How I Built This with Guy Raz - Live Episode! Dollar Shave Club: Michael Dubin

Episode Date: December 17, 2018

At the end of 2010, Michael Dubin was working in marketing when he met a guy named Mark Levine at a holiday party. Mark was looking for ideas to get rid of a massive pile of razors he had sitting in a California warehouse. Michael's spontaneous idea for an internet razor subscription service grew into Dollar Shave Club, and his background in improv helped him make a viral video to generate buzz for the new brand. Just five years after launch, Unilever acquired Dollar Shave Club for a reported $1 billion. Recorded live in Los Angeles. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Airbnb.ca.ca. slash host. Hey, it's Guy here. And today we've got a brand new live episode for you. It's my conversation with Michael Dubin, who founded Dollar Shave Club. And that conversation happened in L.A. just a few weeks ago. But before we start the show, just one quick favor. So for the past few weeks, I've been asking you to consider making a donation to your local public radio station all this month. And the idea behind it isn't just to, you know, ask for money, but it's to ask for your support, because public radio stations depend on your contributions to function. It's how they can bring you the news programs you love and the cultural programs you love and even this show. It's how they can broadcast our show on the radio. So if you can, please consider donating. Go to donate.com.N.P.R.

org slash built to show your support for our show. And thanks. So our first investor was a company called Science throughout in Santa Monica. They gave us a $100,000 check. Actually, you know, they gave us a $100 check by accident first. And I got all the way to the bank. I literally, I got to the bank and I was like, here's my check for $100,000. You had to fill out the form that said $100,000. And I fill it out. And the woman looks at me and she's like, uh-uh. From NPR, it's how I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Michael Dubin turned eight years of experience improv comedy and video marketing into the billion-dollar, dollar-shave club. So think about the billion-dollar companies that didn't even exist 10 or 15 years ago. companies like Airbnb or Lyft or Snapchat or Spotify or Hulu. Pretty incredible if you think about it because there's a pretty good chance that today you use at least one, if not all, of these services. And even if you don't like what these companies offer, you can't deny that they're innovative, that they all offer a new way to do something to get around or find a place to crash or listen to music or watch TV. These are some of the sexiest startups in recent years.

But now, imagine a completely opposite idea, a business that not only offers a boring product, but a product that is dominated by one big company. I'm talking about men's razors. And just a decade ago, Gillette owned about 70% of the U.S. shaving market. But today, Gillette's overall market share is closer to 50%. And that's partly due to a company called Dollar Shave Club. It's a company that decided to take on Gillette, not by offering a better razor, but by offering a better story. In fact, the story of how Dollar Shave Club went from a scrappy website to a billion-dollar exit in just five years is more about Michael Dubin's instincts and marketing shops than it is about anything else. because for almost eight years before he launched Dollar Shave Club,

Michael Dubin was doing two things that would help him figure out how to penetrate an impenetrable market. One of those things was creating videos for corporate clients, and the other, probably more important, was taking improv classes at night. Those two skills would help Michael create one of the most successful guerrilla marketing campaigns in modern history. But long before any of that happened, Michael had what he calls a pretty normal childhood in the suburbs of Philadelphia. His dad was a lawyer and his mom was a teacher and then later worked in real estate. Earlier this month at the theater at Ace Hotel in downtown L.A., I sat down with Michael Dubin in front of a live audience where I wanted to find out why. On snowy days, his mom used to force him and his sister to stay inside and solve math problems.

All right. Welcome, Michael. Thanks for having me. Is that actually true that on snow days your mom would make you solve math problems, or is that apocryph? Yeah, we weren't allowed to, you know, it was like you can have fun, but before you have fun, you're going to be productive. And I think we carry that with us wherever we go. There's like a little bit of guilt that we have whenever we have fun somewhere. Yeah, you're like, I should be doing math problems. Yeah, exactly. That's a good lesson. Do your work first, have fun later. Yeah. All right. So you grew up mainly.

I guess in the suburbs of Philadelphia. So I'm curious, and this is a little bit foreshadowing here, so I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves here, but as a kid or as a teenager, were you into theater or acting or school plays and dramas? Did you do that kind of stuff? I did. I was always in the school play. I was the lead in a school play in fourth grade.

It was called Peace Child. And Peace Child was all about preventing a nuclear holocaust, through song. And literally, no, truly, there was a song that was called I Want to Live. I want to live. And something like, I want to live the right to live my life. I don't know. I mean, it was really like, I'd love to see it.

All right. So I think you know why I'm asking questions about theater, because we'll get to that later and the theatrical stuff. But what about general academics? I mean, did you feel like you were a good student? Did you become a good student? I was not a good student. I was not a horrible student.

I was good at the subjects that I was interested in. But if I wasn't interested in the subject matter, it was really hard to get me to pay attention. I was probably one of these kids that went undiagnosed with ADD, and I think that probably contributed to it. But yeah, I don't think that I was much of a student. I did okay. Good enough. I mean, you went to a pretty good school. You went to Emory University.

I did. And you studied history there, right? I actually started out as a polyscience. major, but I flunked PolySci 100, actually twice. I flunked the same class twice in back-to-back years, which goes to show you what kind of a student I was my freshman and sophomore year. And then couldn't do that anymore. So I became a history major because I always loved history and I love history and studying history. So I actually did fairly well at that. I had a killer internship with a company called Bright House. And I also got super into my internships at CNN.

So I actually did more extracurricularly, I think, in college. And I got really into those things, and that helped set me on my career afterwards. So you graduate college, and what did you do? So I became a page at the NBC page program. Like Kenneth Page. Correct, exactly. But this was before Kenneth made the page program cool, or not cool. Kenneth wasn't very cool.

So, yeah, I was a page program, which for anybody that knows what the page program is, you get to, it's 50 kids that they take right out of college, and you basically, have the keys to the castle. You run around NBC, Rockefeller Center and the studios, and you seat the audiences for the shows, you give tours of the studios, and the tradeoff is that they give you an opportunity to take mini jobs in different departments. And so those mini jobs can be with Saturday Night Live or Nightly News or, you know, at that time, the Rosie O'Donnell Show was still on the air, and you do those mini jobs or assignments for 10 weeks each. So I had some pretty cool assignments. And it was just, I mean, I've said this before, but outside of the air, but outside of the year,

side of this job at DSC, that was my favorite job. So was that your idea that you would stay in journalism or media? Like, was that where you started to think, you know, this is what I'm, maybe this what I'll do? Yeah, I was super passionate about it and went to work at NBC and then went to work at MSNBC, first as a PA and as a writer. And I thought that I would have a career in the media and maybe even in journalism. But I think at a certain point, the 24-hour news cycle, you work all day to. build a story and a narrative.

And then at 5 p.m., right before your show would air, they would, you know, there would be some breaking news and all your work would get thrown out. And then I also felt like it was right around the time that I started thinking, like, I really want to be in marketing or advertising. And how did you, I mean, how did you make that leap? Like, had you been exposed to marketing and advertising, or did you just think this could be interesting? Well, I had, I had this really sort of formative internship.

in Atlanta. And I got an opportunity through a friend of mine's cousin who ran a small marketing firm in New York City that was doing client service work for a couple minor league sports teams. And the main project that I worked on was I worked on an early website for an alarm company. And then I left with one of the partners at that firm to go over to Time Inc. And Life magazine and the relaunch of Life magazine in 2005, I think this was. And I spent a couple years at Life and then I spent a couple years at Sports. Sports Illustrated, Sports Illustrated.com.

And that work in general was, I built a, you know, back in the day, and people might remember the term microsite. I built microsites for some of the big brand advertisers at life. And for Sports Illustrated, you know, those could have been for Gatorade or for Sega. And you were just learning how to do this on the job. Exactly. So like you would build a micro website or make a video or something for these brands. Yep, exactly.

Just figuring out what would be interesting to a user, how to present visual information, with some copy in a way that's digestible. How would I lay out this website? And, you know, I've always been a bit of a visual thinker. So it's fun. UX, UIs, a maze, or a puzzle. That's what great architects do. That's what great restaurant designers do when they lay out a space

or design a hotel lobby. You know, it's what great product designers do. UX, UI designers do. They create these mazes for people to go in, and that's enormously satisfying when you can watch masses of people follow your lead. Yeah. All of this is happening in New York.

You're in New York in the early 2000s, and you decide to take improv classes, something you did for almost eight years. How did that start? Was it just something you wanted to do for fun? So I've always been passionate about comedy, and I had heard when I worked at NBC that all of the great comedians that were on SNL

had trained in improv, And a lot of them had trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade, which at the time they only had one studio in the West Village, no, in Chelsea. And I was just, you know, I said, well, I want to do that, you know. And you could just sign up, just pay the fee and join. Yep, pay $300, take the entry level class and see how you do. And it just stuck. I fell totally in love with it.

Before too long, I was taking sketch classes as well. And you do this like weekly or? Yeah, you take a couple classes a week. If a sketch class, you have some homework to do, you have to write comedy, sketches, you go and you practice the improv at night with a bunch of people that you've never met before and you go rent some weird studio space and you make jokes at 9 p.m. And it's, you know, a very bizarre experience. So you had, you got this marketing job during the day making videos and and at night you were doing improv. And I was also trying to start my first startup, which was a

social network for travelers. So yes, I was busy. And what happened to the social network for travelers? Not much. Okay. I got you. Okay. So you had to, You know, but I'm trying to understand. I mean, there must have been something about improv. Like, I have to imagine that in your mind, you're thinking, maybe I have a shot at being a comedian or being on SNL, or was that what you were thinking? I would never admit that, but yes.

Got it. Yeah, that's right, because why would you take improv classes for years? Yeah, I mean, listen, I would go to the Upright Citizens Brigade two, three nights a week and just watch the most amazing comedians perform. people that have gone on to have amazing careers, people like Donald Glover. I want to go see Donald Glover when he was doing these shows in a basement in Chelsea under a grocery store. And you're watching six to ten people on a stage pull ideas out of thin air and weave them together into a story that makes you laugh. And comedy is one of the hardest things to do, period.

There's a setup and then there's the equal sign, right? It's A plus B plus C equals ha ha ha. And that takes magic. That takes real talent. And so it's addictive. And when you get it right and when you do it well, it's a high. And I also, it was such a great way to blow off steam in the evening as well. Because you would have these really hard long days at work where you're getting grinded

by your boss at work. And, you know, you're trying to start this social network for travelers in the margins. And, you know, then it's like, you know, you could go to the gym or you can go just completely blow your mind and do some improv. Was there any part of you that thought, this can help me one day if I want to start a business? Was that even a kernel of a thought in your mind? No.

Wow. Because right, today you would think, okay, in your 20s, do some improv, learn marketing, and then he'll be... Yeah, right, then I'll sell razors on the internet. Yeah. So you are in your 20s, you're in New York, I guess you're by this point approaching your early 30s,

and you decide to leave. You decide to just go. and move to here to Los Angeles. Why? I mean, quit your job in marketing, in New York, leave improv troupe there and come here. Yeah, well, I got laid off. So that's like a lot of people.

There's no hero story there. Okay. Sorry, sometimes life happens on you. So, yeah, I got laid off. I was dating a girl at the time who lived in Los Angeles, and I'd always wanted to live in California. at some point. So, you know, life happened on me. And I said, now's the time. Like, you know, screw it. I've got nothing to lose. So no plan, no job, you just came out here. No plan,

no job just came out here. And what did you, what did you start to do? So I, through a friend, I was able to get a job at a small video marketing agency. And what they were doing is they were helping brands develop and distribute video content. And this was probably 2000. And this was probably 2010. So kind of similar of the work you're doing in New York. Very related to the work that I had been doing, doing work for big brands,

putting it online, but doing it in a space that was pretty squarely in video. So I'm curious to find out. I guess it's sort of somewhere near the end of 2010. This is a fateful moment for you because you meet somebody.

You are at a holiday party here in L.A. You meet a guy named Mark Levine. Yep. At this party. Who is Mark Levine? what's that party? What happens there? So Mark Levine is my friend's father.

He's a businessman. He's had a successful career in South Africa, then came to the United States, you know, and he was an importer. He's like our family friend who, you know, would show up sometimes with like, you know, a truck full of soccer balls or like a truck full of bikes. And you'd be like, where are the bikes from? He'd be like, do you want a bike or not?

And so you're like, yeah, I'll take a bike. Yeah. So, yeah, we'd been trying to get connected for a while because he had heard that I had worked in, you know, worked in the internet, inside the internet. And he wanted to meet me because he had all this stuff in a warehouse that he was looking to, you know, unload. Like when you say stuff, like he would just import whatever stuff?

Well, the two things that he approached me about were he was like, I've got razors. I got about 250,000 razors. Okay. He also had a couple thousand cake slicers. Cake slicers? Yeah, so the cake slicers were called piece of cake. The slicer themselves was shaped like a wedge piece of cake.

And so, you know, forget about the worry of having to slice twice when you want a piece of cake. Now you take your piece of cake and you put it over the cake. Wow. And out comes the perfect slice of cake. I need to know why we are not talking about Dollar Cake Club. How was that not the product that you said to Mark? Oh my God, amazing, the cake slicer. Yeah, I'm in.

I just, I knew that, you know, gluten-free was going to be the next thing. and I just wasn't going to be a market for it. All right, so you are at this party, this holiday party, and he's like, yeah, I've got a warehouse of 250,000 razors and thousands of cake slicers. Are you in? Is that what he said? He was like, you know, yeah, what do you think? And I was like, well, let's give him a try and we'll see what we can do.

So what happens? Like you go home and then you call them and say, okay, I want to go check out these razors. Yes. So I knew that I wanted to get access to the razors because I had always bristled at the price of razors, and I had always, there was a time, and I remember this specifically,

when I was living in New York, I would walk right past Duane Reed on my way from Rockefeller Center to the subway on the F-Train when I go downtown. And I would need razors, and I just wouldn't want to go into the store to buy the razors,

because the razor fortress is always locked. You have to find the person with the key. They're always doing something else. And you actually feel like you're inconveniencing them for, you know, helping you get a product. It's the only product that's like that, or one of the only products that's like that, in the store.

And I didn't in 2006 say, this is a problem that I'm going to go solve. But at that party, he said, the razors are great. What do you want to do with them? I had the idea for Dollar Shave Club right there. All right. So you go and you, what, you go check out this warehouse?

So the razors are in a warehouse in San Bernardino or Rancho Cucamongo, which is like an hour east of here. And I get out there and there's a guy there and I'm like, hello, I'm Mark Levine's, you know, partner and I'm here for the razors. And he's like, oh, you're Mark Levine's partner. And I'm like, yes, yes, I am. And they're like, great, you got to go get me $700 or these razors. I'm about to throw these razors out. So the razors had been there for so long and the bill hadn't been paid.

Like I'm sure that Mark had just forgotten about the storage space. Like I'm sure that he had almost forgotten about these razors. So I had to go get $700. sight unseen and give it to the guy so that he didn't throw out the razors and i could have access to them so you go in you see the razors and go in see the razors i look at them and i say these look like razors that i would use i take them home i shave with it and i knew that we had something wow so you get home and and you call them and you say hey i think i can sell these and he says great go knock yourself out um more or less yeah he was like what do you want to do with them and i was like

well, I want to put them online and I think that the best way to do it is to create a subscription mechanism where people don't have to go to the store to get them. They come automatically and yeah. How is it at that very moment because it sounds like that's what you're saying

you were thinking this is the business I'm going to do. I'm going to drop everything. I'm going to focus on this thing. What was it about 250,000 razors in a warehouse in Rancho Cucamonga that inspired you to to think like that. Well, because I knew there was a problem. And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs

will tell you that, you know, they trust their gut and I trust my gut. And my gut told me that the problem that I had observed back in 2005, 2006, when I had that feeling of not wanting to go into the store because the razors were overpriced and the buying experience was super frustrating, if I had that feeling, I knew there were other people like me that would have that, that were experiencing that same frustration. And I knew that there was an opportunity. And, And also like a lot of entrepreneurs, once you become focused on an idea and you've identified a problem that needs solving or a thing you want to bring into the world, it's really hard to get that out of your head.

I believe truly that there was a problem worth solving here. And I certainly didn't think that it was going to become what it has become. But I knew that there was enough there to make a couple bucks. And what about the name? How did you, was the name also part of the idea from within a few days? of meeting Mark? I wanted the function of the business to come through in the name.

And I think if you were to pluck somebody off the street and say, what does a company called Dollar Shave Club do, you should probably be able to figure that one out. So if I knew you then, right? And I probably would have said to you, and I have to imagine other people said to you, Michael, you're like a 30-something dude

and you want to try to enter one of the most impenetrable market It's razors and shaving in America. I mean, Gillette, Shick, did anybody, your family, or anybody say to you, like, razors? This is, like, this market is dominated by, like, two or three companies. Yeah, I don't know that anybody quite phrased it like that.

So, yeah, I mean, you know, my family, you know, but, like, don't listen to your family, because for a lot. of reasons. I mean, listen to your family for a lot of reasons, but don't listen to your family for some things. I mean, the way you've laid it out is exactly right. This is, you know, Gillette at the time had, you know, an effective monopoly on this particular consumer product in this category. And, you know, for a nobody to come in with, you know, his rancho kookamunga raisers and, and like, change the way that people think about that category, like, you know, I would never have to be a lot of

have said it that that's what I was going to try to do. Yeah. Because it would have sounded crazy. When we come back, how Michael Dubin and his Rancho Cucumunga Razors actually did end up changing the way millions of people would buy shaving products. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR.

So it's around the beginning of 2011, and Michael Dubin wants to see if he can get traction with Dollar Shave Club, his new company that sells razors on the internet. And to fund it, he puts in some of his own savings, and he also gets an investment from Mark Levine, the guy who had that warehouse full of razors that he needed to get rid of. And so Michael hires a few people to help him put together a beta website. So the goal of the beta site was really to test different pricing models, test different forms of engagement. And, you know, the first brand that we launched was not what it was.

it is today, it was really just, you know, what we have all come to know as an MVP, minimum viable product. And let's just get something up. Let's see how it does, and let's see what the feedback is. What we were trying to learn is what was the best product to sell? What was the best assortment to sell? What were people liking? What did they want more of? And really just, you know, can we move these razors and what, yeah, what do people want out of this type of a service? So, all right, so in that first year, you were really kind of seeing if people would get to the site, seeing what they were buying. How did you even reach people so early?

Like by Google ads and things like that? Yeah, we did a Groupon. I went to a mom blog conference down in like San Diego or something. And I mean, you know, this was real street hustle at the time. And like, you know, you buy it, you do your own SEM in your house. And I still remember our first customer. It was Imranja of Houston, Texas. He just found you online?

He just found us online. I remember where I was sitting when this first order came in, which was the first stranger validation, right? Because obviously my mom had bought some and, you know, like other people, my buddies had bought some and, yeah, the first real sale came in. And like that validation, like, you know, that first thrill of that first sale is like all the encouragement that you need as an entrepreneur to be like, yes, somebody gets it. Yeah. So obviously at a certain point, and this really comes ahead in March, I think the date was March 6th, 2012, your background in video and your background and improv

magically come together, unplanned when you release a video. What was the story about that video? How did that come about? Yeah. So I knew that this was a fairly simple story. Razors are overpriced, you're overpaying for the technology, and you can get a great shave without having to pay such a high price. And I knew that if you just told that story flat, it would sound flat. So I wanted humor to be a part of the brand, and I wanted to make a video. And I knew how to write, and I sort of knew how to act or perform. And I called up a friend of mine, Lucia, creator and director of Broad City now.

Wow. But she was... You met her at the impact. I met her. She directed one of the shows that I was in at one point. So, yeah, I met her as part of that community. And you asked her to help you with this video. I said, she had just moved to L.A. too, and I said,

hey, I'm starting this company. I want to do a video advertisement that tells the story. It's going to go on the homepage. Like, you know, I wrote a script. Will you meet me for coffee and, like, give me notes on the script, and then help me film it. So we met for coffee. She looks at the script. She says, I really like it.

Added a couple jokes. So the line, are our blades any good? no they're great used to be are our blades any good no and then some other bad joke and she gave me that line so I actually owe that oh that to lucia and we rented out the warehouse that we were fulfilling packages in out for the day um that background that you see I mean they fulfill all kinds of crazy stuff over the years for people who haven't seen it which is it's you starting with you behind a desk and it tracks you it follows you through this warehouse and we meet a toddler shaving the head of a grown man. We see a bear, a man in a bear costume. You've got one of your

warehouse employees in a go-car with you. It's very, very funny if you haven't seen it. 25 million, I think, was the latest number. It's amazing. You released it on March 6, 2012. Was there a reason why you picked that date or that time of year to release the video? Yeah, so we were ready to launch. We had just raised about a million dollars in venture capital. And how did you raise that money? You went around and... So our first investor was a company called Science throughout in Santa Monica. They gave us a $100,000 check. Actually, you know, they gave us $100 check by accident first. And I got all the way to the bank. I literally, I got to the bank and I was like, here's my check for $100,000. You had to fill out the

form that said $100,000. And I fill it out. And the woman looks at me and she's like, uh-uh. But who were the, I mean, I have to assume there were some investors, or maybe many, who looked at this idea and said, I'm not going to get into the razor. Plenty, right? So what was the pitch that convinced those who agreed to, or who, you know, who said, yeah, sure, I'll put in a little seed money? Well, they saw the video. Before you released it. Correct. So that was how you were able to convince those initial investors.

Yep. They were like, well, you want to do this. And then they were the first ones that said all that stuff about news, way you can do it. And then I said, how are you going to do it? And I was like, well, I'm going to build a brand. And they're like, yeah, but what do you mean? And I was like, well, and I tried to explain. I was like, you know what, just watch this. You said just watch this video. Yeah. And instantly, many of them laughed. That was funny and thought it was creative. And obviously believed in you. Yeah. And they were like, sure, I'll give you a hundred bucks.

All right. So you raised the seed money. March 6, 2012. Why was that date or that time of year significant? So I had spent time in the media. I knew how the media. I knew how the media. would think about using a video like this to tell the story of our funding. And so I wanted to make sure that we announced our funding at the same day that we launched the video. We also chose that date because there was a nice lull right before South by Southwest. People get really excited right before South by Southwest, or at least they did then, they look for a big tech story.

They hope something's going to break the way Twitter did in 2006 or whatever when, you know, and that was when Twitter kind of had its big moment, was at Southby, and it became a thing. there's a lot of anticipation in the air and people are looking for something exciting in the tech space. So I wanted to do it before the festival, before that got noisy. Because you thought there's not a whole lot of noise out there right now, and maybe this will get some traction if I do it in this window. Yes, exactly. So you guys put it out there. What happens? You upload it to like YouTube? Upload it to YouTube, turn the site on late the night before. And how do you get people to know about it or click on?

Were there journalists that you targeted? Were there people that you specifically went after? Yeah, so we had done a round of press to announce our million-dollar seed round. And we talked to all the usual suspects, the tech crunches of the world, the Bloomberg's, etc. And all the stories went live at the same time. And first, the tech ecosystem picked up on it. And this video, which people found funny and engaging, and also that, it was promoting a real business was sort of a unique combination for people.

I don't think there were too many examples at that time of a direct-to-consumer business that launched with a video that was funny and good. And I think that that tech community surfaced it, and then from there it sort of caught wildfire. And what happened to, I mean, that day, the sixth, I mean, were you surprised? Were you, I mean, because a lot of people watch that Yeah. I you never build anything like that and think it's going to go viral. Anybody that tells you that they can build you a viral video or don't don't believe them. I did not have huge hopes for this video. I just thought that this was a really compelling way to tell the story of what our business was and we launched it. And I you know, we I woke up at my, you know, normal time at 630 on March 6th. And I looked at the site and the site wasn't there. And I was like, oh, oh, I was. Oh, oh. oh my God, what's wrong? Why is the site not live? Like, we should be live.

And I saw some text messages. And some of my friends that were up on the East Coast earlier, they were like, you know, dude, amazing video. Like, but the site, I can't order my razors. And, you know, you're sitting there. And I'm literally in bed. And every entrepreneur's had a moment like this or a hundred moments like this

where they look at their phone first thing in the morning. And they're like, oh, whatever. And that was one of them. So the site had crashed. I had to go figure out how to get the site back up online. eventually we did and then we sold out and the varroval these are these are still the razors from mark levine's warehouse yeah yeah so you you cleared that warehouse yeah we had some other we had some other razors we had some twin razors the first razors were twins then we had some four blades

then we had some six blades so we actually had but all they all sold out and so they sell out and you know you're now you're like what do i do what do i do in this moment do i you know pull down the closed shade and say, sorry, like, we'll be back in a couple months, months we can make more razors? Or do we keep selling, put up a note that says, hey, you know, we're going to sell these razors to you in advance. We're going to keep your money. And eventually we'll send you these razors.

And people, thankfully, you know, we're okay with that. I mean, some people, some people did. We were very transparent about the fact that there was a delay in the razors, but, you know, they hung around because the proposition was resonant. and we actually had tapped into something. We had solved a problem that many, many people had. And we did it in a way that resonated with them, and they wanted to give us a chance.

At this point, Dollar Shave Club was still you and anyone else? At that point, it was, so Science was our first investor, and I was the only full-time employee at that time. But Science had a studio of folks, they had some designers. Then there was a tech team that was a third, party tech shop that did all of our engineering. But I was the only full-time employee, yeah. And where were you sourcing your razors from?

So a manufacturer in South Korea. And here's the thing, you see these ads, right, for Gillette or whatever razor it is, and they talk about this incredible technology as if it's like, you know, something that NASA invented. If Gillette was selling, you know, a four pack of razors, let's say for four or five times the cost that you were offering, which was a dollar plus $2 for shipping and handling. I have to assume that you were, this was a lost leader, that you were not going to make money out this for a while.

On that twin razor, no. On the other ones, yes. And so explain why, I mean, we've talked to the guys who founded Warby Parker, and they explain why frames were so expensive because it was essentially a monopoly. And they said, there's no reason why. Was it the same with razors? just like why were razors that you could buy at a pharmacy so much more expensive than the ones you were selling?

Right. Well, you know, if you think about, it's a very small community. There are not that many people in the world that make great razors. And you think about the science that's involved for such an old school sort of product that's been around for a long period of time, there's an extraordinary amount of science that goes into taking, you know, raw metal, then thinning it out, then creating a blade edge, then, then coating a blade edge, you know, that can actually slice hair off your face and not skin off your face. There's a lot that goes into it. You can do it. People do it. But it's hard. And that's why

there's not that many people that do it. How were you fulfilling those orders in that after the video came out? Was it like you and a few people, like packaging them up? Yeah, we had printers. We had a couple printers hanging around the office and, you know, we were running labels. And, you know, it was so frustrating because we had thousands and thousands of orders and this label printer's like, but do, so like the only answer is get more label printers. So at a certain point, we had these label printers and, you know, we're filling out these rolls of labels and then we put them in these big trash bags and we drive them down to the warehouse where we shot the video and that was doing our fulfillment center.

And this was not an e-commerce fulfillment center. This is a place that like on Monday they're filling like windshield washer pellets into tubes. On Tuesday, they're putting vodka bottles in crates. And on Wednesday, they're filling orders for Dollar Shave Club. And like, whatever. So you have to go over there, take the big bag of labels in a big trash bag, throw them over the fence, and hope that in the middle of the night, nobody comes by and steals the big bag of rolled labels, which would be crazy if they did that. But that's, yeah, that was how the operation worked. So after, after you kind of broke through and start to get attention and start to get subscribers,

did it become pretty easy for you to raise money at that point? Raising money has never been easy for us. And I think for unless you're Snapchat, circa 2000, whatever, you know, it's hard to raise money for any kind of company. And for all the reasons that you pointed out in the beginning, you know, how do you think that you are going to, you know, take on these giants that have been doing this for, you know, over 50 years and aren't they going to squash you?

Aren't they going to copy you? And so it was never easy for us. Yes, there was always, you can always raise some money from some portion of the market, but the people that you want to raise money from, the smart money, so to speak, the smart money asks the smart questions. And they asked all the questions that they should,

and it was never easy for us, even into our series D. You know, once you started to gain traction, obviously competitors came in, Harry's raisers, for example, did that make you nervous when you started to see? other people who are also using the subscription model?

Yeah, I mean, I think, of course, anytime that you create something and you put it out there, and it's naive to think that people aren't going to copy your great idea. And I think your first reaction is to be like, uh-oh, but I think what you learn over time is that the presence of competition pushes you to define yourself more specifically and focuses you on the things that you want to do and, you know, definitely makes you work a little bit harder. So, you know, most people when they first start a company and then they experience competition don't think that's a good thing. I think it's a wonderful thing. We've benefited from that in some ways. It's been validating in so many ways, too. Did you have to do a whole lot of advertising

or were those viral videos because you went on to produce more? Was that really driving the customers? Was that bringing in new customers? Yes, so the virality wore off. at a certain point for sure. And then it was, you know, jump into the paid marketing game, paid advertising game. And yeah, we shot our first television commercials, I believe, in 2013.

We did another video for our One Wipe Charlie's, which is our But Wipe for Men. But Wipe for Men. Do you want to talk about that? Well, I mean, sure. Is 2013. Do you decide to expand and to diversify? Decide to diversify.

Our first expansion was One Wipe Charlie's. It's a butt wipe for men. It's a moist towelette that you use. Some people like to mop before they sweep. Some people like to sweep before they mop. It's a better way to do it. And, you know, anybody, unless you're very flexible, you know, you're not spending any time back there. But other people that care about you might.

Might be. And so that might be a service that you provide, not for yourself, but for your loved ones. A couple of things happened to you guys that are not surprising because it happens to successful startups. The first is the big players got into the game. They got into the subscription game,

the Gillettes and the other companies. They are much bigger. That time certainly were much, much bigger in terms of the capital they had, the cashed, the marketing dollars they had. Was there ever a concern when they got into the, into that game that they could actually crush you? Any smart entrepreneur, any smart CEO or business person

should absolutely be afraid of that type of thing when something like that happens. And you should be doing the chess on how to make that not happen. So, yes, of course, when any competitor launches, and many have, you have to think, how are we going to be different? How are we going to fend this off? If you don't take competitive threats seriously, that's foolish.

So we absolutely took it seriously. The other thing, of course, is that Gillette sued you for patent infringement as you began to take away market share from Gillette. It's still pending. But did that lawsuit freak you out when that happened? Well, yes and no. I mean, you know, it was the first time, I think, that we had gotten sued. And, you know, the first time you get sued, you're like, what do you? How do you react to something like that?

But I think at a certain point, people had been telling us along the way to expect that because that's a playbook that big competitors, big incumbent competitors can do, to make you look unattractive to capital, to make you look unattractive to potential acquirers. And so for me, you know, like, look, you take everything very seriously as a CEO, but you also say that there was a business calculation to it also. that made a lot of sense from their side. So you put it all together and rationalize it that way. So you guys, I think at a certain point, maybe it was 2015, by 2015 or 2016,

I think you had about 3 million subscribers. Do you remember what percentage of the subscription market you guys had at that point? Of the online razor subscription market? I mean, most of it at that point. Wow. I won't know the exact market share numbers off the top of my head. But I think that, you know, as of now, there's about 20 to 25% of the men's non-disposable razor market that we have. Do you remember when you became profitable?

No comment. We're owned by a very big company, and we're not allowed to disclose financial information. All right. So let's talk about that. 2016 Dollar Shave Club was acquired by Unilever, reportedly for a billion dollars. Okay. I mean, it's a mind-boggling, astounding amount of money. Were you looking to sell or did they come to you? How did that happen? So I met one of their executives at a dinner in New York, and we just started talking about

where I wanted to take the company, and he was telling me about some of the things that Unilever was working on, and that men's grooming was a big priority for them strategically. And the conversation really just started out as a, hey, is there a way that we can, potentially help each other. And the conversation, you know, took another step and then another step, and then we ended up with the acquisition. I know that there was a lot that preceded, you know, the founding of the company, and there was a lot that went into it and a lot of stress and hard work. But just to, I mean, just to put into perspective, we're talking about a five-year period from the time you founded it to the time you don't even bought it. I mean, when you think about that,

are you astounded at that? Are you, I mean, do you just think, God, five years, and this is what we built. I mean, it is pretty mind-boggling. It is mind-boggling. It was a huge moment in the company's life and history, and certainly a huge moment in my life and career, no doubt, but I knew that all the hard work was really yet to come. The acquisition in and of itself is a nice moment and an acknowledgement of the progress that we made, but there was still so much to do that, you know, I didn't spend a lot of time sitting around being like, you know, popping a lot of champagne bottles because there's just, it's just... You still run the company. You're the CEO. Correct. Do you work for Unilever?

I'm trying to think where I get my paycheck from, but yeah, more or less. Yeah. I mean, yes, my boss is Unilever. How does, I understand that you and Unilever really wanted you to stay at the helm because it was your vision and your imprimatur is on it. But there have been plenty of stories. I mean, Instagram is an example where, you know, the founders eventually left, but had a lot of autonomy for a long time. Has it, you know, when a big company like Unilever comes in as a parent company, in your experience, has it changed a lot at Dollar Shave Club? Do you feel like it's a same exact place? No, it's definitely not the same exact place, but not because of the acquisition. You know, we've gone through an enormous transformation at the company over the last two years.

We have had to change the way that our entire technology stack is built, the way that the consumer interacts with it, the packages that we're selling people. We went from selling razors once a month to selling everything that you need a couple times a year. And that's working out really well. But just to get to that point required transformation in advertising and frankly transformation of personnel. I don't know the number off the top of my head, but something like, you know, 80% of our, you know, 300-ish employees are new within the last 18 months. And that's what you have to do to, you know, we had a great first act and now we want to have a great second act. And so the company is actually quite different than it was. And that's the way that it should be.

For all the people here tonight who might be in your position in 2010 or 2011, who might be, might be starting something up or, you know, if you were in this audience then and you were watching somebody like you, what do you wish you knew then that you know now that would have been helpful? I think there's a lot of times when you was starting a company and you're faced with certain death or near death. You have a near death experience, which will happen a lot. It's never as bad as you think. It's also not as great as you hope it will be either. And, you know, yes, there are sometimes when the worst possible outcome happens, but it's really rare. And you go through enough sort of crises and near-death experiences and you come out on the other side and you kind of like, in your mind, you say to yourself, okay, I know what it's like to be chill on the other side of the crisis.

I'm just going to put myself there and know that like eight out of ten times, it'll be true. And two out of ten times, it's not. And it helps you, I think, get a little bit less scared because starting a business is scary. Michael, this is a question that I ask everybody who comes on the show, and if you've heard the show, you've heard me ask a question. But I'm curious, from your point of view, how much of what happened to you do you think is because of luck

and how much do you think is because of your hard work and your intelligence and your skill? I think that anybody that's successful in business has benefited from luck. And anybody that tells you that they haven't or don't is not being truthful. Luck plays a role in everything. And I think that you continue to get lucky throughout your career and throughout our business. You know, we've gotten lucky in many ways.

Sometimes good luck is a manifestation of hard work. And sometimes luck is just luck. I like to think that a lot of other people who met Mark Levine at that party that night would not have done what I did with it, what we have all done with it, because this is not a one-man show, it never has been. But yeah, luck is important. Michael Dubin, founder of Dollar Shave Club. I spoke with Michael Dubin in front of a live audience in Los Angeles at the theater at Ace Hotel. By the way, if anyone ever tells you that business school is, the perfect path to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Well, in his 20s, Michael Dubin was actually rejected from business school because of his low college GPA. And today, that viral video that Michael made to launch Taller Shave Club is actually used as a case study at Columbia Business School. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this live episode of How I Built This. Our show was produced this week by Casey Herman with original music composed by Rumtina Arablui. Our live team in Los Angeles includes Ali Prescott, Jessica Goldstein, Joanna Pawlowska, John Isabella, and Ian Baldessari, with recording engineers, Andy Huther, and Josh Newell. Thanks also to our production team, Rachel Faulkner, Norcootsey, J.C. Howard, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Mia Venkat.

I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.