Afford Anything · Tuesday, July 14, 2026
David Bell shared the founding story of Warby Parker, which he invested in. He recalled meeting the founders as students at Wharton and initially questioning the viability of selling glasses online, but was convinced by their home trial program idea.
“And the founders of Worby Parker went to Wharton, didn't they?”
“Yeah, gosh, what an incredible company. They got 300 stores. Opened up now. And this is really funny. So I was teaching the intro to marketing class, right? And I was just showing some data about diapers.com and how this like e-commerce business had grown its footprint from its inception. I'm in the office hours, these four guys came in, three of whom were actually my students, one who was in another section. Like Neil, Dave, Jeff, and Andy from Worby. And they come and say, Oh, we've got this idea. I said, Okay, cool. What's the idea? Oh, we're going to start an e-commerce company. I said, Okay, what's it going to do? Oh, we're going to sell glasses on the internet. So again, being a professor, right, you don't really know what's going on. I'm thinking to myself, this sounds like a bit of a nutty idea because isn't this a product that has tactile attributes, like one wants to touch and feel it before they commit to buying?”
“So with Mark Law and diapers.com, I don't mind buying Pampers on the internet because I know exactly what I'm going to get for my kid, right? It's Pampers. There's no ambiguity. But I might not want to buy this jacket because, you know, in terms of jargon, it's got a non-digital attribute something you can verify when you have it in hand. So anyway, I said something like this to the guys. And then Neil says, Oh, yeah, don't worry, we've thought of that. We're going to do this home trial program. Paula can order some number of frames or send them to her in a box, and you can try them on and so on. So that was the beginning of the conversation around Worby.”