(Ep 34) BURROW -> Level up your furniture game 🛋️

Stephen Kuhl | Co-Founder & CEO

Dec 08, 2020

Hey friends,

Back again with another edition of The Founder recap - this is Episode 34. If you’re new here, my goal is to give you a quick synopsis of what got me thinking from this week’s episode of The Founder Podcast in 5 minutes or less.

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And who am I?

I’m Kallaway - a future founder trying to get some answers before I jump in the ball pit myself.

Let’s get it.

This Week’s Episode (Ep 34) 🛋️

Guest -> Stephen Kuhl, Co-Founder and CEO of Burrow

Mission -> Burrow’s mission is to improve the end to end furniture buying experience for consumers – simplifying how they shop, delivering faster and in a more convenient way, improving the functionality and comfort, and then finally, make it easier for them to move from place to place

Discount -> Use code “Kallaway” or click this link for 10% off of Burrow products

Episode available on -> Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website

In this episode we talk with Stephen about…

🏆 Why Burrow is a better furniture option for consumers

⚖️ Pros and cons of business school

🛋️ The ins and outs of the furniture industry

🤔 Joining Y Combinator as a non-tech company

🙏 Limited edition drops // collabs in furniture

Summary 🔍

What is Burrow and how did Stephen get started?

Stephen grew up in upstate NY and spent the majority of his time in high school freestyle skiing - getting comfortable doing backflips at an early age.

After graduating from Cornell for his undergrad, he bounced around at a few different jobs before landing in private equity and venture investing at Commonfund. He spent 2 years at Commonfund before leaving for business school at Wharton in 2015.

When he got to school, he had a terrible experience buying furniture and met his now Co-Founder, Kabeer, who shared similar struggles.

They took an entrepreneurship class together and thought it was the perfect place to create something new. That’s how Burrow was born.

Today at Burrow, Stephen and his team have created a next generation brand to improve the entire customer experience of owning furniture.

After getting their start redesigning the sofa from the ground up in 2017, they’ve seen explosive growth and now go to market with an entire line of home furniture from seating and storage to tables, rugs and accessories.

What they figured out that the rest of the industry got wrong was that consumers hated the complex, non-customized buying experience, multi-week delivery times and stress moving their furniture from one home to another.

Burrow solves all of these pain points and then some.

Customers can easily design their custom furniture online, have them delivered in compact boxes within a week and then assemble them in minutes without tools.

Burrow has also redesigned their products to be more comfortable and durable so they can withstand the punishment that everyday life brings.

And if you want to level up your comfort this winter, pick up some Burrow furniture with code “Kallaway” for 10% off.

Here’s why I’m a fan and excited about the future for Burrow:

They’re customer obsessed - so they solved the things customers hated about buying/owning furniture and kept the things customers loved. When I think about buying furniture, the worst parts about the experience are:
1. Not being able to get the color/design I want
2. Having to wait 4+ weeks to have it shipped to me
3. The pain of having to move it upstairs and assemble it (this is really #1)
4. Paying a premium price tag and being afraid to ruin my new things
Burrow solved for all of these but retained the classic aesthetic that consumers love.
Stephen was willing to do whatever it took to succeed. He shared a couple of stories about pushing his sanity to limits to ensure the company hit product deadlines and made photoshoots in the early days. When you’re willing to do things that don’t scale in the early days as a founder, you imprint a culture of experimentation and perseverance for the rest of the organization. As the late great Stuart Scott would say, “Stephen is as Kuhl as the other side of the pillow.”

Stephen’s Startup Manifesto 📜

What’s a Startup Manifesto?

At the end of every episode, I ask all of my founder guests the same question:

If you had to write a Startup Manifesto with 5 of the most important key lessons or pitfalls to avoid when starting out, what would they be?

Here’s what Stephen had to say:

Know what you are and aren’t going to do. Be realistic about what you’re going to start. If you’re somebody that’s talking about an idea but not actually spending any time working on it, stop pretending and go enjoy the rest of your life. If you’re going to do it, then do it.
Persevere. You’re going to hear “no” from so many people along the way. It’s funny but people don’t really want to see you succeed more than themselves. Sometimes, the thought of you starting something that could be really big causes others to shut it down and dismiss it. Find the people that believe in you and surround yourself with them.
You will get advice from so many different people at the same time - it’s up to you to filter it. Often times you will have two successful people with high conviction and opposite opinions on the same issue. You have to figure out what’s right for you.
You don’t have to solve for the rest of your company’s life, today. Solve for the next 3-6 months. The product doesn’t have to be perfect. The team doesn’t have to be perfect. Hire, build and test for the short-term. Stay nimble enough to keep making improvements.
Never lose balance. Society creates this 24/7 work mode mentality and it’s very destructive for your mental health if you convince yourself that you need to live by it. Make sure you strike that balance and have those conversations with your co-founders and early employees about your expectations for company culture.

What Got Me Thinking From the Episode 🤔

After reflecting on my conversation with Stephen, here’s something that really got my wheels spinning:

Scarcity // Limited edition drops 👍🏽

Towards the end of the conversation, I posed a question to Stephen about his thoughts on experimenting with limited edition drops and collabs in the furniture space.

Interestingly, he said he was already thinking about the potential and had spent some time brainstorming what might be possible during a session with Ryan Babenzien (Founder & CEO of Greats) a weeks ago.

This idea of limited edition is something that we’ve seen a lot of in fashion and sneaker culture and are now seeing with digital art, but have yet to see in a big way in furniture.

Stephen mentioned that one of the reasons he thinks it hasn’t happened yet is because of the amount of time investment and resources that go into creating a piece. To dedicate hundreds and hundreds of design hours and then only sell 100 of an item is a model that is tough to scale.

However, as Burrow scales and begins to shift more of their product design in-house, it’s easy to see how a small experimental team could be tasked solely with thinking about limited edition drops and collabs.

I think we are in the first inning of activating brands with celebrity and influencer collabs.

The idea that a Justin Bieber or a Travis Scott could co-design an armchair or desk with Burrow is super compelling.

For one, it brings an abnormal level of excitement and fervor to an otherwise “ordinary” industry. It also enables fans to access more creative manifestations from their favorite artists/athletes/etc.

If a company like Burrow had an interest in doubling down on this concept tomorrow, I wonder what would be the bigger constraining factor - the artist’s time/interest or the company’s resources.

Although the mere idea of scarcity should create its own hype and virality, there would likely need to be an entire marketing effort to support each collab to make it successful. That adds to the already high cost of design and production time and resources.

Either way, it’s super exciting to think about all of the collaborations that could be possible.

Who’s your dream collab?

Wrapping it Up 📕

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