Seth Godin goes shopping for mattresses and writes about Harry Acker, the billionaire owner of Sleepy.

When I was in my final year of university (at UMIST, which has now merged with Manchester University), each student took part in a group project. Each project required some level of technical innovation and was to be managed as in ‘real life’, with budgets, schedules and oversight. A senior university lecturer was assigned to each project to provide assistance when required and to make sure that everything ran smoothly and we weren’t going off on the wrong track.

For many of the projects, the lecturer became heavily involved in the work – in some cases providing management and technical leads that should have been the responsibility of the students. Our lecturer didn’t. He did however guide us in the early days of the project and point us in the right direction when he felt we were doing something wrong. Most of the time he didn’t get involved. We’d sometimes spend a week working on the project without seeing him. Much of this was probably due to his other responsibilities, but it was nice not to be badgered every 5 minutes.

Often, when he came to see us, he’d poke his head round the door to our lab and ask us if everything was okay. If we said ‘yes’, he’d smile and go away, if we said ‘no’ he came in to help us. He trusted us with the responsibilities and knew our skills. He was a Harry.