YouSaid · the spoken record

Andy Katz-Mayfield

lines on the record: 129
first: 2023-06-12
most recent: 2023-06-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We started digging into it pretty quickly, if I remember correctly. And I think we did a couple things. I think one, we started to truly understand the industry. What is the structure of the industry? Who makes razor blades? How big are these companies? How profitable are they? And what was cool was interesting is like, you know, Gillette, who had dominated the industry, had sold a proctor& Gamble for like over $50 billion. Before they sold, they would report their kind of financials. They were like one of the most profitable CPG companies ever built. And so we kind of looked at that like, huh, they're making a lot, a lot, a lot of profit. Like, you know, the reason that they're upcharging so much is because they're so profitable. Like they really truly have figured that out in this market, how to just.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was sitting at work and Andy G chats me. It felt to me like the early days of Warby Parker when I was like, oh, I just want a pair of glasses, you know, that are great that don't cost very much. And so I think his experience resonated. And I was like, let's go look into this. Like, this is exciting. And I think, you know, the first conversation we had was, I think, about the brand and being able to deliver high quality product at good value. And then a lot on like direct-to-consumer. Like, we felt like that was an exciting channel and opportunity to go and get to engage with people. Like the one thing that I learned at Warby, or one of the things I learned at Warby was like, it was an amazing place to have direct dialogue with customers. And the cool thing about shaving is that it was going to be a repeat purchase. And so you're going to have multiple bites at the Apple to get to know people and try to sort of tailor an experience to them, which at the time was exciting. And I think would enable us to bypass at least to start a lot of the existing industry dynamics.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I could have bought sort of a cheap disposable product, but I'm taking a knife to my face. I care about quality. And so the light bulb sort of clicked for me that, hey, there is a single player that really dominates this industry. And that was also true of Warby Parker. And one of the reasons why prices were so inflated is that there was effectively a monopolist. And so I immediately drew some similarities in my mind from an industry standpoint to Werby. And I was thinking about it that night and sent a note to Jeff and said, hey, I just had this experience last night. What do you think about shaving or grooming as another category that might be ripe for disruption. But that was the beginning of the dialogue and the idea.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not resonant a little bit inauthentic to me as a consumer. And then I get my razor blades. I go to the cashier. I check out. I pay $25 for four cartridges effectively, which I knew I was getting ripped off and getting taken advantage of, but you're sort of trapped is a pretty negative reaction.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I was driving home from work. I stopped at a drugstore, actually right around the corner from where I'm sitting right now on 14th in Wiltshire in Santa Monica. And I knew I needed to buy razor blades because I needed to shave the next morning. I think I had a meeting or something like that. And I had run out. And I went into the drugstore. The product was locked away. And still to this day, oftentimes razor blades are locked away and they're locked away because they get shoplifted all the time and they get shoplifted all the time because they're extraordinarily expensive. So I'm wandering around the store looking for an associate to come open the case, which I'm kind of like this is sort of an absurd experience. I'm not buying, you know, a $5,000 diamond bracelet or something like that. I'm buying Razorblades. And as I'm waiting for this associate to come and unlock it, I'm looking at.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So October 2011, Andy, you get an idea for what would become this business we're about to talk about. Tell me how that would happen.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember we had lunch, I think, in Boston 2010, early 2011. I think at that point it was kind of like a year into Charles Bank, and I think I was like, hey, I think I'm going to do something else entrepreneurial at some point. I think you may just graduated. I probably don't have the dates totally right, but you were like, yeah, I'm thinking about stuff too.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, we would talk occasionally. He came out and visited at Stanford when they did this Warby Parker trunk show. And I did think that what Warby was doing was interesting and unique. So I kind of had that in the back of my mind that the idea of building a brand, launching it direct to consumer, obviously that's not such a novel idea in 2023, but it was a pretty novel idea in 2010, 2011.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you are at working back at this private equity. Andy, you are, this is now 2011. You've graduated from school. You're living in LA. Were you guys, I mean, were you in touch? Just generally to kind of shoot the breeze about ideas”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, I don't know. It was never like a thing that I actually had never a real life scenario that I had to contemplate. Charles Banks' main offices are in Boston, where I grew up, and I always thought I'd move back to Boston. And I think only after having the Warby Parker experience did I realize that I actually might be happier doing something else professionally. Warby Parker changed my life in that way.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Like when Netflix was sending DVDs back and forth to each other, like, ah, that's Interesting idea. And David kind of came up with the idea independently, and we both got together in a meeting and we're like, we should do Netflix. And he's like, I totally think we should do Netflix. And that ended up becoming a really important part of Warby Parker. Today we have a home try-on program where you can try on five pairs of glasses for free. And that enabled, I think, people to feel comfortable getting to try them before they bought them online.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was awesome. I mean, we would get to go to professors at the end of class. Like, I know we just did a case on Coke and Pepsi, but we really need your help in terms of how do you price eyeglasses. How do we think about what the right price is and how we make margin and how we deliver people great value and how we could sell glasses online, but also give people the chance to try them on? And I remember one of our professors being like, why don't you just do Netflix?”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so you guys pulled some money together, and from what I remember, Neil and Dave when they were on the show a few years ago, I mean, you guys had all these great resources on campus. You had business school professors and people with experience starting businesses. So you were asking lots of people for advice.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had an interesting situation. I worked at Charles Bank, as we mentioned. They had paid for me to go to business school. And then I had agreed to come back afterwards for a couple years. And so I had business school paid for it. So what we did, what I did was took out loans that otherwise I would have used to pay for business school and then use whatever extra capital we had to start to fund Wormie Berker. Wow.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So for me, the journey at Warby started when I was sitting around after class with Neil one day and Dave walked up to us and said, what do you guys think of the idea of selling glasses online? And at the time, I was wearing prescription glasses that I'd had for many years. And I was like, oh, I would love a pair of glasses that, you know, sort of well made that spoke to who I like the sort of fashion statements that I would want to make. We're a representation of who I am. that I could get at a much better price. And Neil was just sitting there being like, you could totally do that. Like the reason that glasses are so expensive is because, yeah, the industry has been dominated by a couple companies and there's a significant markup between sort of the cost to make the products and then the cost that they're sold for pretty quickly four of us and Neil and Dave, our other co-founder, Andy Hunt and I got together and started working on Warby.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Four of you guys. You were all students at Penn. And tell me how you, like, I mean, from your perspective, how did it start?”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so let me kind of dive into this with you, Jeff, because as you mentioned, you were part of the founding team of Warby Parker. And we told the story on the show many years ago, Neil Blumenthal and David Gilboa were on the show talking about Founding the company, which was started at Penn. You were all business students. It was like, I think four of you are.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we talked a bunch. I remember seeing Andy back in New York when we were both back on break. And I remember actually sending him, you know, when I was at Wharton, we started working on Warby Parker. And in the early days, I was just looking for advice. And I remember sending him like a very early version of our business plan for Warby Parker. Literally, like I send Andy this business plan and I get like a markup red pen version back being like, not sure about this one. Here's a question I'd have. And so, yeah, I think we were always kind of in touch.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, agreed. All right, so you guys become friends, and your career paths kind of merge. I mean, you both were bane for a while. You worked there for a while, and then you both go to another, like a private equity group called Charles Bank in New York. And then you both go to business school, different ones. Jeff, you went to Wharton and Andy, you went to Stanford. And did you guys keep in touch while you were at different business schools?”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And seeing Andy and being like, yeah, being like, hey, we're kind of in the same experience together. What's up? I'm Jeff. And we just kind of got to know each other then. And then there were 10 people in our intern class. And a bunch of us became like pretty good friends.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That in order to make their idea work, they had to figure out how to buy their own razorblade factory. Jeff Rader and Andy Katz Mayfield grew up three towns away from each other in the suburbs of Boston, but they didn't meet until around 2004 when they were both still in college and wound up in the same internship program at the consulting firm Bain& Company.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Making a razor that literally shaves a layer of skin off your face or legs or underarms and does it deftly and precisely is really hard, so hard that there are just a handful of factories around the world in very specific countries that have the technical know-how to do this. For starters, you need specialized steel, and that steel has to be milled and ground with such precision to make sure it doesn't cut someone's face off. And another thing, most of those factories are either owned by Gillette or they have no capacity to make razors for a new brand. And when Jeff and Andy decided to enter this industry, they had no idea the obstacles they were about to face. And like all great founder stories, these guys were, well, pretty naive, which may have worked to their advantage, so much so that they soon realized”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cartridges sold globally have the name Gillette on them. But the reason its market share has dropped over the past decade has to do largely with two upstart brands, Dollar Shave Club and Harry's. Both of these brands pioneered a direct to consumer model that made it easy to order razors and shaving cream online. And they did it sort of under the nose of the big players who still prefer to sell their products in retail stores. Now this is not an anti-Gillette episode. In fact, I love their razors. They're pretty great. But for a long time, Gillette had no competitors and their profit margin on razors was massive. But in 2012, two friends, Jeff Rader and Andy Catz Mayfield thought they might be able to offer an alternative, a high quality razor for maybe up to half the price of a Gillette, except there's one massive challenge”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sometimes being David can be a huge advantage, especially when Goliath isn't paying attention. Airbnb is a great example. They kind of just snuck into the hotel and hospitality industry without any of the big players noticing. Can you imagine if Marriott or Hilton came up with a similar model when Airbnb was just a three-man operation? They'd probably have crushed it. But the reality is, big corporations don't always have the flexibility to move quickly. And under the right circumstances, a savvy entrepreneur can strike just at the right moment. This is sort of what happened in the shaving industry. For most of the past few decades, there was really only one player, Gillette. At one point, Gillette had about seventy percent market share. And to be fair, Gillette is still pretty dominant, close to fifty percent of all razors and cars.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I mean, when you made a commitment to buy a million razors from these guys, did you have millions of dollars at that point to give to them? Welcome to How I Built This show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. Guy Raz, and I'm on the show today how two friends took on one of the biggest companies in the world to launch Harry's, a shaving brand that started online and is now a leader in the category.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And their tired ideas rest in peace. This is how we work now. Visit upwork.com to get hiring talented professionals today. We hear a lot about pivots on how I built this, how a simple change in perspective can create a whole new opportunity. And this made me think of a conversation I recently had with Keenan Thompson, who's the longest running cast member of Saturday Night Live ever twenty seasons. And I asked him, what if one day, instead of performing on SNL, you were given the keys to run SNL, you will definitely want to hear his answer. Check out my interview with Keenan Thompson over on my other podcast, The Great Creators. Just search for the great creators with Guy Ross wherever you listen to podcasts. And now on to today's show.”
2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2023-06-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Harry’s Razors: Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT