Eight Sleep Co-Founder & CEO: Matteo Franceschetti – Sleep Optimisation, Billion Hours of Data, & Why Recovery Is the Last Frontier of Human Performance

24:29The Gstaad Guy:Yeah. Can you tell me more about what each office does and why you chose those cities to expand into? Yeah, so New York is the headquarters. Obviously, it's the financial capital here in the US. and we have most of the product marketing growth team and some business ops people. San Francisco is where we have all our AI and hardcore engineering, but also the hardware engineering. Boston is where we run all the clinical studies. We have a great team there. China, we have a very large team there because it's where we do all the manufacturing, part of the QA in production and supply chain. And then we started expanding into Europe for a couple of reasons.

25:16First, I think there is a lot of talent in Europe, and I think having access to that talent gives us an arbitrage, particularly with me being Italian and understanding the European recruiting market. And second, now that we sell in 34 countries, having a presence there also make things easier for us in Europe, but also in the Middle East and over time in Asia as well.

25:42The Gstaad Guy:So I know that although it is a hardware product, it really is a technology business. Why is the framing to you very important that it is technology first as a business? Well, because all our engineers, first of all, they come from the top technology companies. You can name them if it's Apple or some of the other big companies. Second is our DNA. At the end, the hardware is the tool to be able to deliver a technology that is driven by AI and software. But without that intelligence, we wouldn't be achieving most of the value that we are delivering today. And so our passion, our DNA, the way we approach things, everything is...

26:30I mean, at the end of the day, we are a Silicon Valley company. I moved to San Francisco. That is where we started. And then as the company grew, we opened another five offices. But all our top investors are Silicon Valley investors that are betting on what AI can unlock with the amount of data that we can collect about you to then make sure that we can extend your life and compress your sleep.

26:52The Gstaad Guy:You've captured thousands of hours of data. You have the infrastructure for the AI. What are you hoping the AI does for you and does with all the data that you've captured? There are a couple of things. Since when we really started a sleep, I always say, I think there are two things that can be achieved. One is we can compress your sleep and I'll tell you more about that. And second, we can save your life. This is literally how I think of a sleep. Compressing your sleep to me means that sleep is unoptimized and around 50 % of your time is in light sleep, which is not extremely valuable for your body.

27:29The other 50 % is deep end REM, which is extremely valuable. And so I think there are a couple of ways to compress your sleep. The most logical is the sleep battler. So we'll keep doing more things for you, optimizing your sleep performance. You will fall asleep faster, less interruptions, less toss and turns. You will wake up more refreshed. And maybe there we gain, I don't know, an hour, 30 minutes. But in the AI world, you shouldn't be surprised if a certain point, 8 sleep will start even potentially developing the glp1 of sleep we have billions of hours of sleep so there are very few other companies that have that amount of data also with the retention that we have because a lot of wearables they can move more units because it's a much cheaper product but they also have retention problem the churn is much bigger well instead for us our customers they don't sure that is almost a lifetime relationship with with our customers and so So with AI we'll start exploring some crazy patterns, meaning for the business level of what we can do to maximize your sleep.

28:33Then there was a study that has been published recently where a couple of PhD students and one of those joiners were able to detect with somewhere between 85 and 95 % accuracy in that range, the likelihood that you will develop 130 diseases with just the data of one night of sleep. And so the way I see is we are transforming your bed in the most advanced medical grade device ever built, and you will use it by default as long as you're not traveling, unless you have the same device in another place. But we're really becoming a medical grade platform that will be able to know everything about you and your health before you can even imagine.

29:28And that will nudge you to then course correct certain behaviors or do certain type of analysis that will save your life or extend your life.

29:38The Gstaad Guy:So how preventative do you find you've been able to be because of all the data you've already gathered? Well, first I already received emails from customers where I even remember a few months ago, a customer brought us and say, guys, I just wanted to say thank you. You saved my life. My metrics were upside down. I went straight to ER and that saved my life. Wow. And so this is an email we got actually a year or two ago. So, and that really meant so much to me because I think part of what we do is, there is this, when I was a kid, I wanted to become a doctor at a certain point. I had a big accident, skiing, preparing for a race.

30:21And after that, there was a doctor, a neurologist who really saved me. And so since then I had this admiration for him and for doctors. And so being, using technology to be as close as possible to a doctor without obviously replacing doctors just makes me proud. But the other big thing is you can start seeing the likelihood that you will get cardiovascular disease, potentially strokes, hypertension, and many other forms of diseases. And all this just happens with you going to bed as you did for the rest of your life. We believe a certain point with your metrics will be able to know probably if you're a pregnant woman, even before you know.

31:09So the idea is just to leverage AI and connect all these different data points to provide as much value as possible. The other big thing we did, we filed for FDA approval here in the U.S. to become a medical grade device for sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is another major disease across the world and in the US is a pretty big deal. And the largest majority of people, they don't even know they have it. And sleep apnea is this behavior where you substantially stop breathing or oxygen doesn't go to the brain because of how you're breathing while you're asleep. And we invented the technology that doesn't only detect that, but also mitigates sleep apnea without you wearing any device.

31:50and this is under the process to get the FDA approval.

31:54The Gstaad Guy:Can I ask you how you do that for the sleep apnea? We still leverage our current technology, but essentially we found a way where we nudge you to change position and this is designed for a specific type of sleep apnea. Wow. I mean, what I love about your product is that there's so much value and so much long-term value from effectively a passive act. Like every other style of optimization that's being discussed right now takes lots of recurring active efforts. And this is probably one of the most impactful decisions people can make to really prioritize sleeping and sleeping better. And except for that first effort to buy it sleep and set it up at home and set up your account.

32:44The Gstaad Guy:Everything else is passive. That's how we describe it. It's amazing. Yeah. And that is why we have this incredible retention with our customers. Because there is almost a dichotomy where on one side is set it and forget it so you don't have to charge it, wear it, nothing. But every night when you go to bed, you feel it because you feel the temperature. And so even from a marketing or psychological standpoint, there is this daily relationship with the user, but it's very passive. It's very respectful. And that is why translating this incredible word of mouth that 40-50 % of our revenue still comes, even at our scale, from word of mouth.

33:22That's amazing.

33:23The Gstaad Guy:I know one of your early products was a full mattress versus a mattress topper. Yep. Was that because you don't want to compete with the Hastings of the world and you want to let people get the best bet for them and you just want to be the final layer? So this is actually a very interesting point. So when we started, we say, look, we want to be vertically integrated, fully integrated, so you just buy the greatest bed ever. Then what we discover from customers is that we were actually introducing a friction. Because first, okay, is your mattress really comfortable? We don't play comfort. There is no comfort person that they sleep.

34:04We're a technology company. But second, they had to convince the partner to change the mattress. And that was a really big deal. And so then I came up with an idea to launch what is now the cover just in three days with what we had. And it became 20 % of the revenue overnight. And within six months, it became 90 % of the revenue. And now it's 100 % of the revenue. Incredible. It's just consumer psychology. So people don't expect a mattress from us. And we don't care about delivering a mattress. Foam is just a commodity that you can buy a certain price. and so by creating an invisible topper, invisible comfort that can work with any mattress that works perfectly, it doesn't matter if you have a Hasten, a Tempur-Pedic or any mattress you want.

34:51The Gstaad Guy:Yeah, because people get very picky with that as well and everyone knows best. Yeah, and then, you know, it's a big jump, it's this firm, it's this soft, it's comfortable, how do I explain it to my partner? But my partner really likes the mattress. And delivering it is a disaster as well. Yeah, exactly. I love that in terms of placement as well as a brand, the 8sleep brand, it's very much performance focused. Like when I think of the brand, of course, I think of Charles Leclerc, who's a big fan and big ambassador of the brand itself. But even people around me who are using 8sleep, they're people who really care about being at the best of the best in all ways of being.

35:35The Gstaad Guy:whether it's sports or the businesses they run or just the lives they lead. It's a very intentional type of person. Was that always your vision for the branding of the brand? So yes and no. Meaning we rebranded in 2019 and we switched to this brand that is very performance. We used the black, right? The core color of our brand is black. and it was very contrarian at the beginning because if you look at sleep in general, anything related to bedding, for example, is about a lazy Sunday with waffles in bed in a white bedroom, white and beige bedroom. It's true. But that is now my personality. And so during the first years of the company, 2015 to 2019, in the early days, we were still trying to adjust to what people were saying.

36:35And so we were going a bit left and right. And then we got to this turning point in 2019, which is when we were developing the pod and we raised the money from KV, that we say, you know what? We don't care about what other people say. This is who I am. This is how I see things. This is how the founders see things. We are about performance. We are about recovery. And we also want to look very different, right? We don't want to be a drop in the ocean. We want to have a contrarian approach. And that is when we decided to launch. The first device was like gray, but then it became darker gray, and then it became black.

37:08And some people in the early days say, oh, nobody will ever want a black device of that size in their bedroom, or even the color of the cover is black. Then you put your bedsheets and you don't see it. And so we paid a lot of attention to that. But if there are no bad shits and you take a picture or an influencer is taking a picture, it can be only one thing. It can only be eight sleep. And so over the years, we proved that. And as we were proving, the performance angle is also when we decided to get into sport. But you don't see any sort of, you know, these other brands about the night being in sport or working with athletes.

37:47And everything is because our job is just to maximize sleep performance. and I think of sleep as a form of wellness equivalent to going to the gym. You go to the gym every day to take care of your body. You need to go to sleep every day and sleep a certain amount of hours to take care of your body. And then I'm super passionate about sports, and so I was just connecting two elements of my life that I really love, my work and sports, big F1 passion. Actually, there is this story about Charles. that when Char... So I follow F1 since I was a kid, right? And because I was racing in go-karts, I also did a couple of races with a couple of F1 drivers.

38:31I have been looking at watching athletes and drivers since when they were kids. And so I was monitoring Char because he was now one of the potential stars. And when he was racing in F2 at Prema, I reached out to Prema to try to sponsor him. but his lip was too small and at the end we couldn't make a deal, right? We didn't have enough money. But when I met Charles for the first time here in Miami and he was already an F1 driver with Ferrari, I said, man, I don't want to sign you today because you're an F1 Ferrari driver. Here is the email I sent four years ago when you were nobody and I was already trying to sponsor you.

39:11I just didn't have the money.

39:13The Gstaad Guy:That's amazing. And I think there is when we, I mean, many other reasons, but that was one of the reasons why we clicked. I love that. I mean, you grew together, basically, in different directions that also bring you back. That was actually, yeah, you nailed it. Eight Sleep and Charles grew together and Charles became a Ferrari F1 driver and Eight Sleep will reach a point where we can work with him. This podcast is brought to you by Kubel, bringing you interchangeable charm jewelry hand-painted with enamel on sterling silver, allowing you to celebrate all the things you love and all the things you might question through interchangeable styling silver bracelets, bangles, whoop, charms, mini charm, bracelets, rings, cufflings, and much more.

40:00The Gstaad Guy:And all customizable through our 3D builder on poubelle.com. That is poubelle, P-O-U-B-E-L dot com. Thank you so much for watching, and now back to the podcast. It sounds like there's some certain elements in yourself that draw you to certain people. I know one person in particular is your wife and co-founder. I'd love to know more about that relationship and what it's like to have your life partner also be your work partner. Look, before meeting Alexandra, with my other co-founder in the two previous companies, we actually had the rule where you can't work with your partner, it will never work.

40:43And so I think 99.9 % of the time said it doesn't work. In our case, it's a very unique relationship and it's one of the things that if it works, it's a superpower because at the end of the day, 10 years after starting 8Sleep, you still have two co-founders living together and working all the time. That's true. If you really think first principle, two out of three co-founders, they still live together. and the interesting thing is we are motivated by one clear objective we understand each other really well when I have bad days or she has bad days it's not that I need to brief her she just gets it because I travel so much 250 days a year being able to travel together makes it possible because otherwise I would have to pick family or work.

41:39Well, instead, in this way, we can go all in. But we have very, very clear rules. And so, particularly in her case, because I could just work 24-7. In her case, she wants to work probably 18-7. And so, sometimes I have ideas at like 10 p.m. before going to bed, and I start pitching her ideas. And so, one day, in the early days, she said, look, you cannot keep bothering me every time about work, because you need to treat me like any other executive. You wouldn't call people at 10, 30 p.m. unless it's something very urgent, right? And I say, okay, yeah, you're right. But then I started thinking, but I can still slack other executives.

42:19And so sometimes we are on the couch at 10 p.m. and I start slacking her with ideas and I can see the phone with the notification and it's me, but I cannot talk about that. Or another rule we have is our personal life is on WhatsApp while instead business is on Slack. And so I might be complaining on Slack about something that we need to do better or faster, but at the same time, I'm on WhatsApp asking, what do we have for dinner tonight?

42:44The Gstaad Guy:Okay, fine. So we have all these little rules that they work really well for us. And then even when we have to travel for work, we can travel during the weekend. So we save time because we travel together. Otherwise that would be another thing. It wouldn't be possible. All these tiny things. And was this all solved for in the early days or these things had to be incrementally built on? Probably the first two years were the toughest, where we really had to adjust. It takes some time to set boundaries because otherwise, if you just merge everything, then even the couple risks to break. Well, instead, when you have clear lines, that is how you can make sure that you can be top performer at work while you still have an amazing personal life.

43:29The Gstaad Guy:Do you find that lots of the people you work with share the same values with you as your partner shares with you? Is that something you try to nurture in all your relationships? The business, yes, 100%, right? Now we are hardcore, we work in silly heart, just get it done now, go, go, go, no bullshit, no politics, that kind of thing. Then I think where I was really lucky with Alex, she's Mexican, she was born in the US and I'm European, particularly I'm Italian, right? And so, you know, Italians, they are a bit picky about certain things. And I was lucky enough that she really enjoys those things and those moments where you treat yourself that a few times that we are not working.

44:13And so we are really aligned on how to take care of ourselves the European or Italian way.

44:21The Gstaad Guy:That's very cool. Yeah. Would you say that your roles in a business sense are quite differentiated? They are. There is a very clear line, but there is also a very clear line in terms of decision. Like in business, I'm ruthless. It doesn't matter if it's my co-founder or my wife. I just do whatever is best for the business. And so if there is a hard decision to be taken and we disagree, I take that decision. If for any reason at any point we had to make a change in our org chart to maximize things for the business, we would make that change. And Alex knows that for us, there are literally two words.

45:04Somehow we were able in our brain to really separate these two. And when I'm the CEO, I'm the CEO. There is nothing that is going to stop me if I have to do what is the best for the business. And then in our personal life, I'll be hopefully the best husband I can be.

45:25The Gstaad Guy:That's great. I love it. There's an Instagram page I follow that's just AI news. And every week they do like a weekly update of like what happened this week in AI. The pace is just astounding. And I know that you are a very passionate user of AI. That's a big part of your business. I'd love to know how the pace has positively affected you and what is exciting you in the category. What is happening right now is absolutely incredible. and everything really changed four to five weeks ago when what I call the agentic revolution started. And now in four weeks, we have already almost hundreds of AI agents working for us at the company.

46:11So we start thinking of human employees and AI employees and the AI employees means literally AI agents that work for us. our software engineers probably stopped writing code since september and now they just review code uh we also stopped almost calling software engineers engineers we just have a definition of builders because it doesn't matter if you're a designer a product manager or an engineer everybody's shipping yeah uh it's so insane it's reaching incredible things i mean this weekend my agent bought things for me on Amazon. And so an AI agent, I just say what I wanted and it sent me the link, do you like this?

46:53And it just bought on Amazon.

46:55The Gstaad Guy:It's a Claude agent with Anthropic. We have both, we use Claude but we also have one of my chief of staff, he's an engineer, he's building all these special agents with a higher level of security for everybody in the company. And every team now, I mean, Facebook ads, highly automated, Google ads, 100 % automated, all the lifecycle marketing, 100 % automated, that makes 50, 60,$70 million for us, you know, and this is fully automated by agent. And then specifically on the metric side, the models are reaching a point where we know their output and the level of accuracy. and so we were able to develop an algo that is better than FDA approved algo and instead of taking us nine months it took us less than two days.

47:54Wow. And so now you start having all these techniques but the interesting thing is now the AI agents come back to us and they say oh I need more agents and I need to lead a squad of agents and so you start building a sub-squad but then you don't want that squad to cheat and so you create an auditor squad that is completely disconnected and reviews the work of the other squad of agents and everything reports to the DRI which is an AI agent and the AI agent reports to me

48:21The Gstaad Guy:and when the AI agent reports to you do you talk to it through Slack? yeah you can do it in any way but in my case for work I do mainly for Slack on writing do you ever use audio? I use dictation so I don't type almost anymore I use an app called Whisper. I'm not affiliated, but I strongly recommend it. And so I just talk to my AI agent. You just press a button on your keyboard, on your phone, and you just dictate whatever you want, and then the agent does it and it comes back. And also for the CEO, it's amazing because now I literally can make any question, anytime. I'm the type of guy who's thinking about business 24-7.

49:00And sometimes you don't have people available at midnight. Usually at midnight I'm sleeping, but let's say I'm not. Or let's say I'm in a different time zone, probably is the better case. I can have any information available 24 seven whenever I need it.

49:14The Gstaad Guy:That's so good. So how many agents total do you have now? Yeah, agents. Probably more than a hundred and you could imagine we'll be in the thousands within a month. Amazing. And forgive me, what separates the need for one agent versus another is bandwidth of the particular agent or focus? You want the focus, so they use all their tokens and you give them a very clear North Star to just do that specific task. And then you create almost a chain of agents. And so agent A does something from one to two, the other from two to three, the other from three to five, and so on. And you create the whole chain.

49:55But then sometimes when you set parameters, particularly for quality control and other things, they start cheating. that they start telling you they did things they didn't in checking, let's say, a certain amount of code. And that is when you create other squads. The audit. The audit. I call them the audits, and they check the work of the first squad. Wow. Or in the same squad, the other thing you do is, let's say, for growth, you could have an email specialist, but you could have a growth hacker, a CFO, and also a PR expert. And so the PR expert makes sure that the quality of the copy is always perfect.

50:36The email specialist knows when to send the email at what time. The growth hacker is the one who knows about virality. And then there is the AI CFO who makes sure that everything is optimized from a financial standpoint. And at what point do you think you'll get when more output is coming from AI

50:55The Gstaad Guy:than from the humans on your team? Well, probably in the relationship, we are already there. It really depends. Obviously, we have hardware. Hardware is delayed. But everything else is what we are achieving is pretty incredible because now with less people, the beauty of A-Sleep is because we are so hardcore, we have always been much leaner than other companies for the amount of money that we make. So a metric I always reported to my investors and I told them, you can't find anyone who is going to beat me is revenue per employee. Like we are by far, we beat everybody else in our space. How big is your team?

51:32Right now we are 150 people and we'll make a lot of money this year. So you should imagine that we make three to 4 million per person while other companies are probably one-to-one. But then I think the beauty of AI is that you can keep a team in a very lean, which means you can be hyper selective on the people you have on board. You give them more equity. You can reward them more. You can pay them more. And then what I told the team is now everybody is a micro CEO because you don't have to do the job. You have to review the job and you have to be the person thinking and telling the agents what to do.

52:14And then you need to be able to move 8 to 10 agents in parallel and do 8 to 10 things in parallel.

52:20The Gstaad Guy:Do you think that the process of building these chains and auditors to make sure the system works is a means to an end? Do you think that you won't have to go through, I mean, headache in parentheses, but that headache very soon? Things will get more automated and I think AI will, the DRI will just start creating all the different roles. the other important thing is inside the company you need to have a very clean infrastructure in terms of data pipelines so the agents may know exactly what you do or what they have to do and so you can automate and be more efficient but for example for a company like us we are in 34 countries already we're going to launch China in a month then we'll launch Brazil you can have few people running a global business that makes half a billion dollars you know and that this is also so empowering for our people some of them particularly here in the u.s compared to europe some of them they're fairly young but because they're so smart and now they are able to use all these tools they are really scaling themselves that's amazing yeah is there a particular role in in very ai native businesses that is basically a person just setting up these agents and managing the agents?

53:41We do. So that is my technical chief of staff. And he has a team of four people. And the only thing he does is he builds agents for everybody else in the company. And that is how we were able to grow so fast. Then I think one other thing I told them my team is I have this theory where 80 % of the roles over time at its deep will become generalist because the specialist is AI. And so as a CEO, right, you're a generalist. You understand a bit of everything. I'm not the last guy who can understand email or Facebook ads or hardcore artwork. But I have a general sense of everything and I know how to move things forward.

54:20So 80 % will be generalist. And so you just need to be really smart, hardworking, AI-driven. And then there will still be 20 % of roles that will be very specialist-driven. I call that the value protection and think of a head of security for all our data, a CFO. And so these roles will still be specialists. Everybody else, you just need to be street smart, get things done, know how to leverage AI. And you can do email, Facebook, PR, business ops, anything.

54:55The Gstaad Guy:That's actually a perfect segue to a thought I have often about the young listeners of this podcast and people today who are applying to universities maybe, or even just freshly out of university and trying to best package themselves and their skill sets to be hired by someone like you? What would you tell them today? It's almost a barbell. Like, it's tricky. There are incredible opportunities, but you need to be insanely good, right? That is how we look at that. And so, for example, there were a couple of people that are doing an internship with us and we will 100 % make an offer to them because these people are instantly smart.

55:37They just get it. They move fast. They can build things. They have the energy. And at that point, again, I don't need specialists because AI will be the specialist and these people will be able to grow so fast that there is no point they end up hiring someone with five or six years of experience for that specific role. But these people need to be extremely smart because obviously in the grand scheme of things, probably the total number of people that we will need, maybe instead of doubling every year, our headcount, you grow it 20, 30%. So we will still grow it, but less. And so we will be peakier and more selective.

56:12And so the key becomes, okay, first, how do you make sure you are AI native? Second, how can you prove that you have high agency? And how do you stand out?

56:24The Gstaad Guy:How does one prove to you that they're AI native in an interview process? Well, we let you build something that will have taken two weeks in three hours. Like now we are resetting a lot of things in our process. First, the hiring process now is 100 % fully automated, meaning you still talk to humans, but everything in the process is created by AI. Now we just created a new cultural test that I tested today with the team where we assess you culturally, like okay you are one of us we are hardcore this is how we think and you answer a bunch of questions that was created by Claude in an hour based on the history of our Google Drive and a lot of other documents we we uploaded so good even the things right so actually this was done by by a woman who is still in school and she's doing an internship with us and we gave her this task out of many and one was create this cultural test based on the ASLEEP principles.

57:28And she delivered it in an hour or two and I tested it yesterday. And it's absolutely perfect. And she used Claude and she played with Claude, optimize, optimize. And the thing is ready to go.

57:44The Gstaad Guy:I love AI generally. I'm really excited about the future. And about what the future of running businesses looks like. but also what the future of consumption looks like. I think we have a very exciting few years ahead. In terms of the customers' interactions, are they engaging more with your AI service for the customer? I think that is the bread and butter of what we do. It's amazing because some of our customers have disclosed publicly of using our product, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, but all the top CEOs in Silicon Valley, prime ministers, royal families, top athletes, like probably 80 % of Formula One drivers sleep on our product, a very large number of tennis players.

58:38And for me coming from, again, a small town in Italy and having access now, even actors, celebrities and all that, it's just cool because some of these people, I grew up watching these people performance. And I have always been obsessed with, I really like to spend time with the greatest people on earth to the degree of what I, of the people that I can convince to spend time with me. But even being able to empower some of these people, even if maybe some of them, I don't know if they have the product or not, but they are achieving what they are achieving and a 0.01 % is driven by what we do and we just help them to be fully rested to then perform Mission Impossible at the peak level then just makes me so grateful.

59:34The Gstaad Guy:Is that a byproduct of the product just being so exceptional or did you strategize these communities of people as targets for 8Sleep? We didn't. That is the most incredible thing, right? Even Charles, when we met, he has been using the product for two years before we met. Oh, he was a customer first. We didn't even know. That's amazing. And the same thing happened, or there is another really famous NFL player that everybody knows. And so he tries the product at a friend's house. And so then they reach out and say, look, he really wants the product for his house. Can we arrange something? So the team goes to install this device at his house, but he has a special size mattress.

1:00:20And so it doesn't fit. And so the team is leaving, but then the player says, do you mind installing in my kid's bedroom? So I'll still use it from time to time. A week later, the agent reaches out and says, look, he loves it so much that he's throwing away his really famous mattress worth 300K. because he absolutely needs this device. And so there are all these things that make us so excited internally. Or when we discover, like there was the quarterback of the 49ers two, three years ago when they played the Super Bowl, he started saying to journalists that he was using the ASLIP. We didn't even know.

1:01:07It's amazing.

1:01:08The Gstaad Guy:You have natural advocates because the product is great. Yeah, Travis Kelsey, which obviously is a pretty big deal. We didn't know, but he has been interviewed recently because he was recording a movie. And in the interview, he says that whenever he has a second, he goes back in his trailer to sleep and he has an eight sleep in the trailer because it's all about recovery. And all the things, like the only way you can really grow particularly was a product that is premium is by people recommending the product to friends because otherwise you wouldn't spend that amount of money just because you see a meta ad the meta ad is only useful for the very bottom of the funnel exactly top of the first day top of mind right you already heard we call it the the seven touch points rule you need to hear about us seven times before you pull the trigger yeah but probably two to three times it needs to be from friends the time we live in now is a very exciting time for so many reasons.

1:02:09The Gstaad Guy:One reason in particular that I communicate a lot in my videos is the access to knowledge people have and what the effects of that is in all ways of being. And I think one element in particular that I find very interesting and that I talk about a lot on Stadgai is people's growth in this micro community of the Stadgai world from being status obsessed to being substance obsessed and going from doing things because it makes them cool to doing things because it makes them feel good or actually makes them better. One of those things is actually optimization in health, but also performance becoming a high status thing.

1:02:50The Gstaad Guy:And an example of that is people who used to party a lot and be focused on status now do a lot of sports and actually are more focused on their personal growth. And even the ways they gift has developed. And I have a friend of mine who actually has favorite gift to give is Nate's sleep to his friends. Cause it's such a thoughtful gift. Like if someone can give me a great night of sleep, I think it's probably the best gift someone can give me. Yeah, actually. So we see that in our revenue, particularly in Q4, it was extremely strong it was millions of dollars we made in revenue um because of gifts it's amazing and so now there is a way on our website where you can give the product to someone else i love it um and we just launched it at the beginning of q4 waiting for the holidays and drove millions of dollars in revenue and so we we see two trends one i just buy my product uh i just just buy an eight sleep for some friends because there is this wellness obsession.

1:03:59Absolutely. Also in the, another interesting thing we are seeing is CEOs, they buy eight sleep for the executive team. That is happening a lot because they want to optimize the performance of the executive team or in other cases, as people upgrade to the latest generation, they gift the previous generation they had to family and friends. and so we start seeing a larger and larger number of units that are substantially cross-pollinating within certain circles.

1:04:30The Gstaad Guy:I think the price point definitely puts it in the luxury category and of course the quality of the product. But if you think about it on a price per use basis, it's actually very reasonable. A hundred percent, particularly even if you look at the subscription, you're really talking about 50, 60, 70 cents per night of sleep. particularly in the US, if you compare it to a coffee, a Starbucks, you are a fraction of the price. And it's a device that you will keep using for many years. So if you amortize that and you think in terms of nights of sleep, cost of night of sleep, it starts making a lot of sense.

1:05:10Then in a lot of homes, you can also actually, we see in the data, save money on the heating and cooling. and so actually a lot of our customers report that they are saving in electricity cost more than what they pay in terms of subscription.

1:05:26The Gstaad Guy:I know in some markets like Switzerland, air conditioning is illegal anyway. So you can have like the air cooling like down three degrees or heating up three degrees, but for those markets, this is, it's a no brainer. Yeah, no change. Is that part of your thinking when you choose new markets? I know you're live in 34 countries. Yeah. How do you choose the country? What is interesting, it's funny you talk about that, the way you pitch the product changes in a quite meaningful way. So in the US, you have a certain approach. In Europe, Europeans agree up with the mother. She hates AC and she thinks that if you have an AC, you will wake up and you get sick, right?

1:06:07Well, that theory doesn't work in the US, clearly. But then in Europe, there are also the limitations you were just mentioning. And so you can go for that approach. Like while instead, for example, in Asia, because of the, particularly in China, with the Chinese medicine, heating is way more popular than cooling. And so you flip the narrative. And there is where we need to, we are becoming much more savvy as we sell in all these different countries. Other places like Singapore, it could be more about energy saving or other topics, but you need to adjust the marketing angle. Okay, the foundation stays the same.

1:06:44but a lot of other reasons to finally convince you to buy are different based on the different cultures.

1:06:51The Gstaad Guy:My favorite stat actually from this whole conversation is the Starbucks one of the price per sleep and how impactful that few cents or dollar is on your life. And there's a few players in the space that I think are really tackling the longevity or health impact per dollar. I think a lot of the category is ultra premium so yes you get like X amount of benefits but it will cost you hundreds of thousands but it sounds here like at a percentage of impact on your life this is probably the lowest cost with the highest impact that I can think of on something you can actually buy versus something that comes from within and there's a few players like Neco Health that I'm a big fan of founded by Daniel Ek and a few other very cool people.

1:07:45The Gstaad Guy:And I love how cost-effective it is. You know, I love how things like Neko, things like 8sleep, it's what really needs to shift is the priority, I think. And once, possibly governments, as the final stage, but on the way there, I think hotels, airlines, and places where that optimization can be a very simple added layer, like the price per flight for these airlines would be like a dollar per flight you know to optimize the way people are sleeping would be amazing another perspective i have at least as a user i would like to go to hotels that are obviously beautiful you know wellness hotels but more than anything they have neco or something equivalent to neco integrated meaning the way i think is hospitality should change to the point where i go to some of these hotels that are my favorite hotels and I can do a full body scanning, blood test, everything tested there.

1:08:43Because sometimes, you know, maybe during the weekend you have a couple of hours. And so that is how I use the hours to just do everything tested for my body. And then they can, I think in that way, they can create a lot of retention where every six months I still go to that hotel in that specific place because first I enjoy the place, probably I can have good food, but at the same time, I also do seamlessly a full body scanning or body testing. That still doesn't exist. I think Necco or equivalent companies should just partner with some of these hotels.

1:09:16The Gstaad Guy:I agree. I completely agree. I think there are some very medical hotels that do it, but then you feel like it's very medical. Exactly. I'd like it to be secondary, like you're saying. Exactly. Not primary. Yeah. Imagine if you go to a hotel at the Maldives, like stad cortina or wherever in saint tropez but then two hours in the morning you go and you do all the all the full body scanning and you have all the data yeah because otherwise i i do all this stuff i mean i do mri at least twice a year uh blood work once a quarter but then you always need to schedule and go to this place that place and so on well instead i want this integrated in in my life I'm already going to that hotel.

1:10:00Even better if it's business, right? Let's say I'm staying in this hotel in London, I'm there for work, can I just carve out two hours? And while I'm there they come in my bedroom or I just go next to the gym and I do full body scanning. It's a no brainer.

1:10:14The Gstaad Guy:Yeah, there's a few hotels around the world that I can recommend to you that have that peak health and wellness element that's secondary and you're not staying at like one of these medical treatment hotels. The Alpina and Stade does that really well. Their chairman is a guy called Naxan Memran that is health and wellness obsessed. The Kirzner Hotels, with one and only, they have the Syro Hotels. And it's exactly what you described. It's perfect for a business person or even a young entrepreneur going somewhere for four or five days. And it's built around the recovery process. I really think they should have eight sleep in the rooms.

1:10:57Yeah, 100%. Everything should be optimized for these people. Absolutely. And one of the things I discuss sometimes with managers of top hotels, particularly in certain locations, like you can think of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, London, a lot of our customers travel to these hotels for work. Yeah. And so we started seeing them reaching out, and they ask if they can have an eighth sleep there, right? If we go back to what we were saying at the beginning, where there are a lot of, the number one feature, the most requested product is a travel pod. But it's not that people really want to travel with the pod.

1:11:32They want the pod at destination. And so if you go to the, if you are American, right? The CEO of a top Silicon Valley company, and you're probably sleeping on our product and you're going to Abu Dhabi, the fourth season of Abu Dhabi, you just want an eight sleep.

1:11:46The Gstaad Guy:Yeah, absolutely. This is happening, which is actually makes sense. I don't know if you know it, but originally Steve Jobs, focus only on consumer with the iPhone and their product. And he was betting that once the customers would have adopted the product, they would start asking their companies to provide an iPhone instead of another phone. But he never really focused on that kind of corporate strategy at the beginning. And so here it's happening kind of the same, where we are not focused so much on the hotels, on the corporate, but it's just happening because consumers are adopting the product and they want it more.

1:12:24The Gstaad Guy:Very well said. Well, on this podcast, we always play a game of à la poubelle versus fantastique, where the guest lists things they would like to change about the world around them and throw à la poubelle, just two or three things, and two or three things they'd love to see more of and celebrate and call fantastique. Can you share a couple of things from the world that surrounds you that you'd like to change and throw à la poubelle? Well, the first to change is the thing in hotels. So I want to go in some of these hotels. And if I have an hour free, I just want to do a full body scanning, blood work.

1:12:55So I can check everything in my body multiple times a month.

1:13:02The Gstaad Guy:So the boring old school elliptical gym and nothing more. Exactly. Another thing I would like to change, I always say is time zones. If time zone didn't exist, you could work from Japan or anywhere in the world. for people like you and I traveling so much. Time zones and times, it's heavy. Everything would be so much easier if there were no time zones. And then you just show up there and work at 4 a.m. Yeah. Instead, in terms of celebration, I mean, I think we are going through one of the greatest revolution in the history of the world. Well, so many things. I think humans will gain so much free time.

1:13:44They will be able to focus on bigger, more impactful goals, AI will take care of more tedious chores. And I think if we play that all in our favor, it will unlock so many things. And we will all become almost aristocratic. Like if you look at some movies of the aristocracy from the early 1900s or 1800s, where they were not doing almost anything because someone else was managing everything for them. I think we will gain a lot of free time that we can reinvest in our health, wellness, sport. And actually, I think humans with incredible abilities, like athletes, chefs, all those roles will actually become insanely valuable over the next years, right?

1:14:35If you are a Massimo Bottura, you're a top chef, probably you will become one of the most highest paid people in the world. Everything human, even if you are a craftsman and you just work on the wood and stud and you sell these small statues made in wood, probably you will start selling them for thousands of dollars because everything human made will become exceptionally valuable if it's really high quality.

1:15:02The Gstaad Guy:I totally agree with that. I love the optimism. I actually share the optimism. And I love that you focus on the tedious element being out the window because every person listening today, everyone around us have tedious things that are taking up efforts and hours of their days that shouldn't. Yeah, a lot of things that now are limited to rich people will be democratized, right? Even having an executive assistant. Everybody will have an executive assistant. Probably in five to 10 years, everybody will have a robot that is taking care of their house, right? And so there are all these forms of democratization coming from technology that will give time back to people.

1:15:44The Gstaad Guy:I'm very excited. Well, Matteo, I really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I'm excited to see 8sleep all around me even more. Yeah. And very excited to see what you continue to accomplish. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Cool. And if you haven't already had the chance to try out 8sleep, today we're very excited to offer you$350 off your first 8sleep order using code STAAD350. 50 that's G S T A A D three five zero during checkout. We hope you'll love the product as much as we do. It's been massively impactful to my sleep and people around me sleep.

1:16:23The Gstaad Guy:And I hope you get the chance to experience that as well. Thank you for listening to this episode of the start guy podcast. If you're keen to learn more, please follow along by engaging with our social channels on Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple podcasts. And we look forward to seeing you next week. Merci beaucoup. A la prochaine and a big hug from the Stardguy.