Venture Everywhere Podcast: Sophia Edelstein with Jules Ehrhardt
Jules Ehrhardt, LP in Everywhere Ventures, catches up with Sophia Edelstein, co-founder and CEO of Pair Eyewear, on Episode 8: Framing the Future
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Sophia Edelstein is the co-founder and co-CEO of Pair Eyewear, the first direct-to-consumer, customizable eyewear brand reimagining the experience for those who wear glasses. With Pair, adults and children can quickly and easily switch up the style of their glasses in a snap. Sophia is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and on the Inc. Magazine Female Founders 100 list.
This interview is hosted by Jules Ehrhardt, partner at FKTRY, a Creative Capital Studio, and an LP in Everywhere Ventures (previously The Fund). In this interview, Sophia and Jules explore Pair’s three-pronged approach to marketing, attracting new customers organically and methodically, and retaining customers from the first purchase. Learn about using personalization as the value prop and putting sustainability and accessibility at the forefront. Listen till the end for Sophia and her cofounder’s road trip to settle on a new home base for their startup!
If you liked this episode, please give us a rating wherever you found us and be sure to subscribe to Venture Everywhere. To learn more about our work, visit Everywhere.vc and ideas.everywhere.vc on Substack. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for regular updates and news.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jenny Fielding
Hi and welcome to the everwhere podcast. We're a global community of founders and operators who have come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that: founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. Hope you enjoy the episode.
Jules Ehrhardt
All right, Sophia, pleasure to see you. My name is Jules Ehrhardt. I'm an LP in The Fund and founder of FKTRY, Creative Capital studio. I worked a lot with startups, so great to meet you as someone who's part of The Fund family. Sophia, tell us a bit about yourself and Pair Eyewear to lead us into this conversation for the next half hour. Please, just basic background.
Sophia Edelstein
Absolutely. Thanks, Jules. So I'm Sophia Edelstein and I'm one of those co-CEOs and co-founders of Pair Eyewear. We're a technology enabled global eyewear company focused on bringing personalization to the $140 billion eyecare market. We design, manufacture everything in house and sell glasses that are incredibly dynamic, so that you can switch your style and design on a daily basis just like you do the rest of your clothes and your accessories.
Jules Ehrhardt
Great. And you obviously, you've achieved a great deal of success and The Fund's very proud of you in our portfolio and an investment. It would be great to start with where you are currently at. You know, what level of sales and scale, number of employees. And then we'll go backwards a little bit and pick that apart, understand your journey and see what we can learn and share with other people, if that's good. So if you could give us kind of a playback of you know, where the business is at today, and then we'll go backwards if that's cool?
Sophia Edelstein
Absolutely. So today's business. We're around 125 people across three offices, HQ is here in New York. We do all of our manufacturing out of a facility in Irvine, California that we own. And then we have a third office in Nashville. The company has been growing incredibly rapidly. I can't speak to sales numbers. But we grew over 2x last year, over 10x the year before. We'd launched to market only three years ago. So it's been an incredible journey. We've raised a little over 73 million to date.
Jules Ehrhardt
Fascinating. Yeah. And you, you and your co founder, obviously met at Stanford, which I'd love to get into a little bit. Could you share a little bit about - you didn't know each other before then? Is that that's where this kind of idea sparked, yeah?
Sophia Edelstein
It's sparked from our friendship. Yeah. So Nathan and I, we actually met our second week of Stanford freshman year. We were in rival freshman dorms, we were studying like completely different things. He was studying mechanical engineering, and I was studying human biology and actually on a pre med track. And it wasn't until our senior year when Nathan and I were hanging out, we had become at this point, best friends. We were best friends throughout our entire undergraduate years at Stanford. But it was during our senior year where one day we were literally just talking about his experience of wearing glasses. He has worn glasses his entire life since he was around seven years old.
Sophia Edelstein
And was telling me that his little brother at the time, who was 11, had to get glasses for the first time. And his little brother is someone who is absolutely obsessed with sneakers and clothes. He could name you know, the brand of every single t shirt he was wearing, this kid owned like 20 pairs of sneakers. And he went to the eyewear store and was incredibly disappointed that he couldn't find anything that actually reflected his personality and style. And he was left with this like incredibly boring pair of glasses that felt more like a medical device and less like an accessory. So it started us on this journey of really thinking about eyewear and thinking about why no one had ever redesigned the product to actually make it a form of self expression. So we started asking ourselves, can we redesign eyewear to actually make it something that you're thinking about on a daily basis? And in doing so, can we actually create a better business model with higher margins and higher lifetime value than what we saw out there, in both the private and public companies at the time?
Jules Ehrhardt
Great. And at Stanford, obviously, it's a bit of a founders factory, excuse the pun. And you had facilities and support programs there to kind of delve over your to delve into entrepreneurship. And actually some materials labs, you could actually prototype, is that right?
Sophia Edelstein
We did, yeah. So it wasn't - I think it's less common. You see less companies coming out of undergrad and graduate school. I think a lot come out of the GSB because there's probably more resources and more focus. But even in undergrad, you do have access to resources. Because Nathan was a mechanical engineering major, we had access to this like incredible building called the product realization lab, where we actually hand built our first pair of customizable glasses. We were laser cutting them, we like ground them down ourselves to actually prove out the mechanism. And that was, you know, essentially the first prototype.
Jules Ehrhardt
Okay, fascinating. And you obviously then - you found this market insight that in terms of the target market. And there's a story of you reached the first 400 families years ago that you interviewed. Did you conduct that yourselves and was that really - did that really firm up the idea to go and chase it?
Sophia Edelstein
We conducted ourselves. So we, at this point, we were joking that we were spending more time on Pair than Stanford. But we would go to any big store in Palo Alto. We were in the Apple Store, we go to the American Girl store, we're trying to interview families, we go to East Palo Alto, we started calling family and friends, just to hear more about their experience wearing glasses. And what we kept hearing. And what kept getting stuck in our head was that people were looking for a version of themselves in the product. So how can I wear something that actually matches my style on a daily basis? Or I'm a huge fan of X sports team, would be so cool if I was able to go to a game and actually wear glasses that match the team colors or the designs. Or a child would tell us that he's a huge fan of like Superman, and he wants to be able to, you know, pop on Superman top frames and feel like the superhero. So we we felt like we had unlocked this really strong customer need and desire that just wasn't being met by the physical product or any of the brands that were out there.
Jules Ehrhardt
And then then the journey then - did you both go your separate ways and have this in the background before you really leaned into it? What was that journey after graduating and then seeing whether you're going to make this the thing thing?
Sophia Edelstein
So we actually both just started it directly out of undergrad. So Pair was our first time job.
Jules Ehrhardt
So, obviously, so you took this idea into the real world, and you managed to convince quite a compelling first employee to join the mission. Tell us about that.
Sophia Edelstein
We did. Our first employee, it was actually a cold call LinkedIn message. We knew at the time after graduating, that if we wanted to turn this idea into a reality, we had to find someone who is the best of the best at making eyewear. Because neither Nathan or I had really any experience there. So we cold call message Lee Zaro, who was the former head of product from Warby Parker. He had been there for the first five years and helped them to develop pretty much all of their product today. We reached out to Lee and he was incredibly enthused by our proposition of just creating a pair of glasses that was actually more dynamic, that would allow a customer to think about their style and design on a daily basis. And actually change it to match and customize the way that their product looked to their favorite color, design, and personality. So Lee joined originally as a consultant to help us develop the product, and then joined full time. And he's still our full time Head of Product Development.
Jules Ehrhardt
Oh, what a great story. And then you kind of pivoted or expanded into the adult section, tell us a bit about that transition. And what that kind of represents in terms of sales. And what that was feeling - having that initial thesis and you know, tapping into a probably even more compelling wider market.
Sophia Edelstein
Yeah, super interesting. So when we originally launched Pair to market over three years ago, we were originally in the children's space. We thought this was a great beachhead market, because when you're a child, your favorite color changes on a daily basis. So why shouldn't your glasses? And families and children absolutely love the product, the reception of the market was incredibly positive. And when we started looking into the data, we started seeing a really interesting trend, which was that - adults started buying our children's size frames because they wanted the products badly. So instead of moving away from this and saying, you know, we're not ready yet, we actually do the opposite. We said, Okay, what if we take our biggest sized brands and we quickly whip up a landing page and whip up an ad experience to sell our largest sites kits frames to small fitting adults? Like I wonder what would happen? And it absolute literally exploded. Sales, you know more than 10x overnight. Adults were absolutely obsessed with the product, they were coming back more frequently to buy top frames, they couldn't get enough of them, they were absolutely addicted. And before we knew it, we knew that we had to actually launch a full adult line. So over two years ago now, we officially launched our full adult collection. And today, adults are over 98% of our customers.
Jules Ehrhardt
Wow, what I get a sense from when your brand is it still has that kind of sense of playfulness, which for adults and kids alike. So we'd love to take a little bit of a dive into the brand. Talk a little bit about your kind of go to market? You've achieved a lot of success in terms of that, you know, on media. Shark Tank being one aspect of that, which is a route or route I should say, of one of our other LPs and in The Fund, Josh Hix took with Plated. Tell us a bit about how you got that exposure, you're on Oprah, on Shark Tank. And what that did for you. I'd love to then after that, we'll talk a bit about that kind of more structured, kind of paid side and your marketing approach.
Sophia Edelstein
Shark Tank was incredible for the brand. It was - we were still very early stage, we were only in the children's market. But it really just started increasing our growth substantially overnight, and just putting us in front of our core customer at the time, which was American families. And the beauty of Pair, too, is that our product and our brand has always been very affordable and very accessible. So Shark Tank was a perfect audience. Our product is $60, including prescription lenses, each top frame is $25. So Shark Tank was an amazing avenue to really launch the brand. And after Shark Tank is really when we started growing incredibly quickly. And that growth just accelerated after we launched adults.
Jules Ehrhardt
So anything along that journey, it obviously it's made for television, and how much tactical support other than you know, the marketing and the platform it gives you - but how much tactical support does one get from from a from a shark who might invest? And what do you do with that?
Sophia Edelstein
Unfortunately, I can't talk at all to kind of what happens post Shark Tank. But during the show, you work with the team to hone your pitch. But everything is live - you only get one shot. So everything is on Shark Tank is real. Once you start pitching, the camera doesn't stop rolling.
Jules Ehrhardt
Fascinating. Okay, well, this is already tough enough presenting to GPs and funds. So doing that in live television, or live in one shot - must be a hell of a lot of pressure. Fascinating. Okay, so obviously we talked about you got this fantastic coverage, kind of natural coverage to be on media. You've got a really fascinating approach to kind of paid or, you know, the social social channels you're in. Having had a look, obviously TikTok is definitely by far and away the most active. Could you tell us a bit about your success on leveraging TikTok. The balance between posting your own content, user generated content, and how you think of, you know, TikTok versus Instagram maybe?
Sophia Edelstein
Absolutely. So we think of user generated content and our own content almost as one and the same. So what we realized early days was that - any type of user generated content style created performed 100x better than us than anything that looked like it was performed in a studio or highly edited or highly curated. We realize that our customers or future customers really want to see real people interacting with the product, they want to understand why you Jules are wearing the top frames that you're showing them in the video. And how you utilize Pair, and why you have an emotional connection to it? And they want to see you in your natural setting. They don't want to see you, you know, on, you know, a million dollar photoshoot set, you know, looking picture perfect. They want to see like you do when you you know, wake up on a Monday morning. So for us, we really leaned into that in our marketing strategy.
Sophia Edelstein
So for us today, over 30% of our acquisition actually comes from TikTok and that's all through our in house TikTok program, which is threefold. The first is just organic brand. So we have a full team in house that's just focused on organic TikTok content that we create and reposting user generated content. The second is our in house influencer program. So we have a team of three full time people that work on recruiting and working with hundreds of different micro influencers a month, mostly on Tik Tok, but a little bit on YouTube and Instagram as well. So every month we work with hundreds of creators, they can be incredibly small from you know, 10s of 1000s of followers up to millions. And we create organic user generated content for them. We only work with people who actually wear eyeglasses, because we found that really making the content incredibly organic is super important. And also if they love the product, they're just going to wear the glasses all the time in all of their videos. So it helps of course, so working - works with them in creating this content. And then the third part is we take the content that performs best organically and then we utilize it in ads. On TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and even TV. We now actually adopt our TikTok creative into a form that we can use for TV commercials as an OTT.
Jules Ehrhardt
Fascinating. Yeah, I mean, you've obviously really clearly leaned into it. I think the kind of more informal nature of TikTok kind of definitely aligns with that, and they're very much with your brand.
Sophia Edelstein
Yeah, with TikTok content and creative, it's just so important to really get the volume. And to test and iterate. We now know multiple different variables that are more likely to lead a piece of content to go viral. One of the most interesting things is that we realized that if we have a snap, which is essentially the top frame snapping onto the base stream in the first 25 seconds, it's significantly more likely to go viral. So now every piece of content we create has to have that snapping motion immediately.
Jules Ehrhardt
Interesting. Well, let's get into brand a little bit because you know, you're talking about the snap, that it was a branded moment. Your brand is very strong, it resonates. Clearly it worked. You know, it started with the kind of segment of kids and expanded to adults before we've retained that kind of spirit. You just spoke about the snap and you know, branded moments are critical, especially when you have maybe 10-20 seconds to get someone's attention on social media. Tell us a little bit about how you did build your brand. You said you worked with - initially your first employee was a consultant. How did you develop the brand? Was that in-house, did you get any help? What was what was that process like?
Sophia Edelstein
Yeah, so in house, we started a lot of the brand work just really trying to understand why people love Pair? WWhat are the different factors and variables around that? And through surveys and research, we realized that the number one factor for why people bought Pair was because of our customizability. Personalization is the real value prop that drives people to converting on our site and drives people to Pair. People want a product that allows them to feel like themselves and gives them the opportunity to change as their, you know, ever evolving creative spirit changes. So we very much embrace that: you're one person today, and you could be a completely different person tomorrow. And your eyewear can actually adapt with you without having to shell out $400 for a pair of glasses every time you changed your mind.
Sophia Edelstein
And then the second was affordability and accessibility. So people loved us because we weren't coastal elite, we were an accessible brand. It didn't matter if you were under $100k household income, or over $300k. You could afford our product. And we think that's incredibly important because glasses are, you know, it's a global need, like everyone needs access to affordable vision care. And we want to make sure that we're able to be that global vision provider. And that accessibility, it was really important for us when creating the brand. You mentioned, like the brand is super playful. And we didn't want to lose that childlike creative energy when designing the brand for adults. We think that not taking ourselves too seriously is something that's a fantastic element of the brand. And we want to encourage people to be creative. Because when a top frame is only $25, you have the ability to explore a design that you might not buy if you were buying a pair of glasses to wear every day. So our customers can, you know, be a little bit out there one day, and wear a cheetah print top frame, or wear their favorite Marvel character, because it's something that's temporary and ever changing.
Jules Ehrhardt
Interesting. Talk a little bit about, you know, the approach to sustainability, as well as you know, if we go back to brand, you know, people want to spend money on products they believe are doing good in the world and make ethical choices. Talk a bit about that program as well, where you're, you know, if you buy a pair of Pair, that you're helping someone who might not have access to those kinds of resources or eyewear in less fortunate situations.
Sophia Edelstein
Yeah, absolutely, I can start there and work backwards. So from the day we incorporated Pair, Nathan and I realized that we wanted to create meaningful impact both here in the US, with providing people with a better option for their eyewear. But also globally, we realized that there was millions of people around the world that just didn't have access to vision care at all. So from day one, we actually partnered with this incredible organization called the EYElliance, where for every pair of glasses that we sell, we donate a percentage of the proceeds to provide a child in the world that need access to glasses with a pair of glasses. And it's been an incredible program that I think is really meaningful for our customer base as well, because we're able to educate them on this problem and they're really solving a need. But in addition to that, we wanted to take it one step further.
Sophia Edelstein
As we were developing our licensing strategy. Quickly, Pair started onboarding all of the biggest licensing partners in the world. We're today the provider for the NBA, the NHL, the MLB. We create glasses and top frames for all of these major organizations - Harry Potter and Marvel and DC. We also wanted to make sure that we were able to partner with organizations and causes that people really cared about. So in addition to our Pair for a pair program, we also have a nonprofit partnership component where we partner with nonprofits that we think are really meaningful to our customer base. So we do a collection every year where we partner with GLSEN, which is an incredible nonprofit organization that supports LGBTQ youth. And we do a pride reflection with them. This year, we did an amazing collection around mental health with Lady Gaga's nonprofit called the Born This Way Foundation. When everything started happening in Ukraine, we were able to partner with an amazing organization to create a collection in support of Ukraine, where we provided over $100,000, actually, to refugees at the time. And this was able, we were able to go from idea to actual collection in as little as two weeks because of how sustainable our manufacturing model is.
Sophia Edelstein
So when we were thinking through how to actually create a next generation consumer company that is sustainable at its core, it really came down to the main problem that consumer companies have, which is that they're simply not sustainable, because they're holding so much inventory. And when a collection, you know, goes from winter to spring, they end up with all of this excess inventory that they're putting in outlets or trying to sell on sale. So we wanted to see if there was a way in which we could actually change the way we manufacture products to both have higher margins, but also be more sustainable at its core. So that led to the development of our in-house proprietary manufacturing technology, where we actually manufacture all of our products on demand. So if you were to go to the site today and order, a Harry Potter top frame, that design would be created for you same day and sent out to you. So we don't have to hold excess inventory, which just overall really gets to the you know, the main core problem for why a lot of consumer goods companies aren't sustainable.
Jules Ehrhardt
Yeah, that's super interesting. Obviously, you seem to challenge from a production standpoint, getting the product to people quickly, because a lot of consumers would like to make ethical choices. But sadly, due to Amazon and other services, Amazon now, Amazon yesterday, they expect it, you know, within hours. So that's fascinating, you managed to still, you know, have a sustainable production line, but also make sure the consumer can have it as soon as possible, rather than to wait a week, which we normally expect for anything that's made custom.
Sophia Edelstein
Absolutely. And it's very much possible since bringing all of our manufacturing in house on both the top frame side and the lens side, our margin profile has increased by five percentage points. So I think there is like a, you know, generally there's a big misconception that like outsourcing, manufacturing is always cheaper. But if you're able to do it in an innovative sustainable way, there are ways to do it and still, you know, increase your margin profile.
Jules Ehrhardt
Yeah, I mean, that's the best way you know, if you make ethical choices and the most profitable choices as well, that's an absolute win-win. Because as motivated as as you might be, as a founder, your investors and others might not have the same - share the same mission. So congratulations on solving that Rubik's Cube.
Jules Ehrhardt
Love to talk a little bit about about your personal journey, a bit about New York and you're in California. Before we do that, though, talk a bit about your setup. Obviously, there's a big discussion now about return to office, distributed teams, remote teams. Talk a little bit about your setup. And you know, I guess let's talk about the what you did through the pandemics. Tremendously challenging to run a company through a pandemic, from regards to supply chain, but also to live as a human in a pandemic and build a company. So can you touch a bit about you know, your your current setup with remote versus distributed and what the pandemic did?
Sophia Edelstein
So we've had to really find solutions for every type of employee base because we have three physical offices here in the US. We have New York, which is where a lot of people and HQ sit. A lot of our corporate employees. We also have some employees that are fully remote across the US. We have an office in Irvine, which is our 20,000 square foot manufacturing facility which has to be chugging and running all the time. So you know, even during the pandemic, can't turn that off, we have to really figure out solutions to make sure everyone is happy and safe and healthy and still producing.
Jules Ehrhardt
And you were near shore, obviously rather than off shore which was impacted by people with suppliers overseas.
Sophia Edelstein
Absolutely. Yeah, impacted by supplies overseas. We got very lucky though, that we weren't heavily impacted during the pandemic with any of the shutdowns. Eyewear, it wasn't as impacted as other industries. So we were super lucky there that we didn't actually see any delays on production, but that definitely wasn't the norm for most companies. And then we have a third office in Nashville, which we actually opened up during the pandemic recently, around a year ago and that's where our customer service hub in the US sits.
Jules Ehrhardt
Yeah, southern hospitality is always a good a good vibe when you when you really have to make a call. We spoke a little bit about physical space, you know, your, some of your notional competitors are some of the same people in the same space. What's your position on kind of DTC versus retail. Both your own stores or being stocked on, you know stocked at the you know Walmart's and Targets of the world? What's what's the thinking there?
Sophia Edelstein
Yeah, I mean, we think both are absolutely massive markets and super important. I mean, even if you look at eyewear, ecommerce is the fastest growing sector of the eyewear market, but retail is still by far where the majority of Americans are buying their glasses. It's still over, I believe over 75% of Americans still buy their classes in retail. So it's a massive market. And we would be incredibly naive if we said, you know, we don't ever are going to have any kind of like physical retail strategy. Because on the other side, as well, like E commerce, as everyone knows, it's been incredibly, you know, increasingly more expensive for companies on the whole to acquire customers online. We've been able to counteract that with a lot of diversification and a lot of creative testing. So luckily, we haven't seen huge impacts, because of iOS or any of the recent changes on like large marketing platforms. The both are super important. And I think like some of the best public companies are ones that have both a retail and an E commerce arm because they can balance each other out, right. You can discover a brand in retail and then continue to shop on E comm.
Sophia Edelstein
For us, we've been able to continue growing slowly on E comm. Really, because of our business model and how retention-focused it is. So for us when we acquire a customer, we're pay back on first purchase. But in addition to that, our business model almost looks like a subscription model, even though we aren't. Because we drop Limited Edition collections every week, which get our customers to come back to purchase more repeat orders, which are on average around $90 when they come back to purchase more top frames. So we have this model, which is highly predictive. So we know after you become a customer today, when we think you'll come back, how much you'll buy for three years out. Which for us makes e comm a fantastic, you know, way to run our business because we get customers coming back to our site every week. So not necessary. I think for companies that are more one and done retail, you know, mattress, for instance, right? You're going to spend a large amount of money up front. I think retail becomes increasingly more important when you don't have that repeat buyer coming back every week. But even for us, we're thinking a lot about the retail space, we're actually going to have some really exciting retail news coming up next quarter. Can't speak to it just yet. But it's something we're thinking a lot about. And we think we can provide a really fun retail experience for customers and eyewear where's typically it's pretty medical feeling. You go into a store, there's not much color. It's not a very fun experience. So we're excited to hopefully one day, you know, add a pop of color into that.
Jules Ehrhardt
How exciting! So you studied in California. Are you a New York native? Why are you in New York? What are you feeling about the energy and ecosystem of the city versus the West Coast?
Sophia Edelstein
I'm a New York native. So I've always definitely been biased towards New York, I grew up here on the Upper West Side, actually, I was born in Chinatown grew up on the Upper West Side. I come from a family of artists, my dad's an artist. I've just always loved the creative energy here in New York. I went out to Stanford to study for undergrad, which is where I met Nathan. And to be fair and have, like kind of like an equitable process, we did a little bit of a road trip, when we were first deciding where to base ourselves on the company. Where we spent a good amount of time in San Francisco, we then spent a lot of time in Los Angeles. And then lastly, but not least, we came to New York. We ended up staying here. I was biased all along. But I needed to give Nathan like a chance to really, you know, scope out the three cities.
Sophia Edelstein
And I think what really, you know, made New York seal the deal was just the community that we found here, especially in the startup consumer space. It was super strong. We immediately became friends with a lot of consumer founders who were two to three stages ahead of us. And they ended up being some of our most trusted advisors. Even today. There was one founder in particular where we were able to even work out of his office for the first year. And that was just so incredible, because we were able to be surrounded in this environment of a different consumer company that was, you know, three, four years ahead of us and really see, okay, what what are we working towards. And they could help us solve problems that they had solved a few years ago. So that was part of the reason why we just love New York so much. And then we also knew that for us in hiring, we wanted to get a super diversified employee base, both in terms of skill sets, but also backgrounds and diversity. And New York was just like, the most amazing place for that.
Jules Ehrhardt
Yeah, fantastic. Can't can't agree more the kind of this city resonates with a certain frequency. And if that's your frequency, you can really flourish in it. And also, obviously, if you look towards a potential play in retail, and there's no greater city for the sophisticated consumers to test that out than New York. So we're gonna we're gonna we're going to close this out and I just wanted to ask you - You know, obviously, you've gone into adult space. It's potentially busy space, you've got some great opportunities coming in the years ahead, some of which we've touched upon. How do you see kind of the next couple of years as a founder? And as for the company? Love to hear that.
Sophia Edelstein
Yeah. So when we really think about the next five years, the the big question we're trying to solve is how do we take our business model that we have here in the US, and product that's solving a huge need, and bring it across the world? So our goal is to become the next largest global eye care company. And we're really excited to have started embarking on that journey. This year, we opened up our first kind of international region, which was Canada. It's already close to I think 7% of sales. So it's been going incredibly well. So we're now really excited to form partnerships and launch in many different regions globally over the next five years.
Jules Ehrhardt
Awesome. Well, look, I know I know, The Fund is super happy to have you in the portfolio and as part of the community. So it's been a fascinating conversation. Really appreciate your energy and your time. Look forward to meeting for real. Thanks so much for your time.
Sophia Edelstein
Thank you, Jules.
Scott Hartley
Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoyed today's episode. For those of you listening, you might also be interested to learn about everywhere, we’re a first check preseed fund that does exactly that. We invest everywhere. We're a community of 500 founders and operators and we've invested in over 250 companies around the globe. Find us at our website, everywhere.vc on LinkedIn and through our regular founder spotlights on Substack. Be sure to subscribe and we'll catch you on the next episode.