Hello, a sleep tracker that garnered a lot of media attention after a successful Kickstarter campaign, is going out of business, reports the BBC.
Mr Proud – who was born in London – gave up plans to go to university to create the gadget and moved to California after receiving a grant from Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who co-created PayPal and now acts as an adviser to President Trump.
The Briton had originally planned to create a wearable sleep-tracking gadget.
But he switched focus to create a table-top device after deciding that this would make customers more likely to keep using it.
“We spend a third of our day [asleep],” he told the BBC in 2014, “It’s the most critical part of the day.”
He managed to attract money from other big name backers, including ex-Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo, Facebook’s virtual reality vice-president Hugo Barra and Spotify’s head of special projects, Shakil Khan.
But Sense struggled against competition from bigger brands, including Withing’s Aura sleep-tracking alarm clock and Fitbit’s sleep-tracking wristwear.
In addition, Apple acquired another rival, Beddit.
“Kickstarter can give you a good basis to get your product off the ground and an awful lot of PR, but translating that into a successful commercial product is difficult,” said Ben Wood, from the CCS Insight tech consultancy.
“Going to the next level, finding more funding and getting backing – or a takeover offer – from a big company is often the lifeline that these companies need to keep going.”
Read more at www.bbc.com
