Alexandra is the co-founder and VP of brand and marketing at Eight Sleep, the company leveraging thermoregulatory, biotech-enabled products to optimize humans’ sleep fitness. Eight has raised over $150M from investors like Softbank, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and Khosla. This week, it officially expanded into European markets.
On the first hour of her day.
I keep a very consistent schedule, so I wake up naturally and rarely use an alarm.
I’ll put on my Apple Watch so I can start tracking my stats as soon as possible.
I’ll drink some water and brush my teeth. Before I do coffee or breakfast, I need to work out for maybe 30 minutes to an hour. I grew up as a dancer for 15 years, so I know my body pretty well and can often guide myself through a routine. I might do pilates, strength training, or hop on our Tonal machine or Peloton.
Working out is the best way for me to destress, so I actually almost crave it.
The weeks get crazy, but I’ll try to squeeze it in three times during the weekdays, and then a couple of times during the weekend.
On her non-negotiables.
It sounds cheesy, but sleep is 100% my top non-negotiable.
Second to that is nutrition. As a woman, I particularly feel the body goes through many hormonal changes with age, so I’ve been paying more attention to what keeps me energized. I don’t follow any extreme diets.
I just make sure I’m eating enough and that it’s nutritious.
Third, naturally, is keeping up my workouts.
On structuring work-life balance.
I really do integrate work into my life. I’m in front of my laptop between 9 AM to 6:30 or 7 PM, but I’m on my phone from the moment I wake up to roughly 30 minutes before bed.
I think it’s just part of being a founder building a fast-growing company.
It also varies throughout the year. Right now, for instance, the holidays are coming up so I know I’ll have to accept working non-stop and having dark circles under my eyes.
It was worse during the early years of the company.
My co-founder, Matteo, and I were married and working out of an apartment, which our small team would also use as an office. There was no work-life divide at all. We eventually developed a routine where we don’t work on Saturdays.
We might brainstorm during breakfast, but after that, it’s: “Let my brain rest. No more questions about work.” I’ve also found I’m much more creative when I just give myself space to breathe and unwind. I’ll usually start work late one day per week so I can have solo time to simply think while being outdoors.
On ambition and going international.
I’d say I’m constantly seeking self-improvement. Someone once described this effect that happens when you push yourself toward achieving the first step, and then you go, “I was able to make that. Well, what else can I do?”
And that loop continues until you make your thousandth step and ask, “If I was able to do all that, what’s ahead in the next thousand steps?”
That’s definitely what happened with Eight Sleep. As we were still building up the company, we thought it’d be a pipe dream to impact a million people’s sleep patterns. But now it’s clearly on the horizon.
I wake up every morning with people talking about using our product and think, “Holy shit. We have something big on our hands. Why stop now? We’ve gotten so far. Let’s take this to as many people as possible.”
International expansion is really just another step toward that.
It’s exciting because people have been asking for years for us to bring the Pod to them. And all of our teams are now supporting people around the world and learning to build for markets and audiences in new places, languages, and cultures we don’t yet fully get.
It’s something new. The most beautiful part of it all is that Eight Sleep is actually beneficial for people. With our business, if we achieve our goal of reaching millions of people to help their sleep health, it’s a net positive for humans.
I’m not selling you BS. That propels my ambition even further.
On support systems.
I find I have two groups of people who always help me take a step back and recenter.
The first is more business-oriented: like-minded people who’ve gone through or are going through the founder struggle with you. That includes my co-founders, our executive team, our team managers, advisors, other founders, etc.
They all provide perspective and confidence, especially those who’ve been through it before and can tell you what’s normal or not.
The second group has nothing to do with Eight Sleep, business, tech: nothing. That’s usually friends and family back home in Tijuana. These people are so energizing because they’re there for you — and they don’t care how well or poorly your business is doing.
They don’t care if you’re hitting your KPIs. That just doesn’t matter to them.
So going back home to my parents and where I grew up, feeling that energy and source of unconditional love, is incredibly helpful for refueling and recentering.
