greg-hayes-branc-furniture-cofounder — **GREG HAYES**

Co-Founder & CEO of Branch, a furniture company that makes it easy for individuals and teams to create an office you love.

Tell Us About Branch. What Is Your Mission?

We launched Branch in early 2019 as a Direct-to-Enterprise office furniture company. The US office furniture industry, which rakes in nearly $50B a year, has seen almost no disruption in a century. The process of purchasing high quality office furniture is expensive, time consuming, and shockingly confusing.

Our idea was fairly simple: design and produce beautiful, high quality furniture, and make it easy, fast, and affordable to procure. We’d achieve our ease, speed, and affordability by selling directly to businesses, eschewing the middleman dealership model that dramatically inflates furniture prices. To ensure quality, we used the same materials and processes as the best-in-class incumbents.

This original iteration of Branch grew rapidly. We completed eighty installations across fourteen US and Canadian cities in our first year, with client sizes ranging from six to over 800 employees. It seemed that there was nothing but blue skies ahead - until the Covid pandemic arrived with other plans. With enterprise office furniture sales drying up rapidly in March and April, it was time for a pivot.

We spent the Spring working through a shift toward DTC, a move which not only probably saved the company, but has positioned us to become a much larger business in both the short and long term. Our DTC business line is now officially larger than our enterprise-facing one was at its pre-pandemic peak. The change of plans was unexpected, but our mission holds true for both customer segments. We exist simply to make it easy and affordable to create a great workday at home or in the office!

What Is Your Background? What Led You To Starting Your Own Company? And How Did You Choose This Space?

My background is in both institutional real estate and PropTech. I spent the first five years of my career at a large real estate fund, and then moved on to manage real estate strategy for a multinational flexible office space startup. Both were fantastic experiences that helped me build the skill set required to start a company.

I was always interested in building a business, and it was always likely to be in the office real estate industry, but I never expected it to be in an adjacent space like office furniture. But ultimately, out of dozens of startup concepts I’d toyed with over a period of years, office furniture was the category most primed for disruption. The inspiration was simply my exposure to the extreme cost, complication, and general confusion associated with procuring high-quality office furniture. I watched company after company pay the equivalent of a year or two’s rent for furniture that took far too long to arrive, with no discernable justification for the cost or complicated process. The solution - a high-end, direct-to-business furniture brand - was too obvious to ignore.

What Have Been Both Your Favorite And Least-liked Parts Of Your Entrepreneurial Journey? What Have Been Your Most Challenging And Most Exciting Moments For You And The Company?

My favorite part of the entrepreneurial journey has been building a team. I’m consistently blown away by the quality of our team, and often have to pinch myself when I think about the talent we’ve assembled at Branch. The best part is the culture that’s developed. Culture is incredibly tough to manufacture, but we’ve found that when you hire the right people, a great culture tends to form naturally around them.

The worst part of the journey is the early-stage stress. Beyond having absolutely no idea what we were doing, for the first nine months we were pretty consistently within a month or two of running out of money. This was money that had been entrusted to us by friends, family, and angel investors. I had no idea what stress was until I was on the verge of blowing the investments of the people who had shown the most faith in us. It’s not something you can prepare yourself for.

Who Are Your Co-Founders Or People Who You Work Very Closely With? How Do Their Skills Supplement Yours?

My co-founders, Sib Mahapatra and Verity Sylvester, are the real brains of the operation. They’re both Forbes 30 Under 30 recipients. Sib is a Yale graduate and our product whiz, and Verity is a Columbia MBA with a strong finance background who has built our operations processes and supply chain from the ground up. Both of their professional backgrounds are in real estate, so they understood the issues companies and consumers had in procuring high-quality office furniture. I’m not sure how anyone could launch a successful startup without a strong co-founder. I’ve been lucky to have two.

What Was The Fundraising Process Like For You? Tell Us About Your Investors And What You Use The Money You’ve Raised For.

We initially raised $300k from a few angel investors out of New York City and Toronto. Securing the first check was the toughest part - far more difficult than we expected. It’s easy to focus on the success stories of founders raising huge amounts of money on nothing but a pitch deck, but for most startups that’s far from the reality. We probably pitched 20 angel investors before our first check was secured. Once we had that, things became much easier. There’s certainly some fear of missing out amongst investors, and once we were able to say “we’ve raised $X from so and so,” more and more of them became interested in participating. I think the biggest mistake we made in the beginning was trying to convince big funds to invest in our business. Those conversations are far easier once you have some angel investors and real-world traction behind you.

We were much more organized when it came time to raise our Seed round. We were raising $2m, so we identified a number of funds who we thought might be interested in our business and created a two-week pitch schedule. We’d been warned by other founders about the risks of a prolonged fundraise, so we were dedicated to running a very tight, efficient process. Pitching and networking became my full time job for two weeks, including a one-day gauntlet of nine pitches. By the end of the process, a few prominent PropTech and DTC-focused investors were intrigued enough to enter the due diligence process, and soon after that we had our first term sheet from Nine Four Ventures out of Chicago. Nine Four had everything we were looking for in a lead investor - a focus on PropTech, a strong team, an extensive network, and a willingness to be helpful beyond writing a check. We subsequently secured commitments from Alate Partners (Toronto), RRE (NYC), Dolik Venures (NYC), and Rough Draft Ventures (NYC).

I can’t tell you how important it is to make sure you’re completely comfortable and fully aligned with your investors. They’re more than just a source of funds. They become your business partners, and an inextricable part of your success (or lack thereof).

We used the Seed funds to expand our product line, grow our Sales and Operations teams, launch our first marketing campaign, and rebrand the business. What we didn’t know at the time was that those Seed funds (and our efficient use of them) would also be critical to getting through the early months of Covid.

COVID-19 Has Caused Many Companies To Close Their Offices- Either Temporarily Or For The Long Term, Leaving Employees To Work From Home. How Has The Pandemic Affected Branch In Terms Of Demand, And How Have You Adapted To Any Changes?

We originally launched Branch as a strictly enterprise-facing business. It’s not hard to imagine what happened to enterprise-facing office furniture companies when Covid hit the US in March. Demand fell off the map, and while it’s since partially recovered, it will likely be a challenged space until at least 2022. By late-March it was clear that in order for Branch to survive (and thrive!), we needed to make some big changes to our business model.

When the pandemic hit we were still small enough to be nimble, so we semi-pivoted into Direct to Consumer office furniture sales. Historically, DTC made up less than 1% of our revenue, and we weren’t set up to serve the market. We had to completely rethink our approach to messaging, marketing, packaging, shipping, pricing, customer service, warehousing, and more. After a month of the entire team working 100 hour weeks, we were ready to launch as a DTC brand in late-April. By mid-May we were seeing some traction, and by Q3 our new DTC business was already generating more revenue than our enterprise business had been producing before the pandemic hit.

Interestingly, the emerging practice of hybridizing work environments (ie. employees alternate between the home and the office) also appears to have been beneficial for Branch. Companies who were willing to pay huge amounts of money for traditional office furniture in the past, but who will now have employees in the office only 2-3 days per week, are rethinking their furniture spend. The idea of having $1200 chairs in the office suddenly seems foolish, and we’re seeing that the combination of Branch’s quality and price point is now attracting companies who otherwise might not have considered us.

Tell Us Some More About Your Numbers. How Has Growth Been Over The Past Couple Of Years?

We launched in Q1 of 2019, and consistently more-than-doubled revenue quarter-over-quarter for our first year. The pandemic halted the growth of our enterprise-facing business, but since launching our DTC business we’ve seen growth accelerate again into the end of the year. In 2020, our second year of operations, we’ll grow revenue 7x, despite losing a few months of revenue to the pandemic.

Anything Exciting Launching Soon?

Our R&D team have got some exciting products in the works, but we’re keeping them under wraps until we’re closer to launch!

Tell Us About Your Typical Workday Schedule.

As any startup CEO will tell you, no two days are ever alike, so a “typical” workday can be tough to identify. But there are some new trends that have emerged with Covid. The biggest difference is in my morning routine. When we were in the office everyday, I would typically wake up around 6:00am, go to the gym, shower, eat, and then commute to the office, where I would start working by 9:00am. Since March, my morning schedule has shifted to: wake up by 6:00am, open my laptop and start working. There’s no more gym or commute to distract me, and I find that I’ve finished most of my busywork for the day by 9:00am. That opens up the rest of the day up for meetings, investor calls, and long-term planning. In an ideal day, all of my internal meetings are wrapped up by noon, leaving the afternoon for external calls and any catch up.

I try to wind things down between 6:00 and 7:00pm, from which point on I do my best to keep my laptop closed. My days are much longer and probably more efficient since we started working from home, but I’m not sure the trade off is totally worth it - I’d much rather spend that time with my team!

How Do You Think Your Industry Will Change Post-COVID?

The traditional office furniture industry will almost certainly shrink post-Covid, potentially significantly. But there will be sub-sectors of the industry that will see astounding growth. Brands that offer value, appeal to DTC customers, and understand the new world of work will thrive. Unfortunately, legacy brands may not be able to adapt in time. I suspect there will be massive disruption to the status quo.

What Are The Most Important Skills A Modern Day Entrepreneur Needs In Order To Be Successful? What Advice Do You Have For Entrepreneurs Who Are Just Starting Out?

The best piece of advice I can give any aspiring entrepreneur is to find great cofounders. Make sure they’re all-in, have complementary skill sets to yours, and are aligned on your vision for the future. Without them, entrepreneurship will be a long, lonely journey. With them, your life will be much easier, and your success will be more fulfilling.

greg-hayes-branch-furniture-cofounder-interview

Three skills a modern entrepreneur needs:

Adaptability: You have to be nimble. Not only do you need to react to a constant feed of new information about your own business, the macro environment that we operate in is also changing more quickly than ever before. This presents a challenge for businesses of all sizes, but it’s especially difficult to deal with as a legacy business. That means that adaptability can be your biggest advantage over your older, larger competitors.
Decisiveness: You must be ready to make difficult decisions, often on the spot and with limited information. Your team will look to you to be decisive and to stand behind your choice. Of course, you can’t always be right - retrospectives and 180s will be required - but an indecisive leader can kill a young company.
Networking: From fundraising to hiring to developing partnerships, you will constantly be networking. It’s uncomfortable for a lot of people, but it’s unavoidable, so you may as well get to work on it.

Tell Us A Story Of Something That Happened To You, Something You Heard, Or Something You Saw, That Either Made You Laugh Or Taught You An Important Lesson.

I learned a very good lesson in 2015. I was ready to quit my corporate job and launch a startup. I had an idea and a name, I’d started building an MVP, and had even begun to test it in the market. Ahead of leaving my job, I sat down with my brother, who is a successful startup founder, to tell him about my plan. Before I got ten seconds into my pitch, he stopped me and told me not to do it. His concern: how was I going to launch a startup when I had no experience even working at one? My suit-and-tie career had provided me with a steady paycheck, a comfy office, a shared assistant, and all of the resources I needed to succeed in a very specific vertical.

His point was that without working at an early stage startup, I’d be bound for failure. I needed to learn how to work with limited (or no) resources, gain experience across multiple verticals, learn startup jargon, see startup culture-building in action, understand what a fundraising process looks like, learn what a board does, and more. I took his advice, got a job at a then-early stage venture-backed company, and spent two years learning the ins-and-outs of startup life. By the time I was done, I was far better prepared to strike out on my own. It’s advice that I’m glad I took, and which led to some of the most invaluable lessons of my career.

If You Can Have A One-Hour Meeting With Someone Famous Who Is Alive, Who Would It Be And Why?

I’d probably pick a former US President, specifically one who presided during my formative years. Both Barack Obama and G.W. Bush have a special type of charisma and oversaw some of the most consequential decisions of the post-war era. Whatever your politics, you’ve got to admit that they’re both incredibly interesting people! I think I’d get more out of an hour with either of them than almost anyone else on earth.

What Do You Do In Your Free Time?

I’m a big fan of travel, coffee, and wine. I admittedly don’t know much about the latter two, but I certainly enjoy them! Since traditional travel hasn’t been possible with the pandemic, my wife and I have been spending a lot of time in upstate New York, which we’ve found to be an underrated and underexplored area of the country.

What Is Your Favorite Quote And Why Does It Resonate With You?

“Take chances when you are young so that you can tell stories when you are old.”

I don’t know who to attribute it to, but it probably helped to save me from a boring career. I’m a bit predisposed to taking the safe route, but this quote and others like it provided me with a glimpse into what my retrospective might have been. I never want to regret not doing something, and never knowing what might have been!

Who Is Your Role Model?

I’m not sure that I have a singular role model, but I do have a number of influential people in my life - family, friends, colleagues - whose combined personalities and accomplishments provide a pretty good roadmap for how I want to live my life!

What Does Success Mean To You?

From a Branch lens, if we can impact the greater furniture industry and materially influence the way that people and businesses consume office furniture, we’ll have been successful. It will mean we’ll have helped clients’ bottom lines, their stress levels, and the environment.

Greg Hayes | Branch