In our journey, we've collected 160 million, I would say 90% of CEOs of big companies. In Silicon Valley sleeps on our product, Elon Musk has it, Mark Zuckerberg, all the top athletes in the world, Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc, Prime Minister, King... We make millions of dollars. He is Matteo Franceschetti, founder and CEO of 8 Sleep, a company that generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, that went through Y Combinator and has among the most important investors in Silicon Valley. Their flagship product is a mattress cover full of sensors that perfectly monitor your sleep, your
biometric data. It automatically helps you sleep better. The feature that made them famous is the ability to heat or cool the bed as desired. Then there's also the integrated alarm clock, the ability to reduce your snoring and an app to monitor everything. People like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg use 8 sleep, but also Formula One drivers and heads of state. All people who need to perform, for whom sleeping 1 hour more can make the difference, and for whom the investment of a few thousand dollars is worth it. So Matteo Franceschetti has lived in the United
States for years, where his company is also based. But occasionally he returns to Italy and one morning at eight he came by my office in Milan and therefore took the opportunity to ask some questions and have him tell me his story. In fact, Matteo's passion for performance started very early. I started early with skiing because my father had done many ski races. It had always been his passion. Around eight years old, until twelve I had done skiing. The ski school was super formative because I would go train in South Tyrol, where everyone spoke German and
sometimes my parents would leave me there for a couple of days where I basically just skied surrounded by these other children. They practically didn't speak Italian. The coach only spoke on the radio in German and so that was a bit traumatic, but actually... Over time, it was something that shaped me. And then I started playing tennis and I did a lot of tennis between 12 and 17, competitive at the Italian level, some European competitions and then around 16 years old I started racing in go-karts. Why the desire to do sports? Two things: one, I realize
now, that I've always had that drive, that internal grit in me. But the original push came from my father, he was a lawyer, but he had always been an athlete. He had also raced in cars, he had been Italian champion twice in uphill car races he had been in the junior national ski team, had played basketball and I grew up with a father, somewhat with that mentality, and my sister had never loved, probably doing too many competitions. And then I came along. Instead I liked them. What high school did you do? Scientific high school. And
during school are you more interested in sports or more interested in the academic program? At school I was that typical student that teachers would tell my mother "the boy is bright and has potential, but doesn't apply himself." In Silicon Valley there's almost a pushback against all those who follow the standard academic progression. It's usually considered too simple, too canonical, and instead they look for people who are nonconformist. We call it contrarian right, so you have to be contrary and be right. But if you do what everyone else does, you get what everyone else gets. This
is the classic Silicon Valley mindset that you also find in Peter Thiel's book, "Zero to One" That is, usually when you think something different from everyone else, you're the one who's wrong. In some cases we're the ones who are right against everyone else. And if you want to make a successful startup, what you need to find is a situation where you're right, everyone else is wrong, meaning contrarian and right. And Matteo has always considered himself a bit like that. In fact his entrepreneurial spirit was actually already there at a young age. I've always been enterprising,
right? Since I was 14 years old. I remember my father had a car accident, destroyed the car, the next day I went to dealerships trying to negotiate cars and see what cars were available. For people who seemed younger than my age, so if you see this tiny 14-year-old kid who comes and starts discussing to buy a car for his father, I don't know how much credibility you give him. Then he went to university, he did law, why? Good question. I was completely disinterested and so it was the most logical thing. The University of Ferrara is
pretty good in law, my father and sister are lawyers. Probably the easiest choice because I was only focused on sports, even though at that point I had started to slow down and therefore could never have thought that I would then become so focused and obsessed with professional performance. My mom was a high school science teacher, I think on Fridays, she would bring home this magazine, from Il Sole24Ore. I would read it because I was interested I read about these big law firms that do these really cool things like acquisitions, they do stock market listings. I
didn't like the idea of being a lawyer like my father and sister do because I wanted something international, something where I could speak English, even though my English was terrible, I practically didn't speak English. I find this book, about this law firm called Baker McKenzie and I read it, basically I get passionate about it. I say: okay if I have to do law, have to be a lawyer, this is what I want to do. I don't want to work in my father's firm. But to become part of these law firms there are two conditions: one
is that you must graduate with highest honors and second that your English must be perfect. And that's how his goal shifts from sports to studying and so everything changes. And from there I start studying, applying myself and start getting many top grades that will then lead to graduating with highest honors. And then I also have a company with my best friend, I was racing go-karts. I have this idea to take photos directly at the circuit. We create this company and start making tons of money. How come? At that time the way it worked was that
you went to the circuit, there were some photographers, they took photos and then sent you a package home three weeks later with cash on delivery and if you wanted to keep them you would send them the money. What year was it? 2003?... Why this idea? I don't know, I saw the opportunity. He was the more technological one and it was the time when real Digital Cameras were starting to appear and then we had bought an Epson you know, just like the printers, for €90. The funny thing is that we didn't have the money to buy
the camera, I think it was €1,000. So I go to my parents and ask them "would you give me half?, and Enrico finds half." My parents tell me absolutely not. This is one of your usual stupid ideas. Focus, study, graduate. His parents say the same thing We go to his grandmother and his grandmother signs us a mini loan to buy this camera that we would have to pay in 18 months. We repay the Camera in 18 days and the reason is that we go to these go-kart tracks where I used to race, so I already
knew a bit, we take photos and print them directly with this Epson and sell each photo, I think, I don't know, maybe the equivalent of €10, which cost us two and people go crazy for this stuff. So from there we expand, start making posters, start making stickers and so on. We could make 10,000 euros in a week. And you managed to study and do these things simultaneously? Eh... if there was, I don't know, the criminal law exam, the majority of my friends would prepare for it for three months, I try to do it in twenty
days, but in twenty days I do it 22 hours a day. So you wouldn't go out to take photos for go-karts, you would do twenty days of criminal law exam. Exactly, but I had lots of gaps there were the semesters, between April and May, there was this space and there all I did was this thing called Imago, and that's where I made the majority of the money that then took me to the United States, plus a series of sacrifices from my parents who put in the difference. So I graduated and afterward I went to San
Diego for almost a year. After graduation his friend goes to study in China and so they close Imago, also because Matteo's family was absolutely against it. It was a complete push back. For what I know today about Silicon Valley, that could have been the beginning of a startup. So Matteo goes to San Diego and studies at university taking a language course and economics. And then I did an internship at an arbitration center which was the topic I covered in my thesis. What does that mean? Basically instead of going before a judge to resolve a dispute,
there are a series of extra-judicial solutions where you go to an arbitrator or there are mediations. And that was what I had done in my thesis. This first work experience shows Matteo's parents that he can make it perfectly fine on his own, without necessarily having to work in his father's firm. Imagine that my father had his firm in Ferrara, a good firm, but normal, a lawyer from a city. So I remember that one day my father, between the lines, basically the concept he tells me is realize that I have no contacts, I don't know anyone.
try it we'll help you as we can but realize that it seems like a somewhat impossible dream. I'm in San Diego and from San Diego I start making applications like crazy, write to 20, 30, then return and do the interview and get hired, and it's funny because basically I make from day one more money than my mom made as a high school teacher. Did you like life in the firm? In the end yes, it was Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, day two of my life basically I enter at 9 in the morning and leave at 7 in
the evening the next day. Actually my boss gives me 1 hour to go home to wash up at 6 in the morning and says "I'll only give you 45 minutes because otherwise you risk taking a nap and then you won't wake up. So you have to go home, take a shower and return as quickly as possible. What did you have to do for all that time? We were working on a super important transaction with an Italian company. You had the goal of entering these big firms, once you succeeded though, at that point, what was your
goal? At first it was to climb there, and it happened. Make a career? I did the first two years at Freshfields, then my boss became head of finance at Allen & Overy and I became a lawyer a few months later, he brought 3 or 4 people with him and I was the only trainee he brought. And then I became Associate at Allen & Overy. And so let's say the most obvious trajectory for me was either to stay there and try to become a partner one day or potentially at that time I started looking at MBA
or learning to become a solicitor barrister in UK. But were these things that excited you? Was it something that says this is my big dream in life or was it contingent? Was it because you found yourself there? It was a mix. I always wanted to make it big and so at that moment making it big was: either I become partner and go to Dubai and work in a big law firm managing Emirates. Then what happens? The 2008 crisis arrives and our work just stops. So I go from working 16 hours a day because we worked
like beasts to being bored. If I get bored I start looking and doing other things and so with another guy who would then become my co-founder, we start making a non-profit association to connect people explore opportunities, because he was very involved in politics and then from there we realize that there's this opportunity in solar. It was probably the only economic bubble of the last 60 years in Italy and I managed to ride it. An incredible stroke of luck, otherwise I would still be a lawyer. And basically there are private equity funds from all over the
world that want to rent lands, particularly in southern Italy to create large photovoltaic plants. What happens is that my firm and the firm where the other guy who was also called Matteo worked are the best firms in Italy for doing what's called project finance. So we start to understand a bit of this stuff. The majority of these private equity funds speak English and have to interact with people in Puglia Abruzzo, Molise where, they don't speak so we find ourselves practically in this position where we are The intermediaries. We can talk with these big guys, we
can find the landowner in Puglia who has hectares that he wants to rent. So I worked in the office until 9, 10 in the evening and then I would meet with Matteo from 10 to 2, 3 in the morning and we would work on this thing. At first the way it works is that I find all these funds and start almost bringing them to the law firm. But the message I'm given after a while is Matteo, you've just become associate, just become a lawyer, you need to focus on learning the craftmanship, so the legal details.
It's not your time to bring clients... and to me it seemed like bullshit... sorry if I can bring you funds that want to invest hundreds of millions here, why not? And basically I think the feeling was a bit that that's more of a partner job, let the partners do it they know how to do it... Sure, you do your thing. I become a lawyer that year, at the end of November and then my father dies at the end of 2008, at the beginning of 2009, by mid-2009 the company we were managing overnight starts making enough
money to pay me the salary equivalent to what the Law Firm could pay me. Because you took those clients that your law firm didn't want to take basically. And we weren't giving legal advice, there was nothing competing. I was a service provider who identified the lands, validated them for photovoltaic development, managed all the permits part for you. And how did these clients find you? Once we understood how the first one worked we started contacting them and so we created this brand that seemed a bit cool. I remember once someone came from Spain, we went to
rent a BMW because I had a Punto, Matteo had a beaten up Smart and so we said we can't go pick up the CEO of this Spanish company with this broken thing and so we rented a BMW like from Europcar, but the key had you know the keychain and so we had to hide it from him so he wouldn't see it. Yes of course it had to be yours. By mid-2009 we made enough money I can pay myself a salary, so I go to my mother and tell her... she was saying actually, no you're doing
well you can become a partner, partners in this law firm earn a lot of money, you're crazy. Basically in September 2009 I quit and my plan was if this thing fails there was money for a year and my bet was that my boss in my opinion would take me back, in a year I return with my tail between my legs. For many years I had the dream at night that things weren't working and I had to return to the law firms and it was like my nightmare, even though I had always been good there, they
treated me very well and relationships were excellent, but I thought about the concept of failure. It's a bit like when one dreams about high school finals. And so how does this first real activity go? You manage to make enough money to pay the salary. After that you scale it. I don't remember if in one or two years we manage to make more than 1,000,000 euros in revenue and we start hiring, then the whole regulatory landscape changes and it becomes... A disaster. So at that point we find a way to sell the company making some money
and finding jobs for the whole team. You sell it off because of this thing, you can't sell it well. Looking back I still consider it selling well. What was the revenue when you sold it? Between 1 and 2,000,000 approximately Okay When you sell these companies there's a bit of upfront but much has to happen with what are called earnouts, so the potential was still very big if the earnouts had materialized. Then those who bought us didn't do well and behaved very badly, there were also legal problems and so the earnouts by now... The earnouts never
came. No, they still owe us money. So in just over a year Matteo quits, returns to Italy and creates this company that helps American funds deal with Italy taking advantage of the very Italian boom in solar, which those who lived through it remember well, in a short time manages to sell this company and so decides to exploit the same opportunity in the United States. So Matteo and I move. We join the other partner in America, take an office in New York and from there the first American adventure begins. You saw the opportunity to do the
same thing in America, So you opened another solar company in America that did the same thing? Vaguely yes, in the sense, they were still large photovoltaic solar plants. Instead of selling to private equity funds in America it's the municipalities, so the townships that buy this energy where they pay a discounted price and then distribute it. What services did you offer? We identified all the areas where you could develop these plants and put together all the advisory part, always advisory... yes. And this one was going well too. We got some investors and then it was bought
by a Panasonic company. After how many years? Between 2 and 3. Here too let's say few years. Quick, and how did you raise money this time to scale quickly? To scale quickly and because in this one you didn't make much money from the start so much of the money was postponed because here we were no longer an advisor, but literally developing these plants So you had to wait for the project to finish then. And so we had to pay ourselves money to live on. How many people were you doing this? 6,7. What kind of roles?
There were the founders and then all engineers expert in permits same also on the Italian one, on the Italian one I think we became about 30. And what was your revenue with this one? We sold this one before having revenue but we had raised a couple million from a Luxembourg investor. Recapping if the first company in Italy was advisory, so it generated revenue from day zero, like any consulting firm, the company in the United States instead worked with engineers to design plants which, as happens in many cases, the projects last years and the bulk is
paid upon delivery, Matteo despite this manages to sell to Panasonic in two years even before starting to generate real revenue, but clearly exploiting the value of existing contracts. And it's in these years, before the exit that Matteo meets Alex, his wife, with whom he then created the idea of 8 Sleep. I met her in Miami, on a trip, had gone to New York with Matteo for work. We stopped for Halloween in Miami. I met her there which is the most incredible story because I'm not one who goes much to clubs, that kind of thing. Neither
is she, she's Mexican. I'm Italian. She wasn't living there yet. Then we met and from there we made it work. Matteo and Alex would come up with startup ideas on weekends. what ideas came to you in your weekend sprints? At the time there were lots of those startups that did... It was called Blue Apron in New York and so they would send you a food package and how to cook it, and I had made one with Italian food and then we had made another one where we made personalized jewelry 3D printed in plastic. That's where
we met Max, who then becomes the co-founder of 8 Sleep. The idea of 3D jewelry convinces them. They try to get it started with Massimo, another startupper they had met in those years who however seemed much more interested in another idea, that of 8 Sleep. Max is in New York, has just been dumped by his girlfriend. We go out to dinner him and I and he starts talking about this idea I have that comes from sports origins. I've always been obsessed with efficiency and body recovery. This even when you worked in the law firm that
when I did solar, did you stay fit? No, there actually very badly but when I turned thirty something clicked. So there's still hope for me. I remember I went running at thirty practically couldn't run 5 minutes and there I thought "it's disgusting, this is not me" it's not me and from there I started getting back into it. Now I'm obsessed with body hacking and so I talk to him about this idea. I tell him why Elon Musk is taking me to Mars, but I still spend 8 hours a day, which is about 30 years of
my life on a stupid piece of foam, with no technology. I go there, I have to fall asleep, wake up, pretend to be fresh as a rose. These stories are the same for 50 years and despite there being the craziest innovations in high tech, these things haven't been renewed. One of these was sleeping. The Tech bed basically didn't exist, You get this idea, you tell it to Max. I tell Max who tells me why don't you come to San Francisco tomorrow? Let's build something in my garage. So I went to San Francisco the next day
we built it in the garage. He built it, because Max is the genius who builds anything and then we had a pajama party where we invited people, six, seven friends, and what happened is I call Alex, who was in New York, and tell her there will be a presentation here. With some marketing material to explain. What was her specialization, what did she do? Marketing communication in Fintech Company. She puts this stuff together for when the others arrive, they go in the bed, try this first thing, do all the experiences... before leaving one of them, Simone
Brunotti, Italian, now he's moved back here to Italy, comes to me and basically gives me a check says I would like to invest $25,000 which usually, the cut, is done in Silicon Valley. Yes a seed Exactly and I say Simone we don't even have a company meaning we hadn't even incorporated yet I was in the process of selling the other company no no, in my opinion you have to try, this stuff is super cool... I talk to Max and we say we want to do this thing, he had sold his company 3, 4 months ago,
was working for those who had bought it ... let's try. And from there basically 8 sleep starts. How did Max make the prototype? At first it was just a cover that you put on, that only heated up. How did he make it by himself? We bought on Amazon a heating pad, we opened it, we connected it with an Arduino and other solutions and various sensors to wifi, that you could control from the computer based on a present sensor that we also bought off the shelf. We could turn lights on and off because we saw if
you were in bed, and that was the MVP made in three days. The seed also starts. How much do you raise in seed, if you can say? In the end I think something like 1,000,000, 1,500,000. So from that 25,000 you do a nice round to raise 1,500,000. Yes, in pieces so, we had a convertible note this I think happened around March, from there to the following March you talk to one person, talk to another, we raise 1 million. At this point they're ready to start and for their first launch they do a pre-order campaign in
order to properly validate the market before actually starting to produce very complicated hardware. At the time we do the campaign, the 16th largest in the world and we sell about 8000 units. So the campaign is a success. Alex and I get married but we set the wedding date one week after the campaign ends because basically we plan and know that if the campaign goes badly it will be a very depressing wedding, if instead it goes well we celebrate, and we celebrated. There's just one problem with the campaign. Not knowing how much it would cost them
to make each product, they set the pre-order price too low, $200, realizing only later that it would cost them much more per piece. At the time it was $200, getting the price all wrong. But yes, it was fun. For the consumer not for us, it cost us more. So for you it was at a loss, it was a way to do marketing. Actually we didn't know how much it would cost us. Sure because you weren't producing it yet, in your head it was we'll sell them anyway with the money from the manufacturer who produced them.
We wanted to show ourselves. And instead you made wrong calculations. I remember I talked to Tony Fadell, founder of Nest, I said: yes because it will cost us about $100 and he looked at me as if to say this fool, he was right. We launch this, super traction. Definitely a good sign, you validate the market this way. Even if I don't make money on this launch I realize that the market is hot, it's validated, I can invest in it. Yes and no in reality, meaning this is what you tell investors in reality it's a totally
different market today if I went back and knew what I know, it's not indicative because basically there's this tech community, at the time on Indiegogo and Kickstarter, who are fanatics in a positive sense for any electronic gadget but when then you have to sell to the real consumer it's a totally different story. After the fundraising one of the most important turning points for the company happens. They are in fact accepted by Y Combinator, the most famous startup accelerator in the world from which companies like Airbnb, Stripe, Twitch came out. By the way Y Combinator was
led from 2014 to 2019 by Sam Altman. So doing this acceleration program, perhaps at the time more than today was a guarantee and gave you access to the best contacts and the best minds in Silicon Valley. Finally we get admitted to Y Combinator who had rejected us twice, there too a nice story because basically they hire a partner for hardware. Finally, having connected and so I meet him and he says you have to apply. for this batch, and I tell him no, I'm not applying again, you've rejected me twice, at some point I have better
things to do. Isn't it hard to do the Y Combinator application? No, and he tells me no you have to apply, you have to apply.. He goes to my co-founders and we decide at this point to do the application in 1 hour, usually before I would take a week, some days because you wanted to be perfect, we do it, we get admitted, we go through Y Combinator... Why the desire to go to Y Combinator? Also because for hardware like this, maybe, at the time it wasn't normal, they were all tech companies. Y Combinator is the
Harvard of tech startups. If you get in there it puts you in a hardware link. Getting into YC certainly helped 8 sleep, but actually the journey from there wasn't downhill at all. Right in that period they had to start producing and shipping all the products sold in presale producing each piece at a loss. Moreover producing 8000 pieces of new hardware without experience isn't easy. We get in, but the coolest thing happens after Y Combinator because I go to Alex and tell her things aren't happening in China, the manufacturing. I'm going to China. When are you
going? Tomorrow. Okay, and when are you coming back? Once I've solved it. Result I came back n months later. In China I got a house. We had the office, part of the people we hired then are still with us today. Building the first 8000 units was a shit show. The hardest part is finding suppliers who trust you and build custom products. First they're afraid because you don't have cash flow. So working with you for them is super risky, and that's how it went. And then you get all these 8000 units built trying to do it
as quickly as possible because you're late and then the day after you've sold these 8000 units you start selling 100 units per month and so these get super pissed off because you had to build all these lines. Yes, for them it's an investment. Exactly. So they make n production lines to try to build, I don't know, maybe 1000 units per week and then you out of the blue make 1 per day. You make one per day, so it's very difficult with the hardware part but we managed to handle it. After Y combinator we raise 6
million in one day. I think TechCrunch mentioned us as one of the super top companies of our YC batch. And here it was fundamental, the Y Combinator experience also because you are a company that also sells to tech company CEOs in Silicon Valley you were in exactly the right environment in your batch there was another startup that just had success. There were two guys who sold theirs which was called Paribus and now they've done Ramp. Now they're worth twelve billion and that was cool too, because then they all become friends and I was one of
their first investors in Ramp. If you hadn't done 8 sleep. I could have just done Ramp in my life... Set. And I would be set. Like Jeff Bezos with Google, this power of networking. To be clear, the round where Matteo invested was at a 40 million valuation, so we're talking about a 300x return, enough to make you a millionaire investing even just $4,000. And yes, Jeff Bezos was one of the first investors in Google and just that investment should have returned around a billion dollars. But this didn't stop him from screaming like crazy and growing
his own company exactly like Matteo. What did you do with these 6 million? We build the 8000 units. You were still building them meanwhile? How long did it take you to make these 8,000 units? We shipped the last of the 8000 units 18 months after Y Combinator, which was therefore about two years after the campaign. Were the customers angry? Some yes, in the grand scheme of things no. It's part of the game when you invest on Indiegogo on Kickstarter. Finished sending these units at a loss basically, and then you created a new model. We created
a new model because I meet Keith Rabois, who comes from the PayPal mafia, CEO of Square and also LinkedIn and Khosla Ventures has always been passionate about sleep And I pitch him this vision in 2017, they had already connected me to him, we had sent him our deck, Keith is very straight forward and at the time said: no, this technology doesn't convince me. This was in Y Combinator times. they're ready to reintroduce me to him a year later. With Keith, with these big investors usually they already know a certain sector and so the only way
to attract their attention is to tell them or tell them a vision they don't expect. So I write in a day, a Saturday, this memo "the future of sleep" that we still use at the Company today, if you enter 8 Sleep before joining in the last interview which is with me. Can you still do all the interviews? Yes, all of them. How many are you in total? About 400, of which about a hundred in America. Basically I write this document, in a page and a half with all the future of sleep that still guides our
roadmap today. I send it to Keith, he likes it The meeting goes very well and what he says is okay, we're interested, you need to talk to Vinod. At that moment we were running out of money. We needed to raise it. Keith Rabois is really one of the top investors in Silicon Valley and if you follow me, you know he also invested in Trade Republic. I recently interviewed their CEO, but even more legendary among you is Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun microsystems super billionaire who with his vehicle khosla ventures invests in startups. He's a splendid
person, I had the chance to talk for 1 minute when I met him in Silicon Valley. Meanwhile 8 Sleep needed money. Indeed, producing many very expensive units, they have costs to produce that they have to face before selling and collecting. We were selling the cover in irregular sales. So the first product, the one that only heated. This time not at $200? No, more and then we had mixed it with a mattress because that's where you could make the margin. So you managed to sell at a profit. Exactly. And there they were also doing well. How
much did it cost in total? With the mattress part it cost about $1,000. So Keith says: okay you need to talk to Vinod. Vinod proposes to meet me one morning, but that day I'm with an investor that I had scheduled two weeks ago, who was an LP one of our investors that I couldn't cancel. So I ask the assistant can I take a flight immediately after I don't know, I arrive at 3 in the afternoon and she tells me: no I'm sorry Vinod leaves for two three weeks with his family so if you can't make
it that morning we'll do it in four weeks. We didn't have four weeks, we weren't running out of money but almost So I go to Alex and tell her: Vinod can't and that other meeting can't be cancelled, it will be a fiasco. And she tells me: ask the assistant where Vinod is going and I tell her: but I can't ask the assistant where Vinod Khosla is going Yes yes, you can because otherwise there's trouble. So I send an email to the assistant, I say not to be intrusive but by any chance can I meet him
she says he's going to London, London from New York is almost closer than Silicon Valley if Vinod doesn't mind I'll even go meet him in London, so everyone saves a bit of time. Vinod appreciates that thing so much that he said: come after tomorrow to London, what time do you land? I landed I don't know, at 7 in the morning, come at 7:45. We meet for 15 minutes. Max and I fly. Max comes too because Vinod is very technical. We meet Vinod and from 15 minutes, it becomes 3 hours. His wife calling him 18 times
angry as hell, but Vinod has fun with us and we talk about that and from there we do a 9 million round with Vinod So you use this money to make the next prototype, which is the one that also cools. Yes, we do the round at the end of 2017, build it in 2018, launch in mid-2019, and from there it was doing well, but from there things explode. Cooling is a much more difficult functionality to implement compared to heating, so they did it later, but once they did it it was a turning point that made
them become the company they are now. And the product market fit is the fact that it also cools. It cools and heats because many times many couples have different preferences, with the fact that it cools we help athletes recover faster, we help women in menopause who have what are called hot flashes and it becomes a sensational thing Elon Musk has it, Mark Zuckerberg, Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc, Prime Ministers... Let's talk numbers: how many units have you sold, what results have you reached today? In our journey we've collected 160 million. The last round was Lead guided
by Valor Equity Partners, who was the first investor in Tesla, in SpaceX, they were behind Elon from the early days, Antonio Gracias. We've sold hundreds of thousands of units worldwide. United States, Canada, England, Europe. We've just launched in the Middle East, we're in Australia, we're opening Singapore and at some point we'll open in China, we have all the world class people as celebrities practically anyone like princes, kings, all the top athletes in the world. Yes, also top entrepreneurs. I would say 90% of CEOs of big companies in Silicon Valley sleep on our product. There's the
bio hacking trend, especially in Silicon Valley, Huberman, Peter Attia, Brian Johnson, all the entrepreneurs who enter this longevity phase. One of the three fundamental aspects of longevity is precisely sleep quality. And so there's also that whole market slice, meaning people extremely passionate about health and bio hacking. Yes. Tell me about your life now. What are your tasks? What are your challenges? What are your goals for the future? Goal, make 8 sleep what I define as a global company, so with a global presence we're working on many products, our vision is all about what we call
preventive health. So we're working on technologies for body scanning to identify cancer. If you're getting sick and in general to improve your sleep. So everything that is health tech. My life is intense, I travel a lot. What are your mandates? I spend the majority of my time on product, people and growth strategies, particularly now that we're becoming global in this order. Now are the company's goals internationalization? We want to go IPO meaning we want to be listed on the Stock Exchange in a couple of years and so we have a Roadmap both for product and
for fiscal international growth so we know what we need to achieve the question is how we achieve it. What are the biggest difficulties you encounter in your work? People in the end because those who are good you have to keep them motivated you have to make changes with those who don't perform because anyway we want to remain quite efficient to be profitable. Yes, and then you're 500 people for hundreds of millions in revenue, so the revenue per employee is very high. We make millions of dollars per employee. And you're profitable you were saying. Yes. Then
obviously in the hardware business it's all cash flow, some and various but we've been what's called free cash outflow positive. We don't need to raise more money probably we'll do it because it's part of growth but as a business we're very solid. Have you diluted a lot in these investment rounds or not? Yes, if then if you do your job well, with the board you have what are called equity refresh, in my case a good ownership because they give me more shares overtime but you have to earn them. Were there moments when you said everything's
going up in the air, we have to start over? Yes, probably almost died five times. Causes? The cashflow? Yeah, you run out of money. You're about to run out of money especially in the early days, now in recent years the company becomes more solid the risk as you grow is less of dying as a company in the early days maybe the first two three years when you literally finish money and don't have a cashflow. Two years ago there had been, I don't know if you remember, SVB Bank Sure. went out of business. We had 30
million parked in an account there. And did you recover that money? Afterward yes, this happened on Friday and during the weekend the company had 30 million less. You understand that 30 million... You can go belly up. So that weekend we recreated a whole model of what we would have had to do if the 30 million were lost to be able to survive with the rest of the money we had. Black Swans become bigger and bigger, right? When you were small maybe they were Black Swans of 1,000,000 then it becomes 10, then it becomes 30. Maybe
the next ones start to be 100 million that overnight something goes wrong, so how do you handle it? It becomes part of that mechanism. Have competitors been born in these years? Thanks to your success? There were two but we destroyed them. It's a difficult business. Their strategy wasn't optimal. And then we work like beasts, travel faster. If you were to start now in what market would you start? If I had a younger brother I wouldn't have him do hardware, consumer hardware. Too complicated, too risky, too much capital. Do the opposite, do B2B and software. Yes,
but all my CEO friends who do B2B SaaS after a few years get bored they get to this point where maybe they've sold some secondary shares they've made money and there's this super boring thing where anyway there are all the PMs and you make mini features that serve the B2B client, while I maybe go to Formula 1 in Singapore because 60% of Formula 1 drivers sleep on our product. But I'm obsessed with AI technology and technology at 1,000% you can look at fintech, lot of defense and in the United States Anduril. The founder president of
Anduril is on our board, Palmer Luckey. Palmer is one of the founders and obviously the biggest name, there's Trae Stephens who is the President, he's on our board with Antonio Gracias who is practically Elon's best friend and was the first board member of Tesla after Elon and Kimbal who is the first board member of SpaceX. Who is your entrepreneurship mentor? If you ever had one? Living or dead. Our investors for me are incredible, right? Antonio built Tesla with Elon, was with Elon building in Memphis, the biggest computer in the world. So I learn a lot
from him and what he's seen between SpaceX and Tesla. Keith Rabois is insanely incredible as a mentor. They don't tell you what to do, but Keith tells you: look, so, at LinkedIn, at PayPal, at Open Door, Square when we did this that happened. You understand that if 3 times out of 4, 4 out of 4 that happened he's telling you that 90% it could happen. And then we have Trae who built Anduril, which now is worth how much? 14, 16 billion. Vinod Khosla is one of the legends in Silicon Valley. The man is legendary because
he's technical and then he's achieved so much in his life. Now I don't know how old he is, but that guy pushes, never gives up. And another big one is David Sacks, was CEO of PayPal and then did Yammer which he sold 1,000,002 and Trump nominated him the head of AI crypto. And David is one of my biggest investors. I have the opportunity to access these people who are incredible. What advice would you give to a young person who wants to do business? Wants to accelerate this journey? I've thought many times about how I got
here, where I've gotten and there's no way to explain it. Sometimes I also use this turning point which is when my father died in 2008, I became a lawyer, two weeks before I was working in Law Firms If I could talk to my father that day and tell him where I am today, it's so off from where I was, which is incredible. The only common denominator is work hard, follow your gut, your instinct and try any opportunity that comes, right? When I became an entrepreneur, big bet that could fail. When I moved to America, big
bet that could fail. When I went from solar to tech, big bet that could fail. Some will fail. These are three where I did well, but in between there were 1000 where I failed or, weren't as big as I would like. The most important thing is: work super hard at the beginning of your career. Because work compounds. If I have a regret, If I had a magic wand, my life in my opinion is perfect, You're not complaining. No, but if someone said okay, but if you really want to be really picky, what would you change?
I would have gone to the United States, probably in college as a tennis player, because I would have managed to get there at 18 instead of 30. Now many of my friends or investors are entering the government with Trump, others have multi billion dollar funds right? All these things these are relationships that compound, in the next ten, twenty, thirty years if I could have accelerated them I would like to be almost five years younger because Americans graduate earlier, at twenty-one so my smartest friends entered tech at 21 and I entered at 30, 31. I would
be where I am but with ten years less. With what I've managed to do in America in ten years. Imagine if they gave me 10 years back. And so, push at the beginning, build these relationships and then play the long term. Now I've been 6, 7 years that I invest, a bit more. I've invested in many unicorns, those that become more than a billion dollar company and all those the majority are friends. A certain network. This chat with Matteo was gold. There are some themes that always return when you talk with entrepreneurs, like for example
the importance of network which was vital in Matteo's experience, but also the ability to seize opportunity whether it's first in solar and then in tech and then obviously the importance of taking big risks even when things are going well. Even if you're already a lawyer and want to try to do startups or even if you've already had an exit, and want to aim even higher. In short, it doesn't matter what successes you've had, if you want to do even bigger things it's still very difficult. Write me in the comments what you think and don't miss
all the other interviews I've done with other entrepreneurs. Both from Silicon Valley and not, and subscribe to the channel to not miss all the future interviews I'll do, I recommend it!
