Tim Rosa, Chief Executive Officer, Somnee Interviewer: Leo Schwartz, Fortune
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TechTranscript
00:00Good morning, everyone.
00:01I think Andrew might have taken my question,
00:04but I was going to start off.
00:05I know last night might not have been the most conducive
00:08to a good night's sleep.
00:10There was arcade games.
00:11There was bowling.
00:11It was a busy night.
00:12But can I just poll the audience?
00:14On average, who thinks that they mostly get a good night's sleep?
00:19All right, that's a pretty good section there.
00:22I know especially among this cohort,
00:25sleep apps and sleep tracking is incredibly popular,
00:28from Fitbit to Eight Sleep Now.
00:30I've had a very interesting experience
00:32the past couple weeks of testing out
00:34the product offered by Tim's company here, Somni, which
00:37is very different.
00:38It's a headband that you wear with electrodes,
00:41and it delivers electrical pulses to your brain.
00:44So you wear it for 15 minutes before you go to sleep.
00:46When you close your eyes, you can actually
00:48see lights flash before your eyes,
00:50and you can feel like a warm, tingling sensation.
00:53And it plays music.
00:54So it's very different, I would say,
00:55than probably pretty much anything that you're used to.
00:58And I want to start off with Tim.
00:59If you can really explain what Somni is
01:01and how the technology works, how
01:03it differs from a lot of the other tools that are out there.
01:06Yeah, so Somni was actually invented by four UC Berkeley
01:11professors and neuroscientists.
01:13One of them, Dr. Matt Walker, he wrote the book Why We Sleep.
01:16He runs the Sleep Lab at UC Berkeley.
01:19Dr. Robert Knight, he runs the Neuroscience Institute
01:22at UC Berkeley, and two others.
01:24And they basically pioneered this idea
01:28of using neurostimulation to manipulate your brain
01:32to help you fall asleep.
01:33And the way it works is we have an EEG sensor
01:37that maps your brain.
01:39We then personalize the data sets
01:41to determine the right frequency to help you fall asleep faster.
01:45So we cut the time it takes to fall asleep in half.
01:48We also eliminate sleep disruptions by a third.
01:53And we outperform sleeping pills and traditional defaults
01:57like taking melatonin or CBT-I. As Matt says,
02:01sleeping pills are really bad.
02:02They're like a baseball bat to the brain.
02:04They're addictive.
02:05There are a lot of side effects.
02:07So it's a new technology.
02:09It's a new category of product.
02:11It is a closed-loop product, so it's
02:13a diagnostic as well as a therapeutic,
02:15which is pretty rare.
02:17And it's exciting, and it works.
02:19Yeah, so Tim, you were previously at Fitbit.
02:21And like you said, this is a really different product
02:24than probably most of the different tools
02:26that anybody in this audience has tested out.
02:28Instead of waking up the next morning
02:30and it telling you you've got two hours of deep sleep
02:33and one hour of REM cycle, which doesn't really
02:36mean that much to most people, this
02:38you only wear for 15 minutes.
02:39And again, it's a pretty strong pitch,
02:41I think, where you're getting electricity
02:43delivered to your brain.
02:45What made you decide to go from Fitbit
02:48in this last cycle of wearables to Somni, which is really
02:51representing the next generation?
02:52Well, Fitbit and most wearables are general diagnostics.
02:56At Fitbit, we pioneered sleep tracking and sleep sensors.
03:00I always knew the size of the population
03:05that is focused on sleep and the issues around sleep.
03:08I believe 70 million consumers have a sleep disorder
03:13in America.
03:15What we're trying to do is focus on the therapeutic side.
03:19We need the diagnostic.
03:21It's a clinical grade diagnostic.
03:22It's the gold standard EEG and PSG sensors.
03:26So bringing that into a wearable that you
03:29can use and wear for 15 minutes is something very powerful.
03:33But the unique thing about it is it's therapeutic.
03:37I think with wearables, they're great, obviously,
03:40tools to help improve and monitor your overall health.
03:44But we're literally tracking sleep data sets at the source,
03:48so at the brain as opposed to on the wrist and the finger.
03:51So you're getting really clear data sets.
03:54And we need that in order to perform
03:55the therapeutic side of the product.
03:58Do you think the pitch has been harder to make to customers
04:00where, again, with something like Fitbit,
04:02you wear it on your wrist, you get some data,
04:04you can do with what you want with it.
04:06With this, you're putting electrodes on your brain
04:10as you sleep at night.
04:11Is that a harder product to convince customers to adopt?
04:13I think there's certainly education.
04:15Whenever you create a new category,
04:18there's a lot of education that comes with it.
04:19It's the same thing when we launched Fitbit.
04:22We had to educate the consumer market about what we're doing.
04:27Data was really important.
04:29Owning your own data was incredibly important.
04:31Here, it's the same idea.
04:34Basically, we're trying to help you understand
04:38how to improve your sleep.
04:40Sleep is a deeply painful and personal experience
04:43for a lot of people.
04:45Myself, I struggled with adult insomnia
04:49until I started using Somni.
04:52And so the thing that's really unique and sets us apart
04:55is that there is education.
04:58There's more awareness, especially
04:59coming out of the pandemic.
05:02The great thing about the pandemic
05:03is we transitioned from Kardashians as influencers
05:07to scientists and doctors as influencers.
05:10So people like Andrew Huberman, certainly Dr. Matt Walker,
05:14Pete Attia, provided a lot of research and validation
05:19around what was happening in just overall health.
05:22Sleep, obviously, is one of the most important things.
05:25We call it sleep is your superpower.
05:28It affects your physical health, your mental health,
05:31and certainly performance, weight loss, et cetera.
05:34And so for us, it's really about how
05:37do we embrace the technology?
05:40How do we create education and awareness for what we're doing?
05:43How do we drive efficacy?
05:44And certainly, how do we improve your sleep overall?
05:48Do you think that this category of wearables, which
05:50are more focused on therapeutic services than tracking data,
05:54is going to replace the last generation?
05:56No, I think wearables are great.
05:58They're really important.
05:59Obviously, I helped launch Fitbit.
06:03But wearables are very important because they give you
06:06an idea of what's happening.
06:08And there are certainly certain sensors,
06:10depending on the location, that are more accurate.
06:13We know about the finger is an accurate placement
06:17for heart rate data, et cetera.
06:20But we're not looking to replace your whoop or your aura.
06:26In fact, we'll be partnering with a lot of the wearables,
06:29just given the clinical data sets that we're providing.
06:32But even at Fitbit, we're always trying to figure out
06:35how do we close the loop?
06:37We were doing a lot of M&A, looking at the reality
06:41is consumers are always looking for the silver bullet.
06:44They want to understand what's happening.
06:46But how do you drive to a health outcome?
06:50How do you improve a physical fitness goal,
06:54or a weight loss goal?
06:55Or how do I improve sleep?
06:58So again, the unique thing about what we're doing
07:00is the closed loop nature, the therapeutic side
07:04of actually fixing your sleep.
07:05It's very, very powerful.
07:07It's certainly unique.
07:09There aren't many products that exist like this on the market.
07:12One of my personal favorites is a product
07:17that's made by a company called 8Sleep.
07:20And they make incredible diagnostic and therapeutic
07:24products to help regulate your body temperature.
07:27As you may or may not know, in order to fall asleep,
07:30you need to reduce your core body temperature by 3 degrees.
07:34So 8Sleep makes an incredible product
07:36to help you improve your sleep through lowering
07:39that core temperature.
07:41So barring everyone going out and getting Somni tomorrow,
07:44and by the way, you can test it out in the networking tent
07:46next door, or getting one of these.
07:49I think the 8Sleep mattress is something like $3,000,
07:51so it might not be for everyone.
07:53Are there any other simple tips that you can offer,
07:55maybe that Dr. Walker shares, on how
07:58people can improve their sleep on a nightly basis?
08:00Yeah, I think these are basic.
08:02And all of this is out there at this point.
08:04In fact, on our Somni website, we have all of Matt's tips.
08:07One of the most important things is
08:09being regular with your sleep hygiene and your schedule.
08:12So going to sleep at the same time,
08:15waking up at the same time, very important.
08:17Something that I learned, actually,
08:20I didn't learn until I started working at Somni,
08:21was I always thought caffeine had a six-hour shelf life,
08:25but it turns out it has a 12-hour shelf life.
08:29So if you go to sleep at 10 o'clock,
08:32you need to stop drinking coffee by 10 o'clock in the morning.
08:36And so those are things that are really important.
08:39Again, regulating your core body temperature, reducing light.
08:45And certainly, one of the other things is exercise.
08:48One hour of vigorous exercise does
08:50a lot to improve your deep sleep.
08:53And the single most important thing to not do is alcohol.
08:58Being here, we're certainly drinking a lot of alcohol.
09:01Alcohol is really bad for sleep, certainly
09:04bad for your REM sleep.
09:06So making sure you monitor your alcohol consumption
09:10during the evening before you go to sleep.
09:12So unfortunately, that's all the time that we have.
09:15Reminder, you can go check out Somni in the networking tent.
09:18I also think that you have a 2.0 version coming out soon,
09:21so keep an eye out for that.
09:22Tim, thank you so much for joining us here today.
09:25Thank you, everyone.