The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Felix Gray CEO David Roger Interview

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

Felix Gray CEO David Roger Interview Shopfelixgray.com [powerpress_playlist]

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, thanks for tuning in the podcast. I really appreciate you guys being here. Oh my gosh, it's quarantine world and we've got some really cool interview to share with you today. But first, be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel at youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Also, share with your friends, neighbors, relatives, dogs, cats, mistresses, pool boys.

Go to thecvpn.com or chrisvosspodcast.com. You can subscribe to all eight of our podcasts over there and check out everything we do. Today, we have a major CEO on the show with an incredible, incredible startup launch story. So we'll get into that. It's the CEO and co-founder of Felix Gray, David Roger. David is the CEO and co-founder, which pioneered the blue light glasses space with their company, Felix Gray. They're a leader in the category, and the company's mission was to empower people to live longer, healthier, and more productive lives in today's screen-filled

world. Dave and his co-founder, Chris, come from roles in technology and finance that required long hours in front of screens. After a while, they decided to change their lives by offering high quality filter lenses that filter out the blue light and eliminate glare and they're set in beautifully handcrafted italian acetate frames they embed a proprietary blue light filtering technology within lenses and they're both effective and virtually clear and they have helped create over 400 000 happy eyes welcome to the show dav doing, buddy? Good. Thanks so much for having me. Awesome sauce. So before we get into Felix Gray and stuff, give us the website if you can, too, so we can get that plugged. But let's talk about you and how you got there. Yeah. So it's Felix Gray, F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y. We went with the English spelling and it's

shopfelixgray.com. Shopfelixgray.com. So give us a lowdown on David, some of your background and kind of what got you to this point. Yeah, sure. So right out of college, I went to work for the CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, on his project called Downtown Project to revitalize downtown Las Vegas. So essentially that's where Zappos is based. He put in 350 million of his own money into that project. We were treating real estate development a lot like software. And we had no idea if these projects are going to make money or lose money. My job is to figure that out. So I got kind of thrown into the deep end and just had

to swim. It was really, really cool job building a lot of like restaurants and bars and ways to get people to be excited about coming to the area. But it meant being in front of Excel for 12 hours a day, you know, financial modeling. And my eyes just started to absolutely kill me. And at the same time, a lot of my friends and co workers were complaining about similar issues. And everyone's in front of screen and half of them were complaining about it. And so started wondering, like, why is this a thing? And can there be a solution? And so I started talking to optometrists and ophthalmologists and learned that a lot of what these issues are, the eye fatigue, the dry eyes, the blurry vision, the headaches, that's something that gets categorized as digital eye strain or computer vision syndrome.

A lot of that has to do with what screens produce, blue light and glare. So if you can actually filter blue light, eliminate glare, you create a more comfortable experience in front of the screen. That's how felix gray started um yeah happy to talk more about it awesome sauce so uh this is a pretty cool thing i lived in vegas during that time i i love what tony did in fact i think i helped tony launch his first book um and uh the first book that he wrote about his origin story. And then, yeah, what you guys did for Las Vegas was just great, man. I remember a couple times where I went east of Las Vegas at Boulevard. Yeah.

The Fremont area. Well, you call it East Fremont. And I was in fear for my life several times before. You can get pretty sketchy. Yeah yeah it could get pretty sketchy and you just you just didn't go in that area it was like no man's land uh if you wanted to survive and uh what he did and going in and uh revamping that whole area revest investing in it stuff um i know he took some lumps from the press over it and some other issues, but long term, it was great for Las Vegas. The restaurants, the kitschy restaurants that got put up in there were really great.

In fact, I'm still friends with a couple people who were funded by him. One of my friends, I'm trying to think if she has the hydrant dog thing. Oh, sure. Yeah. Kathy, the, the Kathy is Kathy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's a wonderful person. I knew somebody else who owned one of the restaurants there and,

uh, but yeah, it was great. So you, you, you had that, you, you started this.

What year did you guys start Felix gray? So I went to work for downtown project in 2013. My eyes started killing me. I'd say four months into the job and this was like you know it was an idea just rumbling around my head for quite some time uh we didn't really get serious about it until 2015 but you know doing in that time you know the idea was okay there's these issues around blue light and glare that caused these problems around digital eye strain but the stuff that existed at the time uh honestly the lenses made you look like like one

of the x-men uh the lenses were orange they were yellow the goggle they look like hunting goggles on your face meanwhile like you know i'm wearing a black t-shirt i'm working at startup but i have friends you know wearing suits they're working at banks you know and it was wearing a black t-shirt, I'm working at a startup, but I have friends, you know, wearing suits, they're working at banks, you know, and it was, the idea was, okay, well, how do we create something that functionally works, it can filter blue light effectively, it can eliminate glare effectively, but it looks like a great pair of glasses that you can feel confident in wearing at the same time. So how do you have a way of filtering blue light that is in a clear lens, way of eliminating glare really effectively, and then how do you have these beautiful frames italian acetate german metals that really just make your eyes feel good but make you feel good in who you are what you're wearing as well because classes

are kind of a personal sort of expression as well so you you know you want to look good in your glasses and stuff you know i i that one of the best things I've ever seen are examples of like blue light just really have an impact in your eyes is a lot of my friends that do PC gaming and some of our PC gaming audience. Um, if you game on PC and then you immediately go to like your PS4 or something, you'll like go to your PS4 and your eyes just start burning out of your skull because of the blue light and the gamma that's in the PS4 units. And that's, I mean, that's really noticeable. I'm sure anybody's noticed if they've looked at their screen for way too long, you know, you start getting those tired

eyes, you start rubbing them and you're like, oh man, why are my eyes tired? It's because your eyes, you know, they can't handle all that, all that crap coming at them. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, that's, that's exactly what we say that feels great for everyone. Right. So a lot of people are wearing, you know, wearing it, you know, they're students, they're, you know, working at jobs require a lot of time and computer use. But the fact is that look like when this wasn't in quarantine time, you know, I would, you know, get on the subway. I'd read my iPad before work, open up my laptop, do work, read my iPad on the way home. I'd, you know, exercise a little subway. I'd read my iPad before work, open up my laptop, do work, read my iPad on the way home. I'd, you know, exercise a little bit, eat some dinner. And then I watched

some Netflix. Now I'm just watching more Netflix, really. Don't tell your boss. Oh, wait, you are the boss. No, now I'm not reading. I got no commute anymore. So now it's just more TV. But the fact is that we're in front of screens all day, every day, we're constantly consuming things. And, you know, we need to, you know, that is something that is going to be part of our lifestyle for, you know, inevitably for, you know, the course of human history, in my opinion. And so how are we building technology and products that adapt to that new lifestyle? And how are we promoting a lifestyle that is focused on in the screen for the world, helping you feel happier, helping you feel more productive. Yeah, and less stress on the eyes definitely helps.

And making it so that you're not getting brain cramp. I've had migraines from stress on my eyes, or at least I think I have. They seem to be interconnected, or I spend too much time on the computer and I'll just start getting a migraine that hurts from my eyes. And I know on the Chris Voss show, we reviewed blue light lenses before, and they definitely make a difference. At one point I kind of had to have some, I was having some sort of, I don't know, vitamin D blow issue or something. And then I was having these immense headaches that were overcoming me and they really helped me out in, in making a difference during that time I was going through it.

And like I say, I have a lot of friends that we play different games on PC and PS4 and you just like when you switch to PS4 to, to or from PC to PS4, it really hits you hard. Like it, you have to sit there and go, okay,

I need some time. Yeah, we got yeah we got we got a lot of customers that we might we my co-founder chris is is a gamer and my cto is a gamer as well and you know they're they're constantly you know talking about you know they're up till two in the morning playing video games run an iowa company that helps solve this definitely definitely so so you guys started this in 2016. You found your partner, Chris, and you both had roles in technology and finance.

Yeah, it's a fun story, actually. I'm happy to tell it. So I was working. So as I mentioned, I was at Downtown Project. I went and I started this. We raised it. Me personally raised a small Indigo campaign enough money

for that first minimum order quantity this is back in 2015 actually and then the summer 2015 I was starting to beta test different products and was introduced to Chris through a mutual friend and Chris was at UBS's Global Asset Management at the time he was doing quantitative

stuff for their hedge fund. And, you know, he came and said like, look, I want to be a beta tester. My eyes are killing me and my vision's getting blurry and I don't want to mess up at my job because my vision's, you know, blurry. And he started beta testing the product. Three months in, he loved it.

He had started working part-time and about three, four months after, you know, we initially met, he loved it. He had started working part-time. And about three, four months after, you know, we initially met, he ended up quitting and joining full-time as my co-founder in like late September, 2015, before the company had even, you know, launched and been a real thing. Wow. And you guys have been, I mean, that's a very short time to go from there to where you guys have helped over 400,000 eyes. You've got an expansive website. It looks like you have several different things on the website. You've got optical sleep, sun, kids, uh, kids glasses. Tell us about some of the different things that you have going on here.

Yes. So the main product that we sell is this clear lens, right? This idea of how do we marry fashion function? How do we look? How does it look like a normal pair of glasses? We create a proprietary way of filtering blue light. So it really is this highly effective way at filtering blue light, eliminating glare, but looking like a clear lens. The other clear lenses that are on the market filter only about two to 3% of where blue light actually is producing from a screen. It's about 455 nanometers, which is how you measure the light spectrum. We filtered 15 times that we filtered 30% at 455 nanometers. So really important distinction. It's why nine out of 10 people who wear Felix gray report significant improvement. But you know, as we grew the company, you know,

we first launched non-prescription. So people with contacts are 2020, but then we launched prescription lenses. So, you know, that's gone as part of our business. And then we're hearing a lot of our customers talk about how blue light is affecting them from sleeping as well at night. And that's been clinically shown. There's Harvard studies dating back. And, you know, in I think 2009 is the Harvard study that came out basically showing that overexposure blue light can suppress melatonin.

It will suppress melatonin. And that prevents us from going to sleep as quickly. It prevents us from sleeping as well when we are sleeping. And so, you know, we created a second product, which is basically taking this proprietary blue light filtering solution we made. We put more into the lens. So it is actually a tinted version of the lens, but you know, you're wearing it when you wear sweatpants around the house late at night. And it's actually clinically shown to improve melatonin secretion by two times so yeah that's a that's a really really cool product that's uh that's awesome

to check out i probably need that because my problem is is i know that if i wake up and i've got dogs and you know they need to go to the bathroom in the middle of night sometimes and so they'll wake me up no you go out and then then I just know that if I look at that phone, if I look at that phone, I'm not going back to sleep. And it's that blue light and everything else that hits you and wakes up your brain. And, and I know that my mother is a big believer.

She loves taking melatonin before she goes to bed. It's a real issue for her to sleep well. And so she actually takes melatonin and helps knock her out. And she even talks about the same thing too. She'll tell me, I'll call her, she'll be like, she'll be like, yeah, I started looking at the phone last night and didn't sleep well. And so it really is a factor. And there's, you know, like you said, there's, I think everyone's read these clinical studies that if you look at your phone in the middle of the night, you're going to have issues.

And yeah, you got to do something about that. It's just a hell of a blast in your eyeballs. Well, if you think about it, blue light is part of the visible light spectrum, right? So the sun includes blue light, includes all arrays of the visible light spectrum. And then you light as well, et cetera. And so when we were're cavemen cavewomen you you know some would rise you get out of our cave okay well now you get some blue light so now you're melting and suppressed you can you know get along with your day your circadian rhythm is kind

of you know normalized you know sun sets you go back to your cave you go to sleep and then you're done you know in the last 10 years with LED screens and high energy like screens that nor great for the world or any energy, energy efficient, we need to have these screens anyway, we don't want, you know, less energy efficient, you know, devices, but it comes with negative consequences, we brought kind of the sun indoors is blue light indoors, that's going to change our circadian rhythm so again our we look at this as like technology is going to happen technology is a great thing it is amazing that i have a phone that literally like can tell me any answer i ever need you know by like asking it or

typing a couple things you know by my with my fingers it's amazing but there's some negative effects with that and we're just creating technology to help us cope with those negative effects that's awesome because we're just organic human beings because then i don't think a lot of people just give that attention their eyes especially young people young people really need to protect their eyes because my eyesight's gone bad over the years and uh and then in one of my eyes i have keratoconus which is a sagging of the cornea and uh you got to take care of your eyes people i know people tell you that when you're when you're a kid and they're like yeah take care of your eyes but no it really is true and i don't know

about you but i grew up in an era where we didn't really have computers much i think my first computer was the commodore 64 uh it probably dates me um but we grew up in an age without computers up until the time I think I was about 12 and even then you know we really didn't get it you know and I do remember the time I remember the old days with my original office where you had to buy the radiation screens for the old CRT monitors yeah that's how old i am that's uh at least a couple years ago i'm not not gonna comment on that thanks david and uh so yeah so we used to have to do that but but uh that's probably why i have you know half my brain damage is from those those radiation screens but taking your eyesight's really important you see these kids now they grow up and from like two years old

they're you know when i'm on the subway or something i'll see you know a mom or dad with a kid in a stroller and the kids you know like just they're just trying to grab their parents phone and file the parents like all right here you go just just go play they know exactly what to do at like a year old they're like already you know playing playing on it and you know it's it's crazy and that's why we ended up developing you know kids eyewear as well so you know we really start around age age four um it's a little bit harder to do eyewear when you're too young um but you know they just want to eat the lenses when they're so you know so i have a problem now yeah me too i guess maybe not glasses but definitely other things um you know and so so you know then you look at these kids not only are they you know

in front of screens a ton for recreation but then a lot of their school work is now also um done by ipads um done by computers and especially now and especially now with the quarantine yeah of course so and that's only going to rise we're kind of. Especially now with the quarantine. Of course. So, and that's only going to rise. We're kind of leveling up now with quarantine where people are culturally getting more and more accepted. They're accepting,

you know, technology more and more in any different way, whether it's a zoom meeting as opposed to an in-person meeting or doing an online class. And so, you know, we think that FelixPay really is for everyone because at the end of the day, everyone is in front of a screen a lot.

And you guys make some really cool – if you go to the Felix Gray website at shopfelixgray.com, you can see their tab here. They've got kids small, 4 through 8, and a nice selection of lenses for them in different colors and variations. There's kids large ages 9 through 13 where they can do that. You guys have quite the selection of different lenses and they all look really good. Thanks. And then tell us about your Sunware as well. You got Sunware on your website. Yes. So Sunware is definitely another product. And we realized essentially that when

you're filtering blue light you actually can create better color clarity so a lot of sun lenses they're just going to make everything look darker that's not what we wanted to do we want to say okay well how do we how do we create a great somewhere product and if you're filtering blue light we realize that okay you're actually just innately creating something better because the it's crisper color experience. It's like these beautiful colors that you're not going to get from a normal pair of sunglasses. That's just making everything darker. And then we said, okay, well, how does that product match our belief in helping people live happier, healthier, more productive lives in today's screen for the world? Well, we have a polarized lens and, you know, polarization is a great thing to have.

People should want that. But a lot of the issues around polarization is it makes your screens, particularly like your phone, look very prism-y. So you'll see a lot of times people kind of will like lift up their sunglasses when they're reading something because they can't read their phone. We use a special thinner way of doing that polarization so you can actually look at any your phone or anything without any problem wow yeah that's freaking awesome we got to get a chance to review some of your guys's stuff you guys have a thick guide on there so people can figure out what fits best for them that's one of my challenges i have such a large head it's probably because i have such a big brain we we just launched actually a new one so we name all our frames after scientists mathematicians or we launched

them yes we launched the Volta which is the largest frame but you can also we have a chat function on site so it's really easy to you know chat with a customer service person ask them about you know what is the best fitting frame for for your face and you can actually email style at shopfeelingsgreat.com too you can send a selfie and we'll recommend the best frame for you nice and they're all 100 uva and uvb protection so that's always good to have of course from what i understand you don't want that sun scorching out your eyes don't want that blue light you don't want that uv either is that what it is that what it is from the sun that that messes with you you need that 100 stuff yeah uv light i mean uv damages our skin it damages

our cornea you know it's uh that's why we wear sunscreen this is sunscreen for our eyes kind of yeah it's getting kind of crazy all the stuff that goes on you know and you hear about when the sun has its different flare-ups and like it can take down satellites and crap and you're just like really well if you think about it's kind of crazy the sun's millions and millions of miles away yet like i like it's a cold day and then i walk into the sun i feel feel warm all of a sudden. Like that's a pretty crazy energy source. Yeah, it's quite the stalk of the sun. So you guys have this done. You've distributed to 400,000 eyes.

You've got a beautiful website here. People can go on. They can do the Fit Guide. They can check out the optical lenses, the sleep lenses, the sun lenses. I probably need the sleep lenses because maybe that would help me go back to sleep because, you know, that, or sometimes I'll be, uh, you know, I'll get a ping or something in the morning, really early in the morning. Somebody calls me from back East and I'm like, uh, geez, what's going on here? And then I'm like, boom. Yeah. Yeah. I actually keep them right next to my bedside table. So I wake up in the middle of the night i'm like oh i i thought of something or uh you know i i get a you know ping early in the morning or

right right as i'm going to bed and i just put them on real quick and at least that helps yeah then you go right back to sleep the uh now the only thing the only glasses that i need uh the one the one thing of glasses that i need is ones that are indestructible by dogs because i have two huskies i would say dogs are definitely a good friend of felix gray because they destroy glasses and you know we'll offer a discount but you gotta buy my pair i can't tell you i used to keep my glasses in my bed and you know every now and then you won't send them on the on the counter you'll send them you know in the bed because just like i'm just gonna take them off you rest them on your chest or something and then you know you fall asleep you're all over and then i'll wake up

the next morning the dogs would like trample it and you're just like well there we got a lot of requests for you know discount codes on a second pair because something happened dogs are definitely if it was like a family feud board dogs is definitely on the top of the list serious wow but the craziest ever was one person they said that they got mugged which is terrible and they took people took their phone their wallet their airpods and then wanted their felix craze yeah which is like wow yeah we were like okay we feel really bad for you we're gonna send you a free pair actually that's pretty awesome this i mean that's just really going far i want your glasses too um uh so there you go uh so pretty awesome you guys can go to shop felixgray.com

and they've actually got some really good education there. You can learn about ultraviolet light, blue light, other visible light, infrared light. 60% of all Americans report symptoms of digital eye strain, and this is increasing 7% per generation. Wow. 43% of Americans have jobs that require prolonged computer use. Of course, now, I mean, that's all we're doing, vegging out in quarantine.

One-third of Americans spend eight hours a day in front of their screen, and that's just on Pornhub. I'm just kidding. Let's see. And, you know, they can do all this stuff. You'll feel less tired in the morning. You'll sleep better, and you'll be easier at falling asleep. So there you go.

I like to notice color distortion and stuff in some of the filters that you put on the lenses. I think the blue light filter lenses we tried, one of the problems was it would de-sharpen the image. What's the opposite of sharpen? And it would kind of look a little blurry, and we're like, well, I guess that's what you have to give and take. But it sounds like you guys have a better proprietary know our clear product it looks clear so it's clear

but even our sleep product which is tinted it's pretty amazing that there's still this level of true color so not everything is all of a sudden going to look yellow it'll kind of look a little bit shade darker but it'll look just as clear and you're going to get a lot of those true colors still come out nice anything more we need to know about you guys and what you guys are doing? I mean, so, you know, you can, you can find us online. Um, but you know, we're always doing some really interesting things, storytelling. Um, if you check out try.shopfeelingsgray.com slash not all blue light, that's try.shopfeelingsgray.com slash not all blue light that's try dot shop felixgray.com slash not all blue light you can actually walk through the different lenses that are offered in the market competitor lenses

versus ours and how that stuff actually stacks up so you know we look at this as as a you know as the leader in the space and really the thought leader as well you know how to help consumers navigate this space because it's getting more crowded. And a lot of these companies are just, you know, prescription companies or sunwear companies that just want to offer another product. They don't really know what blue light is. They just want to buy something from China, say, Hey, look, it checks the blue light mark. And there it goes. But like, that's you're paying for placebo at that point. And so our job is, you know, let's help consumers navigate and understand, okay, this you know different lenses are priced differently and this is why if you're paying the same price as us you better be getting a good quality lens and that's kind of hard to do if you're not buying

from philips gray most definitely it sounds like you guys have really got an innovation and a lock on the market what you guys are doing you guys can go to shop philipsgray.com and uh thanks to to Dave for being on the show with us and sharing all the stuff. And I guess you're wearing Felix Gray right now, currently, too. Yeah, I'm wearing it right now. I'm wearing the hair. There you go. Not only does he sell the product, he wears it. Now we've got to get you a pair of the big head Voltas.

There you go. We'll wear them during the show. I'll tell you, we launched it, a week and a half later it sold out. There's plenty of other big head brethren that you can make a club with. Lots of guys with large brains. I don't know. Mostly it's that plate in my head from Vietnam.

Large brains, just got to use them. Alright guys, we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to check out shopfelixgray guys tuning in be sure to check out shop felixgray.com and be sure to subscribe to the show tell your friends names relatives subscribe the show as well they can go to the cvpn.com or chrisfosspodcastnetwork.com holy crap there's like a podcast over there go listen to them because what the hell else you gonna do i mean you're gonna watch the Tiger King thing on Netflix? No, you don't want to watch that.

This sounds awful. I haven't even watched it. So be sure to subscribe to the podcast. There's 300 episodes of the podcast up. So if you want to go listen to every podcast that the Chris Foss show has done, let me know when you're done with it. Listen in chronological order starting from up top. Yeah, there you go. Start withix grain and just move right on down but uh we certainly appreciate you

guys being here and tuning in and we'll see you next time thanks so much for having me