Sounds like you had a pretty nice job at Digitas. Why quit? Did you HATE the 9-5 life?
“Unlike a lot of other entrepreneurs, I wasn’t miserable in my ‘prior’ life—but I had reached an impasse. Advertising people can empathize: You pour your heart into creating and pitching this work, but only a tiny fragment sees the light of day… and what does has passed through so many hands, it barely resembles the idea you had in the first place. I don’t mind long hours and hard work, but I need to see the results of my actions.”

Say… results in the form of tangible bedding.
“I’ve always been into interior design—even wrote a blog about it back in the day. But suddenly I was spending my spare time researching bedding like a creep. I realized: There’s no brand loyalty in the category—no interaction beyond the point of purchase. That felt like an opportunity.”

What else did you want to disrupt about the industry?
“For one, I wanted to dispel the idea that thread count is an indicator of quality, because it’s not. But I was also determined to create a product filling the middle ground between Bed, Bath & Beyond and high end brands like Frette… And if I could do away with synthetics and toxins in the process, all the better.”

So, what did you do?
First, I joined an accelerator, Launchpad, which immediately expanded my network. (Side note: It also gave me a place to work with other entrepreneurs where I didn’t feel like a freak sitting there eating 4AM snacks over my laptop.) But, more importantly, the accelerator helped grow my network… Another helpful thing is that once you get one big investor involved, a lot of other deals will fall into place.”

Any other advice on raising capital?
“Actually stay in touch with people. You’ll have a million meetings where people say, ‘This isn’t a fit for us right now, but keep us in the loop.’ Well, I actually kept them in the loop—would follow up and say this is where we are now, these are the new products we’re launching. And more than a few times those people have ended up investing.”

Any other other last piece of advice? (We’re totally annoying, but you just raised $10M!!!)
“Don’t be afraid to admit when you don’t know something. There were times in meetings, often with investors, where I’d be asked a question I couldn’t answer and would start scrambling all over the place, spouting out gibberish that didn’t mean anything. All you have to do is smile, say you don’t know and offer to get back to them. Trust me: It looks better when you’re honest.”