After starting a $900 million company in his parents’ garage, Boxed’s CEO learned to embrace this type of stress

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/09/boxed-ceo-chieh-huang-on-going-public-challenges-stress-journaling.html

By most measures, Boxed CEO and co-founder Chieh Huang is a successful entrepreneur: He just took his start-up public in a $900 million deal, eight years after launching it from his parents’ garagein Edison, New Jersey.

But behind the scenes, he says, the experience is hardly glamourous.

“On certain days, I don’t feel blessed to be CEO,” Huang, 40, tells CNBC Make It.

On Thursday, Boxed — a New York City-based online retailer dubbed as “Costco for millennials” that sells bulk-sized toilet paper, laundry detergent and pet food — debuted on the New York Stock Exchange via a SPAC deal with blank-check firm Seven Oaks Acquisition Corp. The BOXD stock opened at $8.90 per share, and rose to roughly $13 per share within its first two hours of trading.

It’s a new step in Boxed’s rise — and another source of continual stress for Huang, who says he’s worked nearly 24/7 over the past year to take his 400-employee company public during a global pandemic.

″[It’s] been really difficult,” he says. “I think everyone’s been on 25 hours a day this past year.”