Skeptical Speculators Swoon For Socks

Hosiery maker stance is signing up Valley Vcs and delivering returns

- Sarah McBride

David Hornik, Howard Hartenbaum, and Tripp Jones, partners at the Silicon Valley venture firm August Capital, sat around a conference table in July, showing off their latest investment. In unison, each one lifted a foot into the air and pulled up his pant leg to reveal a pair of Stance socks.

“The sock category is massive, and no one had bothered to think about it for decades,” Hornik says. “It was a bunch of old companies making the things they’d always made. You basically had two [options], black and white, and that’s a huge opportunity for disruption.”

“Disrupt” isn’t a word usually associated with footwear, particularly the comfy, cozy knitted kind. And yet Stance Inc. has managed to amass $110 million in funding from the types of investors who typically try to move fast and break things. The pant-leg lift has become almost a tic among in-the-know VCs.

Stance’s popularity doesn’t stop at the edge of the Valley. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sported a pair in late September featuring Chewbacca from Star Wars. Drake, the musician, posted a picture of himself to Instagram wearing a pair designed by—and showing a likeness of—his ex-girlfriend Rihanna. The rapper Jay Z, a Stance investor, mentioned the brand on his 2013 album, Magna Carta … Holy Grail. Stance has achieved the kind of prestige that hipper companies fall over themselves to achieve.