2017 Bull Ring Winner Earns First Outside Investment

  • Entrepreneurship Program director Ryan Holbrook poses onstage with Steven Van Alen and Martyna Skrodzka, the Sleepyhead team.

    Entrepreneurship Program director Ryan Holbrook (left) poses with Steven Van Alen and Martyna Skrodzka, the Sleepyhead team, after announcing them as winners of the 2017 Bull Ring Competition. File photo by David J. Hawkins.

Sleepyhead, the 2017 winner of the California State University, Northridge Bull Ring new venture competition, recently secured its first outside investment — a $50,000 infusion from the CEO and founder of a successful e-commerce furniture retailer.

Sleepyhead is an e-commerce startup that sells boxed memory-foam mattresses and bed toppers. Steven Van Alen, the founder and CEO of Sleepyhead, was a business management student when he pitched the startup, which provides premium mattress toppers to incoming CSUN freshmen and mattresses to off-campus students and student housing communities, at the 2017 Bull Ring.

The investment came from Shawn Nelson, CEO and founder of LoveSac, an e-commerce furniture retailer with more than $100 million in sales last year. The investment was used to pay for inventory to support Sleepyhead’s new partnerships with more than 900 universities in all 50 states. Nelson will also become a partner in Sleepyhead, according to a press release.