Mr. Krim and four friends started Casper two years ago after studying the traditional mattress industry. They discovered it was plagued by inefficiencies and annoying gimmicks. Customers had to trudge to a mattress store and awkwardly prostrate themselves on numerous surfaces before choosing one to use for a decade. There were too many choices and brands, and mattresses were expensive.

With Casper, you simply buy the mattress online and it’s shipped to you in a comically small box (the compressed foam expands into a full-sized mattress, like a magic trick). You have three months to try it out, and if you don’t like it, the company will come pick it up free.

Casper’s business model offers a break from the annoyance of offline mattress shopping. It also works out for the company. Casper advertises on social networks, on Google, podcasts and a variety of other places online; the ads are creative, convincing, targeted and cheap. By selling directly rather than through retail middlemen, the company also creates a connection with customers that allows it to test and develop new products — it now sells sheets and pillows, too.

After two years in business, Casper is on track to book $200 million in sales over the next year, but its success isn’t ensured. Precisely because the internet has lowered barriers to entry, Casper is facing a surge of new mattress start-ups like Helix Sleep, Tuft & Needle and Leesa, among others.

Of course, competition could be great for consumers if it continues pushing down prices for all mattresses, and if these companies invest in better products and customer service. But competition could result in evaporating profits, too. Remarking on the Dollar Shave deal, Ben Thompson, an analyst who writes a tech-business newsletter called Stratechery, predicted widespread “value destruction” across many consumer product categories. He also warned of doom for TV, which “is not only threatened by services like Netflix, but also the disruption of its advertisers,” he wrote.

Value destruction could be on the table. But there’s another view that new online brands could unlock profits through products aimed at people who are not well served by incumbents.