New cpap.com CEO: 'Sleep is the wonder drug’

HOUSTON – Joe Megibow says there’s a ton of untapped opportunities in sleep therapy and he wants to “lean hard” into that potential in his new role as CEO of cpap.com. 

“There’s tremendous opportunity surrounding the real goal we’re trying to solve here, which is helping people who are having sleep challenges,” he said. “Not everyone needs a CPAP machine, and there's a journey up to that point. And there are some emerging products and opportunities around there; and there are health related things that directly impact sleep.” 

Megibow, who took the reins at cpap.com after leading roles at Casper Sleep and Purple Innovation, spoke with HME News about moving from mattresses to CPAP devices. 

HME News: What drew you to your new role at cpap.com? 

Joe Megibow: I fell in love with sleep over the last few years with everything I learned at Purple and Casper. We put a lot of energy into both businesses on really understanding what makes a good sleep and how we could we could design a product that works for most adults that genuinely improved sleep." So, finding a business that has been at this a long time and is a leader in the space (was appealing).  

HME: Your background is heavy on artificial intelligence and analytics. How will you use that to drive cpap.com forward? 

Megibow: The interesting thing about e-commerce businesses is they have the most data and the least humanity. Most online businesses are very transactional and mechanistic, and that’s great if you know what you're looking for. But getting the humanity back into digital businesses is really, really important. One way is to actually use humans, and we invest a lot in what we call our CPAP guides, who are real, experienced trained humans who can help customers out. And then AI is getting really interesting. What used to take a team of analysts or data scientists, you can now sort of have in a box and have the ability to both understand our customers’ needs and service them better. There's a certain amount of repetitiveness to that, and there's a lot we can start to automate and service our customers in ways that are very effective and drive high consumer satisfaction. 

HME: Mattresses are obviously sleep-related, but it’s a very different market from CPAP, which involves testing and prescriptions. How will you apply that background in your new role? 

Megibow: What surprised me at both Purple and Casper is how much research and effort we actually put into the physiology of the human body and the drivers of sleep disruption and how we are actually able to help. We were doing sleep studies and proper peer-reviewed medical studies. I was already sort of in the mindset of this is a medical thing. Sleep is the wonder drug – it's one of the few things that all human beings on the planet share that improves our quality of life.