Hey friends,
Back again with another edition of The Founder Newsletter - this is Episode 10. 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.
No idea what The Founder is? Read this.
Housekeeping
Podcast show link (direct to Apple Podcasts)
Discount codes (from our founders’ companies)
Instagram (where I spend way too much time making quotes and audiogram content)
Recommended learning resources (from all our founders)
And who are you?
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 10) 🧑🚀
Michael Markesbery, Co-Founder and CEO of Oros.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google
Use code “Founder” for 15% off all Oros products
Listen to the podcast if you’re interested in hearing about…
👕 Building an apparel company of the future
🛡️ How to go to battle against Nike, Adidas and Underarmour
🧪 How Oros uses science experiments to build community
🚀 How space shuttles inspired Oros’s next generation apparel technology
❄️ A long sleeve shirt that keeps you warm at sub-zero temperatures
Summary 🔍
What’s Oros?
Oros has a special place in my heart because I met the founding team when we were in school together at Miami University. Back then, the company was called Lukla and it was just two college kids with a dream.
Today, the team at Oros is focused on building the future of apparel. They’re solving for a key problem in clothing today - bulk for warmth.
If you think about it, most of the jackets you have in your closet that are designed for cold weather, have some kind of bulky element. A popular material in jackets today is goosedown, which creates that puffy, Michelin Man look.
After Michael (one of the co-founders) wore one of those puffy coats in the Swiss Alps, he was constantly bugged by this problem. He thought there had to be a better way to design apparel without all the bulk.
When he earned an Astronaut Scholarship the following year, he was exposed to aerogel, the insulation that space shuttles use to keep astronauts warm in space. Apparently, it’s the lowest thermal conductive solid on the planet, meaning it would be able to keep heat in really well. Bingo.
Michael started experimenting with aerogel and eventually invented a way to synthesize it to be used in a more flexible form. That solarcore (aerogel composite) is now in all of the products that Oros sells today (jackets, snowpants, gloves, hats, etc.)
You can go to the top of mountain with just a T-shirt and the Oros jacket and be completely warm. And they’re just getting started.
Who’s Michael?
Michael has always been a self-proclaimed science geek. He was pre-med, prepping to go to med school when he co-founded Oros/Lukla and then ditched the lab coat for a parka and got to work.
He’s also an avid adventurer, having climbed the tallest mountain in the Swiss Alps and run with the bulls in Spain.
Michael’s Startup Manifesto 📜
What’s a Startup Manifesto?
At the end of every episode, I ask 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 Michael had to say:
There’s no silver bullet - prepare yourself for a bunch of lead bullets.
Everything that you do in entrepreneurship is a science experiment. Form a hypothesis. Test it.
Know your why. Know why you’re building what you’re building and form a culture around that. Establish who your company is and what you stand for. Make it spawn from why you’re doing what you’re doing
Don’t lose sight of your physical, mental and emotional health through the process. You’re company’s only going to be as great as you are so make sure you’re on top of your game.
Buy Oros!
Michael’s Thoughts 💭
What is aerogel and how’d they use it…
“Pure aerogel is the best insulation in the world, but it’s brittle. To make it not brittle, you’d need to create a composite. You’d need to take aerogel and combine it with something that is flexible and durable.
We ended up combining it with closed cell foam. Foam’s used in everything - insoles in shoes, automotive industry, etc. We found some foams that was commonly used and thought, well, it’s already being used, I wonder what would happened if you combined closed cell foam and aerogel?
What do you want Oros to look like in the future…
“Every single person that lives in an urban environment shouldn’t own a winter jacket. They should have a long sleeve shirt, made by Oros, and that’s all you’d need throughout the winter. That’s the ultimate success for us.”
Biggest lesson learned raising money…
“We’ve raised around $10M to date from some great VCs and angels. My biggest lesson is: take every single meeting you can. Practice your pitch over and over and over and over again.
VCs have a really great job - it’s their job to say no. At the end of the day, they only need to swing when they want to. It’s totally different than baseball. In baseball, you’ve got 3 strikes and then you’re out. The beautiful thing about being a VC is that you don’t have to swing, you can only swing when you want to.
It’s their job to say no and you’re gonna get told no many many many many times. I think the important thing is taking as many meetings as you can. The other thing we learned is that many of the VCs that came in during the later rounds, were VCs that said no to us in prior rounds.
There’s a value in not just taking the meetings, but also maintaining the relationships and giving people the opportunity to watch your progress and watch your business grow. Ultimately, those that are aligned with your vision but maybe don’t think it’s the right time, they’ll find a lot of confidence in your ability to manage and your ability to build should you let them follow your business.”
What Got Me Thinking From the Episode 🤔
After reflecting on my conversation with Michael, here’s something that really got my wheels spinning:
Just get started 🎬
With Michael, Rithvik and Oros, I have the luxury of being able to not only reflect on this conversation, but also think back to my time interacting with them 5 years ago when we were in college. That’s how long ago it all began for them.
The biggest thing that got me thinking from this conversation was how important it is to just get started.
The reality is that on any journey…creative, entrepreneurial, or otherwise, there’s going to be a period of time where your output and results don’t align with your expectations. And that’s okay. Because that’s how it is for everyone when they start something.
I had the idea to start this podcast in the middle of 2019. I should have got started then, but I didn’t for a number of reasons:
I was afraid that founders wouldn’t want to talk to me because I wasn’t impressive or credentialed enough
I was worried that the audio quality or questions I asked would be subpar and uninteresting
I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough time in my days and weeks to create a product that I was proud of
And the biggest thing, I was afraid of failing. To me, failure meant that nobody listened, for one of the three reasons above (or all three)
What I realized eventually, was that for anyone to get good at literally anything, they have to spend a good amount of time “honing their craft.” It’s a trope, but it’s the truth. For people with god given talent, it still takes them years to be good enough to “make it” or monetize or whatever their success metric is.
Once I realized that, and actually bought into the idea that the first “x” amount of time/episodes/interviews were all just practice reps to get me ready for when the attention/awareness/success would actually come, it became a lot easier to get started.
For Michael and Rith, they didn’t have the issue of not being passionate enough to start, but they had to make a hard choice to give up med school (their dream for the first 18 years of their lives) to pursue Oros. If they hadn’t gotten started immediately, they may have not had enough early traction/conviction when it came time to opt out of med school and who knows where they’d be at today
At the end of the day, for whatever you want to do, you gotta just get started. I promise you the learnings you’ll gain by doing it, even if you quit after a single day, will get you closer to the thing you ultimately want to spend your time doing.
What’s holding you back?
Wrapping it Up 📕
I hope you found this semi-interesting and inspiring/helpful in any way. If so and you want to help support The Founder, here’s a couple things that would be valuable to me and the show:
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Till next time ✌️
Kallaway