硅谷睡眠外挂：富人的玩具，还是预防医疗的入口？｜对话 Eight Sleep 创始人

Kelly: Alex, welcome to Valley 101.

Alexandra Zatarain: Yeah, thank you for having us.

Kelly: I am really excited for this. Great to meet the people behind a product that I sleep on every night. I was really excited when I unboxed the product. A lot of my friends have been telling me about it. I feel like you guys have really made the brand known not only in the tech circle but also just in general. But for the viewers who are not really familiar with Eight Sleep, tell me a little bit more about what you guys are building here.

Matteo Franceschetti: Yeah, we invented a technology that improve your sleep. Everything starts with a mattress cover that you can install on top of your mattress, but then we added other technology that will help you mitigate snoring and also help you fall asleep. But in general, we have this vision about really enhancing sleep performance. What if you could sleep only six hours and get more rest than when you were sleeping eight hours? And in the meanwhile, we also want to track everything about your health so you can live a healthier and longer life.

Kelly: So I guess the core technology here is temperature control. You mentioned that it was so cooler. Tell me a little bit more about how that idea came about for you guys when I guess when you guys started building that. That was like when you guys are 20, 24, 25.

Matteo Franceschetti: We started working on this in 2014 the first time and we had this vision about the ability to track everything about your health and respond. The big difference between what we do and wearables is that the data is not the end point for us but is just a mean to an end. The end is the ability to respond. Temperature is one of the ways we respond and is one of the most effective. So each side of the cover each side of the bed can have a different temperature and that temperature will dynamically adjust based on your biometrics, sleep stages, preferences and whatever you did during the day. So sort of activities. So temperature is the first big ones and through temperature we can give you up to 30% better sleep. Then there are other technologies. There is one for snoring mitigation. This is a base that goes underneath your bed and if you're snoring, we are going to raise your head and that should mitigate your snoring. And then we also have a speaker in the base and we are able to play certain sounds at certain moments of the night to help you fall asleep.

Alexandra Zatarain: And all of it is really personalization. So as you saw, it's all these different factors about your environment. But when we started working on what is now Eight Sleep, it was because of this clear vacuum in the market where like Matteo said, you know, wearables may give you data. There are pharma companies that create drugs to help you fall asleep and help you stay asleep. But the reality is that no one was using technology to solve this problem of humans struggle to sleep well. And modern ways in which we live are getting a bit in the way of our ability to sleep really well every single night. So we wanted to solve that. And we realized that we have to personalize the night for every human in order to do that and that's what we do.

Kelly: I wanted to talk a little bit more about just sleep in general. I feel like we're kind of in like a sleep maxing world. Everyone suddenly started to care about sleep a lot more. Was that the case when you guys started the company?

Alexandra Zatarain: No. No one was talking about sleep now back in 2014. And I mean the world was so different in terms of health and wellness. You know the trends have really accelerated I think over the last six years. But no one would talk about it in public as well like it wasn't something you talk discuss with your friends or it was sort of very private. There were no technologies that were really tracking sleep. Wearables were starting to do it. There were a few companies, you know, Apple was not even in the wearable space at the time. So, it was a very different world. And as you're saying now, everyone cares about their sleep and people are talking about sleep maxing. People are talking about recovery as a key component of performance and health. So, the world has really changed.

Kelly: I feel like previously there was this grind culture. Everyone is proud of not sleeping, you know, waking up at 4:00 a.m. and all that. And that has really changed. What have you noticed, you know, over the years of building this product in terms of the cultural reception of this?

Alexandra Zatarain: Yeah. Well, I think a lot changed since 2020. I think that there have been also just social media has given us the ability to discuss in depth so many topics about health that maybe previously were not. The explosion of formats like podcasts and YouTube vlogs and you just have so many great individuals who are sharing some of the science behind why you should be sleeping and you know why it matters for your longevity. We have people who are friends of the brand like Bryan Johnson who are out there experimenting with all these things around how can you live longer. That has fueled the conversation for the average consumer where they are seeing that media and then they're also thinking well what does that mean for me. Obviously technology companies like Eight but many others that are providing that data every day has sort of opened the eyes to people of wow actually I do feel better when I sleep more so it's been a combination of factors but it has changed significantly I think post 2020 to where we were before in the first years of the company.

Matteo Franceschetti: I would almost simplify saying look 10 20 years ago sleeping 8 9 hours was seen as weak as like you're wasting your time. You know, you're not probably driven enough. Well, instead now is literally perceived like going to the gym. Okay, you're a healthy person and then probably during the day you will be also a top performer because you will be sharp. And so this shift is because of the reasons Alexandra just described. And it's pretty incredible and true, which is the most important thing is literally what science proves.

Kelly: How does it fit into you know the biohacking culture? I was in SF a lot. I went to a lot of the peptide parties where people inject stuff into their own bodies also to like optimize sleep. Have you seen example of people kind of biohacking their own sleeps?

Alexandra Zatarain: I think we're a bit past that which is interesting. Like I do think that biohacking as a movement was very strong in that 2020 to 2022 and then it really just blended with general wellness and what we're seeing now around the world when we travel to all these countries where we sell Eight Sleep is that everyone's talking about wellness in the sense of they want to live healthier longer. So the sense of longevity and so I think that sleep has become more mainstream compared to say peptides that are sort of more right now on the edges and they're being adopted by people who are in the early adopter circles. Definitely in Silicon Valley you see a lot of that because people tend to have appetite to take risk and experiment and they're doing all sorts of things.

Kelly: You mentioned wearables. I feel like right now we use so many technologies to track how we sleep. I have a Garmin on my wrist right now and I feel like we have so many metrics like REM, deep sleep, HRV like all of those words. What do you think are the most important things when it comes to sleep metrics or you know just holistically are metrics important?

Matteo Franceschetti: Well, a couple of things. So the first one is people obviously like metrics but at the end of the day what they pay us for is to do the job for them. That is what we do through this form of responses temperature and elevation. At the end of the day, another metaphor I like to use is we built a sleep butler for you that will do continuous adjustment while you are unconscious to deliver better sleep. So this is an AI that is behind the scene. It looks at the data for you and in real time adjust temperature, elevation, noise and in the future other factors. So number one thing is you shouldn't even look at the metrics. We just need to make sure that when you wake up you feel great. Then if you want to look at the metrics because we all want I'm a metric geek. I think the key thing is to simplify things and highlight when there are what we call internally anomalies. So at the end of the day what you want to know is is everything on track? Yes. And then most of the people are fine. Then if something is changing in your body and our AI or our intelligence is able to detect that you have a certain likelihood to be sick within two three days that is what we should surface. And then there are people like me and maybe you and we really want to go deep into the data and there is when you should have a dashboard with HR, HRV, deep sleep or REM and so on.

Kelly: How does it predict you know when you were sick?

Matteo Franceschetti: We have models that look at the bunch of different biometrics. Usually the most relevant are HR and HRV. And so you start seeing a trend where your heart rate at rest starts going up usually three, four, five days before you get fever and your HRV starts going down. And so those are what we call anomalies and that is how we are training our models to be able to detect some of the shifts in your biology.

Kelly: Yeah. And I wanted to talk a little bit more about you know why you guys choose mattress cover. I know that you guys pivoted a little bit cover then mattress and back to cover and then there are so many variables which seems to be the usual way that people are going about like with sleep tracking. Why did you guys choose mattress cover in particular?

Alexandra Zatarain: Well first we wanted it to be seamless. So for us when we think of sleep, we didn't want to have to ask you to do something else, right? Even wearing something while you're sleeping or having to remember to charge your Garmin or your wearable every x days and remember to do that or activating it or anything like that like was out of the question. We don't believe that that's the right way to go, especially when it comes to sleep. When you feel tired, you should just be able to go to bed. And like Matteo said, this sort of sleep butler takes care of you. So embedding something on the surface that you're sleeping on felt the most natural design option. And so that's why the mattress cover that's the form factor we've had since our very first product before the Pod. And we've sort of gone back and forth in whether we sell it integrated to a mattress or not. But in the end, consumers wanted the flexibility to put it on top of any bed they already had at home. So it turned out to be the right bet.

Kelly: I would love to talk a little bit about the technology that allows us to do that. And what are your proprietary technologies that you know kind of optimize this temperature control and help us feel comfortable?

Matteo Franceschetti: We have filed many many patents. I think we have over probably 40 patents in that range. I mean we really reinvented the technology from the ground up. We came up with this technology that is liquid base and the science behind what we do and the fact that temperature will improve your sleep is something that has been proven for probably I don't know 50 years by now. So we didn't invent that. That was already proven. What we did is we were the first company that was able to create a consumer device at scale that could deliver this value to the average user. And another thing we noticed was the need for couples. What we see is 80 to 90% of the couples they have different temperature preferences and different needs. And that is where we immediately found the product market fit. So people like to joke saying that we saved their marriage because they were fighting with their partner about different temperature needs. I want it colder, I want it warmer and and so on. And so we build this technology that has a device that sits next to your bed and there is where the whole intelligence live and then there is this cover where liquid cooling is circulating. So think of having the most sophisticated liquid cooling technology ever built, but instead being maybe for your top car or super car is just for your bed and for your sleep.

Kelly: Yeah, I was actually quite surprised how easy it was to assemble. Like I kind of just pour water in and it worked. Was that like a cautious decision between like liquid cooling and I guess other method?

Alexandra Zatarain: Yeah, I mean ultimately because water is the best material to actually absorb the body heat. Our bodies are quite hot. They're dissipating heat throughout the night here in bed for 6 to 9 hours every night and so the water can absorb that and remove it from the surface of the bed. So it's much more successful at achieving and maintaining cooler temperatures than air would be for instance. So that's why liquid was important to achieve our goal. But then like Matteo said it is really sophisticated because we had to also make it comfortable. When you're speaking about being on the surface of the bed you need to make it comfortable. You need to make it reliable. We wanted it to like disappear so that it wouldn't bother you go in bed and it just feels like your regular mattress that you had bought previously, but now you have these added benefits.

Kelly: And going back to that couple point, I thought that was really interesting as you said people have different temperature preference. Is there any scientific evidence proven that you know how like sleeping with a partner kind of like affect your sleep like your partner's sleeping habits would like change your sleep quality?

Matteo Franceschetti: Yeah, I think we have data.

Alexandra Zatarain: Yes. Yeah, there's definitely like a very close connection. One because of habits. So couples who are keeping or not keeping the same bedtimes or wake up times will influence their sleep significantly. But even while you're in bed one thing that we have seen in our data is that women are actually heavily influenced by having their partner in bed and their HRV so their recovery tends to be much better when they have their partner in bed than when they don't. And so you start seeing all these sort of physiological effects of having your partner with you that are very interesting. And so you would hear anecdotally women would say like, "Oh, it's much easier for me to fall asleep with my partner with me or like I sleep better." But then we actually see in the data that it's true. The challenge is that when you're sleeping with someone again, their bedtime routine, their wake up can bother you, their temperature preference can bother you. And those are some of the things that we're solving here by giving each partner the ability to define their own side of the bed, their microclimate, their own conditions, their own silent alarms so that they interrupt each other's sleep as little as possible.

Kelly: To build on that, I wanted to talk a little bit about women's health as well because you guys launched the pregnancy mode. Tell me a little bit about you know how you guys discover that use case and you know with like pregnancy and postpartum how the sleep quality differ you know in those period of their life.

Alexandra Zatarain: Yeah. Well, I think everything that we're doing in women's health is really fascinating because you know there's a lot of conversation about how little women are really studied and anything related to our health and wellness. It's sort of harder to run clinical studies for women because of the variations that we have in our hormonal cycles. And we said, well, that doesn't make sense to us. Like, let's just figure out, given that we have this incredible scale of being in consumer's homes, let's figure out a way to recruit women who want to participate in studies with us. They're already part of our user base so that we can learn how women sleep. Let's actually start contributing back to science and like sharing some of this data. So, women anecdotally would say that as they go through pregnancy, they start feeling warmer. They start feeling sometimes even sort of hot flashes or night sweats that they wouldn't have before pregnancy. And then as they go into postpartum, they have those effects again, which almost feels like a little bit of a perimenopause moment because their hormones are starting to go back down to where they were pre-pregnancy. And we saw that in the data. It was very clear. So as the pregnancy advances and every week of pregnancy, you do have different needs in terms of what environment temperature is going to keep you comfortable at sleep. So we said, well, why don't we build that? Let's actually use AI to create this algorithm that's just going to run automatically. If you tell our product what week of pregnancy you're in, what is your due date, it will just manage the temperature of your bed for you automatically. You don't have to do anything. And beyond that, we have the value that we have the data. So, we can also tell you here's how your heart rate is looking compared to pre-pregnancy benchmarks. Here's what your HRV looks like, your breathing rate, which all of those biomarkers change as a pregnancy advances. And we can benchmark you. We can tell you for the week of pregnancy you're in whether those metrics are looking quote unquote normal which also gives women some peace of mind which is so important in that phase of life.

Kelly: Yeah. When you train the algorithm what is the kind of the training data? Do you think like we have enough data for from you know like pregnancy and just like women in general uh to train this algorithm to make sure it's accurate.

Matteo Franceschetti: We do because the thing that we have is obviously all the people that sleep on the Pod we recruit from our user base. So we have women opt in.

Alexandra Zatarain: That's what's amazing. So we don't need to go and like get that data from any external source which obviously as you said sometimes there's not enough or there's not enough of the same quality of data for us. We have this incredible product in people's homes and our user base is excited because we're going to build something that's going to actually benefit them because they end up using it.

Kelly: What kind of feedback have you been hearing?

Alexandra Zatarain: So those two cohorts it's incredible but they're some of their like highest engaged cohorts. They just love the features. We're building something that no other technology company has done for them because it's beyond tracking. So, it's not just the data, but we're actually solving a problem for them through this response. And so, that's just amazing for them. It's like someone's finally building what I needed and that is giving me a pregnancy that means I can sleep better, a postpartum where I can recover better. And when you think about it, in those moments in your life, sleep is so fundamental to your well-being. It really is critical. It's probably the most critical thing that you have to do.

Kelly: Yeah, that's awesome. So, I guess it has been over 10 years. Looking back, are there versions of product that failed and what did you learn from that experience?

Matteo Franceschetti: Well, it's not that there was a version that failed. I think over the years, we always kept improving what we had both because technology became better in general through AI and sensors, but every iteration now for example with the Pod we are on Pod 4 and each iteration of this device is better than the previous one.

Kelly: And when it comes to the algorithm, how large is the data set behind the algorithm? What specifically is hard to replicate about those data?

Matteo Franceschetti: Well, it's billions of hours of health data and so we collect multiple terabytes of health data per day and the only way you can do that is to be at scale. So even if you were starting a company today with a large amount of cash in the bank is literally something you cannot buy even because in our case we don't have off-the-shelf sensors but the sensors have been developed in house by us and so to train your algos on this specific type of sensors there is only one company in the world that can do it which is us.

Kelly: And I do also want to talk a little bit about the end goal here. In a podcast I think two years ago you mentioned that you wanted to solve cancer with this technology. Tell me more about just that connection. How do we get from tracking sleep data to solving one of the hardest diseases?

Matteo Franceschetti: So first of all recently like probably six months ago there was a paper published by some scientists at Stanford and what they proved is that with the data of one night of sleep they can detect 130 diseases and we started seeing that in our back end meaning we start seeing correlation between sleep and diabetes and hypertension and other diseases and we start seeing an accuracy that based on an early test is close to 90% accuracy. This is happening just because of AI. It is fairly incredible how AI is triaging different amount of data and finding correlations that maybe us as humans we wouldn't have found. Then specifically for cancer we have a vision for full body scanning. We believe that while you're asleep we could scan your body and detect certain types of health conditions including certain types of cancer.

Alexandra Zatarain: Yeah, it's really cool. At the end of the day, if you think you're standing still in the same position for six hours and you are on a surface, lying down on a surface that is really big, we have space underneath your body and potentially above your body, then you start thinking first principle in terms of technology. Okay, what can you do to a body that is standing still when you have all this space, Wi-Fi connection and electricity?

Kelly: And I guess to follow up on that, you are also pursuing FDA clearance for this product, you know, as part of the preventive care and you guys publish an independent study. Tell me just more about that process and why did you decide to pursue this role?

Matteo Franceschetti: We are moving towards what internally we call Eight Medical and so how can we pursue our medical mission? How can we help millions of people to really extend their life or at least maybe even save their life? One of the first step will be through sleep apnea. Step one of a journey that hopefully will last many decades. We have a technology that is able to detect if you have sleep apnea while you're sleeping on the current technology so it's a software update and then we also develop a technology that mitigates sleep apnea and we're pursuing FDA approval for both of them.

Kelly: Got it. Has there been any examples of anyone you know benefiting from seeing signs of diseases early from using your product even like in your own experience because I assume you guys are the first users of the mattress cover. What has surprised you while you were using this product in your experience like looking at your data and everything?

Matteo Franceschetti: Well the most unexpected case is for people going through cancer. We didn't expect that, but we discovered that when they're going through chemo, they have hot flashes and the body also becomes less accurate in temperature management. And so we started seeing a lot of people with cancer buying the product. We didn't expect that. We didn't know anything about that and now we fully understand the why. And our goal is to start helping people in with those conditions as well.

Alexandra Zatarain: And there have been cases too of people who have written to us where they say, you know, I've been sleeping on the Pod for a while. And so they have their data, right? So it sort of builds this repository of what's happening while you're sleeping to your body and they were not feeling great. They checked their metrics on the Eight app and they saw that it had been a few days where something was off. I think in this case specifically was their heart rate at rest and they decided to go to the hospital. In the case of this one person I remember, he said that he ended up needing heart surgery. And so I think that's an example of what data is doing and sort of empowering us where it might not be something that you're interested in checking every day, but the fact that you can passively track your biometrics, it becomes such an important signal when something does feel off or when we can flag a certain trend like Matteo was saying earlier and then people can go and do something about it.

Kelly: Yeah. I wanted to move on to you know you guys building this company. Being a consumer hardware company, I think we can all admit it's pretty tough. When you guys were in YC back in 2015, I assume there weren't that many hardware companies in your batch. What are the biggest challenges of building a hardware company, a consumer hardware company in particular?

Matteo Franceschetti: Well, the first part is to really understand manufacturing, how long it takes. Then you need to understand the unit economics. It is not something you can adjust quickly. So being able to nail what is your BOM cost or the cost of production of manufacturing of the device and what the margins will be and then you need to have enough cash or capital to handle returns replacement the whole supply chain the net terms or non-net terms you get from suppliers in the early days. I think we were lucky to be naive because it's one of the things that if you know before you start maybe you don't even start. In our case we were so naive then we had to figure it out as the problems were coming in and we did it. So now 10 years later the company last year was profitable with strong unit economics, we sell in 35 countries and have strong growth.

Kelly: Yeah you mentioned that you flew to China. Was it like to tour the factory or to...

Matteo Franceschetti: Yeah I moved to China for multiple months because at the time we had prototypes that were working but I don't think we were fully aware of the delta between having a working prototype and something that can be fully shipped and manufactured and so we had to learn that. And I moved there, we selected the manufacturers, we also hired our first employees in China which are still with us. They're actually the longest tenure employee in the whole company outside the founders, Jack and Tony, and those people that I found back then they're still leading our group in China.

Kelly: What have you learned about manufacturing from that trip in China?

Matteo Franceschetti: Well, the first one and the biggest is really this delta between a working prototype and a final product. And the main reason is there are first certain steps that you cannot skip. It's called EVT 1, EVT 2 and DVT, MP and so on. But more than anything, these steps are really key for the quality and reliability of the device. So you literally cannot skip them. At the beginning founders, entrepreneurs they always try to find shortcuts and they think they can cut certain steps but obviously manufacturing is something that now has been tested for hundreds of years from very smart people and some of these things can literally not be cut.

Kelly: Yeah. And I wanted to talk a little bit about the Chinese market which is one of the main reasons we are having this conversation here. So you guys started selling in China since April. How has that been?

Alexandra Zatarain: It's been great. It's been our fastest growing market. I think the reception has been incredible. We were really excited to get into China because in one way or another, China has always been a part of our journey as a business. Like Matteo said, he moved there for many months at the beginning and the reception has been great. Just far beyond what we expected. I think a lot of excitement that the Pod was finally available.

Kelly: That's awesome. What did you do in preparation for this launch? Did you like go to China and talk to the market there, the folks there?

Alexandra Zatarain: Yes, definitely. I mean, we've been going to China now for years, so I think like we were familiar enough like to know sort of how different it is, right? That's the first thing that I think any brand coming from outside China realizes and why I think most brands are scared to enter is because it's really different than marketing to the rest of the world. But for us, it was an exciting challenge. And what we did first was build a team. So we built a marketing team that would know the market that would be in China that they could actually take the leadership and guide us through what it would mean to build the awareness of the brand and also all the different advertising channels and how they performed. So that was our strategy: hire the best people possible to make it happen.

Kelly: Was there a reason why you guys decide to do this now in this market?

Alexandra Zatarain: I think it just felt like the right time. I think the brand's reaching a certain point of maturity. You know, we're in over 35 countries and so when we think what is the next big market to tackle China's always at the top of the list, right? It's a huge market. It's a market that's very exciting. There's a lot of innovation. I think the Chinese consumer right now is definitely into everything related to their health and their wellbeing as well. So, we didn't want to be left behind. We are taking the leadership around the world on everything related to sleep and so we want to be also the leaders in China when everything that comes to sleep.

Kelly: Yeah. I would love to hear a little bit about what that market surprised you because growing up in China I always thought it was a very competitive consumer product market. When you were doing market research what about the market surprised you, even like pleasantly surprised?

Alexandra Zatarain: Yeah, I think that it's a pleasant surprise, but it definitely was a surprise to see how demanding the Chinese consumer is because as you're saying, it's a market where you find so many products, right? And there's this availability of almost anything that you would want because it's a country that is manufacturing so much of what we use around the world, but is really positive to see that the consumer still demands high quality and they want high quality products, right? They're not just compromising. They want the best. They want the best service and that's something we have to build for. The fact that the way you interact with a brand, you expect a very six-second response on WeChat and like people just need to be available 24/7 is something that in other markets people don't expect.

Kelly: Right.

Alexandra Zatarain: And so it's something of learning curve, but it's been great because we've also been able to bring those learnings to the service that we provide outside of China because we think that should be the gold standard.

Kelly: What cities in China are you organized in now or is it mostly online?

Alexandra Zatarain: Yeah, it's all online right now. And we have a pop-up store in Shenzhen and now we're looking at other locations as well so we can bring the product to life in person and people can try it and buy in person too.

Kelly: Yeah. I guess going back to the Chinese market and really the global market because sleep is something where individual physique matters a lot and varies a lot. Like I for example am a pretty hot sleeper. I cannot stand any coldness. But a lot of people in western countries may have a different preference. How do you guys account for those preferences across cultures and regions and countries?

Matteo Franceschetti: Yeah, it's something that we saw actually when we were doing the pre-market entry in China that we did have to adjust our understanding of preferences for humans in terms of what they want to feel like when they get in bed because actually Chinese user does prefer the bed to be slightly warmer than what we see in the rest of the world. And so the beauty of it is that the way we account for is we just see the data and you see the usage. So it's very easy like when you're onboarding to the product you give the product your preferences because it starts from there like who are you, male, female, age etc but then also what do you prefer, so then the AI is just adjusting automatically to that and then we can start seeing patterns as the user base grows in a certain market of like where are distinct patterns than from what we have seen in the rest of the world.

Kelly: And as you get more data does the algorithm keep improving?

Matteo Franceschetti: Yes.

Alexandra Zatarain: Yeah.

Kelly: Nice. I do want to talk a little bit about the pricing strategy. The price point. So you guys sell in the US right now is like around $3,000 for a mattress cover. That is quite expensive for a mattress cover. And China is a market where really all the consumer hardware companies I think compete on prices. You know even with AI models they like compete on prices. How do you guys account for that difference? How do you guys think about the pricing strategy?

Matteo Franceschetti: Well, the way we think is just to use some references, right? Think of Apple or think of Tesla. Obviously, right now we are at the Model S if we were Tesla. So, you should imagine the Model Y, X and 3 to come. The idea is to democratize sleep for 8 billion people. And so, over time we will do it. The point is when you develop a technology that is so sophisticated usually at the beginning is slightly more expensive but then over time you find ways to optimize through better engineering and that is how you make it affordable. Then the brand and our brand is aspirational and that is where you can make reference to an Apple. So we are not the type of device that wants to be sold at the cheapest price. That is not our position. We just want to build the greatest product and even if that requires a slightly higher price that's what we want. That's not our focus but at the same time we want to make it more I would say democratic for 8 billion people.

Alexandra Zatarain: Yeah. I think ultimately we don't think of competing in price but we compete on outcome. So if we are the product that is going to help you sleep better, we are confident people will buy our product.

Kelly: Yeah. You mentioned I think in a previous interview that you really look up to the luxury brand from your home country in Italy where when they raise prices they actually receive more demand. Is that kind of the model that you guys are going after as well?

Matteo Franceschetti: I don't think it's luxury meaning we don't want to be positioned as a luxury brand. Then one of the things I learned from great Italian brands is this obsession for quality and also obsession for building a company that is sustainable with margins that can take you IPO and make sure that we are going to be around for the next 30 years. But the position is not specifically luxury. It's more what Alexandra said is all around delivering the greatest product for sleep enhancement. Because usually in Italy is all about excellence, quality, slightly higher prices but smaller scale and that is how they generate enough bottom line to have a great company. Well, instead in the US is all about scale. But then sometimes there is the risk of compromising quality. And so I think there are very few companies like Apple and with Steve Jobs that was able to almost find the balance between the Italian way and the American way where they created a product that is still incredible is technologically advanced but is still premium and something that people desire and they don't want to compromise on product just to compress margins.

Kelly: And so that is where Apple sits and that is exactly what I love. You guys have a lot of celebrity users as well. You know, this has kind of become like a status symbol. What are the pain points, you know, when it comes to sleeping for those high performance individuals, the athletes, you know, executives?

Alexandra Zatarain: Well, I think it's the same as a regular person, right? Like what's fascinating is to see that after all these years working in the sleep space, like we see that humans, we sort of all share the same sleeping problem. But obviously, the one caveat would be like professional athletes and athletes that travel often. So we have a lot of F1 drivers who use the product and a lot of them travel with it across all the races. You know, they're traveling across multiple time zones. They have what like 20 something races in a season. So it's like very grueling and so for them recovery is important mostly because they're just traveling so much and they're sleeping away from their bed. So they want to have the same conditions wherever they go around the world. Or we have, you know, NBA athletes like in the United States, they're traveling all around the US, but they also have just, you know, they may have a match on Tuesday and then they have another one on Thursday and it's late at night. And so those are very particular cases, but we're all sharing the same physiology, which is temperature is still such an important factor in our ability to fall asleep and stay asleep.

Matteo Franceschetti: Another great story is Pogačar, the guy who has won multiple Tour de France. This is the second year in a row where he installs our product in each hotel of each stage of the Tour de France which is what probably 20 to 30 hotels every single night because he can't sleep without our product to recover and deliver the performance he needs to win the Tour de France.

Kelly: For someone who travels a lot, what would you say they should do to optimize their sleep?

Alexandra Zatarain: Well, I think the first is making enough time for sleep. Wherever you're in the world, just making sure that you're prioritizing that in your day schedule. The second is consistency. I mean, we travel often as well, and I think when it comes down to beating jet lag is trying to stay consistent with your bedtime and wake up time regardless of where you are in the world. And the cues around temperature and light are really the two most important signals for your brain of when you should be sleeping and when you should be awake. So, use those cues to your advantage. So, exposure to light and then also the temperature. So dropping that core body temperature in the evening so you can fall asleep and then raising it in the morning. That's what's going to help you adjust as you go through the different parts of the world.

Kelly: Yeah, totally. So for you guys, you know, after like over 10 years, do you feel like you have figured sleep out or...

Matteo Franceschetti: Definitely.

Alexandra Zatarain: I think yeah, we do pretty well. We just came back from the West Coast the other day, slept 9 hours and 12 minutes and that is how I started my Monday.

Kelly: Wow. What do you do like during I guess during the day to keep your sleep consistent?

Alexandra Zatarain: I think it's just prioritizing it, right? It's basically saying at certain point of the day, no matter how busy you are, you have to just go to bed. You need to put away your phone, your computer, and go to bed. And like, as long as you do that and you do it at a consistent time, it becomes a routine for your body. So, your body knows that by 10:00 p.m. you're tired, you're going to go to sleep. And then you also I rarely use an alarm. My body just wakes up naturally, but because we are quite consistent with our schedule.

Kelly: What would you say is how long do you guys sleep every night?

Matteo Franceschetti: Eight to nine hours.

Kelly: Oh, wow. Every night.

Matteo Franceschetti: Yes. [laughter] Less than eight for us is very difficult, is a disaster.

Kelly: Wow, that's fascinating. So, you really know your body well. I actually want to build on that and talk more about the culture because we talked in the very beginning about how the culture surrounding sleep has changed starting from Silicon Valley and now around the world. Keeping a consistent sleep routine, it's somewhat of a luxury for a lot of people who have to work maybe night hours or not consistent hours every day. It is kind of hard to keep that. What does sleep optimization look like for people who may not have the luxury of keeping a consistent schedule?

Alexandra Zatarain: We get that a lot because we definitely have some members who are even people who work at hospitals or doctors and they have changing shifts. And so what we know is that as much as possible just still prioritizing sleep in your day makes a big difference. So even if the schedule is changing continuously, if you just make enough time for sleep, that will help you because the biggest challenge people have who have night shifts or who have changing schedules is that they end up not making enough time for sleep. You know, they try to live the life of a person who has a regular schedule but they actually don't have one. So that would feel like our first recommendation. The other one we do see with our product specifically that because of the influence that temperature can have in helping them fall asleep faster and like get deeper sleep that it gives them a boost. So those hours that they are sleeping even if they may be a little off to their regular circadian rhythm because maybe they were sleeping in the middle of the day the influence of that temperature coming from the Pod can help them achieve higher quality sleep even if it's in the middle of the day.

Kelly: So my last question is what is the vision now that you guys are in 35 plus countries around the globe and over 10 years of making this product what are you planning to do in the future?

Matteo Franceschetti: More products, more countries, more channels and a certain point probably an IPO.

Kelly: Yeah, totally. And I guess more people to realize the importance of sleep. Yeah.

Matteo Franceschetti: Yes.

Kelly: Great. Awesome. Thank you guys so much for joining me.

Alexandra Zatarain: Yeah, this has been great. Thank you.