Nebia (YC S15), a Shower Head Start-Up, Receives Funding from Tim Cook of Apple

For those surprised by the cost, I did a quick search on HomeDepot.com for the current line up of "shower head"s.

The largest category is the $50-100 group where HomeDepot lists 633 products. In the $200-250 category, where the Nebia is priced there are 95. Above $250, HomeDepot carries nearly 450 products including a $5500 shower head.

So if you think this is too much money to pay for a shower head, think again. It's the same discussion that appears every time Dyson launches a product (see LED light).

Why on earth would they focus on the payback period when the point is that it's a better shower? Is this because Kickstarter backers are supposedly more rational consumers than other people? I doubt that. If it's a more pleasant shower, then sell that.

I'm curious to know how the droplet size effects the water temperature required to take, "a nice hot shower." Wouldn't the smaller droplets increase surface area and convection/radiative heat loss? There is a certain sublime feeling of having hot droplets rain down on you.

Buckminster Fuller had the same idea in the early 1930's with the fog gun shower[1]. I sometimes wonder how many of his ideas will be recycled and gain traction in the years to come.

[1]: http://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/dymaxion-world/dym...

anyone really think a $250 shower head is going to withstand pressure from the sub $30 knockoffs that hit the market a year later?

A "shower head" start up? Atomized water? From YC?

Digging into the multiple reviews / press articles I think I figured out why investors love this and we should be compelled.

This is not a "shower head".

This is something new that has the same end-game of getting you clean like a shower head, but much more efficiently:

“It’s like walking into a humid environment that gets you super drenched,” Winter [Nebia's CEO] said, insisting that the mist is powerful enough to handle elaborate shampoo and conditioner rituals. (1)

and

“So I’m standing under it, and one of the things I realize is that it’s really hard to explain,” says Parisi-Amon [Nebia's CTO] “You tell people it’s fundamentally different and they’re like, ‘Whatever, it’s a shower.’” (2)

It's fascinating to see the press then try to get their head around it too:

NYT - "In my testing of a prototype, the multinozzle shower head produced a misty spray (the word nebbia in Italian means mist) that immersed me in water, unlike traditional shower heads that shoot pressurized streams of water. It made my hair feel flat and uncooperative, though my skin felt soft and relaxed." (3)

Buzzfeed - "Instead, at first, I felt nothing — as if there weren’t enough water to get wet, let alone shower. It felt like stepping under the nozzle that mists vegetables at the grocery store, and the mist kept recirculating — like a sauna with whatever makes saunas work on overdrive. While I didn’t think it would, the mist eventually got the job done. I still got wet. The soap still foamed, and it still came off. I felt clean. . . BuzzFeed News can confirm that this is definitely a shower."

I'd love to try one before committing to $400 (consumer price) and a plumbing project.

And I think they've covered that with the brilliant strategy of pulling in Equinox Gyms and the implication that Goog/Apple will have these installed on campus.

Cool!

- - - -

(1) http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/S-F-startup-clai...

(2) http://www.wired.com/2015/08/nebia/

(3) http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/nebia-a-shower-head...

(4) http://www.buzzfeed.com/brendanklinkenberg/i-tried-silicon-v...

The drawback to smaller droplets is that the larger surface area means they lose heat quicker, and so can consume more energy. The same problem occurs with those heads that put air into the center of each droplet.

I recommend trying out h2okinetic shower heads (now owned by delta in the US). They have channels that cause something similar to cavitation which then results in large droplets widely spread. It is like being in a rain storm. The result is feeling like more water is flowing than actually is, so flow rates can be reduced.

Their 90 second fluff piece video explains it, with the actual working (not moving) part shown at 30 seconds in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxWeyd-pnK8

I wonder how it copes with calcium scaling?

YC seems to have taken in a lot of unusual startups this year.

I slightly cringe when startups that receive funding start a kickstarter campaign just for the hype.

Nevertheless, the product looks really awesome and I would love to try it.

With some quick back-of-the-napkin math, I get just under 4 years of daily showers to break even (with their $400 retail price, assuming a generous $0.02/gal ($15/CCF), which is the highest residential marginal seasonal rate where I am).

If I wanted to reduce my water usage, I'd just take shorter showers and alternate days when I've not yet become smelly. These cost $0 and yield immediate savings.

Power saving/ water saving FWIW is a social fashion, which the consumer need to show up. You need to show up your priuses and teslas. Your shower head might not make that ecological concern statement that people might be looking for.

I am not sure how much water to energy to dollars it would save against a conventional shower-head for to be positioned for budget customers, like say a energy consuming light bulbs.

May be it gives a different shower feeling and people will like it simply based on that.

Whatever the concern may be the product is worth building, if nothing else to expand our horizons, be it in our success or be it in our failures.

Wouldn't minerals residue become a problem quite quickly in some places. I don't think it will be as easy to remove as from regular shower head.

Does any one know if it'll wash out shampoo or conditioner? I have trouble believing you can wash your hair with it, which makes $400 seem steep.

I would be surprised if anyone who would but a $250 shower head cares about saving money on their water bill.

Interesting but too expensive for just a shower head, if it did something else, for example remove fluoride from the water, then I might be more inclined to buy it.

Every time I see such startup attempt with an invention I think of this: They have made an invention, then they've patented it to prevent others from making the same product and selling it, then they'll start selling this thing and if they are somehow happen to be very successful (microsoft, apple, google, etc.) we'll accuse them of becoming trusts, as if they've not shown the intent thereof with the very action of patenting the invention, and as if when a startup comes out with the slogan "our invention will revolutionise the world," they are not willing to be the one company that sells every single instance of the product, which is, well, the very definition of a trust. So at the end of the day it is legitimate to feed the aspiring trusts until the day they become actual trusts bashing others with their patents, when we'll call them patent trolls that are killing the startup arena, market, world or whatever. Enter out two-faced deceitful and hypocritical western culture.

Then, a "shower-head startup" sounds more like a name for a comic strip than an actual business. I'm sorry, and I know that here is news dot ycombinator dot com, but yet, this startup thing is really becoming a big joke.