Product Management Confabulation
What Product Managers are talking about.
Nothing lasts forever. Nowhere is the truism more apt than in consumer tech. This is a land inhabited by the eternally restless — always on the make for the next big thing. The smartphone has, by all accounts, had a good run. Seventeen years after the iPhone made its public debut, the devices continue to […]
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It’s been a whirlwind few years for Oura. The hardware-maker rode the early days of the pandemic to the top of the wearable ranks, establishing itself as the top smart ring maker by a mile.
With the promise of detecting early COVID warning signals, the company struck up brand partnerships with some of the world’s leading sports leagues. Oura has had its share of controversy along the way, including the addition of a premium service that locked existing features behind a paywall.
This time last year, the company announced that Tom Hale joined up as CEO, with a stated goal of scaling the company. Today’s news is a major step in that direction, as the company announces a deal with Best Buy that will bring its ring to around 850 locations around the U.S.
“Brick-and-mortar retail is a natural next step for Oura and marks a pivotal moment for the business as we continue to expand into the mainstream,” Hale says in a release. “Introducing more people to the benefits of Oura’s technology and providing an impactful in-store and online experience with the help of Best Buy is an exciting step forward for us as a company.”
The in-person experience is an important one for wearables. After all, products designed to be worn on your person represent an extra level of intimacy you don’t get with standard consumer electronics. It’s a pretty good idea to try something on before plunking down a few hundred dollars plus subscription fee.
Oura does have some brick and mortar presence already, but nothing that rivals the Best Buy deal. The list includes limited availability in Gucci and Therabody stores, as well as SoftBank retail locations in Japan.
Oura/Best Buy partnership brings the smart ring to 850 stores across the US by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch
Movano’s getting a week’s jump on what might well prove a banner CES for the smart ring. Today the Bay Area-based firm debuted Evie, a smart ring focused on women’s health set to hit the market later next year. The device capitalizes on the recent popularity of the unobtrusive form factor, led by the likes of Oura and Circular.
It is, however, among the first to be focused on a specific market segment (insofar as roughly 51% of the population can be considered a segment, I suppose). Women’s health certainly makes sense as a target. Companies like Fitbit and Apple have found some success with the addition of cycle tracking and related features.
That is, of course, included out of the box here. Evie’s top-level features include:
[R]esting heart rate, heart rate variability, SpO2, respiration rate, skin temperature variability, period and ovulation tracking, menstrual symptom tracking, activity profile, including steps, active minutes and, calories burned, sleep stages and duration, and mood tracking.
The “mood” bit here is the main selling point of the as of yet unreleased Happy Ring, which puts its data to use in hopes of helping users manage things like stress and sleep a bit better. The rest of Evie’s details are still fairly foggy — Movano is promising a better look at the product at the show next week. Of course, you can’t really blame the company for wanting to get out ahead of the scrum.
Image Credits: Movano
On top of that, Movano says it’s “planning to seek FDA clearance” for the product. Obviously no firm time line on that. It notes:
The Company plans to file for pulse oximetry metrics after having completed a successful hypoxia trial in October 2022, where accuracy for clinical SpO2 and heart rate commensurate with FDA’s consensus standard was demonstrated. While a few wearables are only FDA cleared for specific software, such as ECG and Afib, Evie is designed per regulatory standards and built in a medical device manufacturing facility that meets ISO13485 and cGMP standards. The clearance will offer women trusted and personalized insights that can help them draw connections between cause and effect, so they can better understand the “why” behind what they’re feeling. Additionally, Evie will deliver data that clinicians can deem reliable for patient care.
That’s clearly the end game for a lot of these firms, moving from the consumer space to something that’s taken a bit more seriously among medical professionals, insurance companies and the like.
“As a medical device, Evie will go beyond the status quo of other wearables on the market, and we believe it has the power to transform women’s lives and overall health,” CEO John Mastrototaro says in a release. “We are bringing together medical grade biometric data and insights in a comfortable and contemporary wearable that allows women to take ownership of their unique health journey.”
The product is expected to run around $300 and, unlike Oura, it won’t charge an additional subscription fee.
Movano’s new smart ring is focused on women’s health by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch
Battery technology has made significant strides in recent years, but there’s one place they haven’t changed much — they’re still as stiff as a board.
The era of inflexible portable power may be coming to an end, though, if Anthro Energy can bring its bendy batteries to market. It’s getting some help with that courtesy of an oversubscribed $7.2 million seed round, which the company is announcing today, TechCrunch exclusively learned.
The round was led by Union Square Ventures and Energy Revolution Ventures with participation from Voyager Ventures, Emerson Collective, Nor’easter Ventures, Ultratech Capital Partners and the Stanford President’s Venture Fund.
Anthro was founded by chemists David Mackanic and Joe Papp, who saw an opening for a flexible polymer that could not only give batteries new properties but also offer a quicker way to market than the frequently cited automotive route.
“Batteries are faced with this kind of really severe innovator’s dilemma, where to get into something like an auto, it takes a ton of validation, a ton of technology development and a ton of time,” Mackanic said. “And so I realized if I want to make a difference in the battery space, I’ve got to think differently about the problems I’m solving, I’ve got to think differently about how we’re bringing this to market.”
Bendy batteries could power new categories, and Anthro Energy thinks its cracked the code by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
It may surprise the casual reader to learn that I don’t run a trillion-dollar multinational corporation. Like any decent tech writer, however, I’m more than happy to offer all my opinions on the matter in a very public forum. Having most closely followed hardware makers over the years, I’m often struck by one specific subject in particular: choice.
I’m generally of the opinion that more choice is better. This applies to many aspects in life (best to avoid the nuisances in the introduction to a piece about a smartwatch), including consumer goods. More companies, more competition, more customer choice. All that fun stuff. From Apple, in particular, the question of choice has been an interesting one.
Observing the company over the years, there’s been an ebb and flow. In some cases, it can be a question of quality control, not confusing the customer with “too much” choice and not spreading oneself too thin (though I’m not sure that a brand with a market cap of $2-3 trillion is at risk of the latter).
These are valid concerns, and within the confines of a single company, there’s a push and pull. The opposite end of the spectrum is intentionally limited choice in a manner asserting that you know what’s best for the consumer. It’s a criticism that, understandably, has been leveled at Apple over the years.
Among consumer electronics categories, wearables may have the most to gain from choice. On top of the standard customer preference, you have wide variations across the spectrum of human bodies. We’re all perfect, beautiful snowflakes here and — at the very least — deserve a watch that will fit on our wrist. This was the main complaint with the first generation of smartwatches: they were too big, with too little variation.
After eight generations of Apple Watches, we’re looking at more choice than ever before. You’ve got the big, flashy and expensive Ultra, the mid-tier Series 8 and the budget SE. Both of the latter are available in a bunch of different colors and two sizes (41 and 45mm for the 8 and 40 and 44mm for the SE). I’m curious to see whether the future will hold a more compact version of the Ultra, but for now, it’s a big watch for mostly big wrists.
Earlier today, I posted a fairly lengthy review of the Series 8. The piece focused on a lot of different factors, but one thing in particular took center stage. In a world where some of the competition rates battery in terms of days — or even weeks — it has loomed over the line for a while. Apple has addressed the issue, in part, with the addition of Low Power Mode, introduced with watchOS 9.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
The presence of the feature posits an interesting question. If you had the ability to disable any and all features for the sake of battery life, which would you sacrifice, if any? It’s an interesting exercise in determining which are actually valuable in daily life. Each year, Apple adds a bunch of features. Some you’ll use, some you’ll never touch. In my case, I can handle losing everything that shuts down in Low Power Mode. Someone monitoring a heart condition, on the other hand, may not.
Maybe now is a good time to discuss what, precisely, “SE” means. The first edition was introduced in 2019, alongside the Series 5. It’s been three years, and Apple’s approach has been a combination of relying on the SE and older models to appease the lower end of the market (though this time the Series 7 is only around as long as retail channels still have current stock).
Theories have varied on what the SE here (and on the iPhone) means. Some have pointed out that it meant “System Expansion” once upon a time in Apple parlance. More recently, however, Apple exec Phil Schiller confirmed what many suspected, with the two-letter acronym standing for “Special Edition.” From where I sit, I believe special editions are reserved for weird Batman FunkoPop you can only purchase by waiting in line at Comic-Con for 15 hours, which you later sell with a 10,000% markup.
But that’s probably just me.
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In the case of this device, I’d offer another, similar, suggestion: Streamlined Edition. The SE is the Apple Watch for people on a somewhat tighter budget, who recognize that they don’t need absolutely every annual addition to the device. As reviewers, I think we too often lose sight of the fact that a couple hundred bucks is not an insignificant chunk of change for a vast majority of readers. Starting at $249 for the standard edition and $299 for the cellular version, the SE is $150-$200 cheaper than the Series 8. It’s not exactly half the cost, but it’s getting there.
“Cheap” is relative, of course. Particularly in the case of Apple products. Smartwatches under $100 do exist, but as a rule of thumb, I’ve been using the $200 Fitbit Versa as a baseline for affordable smartwatches with a premium experience. At $50 more, the SE isn’t too far off target.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
Here’s what you lose by picking the SE over the Series 8:
Your mileage will vary, but as compromises go, these seem manageable. And, honestly, good luck telling them apart at first glance. Again, if my doctor suggested I pick up the watch for heart monitoring, I’d likely shell out the extra money and go for the 8. It’s true that health monitoring has become an increasingly central part of the line, so those compromises are going to be significant for many.
Beyond that, the devices have the same processor (W3) and stated battery life (18 hours w/o Low Power Mode enabled). Much has already been written about how the Ultra is effectively a niche device, compared to the S8, but having used both the standard S8 and SE since the Far Out event last week, I would add that suddenly there’s a very credible argument to be made that the SE is truly the right Apple Watch for most people.
The Apple Watch SE isn’t as much of a compromise as you might think by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch
Digital avatar startup Genies, known its for high-profile partnerships with celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Migos and Cardi B, has just released its long-anticipated NFT storefront, “The Warehouse.” Genies last earned a $1 billion valuation from heavy-hitting tech investors including Silver Lake and Mary Meeker’s Bond Capital during its most recent raise, a $150 million Series C round announced in April.
The Los Angeles-based company partnered with NBA Top Shot NFT creator Dapper Labs to develop the storefront on Dapper’s Flow blockchain and debuted it to a group of invite-only beta users in December last year, TechCrunch reported at the time. Now, The Warehouse is available to the general public, meaning users can download the Genies Studio app to create their own avatars and buy digital fashion items to dress them, Genies CEO and founder Akash Nigam told TechCrunch in an interview.
Genies is partnering with a handpicked group of creators to design the first set of collections available on the platform, Nigam said. One of the first collections will come from fashion photographer and influencer Tati Bruening, known on Instagram as @illumitati, where she went viral for her petition to “Make Instagram Great Again.”
Genies CEO and founder Akash Nigam Image Credits: Genies
Users can also leverage in-app tools to modify the clothes they purchase, allowing them to personalize items they purchase from these collections, he added.
“Creators will be selling their own avatar fashion, and the ones that they’ve customized over the past couple of months. And when they do sell out — let’s say someone sells like 100 items, and let’s say that if a fan or follower or anybody within the community decides to buy it for their own avatar, they also now have the rights to be able to edit it or DIY it within the studio platform, so they can use the tools and create a derivative collection, and then sell the derivative fashion line in The Warehouse,” Nigam explained.
Because each item is an NFT, the original creator gets a cut of the revenue each time that item is resold and owns the intellectual property behind the design, he added. Genies charges a 5% fee on each sale, allowing creators to keep the majority of the revenue they earn on each transaction, Nigam said, contrasting that with the 50%+ fee Meta charges for NFTs within its Horizon Worlds metaverse. (Meta is pushing ahead with its NFT plans too, announcing earlier this week that it would allow users to post their NFTs on both Facebook and Instagram after rolling out its own digital clothing offering in June).
Meta isn’t the only tech company looking to carve out its own identity by helping people craft theirs using digital avatars. Reddit launched its own NFT avatar marketplace in July and Estonian startup Ready Player Me raised $56 million led by a16z for a similar vision earlier this month. Genies is certainly holding its own in the space through its celebrity partnerships and its own team — the startup counts ex-Disney CEO Bob Iger as an investor and board member.
On Genie, only approved sellers on the platform will be able to launch collections to start, though the company says it eventually wants to empower all its users to create unique 1-of-1 fashion items. Genies has made forays into fashion before — the startup partnered with Gucci back in 2020 to give the retailer’s customers access to try on new virtual designs and to buy curated digital goods.
An image of the Genies platform showcasing a fashion collection designed by creator Ian Charms Image Credits: Genies
NFT sales volumes are falling and crypto prices remain depressed, but Nigam expressed confidence about the long-term demand for digital avatars, likening them to mobile apps in their significance to the internet.
“The reason why I think avatar ecosystems are going to be the mobile apps of web3 is because you see two massive consumer trends currently being perpetuated. There’s one trend, which is the virtual trend, which is … I mean, it’s obvious. Everybody wants to exist in a 3D spatial world,” Nigam said.
Second, he added, avatars allow people to have ownership and individuality within the digital world.
“I think a lot of creators understand that they’re contributing so much back to all these different platforms, but they’re not reaping nearly enough of the benefits,” Nigam said.
Still, he expressed hesitancy to characterize and market the startup as an NFT company, although NFTs are core to its business model. He described Genies’ target demographic as the Gen Z cool kids of the internet rather than crypto-native users who view NFTs as financial assets, noting that 85% of users on the waitlist for The Warehouse are female.
“The mentality around this is so different, like, people are just obsessed with the actual digital fashion itself and creating your dream closet,” Nigam said.
Eventually, Nigam sees the company expanding into a full-fledged social network, which he said Gen Z is “starving for.” He views Facebook and Snapchat primarily as messaging apps and said Instagram is having an “identity crisis.” Meanwhile, he hopes Genies will evolve as a place where people can serendipitously meet like-minded friends on the internet — a vision to which the company has moved one step closer with its launch of the app and storefront.
“I don’t think people are even thinking about like, oh, if I buy this as an asset, do I get to unlock X, Y and Z, and does it accrue in value, and can I sell it one day,” Nigam said. “They’re just like, I just want to make dope shit, and then I want to kind of trade it and collaborate with my friends and make it too.”
I’m a mediocre meditator, at best. Some weeks I meditate every morning, and others go by without doing it at all. Turns out healthy habits are a lot harder to develop than good ones. I’ve tried a few different pieces of meditation hardware over the years, because who wouldn’t love to have a nice shortcut to mindfulness?
Of the products I’ve tried, Muse is the one that I found legitimately useful. Nothing is going to make you a great meditator overnight (or stick with it long-term), of course, but the product was useful in helping me establish a more regular practice.
This week, Muse’s maker, Interaxon (probably time to just change the company name to Muse), announced a $9.5 million Series C, led by BDC Capital, Sonny Vu’s Alabaster and Export Development Canada. The funding is on the low side, by 2022 standards, but it finds the Toronto-based firm reading the launch of a new subscription service set to arrive early next year.
From the sound of it, it’s a similar shift into a premium subscription service as the one Oura went through a while back. Here the company is leveraging the headband’s EEG readings to offer personalized insights and create a kind of global meditation database, where users can compare themselves to the average.
Per Interaxon:
The Company aims to leverage these patterns through the development of groundbreaking metrics that will provide users meaningful insights into brain health and lifestyle factors (i.e., meditation, sleep, alcohol, stress, exercise, diet, etc.) that affect it. These personalized insights along with other new biosensor trend reports will roll out later this year, and will be included in the new membership program.
The offering also seems to find the company looking at a kind of hardware as a service model, which run around $300 up front — no doubt a major barrier of entry for a product you really need to use to properly understand.
The company also recently announced an SDK initiative designed to utilize its brain-sensing technology for potential metaverse applications.
Apple and Kim Kardashian announced their first collaboration this week, taking the Beats Fit Pro wireless earbuds to new, nude-toned heights.
In hues so neutral they could make even Sir Jony Ive blush, Apple said the buds will come in three flavors: “moon,” “dune” and “earth.” They’ll debut on Apple.com on August 16 and “in limited quantities” at some Apple Stores and third-party retailers the next day.
If this collab tugs at your heart strings, the Kardashian-approved buds will set you back $200, or $20 more than the standard Beats Fit Pro cost lately. The minimal colors are all that’s new, and they appear to have been plucked right out of a lookbook for SKIMS, the shapewear company Kardashian launched (and quickly rebranded) in 2019.
Left to right: Beats x Kim buds cases in “earth,” “dune” and “moon” hues.
“Since you’re wearing something every day, I wanted them to be able to blend in,” said Kim Kardashian in an ad for the buds. “I’ve never seen any tech products, especially headphones, be in neutral colors.”
Apple acquired Beats from Dr. Dre and music executive Jimmy Iovine back in 2014 for a cool $3 billion.
Featuring the same innards that launched in November 2021, Apple said it will sell the special-edition buds in nine countries. Here’s where folks can pick up a pair (listed alphabetically).
Australia: David Jones
Canada: Apple.com, Amazon and SSENSE
China: Lane Crawford and WeChat
France: Apple.com, an Apple Store in Paris (Champs-Élysées) and Galeries Lafayette
Germany: Apple.com, an Apple store in Berlin (Kurfürstendamm) and Zalando
Japan: Apple.com
Switzerland: Zalando
UK: Apple.com, Amazon, an Apple Store in London (Regent St.) and Selfridges
U.S.: Apple.com and Amazon, as well as at Apple Stores in Los Angeles (at the Grove, Tower Theater and 3rd St. Promenade locations), New York (5th Ave. and Soho), Miami (Aventura) and Chicago (Michigan Ave.).
Apple and Kim Kardashian announced their first collaboration this week, taking the Beats Fit Pro wireless earbuds to new, nude-toned heights.
In hues so neutral they could make even Sir Jony Ive blush, Apple said the buds will come in three flavors: “moon,” “dune” and “earth.” They’ll debut on Apple.com on August 16 and “in limited quantities” at some Apple Stores and third-party retailers the next day.
If this collab tugs at your heart strings, the Kardashian-approved buds will set you back $200, or $20 more than the standard Beats Fit Pro cost lately. The minimal colors are all that’s new, and they appear to have been plucked right out of a lookbook for SKIMS, the shapewear company Kardashian launched (and quickly rebranded) in 2019.
Left to right: Beats x Kim buds cases in “earth,” “dune” and “moon” hues.
“Since you’re wearing something every day, I wanted them to be able to blend in,” said Kim Kardashian in an ad for the buds. “I’ve never seen any tech products, especially headphones, be in neutral colors.”
Apple acquired Beats from Dr. Dre and music executive Jimmy Iovine back in 2014 for a cool $3 billion.
Featuring the same innards that launched in November 2021, Apple said it will sell the special-edition buds in nine countries. Here’s where folks can pick up a pair (listed alphabetically).
Australia: David Jones
Canada: Apple.com, Amazon and SSENSE
China: Lane Crawford and WeChat
France: Apple.com, an Apple Store in Paris (Champs-Élysées) and Galeries Lafayette
Germany: Apple.com, an Apple store in Berlin (Kurfürstendamm) and Zalando
Japan: Apple.com
Switzerland: Zalando
UK: Apple.com, Amazon, an Apple Store in London (Regent St.) and Selfridges
U.S.: Apple.com and Amazon, as well as at Apple Stores in Los Angeles (at the Grove, Tower Theater and 3rd St. Promenade locations), New York (5th Ave. and Soho), Miami (Aventura) and Chicago (Michigan Ave.).
Apple and Kim Kardashian announced their first collaboration this week, taking the Beats Fit Pro wireless earbuds to new, nude-toned heights.
In hues so neutral they could make even Sir Jony Ive blush, Apple said the buds will come in three flavors: “moon,” “dune” and “earth.” They’ll debut on Apple.com on August 16 and “in limited quantities” at some Apple Stores and third-party retailers the next day.
If this collab tugs at your heart strings, the Kardashian-approved buds will set you back $200, or $20 more than the standard Beats Fit Pro cost lately. The minimal colors are all that’s new, and they appear to have been plucked right out of a lookbook for SKIMS, the shapewear company Kardashian launched (and quickly rebranded) in 2019.
Left to right: Beats x Kim buds cases in “earth,” “dune” and “moon” hues.
“Since you’re wearing something every day, I wanted them to be able to blend in,” said Kim Kardashian in an ad for the buds. “I’ve never seen any tech products, especially headphones, be in neutral colors.”
Apple acquired Beats from Dr. Dre and music executive Jimmy Iovine back in 2014 for a cool $3 billion.
Featuring the same innards that launched in November 2021, Apple said it will sell the special-edition buds in nine countries. Here’s where folks can pick up a pair (listed alphabetically).
Australia: David Jones
Canada: Apple.com, Amazon and SSENSE
China: Lane Crawford and WeChat
France: Apple.com, an Apple Store in Paris (Champs-Élysées) and Galeries Lafayette
Germany: Apple.com, an Apple store in Berlin (Kurfürstendamm) and Zalando
Japan: Apple.com
Switzerland: Zalando
UK: Apple.com, Amazon, an Apple Store in London (Regent St.) and Selfridges
U.S.: Apple.com and Amazon, as well as at Apple Stores in Los Angeles (at the Grove, Tower Theater and 3rd St. Promenade locations), New York (5th Ave. and Soho), Miami (Aventura) and Chicago (Michigan Ave.).