Matteo Franceschetti on Eight Sleep's F1 cooling gloves, investing in 20 YC companies per batch, and the dearth of consumer hardware

Thank you so much. Have fun out there. It's great having you on. We'll talk to you soon. All right, let's bring in the next crew. We are at YC demo day. Hey, how you doing this? It's time to talk sleep scores. Let's talk sleep. How did you sleep last night? It was brutal. I was I was at the Rosewood.

The Rosewood doesn't have eight sleep. This is a big problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 90% of the guests are good. Good to see you. What's happening? I want to talk I want to talk F1. I want to talk F1. Uh you just did a interview with Charlotte Clair. Uh break it down. What did you learn from him?

Uh his obsession for uh every single detail in his uh preparation. He goes for two weeks at the mountain in January to prepare for the season. Elevation elevation. Elevation. And then he does every sort of skiing for like eight hours a day. And then he goes to the gym and then he brings the pod.

He sleeps on the pod while he's there. there is when he really prepares the season. Yeah. Um and and then his obsession for every single detail when when he travels, all the gadgets that he brings with himself from, you know, devices for recovery, ice bath, obviously the pod, the neck training.

Is he doing the leg compression thing? That's a big one. He does. And I don't know if you saw it. So we So Charles was talking to us about the fact that uh when he's on the grid, it's really hot. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of athletes in Formula 1 now, they use these vests, cooling vests. But they don't really work.

And so the way you want to really cool your body, uh, you need to cool the palm of your hands. Oh, interesting. And so I was with my co-ounder, Max, and we said, "What if we build cooling gloves for you? " He said, "Oh, that would be interesting. " So we built the gloves in 3 days. No way.

And then one of us, one of our people, they flew to meet him in Barca. In Barca, there were like 35° Celsius. It was super hot. And so Charles started using these gloves, cooling gloves that we built for him.

And then as he goes in the box, uh, Ferrari takes a picture of him just, you know, for scooter Ferrari blah blah. And so he was on the cover of the Instagram account with so it was pre-branding for us with the device we built for him.

So now so you see that with the tires they have the tire warmers then you have the hand coolers. Every different part of the F1 machine needs to be temperature controlled perfect saw him using this and so paddle players tennis players they all say can I use it and say but man we did we didn't.

And so now we have a team that is building this cooling blows for a few outlets. That's that's incredible. Um great partnership. What has YC demo day been like for you? Are you here just trying to sell eight sleeps or are you also doing some investing? What are you What are you getting out of of YC Demo Day today? Yeah.

Yeah, I do a bunch of investing. I invested like probably 20 companies in this batch already. Wow. Amazing. You got to get I mean you got to get them in here. You need to start early or then you're out. Oh yeah, you got to get in early. You got to get in early.

And so in every batch I try to invest in around 20% of the batch. Oh, cool. More or less. That's great. Um, and I have been doing this for two years. Have you seen anyone doing cool hardware, cool consumer devices? I know that there's a ton of AI.

There's some hard tech, defense tech's becoming cool, but I always like I like the aid because it's a gadget. You can give it to someone for, you know, Christmas and they like experience it every day in a very different way than just nap on their phone. Have you seen anything?

So the I I I I I'll answer your question, but it's cool because I walk around with my head and people stop me and they say, "Oh, I sleep on your product. " I just met two two founders and one had a 75 score, the other one a 48 score. 48 the night before. That doesn't work. I've been smoking Jordy this week.

I got I beat him twice. I got it. I'm up in the 90s. I'm doing great. I've had a rough one. But there is not a lot of consumer hardware. It's hard. It's so hard. Yeah, it's really hard. I was just talking to a few founders. Even when I look back, uh other companies starting with us, they all struggle.

So, we have been so lucky to be here today. Uh but you see a lot of really cool stuff now in robotics. Yep. Yep. Matic robots, we've been in the office and at home and so usually there is an hardware section and that is the first section where I go. So, art techch or hardware that is my passion and then Yeah.

AI is everywhere. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you see a lot at CES. You'll see the AI connected oven and the AI connected toaster and YC's kind of stayed away from that because it feels like it's hard to build like an independent business around.

Uh but but I am optimistic that that once the software side of AI is so commoditized and so uh just ubiquitous. We'll see another revolution in hardware, another and I think with robots things will get easier because robots will explode and a lot of consumer will buy different shapes.

Matt Freriedman was talking about he wants the the the robot that picks up the leaves one by one instead of leaf blower and and it's like a funny idea but it feels like yeah that's only a couple years away and it'll just be even for security.

I have this idea about a robot that goes around your house for security cameras everywhere cameras and lights right I would immediately buy that you could go around my house and make sure that especially if you could put a gun on it.

I mean Amazon Amazon did launch a a drone that will or maybe they just launched a video about this. There's a drone that takes off from a base station where it charges and it can fly around your house and kind of and kind of patrol inside your house.

But yeah, I wanted to add when the when the fires were happening, I figured out that a lot of fires in LA are just started from a single ember landing in like a backyard or on a house or get stuck and you just realize that, you know, there's probably an opportunity for drone based.

Yeah, there's actually a couple companies that did uh uh like water turrets that you mount to your to your roof and then if they see fire, they can just spray right there. It's a hose. It's literally just a hose on an articulated arm. It's like not that complicated, but you could What about What about at 8?

Any any any other hardware coming down the line that you can talk you can kind of allude to yet? So, actually, we have an office in SE. So, I just landed I came here. I'll be here for a couple of hours then I go to the office to see the new products. Very cool. I'm already sleeping on the next generation. Such an edge.

That's such an edge. Edge. You're on five on pod. I'm already on pod six. All my friends, they always make jokes because I always sleep on the next generation and there are new devices. So, they buy the latest, but I'm already one one generation. This is how you win. This is how you win.

We started working with some new sensors that are incredible in terms of computer vision. So, we really want to double down on body scanning and scan your body while you're asleep to save your life.

And that to me is the one of the most exciting things because if we can convert your bed in a health platform and save your life, that's that's pretty sick. Yeah, that's amazing. What uh what are the companies that you're most excited about in the batch without picking too many favorites out of the 20?

Any anything that you're most kind of excited about? At the end of the day, I just get excited with founders. I mean, I just met this guy and he's a high school dropout. He's 18 and he's what? Yeah, because I was at school. I decided to drop out.

I thought there I thought there was this opportunity for AI to help teachers and so I dropped out. I built it and now I'm selling it to my teachers. What? That's amazing.

So when you see these people, right, I don't even I don't care what happens with your company, but I admire you so much that can I can can I want to back the founder. Exactly. And so that is what excites me like to stay young and see these generations shaping the future. That's fantastic.

Well, thank you so much for stopping by. We will see you soon. Great job, guys. Thank you.