To fit into Silicon Valley, wear these wool shoes

Silicon Valley goes through its own unique shoe crazes and it like a uniformity

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's a venture capitalist nearby, there's probably a pair of Allbirds, too.
 
The Google co-founder Larry Page wears Allbirds, according to the shoemaker, as do the former Twitter chief Dick Costolo and the venture capitalists Ben Horowitz and Mary Meeker.
 
Founded by a New Zealand soccer star and a clean-technology entrepreneur, Allbirds makes the sneakerlike 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 start-up. 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 start-up 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 T-shirt), 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.  And so, for now, this insular world has settled on Allbirds.
 
At a gathering last month hosted by the venture capital firm August Capital on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California, 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, the managing partner for Elefund, which finances early-stage start-ups, 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 colour — but then it's an icebreaker," said Kaldykulov, who owns four pairs in different colours. "Anything with laces becomes less efficient," said John Kim, chief executive of SendBird, a start-up 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 in a statement that the latest line is more durable than earlier iterations.)
 

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 planned 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 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 travelled 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 per cent 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 size 12 and 13 went out of stock," Zwillinger said. "Our demo 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 Brooklyn-based 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 pm every day, the founders host an all-office push-up session called "40 at 4."
 
Dave Morin, an investor at Slow Ventures, which put money into Allbirds, said the start-up was a place to invest "in the material science and the dream."
 
"Number one, breakthrough material; two, you didn't need socks, that changes the idea of shoes; and Number three, 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 executive who wears Allbirds.
 
 Brown and Zwillinger said they planned to release new colours 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 same consumer who buys basic clothes from Everlane, also based in San Francisco, and eyewear from Warby Parker. 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."