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> I feel like there is quite a bit of overlap in hard-fact and future vision

Not to mention revisionism.

> Customers must believe that your product represents a whole new paradigm—often with its own ecosystem. (The iPhone wasn’t just a device; its App Store was a new way of interfacing with the internet.

"Its App Store" didn't come until a few years later. It was not a part of the iPhone vision, certainly not at launch.

There was a kind of behind the scenes ecosystem building in terms of AT&T's giving Apple an unusual (for the time) level of direct and complete customer/device control.

The iPhone wouldn't have been the iPhone without the work to create that wider context.

The better user experience that enabled Apple to give customers counted for a lot. The easy to use, free of telecom interference, App Store is a prime example that the unusual Apple/AT&T relationship allowed, even if it was not v1.0.

Looked at your product. If your marketing copy reflects reality, your product is Sci-Fi.

"The next phase of research is measuring the effect of stimulation on removal of beta-amyloids, related to Alzheimer’s prevention, concussion & TBI, and more. We’re actively speaking to researchers interested in examining the impact on insulin response for improved outcomes in people with type 2 diabetes, as well as athletic recovery and this is just the beginning."

But if you believed that this would actually have a significant effect, I feel like that'd be way up top, not an aside in a blog post. Which means you're a "Hard Fact" ("sleep is sleep") that isn't marketable, and you're reaching beyond your grasp to try to become "Future Vision."

Good point. The reason we don't lead with future impact is that we don't know if any of those things will work out. The reason researchers (not us, independent researchers) are looking into these areas is because they believe, and there is some evidence, that the stimulation could have an impact. Where our customers are focused on their problem.

This will become more obvious as we get closer to market and we start more directly targeting specific markets. We are currently building out our separate website which is more targeted at supporting researchers and other collaborations.

> This is a hard-fact - people are resolved to poor sleep quality, or no "real" solutions to improving deep sleep quality

I glanced at your website, and there’s already a product on the market that does the same thing (headband using EEG techniques to provide auditory stimulation based on the same research your site points out): The Philips Smart Sleep https://www.usa.philips.com/c-e/smartsleep/deep-sleep-headba...

So in your case, I’m not sure it’s accurate to say there aren’t any “real” solutions when a major market player has already released a product in the exact space. I think it’s more likely that wearing a headband every night isn’t an attractive proposition for many. That’s an entirely different problem to solve.

Philips has not been available for years, and though there are many other EEG headbands, they are not focused on improving deep sleep. Though I agree, getting people to wear a headband is a difficult problem to solve as well.

iPhone was considered a future vision, but we had smartphones and even smartphones with apps previously, but at the bottom of the page, Sequoia points to the iPhone and Vision Pro as Future Vision examples.

> I think it’s more likely that wearing a headband every night isn’t an attractive proposition for many.

Case in point, I personally cannot use wrist bands or any such accessory for sleeping as I sleep with my forehead on my wrists. Neither the wrist band nor the hand band are good options for me to use.

I wonder if there is something that can help someone who sleeps on their stomach not have to choose between crushing their nose or cramping their neck when they sleep...

I'm curious to see how that actually compares in effectiveness to wearing headband-type speakers and listening to sleep brainwave stimulation music (which I tried).

Completely different. Not only from a comfort perspective, but show me a decent study which looks at the impact of "sleep brainwave stimulation music" on immune function, cardiovascular function, memory, reaction time, etc etc.

This isn't "gentle tones to help you sleep". Directly interacting with slow-waves can increase the spectral power by 30%.

Deep sleep is not improved by consistent sleep/wake times, and adjustments to noise/temperature/light conditions? If not, which sleep phases are?

(I don't have an answer to the overlap question; I'm squarely in Hard Fact.)

> Deep sleep is not improved by consistent sleep/wake times, and adjustments to noise/temperature/light conditions?

Deep sleep definitely benefits from consistent sleep/wake times. Your body tries to play catch up if you break from your normal rhythm but it’s not entirely effective.

I think the parent comment might be exaggerating the futility of sleep hygiene because they have a product to sell. :) Proper sleep timing, duration, and sleep hygiene are inarguably valuable for proper sleep architecture.

I'm not saying sleep hygiene is futile, I specifically say it is important, and sleep hygiene improves the potential for deep sleep, it does not directly improve deep sleep.

Sleep hygiene impacts sleep duration, which can impact all phases of sleep. It impacts the sleep phase potential, which is different from directly impacting sleep.

Measuring only sleep duration is like measuring only how much time you spent at the gym, ignoring what exercises, weights and reps you did.

Yeah I’m not sure where mine fits either. I have a video editor that removes pauses, saving lots of editing time for (certain kinds of) videos/podcasts. I would say I hear from 3 kinds of customers:

- They know about tools like mine and have compared a few

- They have had this problem for a while, decided to Google it one day, and found my Recut app

- They stumbled on it randomly via social media and say things like “where has this been all my life”

I would guess that some people from all 3 groups would describe it as Hair on Fire, but they have different levels of awareness of solutions. Maybe they just live with it as a Hard Fact, maybe they live with it because they know of solutions but don’t like them (of the flavor “I want to automate this but I don’t want to lose all creative control to AI”).

It’s tough to find good ways to get in front of the people who aren’t looking! It feels like that way lies a lot of broad/expensive advertising.

> It’s tough to find good ways to get in front of the people who aren’t looking! It feels like that way lies a lot of broad/expensive advertising.

What unrelated (to your solution) place are your potential customers looking for solutions to other problems they have, for whatever reason? Or at least a segment of them? Then figure out how to be of interest based on that motivation, in a way that lets you also naturally introduce your product - directly, or maybe better, seemingly incidentally.

Just throwing out a possible approach.

Good ideas here, thanks!