Warby Parker’s Co-Founder On Starting A Company From Scratch

Before Warby Parker, the eyewear retailer worth more than $1 billion, was launched, none of its four founders had ever started a company before. So Dave Gilboa, Warby Parker’s co-founder and co-CEO, made a point of asking for guidance. “We spent a ton of time getting advice and mentorship from people who had either started a business before, or who had expertise in a specific area—like optometry, fashion, design, or e-commerce,” Gilboa says. One of those mentors was Jordan Kassalow, an optometrist in New York and the founder of VisionSpring, a socially minded company that aims to make glasses more accessible to communities with limited access to eye care. For the The Atlantic’s series “On The Shoulders of Giants,” I spoke to Gilboa about the kind of guidance that’s required to start a company from scratch, how he got the idea for the company, and which frame designs never made it to production. The conversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity. Read more at The Atlantic.