She made the dullest object you own changeable - and built a factory to prove it.
FORBES 30 UNDER 30 · STANFORD '18
Sophia Edelstein. The glasses are negotiable. The conviction isn't.
Nathan Kondamuri got his first pair of glasses at eight and spent the next decade quietly embarrassed by them. He told that story to a Stanford classmate named Sophia Edelstein. Most people would have nodded and changed the subject. Edelstein asked a different question: why has nobody made these things fun?
That question turned into 400 interviews with families. The findings were not subtle. Kids dreaded their glasses. Parents dreaded the bill. Both treated the whole errand like a trip to the dentist. Edelstein and Kondamuri spent their senior year deciding that the optical aisle was overdue for a rewrite, and they were going to be the ones holding the pen.
Today Edelstein is co-founder and co-CEO of Pair Eyewear, the brand that sells a base frame around $60 with prescription lenses, then lets you snap on a magnetic "Top Frame" for about $25 and change your face like you change your socks. The tagline - "One Pair, Infinite Joy" - sounds like marketing until you realize they built an automated lens lab in California to make it literally true.
Here is the plot twist nobody scripted. Pair launched as a children's brand, the cure for the self-conscious third grader. By 2023, more than 95% of its customers were adults buying for themselves. The kids' glasses became a grown-up fashion habit, and TikTok - more than a quarter of total sales - did most of the convincing.
Edelstein runs the brand, creative, web, and product design side of the house. Kondamuri runs the rest. They share the title of CEO, a structure venture capitalists usually treat like a smoke alarm. The pair treats it as the entire point: two founders, one chair, no territorial standoff. It has held through three funding rounds and roughly $145 million raised.
FILED FROM NEW YORK, NYBefore any of this, Edelstein came up through finance - a summer at J.P. Morgan in India, work adjacent to public-sector and infrastructure banking at Goldman Sachs. She left the spreadsheets for swappable frames. The spreadsheets, it turns out, came in handy.
Today, over 95% of our customers are adults purchasing for themselves, and at the end of this year, we will have sold over 3 million top frames here in the United States and Canada.
A complete pair with prescription lenses runs about $60. Pair skips traditional distribution and designs frames in-house to undercut an industry famous for marking glasses up like fine wine.
Magnetic Top Frames snap onto the base for roughly $25. Florals on Monday, tortoiseshell for the meeting, Van Gogh on the weekend. The frame becomes a wardrobe, not a purchase.
A 40,000-square-foot California facility - billed as the most automated lens lab in the US - lets Pair make lenses and frames itself. Vertical integration is the unglamorous secret behind "infinite joy."
In December 2021, Pair raised a $60M Series B led by NEA and Connect Ventures. In October 2023, it added a $75M Series C led by Prysm Capital, with NEA and Javelin Venture Partners returning. NFL running back Christian McCaffrey is on the cap table.
The Series C came with a mission statement disguised as a press release: international expansion, more onshore automation, a second facility. "Our vision for the company," Edelstein said, "is to be a global eyewear company."
Summer analyst at J.P. Morgan in India; finance work adjacent to public-sector and infrastructure banking at Goldman Sachs. A Dalton School and Stanford education behind her.
Interviews 400+ families with Nathan Kondamuri at Stanford. Discovers nobody likes the glasses status quo - the entire product thesis is born from listening.
Co-founds Pair Eyewear and takes the co-CEO seat. The customizable, swappable Top Frame is the founding idea.
Named to Forbes 30 Under 30. Pair makes its debut on ABC's Shark Tank.
$60M Series B led by NEA and Connect Ventures fuels the leap from kids' brand to mass adult appeal.
Opens America's most automated lens lab in California; closes a $75M Series C led by Prysm Capital. Eyes global expansion.
We love the idea of 'Made in the U.S.' and really investing in onshore manufacturing.
Our vision for the company is to be a global eyewear company.
Since then, we've continued to grow exponentially here within the United States, mainly as an adult brand.
Over 3 million top frames sold here in the United States and Canada - and over 95% of our customers are adults purchasing for themselves.
Edelstein and Kondamuri sat down for Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series to retrace the journey - the idea, the first hires, building culture through breakneck growth, and the strange math of two people sharing one job title.
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