E999: ROOM CEO & Co-founder Brian Chen is building phone booths for the modern office, shares insights on maximizing open floor plans, partnering with Calm to reduce stress at work, maintaining capital efficiency as a hardware startup

0:53 Jason intros Brian Chen

1:15 Brian demos ROOM’s collaboration with Calm

2:42 How did ROOM get their room.com domain name?

3:49 Upside & downside of open floor plans

5:52 Why ROOM manufactures the product in Indiana (for US distribution) & Portugal (for European distribution) as opposed to China

13:47 How did Brian convince VCs to invest in his DTC furniture business

18:13 What Brian thinks about ROOM’s defensibility

21:20 ROOM’s case studies with Density

26:20 How does Brian keep ROOM so capital efficient?

31:28 How does ROOM ventilate their booths?

34:58 Will ROOM raise another round or continue building off profitability?

36:49 What will ROOM’s next products be?

40:05 What would a Jason themed booth look like?

44:01 Alternative solutions for manipulating open floor plans