Warby Parker

Warby Parker started in February 2010 with four Wharton students — Neil Blumenthal, Dave Gilboa, Andrew Hunt and Jeffrey Raider — after Gilboa lost a $700 pair of glasses and balked at replacing them. Their answer was to design frames in-house, cut out the licensing layer that made branded eyewear expensive, and sell direct at a flat price, with a home try-on programme instead of a shop. Blumenthal and Gilboa have run the company as co-CEOs since launch, a structure they attribute to defined lanes and constant communication rather than shared decisions. The company added physical retail as it grew, passing 200 North American stores, and went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021; it was valued at about US$2.6 billion in February 2026. It also runs a buy-a-pair-give-a-pair programme with nonprofit distribution partners. Blumenthal appeared at TechTO's retail session in April 2020, weeks into the pandemic's shutdown of physical retail.