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founders
Andy and Brian
How did we end up starting a company together? We don't know.
Pants were just a dream (and a need) Brian had. A hobby at best. Brian's
mediocre business ideas forever focused on enabling the world
to better cater to his eccentricities, like underwater mp3 players, direct
flights from Copenhagen to Austin, and white Russians made with unsweetened
soymilk. Andy, clearly the
more promising entrepreneur, came into Stanford GSB hot, with
business plans to build a gourmet beef jerky empire and to import high
end Guatemalan rum. These 'sure things' would become the cornerstones of his own
'cultural arbitrage' venture capital firm. Raise $500mm, generate
50% IRRs, retire at 35, then teach write and photograph for the web's most
engaging and piercing blog (quelle blague!). Our fanciful and bad ideas
were not limited to entrepreneurship: we once found ourselves trapped
behind a wall of 700 beers in our schwab room at Stanford; while others
were engaged in sensible curriculum in finance and marketing, we took two
rounds of interpersonal dynamics and PE classes in ill-chosen sports (Brian "the
leadweight" attempting water polo and Andy "jungle cat" going
out for squash).
Kidding aside, these tales indicate a bit about who we are. We're not afraid to try new things, even if odds are stacked against us. We listen to feedback and we listen to each other. Through our various mishaps in business college, we built a wonderful friendship. And part of that involved learning that we wanted to build something cool and were willing to risk failure. So when Brian's bush league pants started selling like hot cakes, Andy gave up more elegant business plans and logical pursuits (like a cushy VC job) and rolled up his sleeves to help. Not because he knew the first thing about fashion, but because he derives an enormous amount of energy from helping his friends (oh boy did Brian need help) and he loves to be involved in cultish consumer businesses. And now we're having the time of our lives working together to spread the joy and cheer of better men's pants far and wide.
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