Five years after we launched our first product, we introduced two in close succession. We’ve been developing our second product, &PILLOW™, for over a year; our third product, &SHEETS™, has been in development since last summer.

Setting prices at Tuft & Needle follows a simple rule: we charge what we need, not what we can. The process is pretty straightforward. We start with what it costs to make a product; then we consider all expenses associated with selling that product (i.e. shipping or customer service). Finally, we consider a fair profit to make on each sale.

Unlike other companies, we don’t start by asking “What is the most that people are willing to pay for this product?” …

Don’t be seduced by an office with ping pong tables and massage chairs.

This article first appeared on Entrepreneur.com on February 16, 2017.

By Dennis Eusebio

It’s 2:13 a.m., roughly a week after my daughter, Maya, was born. I haven’t slept for more than three hours at a time. Complex sentences don’t make sense anymore. Only simple phrases will do: Verb, Noun. Soothe baby. Change diaper. Feed baby.

Seven days was all it took for me to go from productive professional to barely functioning, monosyllabic diaper machine. And yet, for all the difficulties, I consider myself lucky. If I were like most employees in the United States workforce, seven days is all I would have — I’d have to be right back to work the following week. If my company was like most in the country, I’d be burdened by two kinds of guilt: The guilt of having left work for seven days to take care of my family, combined with the guilt of having to go back to work and leave my family. …

Why Every Industry Needs A Black Sheep

We started our mattress company knowing zilch about mattresses. All we knew, based on our own experiences as customers, was that mattress shopping sucked and that there had to be a better way.

The mattress industry hadn’t changed in decades. It was the ultimate forgotten corner of the retail world: showrooms of over-complicated products layered with dozens of fancy-sounding ingredients, staffed by salespeople who were like used car salesmen, offering tricky promotions and high-pressure tactics. There was no price transparency and no way to comparison shop. And no one had any incentive to change the way things were. …

We Said No To Venture Capital So We Could Say Yes To Everything We Care About

When we first decided to build our company, it was in the beating heart of Silicon Valley. At the time, we were both working at an early-stage software company, flush with funding and fantasizing about making millionaires out of all of its employees. Only now, with the benefit of hindsight, can we fully understand that this was a kind of mass delusion.

There’s a looming consensus on so-called business truths that infects new ventures. Take, for instance, the deep push to raise VC money. …

This is not the essay we thought we’d be writing.

In fact, when we first met and decided to create a company, it was in the beating heart of Silicon Valley — the place where phrases like “we should start a massive company” don’t sound totally ridiculous.

At the time, we were both working at an early-stage software company, flush with funding and fantasizing about making millionaires out of all of its employees. On the surface, it was the dream: we worked with a group of like-minded, hard-working people, on an app whose success would, if it didn’t change the world, at least make us rich. We worked more hours per week than seems humanly possible. …