Not My First Guess When it all goes wrong after the IPO, with former Eve Mattress Co-founder Kuba Wieczorek
Most founders dream of going public- but what happens after you ring the bell, if share prices tank, and the company you used to leap out of bed to run is destroying your mental health?
For anyone who hasn’t heard of Eve mattresses, they were one of the first companies in the UK to offer a mattress in a box- and the countries fastest retail IPO at the time they went public just a couple of years after launching. They disrupted the standard business model of having to invest in retail stores where customers could try before you buy. Their tube adverts still hold records for brand awareness.
On this episode, we talk to Kuba Wieczorek, co-founder of Eve. He’s talked openly about the toll the company took on his mental health, and why he’s much happier running a lifestyle business today- branding agency Kuba and Friends.
In this episode we discuss:
- How Kuba became a co-founder at Eve
- Why IPOing is the biggest thing he’d change if he had his time at Eve again
- Having a mental breakdown he couldn’t legally talk about with friends and family, for fear of insider trading
- What a brand is and isn’t - clue it’s not the logo
- And, which startups should and shouldn’t worry about brand and how to balance when to invest
Links
- Checkout Kuba's new company, Kuba and Friends here