When/How/why was Proof created?
We thought wood sunglasses would be a cool concept. Fill a need and a niche that was underserved in our estimation. We thought it was unique enough that we may sell a few pairs of shades and have some fun doing it. We didn’t expect it to do as well as it has.
We launched it in my garage with funds we’d saved up. No debt.
How risky was launching Proof for the founders? (Top ramen diet)
It was a risk. Not sell your first born risk, but a risk all the same. We took our savings and dumped pretty much all of it into the company to build the website, and buy inventory. If it didn’t take off we’d have a lot of wooden sunglasses on hand.
We figured if the worse case scenario happened and we didn’t sell anything we could sell the shades at cost or close to it and recoup most of our costs and walk away lesson learned.