Helix Sleep

Helix Sleep's founder, Adam Tishman, came onto Nathan Latka's show to explain a simple pitch: a direct-to-consumer mattress brand that builds each mattress around the buyer. Customers answer questions about their height, weight, sleeping position, and firmness preference, and the company custom-builds a mattress for them, 100% in the U.S. The company charges the same price regardless of firmness or support, which the founder argued is one of the bigger problems in the mattress industry. A queen costs $900, while the equivalent product at a retail store would cost closer to $2,000 to $3,000.

Helix Sleep was founded in August, and by the time of the interview it was coming up on its one-year anniversary. The company's technology is built around an algorithm that translates customer questionnaire answers into optimized product constructions. Rather than hiring a large in-house engineering team, the company used Toptal, a service that sources vetted remote developers. A developer found through Toptal built much of the codebase after launch, and the company was in the process of building a smaller in-house tech team. Adam said the company paid by the hour at first, at rates 25 to 40% below what comparable developers cost in the U.S., and later moved that developer to a full-time salary. He said the company owns all of the IP its developers create.

The product line is also more flexible than the price list suggests. Adam said the company has a few hundred SKUs, not tens of thousands, because the variations come from combining a limited set of buckets for firmness and support. Split beds, with each side customized for a different sleeper, add to that count.

Helix Sleep started with digital acquisition, focusing on Facebook, search, content, and Outbrain for roughly the first six to seven months of its acquisition push. Adam described a test-and-scale approach: launch a channel, test it, and find how much scale it can support. The company later moved heavily into audio, including podcasts and SiriusXM and terrestrial radio, which he said worked well for brand awareness and direct response. He noted that mattresses are a longer-lead purchase rather than an impulse buy, so audio's mix of reach and direct response suited the category.

The company raised a seed round of just under $1 million on a convertible note. The founder said it had months of profitability in its short history.

What worked was a combination of a clear price advantage over retail, a personalization story that is easy to explain, and an aggressive push across paid channels that were tested and scaled one at a time. The company's team grew from four people in January to 16 in the interview period. Adam said the company was willing to accept a lower customer acquisition cost to lifetime value ratio than typical SaaS companies, because it collects nearly all of a customer's lifetime value at the point of sale, which lets the cash fuel new acquisition.

The founder did not share specific CAC figures, and he avoided naming a growth target in dollars. He said the company would be "popping champagne" at selling well into the thousands of mattresses per month. Churn and repeat purchases were not a major focus, since mattress buying is infrequent.

At the time of the interview, Helix Sleep had sold tens of thousands of mattresses, had raised under $1 million in seed funding, was preparing its next round, and was growing its team. Adam's stated priorities were building the brand, finding scale in new acquisition channels, and improving the customer experience.