Ep. 257 - David Roger, Founder of Felix Gray, an E-commerce Eyewear Company on Launching a New Category of Eyewear and Other Startup Challenges

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with David Roger, founder of Felix Gray, the e-commerce eyewear company with proprietary blue light filtering technology. David and I talk about the founder's journey of launching a new category of eyewear and the challenges along the way. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help you rethink, reset, and remix yourself and your organization. Each week, we bring the latest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses, as well as the tools, tactics, and trends you'll need to thrive as a new innovator.

Interview Transcript with David Roger, Founder of Felix Gray

Brian Ardinger: [00:00:30] Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have David Roger. He is the founder of Felix Gray, an e-commerce eyewear company with proprietary blue light filtering technology. And he's got quite an interesting story. So welcome to the show, David. 

David Roger: [00:00:57] Thanks so much for having me. 

Brian Ardinger: [00:00:58] Our paths have not crossed until today, but a lot of our common network have in the past. You started your company, Felix Gray in 2016. Let's go back to the beginning and let's talk about how you got involved in becoming an entrepreneur. 

David Roger: [00:01:13] In college, I initially thought I wanted to be a lawyer. That's what I went to school for and by sophomore year I realized I did not want to do that. And I kind of loved this idea of starting businesses. And this is the time where TechCrunch was starting to get really popular, and you'd read a lot of different things and different entrepreneurial things. And it was something really exciting. 

I ended up starting my first business in college, which was a secondary school newspaper. And I had to sell print advertising to local stores and shops and businesses. And if you want to learn how tough selling is, try doing that. 

And then when I left Cornell, I went and joined Venture for America, which is basically Teach for America, but applied to startups and entrepreneurship. Founded by Andrew Yang, who is running for democratic nominee couple of years ago and is now running actually for Mayor in the New York Mayor race. And so that's kind of how I got into entrepreneurship.

Brian Ardinger: [00:02:06] I think you started in Vegas, is that correct? Working with Tony Shay and the Downtown Project. And maybe tell us a little bit about that Vegas Tech Fund and some of the stuff that you've done in there. 

David Roger: [00:02:17] Through Venture for America, they are in partnership with Tony's Downtown Project. And so that's how I got connected with them. I interviewed out there, really bought into the mission, really thought it was an amazing thing to fill a walkable livable downtown area, which is, Vegas is not known for that. It's basically all suburbs. And then essentially the strip, which is a transient first population.

And so, I thought that was an amazing mission. I was part of the biggest tech fund, but my primary job was on their operations team. Basically, when I got there, Tony had put in $350 million of his own money into revitalize the area, and we had no idea if projects that we had going on ranging from a million, to twenty-five million dollars, we're going to make money or lose money. It's kind of the wild west.

And they threw me in, and they said, go figure this out. And so, it was really cool. Great job right out of school. I will say it did mean that I was in front of Excel, building financial models, 12 hours a day. That's when my eyes started to absolutely kill me. I was looking around, looking at everyone else, complaining about the same things our eyes being tired at the end of the day, their eyes being dry, headaches, blurry vision. 

And kind of looked and said, okay, why is this a thing. Everyone I know at work and half the people I know in my friend group that are in different jobs all around the country, why are we all complaining about the same thing? 

That's when I started talking to Optometrists Ophthalmologists.  Learned around what screens produced, which is blue light and glare and basically that caused a lot of these issues that get categorized as digital eye strain. So, if you get filtered blue light, you can eliminate glare. You create this more comfortable experience. 

Brian Ardinger: [00:03:50] I love the genesis of that. But not every new idea becomes a company. And so how did you make that jump from, hey, I've got an individual problem from the standpoint of, you know, my eyes are getting strained from all the work I'm doing on screens to, hey, I think there's something here that I can create a company around?

David Roger: [00:04:08] So the first thing was really recognizing that problem. Right? So, recognize the problem myself and then recognize that problem in a lot of other people. Whether it was people complaining about it firsthand, or me saying, hey, do your eyes ever get exhausted at the end of the day? You ever deal with a headache?

And everyone's saying, yes. You're like, okay, there's something here. So, then I start to understand, okay, what is going on? So that's when I started talking to eye professionals for a better understanding what could be these root causes. And so when I'm talking to ophthalmologists and optometrists they are saying look, screens are a large driver behind this, and particularly what screens produce, light and glare.

And so like, look, you can filter blue light, and you can eliminate glare. You can create a more comfortable experience. There are these glasses out there, they're yellow or orange lenses, and basically, they're going to help. So, I look, and they're not only yellow and orange lenses, but they look like hunting goggles.

And if you put them on your face you look like one of the X Men. And I'm like, I can't wear that, and we'll show this to plenty of other people like, hey, this will solve your problems. They're like, I'm not wearing that. Right. So basically, the idea was okay, well, how do you create something that is functional, but also can look good. 

At the flip side, there were a couple other things in the market at the time, and this is still the case today. But these clear lenses, basically the Optometrist, the Ophthalmologist, the real eyecare professional said this stuff is not really filtering real blue light. It's filtering 2 to 3% of blue light where it actually matters, which produces blue light. It is basically placebo. It's not worth buying. So, what I did then was said, okay, well, how can you marry the fashion function?

How can you create something that has a beautiful frame, but a really functional lens? And that's when I started working through a lot of networking with, with different lens suppliers and ended up developing a proprietary way of filtering blue light that can still have a clear lens. But be highly effective, right?

So, Felix Gray's lens, even today, filters 30% of blue light instead of 2% of blue light at the 455-nanometer range, which is where screens produce blue light. Right. So basically, we filter 15 times more blue light where it's important. And that's why 9 out of 10 people who wear Felix Gray report significant improvement, but that was the genesis.

So, it was okay,...