To fit into Silicon Valley, wear these wool shoes
Silicon Valley goes through its own unique shoe crazes. There were Vibrams. There were Crocs.
Now comes the Allbird, a knit wool loafer. In uncomfortable times, Silicon Valley has turned to a comfortable shoe. If there are venture capitalists nearby, they’re probably in Allbirds, too.
Google co-founder Larry Page wears Allbirds, according to the shoemaker, as do former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and venture capitalists Ben Horowitz and Mary Meeker.
Founded by a New Zealand soccer star and a clean-technology entrepreneur, Allbirds makes the sneaker-like shoes from wool and castor bean oil. Slightly fuzzy to the touch, Allbirds have minimal styling (tiny logos only) and come in two versions: a runner and a lounger. Both styles, for men and women, sell for $95. Next month, Allbirds is opening its first store in Manhattan.
In true Silicon Valley fashion, Allbirds is a startup. Is it venture funded? Of course it is. The company has raised $9.95 million over the last year to spread its vision. But this being startup land, a shoe is never just a shoe.
“We’re about the distillation of solutions, the refinement and crafting of forms in a maniacal
way,” said Tim Brown, the Allbirds co-founder from New Zealand.
Silicon Valley likes a uniform. Standing out with a personal style in tech is generally shunned, since it implies time spent on aesthetic pleasures, rather than work. Tech leaders often adhere to strict personal dress codes (like Mark Zuckerberg’s gray Tshirt), and young entrepreneurs study the social media cues of the venture capital class, who tend to select investments in part based on who looks like them.
So, for now, this insular world has settled on Allbirds.
At a gathering last month hosted by August Capital on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, about 1,000 entrepreneurs and investors mingled on a concrete patio over margaritas and deviled eggs to celebrate summer. Guests wore other shoes — New Balance, Top-Siders, Tevas and a rare dress shoe were spotted — but the furry-looking Allbird was by far the most common.
Serik Kaldykulov, managing partner for Elefund, which finances early-stage startups, wore a pair as he waited to get into the party.
“Everyone’s wearing them. Sometimes it is awkward, especially if we’re wearing the same color — but then it’s an icebreaker,” said Kaldykulov, who owns four pairs in different colors.
“Anything with laces becomes less efficient,” said John Kim, CEO of SendBird, a startup that helps software engineers build chat features within their apps. He sported a pair of light gray Allbirds.
Kim said he wore Allbirds for “all reasons and purposes” — except to a recent barbecue, for fear that sauce could seep in. Allbirds, which are machine washable, are meant to be worn without socks. (Some have complained about how quickly the shoes wear out, though Allbirds has said that the latest line is more durable than earlier versions.)
Yet today’s hot shoe may easily become tomorrow’s Google Glass in a drawer. So what to do except strike before the moment slips away? Joey Zwillinger, an Allbirds co-founder and former clean-tech entrepreneur, said the company plans to raise more money. “We have pretty big aspirations,” he said.
At Allbirds’ office, in one of San Francisco’s oldest buildings on a high-end shopping street downtown, he and Brown, both 36, told the story of how they became Silicon Valley’s cobblers.
In 2009, Brown, then vice captain of the New Zealand soccer team, was trying to figure out his next chapter. He liked design and, before attending business
“Sometimes it is awkward, especially if we’re wearing the same color — but then it’s an icebreaker.” Serik Kaldykulov of Elefund, who owns four pairs
school, made simple leather shoes for his friends. But the shoes were uncomfortable.
“Coming from a land of 29 million sheep, wool was obvious,” Brown said. With a research grant from New Zealand’s wool industry, Brown began a Kickstarter campaign to make wool shoes in 2014. Within four days, he had sold $120,000 worth of shoes through the crowdfunding website. He shut down the campaign in a panic.
“I didn’t understand how it could be made,” he said.
Zwillinger, an engineer in biotechnology, was working in Silicon Valley and struggling to sell algae oil as a replacement for petroleum. (It was too expensive to catch on.) Their wives, who are best friends and former Dartmouth roommates, introduced the two men. Brown traveled to Northern California to meet Zwillinger and get advice on supply chains. Zwillinger cooked a lamb stew, and the two decided to form a business.
“One of the worst offenders of the environment from a consumer product standpoint is shoes,” Zwillinger said. “It’s not the making; it’s the materials.”
Allbirds are made of a very fine merino wool, each strand 17.5 microns wide. “Which is 20 percent of the width of the average human hair,” he said.
The shoe’s name comes from what explorers supposedly first said of New Zealand: “It’s all birds.” Also, Zwillinger is an avid birder.
For a while, there was little tech interest. Then, in mid-2016, Zwillinger noticed tech leaders posting about the shoes on Snapchat and Twitter.
All of a sudden, men’s sizes 12 and 13 went out of stock, Zwillinger said. “Our (customers) went from mostly female to way male. A run started happening.”
Today, the two men have 50 employees in their San Francisco headquarters, 350 contractors in a factory in South Korea and 40 at a warehouse in Nashville. The Red Antler consultant firm worked with them on branding and design.
The office is packed. The meeting room is up a ladder; there’s a frosé machine for frozen rosé. At 4 p.m. every day, the founders host an alloffice push-up session called “40 at 4.”
Dave Morin, an investor at Slow Ventures, which put money into Allbirds, said the startup was a place to invest “in the material science and the dream.”
“No. 1, breakthrough material; 2, you didn’t need socks, that changes the idea of shoes; and No. 3, it was a single shoe,” Morin said. “I think of it as classic Apple simplicity strategy.”
Others were more hesitant.
“I don’t think Silicon Valley has ever set, is currently setting, or ever will set any fashion trends,” said Costolo, the former Twitter chief who wears Allbirds.
Brown and Zwillinger said they plan to release new colors of shoes (currently six are available, including pine and moss) and, eventually, shoes for children. A reporter saw a pair of flip-flops that appeared to be made of bamboo or very firmly packed leaves. “Market research,” Zwillinger said.
The co-founders are hoping to appeal to the shopper who buys basic clothes from Everlane, also in San Francisco, and eyewear from Warby Parker. (Two Warby Parker founders are Allbirds investors.) Shoes are an $80 billion industry in the United States, where the average American buys eight pairs a year, according to a Euromonitor International Passport report.
“If you were going to design one sneaker and only one, what would it look like? We focused on this idea of a singular solution,” Brown said. “The right amount of nothing.”