Ops team just did the math and we've had over 1 MILLION nights slept in @CubbyBeds 🤯

Teams that celebrate together win together 😂. It’s been a fantastic year at Cubby! Huge thanks to this team.

One metric I love → “nights of sleep delivered.” If you’re mission-driven, quantify the mission and showcase it often. At company meetings, we talk to the dollars and cents because that’s what drives the business. But we always translate it into impact metrics because that’s what drives the team. Outcomes > output. P.S. What’s your guess of how many nights of safer sleep Cubby has delivered? I’ll announce it in a future post (hint, it’s in the millions!)

$400/year is the best team-building investment we make. At @CubbyBeds, we give $30/month to anyone who gets together with 3 colleagues outside of work hours (we call it 333). Every month, teammates who might never interact grab coffee, lunch, or beers. Experiences like these build a lot of trust. ROI = 🚀

I thought someone had been m*rdered in my friend's garage. Blood trail from the alley, through the gate, and into the yard. My heart was racing. Do I call 911? What happened in my backyard workshop? I peeked over the fence, terrified. It was her brother butchering a deer. He hadn't told anyone. This was my office in the early days of @CubbyBeds. That's bootstrapping.

whats the best course or book for storytelling?

We have a kid who body-slams our Cubby Beds like he's in WrestleMania. His mom sent us a video. I watched this 12-year-old run full speed into the padded walls, bounce off, laugh, and do it again and again. Before the Cubby bed, the family had holes in drywall, broken furniture, and ER visits. Now, "He finally has a place to get his energy out safely," she said. Kids with special needs experience the world differently. Oftentimes, every sound is louder and every light is brighter. That can feel like living with all your senses turned up to 11. So we built a bed that turns them down to 3. The canopy is a sensory filter that muffles outside noise/light and creates predictability. Inside that calm, we add back only what helps: 1️⃣ Sunrise lights that teach the body when to wake. 2️⃣ White noise that drowns out scary sounds. 3️⃣ Meditative breathing lights for anxiety. The walls have 360 degrees of padding with no hard corners or sharp edges. We installed safety sheets that zip to the walls so that kids with seizures can't get wedged in gaps. We installed portholes for feeding tubes and oxygen machines. Kids who never could now sleep through the night. Oftentimes, it's the first time in their lives. And when the kid sleeps… The whole family sleeps better too.

7 years ago, I had a hunch. If I combined the best features from sensory rooms, safety beds, and baby monitors, we could create a better bed for children with special needs. So I built some prototypes. Took them to autism fairs and schools, watched kids crawl in, and asked parents: "Would this help at home?" We launched and started collecting reviews. We ran NPS surveys to see what families thought about our beds. Turns out, they loved them. Our beds kept kids safe, which meant families could sleep better at night. Last year, we hired a researcher to analyze >100 studies. That work aims to answer questions like: 1/ Does safety impact sleep? 2/ How does sensory input affect behaviors? 3/ Does better sleep improve therapy outcomes? The pieces started connecting, but insurance companies needed more. They needed proof and they needed numbers. So we invested in peer-reviewed research. The results suggest that a Cubby Bed pays for itself within one year. We went from "this might work and be cost effective" to "here's exactly how much money this saves Medicaid." There's a long way to go, and a lot more work to be done, but Cubby Beds is now the first official safety bed company with peer-reviewed research. We're just getting started 💪

Excited to announce our new COO, Alex Werner! He built a Cubby Bed today in 34 minutes, 9 seconds. An honorable 2nd place on the team leaderboard. Alex brings a decade of military ops from West Point, two other successful medtech startup runs, and a roll-up-your-sleeves approach to everything he does. When someone jumps straight into building the product they're helping scale, you know you've found the right person. Welcome to @CubbyBeds, Alex!