20VC: Casper Founder Philip Krim on The Right Way To Think About Marketing Channel Diversification, When To Accept Strategic Investors & How To Successfully Build Out Your Exec Team

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Philip Krim is the Founder & CEO @ Casper, the global sleep company that launched in 2014 offering perfect mattresses directly to consumers. Since then they have raised over $239m in funding from the likes of NEA, Lerer Hippeau, IVP, Norwest Venture partners and even include Leonardo Di Caprio on their cap table. As for Philip, he is a serial entrepreneur having founded 2 previous startups, launching his first business out of his very own dorm room at the University of Texas. Due to his immense success, he has been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and been awarded a TechCrunch Crunchie award for Best in E-commerce.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Philip made his way into the world of startups and came to launch one of the most successful consumer brands of our day in the form of Casper?

2.) We continuously hear about "the end of retail". What does retail done poorly mean to Philip? How does he perceive the future of retail and retail done right? How does retail fundamentally change the margin structure of an originally online brand like Casper? What does Philip perceive to be the biggest challenge to opening up retail significantly?

3.) Why does Philip think we have seen many online mattress brands struggle over the past year? How has this affected how he operates and executes the plan with Casper? How does Philip think about diversification within customer acquisition channels? How does Philip assess the saturation rate of different distribution channels?

4.) Casper's latest lead investor was a strategic investor, Target. How does Philip think about accepting strategic funds? What was the internal debate and decision-making process? What advice would Philip have to founders contemplating accepting strategic money? How can strategics sometimes have ulterior motives?

5.) Does Philip agree with many former CEOs on the show, the most important role of the CEO is management upscaling? What other functions does Philip consider core? How did Philip think about building out the core of his C-Suite? Does he wish he had done it earlier? What element of the C-Suite was the hardest to hire for?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Philip’s Fave Book: Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Philip on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We are back for another Founders Friday here on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings.
0:04.0	Now, as you know, I can be found on Instagram at H. Stebbings, 1996 with 2Bs, and it'd be fantastic
0:09.5	to see you there.
0:10.4	But to the show today, and I welcome a guest that I've really wanted to have on for a long,
0:13.9	long time.
0:14.6	He's created one in the world's most successful consumer products of our day, and so I'm thrilled to welcome Philip Crimm, found and CEO at Casper,
0:21.7	the Global Sleep Company that launched in 2014 offering perfect mattresses directly to consumers,
0:26.9	and since then they've raised over $239 million in funding from the likes of NEA,
0:32.0	lira Hippo, IVP, Norwest Venture Partners, and even include Leonardo DiCaprio on their cap table. As for Philip,
0:38.4	he's a serial entrepreneur, having founded two previous startups launching his first business out of his
0:43.2	very own dorm room at the University of Texas. And due to his immense success, he's been profiled
0:47.9	in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and been awarded a TechCrunch Crunchy Award for
0:52.6	Best in e-commerce. And I do also want to say a huge thank you to Dennis Phelps at IVP for the intro to Philip today.
0:58.2	I really do so appreciate that.
1:00.2	However, before we welcome Philip, thanks to my friends at Weepay, let me introduce you to another
1:04.2	cool player in the space we love, Big Commerce.
1:06.8	Big Commerce offers powerful e-commerce tools that turn shoppers into customers with a range of
1:11.6	customizations to serve the needs of fast-growing brand and high-volume businesses.
1:16.0	The platform allows companies of all sizes to customize their sites, manage shipping and payments,
1:21.1	and list products on the likes of Amazon and Facebook, and you can learn more at bigcommerce.com.
1:25.8	And to learn how you can grow your revenue with integrated payments, just like big commerce did,
1:29.8	visit wepay.com forward slash Harry.
	...

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