319: GREATEST HITS: The Biggest Ecommerce Mattress Brand Ever

In this Greatest Hits episode we're revisiting a conversation about market disruption and big goals. JT Marino shares the story of his dream to build a company that would disrupt the mattress industry. JT Marino was the co-founder of Tuft & Needle, and this is his story of bootstrapping his way from nothing to the largest online mattress retailer in the world. JT, who is now the Chief Strategy Officer for SSB Phoenix, joins us to share his incredible story. We talk about why customer-centricity was one of Tuft & Needle’s core principles from the beginning, and the role it played in their eventual merger with Serta Simmons. JT shares his thoughts on the importance, as a founder, of having an intimate understanding of how every aspect of your business works, and why they decided not to take any outside investments when they first started out. This is one of my favorite founder interviews we’ve done and I hope you enjoy it! Episode Highlights 4:58 Introducing JT Marino 6:47 How the friendship and partnership started between the founders of Turf & Needle, JT and Daehee 11:13 How the Tuft & Needle co-founders maintain a strong friendship while running a business together 12:51 How JT’s prior experience with heavily-funded, but unsuccessful, Silicon Valley start-ups influenced Tuft & Needle’s decision to not take outside investments. 17:21 The importance of identifying “the problem” when you’re building a business, and how this led to the creation of Tuft & Needle 19:28 Some of the other principles the Tuft & Needle founders committed to before starting their business 22:11 How JT and Daehee used a problem-solution approach to determine whether they had a product-market fit for Tuft & Needle 27:59 The benefits of being highly involved with and having an intimate understanding of every aspect of the business, from manufacturing to supply chain to marketing 31:30 How Tuft & Needle moved through the pit of sorrow and started to scale 35:12 How a Hacker News blog post contributed to explosive growth of Tuft & Needle 37:51 The importance of customer satisfaction and word-of-mouth to Tuft & Needle’s success, especially when they had a limited advertising budget 39:40 The various channels that helped grow the business over time 42:45 JT's approach to tracking attribution across a variety of channels 45:55 How Tuft & Needle developed advertising techniques and targeting that span across digital and non-digital 50:34 The unconventional reason Tuft & Needle started selling on Amazon 53:39 The Net Promoter Score target T&F; set before making the decision to list on Amazon 56:10 JT’s advice if you’re considering selling on Amazon and the importance of looking at the market picture as you start to grow 59:35 The role customer-centricity played in Tuft & Needle’s decision to merge with Serta 1:06:46 The future of the mattress industry 1:09:48 JT shares his hobbies and what’s in store for him in the next year   Links And Resources Tuft & Needle How to Get Startup Ideas by Paul Graham Blog: How we bootstrapped to the #1 rated mattress on Amazon.com Meet the Warby Parker of Mattresses JT on Twitter: @johnmarino [email protected] The Coalition @a_brawn on Twitter Review or subscribe on iTunes