Pre-launch Tips to Help You Reach Millions

0:00I don't think I've ever believed in anything as much as I believe in this. I have zero doubt it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do for the consumer. It's the right thing to do for the planet. It's an incredible business model. And it's something beyond just building a business. This is something that I can look into the eyes of my children and say, Dad is working on something meaningful. Hey, what's going on? I'm Shuang Esther Shan, and welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. Within the direct-to-consumer space, we talk a lot about disrupting an industry, but can you still challenge the standards and revolutionize products?

0:42Well, Gif Safavi and Mark Rushmore are doing exactly that with their company, Siri. Compelled by the overwhelming reality of how one billion toothbrushes end up in landfills each year, Gieve and Mark set out to create sustainable electric toothbrushes with plant-based recyclable heads and 40-day battery life. Not to mention, the design is super sleek as well. Today, we're going to cover how the dual started Siri and how they've reached$30 million in sales in just two years. Gheve, Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Very excited to chat with you both. You had a fateful meet many years ago on this nice boat in Cairns.

1:30Took you guys a bit of time to start a company together. How did you even bring up the topic of toothbrushes? Great question. So it actually started a little bit before then. And so I started my career at Procter & Gamble in a variety of sales and strategy roles, ultimately managing Pringles. Delicious. When it was sold to Kellogg's, I helped transition the company there. Then I left and set up my own, the UK office of a German advertising agency. And it was during that time that I went to the Cannes Lions, and I was really fortunate to meet Yves. Cannes Lions is like the advertising festival for creativity.

2:10The Oscars of marketing. The Oscars of marketing, yeah. That's what I meant to say. That's exactly it. And so we just, you know, by coincidence met each other at this event, and we found out that we had both worked at P &G. So I was in sales and strategy, even finance and marketing. And it was literally in that first half hour of meeting that Giv said to me, hey, Mark, I think, you know, P &G is obviously great, and he'd gone on to work elsewhere. But I think there's a few things that need addressing. Like one, like the incredible sort of waste created by a lot of fast moving consumer products, you know, whether that's from the plastic packaging or the way the products are made or, you know, their end of life.

2:48And secondly, I remember Guy really distinctly telling me, and he's a big Apple fan about, you know, a lot of retailers don't necessarily think about the customer experience, you know, whether that's, you know, the aesthetic or the unboxing or the customer service. And he just said, you know, I really think there's a big opportunity to address both of these issues in oral care. And so, yeah. That was nine years ago? That was nine years ago. And then it took us a few extra years and we became friends. It took like six years. I ended up exiting my company. Gide went to work in some other e-commerce companies and learned a lot about this amazing software called Shopify.

3:30and said, hey, Mark, now why don't we take that idea and use our sort of joint expertise to build it? It's kind of hard to imagine that you meet your potential future business partner in that way. It actually took about seven years for you guys to come together. And coincidentally, it was during COVID. Yeah, Giv, talk to us about the early days of actually getting together, working during COVID to start a new company? So I remember I had put together a little deck and Mark came over for dinner and I showed it to him. He was like, this is great. We should do this. And I was like really eager to have somebody join as a co-founder and I really wanted him to join, but I didn't believe him.

4:15So I was like, oh, why don't you think about it? I don't know if I really need it. But I played hard to get. And the next day he's like, I'm in. Are we doing this together? Can I jump in there? Can I add a little bit of color? Because this is like so geek. He said, oh, you know, I prepared a little deck. This was a 50-page deck with, like, accompanying documents, which were, like, 30 pages long, full of, like, detailed research, like, prototypes. Like, it was so comprehensive, and I just was blown away with, like, the level of detail I'd even gone into. I mean, thank you. I don't remember that very much, but I do.

4:48Well, one of the things, I'd worked at a few startups before that had not been so successful, and, like, some of the key insights I took away were product market fit, whether or not it was really competitive. Were you launching in a space that there are already 200 brands and you would struggle to really do well? Were you differentiated? And so I tried to capture a lot of that research early on, share data. And from there, when we looked at share data, we found that there was probably just two main brands that dominated most of the share and most developed markets. And the first thing Mark and I did was we ran a lot of surveys.

5:24So we started cheap surveys, any survey we could get, not friends and family. The friends and family survey was like, great idea. Go and do it, as it usually is. We ran, we used SurveyMonkey, we used ATest, we used a bunch of sites. And then we did in-person interviews with people. And what we found was, well, people weren't in love with the brands that we're using. Half the time they couldn't name it. They're like, I paid$100 for it. Well, what's the name of the brand? I don't know. It does this. And I was like, how many times a day do you use it? Twice. And so immediately we realized that there was a dominance of a few brands in the category, but nobody actually loved them.

6:02It was like a loyalty through sort of just like availability of choice. And from there, that's where we got a lot of the insights that we refined and we took into Suri. But in the early days, your question was, how is it working together? It was during COVID. So we were on Zoom 24-7. It was almost like we had a portal on our house because we'd just walk in and out of the room and be like, oh, hey, you're eating lunch now. All right, I'm going to go get a coffee and I'll be right back. And that's not easy, I would say. It was intense, for sure. Something that we did early on was actually work out how can we find a way to really effectively communicate because I don't know if you've ever found this, but sometimes someone will say something a certain way and it just maybe kind of rubs you up the wrong way or you misunderstood it and you don't say anything at the time, but it kind of builds up this tension.

6:51And so I think we were working so intensely on this all the time, but without seeing each other in person. So we said, what we should do is have this meeting on a Friday and we should just put onto the table anything that sort of bothered us that week, which was like this bold move. But it was so enlightening because what we found was I'd say like, oh, Giv, you know, you said this and, you know, really bothered me. And Giv would be like, oh, that's not what I meant. Like, oh, I was meaning more about this. I'll give a better example. Or Mark will be like, what do you think of this document? I'll be like, oh, great.

7:24Give me one minute. And I'd rewrite half of it. And he'd be like, that really bothers me when you rewrite half of what I just wrote. And I was like, oh, I thought you asked for my help. And he's like, not to redo everything. And I was like, oh, well, that was me helping. And then obviously you dig deeper. And he's like, then that makes it look like you didn't think my work was good or something like that. And what we realize is we're just very different people. And I think it's a natural and obvious to think that people come from different backgrounds, different ways of working. But we never actually confront those differences in an open space with trust.

7:56We both want to achieve the same thing. We want to grow this company and be successful. But we work in different ways, and we need to respect those ways and tell each other when something isn't gelling the way we want it to. Yeah, it's a really interesting and enlightening process. But I think there was a point where we were speaking to each other probably more than we even managed to speak to our wives. And so it kind of became really important that we just work through things really quickly. And that's definitely been, I think, a trait that's helped us over the last two years. And it's something we now we're bigger and with our whole team, we don't have a Friday session.

8:29But like it's like an openness and trust. Like if you really trust somebody, you can tell them they've bothered you in some way or something you didn't agree with the choice they made and pull them aside and have that conversation without feeling like you're going to get judged back or create a negative relationship afterwards. Yeah. It sounds like both of you were having self-guided co-founder therapy sessions every week. Kind of. Well, the number three reason or something companies break up in an early stage is co-founders fall out. And that's the data. And the reality is it's intense. There's a lot of decisions and pressure.

9:00And you need to maximize the way you work together. It just so turns out that we have a totally different skill set that when it works together, at least from what we've seen, it works together really well. and that diversity of thought is what has been our success, I would say, in the early days. Totally. And like you say, it's sort of, you know, we're far from perfect. Like we were getting stuff wrong all the time, like almost like every month or year, like we're in such a different place than we've ever been before. And so navigating those changes, like, you know, we get things wrong, we still, we'll still annoy each other or make, you know, like misunderstand each other.

9:32But it's kind of accepting that like that's going to happen. But how do you deal with it? Like how do you communicate? How do you move forwards? How do you like learn more about each other? So I think it's like a constant work in progress. And yeah, it's working well so far. Yeah. I mean, during COVID, you've gone through basically being on Zoom 24-7. You establish these Friday self-guided therapy sessions. And throughout the process, you're also illustrating or communicating these ideas to designers and manufacturers that could actually execute what you want. I believe you spoke to like over 30 factories to actually get someone to agree to try to make Siri.

10:15What was that process like? Yeah, I mean, just, yeah, you're right. Our designer was based in California and we met him through the World Wide Web. He was our second employee. He now lives in London with us. But in the beginning, it was really hard because we couldn't travel to see our suppliers because we were locked down in COVID. And so you had to find a way to vet a supplier without getting to see the premise. And at the same time, pitch them a novel idea that was different. You know, our brush is one third the size of most brushes, but yet just as powerful. And we're using new materials that have never been used in a toothbrush before, plant-based materials, cornstarch, castor oil on our bristles.

10:55And the immediate reaction was, we don't trust you. We don't think this is a good idea. And this sounds very complex. And so. And I'm not going to lie. you know if if you've been rejected 20 times and told like it is impossible to use that material like you cannot make a brush that strong if it's that slim then at certain point you you kind of the doubts do kind of creep in and fortunately giv is amongst the most stubborn people i've ever met and you know he was like it is possible there is a way you just need to try harder and a lot of people are just like not up to the challenge and you know come like the i don't know 23rd 24th rejection i was a bit like do we need to do we need to like compromise on certain things and go absolutely not like we will find a way

11:44and sure enough you know when we found that factory who were willing to take that risk and to go on this journey with us i mean the thing about innovation is uh for a supplier or factory innovation isn't efficiency and suppliers their goal is to be more efficient or you know if you can use the same components and more products that's efficiency cost savings when you do things differently that's complexity and if you're doing things differently with somebody who's never done it differently before that's even more complexity because then they have to invest time and resources to figure it out with you and all the problems that will happen along the way but luckily we We found a supplier who was hungry, like we were, and we're like, this does sound different.

12:26This is a way that we can both grow together. And we formed a really good partnership. And so we did a lot of testing. There were a lot of ugly prototypes. A lot of ugly prototypes. I remember the first day when we went to see early investors, and I had to kind of show them the product and then hide it. And I didn't want them to hold it. I was like, there it is. And I put it back in my bag really quickly. That's so true. Hey, those early prototypes can go into the Suri Museum along with your 50-page deck. So that would be really great. I think the other question here is when you're going through like 30 no's also during COVID and during a time where you guys have both let go of really established careers, how do you adjust yourself mentally?

13:13Because I think that's also a big ego play as well, where you have to say, like, I'm not having a usual paycheck that comes in. I'm taking a big risk. And I'm also going through a lot of rejections at the same time. So I think it's really important to say at this point, both of us are very, very fortunate for having incredibly supportive wives who work really hard. And we're like, you know what, you guys have to do this. Like, you fully believe in it. and I think that knowing that you know they're like working really hard in like corporate jobs so enabled us to be like okay let's let's take a year and and really give this a go one two I don't think I've ever believed in anything as much as I believe in this like it I have zero doubt it's the right thing to do it's the right thing to do for the consumer it's the right thing business model and it's something beyond just building a business this is something that i can look you know into the eyes of my children and say you know dad is working on something meaningful which you know in some little little way contributes to making the world a slightly better place and so that really helps actually with the rejections and it's the same when we've spoken to investors you know a lot of people um you know they say nobody cared about this is a saturated market yeah who's gonna want this innovation like you know this product could exist somewhere else and raising money is hard oh yeah but it you only need one potential investor or two um in order to go and so we we just i i just believe in every fiber of my being that this is a great business that's going to succeed and so through the rejections it was like wow well, we're only looking for the one person.

15:05We don't need everyone to come on board, if that makes sense. Totally. And it's a lifestyle adjustment. I mean, as Mark said, we're so fortunate to have such supportive wives. We also have had two young kids in the time. So it wouldn't be possible without their support. And allowing us to, you know, obviously in the beginning you don't earn a salary to work and to pursue our dream and make this happen. You know, at the same time, it's exciting. And so I'd say with the rejection, you know, like the challenge is what excites you, you know, being able to move something forward every day. And like one week feels like two months for us.

15:40And it still does today. Like everything moves so fast that you've got this just constant adrenaline running all the time. And, you know, we come to work every day feeling super fulfilled. And like we have an atmosphere where everybody trusts each other. And it's really positive. And it's the best place we've ever worked. and so in that sense even before we had employees like we were loving what we were doing obviously there's the downsides like you're small you don't earn that much money in the beginning and like but the rest just totally outweighs the negatives and that is the drive that I think continues to push you Don't get us wrong though it's not like plain sailing it's not like oh just you know sweetness and light the highs are high the lows are low like you know what I mean it's not it isn't easy being rejected constantly it's not easy when people tell you something's not possible or when issues and problems happen which i do and that's what happens today yeah of course but like for us it's about you know we have a belief in the mission we have a belief in in the product we have a belief in our team we have a belief in each other and that sort of is like this guiding light through everything i feel like when you're in a startup like the days feel like jam-packed So you're on this like expedited, but yet like super full day.

16:57Totally. Yeah. How many iterations for the toothbrush did it get to the point where you were actually 100 % happy with it? Oh, like quite a few. So we launched in May. We did pre-sales on Shopify. We did quite a few iterations, probably like 20 iterations before we launched. We did testing with dentists and sustainability experts early on. We did like a 500 batch, then a 1 ,000 batch. And then as we've launched, we're constantly iterating the inside of the brush. Because one of the things for us is like, if anything happens, we recover the brush. We want to be able to take it apart, investigate it, repair it if we can, or recycle the components.

17:38And that requires us to constantly improve the way our structure works. So we're constantly changing the product. but I guess the main thing for us was that we needed to achieve minimal lovable product and through our testing we launched finally when we were like people actually do enjoy this because I think gone are the days of a minimal viable product there's so much competition out there anybody can get a you know a supplier to make them an average product uh rebrand it do really nice graphics and then not really cut through and so if you really want to cut through in the market, you have to have something that people really enjoy and get behind.

18:15And I guess you could say we, you know, when we launched, we didn't realize that people really love the product. We thought we were there. We're like, this is good enough. This is better than average. But like, we started to see the reviews come in. And then we, I think for the first year, we never even talked about enjoying our brush. But like, what we started hearing people say is like, I never enjoyed brushing my teeth. Now I do. This is awkward. They love brushing their teeth. So we have a 4.8 rating on Trustpilot with, I think, almost 7 ,000 reviews now. And that's been like a bedrock of, you know, our growth is, you know, people loving it and then sharing it with others.

18:51But I think to the point about the iterations, like, we really, really care about the little details, you know, like, crazy little details. Both Keeve and I have a passion for, you know, even like, oh, the font size on the inside of the packaging or this little phrase. we scrutinize these tiny details Dylan as well, you know, like this angle oh no, they've got this angle like slightly out and it's almost invisible to the naked eye but it's like it's the culmination of all those little tiny decisions across packaging, across your checkout across the whole user experience which like add up I think to people having a really great experience because they can see and appreciate the detail and thought that's gone into a lot of small decisions.

19:38And as I said, it's come from customers telling us where their pain points were, because we knew there's quite a few established brands. What are we going to do that's different? Like, we want to listen to people and hear what are they saying that they're not enjoying or what are they not saying that we could actually create? So one of the features we have on our brush is a mirror mount. And, you know, people often, when you charge your brush every day, you get this buildup of gunk. I don't know what you call it, toothpaste gunk. And it's like a yellow ring. I know that very well, yes. It's pretty gross.

20:09Yeah. You also get it under the head too. And so we're like, how do we eliminate that? Well, one, we focused on a longer battery life. So our brush lasts 40 days. And we created a mirror mount that you could hang it on. And as a result, like instead of having to be uncharged and build up gunk, it just drips off on the counter and it wipes off because it's not constantly being built up. And then under our brush head, we have a stainless steel plate. So when gunk does build up there, it wipes off pretty quickly as opposed to being ingrained in like a plastic cover. As someone who's unpacked and experienced it, I truly appreciate the finer details.

20:43I mean, obviously you will say that there are things that you've gotten wrong, but from our perspective or from my perspective through this conversation, it seems like there were so many things you were thinking about pre-launch, the dynamic between the two of you, the relationship, the product itself, and then also the communication, the pre-orders. If you were to give advice for the whole pre-launch experience for founders, what are some key takeaways you think everybody should think about? Great question. That's a really good question. I think something, and I have to totally credit Gede with this, is Gede had the foresight to have our customer service software set up prior to launch.

21:29So we use Gorgias. for that. And we had this thing where we had, I think, 5 ,000 pre-orders. And so our 3PL went from having never shipped a single product to having to ship 5 ,000 orders in like two, three days. And unfortunately, there was a mistake with a portion of the orders where it meant 1 ,000 of the 5 ,000 customers were going to have a week delay on their product. So we went from having no customer service tickets to having to tell 1 ,000 people this product they were going to to be waiting for it was going to be a week late. I think it was more than a week. It was like three or four weeks.

22:04We went from having no problems to a bunch of angry emails we need to quickly respond to. But it was actually because Gieb had sort of had the foresight and the experience from prior places to know, okay, let's have this system set up so that we can proactively communicate so that we can, you know, address any potential issues. And at the time, like, I swear we were like, not quite in tears, but like, this is going to sink the company. like we've only just started this is huge like oh my goodness how are we going to deal with it now looking back we can laugh but like I remember like really at the time like it was like a lot of refund requests because we were ready two months late but we didn't we got people saying oh that's so great thanks for informing us like we you know really excited to to get it and so I think my tip would be to really communicate you know it's amazing like your early adopters and those customers like are actually really understanding We didn't have a single refund as a result of that, I think.

23:01And so I think a combination of thinking about your infrastructure to help you address customers, but also being proactive in your communication. I'm really risk-averse and detailed, as Mark said. So one of the things I think would probably be my tip would be as we started doing our research, getting all those insights is really important and just feeling, and before we launched, we pre-launched on Shopify, but we had multiple landing pages that we were testing. We were doing, in the beginning, fake ads to emails to just see, to refine the concept further, what was the communication message that was actually working and driving the conversion to an email, and it's a proxy to a sale.

23:47And then as we started doing pre-sales, we were able to see what is the communication message that really worked to drive the sale. But that helped us refine, even though the product was getting pretty close to final, it helped us refine a lot of the ways we communicated. So one of the hypotheses we had was that people didn't care about sustainability. It's a toothbrush that's more sustainable. Great. People just want a toothbrush, which was something that a few friends and family say investors have told us. But it wasn't true. It was just like the order in which you communicated it and where you communicated it.

24:21and so and also like we don't talk about design we talk about the features right we don't say like a great design toothbrush that you're going to love the design and it's going to feel really premium in your hand instead we show that really beautiful visuals and renders and so testing a lot before you even sell is a great way even if you don't have a product ready you can do renders really well so we were fortunate that our product designer obviously could do beautiful renders and make it look lifelike and so you almost was like, that's a real product that I want. You could test different design shapes and just see people, you know, which one would sign up on email.

24:57And that's a really close, not immediate, but it's close to sales. And so the more we did a lot of testing early on to find out what is the right communication messaging so that when we launch, this is how we're going to drive, you know, click through an ads sales. And we still do that today. We're still constantly refining everything, really looking into the details. How long do people look at our ads for the first three seconds? You know, the middle part, the end. And then which landing page converted better? That's really nerdy. And I love it so much because I think sometimes founders feel like they need to have everything ready before they can test advertising or even speak to the market.

25:33But to your point, when you're iterating and testing before you launch, it helps inform how you're going to market in the future. Completely. Yeah. I think also that process, as Giv said, doesn't ever stop. So like what we were sort of doing then. We still do it now. To an extent, we're still doing it now. We're just constantly trying to iterate and improve and learn on everything. If you see our ads, I mean, it's like 20 bits of content stuck together. And the reason is that it's different for a lot of people. We changed little parts in it just to improve the conversion rate. And the story. The story is the most important part.

26:09But it's like, how do we make that story even clearer? Because you want to communicate all the features, but you can't. And you've got a 10-second dwell time on your Facebook ad, for example. So how do you get somebody excited to click through and want to buy it just on that? So it's a pretty tough challenge. Yeah. It's especially tough because, to your point, this is a category where it was kind of boring before. I got a toothbrush because my dentist gave me the toothbrush recommendation. So I think the way that you've honed in and really refined the way that you communicate Siri is really special.

26:43Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And then the both of you coming from really established, accomplished careers from the corporate world and then you enter into entrepreneurship. I love highlighting stories like this because I think like nothing is an overnight success and you had decades of experience leading up to this moment. I guess where were some of those like random learnings from the corporate world that in the moment you probably were thinking it's tedious or laborious but then today it actually helps you. I'm just going to take this one. So when it comes to anything commercial, Mark is a complete strategy expert there.

27:24And I feel like from the beginning, I had no doubt we'd ever, if we ever could do well in retail, just because it's like his time at P &G really built a bedrock of information there that, I mean, from the beginning, like pricing, all of that, like, pretty much I didn't, I was like, that's your call. You know so much on that, that I would say that that's like, thank you. Yeah, and the truth is, I draw on it every single day. And it's very much like, you know, shout out Procter & Gamble, like incredible training. And also, I love it. It's really enjoyable, like learning about retail, about merchandising principles, about pricing, promotions, about relationships, negotiation, selling.