You never called Eight Sleep a mattress company. Instead, you pioneered a new category of ‘sleep fitness’ by positioning it as a ‘sleep fitness brand.’ Tell me about the decision-making and strategy behind this.

ZATARAIN: We were not intentional about our positioning for the first five years of the company because we didn't even know what brand... See more

Despite this, Lovevery’s lifetime sales per customer are more than double that of KiwiCo’s, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Second Measure. (And at around $700 after 24 months, more than enough to justify spending on customer acquisition.)

Direct-to-consumer brands have typically relied on disparate sources to solicit feedback from their most engaged customers: Google Docs, Slack bases, DMs. Try Your Best aims to streamline that process, and to route marketing dollars away from Facebook and Instagram, where Ms. Haney said that soaring costs have made it harder for emerging brands to... See more

(1) Viable business model - can you make decent profits on the unit economics? (note: this means that DTC winners will, by and large, be premium-priced, with decent basket sizes, with efficient cost structures, and have repeat business with a customer rather than just one-off transactions)