HOW SHE BROKE THROUGH
FEATURING
ALEXANDRA ZATARAIN
Text by Grace Cook
6 Minute Read
Courtesy of Eight Sleep
HOW SHE BROKE THROUGH
FEATURING
ALEXANDRA ZATARAIN
Text by Grace Cook
6 Minute Read
Courtesy of Eight Sleep
“I never take no for an answer.” From a start-up to raising $250 million in venture capital and making Forbes’ 30 under 30 list, Eight Sleep’s co-founder gives the 411 on entrepreneurship.
Kicking off our new business series How She Broke Through is Alexandra Zatarain. She grew up on the border of Mexico and the US, and now resides in Miami with her husband, Matteo. She is 36.
Alexandra Zatarain co-founded Eight Sleep, a pioneering sleep performance company, in 2014. The product? A hyper-intelligent mattress cover. Users on each side of the bed can personalize their sleep settings, from temperature to back support. Its built-in, AI-driven data center, Health Check, also monitors heart rate, breath rate, and heart-rate variability—it’s the world’s first non-wearable monitoring system.
In August 2025, Eight Sleep raised Series D funding, taking its total of VC investment to $250 million. Fans include Andrew Huberman and tennis stars Peyton Stearns and Taylor Fritz. One online reviewer called it “the best product invention since Air Pods.”
DANIMÁS: How did Eight Sleep begin?
Alexandra Zatarain: My husband Matteo [Franceschetti] was struggling with his own sleep, and had the idea that we could use technology to help people sleep better. Massimo [Andreasi Bassi], who is our CTO, is a technical genius. He created the architecture for the product. In the beginning, they built a prototype, and shared it with some friends at a pyjama party in San Francisco. At that party, one guy said he’d write a check if they ever decided to turn it into a company. He turned out to be Eight Sleep’s first investor. I was out of college, working at a FinTech company in New York. They needed someone to help with marketing and branding, and Matteo asked me. I quit and decided to move to San Francisco to help build the company.
D: Why is sleep important?
AZ: Sleep is the most important pillar of health. You would die sooner of sleep deprivation than food deprivation; your body has storage systems for food. For people in business, the higher up the career ladder you go, the more decisions you have to make. Leaders make hundreds of decisions every week. Your mind, your brain, your sharpness, your ability to connect the dots, to be sharp, to remember information and maintain emotional stability… All of this is connected to sleep. We need to operate on a brain that is properly rested.
“I’m passionate about creating products that work for women.”
D: How can businesses or entrepreneurs stand out today?
AZ: Everything starts with a great product, and secondly, solving a problem that people have. In our case, we have built a technology that actually helps people sleep better. The third facet of success, which is the element of Eight Sleep that I take care of, is realizing that it’s important to bring forward a product that is actually desirable. Ten years ago, everyone was talking about fitness, and everyone was counting steps. But no one was talking about sleep. No one was talking about longevity. Creating a message that would make sleep resonate, and which tapped into this lifestyle, has been a key component of our success.
D: You have collectively pioneered a product category and a new way of talking about rest. How easy has it been?
AZ: It’s never been easy because of the category we are in. We’re a hardware company; we’re consumer goods; we’re technology. For the first four years, we were a scrappy startup. I studied communications for my degree, and I realized we had to reposition the brand’s messaging around six years ago, as we were being compared to mattress companies. There were no other players who were putting technology into your bed. From the consumer side, we had to get people to understand that this was not a mattress. That’s been one of the biggest challenges, to create this concept of sleep fitness that people can understand.
“Prove to investors that someone is willing to pay for your product.”
D: Why is language so important when building a brand?
AZ: We sell in over 30 countries; I’m trying to reach people all over the world. It’s so important to not be American-centric in how we think about building a brand and a message that resonates.
I grew up in Mexico, on the border with the US. It was between cultures; I grew up bilingual and you go to school in English from a young age. You’re very exposed to American media, but interpreting it from the sidelines as a Mexican child. I never thought I’d be an entrepreneur, but it’s been a huge advantage to be exposed to different cultures at a young age—particularly in marketing, which is my remit.
D: What lessons from your childhood have you taken into business?
AZ: There’s a resiliency among people in Mexico. We have to have this attitude that anything is possible. It’s served me so well being an entrepreneur. I never take no for an answer. I grew up in an environment where there was always a way—you just had to figure out the way.
D: Eight Sleep has successfully raised $250 million in venture capital. Do you have tips on how to fundraise?
AZ: You need investors on your side. It’s important for them to have a compelling narrative to understand. I often mentor entrepreneurs, and I tell them that they need to find proof of actual traction as fast as possible. You need to prove to investors that someone is willing to pay for what you’re building. If it’s consultancy, a product, a nail salon… whatever it is. Focus on building the product, then prove that you are having some degree of success. The opportunities will come.
Courtesy of Eight Sleep
D: Less than 1% of VC funding goes to women entrepreneurs, and there are very few women in tech—let alone Latina women. Would you consider yourself a role model?
AZ: I am a huge advocate for women understanding that there are roles out there for us. My entry into tech is from marketing; I’m not in STEM, nor am I an engineer. Companies cannot survive on product developers and AI engineers alone. Every single business requires different skills. There is a need for clear, compelling messaging, marketing, and distribution, and those fields are dominated by women.
I’m also passionate about creating technology that works for women. As a sector, very few products are developed specially for women. Medically, we’re underserved by research, and understudied. We have an awesome in-house clinical team, led by women, and we wanted to understand how women sleep. We ran our own clinical studies with women going through perimenopause; we have hundreds of thousands of women using our products every day. We recently released a menopause function, but we’re also innovating for pregnancy, postpartum, and eventually we’ll get to your regular cycle.
D: How do you create the right team?
AZ: Surround yourself with hard-working people who are driven, but crucially people you enjoy spending time with, both personally and professionally. The people around you are going to determine so much of your energy and your state of mind. We’ve learned at Eight Sleep to have a policy of not hiring assholes.
D: Your husband is your co-founder. How do you balance your personal and professional relationship?
AZ: When you work with your partner, and you have a strong relationship, there is no one that you trust more. We’re each other’s most active and caring providers of feedback. We know which buttons to push, and what each of us cares about.
We also have defined rules of the game. At work, he’s my boss. He’s the CEO. But he needs to treat me like any other executive when it comes to work. There is no special treatment. And we have platforms that we use to communicate work versus personal that we do not mix. We use WhatsApp for personal chats, so there are never any work related conversations there. It helps set the tone.
“We have a policy of not hiring assholes.”
D: How do you effectively manage your time?
AZ: I prioritize sleep over all else. I get eight to nine hours a night. I go to bed around 9:30, and wake up around 6 am without an alarm. My second priority is work. My third priority is working out. I aim to do it five to six times per week, even if it’s just for 20 minutes in our at-home gym. I do weight training, padel or pilates, as I grew up dancing classical ballet. Weight training is the easiest to do in a hotel gym when I’m traveling for work.
D: What’s your top tip for riding out the entrepreneurial rollercoaster?
AZ: It comes down to your mindset. You need to understand nothing is personal in business, and that you can figure it out. Mindset changes everything. Avoid the negative spiral where every problem is seen as doomsday at all costs. For me, it’s realizing that if I sleep well, eat well, and am working out to maintain a healthy mental state—that’s my investment in myself but also in my company. It enables me to perform and keep building.
