S15E3: Building the Future of Sleep with Hatch Co-Founder & CEO Ann Crady Weiss

I tell my kids, if you're not doing things that scare you, you're not growing. And the reality for me is going on Shark Tank definitely scared me, not because I've done a gazillion pitches, like I feel really comfortable in public. But that said, it's a show that is designed to humiliate people like me.

Welcome back to a new season of The Room Podcast. Hi, Mads.

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Today on The Room Podcast, we sit down with Anne Crady Weiss, co-founder and CEO of Hatch, the company that turned the humble sound machine into a smart sleep platform, helping millions of families from newborns to adults build better sleep routines with connected devices that blend light, We're so excited for today's conversation. Let's open the door. And now a message from one of our sponsors, Rippling. One thing we constantly hear on The Room is that grid operators don't just need more data, they need a faster way to turn that data into decisions. As a founder, I know how painful it is to wait days or even weeks for a report while a real business problem is unfolding. That's what makes Rippling AI different. You can ask Rippling AI, is our sales team at risk of missing quota? And Rippling AI instantly pulls real-time data from Rippling and your CRM to answer that question. CRM into presentation-ready dashboard data showing quota attainment, headcount trajectory, and monthly revenue to quota by region. But it doesn't stop at the insight. Rippling AI can act on what it sees, recommending and building an automated recruiting workflow when open roles and slow time to fill are putting quota at risk, all while following your existing permissions and approval processes. Question answered, action taken, problem solved. Ready to rule your business? Head to rippling.ai/theroom and sign up for exclusive access.

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Anne, first of all, thank you so much for joining us in The Room today.

I am so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

We're delighted to dive into both your story and the building story of Hatch, but First, we like to start with the beginning with our guests. So could you share with us where you grew up and how that shaped your view of the world?

I'm happy to. I grew up in the Bay Area. I am a Silicon Valley OG. And yeah, I grew up when Silicon Valley was just starting to be Silicon Valley. And I, my mom, and her sister each had a family. There were 2 kids in my house and 2 kids in my aunt's house. And it happened that we did everything together. And it happened that my uncle became the CEO and the third employee at Intel, which became a huge deal in the course of my childhood. And that really was a major inspiration for me to become an entrepreneur and a founder, just seeing my uncle's journey and really my entire family's experience.

I am obsessed with the founding story of Intel and how it had spun out of the Fairchild Semiconductor ecosystem. So, that is fascinating. How does your uncle meet the early Intel team?

He was at Fairchild with them and they all left Fairchild together to start it together. He was not, he's not technically a founder, but he, I think, was the third. I think actually officially he's the fourth employee, but he was actually the third person right after the two founders.

Well, it's nice that he avoided the Traders 8 logo, I suppose. That's so interesting.

Wow.

It sounds like you've been incredibly steeped in the ecosystem, both on the hardware and the software side. So we'll be excited to dive in more, but tell us for you with this backdrop, did you always think you were going to become a founder?

You know, I was a kid who always was an entrepreneur. Like, I was a kid who made, like, I would like handmake stationery and sell it door to door. And then I would like order things from catalogs and sell 'em door to door. I'd have lemonade stands. So I was always a hustler for sure as a, as a kid growing up. So I think it was in my blood and also in my, it, it's what I enjoy doing. It filled me up. So I think always. I also have a younger brother who founded a company right before I did and ended up selling it to Google before they went public. And so, and it was like a storybook kind of experience for him. And so I was like, if he can do that, I'll do that too. And so I started my first company.

Nothing like a little sibling competition to get you going. That's incredible. I have brothers and I'm quite close to them too. And it sounds like really truly there were multiple journeys to your career before you became a founder as well. So I did want to touch briefly on your journey as a lawyer at a very prominent law firm like Wilson Sonsini, the work you did at Yahoo ultimately, and then when you made that first plunge into founding Maya's Mom. Could you walk us through a bit of those earlier career choices?

Sure. So when I finished school, I was a psychology major, mostly because I had originally started pre-med. And I decided organic chemistry was not for me. So, I graduated with a psychology degree, and I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And so, I ended up applying to law school because why not? And I became a lawyer, and I worked at a firm called Wilson Sonsini, and I did corporate securities law. And it was— I came out of law school in the first dot-com boom. Companies were going public left and right with zero revenue and basically a name and a cool dot-com. And I worked on venture financings and IPOs and M&A. And I had absolutely no business being staffed on what I was staffed on because I was so junior, but there was just so much work that it was, everyone was asked to do. The janitors were asked to do, not seriously, but it was crazy time. And I worked all the time, but it was definitely not a job that filled me up. It was a job of details, and I definitely am not a detail person. I am a let's talk about the big picture person. And so, I worked a ton of hours, and I just kind of ground it out. And I went to enough board meetings to realize that I wanted to be on the other side of the table. And so, I ended up leaving the firm. I went to a startup. That startup got bought. I then went to Yahoo and had a really wonderful career for about 5 years at Yahoo. And then left and started my first company.

That is an incredible journey. And I love just the hearkening back to some of these IPOs. I just before we hopped on saw the announcement about Anthropic filing, and it just feels like there is so much energy happening right now. And at least this time around, seems like there's some real revenue.

Massive substance compared to those days. My God. Yes, real revenue and more than a name.

Well, tell us a little bit more about how the experience of the acquisition from that first startup ultimately brought you to where you are today, because where I want to go next is actually the founding story at Hatch, which is what has really become not only an amazing product, but quite a phenomenon in people's personal lives and sleep journeys. So, there's so much to dive in, but just bring our listeners into those moments and decision-making criteria. That brought us to where you are today.

Yeah. When I started my first company, like I said, I left Yahoo to start, and actually my now mentor and, and former leader of the group that I was in at Yahoo, Jeff Weiner, offered, he said, do you wanna do your startup idea at Yahoo? And I knew instantly I did not. I wanted to do my own thing. I left and had, I raised money, I hired people. I had really a fairytale journey because about My guess is about 2 and a half years in, I went to meet with the CEO of a site called BabyCenter, which at the time was like the number one place that you got information about your pregnancy and your baby and your child. And I went to meet with her about a partnership. And she said, I don't want to partner with you, but I'd like to buy your company. And I was like, OK, let's talk about it. And it ended up being just an absolutely wonderful journey. Tina Sharkey was the name of the woman who bought us. And she just was an incredible mentor and leader. And worked for her for 3 years and got to run a big part of the business and then left after post-earnout and really thought about what I wanted to do next. And, and then I started Hatch. Happy to tell you about the, the why and, and how I got to the specifics of Hatch.

That is the perfect segue. And please, like, maybe take us behind the curtain around your aha moment for Hatch. I know Hatch started with a Grow smart charging pad and scale, really in this category of smart nurseries. But you've then since forayed into a much larger category. So maybe let's start with kind of the original product and the original kind of origin behind what Hatch is now today.

Totally. Like all good founding stories, like we've zigged and zagged. So when we started, my co-founder and I, my husband and I, we had what we call sometimes a bonus baby and sometimes an oops baby. I was 40 and I Accidentally got pregnant and was thinking about, okay, I started one company in the mom and baby space when my big kids were little and what might the world need now? And I really struggled with breastfeeding my first kid and ended up buying a scale so that I could put her on the scale first. I would breastfeed her and put her on the scale afterwards and figure out how much she ate. She had jaundice and she had, she really needed, we needed to know what's going on here. So anyway, I decided to Create a product there. We knew nothing about creating hardware. I had been a software person my entire life and entered in, sometimes ignorance is bliss. I entered into like, well, of course we can make hardware, you know, let's try it. And it really was a passion project to start with. It was just something I needed. And so we created it and it was a lot of fun. And then we created another product, Rest, which is a product that helps infants get good sleep. And then had incredible success with that. But really the founding story, and actually the thing that we went on Shark Tank with was this thing that I created out of personal need that helps people with the early days of breastfeeding, which by the way, you guys, I'm assuming have not gone through that. It's really hard. It's really hard. And you think it's going to be this wonderfully natural thing. And for some people it is, but for some people it's not. So anyway, that was our first product.

That's incredible. Well, it's important that babies sleep, but also that everyone sleeps. Tell us a little bit more about when you thought through the broadening of your mission to sleep itself away from just focusing on the nursery.

Yeah, really what happened in short order, we decided, you know what, let's make a real company of this and let's raise money and let's move this beyond passion project to really something that can scale. And so we went into infant sleep and we created a product called Rest. It's called— everyone calls it their Hatch, but it's called Hatch Rest. Actually, now it's called Hatch Baby. But when we created that, we knew sleep was a massive market. For baby and for everyone, but we really were very focused on baby because we thought we might create a bunch of different baby products and be a horizontal baby-focused company. We had such incredible success. We were in 1 in 3 homes in like, I think the first 4 years of creating it with almost no marketing and just incredible word of mouth. And we've stayed in 1 in 3 homes of infants. for, I think, 8 years at this point. So very dominant in that category. And we realized, you know, as a baby company, there aren't a whole lot of venture capitalists that are throwing money at you to do things in baby. It's, you know, there haven't been a lot of huge exits. It's a relatively speaking small market. But what happened is our customers said to us like, hey, you're helping my baby get great sleep, but what about me? And we found that a lot of parents were buying a second device for themselves. And so our customers really led us to this experience where we, you know, we said to ourselves, like, there are unique needs about adults. They don't need the same things that babies need, but they need a lot of help. And so we decided at that point to verticalize the company around sleep.

A lot of founders are given the advice to start tackling a beachhead market, finding kind of a set of users who are obsessed with their product, and then Once you've kind of found product market fit, they're starting to expand to a broader ecosystem, which sounds like was very much your journey. What advice would you give founders who are maybe wanting to tackle a larger opportunity, but also don't want to bite off more than they can chew?

Yeah, I think it just depends on, I think first where your expertise lies and where your passion lies. As a founder, you have to make sure that you care about the problem that you are working on. And if you you wanna raise money, you need to be working in a market that is large enough for someone to care. So, I think if I, at this point in my career, if I gave someone advice, I'd say start with a very large market, but pick a component of that very large market that you can uniquely own and you can be best in the world at. And keep your vision on the larger market, but keep your focus and execution in the first bit of time to specifically one user who you can describe in detail and then Well, there's a reason why your customer segment fell in love with the Hatch product.

So let's dig a little bit deeper into kind of the product part of product market fit. Hatch products feel unusually emotional for consumer hardware. You're not necessarily selling like alarm clocks or lights. You're selling calm, ritual, mindfulness, and I'm sure that's in part why You've not had to do a ton of paid marketing at the beginning in order for folks to find and fall in love with your product. Tell us a little bit more about the magic behind the Hatch products and how you iterated on your product positioning.

I love that question. For us, we have never raised a ton of money. And so it built a culture at Hatch that meant that we had to have organic love. That is part of our ethos. And as a result, we have really prioritized design, like making sure that the physical product has an aesthetic that someone is happy to show off. They're proud to have. It's almost like a piece of furniture. And we take that really seriously. We have an incredible design team who, they are absolutely world-class. And that's not just in the design of the physical product, but the design of the packaging, of the onboarding. So design, we take incredibly seriously. And then also making sure that the way we— the product that we produce is culturally relevant. So we do— we create alarm sounds, for example, like we have the Gilmore Girls. We did a riff on heated rivalry on— there are all sorts of different things where we try to make it so that people smile or laugh or say, oh, that's so me, or that's so them, and they want to share it with other people. So that's been a big part of it. big part of, of what we've done, really design and product, making sure that they are, they meet today's standards of wonderful aesthetic, and then also making sure that people actually feel emotionally connected so that they wanna share and help us do our marketing for us.

That's incredible. I think one unique challenge of sort of this intersection of hardware and kind of consumer software is the iteration cycles versus a SaaS tool where you can just ship a feature that a customer has asked for the next day. What advice would you have for founders that are thinking about hardware around understanding your customer, asking the right questions to make sure that the critical features that folks are going to latch onto are in that initial build?

Yeah, I think when I started this company, I didn't know hardware is hard. The reality is hardware is hard. The cycles are much longer than working in software, but the way our team is structured is we are a software team. If you look at, we have 160 people who work at Hatch, and the overwhelming majority of them are fully dedicated to software. We have a supply chain team that are hardware dedicated. We have people in China who help with our manufacturing, and in Vietnam and Malaysia where we manufacture. But the overwhelming majority of our employees are software. And so, most of what we do is iteration on the software. Now, that said, you do have to get the shell Right. And you have to make sure that you understand your customer well enough to know what in the next version they're asking for. But as long as you get the first thing right, as long as you understand, for us, the basis of what we do is we help people, what we call ourselves, actually we have a new product. Should I talk about that now or you wanna talk about that later?

We can talk about that now.

Yeah.

Okay. We have a new product that's coming out and we're not talking about it until June 4th, but I think this is not— yeah, I think we're good. So we have a new product coming out and it's called Hatch Sleep Clock. And that product is a different type of sleep tracker. It is a sleep tracker that actually helps you get to sleep. So we don't believe in scores. We don't believe in judging people. We believe in rest for real life. And we believe, we know That the hardest problem for all of us is that life and work now are all at the tip of our finger. We have access to every kind of entertainment notification. We can do any— we are so efficient. We can be so efficient from our beds. And it is leading to a world in which we are not getting enough sleep. In fact, 10 years ago, the CDC said that the lack of sleep in this country is an epidemic. And 10 years later, the problem is even worse. And so the core of what we do is we help you get to sleep. That is our goal. That is what this product does. And it's a really hard problem. But if we can make it a ritual and something you look forward to doing and you look forward to doing on behalf of yourself to make time for you to disconnect, like we, we have won. So we're really excited about that launch. It's what we do today. But with the launch of Hatch Sleep Clock, we'll do it in an even more sophisticated way because it has contactless sleep tracking included in it. So you don't have to wear anything, you don't have to charge anything, and it will help you understand how you sleep. So it will help you connect your intention. I want to go to bed by 10 PM with reality. I went to bed at 12:30. And by the way, no judgment. If 12:30 is the right time for you, no problem. But we really help you understand how your intention and your behavior line up and encourage you that, hey, if you want to go to bed at 12:30, let's make that our intention. And so you just end up with much more awareness because solving the sleep epidemic and solving all of our sleep— we wake up tired on a pretty regular basis— is really about the first step is awareness.

Well, We're thrilled that this product is coming out and that you're sharing a little bit of the background behind it with us. I can certainly say I am one of those people that always say I want to go to bed at 10 and always end up in bed at 12:30. So thrilled to hear that this product will be something that I can leverage soon. Let's dig a little bit more into the future of Hatch and where things are going in a few moments, but You've mentioned a couple of times how important fundraising was for your journey. We're going to chat about your venture capital raise shortly, but a lot of folks found out about Hatch by first its appearance on Shark Tank in 2016. You ultimately partnered with Chris Sacca after that experience, and you've publicly said that your trajectory of Hatch had been changed by the exposure of Shark Tank. Take us back to that moment. What was going through your head walking onto that stage? And what did that experience really unlock for Hatch in paving the way for these incredible products that are launching very soon?

Shark Tank was a pretty fun experience. I actually found, I actually didn't even know that Shark Tank existed as a show back in 2016. I think it was actually pretty popular. So I think I was living under a rock a little bit, but Jamie Siminoff, who I know you guys have spoken to, the founder of Ring, it was in his And I asked him about it, and he said, oh yeah, you have to do Shark Tank. Like, for sure, you have to do Shark Tank. And so, it happened that there was an application. I think auditions were in Vegas, like, in 3 days. So, we flew to Vegas, we did the audition, we made it all the way through. What I tell my kids, by the way, is I tell my kids, if you're not doing things that scare you, you're not growing. And the reality for me is going on Shark Tank definitely scared me, not because I've done a gazillion pitches, like, I feel really comfortable in public. But that said, it's a show that is designed to humiliate people like me. People who have venture capital valuations generally get torn apart. And so, I was really nervous to go on. I will say that as soon as we walked through that hallway, I was locked in. And my co-founder and I did— my husband, Dave, and I had so much fun. It actually ends up, you film for an hour, you don't see a camera. It really looks like this, just the set that you see on TV as a, as someone pitching, you don't notice anything other than what you see on TV. Again, no cameras, no producers, nothing. And it was a super fun hour-long conversation and they all passed. And then we did what we had planned, which is to tell Chris Sacca that he could come in on the terms that we had offered to our, in our seed round. And he did, and he's been a great partner ever since.

The Shark Tank lore is so fascinating, A, because people just love to hear it. So thank you for bringing us into that room and that experience. I certainly do not think you were humiliated, but I understand the sentiment of it. And they definitely been hot with their offers and their feedback. And it's funny having been an actual venture capitalist and then there's this like kind of mirage of perception of like playing the venture capitalist on TV. And then to your point, Chris's actual behavior and experience and ability to be a true partner, which of course, hopefully is the genuine goal of most investors.

Totally. It is very different pitching to Sharks. Anyone who thinks that pitching to Sharks is like pitching to venture capitalists has not met real venture capital. But it was a super fun experience and they definitely got their zingers in, which was fun.

Hey, it's a reasonable assumption that you would think, yeah, this is their job. So it's great. And you ultimately did go on to raise traditional venture dollars. But, but to the point made earlier, you did not, and to my understanding, have not raised To the levels that normally is seen when building hardware companies. Note you share a cap table member with Jamie, you mentioned with True Ventures, who has done an incredible job of consistently backing consumer-first hardware-forward brands, yourself included, and as well as Peloton, which is well known. So from that standpoint, who was the first person to ultimately say yes to investing in Hatch?

One thing we constantly hear on the room is that great operators don't just need more data. They need a faster way to turn that data into decisions. As a founder, I know how painful it is to wait days or even weeks for a report while a real business problem is unfolding. That's what makes Rippling AI different. You can ask Rippling AI, is our sales team at risk of missing quota? And Rippling AI instantly pulls real-time data from Rippling and your CRM into presentation-ready dashboard data showing quota attainment, headcount trajectory, and monthly revenue to quota by region. But it doesn't stop at the insight. Rippling AI can act on what it sees Recommending and building an automated recruiting workflow when open roles and slow time to fill are putting quota at risk, all while following your existing permissions and approval processes. Question answered, action taken, problem solved. Ready to rule your business? Head to rippling.ai/theroom and sign up for exclusive access.

And now a word from our new sponsor, Gradiol. Whether you're building a company, launching a product, or growing a brand, you know the idea is just the beginning. And marketing's bottleneck has never been creativity. It was always the work it takes to get an idea out the door. Gradiel handles the operations so that marketers can stay on craft. An agent will learn your process, work across the systems you already use, and delete point solutions you don't need. Designers will ship on-brand pages without counting prompts or tokens. Product marketers will launch across markets in days, not weeks. And digital experience teams test customer journeys, catch what's not working, and fix it All before launch. Gradio learns that your brand, business, and process and brings that continuous context to every workflow. Every task gets done your way with brand, quality, and approvals built in. No more token maxing, slop, or runaway AI bills. More time to think bigger and create the impact people remember. Gradio, the system of work for marketing. Ashurst Perkins Kewey supports the most innovative entrepreneurs and investors in fast-moving and high-growth sectors, addressing their myriad of legal needs. But the firm doesn't just provide end-to-end legal and business counseling to its startup clients. It also facilitates introductions to key advisors and sources of capital. Ashurst Perkins Coie's interactive website, Startup Percolator, offers access to programs, resources, and rich dynamic content designed to assist entrepreneurs in their startup journey. To learn more, go to startuppercolator.com.

Yeah, so True was— True Ventures is incredible. They actually backed me in my company too and made money with me there. But they have been absolutely incredible along the way. I cannot recommend them highly enough, not just in the connected hardware world, but across the board. That is the most important thing you can have as an early-stage founder is someone who believes and who knows that the road, the path to success is never straight up and to the right, but that, but has conviction along the way. And that's exactly who they were in my first startup and—

Oops.

That's exactly who True has been for me in my, both in my first startup and at Hatch. They have had conviction and support, and they understand that there are ups and downs in all of our journeys.

Well, speaking of those ups and downs, we know that founding journeys are never linear. I certainly found that myself personally. Can you share a moment where something didn't go according to plan, whether it was product, retail manufacturing, or hiring, and how you navigated through it?

Gosh, I have a few examples. So probably the, the most important one is one we've already touched on a little bit, and that's really the decision to become a sleep company as compared to a baby company. And that was precipitated by the fact that we, our customers really led us there, but also really understanding market size and realizing this is a company that we are going to swing for the fences with. This is a company that really can be meaningful, a meaningful outcome for us and for our shareholders. And I think it started with realizing that the first product that we created was really much more of a pet project rather than a huge moneymaker. The window for breastfeeding, which was the, again, my personal need that I created this product around, is quite short. And it's really hard to get people in that window to buy your product. It's basically, if you don't get them in 3 months, you're never going to get them. And the window of need is quite small. So that was definitely the first thing that that we had to— that we learned and we moved away from. Another one for us is we went into Costco early, and we probably shouldn't have. I advocated to go into Costco. We were so successful in baby. And, but when you go to Costco, you have to be very prepared. You have to create different packaging, a different SKU. And we ran a test. And again, even though we were massively successful at the time, we were not as successful as we are And so, we kind of burned that bridge, although if anyone out there works for Costco and wants to try again, I'm happy to entertain it. We haven't actually revisited it, but that was something where I, as a founder, like one of my superpowers is I can make anything happen. If I put my mind to it, it will happen. And I did, and I made it happen, but we probably did it too early, and it turned out to be a nothing.

It is hard to know when you're ready for that scale in any sort of business, but particularly in consumer businesses, because one of the hardest parts Having myself worked in retail, is this kind of predictive modeling of margin and inventory and lead time and distribution, of course, which Costco, just by the nature of their scale and their access, pushes anyone to the brink. So, completely understand why that was an earlier learning for you. And I'm curious about this point you made around hardware being hard, which is a trope I've heard previously, and we've talked about here, but like, For you, like, what of those experiences was the one that really, like, ultimately informed how you thought about building this business? Where did you, as a leader, step in and say, okay, this is how it's done, and this is how Hatch is going to do it?

I think the biggest inflection point for us really was the, we're not going to be a horizontal baby company. We're going to be a vertical sleep company. And I, and what came along with that, and what makes us very different than other sleep companies, is this discipline about unit economics, about We value growth, but not growth at all costs. And as a founder, I think that is a real difference between me and a lot of other people in this space is we're not selling dollars. We've never sold dollars for 80 cents. And we've always operated with real unit economics and keeping the customer at the center of everything we do and making sure we delight them every day of the week. And that's growth at all costs, Growth has sometimes been in fashion, and growth is always in fashion, but it is sometimes more in fashion at the sacrifice of unit economics and sometimes not. And we are lucky to be in a time where profitability does matter. And, but that is something that I guess was unconventional about my approach is let's build a fucking business. Let's build a, excuse my language, let's build a business, a real business that is sustainable and that can grow in a way Well, one way that you've decided to do that is to have a complementary software product and experience that sits alongside Hatch.

And you teased that a little bit earlier with some of the fun jingles that you can use. And actually, your sleep experience— I myself am a huge Gilmore Girls fan, and perhaps revealing myself a touch here, I used to fall asleep to Gilmore Girls because I just find it so soothing and I love the dialogue. And I'm a bit of a needs-noise-to-sleep person. So tell us a little bit about the decision to have this complimentary subscription and content product. I think that's known today as Hatch, like Hatch Plus, and how that's built this relationship with the user. Then to your point, also created a consistent margin to the product.

Yeah.

By the way, what you just described is very common. So science actually says that when we go to sleep, if we listen to something, music or something with words, it distracts our mind and it helps us sleep. It's proven. So you are not alone. I am with you. And yes, and millions of others are with you. And that really is, as we look at this epidemic of lack of sleep, like it is becoming more and more important to distract our minds from all of the busyness that we have. So that's where Hatch+ comes in. So we hired the head of podcasting out of SiriusXM to lead and grow our content team. So Hatch+ is all about content, audio content built for bedtime. So it starts in an engaging way, something you look forward to. And by the way, it could be a meditation. It could be— I listen to Little Women every night.

There are—

we have meditations, we have audiobooks, we have sounds, we have soundscapes, we have all sorts of different things that you can choose from. I think it's 2,800 things in our library, but all designed to be engaging at the beginning and then help you drift off to sleep. And that, and then in the morning, wake you up with some sort of a fun alarm or a not fun alarm if that's what you choose, but something that meets your personality. So that's the foundation of Hatch+. And we actually launched it with the launch of our first adult product in 2020. So we've been doing this for about 6 years, and it's an incredibly successful and an incredibly important part of our business.

People are welcome to listen to The Room Podcast to fall asleep. We are happy to have that be added to the repertoire so we can talk offline about that, Anne. But helpful to know that my behavioral patterns are somewhat normal. And then also that this is just really baked into the beautiful design of the product and experience for the customer too. It definitely seems as if not using your phone for an alarm to go to sleep is the resounding feedback from the doctor community. And that's actually why I bought a Hatch when I was in 2021 on my phone all the time with work I was like, I need some separation of church and state here.

100%. That is a huge reason that people love their Hatch is because it helps you, whether you can get the phone fully out of the room or whether the phone just moved a little bit farther than arm distance, it's a really important thing to do for your mental health and for your sleep, for your physical health to get that phone away. One of, before we started Hatch+, we had people in customer interviews saying, yeah, like I really to listen to X or Y or Z on my phone. But when I open it up at 4 in the morning when I really need to fall back asleep, or even at 11 when I'm going to sleep, I find myself on TikTok, I find myself on Instagram, and that's not what anyone wants. So yeah, that is, it is very much a way to use Hatch is to, if you aspire to phone-free sleep, it is something that will deeply help I'm struck actually by the intimacy of this conversation.

Like, there's just so much vulnerability in thinking about your sleep habits in that moment of your day that's just for you and you're going to bed. And so just how have you guys thought about like continuing to build that trust with your customer base there?

I love that question so much. It is— we— the place that we have in people's homes, it is the most intimate room and really the most intimate place in your home, whether it's your baby, kid, teenager, or your room, it is incredibly intimate. And we take that responsibility very seriously. We are the first thing that people see when they open their eyes, and we're the last thing they hear when they go to sleep. And that's one of the reasons that we take design so seriously. It's also one of the reasons that we have no microphone or camera in our product. We don't believe— we believe the bedroom is sacred and should be a place that is private. So yeah, I'm so glad that you see that and recognize that in what No, thank you for sharing that.

It's especially when the conversation around constant monitoring and surveillance, not in a bad way, but in a maybe I've opted in here way, it is something that's really top of mind, I think, for the average consumer. And certainly for—

Absolutely. Absolutely. And finding we are— there are so many brands that want to keep you engaged and stimulated, and we are the opposite. We want to support you in taking care of you. We want to support you in giving time for you that is It is just time where you can rest, relax, and hopefully sleep.

Claudia and I are both internally sitting back. We need this more. And you alluded to this earlier a little bit about a feature of the Hatch is that it's not some of these other things. And one of the— so it's not a camera. And you also mentioned it's not a wearable. And this new product that you're launching is going to help despite it not being a wearable. I'm wearing my Oura Ring right now, which I have really come to enjoy as this tracker and as this system, both for physical health and sleep too. And then they recently confidentially filed to go public, like that kind of got leaked. And so I'm just so curious your perspective on this broader whole concert of ecosystem and data points that is ultimately informing a user's decisions throughout their day, if you have any to offer.

Absolutely. Our position is very different than the existing trackers. It's why we call ourselves a different type of sleep tracker. We are not about a score. We are not about judgment. We are about support to help you get to sleep. And that is why, for us, data for data's sake is not helpful. Data help you close the behavioral loop and understand how your intentions and behavior line up. That is where we come in. We are big fans of— Google has a new product, their Fitbit band, Oura, Whoop. We're big fans of all of them, but we play a very different role. We actually help you get to sleep. And we are not a tracker for tracking's sake. Right.

That's helpful to think through, again, where you sit in the journey. And it's, it's actually like a tool, much like I, I go work out when I get told to work out with my Oura Ring. Your Oura Ring might tell you, turn on your hatch, you need, it's time to go to bed, right? So it's helpful. Well, you yourself are on the other side of the aisle sometimes now, being an investor adventure partner at True Ventures, of whom you have a close long-term relationship with as a firm. Just maybe for our listeners who are thinking about either that, that journey for themselves, a decision to join a venture fund, or just even what you've learned from being on the inside of this journey as a true founder and entrepreneur yourself, could you just share a little bit more about that experience?

Happy to.

I've been a venture partner for now a number of years, maybe even 8, and it's been a great experience. I, what I've learned is I am not alone as a founder CEO. In this journey. Like everyone, every CEO in the portfolio has had similar ups and downs. And that, even though I intellectually have known that, to actually viscerally feel it in talking through those things in a partner meeting or one-on-one with one of my partners has been really refreshing and helpful. No one escapes from the difficulties of this journey, whether it's a business stumble or a personal stumble or an employee issue, nobody escapes. And it's real, and we should embrace the normal, the normal I've learned that. I also have learned how easy it is, how much luck is involved in success or failure. There is so much that just turns out to be good timing, chemistry related to co-founder relationships. There is so much that you cannot control. And as a result, a lot of times, good people with good ideas fail. And good people with okay ideas succeed massively, right? You just can never— and bad people, there's just all, every mix is possible. And I think remembering as a founder that so much, there is a lot you can control, but there's also a lot that you can't. And just accepting that reality, that's probably the second lesson. And the third lesson is that ultimately it comes down to people and who do you want to work with and what markets are interesting to you. And that is oftentimes the reason that, that someone, that a venture capitalist says yes, or they say no. Are they interested? Do they have passion for the market? And do they think that these people that they're funding are uniquely qualified in this particular space? So, it does all come down to people and relationships, I guess unsurprisingly, but that's the third lesson. That's a great one to remember.

So interesting seeing those lessons from your kind of dual venture investor and founder lens. They really resonate. And I think it's, yeah, definitely another sort of indication that founders, if they are talking to 50 investors, they're all generalists, and they say no, it's really oftentimes not personal. And it's not because you have a bad idea or that your company sucks. Totally.

I think that is, I'll just say, as a founder, especially your first time in early stage, it can feel personal. And of course it is because it's your company, but the reality is you just never have any idea why someone says no or yes. Where are they in their fund cycle? Where are they in their partnership? There's just so many reasons. And if you are gonna be a successful founder, you have to weather that storm and realize that, hey, thank you, next.

Thank you, next. Love that. Well, speaking of next, let's chat a little bit about the future of the industry. Sleep has been— has gone from being viewed as a wellness niche, really a massive consumer category. It obviously touches everyone's lives. Where do you think the future of sleep technology is heading over the next 5 to 10 years, especially in the lens of AI?

Man, first of all, in the lens of AI, like in 5 to 10 years, who knows? It's so incredible what already has changed, both for us our internal operations, but also the way we develop product when it comes to AI. To me, when it comes to sleep, it is fundamentally an extremely human problem that is unique to our culture today. As we talked about before, people are so busy in their minds. They have, we have so much going on and so many dopamine hits, so many brands that want to keep our attention. That it is only going to get worse, unfortunately, as a problem sleep. And the solution to sleep is not— the solution to sleep is very clear. And a sleep scientist will tell you the way to get better sleep is to create better sleep habits and to create a ritual that you look forward to. And that's really where Hatch comes in, is helping you to create that ritual that you look forward to where you make time to take care of yourself and you make time to go to sleep And to rest and to go back to sleep if you need to and to wake up gently. I think in the next 5 to 10 years, I believe that there will be solutions like Hatch. And hopefully Hatch will be the dominant solution that really, again, helps you with the fundamentally human need to quiet your mind, which is not going to be solved by AI and not going to be solved by any sort of new technology. It will be solved by humans. taking care of ourselves, hopefully with the aid of technology like Hatch that is there to help combat all of the other things that are clogging up your brain, wanting the attention of your fingertips and your eyeballs.

That's such an interesting framing because a lot of wellness products specifically really create anxiety under the guise of optimization. I used to wear an Apple Watch for years and years, and if I didn't close my rings, I felt bad, right? But it did drive a lot of engagement and all Ultimately, that's why I think a lot of people do wear that device. How do you build products that will help people feel calmer rather than more monitored, especially as we enter into this AI optimization era where everything is monitored and everything is being evaluated on?

Yeah, I think that people, there certainly is, there certainly are a body of people who are performance hackers and that's real and those, God bless them, but I think there are substantially more people who are interested in the outcome of better sleep. They are interested in feeling well. And the way to get there is not by more data or more measurement. In fact, there's something called orthosomnia that is a diagnosed condition where people are so obsessed with their sleep scores that they actually have anxiety because of their sleep scores and cannot sleep. I believe that the substantial majority of people want a solution that actually helps them prioritize themselves and that gives them incentives, both internal incentives and external incentives, to take care of themselves, to go to bed when they would like to go to bed and to disconnect when they want to. And I think that's exactly what we are trying to do for people is to help them create those boundaries from other technology and take care of themselves. That's incredible.

Well, I know we are 3 days out from a new product launch, and we must link the, the PDP in our bio so our listeners can go check out the new product. But maybe more broadly, tell us what's next for Hatch.

So Hatch is laser-focused on owning the adult sleep market. We are completely dominant when it comes to baby. And as a result of owning baby, we own a lot of little kid. But in adult sleep, we've sold millions of devices, but there are More than 60% of adults are unhappy with the amount of sleep they're getting and believe they would significantly benefit from more sleep. And that is the market that we are laser-focused on building toward. And with the advances of AI and with the incredible work that our team is doing, with a small, nimble team that we have, we believe we have every right to win there, given that we are focused on the root of the problem. So we will stay laser-focused there until we are dominant in the adult sleep market as we are in baby.

That's incredible. We'll be rooting from the sidelines, but maybe not from the sidelines as users of Hatch and your suite of products. And thank you so much for telling the Hatch story and where you're going in the future. As we come up on time today, we'd love to ask you our hero question. We ask this of all of our podcast guests, and that question is, who is a woman in your professional life who has had a profound impact on how you lead in your career?

Such a good question. As I was thinking about this, there are— I am lucky to have a few to pick from. I think I'll pick Tina Sharkey, who bought my first company and who really was and is an incredible mentor. She is one of the most inspiring people you'll ever hear on a stage. She has conviction and vision, and she also has experience. experienced the highs and lows of being an entrepreneur and has been very real about that journey. She's someone I've learned a ton from and have a ton of respect for. So shout out Tina.

We'll have to tag Tina. And thank you so much for joining us on this week's podcast, In the Room. It's been such a pleasure to have you and share the space with you, and we can't wait for your product Thanks, you guys.

It has been so much fun chatting with you.

Awesome.

Thank you so much for joining us at The Room Podcast.

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