press comp for FIGS
Shaan notes that FIGS, the fashionable medical-scrubs brand, went public and reached a $7 billion market cap, with the press hailing it as the next Lululemon or Nike.
“They went public. $7 billion. What? $7 billion market cap. What? If you go read any of the articles, it's like why FIGS is the next Lululemon, why it's the next Nike, why FIGS is, is a Starbucks for scrubs.”
Shaan notes the in-home Mirror workout device sold to Lululemon for $500 million, a strong exit for a hard hardware-plus-new-behavior business, and frames it as the template a glucose-monitor company like Levels could follow.
“So Mirror got bought by Lululemon yesterday, $500 million. And, you know, on the surface is like one of those really hard businesses. It's like Hardware, new behavior for customers, really expensive. And so you could see all these different ways that it was gonna fail. And this, this female founder who did it and the VCs who backed it, it paid off and it got bought by Lululemon for a really great exit.”
Shaan summarizes Stewart Butterfield's pre-Slack memo. A saddle company shouldn't sell saddles to existing riders; it should sell the joy of horseback riding so more people want to ride and then need a saddle. Lululemon used the same move by spreading the yoga lifestyle rather than pitching $100 pants.
“the reason he says we don't sell saddles here even though we're a saddle company— is that what we need to do is sell the joy of horseback riding. If we can make people want a horseback ride, we can tell them about how awesome it is to ride horses, how it's fun, how it's great exercise, how it feels great to have the wind blowing in your hair, then they'll want to do it. And when they do it, they'll be like, oh shit, I need a saddle.”
Steal thisIf your category is small, grow the category by selling the lifestyle, then sell your product to the newcomers you created.