Founder's Story - What NASA Knows About Sleep That You Don’t | Ep 220 with Dr. Arjen de Jong Founder of AirTulip

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Dr. Arjen de Jong, an aerospace engineer and founder of AirTulip, joins Founder’s Story to share how clean-room tech, fluid mechanics, and a little smoke visualization led to a Shark Tank pitch—and a consumer sleep product unlike anything else on the market.From clean air in dentist offices to hydrogen water-style traction for your bedroom, Arjen walks us through how laminar airflow can drastically improve health, reduce allergies, and even reinvent how we think about air.Key Discussion PointsClean Room to Clean Sleep: How a cigarette in a laminar flow booth sparked the product ideaPivoting Post-COVID: Why dentistry was the real product-market fit before sleepShark Tank Secrets: The casting line, the 30-minute pitch, and walking away from an offerVisualizing Air: How lasers and wind tunnels helped explain an invisible productConsumer Trust vs. Engineering Genius: Why educating the market is the hardest partScaling a Physical Product: The difference between B2B machinery and consumer DTCLong-Term Vision: From side hustle to orbiting planet—Arjen’s exponential success roadmapKey TakeawaysThink Laterally: The best innovations come from cross-industry application of existing techEducate First, Sell Second: Customers need to believe the invisible before buyingPersonal Experience Sells: Real stories of health improvement drive conversionCommunity = Credibility: DTC success hinges on trust, repetition, and consistencyDon’t Just Launch—Prepare for the Surge: Shark Tank is a spotlight, not the finish lineClosing ThoughtsAirTulip isn’t just another sleep gadget—it’s a physics-first approach to rethinking how we breathe. Dr. Arjen de Jong’s journey proves that the smartest solutions aren’t always the loudest. Tune in to learn how engineering curiosity, strategic pivots, and real-world validation turned laminar airflow into a movement.Our Sponsors:* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Notion: https://notion.com/founders* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com* Check out Square: https://square.com/go/founderAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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Hey everyone, welcome back to Founder's Story. Today we have Dr. Aryan Dayang, an aerospace engineer, a real rocket scientist. So we're gonna see if you really need to be as smart as a rocket scientist to understand this conversation today. But Arjen is the founder of AirTulip, a company reinventing sleep by using Laminar and Airflow technology to create a purified breathing zone at night, which was just on Shark Tank. Yep. Which is like every entrepreneur's dream, go on Shark Tank,

and then maybe one day exit your company. But Arjen, what was the spark for entrepreneurship for you and why this industry? Great. Yeah, thanks. I actually grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My dad had his own factories making king rooms. So I grew up already like being like three, four, five year old being around the factory. My tree house was actually blocks of styrofoam that I could like stack up in the, in the corner in the storage space. So it was really fun. Uh, but with that came like this feeling like, Hey, you can always do something in a different industry.

And sometimes people think you need a large team to do something. It, the smallest team can make the largest impact as long as you come with something unique from a different angle. So I started with that. I've studied aerospace engineering and specialized in fluid mechanics and all that. But what that does is you can be agnostic to industry. You can improve something by taking something

from another industry. And I've done that many times. I was like having some wind tunnel devices with lasers and I used that to improve a semiconductor machine for like a big manufacturer. So I was like, everybody was like, oh, you can't measure this thing. I was like, sure you can, here, back of the envelope. One, two, yeah, that works. You know, just need the big manufacturer. So I was like, everybody was like, oh, you can't measure this thing. I was like, sure you can, you know, back of the envelope, one, two, yeah, that works.

You know, just need a big laser like this one. And their way, cross breeding is I think where you can get a lot of entrepreneurship. So that sparked for me, like, I love to unstick things when they're like, when somebody says, oh, you can't this or so difficult. Anybody is always able to say something like how it can't be done. There's many, many people can say like, it can't this or so difficult. Anybody is always able to say something like how it can't be done. There's many, many people can say like, I doesn't work because of X, Y, Z, and et cetera, but it's like asking the question like, well, how can it be done? Or what is the alternate? And then there's less people that are like, well, that can't be done.

But if we let's think, so try to get to that corner because it's, you know, you see that with professors and with academia I love academia. I got my PhD as well, but it's too easy to just you know, burn down an idea instead of giving an opposite So think of that. How do you flip this around and that's that's for me this part that creates stuff Yeah, I love that story. I am also like a creative person who wants to invent something, but I have like six failed inventions. So when you look at the massive amount of problems that we could be solving in life, how do you hone in and say, this is the problem that I want to solve? Right. Well, for me, it came back to like, what I can do to help others. So with the

semiconductor is like, unsticking something to enabling a lot for the people that I was already working with. But this thing, it was something else. And it comes back to COVID. We couldn't be indoors just around the pandemic because you'd spread COVID much stronger indoors. And I knew why, what would happen if you have turbulent flow in the air that mixes everything and it stays in this box. You can like somebody coughs and instead of it being blown away with the wind out door, it stays around and around and nobody sees it because it's all transplant. We don't know how air moves. We have no idea. I remember being a part of the maintenance crew

for those clean rooms. And after we do that, we have these downdraft booths. They're like a porous filter and the whole booth has a downflow, meaning that it doesn't mix up, it's just going in one direction. That's called laminar flow in layers. It doesn't create whirls. It's just straight down. And one of the workers lit up a cigarette. Wasn't allowed to, but you know, and I was just joining the crew. I was like 16 or something like that.

And you know, instead of a plume of smoke, it was a line straight down. And I stood right next to him and I can smell it. I didn't cough. I was just having completely clean air because my air I was breathing was coming from straight above. It wasn't coming from him. So I was like, when it came to the pandemic, I was like, wait, this is it. We can solve the indoor problem.

We can open up bars and restaurants and we can make sure the COVID doesn't spread and we can really block it off. So fast forward, let's make a portable clean room. So again, back of the envelope calculation. So we made these kind of pillar like things. They look like extra large tulips. So hence the name. And yeah, we started placing them in bars and restaurants in New York City. I was just hauling them around. I'm still living in the West Village and just trying to see where we can be. And that was like the spark, like, hey, can we help solve the pandemic?

Like I know about Flow. Let's do something and not only think about it, but do it. So we built it and we started doing it. Timing is everything, right? It's you combined all of your experiences, your educational knowledge, the experience you had working for, within a certain company, doing a certain task, and now you've created this thing.

You said that you went from bar to bar, you were just going there. How did you get your first 20, 30 clients? So that was actually, and this is the whole product market fit thing, right? You start learning a lot about the non-technical stuff. So a lot of the restaurants, it would help them, but how do I explain to them that this would help versus an air purifier or just closing or wearing mask? So that was the biggest challenge. Like, wait, how do I, in a short time, right? Because the pandemic was running and running,

we went to like restaurants and bars and some people were like, okay, cool, I'll try it and then do it and we'll measure it. But it was hard to get like real traction. And so the Eureka moment came when we started switching clients. We started thinking about, oh, not only bars and restaurants, where do people need to be? Dentistry's dentist office.

You had to go to the dentist and the dentists are actually technical people. They work with their hands. They are very educated and they also work with their mouth open. They already have the problem that all this kind of, you know, saliva is always spitting up. So they are very aware of all the problems there were. So started to talk to dentists, and they're like, yeah, for sure I get that.

Let's place it here and here and here. And so that's where you got like a fit. Like the product started fitting the market. Even though I knew it would help the restaurants and the bars, at that point, I could do one and two and three, but dentistry was a niche that started to come in. And I was like, okay, let me just do that and then come back to the rest, you know, and then, you know, gain your traction there and then work to the other niches. So that was really finding your... and again,

it's the classic thing that you read in the book, but it's more about the people thing. I can be as smart as I can do with the smartest equipment and the best thing, but you need to convince people. And how do you talk the talk for the people and what's in it for them? So dentist at that point. Yeah, that's so smart. You many times think it's a certain customer or clientele

for your product or service, but then you realize there's somebody who probably needs it more already understands it and I'm guessing they have more money to spend because as we knew a lot of these bars and stuff, not only are their profit margins already low, but they've been shut down or the dentist and medical better profit, better margins, more money to spend, also a necessity. So that is super smart.

So fast forward to Shark Tank. Yeah. A lot of people I'm sure be like, I wanna get my product on Shark Tank. So what is the first step of how someone even does that? And then I would love to go into how the experience was. Sounds good. Before we went to Shark Tank, a quick note,

the product I was going to Shark Tank with was actually an evolution of that. Post-pandemic, I had to flip. I had to like pivot. Again, in the book you say pivot and everybody says how to do it. But it was mostly like, all right, the dentist assistants that were all sniffing a lot of allergies, had a lot of allergies, they weren't having the allergies anymore because we put these down draft pillars in there.

And for the whole day, you're like in completely clean air. So I was like, wait a second, this does something to people post COVID. So we implemented this in the headboard for a bed. Why? The larger the areas we need to cover with people, the more difficult it is to make a machine. So where do people not move? So when you're sleeping, you're like between this and that side of the pillow.

Bingo. All right. So that's what we did. Couple prototypes. And then we started like going towards we had a Kickstarter. So that helped as well to figure out the fit. A lot of people are resonating with it. And now comes Shark Tank. And Shark Tank, everybody thinks like, oh, you immediately go on the show. No, it's it's got a couple of steps. And it's quite exciting. My friend that actually was on the go in the show? No, it's got a couple steps. And it's quite exciting.

My friend that actually was on the show in the tank, he's also a consultant in aerodynamics and a good friend of mine, his name is Jim. And he said, Arjen, you need to go on Shark Tank. Again, people would say, ah, yes, but if it's difficult. I said, sure, let's do it. How do I get on Shark Tank? How do I get on Shark Tank? Now How do I get on SharkThing?

Now you can do two things. You can submit your thing to the website, but then you're part of the pile and they have these open casting days. I was like, all right, that sounds good. So you line up at 6 a.m. in front of the Javits Center here in New York City between everybody. Some people have fantastic inventions or stuff to make your back better or cookies or ice cream or, you know, everybody's there. It's kind of fun. So I was like starting to talk to everybody by the way, always be social. It's awesome. Um, and yeah, I had a couple of phone boards with this kind of flow

visualization and started talking to people. It took a long time. So because there's so many people, I only got my little pitch at around 2 p.m. So you spend this whole day and waiting and cycles and stuff, but yeah, and then so you start talking to people and they vet somebody for the next round. Second step is you get assigned like, you know, some directors and co-directors that start helping you

with the process, preparing your speech and your pitch. And that really helps. Of course, for TV, you have a certain pitch. And one thing that people might not know about is, first of all, there's no redo's. So you come in, you do your thing, you do your pitch, and then there's a Q&A, it's about 20, 30 minutes. No redo's.

And also, they don't know about you beforehand, which is by design. They're like, I don't know what this is, let's see it. So it is genuinely this clean, new pitch. Nothing is set up like, I don't know what this is, let's see it. So it is genuinely this clean new pitch. Nothing is set up like, oh, they already know. No, but that means it's pressure cooker. And so you go through a couple of cycles with the directors, submit another video, make sure that everything's good. You then go to the next round. So there's like a couple of rounds before you get actually to the shooting and the show. And then in the show, they say like

they overshoot. So it's not guaranteed you get to air. It really depends. But yeah, you do your best and you work with it. And the directors love the whole airflow visualization. Again, that's the lasers from the wind tunnel with the smoke stuff. But now I'm using it to show people how this works. That's my biggest challenge as well. Like how do I show what air does if air is transparent? Nobody knows that like unless you're you know aerodynamic scientist. So yeah super exciting and then a couple of weeks before. Yeah how was the experience like the doors open up and then now you have to go out. Yep. How is that experience for you?

Because I would think I would be very, very nervous. Whether you're, obviously you can't see everyone watching you at home and it's recorded, but knowing that you only get one shot, they're right there, you see how they are on TV, obviously you're getting some insights internally of what, yeah, some help from people within the organization but what's going through your mind

and then how was the exact experience when you walked out there and you started? Yeah, of course you're like super, you know, what do you say, like it's like, it's super exciting but it's also like, you can be a little anxious. I was like having this like dry mouth and stuff, like, all right, let's do it.

At a certain point you need to just like, all right, that's it. It's not gonna be perfect, but never is. You've prepped your speech to that level and then you just need to go. So you walk through that corridor, there's a spot on the floor where you need to stand for the cameras and stuff to make sure.

And then it's just one, two, three, and go. What I noticed is, and this really depends on the persona to the persona. Some people have more difficult with it. I love to improvise. I'm like, okay, let's go. And I'm actually more anxious beforehand. But the moment I'm on the stage, I'm like, all right, let's do it. I did a lot of like, you know, theater and improv and stuff before. And I kind of, I get my energy from it. Like, okay, I'm here. I'm making the most out of what I have energy-wise. As long as you don't make it too, you know, oh no, it doesn't, don't make it too stiff.

And it's harder for some people than for others, but you know, try to give it, you know, with a smile and a pinch of salt. It's already amazing that you're there. You see the studio. If people are going to be on the shark thing there, there is a walkthrough to show the set already so that you get a little bit acquainted. That's either the day off or day before you come in. And

so it's not like, oh my God, I don't know where the door is and what's happening. But yeah, it's just about going and often entrepreneurship in general is about making that step and being uncomfortable and then see what happens. I won't make it perfect, you know, but I've given my best shot for what I have at the moment. So yeah. I've heard a lot of people talk about improv is very good for business. And even in theaters, I did a little bit of theater, very, very small. Maybe it's the comedy side. I enjoyed that too. So I can see personally how that's helped me when it comes to connecting with other people. The fact that you are talking about using and

leveraging things in your background. I think I'm inspired. I'm going to go do some stand up, do some improv. Those are the things I'd imagine. you've got to really be on your feet when you're pitching something and you have to be prepared but not frozen so let's say what so the other thing I think most people want to know is what happens after Shark Tank? Yeah so after Shark Tank of course you've done your pitch depending on how the outcome is it's like a huge sigh of you know relief and I was like you know civil gym in Los Angeles. It was in the studios in LA. And yeah, it was super exciting. I didn't take the offer.

I got an offer. I didn't take the offer. I know from other people that then there's of course, the whole thing about finalizing and putting in writing that offer. So you work with the shark and with the team. For me, I didn't have that, but what we did have was an unknown

on when we were gonna air. So we were shooting in September it was, the season was starting around October. The problem is, the season has got like 16 to 20 episodes and they're only gonna tell you three weeks ahead if and when you're gonna be in the episode. So then the first episode you're like, okay, so where is it happening?

This episode's had the guest sharks and stuff like that. I had all the classic sharks. I already knew I'm not in that episode, not in that episode. But after a couple of episodes like 8th, 9th, 10th, you're like, okay, that's cool. But when are we going to be airing? Like what's going on? So it was a huge sigh of relief and I actually saw that, oh, we're going to be airing in episode 16. And you know, season 16 and season 16 episode 16. It was super.

And then from there on, it was also scrambling together with the team we have, like, how do you prepare for that? How would you prepare for traffic on the website? What we're saying, marketing, like it's all hands on deck. So it's not only you go Shark Tank and that's it, and you make the money and yay. No, it's also about showcasing to the world what you're doing and why you're doing it. And that's also a big part of it. Like for me, it was showcasing that we can actually manipulate air and create a local bubble in the open.

People might not think that's possible. So that was also a big part for me to do it. And then I want to piggyback on that to kind of, you know, to help people. Because, you know, we had a lot of people with asthma, with allergies that had a huge benefit. But how do I reach the people and convince them like this actually is working? How do I work with that? And that's something different from engineering. And that's, I think, the biggest challenge for especially a technical founder. I can make the most beautiful device in the world. Nobody would, you know would give a damn about it because you need to convince somebody that it would help them or what it is.

So that's the biggest mismatch and that's the challenge. And that's post Shark Tank really what I personally focused on. Yeah, I feel like when there's any educational sale, it just adds to a little bit more complexities. And this product sounds, I mean, it sounds incredible. You know, I've never seen or heard of a similar product out there in the marketplace. But, you know, most of us will probably need something. You know, my wife and I always suffer from allergies and other things. And, you know, being in the city, there's smog and pollutants,

like all the things that you already know about. So how did you, or how are you finding now, people are responding to the education that you're putting out there and just the product in general? You know, what also helps you, even if people don't go for the project, for the product that I have, I already noticed that people are grateful,

hey, I didn't know that this was the case and now I look at the air quality or I close the windows or wash the curtains and it's really helping me. And that's already something that that's for me a win. You know, like I'm helping people with transferring some knowledge about what is there in the air.

So yeah, that's the first. And the second thing is it's a continuous journey. And as we're growing and as we're showcasing more, there's also a build-up of trust. and this is also how it goes for any entrepreneur. How do you make sure that people see you not just once but also twice and five times and stuff? That's not only for yourself but it's also what you try to educate. So for me it's a dual thing.

I love it that people actually respond to the way I try and work on explaining what's there and what it does for them. And then again, it also helps getting the product to market. And that's one thing that I think is always a challenge is there's such a big difference between B2B and direct to consumer sales. I had an earplugs company before that was like direct to consumer. I didn't know about that because a lot of the previous stuff I've done is in the kind of B2B sphere. Large machinery, expensive equipment, changing things that are very...

Like a couple of companies can do it and there's these large contracts with it. And this is a whole different game. So how do you reach people and mass? And how do you create a community around that? Community is everything, right? I think when you're reaching people, maybe even you know the future of B2B is also you know having some sort of community just maybe it looks it looks different. So I know you've had a very fascinating journey I mean from aerospace engineer to creating different products, inventing things, you success, getting this investors or crowdfunding,

and then you have Shark Tank, and now you're here, you've gone from B to B, B to C. What was a challenge, a personal challenge, or something, or a challenge that you had to go through that maybe personally was not easy, and how did you overcome it? I think the biggest challenge that I've seen and it's a weakness for me is like, I noticed

that I like working with people. But when you are getting other people to get on board with your business and you start working with them, I noticed that I too often in the past was, oh, I like somebody as a person, therefore I want to work with this person, not looking at their merit or their backstory or what's happening. And so for me, it was really like, how do I learn to not try to be just working with friends because that's not working? I need to get a diverse team where everybody is really at level and chips in what it is.

And that's for me the biggest challenge. Like how do I switch my mindset, my own natural tendency to gravitate towards a certain persona that I like personally just to be playing pool with or like hanging out with. That's not necessarily, and it's good to have a team where you like each other and work with it. But how do you make sure that it's also based on merit and also based on expectations? So that's my biggest challenge.

And I keep cycling with that. Like, okay, who do I work with and what capacity and at what level? And that's not only for team internal, there's also like suppliers and contractors and collaborations and all that stuff. That's the continuing journey. And I'm improving on that but it's it's difficult

I'm very strong at what I do on the inventing stuff side but then if people are enthusiastic like are they the right people to join the team and because in the end and That's one of the things that I find difficult is to be more Clear on you ever get stuck at checkout and suddenly feel like you're back in 2003? I was in this coffee shop the other day. Their system froze when I went to pay. Staff panic. I ended up walking out empty handed.

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There you go. I love that you're able to say that this is an ongoing thing. Some people are like, oh, I solved this problem, I moved on. But what you're saying is this is an ongoing thing. I think most of us, that's what we're really dealing with in business is it's something ongoing and it's not probably already solved. But I think not a lot of people are willing to admit to that. But I appreciate that.

I am totally with you on board and I I've gone through the same, uh, the same thing I've had to relook at how I trust people or how I get excited to work with people. It's not just because of their personality, because who they are, how much fun we have. I am very interested about success though. So you mentioned success just now. What will success look like?

Or at what point are you like, okay, I am satisfied with the success that I've had. I'm gonna move on to something else. I think that comes down to, is this a working machine that really is changing people's lives? So kind of the mission of what we do to help improve people. And it's not by just having X units or something, but really creating momentum and a movement

towards a betterment. And I think then I would feel very satisfied to make sure that this continues. So I don't want to cut it off, but then to kind of start saying, okay, this is something I can look at it, we built the foundation, the building is standing, the gears are in there and turning. This is the moment where I don't need to be anymore putting the bricks in, this is to run by others. Okay, now let's see what this can be.

And it can be either as part of a larger corporation or on itself, get further, but I'm definitely not there yet. Like this has to still grow and it's still, we got the momentum, we got the traction, we got the interest, we got these orders and it's like, it's a running machine. So that's great. And there's so many levels of skill

that I still wanna go through. And this is maybe, again, the physicist, let me speaking, it's logarithmic scale, meaning it's like the Richter scale for earthquakes. If a mosquito lands on the table, it's minus 14 on that same scale, minus 14 on the Richters. The Death Star exploding by the laser thing, the Death Star exploding the planet

is like 15 on the Richter scale. So Richter scale is in orders of magnitude. It's like times 10, times 10, times 10, times 10, times 10. So every step you take, you go 10 times more. So every time you go from two to three, 10 times more. From three to four, 10 times more, et cetera. But if you then look back all the way down the alley, you've done a million times. So right now we are in a certain phase, the phase of the thousands. This can become the phase of the 10,000s, the phase of the hundreds of thousands, et cetera, if you think about units.

So for me, every phase has a new challenge. Your company has to be bigger or has to do something different to reach the next milestone in the phase. And I'd like to see a couple more phases and then say, okay, this has enough momentum and mass. This is like really, this is now orbiting a planet instead of just doing a hobby.

You know what I mean? We're very far from the hobby side, but we're not yet on the, it's a planet that orbits the sun, let's say side. So I want to get that. You got to come back when you're orbiting the planet. When you hit this success, when you're at the tens, hundred thousands, billions in revenue or valuation. That'll be very interesting to see. I love to learn. What are the challenges at that point? What are the learnings at that point?

Cause I think it's great. It's like, like you're saying, uh, every step is like a new challenge, a new learning experience, something that's different. Um, and there, your 10x or 10 times success rate at the next phase, come back and share with us how it's gone since then. But this has been, Dr. Aryan, this has been great. One day I wanna go to Shark Tank. I just wanna be on the show,

but not have to talk on the show. I don't just need like a prop or something, but I really appreciate your time today. If people wanna get in touch with you, they wanna find out more about the company, how can they do so? Yeah, so we have the website, erictulip.co.co, so not the com, and yeah, there's a couple

of different menus. You can reach out to us by email. We also have a chat window if you have any questions, and so please reach out to me and to us. My personal email is also Arjun at Airtulip.co. If anybody wants to reach out personally, my name is here in the description. A-R-J-E-N. It's Dutch. At Airtulip.co.

Amazing. Airtulip.co. Dr. Arjan, thank you so much for joining us today on Founder's Story. Thank you so much. Thanks, Dan. Welcome to It Takes Energy, presented by Energy Transfer, where we talk all things oil and natural gas. Oil and gas drive our economy, ensure our country's security, and open pathways to brighter futures. The US produces 13 million barrels of crude oil every day, enough to fill 800 Olympic swimming pools.

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