind of marketplaces will become increasingly important. I think even just understanding the change in perception of Amazon over the past few years, right? There used to be this heavy negative connotation where if you were a brand that was selling on Amazon, you were deluding yourself, right, you were diluting the brand. But for us, I mean, that's been a really, really efficient channel for us. And, you know, my response to that is think about the breadth of consumers that shop on Amazon and then name me another retailer that carries that level of, you know, yeah, consumer differences. I mean, there's not. So I mean, I think there's just a lot to be said around what can become of the wholesale channel, I mean, probably not too many massive brick and mortar storefronts popping up. But what will be the opportunity to live offline to get into consumers hands by being on a shelf or being at a point of sale? That's enticing enough for someone to grab as they're checking out. Right. So I think kind of the changing wholesale environment will certainly be an area of focus over the next few years. I also just think you'll, you'll continue to see a number of brands pop up that are continually more mission driven, right where, look, I mean, I wouldn't consider myself born to be an entrepreneur. But why I feel like this is a really good category for me is because I am the I Am the end consumer, I was that person five years ago. So I feel like I can stand on kind of a soapbox of sorts, and say, like, this is who we're fighting for, like we're fighting for me five to seven years ago. And that's why I feel like I can have such an intimate one to one conversation with a lot of our customers. It's because there's that there's that time, there's that shared experience. And I think consumers and customers in general, will care a lot more about kind of what's behind the scenes that brand, the why behind the brand, what's in the brand DNA, as they consider kind of the overall purchasing journey. So I think you'll start to see a lot more businesses that pop up better, again, born out of need born out of, you know, there's a strong passion for something in customers and folks on the other end of the table will really take note of that.
Phil 56:26
Love it for for a guy who says he doesn't have a big broad vision as a strength. Think about the future. So it's really interesting. I see Abe popped up here. So please feel free to ask a question. Thanks for coming up on stage,
Abe 56:41
Thank you, thank you both for for hosting the chat, you know, lots of great information and learning a lot. So I'm super appreciative of both of you. So I had two quick questions. The first is, and I joined a little bit late. So hopefully, I didn't miss it beforehand. But one is kind of the what fueled the most of your guys growth was a kind of that, you know, non scalable, reaching out to folks, organic referrals, you know, organic search, things like that, or is a lot of that early stage growth. Typically, you know, for you guys kind of driven on that, you know, paid acquisition and, you know, just making lifelong customers. And, you know, if you can make lifelong customers using paid, obviously, the returns, there can be pretty attractive. Sure,
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 57:26
really good question. I think I could probably break it down into probably three different areas. So, six weeks after launch, we're actually The New York Times. So from a PR perspective, that really, really, that was a huge tailwind from a pure brand awareness standpoint. And that was just out of pure luck. So I'm also a firm believer that when folks tell you that they're more than 95%, like when luck is not more than 95%, they're short selling luck, right? Like That was 100%. Luck. So that was certainly a brand awareness piece. Second, I think we started to unlock some value on paid social, where we felt like, we could invest at a little bit more aggressive rate, but still generating a return that we were really, really comfortable with. And then third, quite honestly, is we launched on Amazon on March 1, kind of right, as COVID was happening. And I think what you saw on Amazon was Amazon became basically the one retailer that could continue to deliver in two days, right? So people were buying dish show people were buying wipes, people were buying x, but there was also just this increased consciousness and awareness of, you know, now I've been sitting in my apartment or house for 18 hours today, like, what do I actually eat? What do I actually put on my body? What do I actually do act? Like there was a lot of kind of self realization a little bit. And I think that was a tailwind for our category. By and large.
Abe 58:45
Awesome. Yeah. That's super helpful to know. And then and then the second one that I was curious about, you know, is how you guys think about kind of like product and skew expansion, you know, are you looking to stay kind of in the, you know, in the realm that you're in? Are you expanding like oil based products? And, you know, kind of targeting more of the other gaps that men have or Yeah, curious to learn more about that.
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 59:10
Yep. So we actually just launched hair, which is kind of our first big extension, about two weeks ago, that's gone incredibly well, which we're really, really grateful for, and I'm like, great, maybe we should just launch products every week that seemed to work well. Obviously, not not scalable. But to be quite honest, I mean, we still have products in the hopper that we went into development before launch. So I mean, we're, you know, these are products that we'll see the light in q1, but we've been working on for quite some time. So I think, you know, there is a few skews that we've, you know, that we have had in the hopper for quite some time. But I also think we're starting to understand based on customers that we have in our community via email or via our slack group, that can kind of tell us what they want, right. So hair is one of the first products that we kind of CO developed with a lot of our guides Which is what pain points you currently see and kind of the shampoo and conditioner that using? Why do you even use shampoo or conditioner? Do you like the fragrance? Do you like x? Do you like the way your hair feels after. And I think you start to tease out a lot of these points with customers who are willing to share their experiences. And you kind of create this amazing product and formula kind of in tandem with folks that are already your customers. And that's been really, really exciting. So I think that has to be obviously balanced with avoiding skew proliferation. But I think for us, we'll continue to roll out products that we're really really excited about.
Abe 1:00:34
Awesome, look. Great. Learn to appreciate that. Awesome.
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 1:00:40
Thanks for tuning in.
Phil 1:00:41
Thanks for coming up, Abe. Not last but not least, and we'll wrap it up. It's fine. It's five my time seven your time. Who knows what time it is these days anyways, with Colton, but one thing I'd love to ask is just you know, what book has had a big impact, or maybe the biggest impact on your career so far?
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 1:01:03
Oh, man, that's a really good question. I mean, I am a huge Nike fan. I spent my summer in between first and second year of grad school and Beaverton working at Nike. And I mean, I feel like one of the prerequisites is to read shoe dog, you know, but when you think about Nike, and you think about this massive behemoth to understand kind of even like the inventory and working capital issues that they were struggling with, like, Well, after they got off the ground, you know, it just goes to show you that, you know, brands at various stages are still kind of fighting through the iceberg theory, right, which is on the surface, everyone looks fine and dandy, and everyone seems to be doing just a great job, but underwater, like people are swimming with fury. So you know, that was a book for me. That was always really, really interesting and a really fun read. Super cool.
Phil 1:02:00
Well Matt just want to thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate all the insight and perspective you shared. Thanks so much. This was fantastic. I learned a lot and I appreciate you coming on.
Matt, Founder and CEO or Huron 1:02:12
Awesome. Thanks much for having me Phil. Appreciate it. Cool.
Phil 1:02:15
Thanks, everyone for listening in and Matt Have a great night and everyone listening in. Have a great evening to take it easy, everyone
:01
The DTC Growth Show
Phil 00:03
Matt welcome and thanks for taking the time to sit down with me and just have a live conversation about you know all the things Huron and and your journey. For everyone listening Matt is the founder and CEO of Huron really, really cool direct to consumer brand in the men's personal care space. Started off in skincare recently entered the haircare space. I'm sure Matt could talk a lot more about Huron n in a much better way than I ever could. So maybe, to kick things off, Matt, you want to share a little bit about yourself?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 00:34
Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, happy to kind of give you the not so interesting background on me personally, and how that dovetails into probably the more interesting here on backstory. But so quickly, I'm originally from Ohio, grew up in Cincinnati, went on East for undergrad, graduated in 2008. pretended to be an investment banker for a few months at Morgan Stanley shortly thereafter, quickly realized I was arguably the worst investment banking analyst maybe to evergraze planet Earth. So kind of started looking elsewhere on what might be a little bit better fit for me, ended up kind of serendipitously meeting the guys at bonobos, when they're a team of four, four or five. So join that team pretty early on in December 2008. as kind of a finance and ops ninja slash packed pants and boxes for many hours a day. Yeah, it was a it was a super cool experience. And he was kind of reflecting on that. That was certainly way before the traditional, as we know, at DTC world, right. You know, we kind of summarize bonobos It was a company that sold men's pants online. So, you know, the DTC acronym is much easier and familiar these days. So a few years of bonobos ended up moving to Chicago went back into banking. So I spent some time at UBS in Chicago on their m&a group, and then spent three years at a consumer private equity firm. So kind of the opposite table, a bit of a bonobos, where we were looking at and kind of evaluating early stage consumer businesses. And kind of professionally, that's kind of where I was, you know, you know, the broader personal care category kind of peaked an interest to spend three years at, at this fund went out of capital, and ended up migrating west to grad school at Stanford, which is kind of really where we started to kind of turn the dial up a little bit on on here on And really, the thought for me was twofold. One, kind of going back to what I was saying just a few seconds ago, so it would No, no, we had invested or at least looked at a number of investments kind of in and around the broader personal care category, but largely on the on the female side. So we looked at really cool companies like a drunk elephant and a number of others. And I was thinking, you know, there's so many cool brands out there, amazing messaging, super cool coffee, great founder story, packaging, etc. And I'm still a mid 20, something who's buying my neon green bodywash? From CVS, right. So they're just felt like an inherent disconnect. So professionally, there was always a little bit of an intrigue there, I think more relevant more personally, is I was just a kid that grew up with bad skin. Right. So I had, you know, you name it at your local grocery store, I tried it. And then kind of went through the dermatologist world tried seemingly everything that was there to offer, nothing really worked. And then while I was out west for business school, I, you know, kind of wound up walking into a quote unquote, premium skincare store and bought a face wash that I'd probably be embarrassed this day to say what I paid for that. But for whatever reason, that product really resonated, and my skin responded positively. And it was kind of like an aha moment. But I didn't know anyone, personally, that would have kind of jive with that overall experience. So the thought was, could you create some of these products that would rival these more higher end products from an efficacy perspective, but bring them down a little bit more to the masses, right, have a relatable tone of copy, just speak to these products in a way that made sense. So that was always kind of like the longer tail vision, I think, tactically what we did to even see if there was an opportunity, we actually launched a fake brand in q1 of 18, which was super interesting. So we bought a URL, we put up a really crappy site on Wix, and we just kind of sat back and learned. So we ran social campaigns all across the Midwest, kind of ranging and testing coffee from, you know, clean men's skincare to all natural men's skincare, organic and skincare to kind of learn from the top of the funnel side what was working, but then understanding what kind of products that this customer would be shopping for. And I think that was wildly informative to me. Also, someone being incredibly risk averse, like I wanted that third party validation that this hunch that I had for you know, potential company actually would make sense and actually had a little bit of runway so we did that over the course of q1 of a team had a lot of success from that which was which was awesome. So I ended up moving from SF to New York to kind of pursue this full time and when I landed in New York you know, supposed to meet you know, a number of folks for coffee kind of networking, whatnot, but ended up meeting Gentlemen, Matt would eventually be my business partner co founder. But his background is he spent upwards of 20 years in product development at Estee Lauder. So building products for the lab series of the world, and Tom Ford, men's and a number of different fragrance brands. And I think, well, I had kind of touched on so many other facets of the business, whether it be kind of performance marketing, or finance and Ops, in analytics, you know, Matt was the guy who knew how to make the product. And that was certainly not my skill set. So I think, you know, we had certainly complementary skill sets from from the get go, but a shared vision around what kind of this new age brand could be for the guy who was still trying to figure out the bathroom. So over the course of 2018, and 2019, we built products, raise some money, we worked on the creative development, with an agency here in New York called gin lane, which is now pattern brands. And then we eventually launched last July, so July 29, of 2019 10:42am. Eastern, but who's counting? And then, you know, we were kind of off to the races from there.
Phil 06:00
Okay, super cool. I love I love the overview. Really, really interesting journey. And I almost want to start back at the beginning, and kind of just dig into like, some of your thought process and learnings and experiences at at the top of it. And you know, I think Bona Bona is it Bono boast or But no,
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 06:18
how do you pronounce it? No, no, both?
Phil 06:21
But no, both? Okay, no, I get it wrong all the time. But they were often with me super early. Within this category. I even remember in like the early 2000 10s, being in San Francisco on a trip and jumping into a store of a nova store and I went in, you actually couldn't take a product home, you could only buy it, and they ship it to and I was like, wow, these guys are living in the future. And this makes so much sense. And, you know, fast forward. Of course, Andy, who's the founder there has had, you know, immense success and really was a pioneer in this space. So when you think about that company, in your experiences in that kind of every man role, you know, as you put it, what did you learn? Like, what were some of the takeaways that may be of aid, you know, today as you're on?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 07:06
Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost, kind of unequivocally is this notion of the consumers? Star, right? I mean, I think whether you were a finance and ops analyst, which is what I was at bonobos, or you were a production member, or Andy, or a customer service, Ninja, I mean, the thought was always what can we do to provide a 12 out of 10 experience, and I think for the longest time, but Novus has been kind of one of the golden standard type companies from, from an NPS score perspective. And I think that just becomes as a direct result of so much passion and effort and dedication towards maximizing overall CX, whether it's on site, whether it's if you have an issue, whether it's return. I mean, we used to have customers who would like vacation to New York and spend an entire day at our offices, which was an interesting way of spending your vacation, but one nonetheless. And I think you know, that that was certainly a point of difference. And I think one of the things that we've tried to channel and hear on is, you know, how do we make what is otherwise a fairly commoditized purchase, which is purchasing bodywash into actually an experience, right, which is, what can we do to make this experience from start to finish a 12? out of 10? What can we do on the retention side? What can we do if there's a fumble? on our end, if there's a fumble on the carrier end, you know, all of that kind of reflects back up to us as a brand. So, you know, we tried to pressure test so many different areas of the overall buying and consumer journey, and thinking about what can we do, you know, overall, create the best possible experience that a customer could have, you know, with your own.
Phil 08:42
And so when you think about that 12 out of 10 experience like that articulation, maybe you could break down some like the key elements that stand out that help bring that that to life or maybe a framework that you have as to how you look at it.
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 08:56
Good question. So, our Director of retention, and CX, one of the things we put together a few weeks ago, just kind of reflecting back on, you know, how the first year was for us, so I guess, more than a few weeks ago. But just think about, like, how would you distill that framework? And how do we kind of approach these conversations in these relationships on a day to day basis? And I think one of the things we we came up with, we were pretty excited about is this notion of a jet framework where J's judgment is empathy T is trust, trusting your team members to exhibit really good judgment on hand, how to handle these sometimes one off scenarios, empathy, so meeting the customer where he or she is that if you have a really poor experience, like how can we empathize with that and, you know, come down to their level and kind of understand the frustrations, and really tangible point. And then trust is trusting one another to make really good judgment to make really empathetic decisions, but then reinstalling that trust with the customer. So kind of that framework really kind of summarizes how we approach each individual customers. service ticket that we get or each community inbound we get on our Slack channel or email, SMS response that we receive, you know, that's kind of the frame of mind that we're in when we're, you know, in discussions or engaging with our base.
Phil 10:16
How do you balance kind of systemising, you know, responses to common problems with still applying like a strong degree of judgment and trust with your team, and giving them the or empowering them to apply, you know, solutions to challenges in an empathetic way. And I think it's this challenging balances, maybe like a CEO where you want to operationalize things as much as possible, but not everything can be perfectly systemized. And how do you think about balancing those things?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 10:44
Yeah, I mean, I think CX is an interesting area of the business to explore, because there oftentimes isn't a blueprint. Right. You know, certainly there is for some results, you know, a, you know, the order this order says it left the warehouse two weeks ago, but I haven't received the product. So they're certainly kind of the vanilla answers that we can provide and still providing great value, but but maybe, answers and inquiries that require a little less intellectual horsepower, I think where you exhibit the really good judgment is for me to say to our team, like, I defer to us to what's right, right, whether it's refunding an order and overnighting it one, or copying a product to a really great customer or copying a product to someone who offered really, really great feedback, I think those are for us low cost initiatives to really create a lasting impression. Again, what would otherwise be in a category that could be viewed as commoditized. Right. And I think for, for much of the audience that we're targeting, you know, this is a subset of guys who might have been 20 year dub for men buyers, right, like Namie, another product that guy has purchased for 20 years consecutively, this has become such an autopilot purchase that our biggest obstacles, our biggest opportunity, which is how do you effectuate consumer behavior change? And I think creating that type of experience, surprise and delight, what have you, really is that opportunity to kind of say, like, wow, this brand kind of gets it. And I really like their product, I'm willing to make the switch. And I think that's kind of the spark that we're looking for.
Phil 12:18
And makes a lot of sense. And it's one of those things that I feel like, you know, you can bring to life in a much more clear way for existing customers. How do you think about bringing to life you know, kind of the the brand around the surprise and delight that you deliver to customers? for maybe someone who's never interacted with hear on and maybe they're used to going to, you know, CVS or Walgreens or wherever they pick up their, you know, their body wash? They're just hearing about here on but they don't they don't know that you guys, you know, take these unique approaches. How do you how do you think about incorporating that at the top of the funnel?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 12:50
Yeah, it's a good point. And I think, you know, what would be antithetical to that is to kind of scream that from the mountaintops. Right? It's a really good service. That's more of kind of like a back end experience. So I think the thought is kind of twofold. One is we invested a lot into copy, not necessarily like financial investment, but everything that goes out kind of from us into the into the ether, has really been pretty thoroughly vetted. From a copy standpoint, how do we sound as a brand? How relatable are we? I think a lot of brands tend to use authenticity, and the broader DTC landscape, I personally don't really like that word. I'm more of a proponent of relatable, which is like, hey, we've been in your shoes. Like, I've watched, I've wandered my fair share of CVS and Walgreens aisles looking for products that work, but like didn't really find one, like, here's why we're confident that we could be that brand for you. And I think that first person touchpoint actually resonates quite well. And then secondly, is the opportunity, opportunity to educate, right? So having someone like my partner, Matt, kind of lead our product efforts. I mean, we're dealing with someone who built some of the largest brands in the world, especially kind of in the broader beauty space. So having that, you know, that knowledge base, that skill set on our roster is incredibly impactful. And I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to kind of speak from a point of authority, but have that voice come through as a persona who's like your older brother, right, which is like slightly more experienced than you maybe slightly cooler but not necessarily a no at all, which is not what we want to come across as, but someone that you would look up to and turn to to say had a question for x, like we hoped to be that brand, but that can provide that answer.
Phil 14:34
Really interesting, great, great way of thinking about it. Before I jumped forward, and I want to actually spend some time a little bit later to dive into how how you actually build products and how you think about, you know, and how I guess your co founder leads that but before we get there, one thing I thought that stuck out stuck out when I was kind of looking into your background was how you actually went from from bonobos, where you learn some really interesting stuff that clearly has been, you're applying in a really meaningful To hear on but you know, you took us into finance. I'm curious kind of why you took that approach. And and were there things you learnt there, outside of kind of identifying the market opportunity that you highlighted earlier that have influenced, you know, your journey building this company?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 15:15
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, it was just kind of pattern recognition across professional mentors I had at the time, right. So, you know, as I mentioned, kind of earlier on kind of, from Ohio, originally, my mom's a schoolteacher, recently retired, and my dad worked at Delta for almost 35 years. So when it came to this mythical world of business, didn't have a lot of people to kind of turn to. So I looked at folks like Andy Dunn, the founder of bonobos, and kind of said, you know, what was Andy's career path to get him to where he was at the time it was consulting, or banking, and then you spend some time in investing, and then maybe go back to grad school, and then hopefully launch your own business. And as I kind of looked around the folks within I, with whom I admired kind of, in my small circle at the time, that was kind of like the common the common background, the common set of skill sets. So I was like, cool, like, I guess this is the track that I'm supposed to be on. So you know, that was kind of the impetus was, you know, go back kind of understand and get a financial background, to understand the X's and O's and things and then hopefully leverage that in a few years to propel yourself maybe to an investor role and and maybe have the opportunity to go to grad school, and then you would have the skill set to go launch your own business now is that the only way to become an entrepreneur like obviously not, it was just kind of the, you know, the personas or the archetypes that I had around me immediately that I thought were obviously really good business models.
Phil 16:40
Got it really interesting. It's always interesting to to see the pads an entrepreneur takes because kind of to your point, there is no right way or standard way. There's so many different ways. And I think this, this kind of path you've gone down is, is quite is quite interesting, and I'm sure has provided a lot of, you know, great experience to help you avoid a lot of mistakes. That may be first time founders typically make sure I mean,
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 17:06
that's probably a that's a whole separate conversation, because I feel like I've made no, no few of those, no shortage of those. But I think you know, even going back to the broader entrepreneurship conversation, I mean, there are a million reasons to say no, here's why I shouldn't do it. Right. Yeah. I think, you know, I try and tell people be the voice of Yes, like, be your own cheerleader. You know, I think what I've learned along this journey is a, you learn a ton B, the broader network is incredibly supportive, right? I'm very fortunate to have a bunch of different founder friends that I can call on to ask questions about supply chain, or hiring or fundraising, etc. And I think there's just kind of this broader wanting this and willingness to help. And, you know, I think this experience for me personally, has been incredibly fruitful. And I can't think of another job that I've had to date, or I've learned so much in short, such a short period of time. So you know, as I try to encourage people, you know, yes, there will always be reasons to say now's not the right time, for XYZ reasons. But if you can be your own voice of Yes, then you should take the leap.
Phil 18:11
Love that be the voice of Yes, I'm going to be quoting that on twitter at some point. Love that. One thing that has always stood out from here on from from kind of, you know, a seat back or from afar and looking at how you've built the brand has been the high degree of product quality. And people talk about that, it's very clear that here on is an excellent product. Can you walk us through how you how you and your co founder, think about product? How you have to think about I guess, product development, because I think we live in a world where it's pretty easy to like, create a low quality product is not very easy to create something that is actually incredible when you purchase it. How do you think about that?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 18:51
Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. I mean, I think, an early stage DTC, there was an opportunity to maybe slide by with a really beautiful website, a great cx really cool branding in a very mediocre product. I think we live in a world today where consumer expectations are far greater than what they were. So for us, I mean, product was something we wanted to lead with, right, I think that was kind of the the straw that broke the camel's back for me, which was I would have never been exposed to kind of broader quote unquote, prestige skincare, unless I had gone through some of these trials and tribulations, right. So it wasn't until I explored some of these more efficacious and coincidentally higher ingredient from a price point perspective products that like my skin responded positively. So for us, Matt and I have always opted into what can we do to make these products as multi dimensional as possible? What can we do to make these products as efficacious as possible? And I think for us, it was never really, you know, obviously there there was some sense of speed to market but I think speed to market and more tricky. There's no industry is you know, the SAS businesses the world etc, you just get get an MVP out and iterate and test etc, right? For us, we had such a high bar of what it meant to put great product into the market. You know, we I mean, we ended up delaying launch by a number of months, because we felt that it was imperative to put products in the market that we were massive fans of and that we were using every day. Because if we weren't, how could we honestly speak to our consumer? And tell that story? Right? It's like, well, if you don't even believe in these products, how are we supposed to, so the amount of time and effort in development that went into these products, you know, was was quite lengthy, and very few expenses, and a lot of time were spared. And a lot of that comes from Matt, his background is just being incredibly tough on on products. And we're very fortunate to work with a great group of product developers, chemists, labs, etc, who believed in our vision kind of early on, and we're willing to take a chance on a on a pre launch business to help create great products.
Phil 21:09
super interesting, you know, what, I'd love to get tactical in some of these conversations. And so maybe a question that comes to my mind is, you know, what is the product development cycle look like? Especially, you know, particularly in the category that you plan.
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 21:22
So, this is all news to me, as of to go longer than that. But basically, the way it starts out is almost like a term paper, like you write a thesis around what you want this product to be, what the claims you want, what the benefits you want, how you want the skin to feel, how do you want the product to perform, what the fragrance might be, what the approximate, you know, cost per ounce may be etc. So you kind of do some monkey math on the costing exercise, you lay out pages and pages of, you know, the sensorial effect, which for us is really, really important, the claims, benefits, etc. You know, you pass that over to the lab, you review, and then you really start iterating on product. And I think for us, again, kind of another tip of the cap term manufacturing partners, you know, a lot of brands will get, you know, a handful of iterations from these manufacturers, right, you know, maybe you get it, you know, maybe the the the manufacturing partner is able to nail it by the third or fourth iteration. I mean, we were in the 40s on some of our iterations, where we're tweaking levels of fragrance by point 00 5%. So So I mean, when you say we kind of get into the nitty gritty of things, you know, we we've kind of firmly stand by it. And there is no experience like listening to my partner, Matt describe fragrance is like unworldly. He's like, you know, after like three hours of where the fragrance is a little scratchy, I'm like, I have no idea what that means. But I'm taking your word for it. But again, long story short, you know, there's so much emphasis that went into the product into the creative into the tone of voice, etc, to not bring a plus plus product into the market would be a disservice to all those other factors in the business.
Phil 23:08
Yeah, totally. And I think you nail it on the head there. It's just like businesses, a system and each piece of that system needs to lift each other up. And when you have a weak link, you need to address that weak link, because it can bring down all these other incredible pieces that you've put together and, and product certainly sits at the center.
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 23:25
Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right.
Phil 23:27
I think one thing I also take away is just like that expertise that your co founder has, and how probably how many mistakes you're avoiding because of his expertise and in specifically in the fragrance, space and, and building kind of personal care products. So maybe let's shift to talking about teams and building out a team. You know, I think it provides some interesting insight on how you partnered with your co founder. But as you build out your team, maybe what does it look like today? And how do you think about talent acquisition and filling the right folks in the right roles.
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 24:01
So today, we're we were made a small team. So we're only three full time we hired our first employee, Johnny, in March of this year. And he was kind of had the the quote unquote, athlete background that we were looking for. He spent a few years in finance and actually worked for a larger New York based DTC company after that. So I think kind of channeling back earlier but novas days is you find smart, driven, motivated people and throw them into roles and let them figure it out. Right now, obviously, you provide the guidance, the direction, the help when necessary. But you you give a lot of responsibility to those folks and you let them go succeed. And I think that's kind of our mentality where, you know, we have the capability of a small team to do a number of different things. We're very fortunate to work with a great number of partners, not just on the manufacturing side, but we have an amazing creative designer. We have a One developer that are kind of both freelance. So you know, supply chain fulfillment, etc, kind of the list goes on. And the way that we've kind of approached partnerships in general and working with these folks, whether freelancers or actual firms or agencies, is we vet these folks incredibly thoroughly. And then we kind of invite them inside of the brand walls, right, one of the first things I ask when we onboard, a new partner is I will never call you a vendor, like, Don't ever refer to us as a client. Because it's so much more than that. That's me as a very transactional relationship, where you're here to do X, not y, like, Don't tell me anything else. Like no as our, you know, paid social agency, like, we're going to tell you everything that's happening, what we're going to tell you what's happening in the development process timetables for X or Y. Because that's important buy in, because we want you to think proactively on our behalf, as we're thinking about the social strategy, etc. And I think we've really benefited from that type of mindset. And kind of bringing folks inside the brand as as a true partner, and not a vendor client relationship. Right. So I think, you know, outside of that, we are looking to grow the team, we will probably bring on a number of folks in the coming months as we continue to grow and scale, which is exciting. But we aren't just going to go hire 50 people over the course of 2021 and then cut half of them six months. Right, it's an intentional growth process around what do we need? Where are we not the best? What areas? Do we need kind of some outside help? And then who's the right fit? You know, so that's kind of the, you know, the hiring thoughts for the next few months?
Phil 26:42
What are some of the functions that you're looking to build out?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 26:47
Good question. I mean, I think, you know, for us customer experience will always be something that, regardless of where you fall within the hierarchical structure, you will have a hand in when you join here on because I would argue that's the most important function of the business, right? It's not the VP of growth. It's not the head of this. It's literally CX, because you're on the front lines. And so much of that informs so many other facets of the business. It's actually surprisingly quantitative. I was talking to Johnny about that earlier this week. You know, a lot of CS is pattern recognition, hey, what are we hearing from customers? How can we use that data to inform our website copy, or what we're doing on organic, social or even paid. So I think cx will continue to be an area of focus for ours, going forward, infinitely. I think areas where we will also have to supplement is probably on the growth side, thinking about how we continue to explore other channels, how we continue to grow kind of our presence, both organically and through other channels. And then probably a few other areas that we'll we'll tackle along down the road a bit. But those are kind of the tears of focus for now.
Phil 27:58
Well, that and I like that articulation of how customer experience is the most important function, the business and even just the concept of everybody who comes into the organization needs to touch it and feel it and and have some contribution towards it, even if it's not their core role. I think the brands that stand out in today's day and age are the ones that go deep in customer experience. Because if you can build that relationship with the end user, you know, you can get past a couple speed bumps that are almost inevitable in a growing company. Because they know you actually care, they know you you actually give a shit and that there's people behind it. And I think that was some stuff, some of the kind of points you were touching on at the top of this conversation.
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 28:37
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, another kind of framework that we have is, you know, do things that aren't scalable, so that you can scale, right? Like, yeah, a lot of those touch points come through. Cx, like, for instance, in the, in the summer, when it was warm out in New York, we were doing city bike deliveries for local New York City customers, super, so many people got a kick out of that. And for me, it was super fun, because you get to you meet customers who are buying from you a handful of times and buy them a coffee or take a quick port, selfie, or whatever it is. But you know, what better way to spend a few hours but for a lot of people that might Oh, well, you know, I just have my fulfillment center send out, which is totally fine. But you know, what are those ways where we can kind of swing the pendulum back in the direction of a point of difference where the world is moving into a heavily automated world where there's an app for your apps, and everything is, you know, a personalized email reminder to come from this email platform and just like well, what about handwritten notes? Or what happened to hand delivering products? I mean, I think there's, those are opportunities where you can really create winning experiences that are obviously very unscalable over time, but that's how you kind of build your, you know, your loyal audience from the early days. I'm a firm believer in that. Well, that
Phil 29:55
do things that don't scale. I think that's not that idea has come up from some of the most forward thinking sounds So I've spoken to on on this community. And they do it all in a unique way that that makes sense for their brand. And I like your example of jumping on a city bike. Those are the ones that you rent for, like an hour, right? Yeah. Because who else is doing that? Like, you talked about building loyalty and your brand? Like, there's no better way?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 30:19
Yeah, I mean, in the end, it's just fun, right? You get to go meet a bunch of people. And that's a cool experience for them. And, yeah, it's a, it's it's little things that you can kind of take advantage of that. You know, you just kind of lean into
Phil 30:34
totally. So when you were when you were kind of, you know, out of beta in your first launch, or you first launched the brand, but let's talk about some of your early growth channels, super small teams. So I assume you had a direct, your your driving is pretty directly, you know, how did you get your first hundred customers? Your first, you know, thousand customers? What were some of those early channels? And what worked? What didn't?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 30:59
So we explored a number of different avenues. I think, you know, probably everyone is familiar with kind of the Harry's model, right, which is kind of referral program pre launch, you get 200,000 emails, and when you're ready to go, you're ready to go. Right. Well, I mean, that that was obviously a little bit different story for them. You know, we we did have some pre launch traction through email, signups and referrals and whatnot. I mean, I remember on a few separate times, I literally just downloaded my entire personal Gmail contacts list. And we'll just break them up into people I really haven't talked to and forever, it's like, Hey, you remember me, you're interviewing me for this job that you didn't hire before. But a lot in here on now. So you should buy some. I mean, we kind of empty the tank on that front. But you know, you, you do what you can do? Right. So that was that was certainly one of the ways we got some organic traction, I would say, and then, you know, we kind of pulled the necessary lever levers and played in the usual channels of paid search and paid social. So we had a little bit of a Facebook presence, we had a little bit of a sem presence. You know, but kind of coming out of the gates, it's a lot of friends, family, really supporters that are going to back you obviously, but that's when the real challenge begins after that, right. It's okay, you got the wave of your, your early on borders, are activists out of the way, can you go up choir and win eyeballs from other brands, and I think that's where kind of getting scrappy and getting thoughtful and figuring out ways to, you know, drive awareness drive attention. You know, that's when that becomes a pretty in the weeds game. And I think honestly, like a lot of arbitrage opportunity that existed on paid social in 2012 to 2014. Like is no longer there. So what are the other levers that you can pull to, again, bring awareness to the brand, in a category where a lot of guys have been jogging on autopilot for 10 1520 years?
Phil 32:54
Certainly. And so then the question I must ask is, what were some of those levers that you pulled, you know, to to build awareness for the brand?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 33:04
So a little bit of a contrarian viewpoint, but I'm sure some of this has probably come across in our discussions, as far as you know, we wanted to make sure that the the back end experience was super tight. Right. So what does retention look like? What does post purchase email flow look like? What does you know that informational email follow ups look like we wanted to make sure that if you were to take a chance on us for which we are forever grateful that ideally, we would be the brand for you for X number of years down the road, right? So rather than just simply turning on the switch on Facebook, and spending as much money as humanly possible and crossing your fingers and hopefully get a bunch of transactions, it's like, let's build the backend out first, so that we can retain as many of these folks that walk in our doors humanly possible. So that was kind of step one, to be honest, so a little bit of a contrarian approach. And two is, you know, you I mean, early lovers, jeez. I wish I had a great answer. I mean, for us, we do live and exist in a category where sampling as possible. So we get I gave out a ton of samples. I mean, I always carry a backpack with me of like, 50 samples at all times. And I will sling those things out all day and all night, even today. So you know, it was weekends in New York, you pack a bag with 50 things a body wash and see the group go pass out five, see a group go pass out 10 drop them off at a gym, like whatever you can do to just get product in people's hands. I think that's certainly one of the tail ends of our categories just had the opportunity to do that. At bonobos. We weren't really gifting wool pants to a bunch of people on the street. You know, so that's certainly one of the you know, again benefits of this category, but I mean, you just look and say like, Okay, if we don't have a crazy war chest of capital to go spend hundreds of thousands of dollars On Facebook every month, what can we do to win eyeballs? And you just kind of get scrappy.
Phil 35:07
Love that samplings? Actually not something I've heard, be super common. I feel like in your space, you can get the smaller product sizes and get those in as many hands as possible even in an unscalable. It's it, it makes total sense. I love the focus. Actually, you know, you talked about being a little bit counterintuitive, but I actually think it's quite pragmatic and thoughtful that have you focused on the retention experience. And once you get someone you know, walking through that entire post purchase experiences like and maybe you can provide some more color into what that post purchase experience is, is like for those who maybe have never interacted with your brand before and how you've gone about developing and thinking through that.
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 35:44
Yeah, and I would say that it's constantly changing, right? So it's like our, you know, our initial foundational building blocks are still in place by any means. But I think the intent was, how do we make sure that this is a great post purchase experience. So whether it's kind of email follow up from me individually, or a member of our team, to thinking about educational emails around hey, here's like, the best way to use facewash Are you really don't need to use that much that way the product will last longer. Like I think there's so many little tips and tricks that we can share with our customers to kind of look, they actually are kind of consumer first. Things was certainly a tailwind for us. And obviously, kind of Matt's background. And the knowledge that we could offer a lot of these consumers was certainly a point of emphasis and coming through kind of email campaigns and flows, etc. Second, I mean, once we launched, I was in our fulfillment center on launch day, and I wrote hundreds of thank you notes, right. I mean, that's, again, like probably table stakes for a lot of folks. But for me, like that was really important that it wasn't just the generic clavey over MailChimp, email coming from the founder, but it was someone with frantic handwriting, who was probably misspelling a lot of things like actually writing a note and putting it in their box post purchase. So again, like some basic blocking and tackling, but again, in today's world certainly goes goes a lot further than one may think.
Phil 37:19
Yeah, for sure. Especially in a world as you characterize earlier that is increasingly automated.
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 37:26
Yeah, exactly.
Phil 37:29
Have you guys used SMS at all?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 37:32
We have, we're still figuring out the right tactic, I would say. So the way we kind of bifurcate strategy and tactic strategies, like 30,000 foot view, like very high level tactics, like what's, what's the day to day? Right. And I think strategy for SMS for us is how do we continue to offer a plus products and an even better experience? And I think what we've seen from SMS is it's a very engaged base. It's a very engaged medium. But you hear a lot of KPIs, right? Like, well, you get a 99% open rate through SMS for email. It's like, yeah, of course, because no one wants an unread text message, right, but not rocket science. There's a lot of these KPIs are kind of like throwaway facts. I think what we've tried to say is what we're testing now is like, what's the right cadence? Like, what's the right number of SMS messages to send to the community? Before we feel like we're, you know, like, not respecting the inbox, so to speak, and like, we never want to play in that, in that area in that gray area. So what we've tried to do is not just send transactionally driven SMS messages, but maybe a look behind the scenes, or, you know, I sent one a few weeks ago, as we were picking up our new I stick product of like, a selfie, like on the manufacturing floor or manufacturer, like some, like cool behind the scenes stuff, right? And then the thought there is like, does that resonate with everyone? Probably not. But the point is, is like we want to establish upfront that this is a channel that will not purely be, hey, here's 15% off of our new bundle, but it's like, Hey, here's actually a look behind the scenes and kind of how we're building this brand together. And I think kind of sharing some of those insights has been a point that's been fairly well received by a lot of folks within our SMS community.
Phil 39:22
Very cool. When you get responses on SMS, how do you how do you manage kind of the the assuming there's some level of scales, but how do you actually manage, respond being responsive?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 39:33
So before we send an SMS, we actually make sure we're kind of all hands on deck, just in case people want to go a keyboard, keyboard happy, but it's Yeah, I mean, we get a ton of responses, which is awesome. And I think that level of engagement isn't quite the same on email, right? I mean, you get an email you don't really want or you just look, I got school like Marcus, where I think it's text people like oh, that's pretty cool. Like, where's your facility and then maybe we're answering They're like, Oh, cool. Like, we'll be like, have you tried out the new product yet? Here's one feature that we're super pumped about. And it just creates a much more engaging kind of colloquial type conversation, versus maybe more formal on email or other channels.
Phil 40:15
Really interesting. I like that you get everybody on deck ready to go so that when the sea of responses comes through, you can actually manage it, because that's the opportunity. And to your point of, you know, doing things that don't scale, that certainly doesn't scale yet. You're now developing such a meaningful relationship with the with the customer. And you know, actually, I see Ellie here listening in from Ollie pop, and he runs cx there. And we had him on on chalk a few weeks ago here. And he had some really similar points of view around just doing things that don't scale and building an incredible experience for each person and treating them like a person instead of a number. And I get the sense that you guys do that in quite a sincere way.
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 40:56
Yeah, I mean, I think Eli is kind of the SMS savant. So yeah, he's reading the playbook there. I think we're, you know, he's been super helpful for us as a brand friend. And I think what they're building and all the pop is tremendous. And I think a lot of that is attributable to the experience that they offer their customers across a number of different platforms. I think what they do on SMS is pretty impressive.
Phil 41:20
Yes, certainly, I learned a lot on that, on that conversation, I guess, maybe outside of lollipop, which we which I think is a fantastic brand. Are there any other brands that you look up to that you think just doing a fantastic job, that there are elements you try to emulate from?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 41:35
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think there certainly are brands that, you know, we would kind of consider our brand friends, right, where we'd like email communications, we like some of like, the text angles, or approaches that they're leveraging visa de la pop. Yeah, you know, subscription presentation, web aesthetics. I mean, there's so many different metrics on which to kind of collect and chat about whatnot. And I think, you know, we do have a good ecosystem of folks we share notes with and definitely respect and admire. But I think it just depends on kind of what what topic, because I do think, you know, a lot of brands do a lot of different things incredibly well. But I think it just also just kind of circles back to what I was saying earlier around. This is being like incredibly supportive network rely. And I've met a handful of times just to chat around cx and retention and compare notes and whatnot. I think that's, that's super cool to have two different brands operating in two different categories, who can speak very openly about kind of some of the strategies and tactics that they're deploying? Right. Yeah, you know, so it's, it's a, it's a really supportive community out there. And I think, you know, we've been fortunate to, to get to know people like Eli,
Phil 42:53
certainly, and I feel like, it's almost surprising sometimes how much people are just willing to help if you reach
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 42:58
out 100% 100%. And I think like, at the end of the day, not, there aren't a ton of brands who are doing things wildly different, right? It's like, Hey, are you emailing your customers are using MailChimp or clay? Vo? It's like, Hey, are you using SMS? Are you using one of these four platforms? Right? So it's not like every brand is as full stack in house building all their own proprietary tech, it's just not how that world works anymore. But what I think isn't commoditized is the thoughtfulness and the intent behind the scenes. Right. And I think that's where we've been able to learn from, and kind of, you know, understand what some of these other business leaders are doing. And you know, that certainly helped us along our journey.
Phil 43:46
Really interesting. Maybe just on the topic of tech stack, what what are some of the tools that that you have found quite useful as you build out here on
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 43:56
so we are on clay vo for email, which has been incredibly helpful for us as we kind of slice and dice our email list to think about, you know, when we're sending out an email, you know, Johnny is our Director of retention CX, I mean, he's a, he's a wizard, when it comes to clay, vo I mean, we have more segments to send to then I would even know what to do with. So it's amazing what he's been able to kind of put together and how we're kind of fine tuning messaging to various customer groups. So we're run klavier for email. Yod posts has been really, really big for us. On the review side, I think customer reviews are really, really important in our category, because the switching costs while the price point isn't high, kind of the loyalty is right where, again, for a lot of our consumers who enter here for the first time, they're trading up from a brand that they might have been using for the past 15 years. Like what other products have you been using for the past 15 years? like yeah, are you still wearing Old Navy Carpenter jeans? Like, maybe not, maybe, maybe not though, right. So you think about like, what are some of the habits that haven't evolved over the past decade and a half. This is one of them. So how do we think about kind of pushing that consumer over the edge say, okay, fine, I'm willing to give this brand a chance. I think he uses it through social proof. And reviews are a great opportunity to do that. So yeah, po for us has been really impactful. And then I'm trying to think if there's any others that were, I mean, geez, we have so many partners that we're obviously very, very fortunate to work with. But honestly, I think those are, those are two that come to mind as being kind of standouts. Very cool. Um,
Phil 45:35
we're getting to the last 15 minutes, I usually keep the last 10 minutes open for the community to kind of come up on stage and ask you a question directly, I'll unlock the stage at that point. Maybe we'll dive into another topic before we do that. So anyone who's listening in if you have a question for Matt, I'll open up the stage in five, five minutes or so be really cool to get someone to pop up and ask a question or two. But one thing, and I only know what's public and I took a look at crunchbase, I noticed you guys have kind of taken a more modest approach and how you finance the business, which is super interesting. What I was able to see was you've raised a million bucks from some really interesting angel investors. One of them that stood out was the CEO and founder of RX bar, which which I think we all know how to really incredible exit. I'd actually just love to think of here how you think about both financing through Iran? And what as well as how you think about building out the cap table? for the for the business?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 46:28
Yeah, really good question. I mean, I think, I think for us, the way we approach fundraising is, ideally, we're looking to kind of cross the chasm from being a brand to being a business, right? And what do I mean by that is kind of, you know, a brand has great branding, and has amazing customer loyalty, retention, etc. But a business is self sustaining, right? And how do we get to a point where we're pocketing? 30 cents of $1 of every dollar of revenue we generate? Right? And I think for us, like profitability has always been kind of infused into the DNA of here on how do we think about efficient acquisition spend? How do we think about keeping a nimble team nimble, an agile team? How do we think about understanding the capital that leaves our business? And what is it ultimately going towards? Because for me, if it's not going towards winning a customer, we better have a high degree of conviction that's adult that's $1 well spent. So that's kind of like how we're thinking about kind of capitalizing the business in general. And then secondly, from kind of constructing an investor base. You know, I've been fortunate to get to know a lot of great founders, in business leaders throughout my career, whether it's Andy bonobos, Peter, our x bar, etc. And we wanted to kind of construct this cap table with a lot of these folks who have built brands before, who could help us grow and scale by kind of avoiding costly missteps, right? It's, I wouldn't hire someone at this stage because of XYZ reasons. Or I wouldn't pursue this channel yet, because ABC. And I think having kind of that base to kind of bounce ideas off of was incredibly helpful for us in year one, as we were such a small team is basically Matt and I, again for the first eight months. And I think that kind of value operational add, was something that we'll look to kind of build upon, you know, going forward as we grow and scale.
Phil 48:21
Very close, I love the focus on profitability. And I think maybe there isn't a right or wrong way to build a business. But, you know, having intent behind the strategy is quite important, because you may make decisions in a very different way. Have you thought about debt capital from like platforms like clear bank or Shopify capital, there's like a new one that pops up every day, it seems.
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 48:43
Yeah. And we, we have worked with some of those partners. And I think it's, you know, the, the non dilute non dilutive capital is certainly a great way to scale. And I think, to your point, they're becoming more and more players that are entering that scene that would allow an entrepreneur even an earlier stage to say, Hey, I don't want to give away 30% of my company at you know, in the second inning, or even the top of the first. And now there's opportunities to kind of flex and say, okay, we may not be, we know, we may not do a million dollars of revenue in our first seven hours, but we feel like we're growing things with the right cadence and with the right intent, and kind of with the right mindset that will allow us to be in a much better position 369 1218 months from now. And I think, again, that's kind of where we're trying to figure out is, you know, where are dollars going? How can we continue to remain lean and mean, but also, how can we continue to provide great value and kind of grow here on at a clip that we're super, super excited about?
Phil 49:46
Do you set targets like from a growth standpoint on an annualized basis? Or are you more focused on profitability with each dollar that comes in?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 49:55
I mean, we certainly have monthly targets and whatnot. You know, I think The numbers on the Excel sheet or our numbers that will never be right. Right? So it's Yeah, it's right
Phil 50:07
as they can be right?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 50:08
as right as they can be. But I think it those do a good job of kind of keeping you in check and understanding what the budget is and where you can deploy. And, you know, if you do decide or if you can unlock a little bit of value in one particular channel, do you have the wiggle room to lever up a little bit? So I think it provides kind of a fundamental basis from which to jump from. But yeah, I mean, those numbers are, are largely placeholders.
Phil 50:35
Very cool. If you're a DTC founder listening right now, you know, not give any advice on how they should think about, you know, maybe their first round of capital. Yeah, I
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 50:47
mean, it's Look, it's a, it's different by brand, right. And there, there will be some people that will want to raise as much money as humanly possible so that they can go on to do XYZ. And maybe there are brand specific goals that maybe aren't a huge focus of ours. So I really do think it's case by case dependent. What I will say is approaching any fundraising process with intent, right, it's understanding what you want to get out of this process from a partner from $1 amount from a dilution standpoint. Or to, you know, maybe dilution doesn't matter. And you just like, hey, I need to do whatever I can to get to, you know, to get a million bucks in the bank. So I can go execute XYZ, but but that's still kind of wearing a hat of intent. So I think, you know, again, just kind of channeling that thoughtfulness, that vision that focus that intent to then go execute on on a raise, you know, it's tough, because there will certainly be ups and downs, you'll get a ton more nose and you will get yeses, right. But that's, you know, all it takes is a really good 29 minute conversation for someone to say no, but I'd like to introduce you to person x, who then goes and lead you around. So it's this notion of, you know, staying positive, staying appreciative, being grateful for people's time following up being diligent. Understanding that no is part of the game and kind of rebounding and staying on the course.
Phil 52:11
Great advice. I just unlocked the stage. If anyone wants to jump up, you just tap the talk. I think it's a speaker talk on the top left. Sometimes people come up sometimes they don't sometimes it's awkward for a second so I'll lean into the awkward silence for for 10 seconds. Please feel free anyone who's listening in to jump up and ask not a question. Okay, if someone else if somebody else has something, I'll leave the stage open to pop up. I've got kind of just two more kind of general questions and then I think we can we can wrap up this has been super insightful. Oh, Chelsea, you came up. You have to come back. Maybe feel like Chelsea accidentally clicked been? Okay. All good. Chelsea, I see you're back here. If you want to come up, please feel free. Oh, good. Also, I
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 53:07
will say if this is not the forum, people can just email me directly. I'm mad at us here on Comm. So I'm happy to field any questions or talk through any thing with folks if that's more comfortable for them? Love that. I
Phil 53:20
appreciate you sharing that. Thanks. Not. So my last two questions. First one would be and I asked these two to pretty much everybody that comes on. When you look 10 years out? Where do you think the direct to consumer ecommerce space goes? What do you think it looks like in 2013? Geez,
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 53:40
I don't even know what it looks like in 2021. True? It's a really good question. I think honestly, that's probably one of my biggest areas of improvement is kind of taking my head out of the weeds a time to kind of thinking about bigger and broader vision. I think certainly new channels were emerge, right? Where brands won't feel maybe as constrained to paid social or mainly Facebook and Instagram. As the case in 2019, I think wholesale will become increasingly important. I think kind of marketplaces will become increasingly important. I think even just understanding the change in perception of Amazon over the past few years, right? There used to be this heavy negative connotation where if you were a brand that was selling on Amazon, you were deluding yourself, right, you were diluting the brand. But for us, I mean, that's been a really, really efficient channel for us. And, you know, my response to that is think about the breadth of consumers that shop on Amazon and then name me another retailer that carries that level of, you know, yeah, consumer differences. I mean, there's not. So I mean, I think there's just a lot to be said around what can become of the wholesale channel, I mean, probably not too many massive brick and mortar storefronts popping up. But what will be the opportunity to live offline to get into consumers hands by being on a shelf or being at a point of sale? That's enticing enough for someone to grab as they're checking out. Right. So I think kind of the changing wholesale environment will certainly be an area of focus over the next few years. I also just think you'll, you'll continue to see a number of brands pop up that are continually more mission driven, right where, look, I mean, I wouldn't consider myself born to be an entrepreneur. But why I feel like this is a really good category for me is because I am the I Am the end consumer, I was that person five years ago. So I feel like I can stand on kind of a soapbox of sorts, and say, like, this is who we're fighting for, like we're fighting for me five to seven years ago. And that's why I feel like I can have such an intimate one to one conversation with a lot of our customers. It's because there's that there's that time, there's that shared experience. And I think consumers and customers in general, will care a lot more about kind of what's behind the scenes that brand, the why behind the brand, what's in the brand DNA, as they consider kind of the overall purchasing journey. So I think you'll start to see a lot more businesses that pop up better, again, born out of need born out of, you know, there's a strong passion for something in customers and folks on the other end of the table will really take note of that.
Phil 56:26
Love it for for a guy who says he doesn't have a big broad vision as a strength. Think about the future. So it's really interesting. I see Abe popped up here. So please feel free to ask a question. Thanks for coming up on stage,
Abe 56:41
Thank you, thank you both for for hosting the chat, you know, lots of great information and learning a lot. So I'm super appreciative of both of you. So I had two quick questions. The first is, and I joined a little bit late. So hopefully, I didn't miss it beforehand. But one is kind of the what fueled the most of your guys growth was a kind of that, you know, non scalable, reaching out to folks, organic referrals, you know, organic search, things like that, or is a lot of that early stage growth. Typically, you know, for you guys kind of driven on that, you know, paid acquisition and, you know, just making lifelong customers. And, you know, if you can make lifelong customers using paid, obviously, the returns, there can be pretty attractive. Sure,
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 57:26
really good question. I think I could probably break it down into probably three different areas. So, six weeks after launch, we're actually The New York Times. So from a PR perspective, that really, really, that was a huge tailwind from a pure brand awareness standpoint. And that was just out of pure luck. So I'm also a firm believer that when folks tell you that they're more than 95%, like when luck is not more than 95%, they're short selling luck, right? Like That was 100%. Luck. So that was certainly a brand awareness piece. Second, I think we started to unlock some value on paid social, where we felt like, we could invest at a little bit more aggressive rate, but still generating a return that we were really, really comfortable with. And then third, quite honestly, is we launched on Amazon on March 1, kind of right, as COVID was happening. And I think what you saw on Amazon was Amazon became basically the one retailer that could continue to deliver in two days, right? So people were buying dish show people were buying wipes, people were buying x, but there was also just this increased consciousness and awareness of, you know, now I've been sitting in my apartment or house for 18 hours today, like, what do I actually eat? What do I actually put on my body? What do I actually do act? Like there was a lot of kind of self realization a little bit. And I think that was a tailwind for our category. By and large.
Abe 58:45
Awesome. Yeah. That's super helpful to know. And then and then the second one that I was curious about, you know, is how you guys think about kind of like product and skew expansion, you know, are you looking to stay kind of in the, you know, in the realm that you're in? Are you expanding like oil based products? And, you know, kind of targeting more of the other gaps that men have or Yeah, curious to learn more about that.
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 59:10
Yep. So we actually just launched hair, which is kind of our first big extension, about two weeks ago, that's gone incredibly well, which we're really, really grateful for, and I'm like, great, maybe we should just launch products every week that seemed to work well. Obviously, not not scalable. But to be quite honest, I mean, we still have products in the hopper that we went into development before launch. So I mean, we're, you know, these are products that we'll see the light in q1, but we've been working on for quite some time. So I think, you know, there is a few skews that we've, you know, that we have had in the hopper for quite some time. But I also think we're starting to understand based on customers that we have in our community via email or via our slack group, that can kind of tell us what they want, right. So hair is one of the first products that we kind of CO developed with a lot of our guides Which is what pain points you currently see and kind of the shampoo and conditioner that using? Why do you even use shampoo or conditioner? Do you like the fragrance? Do you like x? Do you like the way your hair feels after. And I think you start to tease out a lot of these points with customers who are willing to share their experiences. And you kind of create this amazing product and formula kind of in tandem with folks that are already your customers. And that's been really, really exciting. So I think that has to be obviously balanced with avoiding skew proliferation. But I think for us, we'll continue to roll out products that we're really really excited about.
Abe 1:00:34
Awesome, look. Great. Learn to appreciate that. Awesome.
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 1:00:40
Thanks for tuning in.
Phil 1:00:41
Thanks for coming up, Abe. Not last but not least, and we'll wrap it up. It's fine. It's five my time seven your time. Who knows what time it is these days anyways, with Colton, but one thing I'd love to ask is just you know, what book has had a big impact, or maybe the biggest impact on your career so far?
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 1:01:03
Oh, man, that's a really good question. I mean, I am a huge Nike fan. I spent my summer in between first and second year of grad school and Beaverton working at Nike. And I mean, I feel like one of the prerequisites is to read shoe dog, you know, but when you think about Nike, and you think about this massive behemoth to understand kind of even like the inventory and working capital issues that they were struggling with, like, Well, after they got off the ground, you know, it just goes to show you that, you know, brands at various stages are still kind of fighting through the iceberg theory, right, which is on the surface, everyone looks fine and dandy, and everyone seems to be doing just a great job, but underwater, like people are swimming with fury. So you know, that was a book for me. That was always really, really interesting and a really fun read. Super cool.
Phil 1:02:00
Well Matt just want to thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate all the insight and perspective you shared. Thanks so much. This was fantastic. I learned a lot and I appreciate you coming on.
Matt, Found and CEO or Huron 1:02:12
Awesome. Thanks much for having me Phil. Appreciate it. Cool.
Phil 1:02:15
Thanks, everyone for listening in and Matt Have a great night and everyone listening in. Have a great evening to take it easy, everyone