31 ms·

I started a company to pursue circadian lighting (called Twist) and sadly pivoted away from it as a core value proposition because of weak reception from the ma

by Duhck 4y ago

I started a company to pursue circadian lighting (called Twist) and sadly pivoted away from it as a core value proposition because of weak reception from the market. I feel we were 20 years too early (we shut down about 5 years ago). Our tech enabled smart circadian lighting (we called it adaptive lighting) without configuration, an app, or wifi. The lightbulbs worked without any smart gadgetry necessary. Every time the switch turned on the light made a 20 ms computation based on the time it stored (via a low power clock and a super cap) and turned to the right brightness and color temperature automatically. This was protected by a patent but also could not find a buyer for the tech despite how differentiated it was Now I have an entire home with hue downlights + bulbs that does circadian lighting (with HASS as well) and while its not nearly as elegant of a solution as Twist (aforementioned startup), it is pretty great and a huge life changer to me and my fiancè. Edit: for context we use Philips Hue downlight retrofits + bulbs in other fixtures, all white ambiance, and Lutron Aurora dimmers, connected to HASS on a RBPI, running adaptive lighting from HACS

Duhck 4y ago
Adding our failed Series A pitch deck because I think its interesting for this crowd: https://docsend.com/view/bm5za5w https://docsend.com/view/bm5za5w
- maximilianroos 4y ago
  Impressive deck! Why didn't the raise succeed?
- dmix 4y ago
  That sounds amazing (insert Fry throwing money meme). It's too bad it didn't work out. I wonder if there's been any success stories where an idea failed but then later the founder tried again? I'm guessing usually the first experience burns them out they probably dont bother again.
- pedalpete 4y ago
  That's a seriously great deck. Did you do a public post-mortem of why you think you were unable to raise?
  - Duhck 4y ago
    No and candidly I mishandled the entire shutdown. As a solo founder, my company going insolvent really put me in a dark place. I’m happy to talk about it now though. I think the problem was twofold. We were trying to raise during a tumultuous time for consumer hardware — when VCs were really skeptical of hardware without subscription revenue streams. And our unit economics story was really challenging. COGs grew considerably to get to shipping and that compressed our margins in a way that made the growth story seem capitally intensive. I was convinced we could reduce costs and increase AOV / LTV but VCs really wanted subscriptions
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      What kind of subscriptions were being considered, if you can still recall?
      - Duhck 4y ago
        We didnt consider any, hence the friction towards getting more capital
        MichaelZuo 4y ago
        Was there a reason for not considering it?
m4jor 4y ago
Have you ever thought about just releasing the patent for everyone to use? Patents stifle innovation iirc.
- hobo_mark 4y ago
  Not to sound like the infamous Dropbox comment, but would the patent prevent you from doing? Changing light temperature and colour over the course of the day? I've been doing that for years with a cronjob. Doing so without a microcontroller? Those cost pennies nowadays.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 4y ago
  > we shut down about 5 years ago
- Duhck 4y ago
  The patent was handed over to our debt financing company (WTI) and sits idle. The actual patent covered the method for tracking time without power and for synchronizing clocks over a low power mesh network
yeutterg 4y ago
We've worked on similar circadian products, and I have a similar setup at home. IMO, we're getting closer to the time the market is ready. The main learning is to release MVPs and continue to gather feedback from/build a relationship with the core early adopter market. The market is small, probably in the tens of millions of dollars annually, but the right solution is going to be easy to setup/use with a good UI, and priced at a slight premium over other lighting (but not exorbitantly).
- Duhck 4y ago
  If you ask me I dont think average users will ever pay for a solution to this problem. People are simply not aware that their blue-heavy LED lights either cause harm to their sleep schedule or simply feel clinical at night. I live in a very affluent mountain town now, one thats very aware of light pollution and is a general haven for health nuts, and yet 75% of the houses I see with lights on at night have blue-white lights. Especially in their kitchens. This makes sense as they are working areas
  - beebeepka 4y ago
    Have you noticed the median age of those with white lights? I'd assume it's mostly old people. Personally, I'd stay in the dark before subjecting myself to that sort of unnatural light
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > If you ask me I dont think average users will ever pay for a solution to this problem. I tend to agree. I'm inclined to appreciate the technology, yet at the same time I don't think I like it well enough to blow $60/each to replace all my can lights with Hues. I just run 2700K bulbs for almost every light in the house (excepting the garage & my workshop), and in some areas I make it very bright in lieu of going towards the blue end of the spectrum.
  - yeutterg 4y ago
    To be clear, I don't think companies should be focused on average users. At least not for a while (until there is sufficient education and agreement that this is a problem, if that ever happens). The market is all about early adopters for the foreseeable future.
drc500free 4y ago
In all honesty, I’ve found it healthier to have fixed color temperature in different rooms, and change what room I’m in throughout the day. I’m only in my bedroom when warm lighting makes sense, I’m only in my office when cool lighting makes sense. That helps establish other healthy habits than just sleep, and keeping the bedroom dedicated to sex and sleep is a good practice anyway to combat insomnia.
- runjake 4y ago
  I do this, but also have different lighting options in certain rooms, like the office. In my office, the ceiling light is a daylight bulb, but i also have a couple lamps with warmer lights. During the day, I run the ceiling light, and after sunset, turn the ceiling light off and turn the lamps on. Perhaps a bit Luddite, but less fuss and cost.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  That sounds great, but many people (especially those living in cities) don't have that many rooms in their home, so other solutions are needed.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - argondonor 4y ago
    In the past I have put up a curtain around my bed (although originally for other reasons.) Like a homemade canopy bed!
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      > although originally for other reasons I dont want to get into too much speculation, but the answer obiviously is building a fort?
- liotier 4y ago
  > keeping the bedroom dedicated to sex and sleep Yes. No computer of any sort, the alarm clock's only advanced technology is radio-synchronization and I don't even let a book enter the bedroom - that is for the living-room couch. Does wonder for sanctuarizing the late evening !
hatware 4y ago
How did these Twist bulbs account for differences in time zone? If I have some of these lights and I move hundreds of miles to a new time zone, plug the same lights into the new home, how do they lights know?
- __turbobrew__ 4y ago
  I wonder how much it would cost to put an gps receiver in every lightbulb? If you can get a gps signal you can get a rough guesstimate of the bulbs location and time and therefore adjust to fit the local circadian rhythm. Or maybe you could sync to a local radio time station?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Duhck 4y ago
    both GPS and radio time receivers are very expensive. LED bulbs are a commodity product and thus have little room for margin. Our low power clock + super cap added $1.25 of BOM which translates to $2.50-$3 of cost to the user. Led bulbs at Home Depot are $3-5 on the low end.
    - bboygravity 4y ago
      I would easily pay 30+ USD per bulb if it had time-sync and NO internet connection (LAN optional and not a must-have). Actually I already did. LIFX day night bulbs cost more than that and don't have the functionality that you had in your product out of the box. Actually personally I would pay as much as 50 USD per bulb for standalone bulbs that just follow a cycle pre-set by myself over BLE or wifi or even a freaking USB port :p Maybe they exist but I haven't been able to find them.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    $2-3 but GPS antenna is pretty bulky so forget it. Local radio time is generally iffy if you can't afford bigger antenna. Syncing my watch is basically impossible indoors, althought you might be able to get a bit bigger antenna in a bulb... but they will also be in much worse locations (near walls and inside metal enclosures)
vageli 4y ago
Would you mind sharing the patent number? It sounds like an interesting technology to read more about.
- Duhck 4y ago
  https://patents.google.com/patent/US9784417B1/en?oq=9784417 https://patents.google.com/patent/US9784417B1/en?oq=9784417 A lot of the claims surrounded how we designed and manufactured a light bulb that was modular. We could support speakers, cameras, and sensors in the same form factor without any material mechanical or electrical changes.
ilyt 4y ago
That sounds like something you want as a feature in bigger system, not something you'd want to buy a specific bulb just for that. > Every time the switch turned on the light made a 20 ms computation based on the time it stored (via a low power clock and a super cap) and turned to the right brightness and color temperature automatically. Where it got the time sync from ? You said it didn't need configuration or an app ?
- SamBam 4y ago
  It sounded like it was a real-time-clock chip, powered by the capacitor. So it's self-contained.
  - ghostpepper 4y ago
    I guess it could get it from GPS if each bulb contained a radio but this sounds incredibly inefficient
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Right but that cap ain't gonna hold power for few months on the shelf. Supercap self-discharge rate is high enough that it will be down to zero in weeks to months from my experience.
marze 4y ago
I use orange led bulbs in a parallel system to the white lights. Some in lamps plugged into a power strip with a switch. Simple and cheap, but requires extra lamps.
- scarby2 4y ago
  The cost of a lamp a tunable bulb and a fraction of an rpi is almost certainly lower than the cost of 2 lamps and 2 bulbs.
  - marze 4y ago
    Two things, I set this up long ago before tunable bulbs were cheap, and the single tunable bulb I checked out subsequently didn't emit just orange, it had some blue.
carlmr 4y ago
Oh man, this sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. I find all these smart setups too involved and finnicky. On-off timers are too coarse though. I want slow rising sun.
- naikrovek 4y ago
  open the curtains/blinds, when the sun comes up, sunlight gets in. even if you want to control the time of day this happens, surely you realize that your body evolved according to the sun's timetable, and benefits from that timetable. if you're not a day shift worker I understand completely.
  - carlmr 4y ago
    Um I can open the curtains all I want, there's little sun in German winters out there. The automatic part is also important since I need it to get up from bed.
joshspankit 4y ago
In my experience (as someone who has advocated for f.lux and natural lighting since the early days) even when people are directly exposed to the benefits (such as leaving a shift at 11pm and being able to sleep restfully when they get home) it’s still difficult for them to change habits. The work/life autopilot just does not seem to have room for it. It’s truly heartbreaking, and doubly so when we lose out on companies like Twist.

by Duhck 4y ago

Duhck 4y ago

Adding our failed Series A pitch deck because I think its interesting for this crowd: https://docsend.com/view/bm5za5w https://docsend.com/view/bm5za5w

maximilianroos 4y ago
Impressive deck! Why didn't the raise succeed?
dmix 4y ago
That sounds amazing (insert Fry throwing money meme). It's too bad it didn't work out. I wonder if there's been any success stories where an idea failed but then later the founder tried again? I'm guessing usually the first experience burns them out they probably dont bother again.
pedalpete 4y ago
That's a seriously great deck. Did you do a public post-mortem of why you think you were unable to raise?
- Duhck 4y ago
  No and candidly I mishandled the entire shutdown. As a solo founder, my company going insolvent really put me in a dark place. I’m happy to talk about it now though. I think the problem was twofold. We were trying to raise during a tumultuous time for consumer hardware — when VCs were really skeptical of hardware without subscription revenue streams. And our unit economics story was really challenging. COGs grew considerably to get to shipping and that compressed our margins in a way that made the growth story seem capitally intensive. I was convinced we could reduce costs and increase AOV / LTV but VCs really wanted subscriptions
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    What kind of subscriptions were being considered, if you can still recall?
    - Duhck 4y ago
      We didnt consider any, hence the friction towards getting more capital
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        Was there a reason for not considering it?

m4jor 4y ago

Have you ever thought about just releasing the patent for everyone to use? Patents stifle innovation iirc.

hobo_mark 4y ago
Not to sound like the infamous Dropbox comment, but would the patent prevent you from doing? Changing light temperature and colour over the course of the day? I've been doing that for years with a cronjob. Doing so without a microcontroller? Those cost pennies nowadays.
0xdeadbeefbabe 4y ago
> we shut down about 5 years ago
Duhck 4y ago
The patent was handed over to our debt financing company (WTI) and sits idle. The actual patent covered the method for tracking time without power and for synchronizing clocks over a low power mesh network

yeutterg 4y ago

We've worked on similar circadian products, and I have a similar setup at home. IMO, we're getting closer to the time the market is ready. The main learning is to release MVPs and continue to gather feedback from/build a relationship with the core early adopter market. The market is small, probably in the tens of millions of dollars annually, but the right solution is going to be easy to setup/use with a good UI, and priced at a slight premium over other lighting (but not exorbitantly).

Duhck 4y ago
If you ask me I dont think average users will ever pay for a solution to this problem. People are simply not aware that their blue-heavy LED lights either cause harm to their sleep schedule or simply feel clinical at night. I live in a very affluent mountain town now, one thats very aware of light pollution and is a general haven for health nuts, and yet 75% of the houses I see with lights on at night have blue-white lights. Especially in their kitchens. This makes sense as they are working areas
- beebeepka 4y ago
  Have you noticed the median age of those with white lights? I'd assume it's mostly old people. Personally, I'd stay in the dark before subjecting myself to that sort of unnatural light
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > If you ask me I dont think average users will ever pay for a solution to this problem. I tend to agree. I'm inclined to appreciate the technology, yet at the same time I don't think I like it well enough to blow $60/each to replace all my can lights with Hues. I just run 2700K bulbs for almost every light in the house (excepting the garage & my workshop), and in some areas I make it very bright in lieu of going towards the blue end of the spectrum.
- yeutterg 4y ago
  To be clear, I don't think companies should be focused on average users. At least not for a while (until there is sufficient education and agreement that this is a problem, if that ever happens). The market is all about early adopters for the foreseeable future.

drc500free 4y ago

In all honesty, I’ve found it healthier to have fixed color temperature in different rooms, and change what room I’m in throughout the day. I’m only in my bedroom when warm lighting makes sense, I’m only in my office when cool lighting makes sense. That helps establish other healthy habits than just sleep, and keeping the bedroom dedicated to sex and sleep is a good practice anyway to combat insomnia.

runjake 4y ago
I do this, but also have different lighting options in certain rooms, like the office. In my office, the ceiling light is a daylight bulb, but i also have a couple lamps with warmer lights. During the day, I run the ceiling light, and after sunset, turn the ceiling light off and turn the lamps on. Perhaps a bit Luddite, but less fuss and cost.
TremendousJudge 4y ago
That sounds great, but many people (especially those living in cities) don't have that many rooms in their home, so other solutions are needed.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- argondonor 4y ago
  In the past I have put up a curtain around my bed (although originally for other reasons.) Like a homemade canopy bed!
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    > although originally for other reasons I dont want to get into too much speculation, but the answer obiviously is building a fort?
liotier 4y ago
> keeping the bedroom dedicated to sex and sleep Yes. No computer of any sort, the alarm clock's only advanced technology is radio-synchronization and I don't even let a book enter the bedroom - that is for the living-room couch. Does wonder for sanctuarizing the late evening !

hatware 4y ago

How did these Twist bulbs account for differences in time zone? If I have some of these lights and I move hundreds of miles to a new time zone, plug the same lights into the new home, how do they lights know?

__turbobrew__ 4y ago
I wonder how much it would cost to put an gps receiver in every lightbulb? If you can get a gps signal you can get a rough guesstimate of the bulbs location and time and therefore adjust to fit the local circadian rhythm. Or maybe you could sync to a local radio time station?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Duhck 4y ago
  both GPS and radio time receivers are very expensive. LED bulbs are a commodity product and thus have little room for margin. Our low power clock + super cap added $1.25 of BOM which translates to $2.50-$3 of cost to the user. Led bulbs at Home Depot are $3-5 on the low end.
  - bboygravity 4y ago
    I would easily pay 30+ USD per bulb if it had time-sync and NO internet connection (LAN optional and not a must-have). Actually I already did. LIFX day night bulbs cost more than that and don't have the functionality that you had in your product out of the box. Actually personally I would pay as much as 50 USD per bulb for standalone bulbs that just follow a cycle pre-set by myself over BLE or wifi or even a freaking USB port :p Maybe they exist but I haven't been able to find them.
- ilyt 4y ago
  $2-3 but GPS antenna is pretty bulky so forget it. Local radio time is generally iffy if you can't afford bigger antenna. Syncing my watch is basically impossible indoors, althought you might be able to get a bit bigger antenna in a bulb... but they will also be in much worse locations (near walls and inside metal enclosures)

vageli 4y ago

Would you mind sharing the patent number? It sounds like an interesting technology to read more about.

Duhck 4y ago
https://patents.google.com/patent/US9784417B1/en?oq=9784417 https://patents.google.com/patent/US9784417B1/en?oq=9784417 A lot of the claims surrounded how we designed and manufactured a light bulb that was modular. We could support speakers, cameras, and sensors in the same form factor without any material mechanical or electrical changes.

ilyt 4y ago

That sounds like something you want as a feature in bigger system, not something you'd want to buy a specific bulb just for that. > Every time the switch turned on the light made a 20 ms computation based on the time it stored (via a low power clock and a super cap) and turned to the right brightness and color temperature automatically. Where it got the time sync from ? You said it didn't need configuration or an app ?

SamBam 4y ago
It sounded like it was a real-time-clock chip, powered by the capacitor. So it's self-contained.
- ghostpepper 4y ago
  I guess it could get it from GPS if each bulb contained a radio but this sounds incredibly inefficient
- ilyt 4y ago
  Right but that cap ain't gonna hold power for few months on the shelf. Supercap self-discharge rate is high enough that it will be down to zero in weeks to months from my experience.

marze 4y ago

I use orange led bulbs in a parallel system to the white lights. Some in lamps plugged into a power strip with a switch. Simple and cheap, but requires extra lamps.

scarby2 4y ago
The cost of a lamp a tunable bulb and a fraction of an rpi is almost certainly lower than the cost of 2 lamps and 2 bulbs.
- marze 4y ago
  Two things, I set this up long ago before tunable bulbs were cheap, and the single tunable bulb I checked out subsequently didn't emit just orange, it had some blue.

carlmr 4y ago

Oh man, this sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. I find all these smart setups too involved and finnicky. On-off timers are too coarse though. I want slow rising sun.

naikrovek 4y ago
open the curtains/blinds, when the sun comes up, sunlight gets in. even if you want to control the time of day this happens, surely you realize that your body evolved according to the sun's timetable, and benefits from that timetable. if you're not a day shift worker I understand completely.
- carlmr 4y ago
  Um I can open the curtains all I want, there's little sun in German winters out there. The automatic part is also important since I need it to get up from bed.

joshspankit 4y ago

In my experience (as someone who has advocated for f.lux and natural lighting since the early days) even when people are directly exposed to the benefits (such as leaving a shift at 11pm and being able to sleep restfully when they get home) it’s still difficult for them to change habits. The work/life autopilot just does not seem to have room for it. It’s truly heartbreaking, and doubly so when we lose out on companies like Twist.