5 key lessons on brand, marketing and category creation with Alex Zatarain (Co-founder - Eight Sleep) | Ep174
Key takeaways from Episode 174 of The Startup Playbook Podcast
Hello everyone đ
Welcome to The Startup Playbook Newsletter where I share details from the latest podcast episodes as well as diving deeper into some of the topics, themes and insights discussed on the podcast.
This weekâs guest is Alexandra Zatarain, the Co-founder & VP of Brand & Marketing of Eight Sleep who gave a masterclass on all things brand, marketing and growth.
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A little history on Alex Zatarain and Eight Sleep
Alex grew up in Tijuana, Mexico, where a lot of her values and perspectives on entrepreneurship came out of seeing her parents run their own businesses.
She then moved to New York where she worked for a fintech company before moving from New York to Silicon valley in 2014 to launch a smart mattress company alongside 3 other co-founders, all of whom were âoutsidersâ to the silicon valley startup scene. They wanted to build and create a first of its kind hardware product, built by a founding team with no prior hardware experience between them!
In 2015, Eight Sleep launched via an Indiegogo campaign that raised over $1M in pre-sales and fast forward to today, Eight Sleep is the worldâs leader in helping people build their sleep fitness.
The company has gone on to raise a total of over $150M (valuing the company over $500M), operates in 13 countries and has over 200 of the worlds leading athletes across F1, Tour de France, NBA and the NFL (to name a few) using their product.
5 key takeaways from my conversation with Alex
This episode was an absolute masterclass from Alex on all things brand, growth, category creation and building hardware products.
Here are the 5 key takeaways from the episode:
1. The evolution of Eight Sleepâs brand message
Your company brand and story is so important.
Itâs how you connect with your customers, its why customers choose you over your competitors and ultimately how you attract talent and capital to your company.
For most companies, itâs rare to land on the perfect story for your business right away. Often it involves an evolution of the brand story and Eight Sleep is no different.
When they successfully launched their Indiegogo campaign in 2015, they quickly took in over $1M in pre-orders. That initial story and message shaped around their product, a âsmart mattressâ resonated with their early adopters but over time with more competition coming into the market, their messaging plateaued.
They then went through an evolution of the brand messaging from being product focused to value focused and in this 6mins clip from the podcast, Alex shares the process they went through and why she believes that you should NOT A/B test your brand message.
2. The value of category creation
Part of evolution of Eight Sleep to become a âSleep Fitnessâ company was defining and creating its own category.
Category Creation is a concept that has been around for a while, and refers to the concept of creating a new market segment or product category that did not exist before.
The benefits of this is that you immediately differentiate yourself out from anyone with similar products, but it also comes with its own sets of challenges.
In this clip from the podcast, Alex shares some of the pros and cons of category creation.
3. Running effective marketing campaigns
One of the benefits of being clear on your messaging, brand and company DNA is being able to move quickly on taking ârisksâ with your marketing campaign.
Eight Sleep do an exceptional job in understanding their customers and how their product fits into the life of their customers.
An example of this is a billboard they put up during Miami Tech Week a few years ago which said âSome nights are worth a late nightâ - something that is so counter to how Alex and Matteo live their lives and what a company obsessed with helping you track your sleep should sayâŠbut is perfectly aligned with the lives of their customers and the mission behind a âSleep Fitnessâ company.
4. How to effectively work with content creators, influencers and athletes
Working with content creators, influencers and athletes/celebrities can have a significant impact on the growth and success of your company, however many businesses fail to do this effectively.
This is a model that Eight Sleep has nailed with over 200 athletes, celebrities and key influencers like Lewis Hamilton, Connor Mcgregor, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerbeg and Andrew Huberman (to name a few) all using Eight Sleep as a product.
In this clip from the podcast, Alex shares a breakdown on how Eight Sleep works in this area covering everything from who they choose to work with to how they measure the effectiveness and success of these campaigns and partnerships.
5. Overcoming the challenges of building hardware products
Building hardware products is notoriously hardâŠthis is made even harder if none of the founders of the company come from a hardware background!
That was the challenge that the Eight Sleep founders faced when building their first product and is a process they have continued to innovate on in overcoming the developmental cycles that come from building hardware products at scale.
Bonus: Tips on how to sleep better
My sleep habits are terrible and Iâm sure iâm not the only one in this boat!
I couldnât let Alex go without asking her for some tips on how to develop better sleep habits!
The rest of this interview is jam packed with even more insights and lessons from Alex on her decade long journey in building Eight Sleep.
You can find the full podcast episode on all of your favourite podcasting apps by searching for âThe Startup Playbook Podcastâ or you can find all of the links here:
YouTube (video) - full episode below!
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