Hello, the makers of the bedside sleep tracker Sense, is shutting down as after looking for a buyer, according to a blog post from the company. The news wasfirst reported by Axios, which said the company has laid off the majority of members of its employees and sought a buyer of its assets.
Weve likewise heard that the details via Axios are on-point, including talks with Fitbit for the companys assets with no outcome. Weve also heard that some of the engineering squad will unsurprisingly be headed to sleep startup Casper. That squad will be part of the companys San Francisco R& D team. Casper sells a wide portfolio of sleep products like the mattress, sheets, pillows, and of course a puppy couch.
The company was valued between $ 250 million and $300 million in a financing round in 2015, when it created $40 million in a round is presided over by Temasek. The company raised $2.4 million on Kickstarter for its first product, but since then has tried to roll out new features like a version with voice acceptance late last year. That last unit was priced at $149.
Hello positioned itself as a sleep tracker that you wouldnt have to wear on your wrist, instead sitting somewhere in your chamber with a small tracker that fits inside your pillow. Sleep tracking has increasingly become a component of a lot of fitness and health tracking, with there even has become a Bedtime function cooked into iOS.
Hello likewise aimed to make its service equal parts software and the actual physical hardware. The goal would be to make sure customers get to optimal sleep contexts whether with white noise or having a comfy room and try to keep those environments consistent and build up good habits around sleep.
Inevitably, though, these kinds of bedside hardware products face an existential danger from voice-powered aides like Alexa and Google Home( and, soon, the HomePod ). While these products arent necessarily branded around sleep, it doesnt seem like too much of a leap to bring those kinds of features to things like the Echo and Google Home. It could turn out to be as simple as telling, Alexa, please slowly turn the illuminations on at 7 a. m. and make sure I wake up.
And hardware is a different beast than merely creating an app that builds better sleeping habits. In August last year, the company “re saying it” would begin selling Appreciation at Best Buy and Target. That means that a startup like Hello suddenly has to grapple with complex problems like supply chain management and distribution, as well as the right marketing to ensure that people actually end up buying the tracker off the shelves. The corporation hired a new CMO from DoorDash in September last year.
Ive reached out to CEO James Proud, an early Thiel fellow, for some additional detail and havent hear back yet. We reached out to Casper, which also hasnt responded to a request for statement yet.
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