How Two Entrepreneurs Quit Their Jobs and Sold Over $1 million In Blackout Blinds

Sleepout curtains is an interesting company that I hadn’t heard of until they did an AMA (ask me anything) on reddit to help promote their second Kickstarter campaign. Their first product was a portable blackout curtain that used locking suction cups to allow you to quickly install a blackout blind anywhere. A big part of their value proposition was that their blackout blinds actually block all the light, turns out most blackout blinds let in some light.

Their budget for the first campaign was $50,000 which included prelaunch, page buildout, video and more. They borrowed the money to launch the business and used the Kickstarter funds to manufacture the curtains. It was a success! They reached $295,000 in sales in 35 days and within the first year they were profitable and made over $1 million in revenue. In the last 12 months they’ve shipped 15,000 products which works out to almost $2 million (Canadian, so around $1.5 million USD). They have around 150 long term relationships with social/influencer affiliates which help them continue to grow.

For their second product they launched a blackout curtain and rod for your home. It’s actually pretty clever as the top folds over to stop any light leaking from the top and the sides wedge into the curtain rod to hold the curtain as close to the wall as possible. For this campaign they were more prepared as they already has 2,000 prior backers from their first campaign and 5,000 customers from their regular business that they could notify. They also worked with Enventys, an agency who specializes in launching products, to run pre-launch ads to build a list of around 2,500 people that would be interested. It worked again, they hit their $10,000 goal in 10 minutes and it’s over $149,000 with 28 days left to go.

They have impressive hustle . They would post on their socials and would then follow up with a direct message to anyone who left a comment. Just like Paul Graham from Y Combinator used to say “do things that don’t scale.” Bigger companies can’t do them so they differentiate you when you’re just starting out.