The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Kokoon Launches on KickStarter: NightBuds – Smart Earbuds for Better Sleep and Relaxation

Episode Date: October 22, 2020

Kokoon Launches on KickStarter: NightBuds - Smart Earbuds for Better Sleep and Relaxation KoKoon Kickstarter

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks it's voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast we certainly appreciate you tuning in be sure to refer your friends, neighbors, relatives to go to thecvpn.com or chrisfostpodcast.org.com. You can subscribe to all nine podcasts over there,

as well as you can also go to youtube.com forward slash chrisfost and hit that bell notification so you get all the notifications of all the wonderful things that we're doing. You can see the video version of this conversation as well. Today, we have a most brilliant founder and CEO today on. He is the CEO of Cocoon Technology. His name is Tim Antos. And Tim, welcome to the show. How are you?

Yeah, great. Thanks. Pleasure to be here. So, coming all the way to us from London or England or both. Yeah, yeah, London, England. Yeah. The fish and chips and just the great part, the wonderful sunbathing weather that you guys have over there. I wish, I wish.

So we're going to be talking today about you guys, some products that are launching on Kickstarter, some really cool things, and you've got some interesting technology you guys use. But let's get some plugs in on where people are going to look up this company you have, Cocoon, and the Kickstarter. Yeah, so if you fancy checking out our new latest product, it goes to NightBuds on Kickstarter.

So just search NightBuds, and i'm sure you'll find your way there um and basically we're we're running a pretty sizable discount on the moment i think you get 47 off um if if you order now i think we've got a limited number left at that price um but yeah check it out um it's it's got a little video tell you the story in a bit more depth and detail. But yeah, if you have issues with sleep or you kind of like to listen to audio to sleep or want to improve your sleep, have any issues, it's a cracking product for you. Well, this is probably really important because uh with the pandemic people getting some weird sleep and have some weird dreams because they're not sleeping very well yeah and uh but

let's get into the company so you can check it out on kickstarter i just googled it uh and uh night buds one word smart earbuds for better sleep and relaxation. You guys raised the money. Experience sleep like never before. Immersive, intelligent audio to help you improve and enjoy your sleep. I mean, who doesn't want that? And I watched a couple of the videos you had on your website. You got a lot of great testimonials of people. They're like, man, I can get some sleep. And they've got kids.

And they're trading off between partners. Let's talk about your company, though, before we get too deep in the weeds uh what you you started this company how long ago so back in 2013 started cocoon um so so my background's i'm a mechanical engineer originally did a bit of time developing medical products and then kind of moved into a big kind of busy city job where i was working all hours of the day um and i kind of moved into a big kind of busy city job where I was working all hours of the day. And I kind of developed a little bit of insomnia myself. So I used to kind of just, you know, I'd struggle to have my mind switch off, basically. And, you know, I'd have a racing mind, really busy, always thinking about what I hadn't done, what I had to do.

And kind of did the the kind of classic thing hit google tried to find ways to kind of help me you know nothing really really worked um so kind of ended up navigating my way onto the um into a sleep clinic um which isn't easy in England you know we have a kind of free NHS um and they'll kind of encourage you to try lots of other stuff first um but then ended up getting into a sleep clinic um and it was incredibly helpful for me um you know it's in a sleep clinic you kind of understand your sleep you kind of understand bad behaviors bad habits that you have that you want to change bad thought processes and really fix the kind of fundamental

issues that that are kind of disrupting the sleep um so yeah i went into the sleep clinic uh it's quite inconvenient it was kind of eight sessions the other side of london um uh and yeah a couple more um and basically um it was you know really good for me but i was just um amazed at how complex it had been to get the help you know it didn't seem like rocket science what i was learning um you know it was it's quite um straightforward at the end of the day um so i really created cocoon with this mission to you know how can we make you know the 50 of the population that have issues with sleep how can we make their lives better how can we improve sleep for everyone and and just get more from sleep you know sleep is such a kind of you

know it's one of the three pillars of of good healthy happy living, you know, diet, exercise, sleep, the three critical pillars. And it takes up a third of our lives. So, you know, how can we kind of make that experience better? And, you know, on the journey, we've also found just how much people enjoy sleep and how, you know, kind of relaxing getting to sleep. You know, for a lot of people, it's a real pleasurable experience and, you know, something of relaxing, getting to sleep, you know, for a lot of people, it's a real pleasurable

experience and, you know, something that they can enjoy. So how do we kind of make it kind of even more enjoyable? And how do we kind of help people get more from their sleep? You know, how can we make it more efficient, more effective for kind of happier, healthier lives? Yeah, the sleep is really important. And it's a time that your body also heals itself too. effective for kind of happier, healthier lives. Yeah. Sleep is really important, and it's a time that your body also heals itself too. And so if you don't get that deep REM sleep, you don't get that deep body sleep, your body really doesn't heal. And I just feel if I don't get my sleep for several days in a row,

I just feel sick and lethargic and just feels like all my cells are plugged up and gummed up. And I just become a blob of emboble body mass worse than I am. So this is really cool. So you decided to start the company. Do you start out with a product that you had in mind? Yeah. So we kind of always had this kind of product in mind just because audio is such an effective way of of kind of helping the mind kind of you know distract itself from whatever's worrying it and and also helping it just relax and and kind of get into that sleep state so audio is always

going to be a kind of key component of it um it's also a good way for you know if um if you know you do need some coaching you do need some advice it's a good way to to consume that advice and really learn um and then the other component was you know we everyone is unique um what helps you sleep is different to what helps me sleep your particular challenge your issue may be quite unique to you um and you know mine may be very different um or you know you can have great sleep and just want to improve it so um yeah the other component was really um intelligence within it so um understanding your sleep and what will work for you um really was was a key element um so that that was why audio plus kind of bio data so tracking of your sleep

measurement of of your sleep looking at it analyzing it were the two key components of our product um and our first product which is the cocoon relax headphone which is an over-ear headphone that we we launched um on kickstarter um nearly uh over um five years ago um that that kind of hit the market in 2018 and we've shipped kind of over 30 000 of them so that that was our first product and we learned an awful 30,000 of them. So that was our first product and we learned an awful lot from that journey. We've kind of spoken to thousands and thousands of customers to really understand what bits they like, what they don't like

and how we can really optimize that sleep experience based on everything we learn. So all of that has gone into the new NightBuds product, and we've kind of incorporated all those learnings. And, yeah, that's the product that you see today. Nice. So you also have a sleeping and relaxation companion that goes with the headphones and matched with the new NightBuds.

And so you've got an app where you can have sleep exercises in the app music and soundscapes personalized recommendations uh basically it can also uh you know track your sleep let you know how well you're sleeping um this is really uh uh interesting uh it says here on your guys website you can fall asleep faster 30% with Cocoon's sleep headphones. Is that true? Wow. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's quite a kind of, you know, generalized thing.

Generally, we see that about 81% plus of people will, you know, their sleep will improve their sleep efficiency so time to sleep um all of those those kind of elements of sleep will improve um and yeah we we've got some clinical studies uh going um which will show kind of people improving on the in summary severity index um and also improving their general sleep efficiency um so yeah this some really positive impacts on on sleep that that um we're coming through on nice uh so with the night buds these are not your over the ear earbud or earphones like you have with the uh with the other product.

These are ones that just kind of go around the back, up in, and into the ear? Yeah, exactly. So the kind of key thing with headphones for sleep is getting them really comfortable in bed. So, you know, side sleeping, these are specifically designed for that. So there's two special elements. We've got the world's thinnest Bluetooth headphones here. So they're only 5.4 millimeters thick, which is absolutely tiny when you kind of see it in real life. So they're incredibly thin in the ear.

That means that you really don't feel them in the ear. And they have a special shape um which is designed to keep them stable um in the air and what that shape enables us to do is take all of the kind of bulky electronics that you typically find in the air and relocate them back in an area that you can't really feel when you're you bed. So, you know, we've done an awful lot of testing with it, kind of lots of testers putting it through their paces. And, you know, everyone finds it very comfortable, side sleeping, moving about a lot.

And it keeps nice and snug and secure. Awesome, Sauce. So, and you can also, they have an integrated microphone where you can make phone calls over bluetooth yeah one of the things that we've always been quite passionate about is that you can use them just as regular headphones so you know you can listen to your audio book or your um spotify or your apple music or watch youtube um and you can also take calls and kind of use them out and about. I've actually found they're awesome. They're not designed for this,

but they're awesome for running. The design of them is designed to keep them really snug and secure. So actually they work better than most headphones for running. But that's really not what they're designed for, but they just happen to do that quite well as well. So you can use them just as your regular headphones.

We've got some high-end balanced armature driver speakers in them, which really do give a kind of quality sound reproduction as well. There you go. There you go. Yeah. I've had sport headphones that are like that. They go around the back and they go over the ear and then they go in and that would help me. Cause I tend to be a side sleeper or I sleep on, I usually flop from side to side.

One of the problems that I have is, and I think a lot of people have, especially nowadays is if you look at your phone, like if I wake up to go to the bathroom in the night or whatever, the one thing I can't do is look at the phone. For some reason, that blue screen will set me off and my brain will fully wake up and go, oh, you're looking at phones now? We're awake. So have fun with that, buddy. And then TikTok is the worst. Like sometimes I'll go to bed and I'll be like, just look at one or two TikToks, the TikTok app.

And four hours freaking later, I'm still like, just one more. Oh, that was funny. And it seems, I see a lot of TikToks doing a joke about it. So it seems like a lot of people have that same problem.

How does your app like help people like me to focus on just like just go take it easy yeah i mean so yeah it's kind of gentle nudges really um that the the app is designed so you know all you need to do is is press play and it takes care of the rest so it'll you know fade out what you're listening to when when you're falling asleep or bookmark it so you can pick it up at the next at the point you left off so we know when you kind of lost lost consciousness lost the plot um and then um you know we can you know give you little nudges if if you need it um if you're open to them um to kind of remind you that this is your sleep schedule that you should be sticking to um because having a healthy

sleep schedule really really is is important to definitely are there volume controls with it yeah so um in the middle of the the headphone uh we've got volume controls. You can skip tracks. You can kind of end start calls. So, yeah, kind of all the controls are located just in the back of the head. So I imagine the app really helps you kind of focus on sleeping. Like, I think that's my, like, every now and then I have to have that conversation with myself and go, okay, put the TikTok app up, close Twitter.

It's time for sleep. It's sleep time, kid. Go to sleep. But I don't focus on it very well because I'll lay there for about five minutes and go, well, my brain's still awake. Maybe I'll go to sleep if I look at some videos, you know, and then three hours later. But it looks like through your app, it's pretty good at being able to get people to focus on the task at hand, which is to go to sleep and stay asleep. Oh, totally. You know, one of the things that we don't try and do is kind of change your routines or habits too much, too quickly.

You know, we like to kind of, you know, find out how you sleep and then slowly improve that over time. With sleep, it tends to be behavioral changes that really drive the most improvements. So what we do is we'll show you the suggested actions and we of show you the data on you know why maybe what you're doing isn't quite perfect and how to slightly improve it um and then if if needed we can give you little nudges little kind of reminders or little kind of personalized bits of coaching that are kind of just for you to help you understand a concept um so we can really kind of slowly get you on on track to healthy um healthy sleep yeah one of the the kind of things with um you know sleep science is um you know it's been designed around kind of clinicians and what they like people to do.

But we've really designed this around both clinicians and users to kind of, you know, actually, realistically, this is how people do things. And in real life, this is kind of the habits that they have. And so we try and gently wrap ourselves around around you know what what you're doing already and then slowly help you improve and get better over time what i need is one of those mobile devices that takes the sheep and jumps them in front of the thing for counting them no i'm just kidding counting the sheep uh so this is really cool you guys have it on kickstarter it's about 22 days left to go um and they they look pretty awesome they look like something you can easily sleep in bed with with the side if you're a side sleeper

like i am uh you know they're not gonna they're not gonna pinch your ears like me my big head i would crush your headphones if i turned on my side and tried sleeping on them uh but you know that's what you want you don't want to feel like you have this whole thing going on and there's a lot of people have a lot of distractions like i when i go to new york city to try and stay trying to sleep in the city is like insane i imagine london's the same way the honking the sirens the cars someone went there we stayed in a newer we stayed in this kind of rock and roll sort of hotel that had steel doors i don't know why you put steel doors on a hotel rooms but they had you know it was like some sort of chic whatever i don't even know the fashion but between the steel doors and the concrete hallways and

stuff uh the the you know the sounds would just bang around like all day long and, and, uh, drove me insane and trying to sleep in New York city. I mean, you, you really need a product like yours. Um, and I imagine a lot of people that have kids crying babies, uh, people that are just trying to get some peace, being able to tune the world out. And I think that's the biggest problem. Cause like for me, I have two dogs and, and like, if I start hearing them wrestle around then i'm like okay what's going on and uh and just being able to tune out and focus on the task at hand falling asleep to sleep is really important i think oh completely yeah i mean you know disturbances can really have a bad impact on our sleep you know they may not wake you up you may not kind of remember that

you got disturbed but they'll drag you out of that that good deep sleep that that really restorative sleep um so what we do with cocoon is really just protect um protect your sleep and mask out things that may disrupt the sleep so um one of the techniques that that we use is called noise masking which is essentially introducing an ambient level of kind of consistent techniques that we use is called noise masking, which is essentially introducing an ambient level of consistent noise that's not going to disrupt your sleep. What that will do is it will mask out the things that may're hearing outside, the difference between that and what you're listening to is significantly reduced, so much less likely to disturb. Does that make sense? And what it looks like, too, that's really cool is it has a coiled sort of system

that makes it so it can expand and contract, depending upon the size of the head, the size of the neck, and how far it's got to reach around to get in the ears. That looks really cool because then it can comfortably fit just about anyone. It gives you comfort in bed. Your audio adapts to you. Immersive 4D audio. What is that?

Yeah, so basically one of the great things about in-ear headphones is that you can the way our brains process sound is that they are spatially aware we can understand where a sound is coming from so because we know the exact position of our speakers in the years we can create immersive 4d audio so this is basically um creating a sound stage where it's like you're in that place in real life as if um you know that's going on over there or or that thing is moving around and you really get that added experience of oh my goodness i'm here in this place and it feels much more immersive. And that's what we do on our 4D soundscape.

So we have a log cabin where it really sounds like you're in that cabin and there's the fire over there, the wind kind of going on there. You spatially can really feel like you're in that space. And one of the concepts with our product is you're able to create your own cocoon, so your space that it's kind of optimized for you, that can become your kind of relaxing go-to. And within that space, you can listen to your podcast or your audio book. But there's this kind of protective space that's familiar for you and is generally quite relaxing.

And you get sleep coaching through the app, noise masking, auto pause upon sleep, clear calls and audio, sleep monitoring. What about people who have snoring issues and stuff like that like my mom's got one of the sleep apnea devices which is kind of weird i know sometimes i've snored so loud i've woken myself up from the story yeah so i mean we we help mask out disturbances like snoring so uh if you've got a snoring partner, it's perfect. Or if your partner snores, you know, it's great for that. You know, it's really optimized to mask out that noise of that snoring so that, you know, it's just the kind of person snoring that's there. I should have gotten that for all my girlfriends over the years.

That was always the biggest complaint. You snore. Yeah, I mean, it's perfect for that kind of use case. That was always the biggest complaint. You snore. Yeah. I mean, it's perfect for that kind of use case. It really blocks that out. We are looking at kind of sleep apnea side of stuff, but we don't offer that as a capability. I've always kind of wondered about that technology anyway, really.

But that's just me. I have a lot of friends like yeah i really like the sleep abby i'm like we lived as a species for eons in time and sometime in the last 20 years we suddenly need to wear darth vader masks to go to sleep i don't know maybe is it me or is it you um one thing that's interesting looking at the kickstarter for the night buds is these are 5.4 millimeters which is uh a lot smaller than uh just even the buds to give people an idea of how they work the buds that you get from iphone uh the iphone buds are 16.2 millimeters or 20.33 millimeters i guess depending on which model you get from Apple. And you guys are much thinner than that by three times to four times. So that just tells people how thin and comfortable

this is going to be in the ear. And you're not going to feel like you're laying on those hard Apple earbud phones, whatever they're called. Yeah, totally. So the thinness is probably the main thing that really enables them to be comfortable and they're covered in a kind of soft layer of silicon as well. So they really kind, things like the sleep apnea detection, things like kind of helping people with tinnitus.

These are all features that, you know, we will be able to release in the future. And it's constantly evolving based on our users and how they're getting value from it. Tinnutitis, that would be an amazing thing based on kind of our users and how they're getting value from it. Tenu Titus, that would be an amazing thing that you could help solve for me and a lot of my friends and people. I have horrible Tenu Titus, especially in my left ear maddening to the point where, well, I mean,

I'm insane. But it's, it's, it drives, I have a lot of friends that have it. I don't know why. A lot of my friends that are authors and speakers, we all have tinnitus. I guess we went to too many rock concerts with some of his children. But yeah, if you could figure out a way to make that work. I've gotten a few different products lately that have been sent to me that have claimed

to fix tinnitus, but I haven't seen it. We can't fix it, but we just make it much more bearable in essence. So, you know, really, you know, even just using the product itself, a lot of people get benefits in helping them manage their tinnitus just through, you know, on a simple level, masking out.

But there's also some really cool kind of techniques that we can do specific to your own tinnitus to help, help manage that as well. Yeah. It almost seems like some of its blood plush, be the blood pressure related or circulation related. Cause there were times where if I went partying too much on a Friday or Saturday night and drank too much,

both ears would really ring loud. And then once you get past that day or two of laying over, they don't. And I've had times where if after working out and stuff, I've actually had less in my right ear. So one thing you do is the product is integrated on the night buds with Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, SoundCloud, and YouTube. So you can definitely just tune in to your favorite audio and get it going on, right? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's great for people that like to kind of consume content and just relax. Yeah, it just means that if you happen to drift off while you're doing that, it's all safe and, you know, you'll get woken up and, you know, track your sleep and fade things out at the right point.

Does the app let you wake up on your own? Or does it, can you set it to say, hey, wake me up at 8 a.m.? That sort of thing? Yeah, so you can set, you know, a wake-up alarm and it'll, you know, wake you up in a nice kind of gradual manner. And we're also looking at kind of wake-up, enhancing that wake-up experience as well. So waking up with much more positive, upbeat content to get that mood right in the morning.

Yeah, there's, I think it's my Google, hey Google, that gives me the nice wake-up tones or I have an appointment or whatever. It kind of slides it into you where as opposed to some other ones, they just go, and you're shocked to wake into a seizure heart attack because of the sound oh yeah i mean i i regularly build a little bit of a hatred towards whatever alarm

has got me out so it's a certain apple alarm that i'm not the biggest fan of yeah i wouldn't set mine off so there you go uh but uh yeah so anything more we need to know about the night buzz what you guys are doing over there at cocoon etc etc yeah i mean i think um kind of anyone that's interested in getting more from their sleep um kind of you know really experiencing and enjoying sleep once more um has snoring partners has you know kind of you know potentially kind of kept up at night um you know this this is definitely the product for you and um yeah i'd kind of recommend checking it out now we've got a limited number at the 47 off um and that's soon kind of going to come to an end so uh yeah do do get in and check us out um on kickstarter so

night buds is it's the one there you go and they've been doing this for a lot of years guys they've got it down and been perfecting their formulas give us the dot com so that people can look these up and order them up yeah so it's cocoon.io is our our home site um and then if you want to back the kickstarter go to kickstarter.com and then search for night buds or nightbuds.co nightbuds.co will take you right to the website. There you go, guys. Be sure to check it out. And you can see the video version of this conversation. You go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss at that bell notification. Be sure to refer your family, friends, and relatives to thecvpn.com as well.

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