Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022)

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/851446a5d4da9696

Hey everyone and happy new year! It's Guy here, of course. Anyway, this week we're pulling a show from our archives as our team takes a short break. It's an amazing episode with Randy Goldberg and David Heath, who founded the apparel company Bombus, which of course is best known for its socks.
Rand and David made a name for themselves on Shark Tank, and Bombus went on to become one of the most successful brand in that show's history.
Also, if you want to hear more from Randy Goldberg, he came back onto the show last year on the Advice Line, and you can scroll back in the podcast queue to hear him give advice to up and coming entrepreneurs, which is another really fun conversation. But first, stick around for this episode. Here is Randy and David's
First appearance on how I built this.
From twenty twenty two.

All but pretty much laughed out of the room. Not exciting.
Exactly. Like
How?
big could a sock company be, or like, you know, it's a pretty
A boring category and
I think from a confidence level standpoint that made us like
re question things a little bit too. And so as a salesperson that was pretty hard for me to take.

Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements.
They don't.
I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today.
How two friends decided to take the tools of innovation
and apply them to one of the least innovative products.
Sucks.
ended up building a multi-million dollar company.
Bombas.
Mm.
A great idea is almost never an original idea.
It's usually an improvement on an existing concept. You can apply this logic to some of the most innovative brands in the world.
Tesla didn't invent electric cars, but it made them so much more interesting and efficient. Google didn't invent the search engine, it just made a better one. And Dropbox didn't invent cloud based storage, it just made it easier to use. Now, all of these examples are technology companies.
And many of us typically associate the word innovation with technology.
But the reality is the opportunity for innovation is often found in the most boring places.

We don't even notice.
Like women's shapeware. No one really bothered to improve that category until Sarah Blakely came up with spanks.

For socks.
Socks have been, for the most part, an afterthought. You've got your dress socks, your sports socks, and maybe some thick hiking socks. But no one was really thinking, hey, you know what needs innovation? Socks.
That is until 2011 when David Heath decided to do just that.
How he got the idea, well, you're about to hear that in a few minutes, but what David quickly realized is that no one was making a product that had the qualities of a high-performance athletic sock and a casual dress sock all in one package.
So with his friend Randy Goldberg, David began the long process of trying to figure out if there was a market for his idea. They called their brand Bombus.
Now at the time, as you will hear, very few investors were interested. Socks just weren't seen as exciting or profitable. But it turns out socks are very profitable, almost like popcorn profitable.
And over the course of ten years, David and Randy have managed to build Bombus into a business that does more than a quarter billion dollars in revenue. David and Randy met around 2007 when they were both working for a men's lifestyle website called Urban Daddy. Randy Goldberg grew up in Baltimore,
The son of entrepreneurs who ran a business making lenses for glasses. David Heath grew up in Westchester County, just north of New York. His dad was also an entrepreneur who actually pioneered the technology that makes wood chips for playgrounds. And like his dad, David wanted to pursue a life as an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneur. So he went to Babson College to study, well, entrepreneurship. But it wasn't college that turned him into an entrepreneur.
It was a job he had during college, a job selling knives.
door to door for a company called Cutco. David decided to become a Cutco sales rep after meeting a recruiter on campus.
And I like bought full in. I was like, this is it. I'm like, I could do this. I'm like a great salesperson. I was like very into the product.
Um
And I also just felt like okay, there's something I can do on my own.
Send it up joining.
Um
And
Over the course of the next four summers I became
one of the top sales reps in the Northeast. I'd sold like four hundred thousand dollars worth of cut-co knives over four summers.
What was your sales pitch? I mean I mean you're s you'd call me up and you'd say, Hey, I've been talking to Susan and she gave me your number guy and
Um I know that uh from what I understand you're in the market for some new kitchen knives and like what No. I w you don't even like you don't even get there. You're just like all I need, you know, is thirty minutes of your time, you know. Thirty minutes of my time? Uh my time's valuable, David, I don't
And then you're gonna say what? I wasn't calling people like you guy. I was calling, you know
No, anybody.
See if you can sell guys some knives, Dave. Sell him some knives. Yeah, sell me some knives.
Okay, you got okay, thirty thirty minutes of my time and then and then what you can do with that time. Okay. Thirty minutes of your time, you don't need to buy anything. I get college credit for this.
You get oh you get college credit for it, okay.
You really like leaned on the college part, right? It's like I'm a struggling college student. You're a college student, you're getting
credit for being
involved in this business. Okay, I got you. Okay, that's interesting okay, well you know I wanna help a college kid. Okay
And they'd say, Sure, you know, how's Tuesday at three PM? And you know, and I
you know, come over and I'd have my little roll up of knives. You know, before I even unrolled it, I'd like put'em on the counter, kinda create the mysterious like, what is this thing? And I had a little like sales pamphlet and
I'd say
Actually, I can't even remember these days, but
I just remember you'd always start
Well, I'd say like, do you have a penny? This is one of the big like cut co like things. Like, do you have a penny?
They'd say, Yeah, why do you need a penny?
You've got the penny.
And you take out these kitchen shears and you cut the penny into a corkscrew.
I'm really enjoying this.
And they'd be like, What is going on? I was like
This is cut co, right? We make high quality
American made kitchen cutlery. And then I'd say like please go get your three best knives, right? And they'd like get this night dr knife drawer with like rusty old, you know, dull things.
I'd have a piece of rope and it's like we're gonna start by cutting
Yeah, with your knife. And like you cut.
You'd g ask them to cut it and they'd be like I can't cut it. Cut what? Like a chicken bone?
No, a piece of rope. Oh rope, okay. Uh you bring the rope. Yeah.
I'd bring the rope. Yeah. Rope was provided by me. Yep.
And they would try and they'd struggle with their
Couldn't get through.
Yeah. Then they'd be like, Let me go get my sharpest knife, right? Like uh Yeah. Always go get a serrated knife and like I got you. They'd cut it and it would like tear the
fibers of the you know, the the rope, like it's all over the place.
And I was like, all right, now try with a cut coat'cause it had a double edge.
And it would cut the rope within one like half of a pull. Oh my god.
Now you've built up this like tremendous amount of like wow and value.
I I think I think
Honestly.
The two things that this job told me or taught me.
Uh was one in the skills of like how to sell, right? How to like
Yeah.
Build value, handle objections, right? Like the the like sales one oh one. They they were incredible at sales training. Incredible.
Um, and really kind of teed me up for
you know, my interest in sales, but also my pursuit and kind of in in in wanting to be really good at selling and kind of that drive and hunt uh mentality.
But I think the other part
Wise
Always was realizing that it was really easy to sell a good product.
Yeah. And I think this idea around
If you have a great product.
Right, it almost sells itself.
Yeah. And so I just I believed fully the product.
But to do that, you know, at eighteen, nineteen
And you made a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in one summer selling knives as a college student?
Yeah.
That's insane.
That's a crazy amount of money. I mean
I mean you were making you were making more money than anybody in college.
By far. And and and not to mention, I mean, I can't underscore the fact that again, I worked four hours a day, four days a week.
You were the original Tim Ferris.


You're the four hour workweek guy before Tim Ferris did it.

Um all right. So you so you're do and and when when you graduated, did you think, you know, maybe I should just go to Cutco full time. If I made a hundred and twenty in one quarter
Times four, I mean, you know, you could be rolling in it right after college.
Um
So no, I did not have a desire to continue to sell knives. But
I I did follow that that line of thinking in the sense of saying
Wow, I'm really good at sales.
And I think like
Every
broke college kid that comes out of school.
Um, especially I think
as well being a product of the nineties and the MTV Cribs generation.
Everything was about
make as much money as possible, right? I think
I think the newer generation of Gen Z Millennial
That's like do what you love. I'm like
Thank God that they figured that out a lot earlier than I did. And so
I remember
Approaching graduation.
I
looked at sales jobs and I figured out what industry do sales people get paid the most amount of money.
And pretty consistently it was in software sales.
Hm.
Wow.
Because by the time David
W was making like a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
on knives in college, um you had already graduated from
uh Georgetown University.
in I think around two thousand
And went straight to a job at a like a
tech consulting company I think in Boston, um, which was I I guess Red R Red sort of
Before the dot com
Crash, is that right? Yeah.
Things started to unravel pretty quickly and I got laid off in April of 2001. So seven months into my first job. Wow. Um, I'm out.
You know.
Well.
Yeah.
So seven months you're out and living in Boston.
Living in Boston.
And so what'd you do next?
So this was a a moment where I had to decide
Am I gonna move home?
And figure things out there.
Or am I gonna sign a new lease and try and figure things out here?
And
I felt like if I moved home I'd
I might get a little stuck.
I wasn't really certain of what I wanted to do, but
I I made the the decision to
You know.
Move into a new apartment with some friends, sign a lease, and then start interviewing.
So I got a I got two jobs in the meantime.
Just to pay the rent. I got a job at a wine shop.
And I got a job at a bar.
I started out waiting tables and then
Eventually worked behind the bar.
And helped.
Manage the place.
And I learned a lot pretty quickly. But in the whole the whole time I was there I was interviewing
You know,'cause I want it to be doing something else.
Yeah.
How long did you stay there?
Well
I ended up meeting some people.
Who would come in regularly and we became friends
And they worked at an ad agency.

You know.
I think you would kind of be good at what we do. You know, do you want a chance to
So like
to do a project with us as a copywriter.
Mm.
And
I took a job as like a copywriter
Working on a brand book for for Johnston and Murphy.
Um, so the the shoe brand. The shoe cut. Yeah.
Yeah.
I had never done this before.
And
It went really well. It was the kind of thing where
You know.
felt sort of natural to me to do this type of work. Couldn't believe it was a job, that type of feeling. And
I thought maybe there's something here. So I s I started pursuing writing.
Um
more regularly and I was still working
for this restaurant group for for a while after that, for a couple years as I started to build my career as a copywriter. But freelance doing freelance work. All freelance. Yeah. All freelance. So like writing a campaign or picking a song for a commercial
Um, things like that. And a lot of the work was working on brand books for companies that had sort of lost their way, right? So larger companies that needed to be reminded of why they started in the first place, what was special about them, what was unique. And you're doing this for companies that had once been great but had maybe lost their way. That's a a very interesting practice.
Hm. All right. J just h hold that thought for a moment. I want to go back to to David here for a second. David, um when you graduated from Babson around uh I think around two thousand five,
you landed the sort of the quote unquote coveted tech sales job that you wanted. I think it was for an Israeli company called Nice Systems b based in in New Jersey. Um so how how did that job go?
I
did incredibly well um at the job. I I hated the product. I find I found no emotional connection to
Software.
It's not anything I studied. It wasn't anything that I was like personally interested in.
Um purely there just for the money.
And so
After a year and a half there.
I
kind of gave them an ultimatum. I was like, either make me an outside sales rep or I'm gonna leave and go do something on my own.
And
By the time I was twenty four, I was kind of in this, you know, I'd made a bunch of money and put a bunch of money in savings.
And I started my first business because they didn't give me the job. I left and I created a social networking site for apartment buildings called building neighbors dot com.
And what was it how did the social network how was it supposed to work?
So
I had just broken up with my girlfriend.
Um of a few years.
And I was in this
massive building with mostly young, you know, post college um yeah, people in it.
And
Yeah, it was like thirty two floors, two towers, you know, like a hundred apartments each floor type of thing.
I mean this was two thousand and
Yeah.
Six or five? Yeah, two thousand six. So
Facebook.
was not what it is today.
It was it was out there. It was out there.
prolific as as it is today. Yeah. And so
I was like and
I also think this is the time when everyone was like a social networking site for dogs, for apartments, for people who like to cook, you know.
I was just like, Oh, maybe this is an interesting way.
Uh yeah, to meet other people in my building. Yeah.
And um
I worked on that.
For a year.
And put about fifty thousand dollars of my savings into that.
How how long did you end up working on this business?
So I I worked on it for about eight months and as I watched my savings dwindle, uh, without any cash flow coming in, I kind of quickly got nervous and was like Whoa
If this takes much longer, I'm not gonna have much left.
Um, so that's when I said I'm gonna go back and get a job.
Um, you know, while I continue to work on this thing.
And I said, Okay, if this is a
online digital focused, you know, first type of company, I should probably go get some skills or experience.
in the online space.
And
My roommate at the time was working on this project with my roommate at the time.
And I remember he came home one night and he said
I applied for a job for you.
And I was like, What do you mean? He's like
I applied I sent your resume in to this
newsletter that I get that I really like. It's called Urban Daddy.
I was like I have no idea.
Like what this is. I'd never heard of it. And thirty minutes later, like my phone rings.
Right.
Hey, it's Rob at Urban Daddy.
Would you like to come in for an interview this afternoon?
Wait, sorry, back up. Your friend applied to Urban Daddy on your behalf? F what why? I mean you were not a because
'Cause he knew that I was like wanted to get back and find something.
um in the online space.
Yeah. And
Again, we were we're roommates and we were working on the building neighbors project together.
Yeah. Um, and I was bankrolling the whole thing. And he he knew that I was like stressed out about like
My savings going away.
Um
And
Yeah, so I became pretty focused on like let's find a job.
Yeah, like within like
a few days he just like was like uh applied for this job for you kinda thinking it was a lark like I don't know they're gonna they're not gonna like reach out or apply. Like thirty minutes later they called me.

And so you had that obviously
experience as a salesperson and and and this was a just a uh did you know anything about this site? Was it
Was it nothing.
I I never knew I didn't know anything about it. Called urban idea.
Walking into an interview.
So Yeah. It's a it's a horrible name. It's a horrible name. Urban Daddy I spent
Days.
Uh what does it mean? Is it is like this is my sugar urban daddy. I don't understand what it means. It's not just weird, it's terrible. It's aggressively terrible. And terrible name.
It went on to be successful, I know, but it was an aggressively terrible name. Keep going, sorry.
I spent days trying to convince them.
Days trying to convince them to change it.
Yeah.
We just tried
So hard and the the founder was
You know, it was his name and he loved it, so
Yeah. All right.
Okay, so
Oh, so to David, um, you get this interview to be to to do business development for
For this website.
And it this is an important part of the story because
I
Like you like you do when you get a job interview, I put on a suit and tie and I go downtown and I show up
to this office.
Office is a is a stretch.
I like open this door and there's like six people
Sitting at desks and like
For
intern sitting at a big table and then like one small office in the corner.
There's a single chair.
And this is like two thousand five. Two thousand seven. Two thousand seven. Two thousand six. Two thousand seven. Okay. Yeah.
So there's a single chair by the door and they're like, Wait here.
And I'm like full suit and tie in this like
Cool hip.
publication everyone's like super stylish.
Like staring at me.
It's New York, of course.
This is so embarrassing.
I'm like I I'm never getting this job. I'm leaving. This is awful.
I go into the meeting, I meet with the head of sales and
The founder
And thirty minutes later I had a job offer.
And I showed up.
Like whatever, two days later.
I was the second salesperson and like
business development and partnerships to like grow our email list. And sales would mean trying to get advertisers, basically for the website. Yeah.
And then also try to get people to partner with us to share email lists so we could grow our email lists and distribution.
And this is a key part of the story because
My
Chair.

Like backed up against Randy's chair.
As well.
In his suit.
And thinking, who is this guy?
Yeah.
And and you were and and Dave and Randy, you were a writer, right? You were writing articles or like pieces. I was I was writing the New York edition, right? That that was m that was my job and I had started a month earlier. So I it's not like I had been there for a long time. You know, there was six of us and then Dave was seven.
And and just to be clear, Urban Daddy still exists. But but at the time it focused on and it was basically like
Cool places to go eat. Cool.
clothes to wear, like place cool places to travel, like
It was mostly about using the city. New York, okay. Like what is a new restaurant?
A new club, uh a th something happening. You know, if if you if you were
Trying to go out?
Or go on a date.
It was a resource of like
some place to go to impress your friends or impress a date or take your parents. Like it was really about like
Getting out.
And it was for men. It was designed for young men. It's like geared towards it was like a male vibe.
So tell me about how the two of you I mean you were
It was a a r office of seven, eight people, so presumably it wasn't that hard to meet each other.
Did did the two of you become friends right away? What do you remember about that, Randy?
You know
Dave has one of the loudest voices in America, right? So he comes into this tiny office. There's seven people now in this small office.
And we're all in one room, right?
So

His chair is backed up against my chair. There's no space. It's tiny. It's New York, right? Yeah.
And he's sitting on sales calls all day.
And just chalking people's ear off and
It's like he was
Screaming inside of my head.
Yeah. You know, he's on a sales call and I'm sitting there trying to formulate an angle to write a story, which is the
Exact opposite environment.
Bad trend. Sorry.
So there was some tension at first and I was I just was I remember being like, who does this
Yeah, I think he is.
And then
You have an office of seven people, so we went out to lunch and I soon figured out who this guy really was and
I realized that
we couldn't be more different in a lot of ways, right? Like
Like there's a lot about the two of us that's super different. But
We have a very
similar outlook on the world and we're both pretty entrepreneurial and Dave's got a big heart and I was like I like this guy and we became fast friends, you know. It didn't take long to get over that.
The guy bumping his chair in the loud voice and just realized like, this is one of my people.
And when did you start to when did you start to think in your head
Like was it is it early on when the first when the two of you met where you thought he might be the guy that I could start something with, or or was that uh was he just like an office friend and you would just kinda chit chat about ideas? I think because we spent
nine hours a day together. We got to know each other's
strengths, weaknesses, um, you know, what they valued very, very quickly.
And
Then from a creative
standpoint, we started just sharing ideas, right? That would like pop into our heads randomly.
Um
Add to that the
commiseration that we had over
What was
A fifty percent like amazing office environment with super talented.
you know, people that were doing great work.
Um, with a fifty percent like
pretty toxic culture, um
that was built on a lack of transparency and a lack of trust.
And
I think
Our bond was further forged.
By the
fact that we both felt
mistreated a lot of the time um or
deceived or confused uh around things that were promised to us that weren't delivered upon. Um
And
Just this kind of
feeling that if we ever had the chance to do something together, that we would we would take the lessons learned from this experience and do things completely differently. Um on the culture side. But but but
Realized the emphasis on
what great talent can actually do.
Um and a great product.
Yeah.
For sure. While you were while the two of you kind of
At what
And start to talk about like things that you might
Do
'Cause clearly both of you were motivated by this idea of one day r having your own business.
What kind of ideas would would would the two of you talk about?
I remember Randy came to me
And was like I think there's an idea.
for a universal gym membership.
Um
Oh.
There you go. ClassPass. We did not start ClassPass, but you know. No.
Pyle's been on the show before, yeah.
Uh so that was an idea.
And then another one I I came to Randy and I was like Yeah,'cause I was like a single guy living in New York, and I was like, I think there's an interesting idea around selling like pre portioned
Food.
Like for
Menus, like for like recipes.'Cause I was like I don't need a whole onion.
Yeah. I just need a quarter of an onion. You found a blue apron?
So we found a class pass and blue apron. And blue apron.
While you were while you're dreaming of ideas. I had another idea where you know I I lived in a
Walk up building with no doorman.
And I'd I I'd have to like be home to get my packages.
And so I thought of this other idea where it'd be like
a last mile delivery service that would aggregate all your Amazon packages and then like fresh direct you could schedule a two hour window when you'd actually be home to get them.
Um that didn't turn into anything either. And then and then Amazon Locker kinda just
Yes, they've also invented Amazon Locker, so yeah. Wow.
Amazing. You guys are you guys are unstoppable.
Um uh but actually I mean I mean I mean for for real, David, um I think around
twenty twelve. You left Urban Daddy and you did start a business with your your brother Andrew, right? I
Which was based on like
On truffles, not chocolate truffles, like the kinds of
pigs look for in the woods, right? Like that you shave on pasta or scrambled eggs.
Truffles, caviar.
um wild edibles like rare mushrooms and, you know, different types of um
You know, um
Greens and
fiddlehead ferns and
Rams. The usual.
And what did you call the company, by the way? It was called Regalis.
Regales, okay.
Yeah, and I ended up getting another job at a private equity firm um that paid really well.
I was like this is kind of interesting, but
I don't have the time to run this, so my brother really stepped in to kind of run that business.
Um
My brother had just come out of
MBA at Babson.
And was looking for a job and I said, Well
Why don't you step in and run the operations and finance component of this business. So so you were basically a a
kind of a founder investor in regales.
But you didn't have the you were kind of sort of in
Uh running it but not really running it. It was being run by your brother in this.
Yeah.
And uh and and
I I I mean eventually you sold you sold your share of that company, right? Correct.
Alright, so you've got that going. You get a job in a private equity
From
Meantime.
I mean clearly y you know
You were both looking for an idea.
Mm-hmm. How did you land on socks? How did that
Come about.
So
Yeah. These stories happen at kind of the most
um interesting and unexpected ways.
It was February of two thousand eleven. I was still working at Urban Daddy.
And I was scrolling on Facebook and I came across a post from the Salvation Army.
That said.
Socks are the number one most requested clothing item at homeless shelters.
And I remember thinking to myself
That's both
Interesting and sad.
And it's like I never would have thought that would be the most requested item I thought would be sneakers or jeans or a coat or something like that.
Um
And yet
Here's an item of clothing that I've never spent more than a few seconds a day thinking about. And this is the number one most requested item for someone who's experiencing homelessness.
And I remember walking over to Randy's desk and I said
I
I just saw this thing that was said socks are the most requested item at homeless shelter is like
This was around the time
That
I think Tom's was in their fifth year of business and like growing like crazy, taking over the world. This like one for one business model. Shoes, yeah. Um Warby Parker just launched in December of two thousand ten. The one with the one for one class high wear. Randy and myself kinda put two and two together and we were like, Oh
Like
maybe there's an interesting idea around solving this problem in the homeless community by
Building a brand
around a sock company that donates socks for every sock item that we sell.
Um
That was really kind of the initial like spark.
And so the spark was Wait a minute.
If this is the number one r most requested thing at at homeless shelters, maybe there's
A model we can build similar to Tom's or to Warby Parker. I mean were you thinking along those lines or did it just kind of
Come to you. What do you remember?
It was community first, I'd say. So first we we asked why.
Why are socks the most requested clothing item in homeless shelters? So we we made a call.
We call it a shelter.
And we said, Is this true, first of all, and why?
And they said, Well, you know, if you if you're living on the street
Uh you might not take off your shoes at night.
And
you know, a fresh pair of socks means a lot.
You walk everywhere.
U y you have hygiene issues around your feet.
And then it can be a huge issue if it rains. If
This is a big issue.
And because socks were a wear through item.
We don't allow people to donate them.
So
You cannot donate.
use socks to the majority of
Shelters and organizations that help in the homeless community.
And they said, So we end up having to buy socks. So it's a big issue.
Hm.

Alright, so
So it was around
Two thousand eleven, you read that quote and it it
spark the idea of of weather socks
could be a one to one.
business model.
You didn't launch right away, right? Like that that wouldn't happen for another
Yeah.
Um
David
You had left Urban Daddy and and Randy
think you hung on. So what made you guys
actually take action.
You'll pull the trigger.
So uh Brandy you wanna jump in or
No, go ahead. I mean we should probably at some point talk about the Godfather.
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna I I was gonna get to that.
The the movie or a person called the Godfather?
When we come back in just a moment, how a key connection gave Randy and David a leg up in the sock industry.
and how they struggled but eventually found their footing.
without venture capital.
Stay with us.
I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz.
So it's around 2012 or so, and Randy and David are starting to put together a team to launch and run their sock business.
But they realize pretty quickly that
They know nothing, really nothing, about the sock industry. So enter stage right.
The Godfather.
I remember sitting down for dinner with my dad one night and I said
Yeah, I'm thinking about starting this sock company. It's gonna donate a pair for every pair of purchase, but I don't know the first thing about making a pair of socks.
And he turned to me and he said, Well you know your godfather
Spent forty years in the hochery business and did incredibly well.
I don't know what Huh. I don't know what he did, but you should give him a call.
And so I haven't talked to this guy in
fifteen years. So I give him a call. Where did he live? He lived in in Westchester.
Um
I call him up and I said, Hey Steve.
I have this idea for a sock company, and it turns out
That
Steve
Loenthal was the president and CEO of Gold Toe in the late eighties and nineties, which is like Gold Toe socks. I remember gold they must be still around, right? Yeah, definitely.
Gold toe socks. The toes were gold. Yes.
I mean not real gold. They were gold colored, it was gold fabric.
And the idea was that that that's a quality.
You got your toes in the gold part of the sock.
That's the quality sock.
He left Gold To and then started
one of the first and largest private label sock manufacturing
like distributors in the country. He worked for brands like Nautica and Polo and
And he would make their socks like white label. Make their socks as a white label.
Um so he understood global supply chain when it came to socks.
And so
Me, Randy
Uh Andrew and Aaron sat down with him in this meeting once. Andrew is your just a just a
Andrew's my brother.
Andrew's your brother and Aaron is the fourth co founder.
who I'd worked on Regalis with from the branding perspective.
Um, so the four of us sit down with him and we say, Here's our idea.
And he said, Tell me the product you want to make and I will introduce you to the best factories in the world.
Wow. And so we start working together on figuring out what are the components from each individual sock that we like the most. You know, the toe from this one, the calf from this one, the fabric from this one, the arch support from this one. It kind of Frankenstein.
Yes.
sock together and we like cut up a bunch of socks, put them in a plastic bag and handed them to the Godfather and he said, Let me come back to you in a few weeks and see what I come back with.
ended up introducing us to this factory partner in Asia.
And
Because of his
legacy and credibility in the sock business.
They were willing to work with us.
Um, I mean th this is a factory that produces for Nike and
you know, s Sauke and Smartwall and some of the biggest
Soc brands in the world. Yeah.
And here they were talking to us and we
We don't even we don't have like two nickels to rub together, let alone like a full blown brand or concept. Right.
And
Their willingness to
To work with us for
almost a almost two years on product development.
where we would go back and forth and say, We like this, we don't like that, send us some samples, we'd give'em we'd try'em out, we'd give them to friends.
Um
And this development process
That
Yeah.
Ultimately led us to a product that
we thought was pretty great.
All right.
Th it reminds me a little bit of I mean
Warby Parker saw a gap, right? And and the gap was glasses shouldn't be so expensive. I mean they're they're
it's you know, the markup and and they figure out a way to
make them more affordable through this direct to consumer model.
How did you identify I mean
Ha.
'Cause it now you look back on you're like, Of course,'cause socks were like made by Nike or Adidas or they were tube socks you'd buy in packets at Target or
dress socks that you would buy, you know, or or whatever it was.
Thin dress socks, athletic tube socks, and
You know but
But
Now I can look back and say, of course there was a gap, but
It it didn't I can't imagine it was super clear to you at the time, was it?
I think it was pretty clear pretty quickly. I mean we didn't have the data
We weren't in the apparel business, you know, and I think this was a big advantage for us.
We just look we took a look around and we just saw what was available.
And what was available was j always the same over and over and over again.
And it just
It felt like an afterthought. I don't know, Dave, maybe you have a different perspective on this, but I think we knew pretty quickly.
Yeah, I think the sampling process for us was a pretty big eye opening experience, right?
We didn't go into the product development process with
margin or pricing targets, or you know, this speaks to Randy's
you know, comment around us not having any experience in the manufacturing or, you know, retail apparel world.
So we kinda came at it from a pretty blank slate of just saying like
What's the best product that we can make?
And then as part of the development process
We would give
Samples out to friends and family.
And they would come back and they'd say, Wow, these are really great.
then would be like, Yeah, but maybe they say that because there are friends and family. And so
I very distinctly remember bringing samples to the gym with me, and I'd walk up to complete strangers, and I'd say
I know this is really strange, but I'm developing a sock company.
Would you be willing to try these socks for me and you know, if I see you next week, tell me what you think.
And I get a lot of really weird looks.
And inevitably though I'd show up the next week and those same people would come back and they'd be like
Where can I get those? Those are amazing.
Like what are they?
All right, I wanna talk about the design process because the four of you
Are work in this factories in China?
China. Yes.
And and so they agreed to work with you on product development, which meant that
What they they had a designer or you would sort of send them socks you liked and say
Or sort of
email them pictures and say, I want a sock that looks like this, but
has these features.
More the latter.
So you'd send him a photo and say, I like this, but I want these features in the sock. We'd also send physical samples and we would send pieces of socks and Okay.
You know.
They started with a prototype and they'd send us things.
And while you were working with this factory to just get samples, I mean, presumably you had to pay them something.
So what did it cost you?
Luckily the sampling was like the inexpensive part. Um think they were thinking longer term, like oh if this is
turns into something we'll get the business and
Again, by having my godfather tied to this, I think they were less concerned or they had a higher degree of faith that it would be successful.
Um
Yeah, we
Yeah, I had to incorporate the business, right? So I hired a lawyer and ultimately when we decided to
um launch on Indiegogo. We had to pay for the
you know, video and and some of the creative assets. But
Our whole approach
to launching this business was
Try to bootstrap as much as possible. Um
I think by the time we've laun wh launched on Indiegogo
I had about
I don't know, twelve to eighteen thousand dollars of credit card debt.
Um it was not insignificant, but it wasn't
Like
it wasn't it was doable. I mean there was four of you involved.
And by the way, w how did you
How did you decide how to divide up the business? Was it based on how much money each person could put in?
In terms of the ownership or the work?
Yeah, uh the ownership.
So
It was pretty
It was pretty easy'cause
Well, I say it was pretty easy. A lot of hard conversations early on. Uh it's a fraud conversation. I've had this conversation with my business partner, so I know it's not easy. Yeah.
A lot of hard conversations early on. Uh that
I think.
were determinant of
You know.
I had kinda put most of the capital up front in terms of, you know, paying for
the legal incorporation and some of these other things. Um
Think the
the the rest of it was kind of determined by
You know, who
Could take
the risk to
you know, jump first. Um, you know, Aaron had a family at that time, right? So he was like he valued being able to keep his day job um and keep a steady job. As a graphic designer, as a as a creative
Yeah. Yeah. Andrew was working at Regales, so he had a paycheck coming in. Yeah. So
The most likely
you know, person to kinda take the leap first. Like I didn't really have anything else going on.
Um, and I didn't really like the job I was working at, so I kinda took the leap first.
Um, and kind of front loaded a lot of this stuff. Right.
And I just think naturally
You know, while certainly difficult, it wasn't
It was never like
argumentative or contentious. And I think
Everybody kind of just
Agreed to let
Yeah, we kind of
made separate agreements and
Decided to divide the business up.
Yeah, the way we decided to divide it up.
We had the luxury of time.
Alright.
Right.
Because you know, like we took two years, there was no pressure
from anyone but ourselves to build this, um, at that time because it was bootstrapped and
It it gave us time to develop the idea and you know, like Dave said, he leapt first.
And then in early twenty thirteen
When I was no longer an urban daddy.
Like we sat down.
To write the script for our Indiegogo campaign.
Yeah. And that was sort of a moment where we felt like we were writing the covenant of the business.
It took three months for us to write that and something today that would take
You know.
Three hours for a copyrighter to do.
But
It was putting all of our ideas down on paper in the right way and and getting our storytelling.
You know.
around this product that we believed in at the time.
And and by the way, the name Bombus, was that the name from the beginning?
Yep, that was the name from the start.
And it it means bee, bumblebee, right? It's like the Latin word for bumblebee. Yeah, so the word Bombus comes from the Latin word for bumblebee. Um you know. Obviously we're a company that's community based. Bees live in a hive, they work together to make the world a better place.
We love like the inspiration and the idea of things coming together in a hive to work together to improve their world.
How did you did you just come up with a name or did you work with s uh like a branding agency to help you come up with a name?
So I think when we got to the point where we were ready to like name it.
Um
Randy and Aaron said, Give us the weekend. Uh huh. Right.
That us.
We kinda know what this
companies kind of feels like and stands for let's throw a bunch of things up on the wall and come back and present
Yeah.
me and Andrew in the group with a broader I set of ideas.
And
The
the two that kind of they came back with that were the most, you know, at the at the top were something around bees or ants.
Because they're two animals that are naturally al altruistic.
that work together as a community to make it collaborative.
And so
Didn't think that ants were that marketable. Bees tended to be a little bit more playful and fun.
Um
And so kinda landed on bees and
It was mostly Aaron had kind of come up with this idea of naming it Bombus.
Um the Latin word for Bumblebee is is Bombus, but with an A B A M B A B U S
kind of our thought was well if you Google
Ambus, you're gonna get a bunch of like beekeeper information. Um
Yeah, and so we thought
Alright, change the A to an O and make it a little bit more unique and ownable.
Um
So you guys came up with a name over a weekend, it's a great name.
Um, I mean it doesn't
doesn't like I'm sure there are people who are like, Well, but it doesn't scream socks. Just call it like
Call it uh
deep mittens or call it um You're hired. You know you know, whatever, like right, did d did anybody say that to you? Like call it call it something that screams out socks.
We had somebody tell us that you have to write socks with an X.
SO X. It's the only way you're gonna stand out in the market. I mean people spanks. Yeah, people tell you crazy crazy things. You know, you have to have conviction around
You know, the the reasons you put a brand together and how you build the world of a brand. Fair enough. All right. So
So
How I mean, you get you're getting all these samples back and forth.
And and um and I guess we should say like
I I mean doing s doing research about this interview, I discovered a lot about socks, you know, like um
this arch support in socks and, you know, these like honeycomb weaves and stuff like that. Um
When did like at w at what point?
You know,
'Cause I know you landed on like
Mainly.
Cotton and merino wool?
Pro I think you also do some synthetics now.
Right? Yes. Yeah, cotton was what we launched with.
Cotton, okay.
and uh a a different kind of toe seam and like this honeycomb arch support. So
How many
Iterations of the samples did it take to you member before you're like
That's it. We got it.
Hundreds.
Hundreds. Hundreds and hundreds.
I mean guy just for the calf sock.
Tension level alone, it took us a hundred and thirty seven tries.
Tension on the foot.
On the calf. Like if you pull up a sawf.
Like on a calf sock. You pull up a calf sock. Uhhuh.
Right. You wanted to feel
Comfortable and not too tight.
But not so lucid it'll stay down. And you want it to be supportive, but you don't want it to leave a mark.
So we just were these are the types of details where
Once you're in it.
And you have the luxury of time.
This is the type of
This was the approach, right?
And this is still sort of the way we approach product design today, but that is it, right? Like thinking about each little detail. The idea that all these little things
That nobody thought about or cared about it
Could when you put them together
Just come up with something that's greater than the sum of the parts, right? Like
uh you don't have to remember that the honeycomb arch support or a seamless toe or a w stitched heel or that we used, you know
uhima cotton, but when you put it on the feeling
Is
This feels different and I like it more and I wanna wear this every day. That's what we were going for.
Yeah, you know it's interesting, I'm looking at my sock now here.
And uh I got a seamless yeah, I guess I guess that toe.
Right, there's like that little
Little toe thing there.
And uh I never thought about that really.
You know?
Yeah, this is a product that
We discovered most people don't think andor care about.
Yeah, th this is where the opportunity comes in, right?
Like you're a thoughtful guy.
But
Y you haven't spent a lot of time thinking about well.
It's not something people think about. It just wasn't, right? Like we didn't Dave and I didn't grow up dreaming of being in the sock business.
I mean,
Nobody did, right? Like this is something that we stumbled upon. Yeah. But it it was it was an opportunity to
Test out an approach and a brand and do something great.

And
It was all really motivated because we wanted to make a difference, right? The idea looming out there was how can we donate as many pairs of socks as possible? And that's a real motivating factor when you're building a product.
Alright, so you have this so you land on this idea.
You land on the sock.
And
At what point
Do you feel
Randy comfortable.
quitting your job and and and quitting your steady paycheck to actually go into this full
Full time, full force. I think things were coming to an end for me at the end of two thousand twelve at Urban Daddy.
Um
Mm-hmm.
It it was time to move on. It wasn't a good situation at the end.
Um
There was
conflict, there was

It wasn't ideal, but we were also
Mm. You know, things were moving.
Moving pretty quick.
quickly compared to how they had started with Bombas, we started to get a little momentum.
And Dave had left his job.
And you know, there's that moment where you have to say
Like, okay, now's the time. Let's let's do this thing. And again, we we had other things going on, so we had a little bit of safety. Yeah. But
You know, after having a job for six years to be in a position where you're just
Building something.
Building multiple things even.
It's a moment and
I think a lot of people face that moment when they're doing this.
And you just have to you have to give it a little bit of a leap and you have to have to have put in the legwork, I think.
You know, it's interesting'cause you launched this product w um as an Indiegogo campaign, essentially, right? You went out on Indiegogo to raise some money
to see if you could get the capital to do a fur presumably to do a first run.
O of socks.
But it's interesting because now that I think about that and I'm gonna talk m a little bit more about this in a second.
It's kinda, David, it kinda reminds me of your job at Cutco, right? Because you would you weren't selling people knives.
You are a college student who is
genuinely earnestly trying to gain
experience and that was a gateway in.
And then you have this great product that you could also sell.
And it seems to me that
There's a connection between what you were
Also offering here, which was
The Indiegogo campaign was saying hey, you can help
Give people socks.
And you can
Also get a pair of socks too. Is that is that
A fair
Kind of analogy?
We felt like this was really our one shot to get it, and so
Being
relentless, I even think to a certain degree shameless. Um, you know, I
found a way to download my entire Gmail contact database. And I don't mean like just the people that are like in my contacts. I mean every single person that I'd ever emailed with ever in my Gmail. You can like find a way to do this in Gmail.
And I remember downloading this like twelve thousand person email file.
And sending it out, not knowing who was on it entirely.
And I got response back from people who are like, This is awesome.
I sold you a set of concert tickets on Craigslist four years ago. Like
I'm gonna buy a pack of socks. And then I had people
Wow.
Yeah, sleep away camp with eight years ago was like, Haven't heard from you since this seems interesting. I also had a fair amount of people be like
bleep you, don't ever email me again. Stop spamming me. And whatever.
It's actually amazing because you really
Um I mean y you really
had developed all of these tools that would lead you to this moment, right? Like
Randy, you know, you're sort of
copywriting and
David like
selling just selling stuff and understanding like
how to sell stuff and
It all kind of
coalesce it all kind of arrived at this moment on Indiegogo.
I'm just making the observations on a question. It's just
So smart how you sort of landed on this this approach.
Because you know, Indiegogo you're not gonna raise that much money.
You know, but
If it works, if it catches fire.
it can get a lot of attention.
Yeah, and it's a t it's a tension.
Attention that we were after. Validation.
Right.
You know, our friends and family said we loved it, but you know, your mom loving your socks is not
that hard. But a complete stranger putting their money

you know, buy this product before it's available to me and wait however many months to get it, that to us was enough validation to keep going.
Alright, so you launch it into go go.
And I think the the goal is to raise fifteen thousand.
But you had raised
Within
I think the thirty day period, like a hundred and forty thousand. We did twenty five thousand dollars in our first day.
I mean it now the idea was
to do how many like initially what was your idea, how many socks, pairs of socks were you gonna make?
We we weren't.
Ha
fifteen thousand dollars was the minimum amount we needed in order to place
the minimum order production run for like all the styles and colors that we had. But we we knew that if we only got fifteen thousand dollars, it m it was probably curtains. So you needed some to make more money, to raise more money.
Hundred four w with a hundred and forty thousand dollars, that's now you gotta fulfill all these orders too, right?
Um and so
Yeah, I mean did you just basically go to the factory and just hit the go button and say, Let's go?
May I and I'm assuming you just had one skew, one just one kind of sock at that point, or did you have multiple colors and options, or or was it just like you're gonna get
Ankle white socks and that's it.
No we had
Uh calf and an ankle.
Yeah.
A black and a gray base.
With four accent colours.
you could like select what you wanted on you when you like fulfill the order.
Um
And so about halfway through
through when we were at about fifty thousand dollars.
of sales.
Uh
We
That's when we actually hit the go button on the order'cause we're just like, Well, we've clearly surpassed right and we've got plenty of time left. Like this is
Way more than we thought.
um we place the production order so that we could at least beat the lead time.
that we would have on the on promising people when they would get delivered and there was a thought, well, get them delivered before the holidays so that if we have more inventory, people could come back and rebuy for Christmas and What was the plan once you got the socks delivered?'Cause this is like
I mean Shopify's around and and kind of this these
you know, these kind of drop shipping thing is starting to happen, but
Well, I mean I'm assuming you're you're you you're gonna get a huge
container maybe or half a container.
um, you know, full of socks.
And then what are you guys gonna
Package it yourself and
Slap on UPS labels or USPS labels and send them to people?

Well, Randy, do you remember we like looked at the other and we did the math.
And we said to pack twenty three hundred orders. And this is where my brother came in with his like
finance brand. He was like, Well
It would probably take the four of us.
Two weeks in a garage.
To pack twenty three hundred orders. No way. And we looked at each other
We're like.
I don't think that's a good use of our time. That's not us. So Andrew went out and found a local three PL
That was willing to do
What what at the time was a very small run.
Um what's a three PL again? A third party logistics provider. Third party logistics. Like a warehouse that would do the pick packing and shipping of the product.
And
And so they would handle all that. Okay.
Two thousand plus orders to fulfill.
Was it quick? I you're just reminding me now.
About all the indie camp g Kickstar campaigns I've contributed to and never got my product.
Where's my damn drone?
That I bought in twenty fourteen. Sorry about your drone. Yes.
I know.
I gotta I gotta go back to my Gmail account and find that thing. But um how quickly were you guys able to get these talks to people?
Well d like Dave Dave was smart about this, right?'Cause he said about halfway through the campaign
Oh.
He hit go on the order. And that's a little risky because we don't know exactly how much it's gonna be, but we were very
very adamant about trying to deliver our product within the window that we promised. And then following up every person that ordered with a personalized email thanking them and
Listen though.
You launch on how did you do that?
We did it in in phases, right?
Like every week there'd be orders. Uh David to make that work? Or was it human beings typing thank you for your order, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Personalize. Personalise them.
Yeah.
But you wanted everybody who ordered to get an easy.
And uh we had orders to fulfill. But we didn't have a website and we didn't
We didn't really know what to do next,'cause we weren't sure how this was gonna go, right?
And we started to see it happening, we started to plan. Yeah.
Okay, what do you do now?
Okay.
Like
We know how to build websites.
We've done I've done this for
Lots of other companies.
But now you gotta do it for yourself. And what are we saying and how are we putting it together?
You know, Shopify was not the Shopify it is now. So we had a lot of like technology decisions.
to make at the time and we needed to move quickly. You know. So this was like
A little bit of a
The period where you say
We've got something here. We've validated it in the marketplace. We've got these twenty five hundred customers.
Let's build something and then
And then
Just take one step at a time.
Alright, you guys
Um, so you have this momentum and I think pretty not too long after in twenty fourteen
you decide to go out and raise a little bit of money, initially I think a seed round, mostly from friends and family. It's about a million dollars that you raise because now
You've got a
Stand up a website and

e even with the customers that you got from Indiegogo
you now have to build a customer base, right? You need to create awareness of around this product.
Um see you need money to do that.
And
Tell me and then I know that later that year you raise another three million, and this is from Angel Investors.
But tell me with that.
I mean, was that money primarily to
For marketing or was it just to make more product? Yeah.
After Indiegogo, we launched the website, shipped the orders.
And we kind of wanted to see
Like would people come back, would they be rebuy, would they tell their friends about it? Yeah.
The following few months we did another couple hundred thousand dollars of the sales. In the beginning of two thousand and fourteen, we said, Okay, feels like we have something here.
Yeah, as you mentioned, we ended up raising money from
Angel investors, but
At first, you know, I went out to the broader venture community, right? I met with First Round Capital, General Catalyst, Mavron, you know, all the names that we know today of backing some of the biggest and best brands and companies.
And
despite having connections or relationships with people
When I showed up with a deck talking about building a sock company
Yeah, it was
All but
you know, pretty much laughed out of the room. Um, like how
How excited big could a sock company be, or like, you know it's a pretty
Yeah, boring category. And
I think from a confidence level standpoint that made us like
Re
question things a little bit too. And so
I think as a result of that we said, Okay, like
Maybe let's not push it as hard as as we could and let's just focus on building a great brand with great product and give back to the community and
Oh kinda see where it goes, right? We kind of were tempered our expectations a little bit.
Um
Yeah. And so as a salesperson that was pretty hard for me to take.
But it ended up being good for us, guy.
You know?
Oh, amazing. Right, because you didn't uh did you did you raise Beyond a Series A?
We brought in a private equity partner, but
We never raised any more primary capital.
Wow, so that's
you got incredibly lucky that those those venture firms decided not to invest because it didn't dilute your
Ownership stake. I mean, in the end it worked out great. And it also
Yeah, it also allowed us to
Focus the business on
sustained profitable growth versus
go out, raise fift million dollars, build a multi hundred million billion dollar brand, but be losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year, which we're starting to see how that's playing out for those companies today.
When we come back in just a moment.
How against all odds, a truly lucky chance at a TV show changes the scope of Bombus literally overnight.
And how that momentum is nearly derailed.
with a very unlucky server malfunction.
Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this.
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2013, and Randy and Dave have raised some money and they're feeling pretty good. But at the same time, they don't have an easy way to get their products noticed.
in a bigger way.
You know, my dad, uh he said at some point, you guys should go on Shark Tank, and we said, Yeah, good luck with that. You are crazy.
And then
They get up probably a thousand pitches a week.
What do they say, Dave? Thirty thousand people companies apply every year, something like that? Yeah. So it it seemed like a long shot. And then
Out of nowhere, in April of twenty fourteen, Dave get an email.
And it was from a Gmail account, so we weren't sure if this was somebody like a friend of ours
that was just pranking us or if it was real or not, but it was it was a Shark Tank producer reaching out and asking about our company. They had seen our product on Indiegogo, our campaign, and they were curious about where we were in the process, and that started the conversation for us getting on Shark Tank.
Wow.
Did did all four of you fly to to LA to to film it or just the two of you? All four of us went, but Randy and I went on the show.
All right, and I know the way it works is you don't meet the sharks until they like open the screen. They're like, And well, you know, and here are the sharks. Like, right, you don't really like schmooze them beforehand. No. They're
There's no contact. Yeah. You are basically in a bubble for a week. They know nothing about us. We
We only know what we know about them from the T V show. That's it. Right.
Okay.
Nervous. You must have been nervous as hell.
I'll tell you this.
The week that we were
F set to film Shark Tank.
My father passed away.
Mm.
So
He passed away on Father's Day in twenty fourteen.
And we were supposed to fly that day.
To LA.
So we almost didn't go. Dave and I had a conversation
They
You know, we talk to the show.
We decided we were keeping
the date. Uh I went down to Florida, where my parents were living at the time, and my mom and I
dealt with the arrangements. And we had like a really
Like
uh interesting conversation. And I said, you know, I'm not gonna go. Dave will go on by himself. We'll figure this out.
And she said to me, you know.
If your father knew that you were skipping this opportunity first
Because of him.
He'd be furious at you and you have to go and we've done all the work.
And the funeral will be next week.
And
You know, go.
Um
Which was
Very hard.
Uh, and I got on a plane, Dave picked me up at the airport with Aaron and Andrew.
And the four of us had a moment where you know, we'd been preparing for this, so we felt prepared.
In a weird way this took a lot of the pressure off.
Because it just
And it was an important moment.
But it also
You know, it was just in a very different space.
Mm.
And Dave and I were sharing a a hotel room that week, right?
And
So I was there with my friend and I was away from my family and it was really hard.
But we were here to to do this thing and it sort of
It galvanized us and
And at the same time took the pressure off.
But yeah, to your point.
You get to that moment.
And it is a moment of nerves, you know? You they open those doors and you walk down that hallway and you look you think to yourself,
Hey, that looks like Shark Tank, you know? And you're like, Oh, okay, like I'm on Shark Tank.
And you walk in that room and then you know, it's
It's on.
Alright, so you guys

on Shark Tank.
Bombas are athletic leisure socks engineered to look better.
Feel better.
and with a mission to help those in need.
The mass market athletics stock hasn't changed in decades.
Same basic colors, same styles, same cardboard feel, until now.
But as soon as you finished with your pitch, you got like lots of pushback from the Sharks. I I think at first, like, not a single one was interested in investing, but
But then like at at the last minute, one of them, uh Damon John, who's who's been on the show, he he kinda stepped out. Okay, guys. Um
I'll tell you what, I'll try to meet you somewhere in the middle. I'm gonna finance the inventory,$200,000 for 17.5%.
That's it. No line of credit. I'm I'm financing the the goods. I'm already I'm on the hook for the goods right now.
Can we uh can we take a moment and call our CFO?
Uh no.
Your CFO gave you the bad advice already to ask for that valuation.
Um, Damon John did make an investment. I think the deal well the original deal was like two hundred grand for like seventeen and a half percent equity. I guess what
a lot of viewers don't realize is that
You don't actually have to take the deal, even if you accept it on the show, and then sometimes you can renegotiate the terms, which uh from what I understand is what happened, right? You accepted the that deal.
On the show, but then you renegotiated the terms.
Yeah, you accept the deal in good faith.
Um
Kind of a good faith clause.
And
Yeah.
A big part was let's even see if the episode airs, right? Cause they they film something like a hundred and fifty businesses and then they air like a hundred, right? So it's just
thirty three percent chance that we weren't even gonna get on air.
And so
We told Damon or Damon told us, like, let's see if this thing comes on air and then we can talk about it. Um, because kinda no sense in doing anything if it gets
Fine.
We were out fundraising at the time and so we were like, All right, we're gonna run our business as if we were never on Shark Tank and we never got a deal, um, and continued to fundraise over that summer.
Um
And
Beginning of September we get a phone call that says
Your episode is gonna air.
In three weeks on the season premiere.
Get ready. Wow.
So pick up the phone call Damon. We said, All right, well we've got to get a deal done.
Um
And
We just closed our million dollars of seed funding.
And basically
Said, look, we don't need any more cash.
Um
So, you know, can we renegotiate the deal to provide you with some upside?
Um with no kind of cash investment.
Um and the
Two of us, uh
Yeah.
Damon and Bombus came to an agreement that both parties I think were pretty amicable with. Um
and set the foundation for a really, really amazing uh relationship.
um that is only built over the years. Um
And I think
Yeah, both people feel really happy with what they got out of it. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Um
Alright, that episode airs.
And what happens to d I mean
Do you see an instant spike?
Yeah, our website crashed guy and it was terrible.
I mean that was
You know, it was like a super joyous moment and a huge moment and then a moment filled with dread and terror. I I think we were
We had a o a viewing party. I mean, do you remember this day of like and just looking at each other and thinking We've been up for the last forty eight hours. We didn't sleep the night before because we were working on the website.
And we were like trying to get the website ready.
for this massive event. We're like trying to scale up
customer service people'cause we ca that's the one thing we heard was like people are like, Oh, hire a bunch of
temporary people to answer the phones and answer emails because like you will not be able to do this on your own.
And so
We didn't sleep for almost two days. We're at this like
viewing party that we had put on.
Alright, zombies.
And then we're getting phone calls that the website's crashing over and over and over and over again. Yeah.
It was a nightmare.
Yeah.
Alright, so this happens.
the orders start coming in.
And
Is it I mean at this point what what are the hires that you're making? I mean are you thinking about
You gotta come up with new designs, you gotta come up with a uh do you start to kind of expand your team and and designers and and
marketing experts and and
Wha what do you start to think about in terms of expansion?
Well, I I think in that moment
Um
You know.
There was sort of a new floor for the business. It's kinda the way we thought of it. We had all these new customers and
We had made a lot of promises through this business, right?
Like we promised we'd be donating a pair of socks and how do we
show people the work that we're doing on the donation side.
We promised a certain level of comfort and quality with our product.
How do we ensure that people
understand that in the what we're communicating and how do we back that up. So customer service became super important. Dave mentioned he took every customer service call for the first
You know.
year plus of the business, we would be out at a bar, he'd get a call, and he'd go outside and disappear for an hour talking to a customer. But in that shark tank moment we brought in a team and, you know,
That was the beginning of our customer service team and our happiness guarantee. And then we realized that like we had we had brought somebody on to help fill that marketing gap, right?
We just always wanted to surround ourselves with people that were smarter than we were about the things that we didn't know a ton about.
We had our skill sets, right? Dave was a a great leader.
A salesperson, right?
Aaron and I could handle the creative and the design. Andrew was running the finance and operation side of things, and we just started to fill in the gaps around us.
So eventually that was
Customer service, marketing.
Product design, right? These were
And then we had a sort of like GM and PR figure who was our first employee, Emily, and like this early team started to really galvanize around what we were doing.
And
All with the same attitude of let's figure out
the things that we need to do to keep building this, to keep pushing it, to keep growing it, and be really honest about what we don't know.
Yeah.
I think this is an important moment to though interject that.
you know, at a pretty high pinnacle moment. So in the first
thirteen months before Shark Tank, we did about nine hundred thousand dollars in sales pretty organically.
And then in the two months following Shark Tank, we did one point two million. It sold out of every single item of product that we had leading into holiday.
And we felt like we were on top of the world.
And we've just closed this million dollar seed round.
I think you put
you know, three people like me, Aaron and Air and and Randy in a room, right, were pretty
optimistic, you know, growth focused, and we're like, let's go for it.
And Andrew really became like the voice of reason from a CFO perspective.
And kind of.
is my brother and really instilled this moment of
Yeah, let's focus on continuing to build a good foundationally unit economic positive business that
generates profitability.
And we weren't gonna sacrifice profitability at the expense of growth.
So because we didn't feel like
We were getting
the recognition or validation from the venture community that this might be a little bit of a harder road for us to go down and
I think it was also the moment where
We looked at
the brands and companies that we admired most, right? The Nikis, the Lulus, the Underarmers, the Patagonias of the world, right? Brands that had endured the test of time over decades and decades and decades of growth.
And the one consistent

that was different than our peer set of, you know, the aways and the war bees of the world.
that they didn't grow by raising hundreds of millions of dollars of capital and trying to skyrocket the highest valuation possible in a short amount of time.
They did it brick by brick, slowly over time, sustained growth year over year over year over year. And that was the playbook at that time that we kind of at that moment was a pretty pinnacle moment for us to say that.
You know, we're not gonna try to be the biggest company as quickly as possible. We just wanna be the best company.
And be around as long as possible.
Yeah.
I think you reached profitability by year three.
We did. We were profitable in year one.
uh in year two
We made a lot of capital investments in inventory mostly.
Um
That
You know,'cause we were growing so fast that we're just like Sure.
We've gotta stay on top of inventory.
Um
And inventory be kind of came the the cash crunch for us always, every single year heading into holiday where we do about fifty percent of our business.
Um that
September
PO order was always very expensive.
Yeah.
these costs and wouldn't really get those back until you know the books closed at the end of the year.
Yeah.
So
Um
I I wonder, I mean, you know, you're growing every year over year over year and
Covid hits in twenty twenty.
And
most D to C companies were freaking out. Of course it turned out to be
a a good year depending on the company.
Um including for for you guys. But but before
You started to see a spike in sales.
Were you preparing for the possibility of layoffs and and of of retrenching?
A hundred percent. I mean, we watched
Uh
business go from like fifty percent year over year gr in growth in that January.
T
a negative twelve percent year over year growth in March of that year.
Um
And
I'm
grateful that within a matter of weeks it had rebounded and we were back at like thirty percent plus year over year and then forty percent and then then we're like c comps that were insane.
Um
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't think anybody was prepared for that moment. I actually think the biggest fear for us is that
We had built
this amazing incredible culture that we felt like fostered innovation and efficiency and was so collaborative. Um, and we just built out a brand new thirty-three thousand square foot office in Union Square, you know, millions of dollars of investment. It took over a year to build it, and then two months later,
Everyone's remote.
And we're just like
Wow.
How do we operate? How does the you know, are people gonna show up to work anymore? Are they, you know, just gonna mail it in or you turn their videos off or whatever.
And
probably one of the m proudest moments I've ever had as a leader.
was we shut the office down on that Friday and by Monday.
Everything was like up and running and like people were showing up to meetings and they were like
Yeah, it was almost like it almost like rallied us. Um I think people were like
And and and this is a point actually where I think the mission comes back, right? Because totally.
It became this
moment where we're like, wow, this is actually a time where we can step up.
and used this other arm that was mostly used to just distribute socks,
Now here we are as a
Yeah, as a platform that's helping
A lot of our peer brands learn how it what it means to give in times of need.
W what what is the
Ultimate I mean
you do have investors and people who put in some seed money and and you're profitable, but you know, at some point you right, you you either sell or you you go public. So
I know there's been some chatter about maybe going public. Tell me about about
about the possibility, you know, possibilities of selling the company or going public or
You know.
Something along those lines because you obviously you have you do have investors. You have some investors involved.
Yeah, I think the way we think about that is
We're incredibly opportunistic.
Um
We didn't
Didn't design this business from day one to say, Oh, it's gotta be
X billion dollar valuation or we're gonna sell it to this person, or I think
Again in in hindsight looking back by not having
influence from large institutional partners early on. It allowed us to really
kinda make up our minds and decide that like we're just gonna run a great business. And if someone comes and
Is interested in buying us, we'll talk to them.
And
you know, if it's a good fit and we feel like they'll be good stewards for the product, the brand, and the mission going forward, then we'd entertain that.
If not.
You know, and there's an opportunity in the public markets to
kind of fortify, you know, what we've built and, you know.
help us kind of build the dream that we're looking to build in the future, we'll go that route too.
Well you know, when you think about
This this you know, the partnership and you guys sort of
meeting at this company and
kinda batting around ideas and then coming together and and building this brand that is
really big, you know, and and even the fact that you got you you couldn't raise capital and
all these things that happen along the way. The fact that your godfather happened to be involved in the sock business
Um
How much of of this do you think has to do with
You know, all the work that you put in the skills and that you brought to the table and how much do you attribute to luck?
So
I practice stoicism.
And
One of the great stoics is Seneca.
And
He has a quote that says
Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
And so I think
For me.
We were very opportunistic and we were really prepared.
Um
You know, we we put ourselves in a lot of these positions, right? We saw this quote.
and decided to do something about it.
We went out and researched product, but then led us to my godfather, which then you know so
I think a lot of
Certainly lock that played in part.
to, you know, the moment and time in which we formed this company.
Um, to
Yeah.
all the fortuitous events that have led us here, right?
Yeah, you know.
It it is.
It's a combination of course, right? That's that's kind of the only answer w we
We've
We
Time things well, which feels
Like luck.
But
You know.
Everything that led us here personally.
the two of us to that moment, the four founders to this moment to start the company.
And then the things that we committed to doing and that we stood by through the years. You know, things that we've put against tough decisions and those core values they've mentioned.
Like understanding what we're great at and what we need help with.
Being humble leaders.
I
Really committing
to to doing something that benefits

All these ideas.
Like f that feels like the hard work.
And then let's it let you
be opportunistic around
some of the lucky moments and capitalize on some of the lucky moments and things like that. So it it's a wild combination and it's been a good ride because of that.
That's David Heath and Randy Goldberg.
Co-founders of Bombus.
By the way, didn't one of you guys like make a promise to customers that
you would like that you wrote
Into your
FAQs like really early on.
Can you show me that promise?
If
If we get to
A million pairs donated.
Uh Dave wrote this in. He's promised that
He would get a tattoo to celebrate.
Mm-hmm. And we thought that this would take ten years, right? And mind you, I had none at the time. Like so this was not like a oh whatever, I'll go get another tattoo. Like I had zero.
Right. Not
Yeah, so at about the two year mark we started to look at each other and we'd say, Yeah, we're we're about to hit uh a million pair donated already.
And you know.
Promise is a prom A promise is a promise, right, Dave?
And yes, if you're wondering, Dave did get the tattoo.
It's a bee like a bumblebee, which has become kind of a mantra for the brand. The phrase be better is stitched on the inside of every pair of bombs socks.
And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show.
And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, sign up for my newsletter at guyros.com or on Substack.
This episode was produced by Carrie Thompson with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. It was edited by Andrea Bruce with research help from Sam Paulson. Our production staff also includes JC Howard, Devin Schwartz, Alex Chung, Catherine Seifer, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Massini, and Carla Estevez.
I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to how I built this.