Ep174 – Alexandra Zatarain (Co-founder – Eight Sleep) on branding, company DNA and category creation

The Startup Playbook PodcastInsights and lessons from the world's best entrepreneurs and investors Twitter Facebook YouTube Instagram Ep174 – Alexandra Zatarain (Co-founder – Eight Sleep) on branding, company DNA and category creation February 22, 2024 rohitbhargava Podcast My guest for Ep174 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the Co-founder & VP of Brand & Marketing of Eight Sleep, Alexandra Zatarain. Back in 2014, Alex moved from NYC to Silicon valley to launch a smart mattress company as 4 “outsiders” to the silicon valley startup scene. They wanted to build and create a first of its kind hardware product, built by a founding team with no prior hardware experience between them! In 2015, Eight Sleep launched via an Indigogo campaign that raised over $1M in pre-sales and fast forward to today, Eight Sleep is the world’s leader in helping people build their sleep fitness. The company has gone on to raise a total of over $150M (valuing the company over $500M), operates in 13 countries and has over 200 of the worlds leading athletes across F1, Tour de France, NBA and the NFL (to name a few) using their product. In this episode, Alex shares a lot of the journey, lessons and insights over the last decade in building Eight Sleep. Some of the topics we covered included: How to think about your company DNA The importance of brand messaging and positioning The benefits and challenges of creating your own category How to run successful influencer marketing campaigns and much more! Time stamps: 3:33 – Alex’s background, growing up in Mexico 9:43 – The decision to move to San Francisco and launch Eight Sleep 15:13 – The early days of building Eight Sleep 17:51 – Importance of brand messaging and positioning 21:23 – How to think about company branding 23:53 – Philosophy on brand messaging and company DNA 28:21 – Benefits and challenges of category creation 31:43 – Keeping stakeholders engaged when making big changes to a company 34:23 – How Alex thinks about marketing campaigns 37:13 – Product innovation and iterations 39:23 – How Eight Sleep leverages high profile athletes in their marketing 42:03 – Setting up successful influencer/athlete partnerships 48:34 – Insights from user data 51:37 – Sleep tips Our partners A big thank you to Matt de Boer for helping make this episode happen! Also a big thank you to our partners for the show: Scendar  Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business.. Find out more at Scendar.com Vanta Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.Get started with a Sydney-based Vanta team member today, or watch a 3-minute demo to learn more, at vanta.com/playbook. Links mentioned Alex’s links Alex’s Twitter/X Eight Sleep People mentioned Matteo Franceschetti Elon Musk Mark Woodland Andy Cunningham – Get to Aha Al Ramadan – Play Bigger Aaron Judge Brock Purdy Matt de Boer Companies mentioned Fitbit Jawbone Kismet Indiegogo Peloton Feedback/connect/say hello: [email protected]@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)My Youtube Channel Credits: Music: Paycheck Other channels: Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/startupplaybook/Ep174_-_final.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download | EmbedSubscribe: RSS admin January 1, 2014 Reply Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat admin January 1, 2014 Reply Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat admin January 1, 2014 Reply Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. 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