For all the talk of "changing the world" that comes in the software start-up scene, it's the physical inventions[1] that have more obvious & immediate impact on the world - and by "world", I really mean developing countries instead of our first-world problems(annoyances really). These fast-inflating/deflating mattresses would be very helpful in those countries.
Your comparison is unfair, given that new web apps are being created/updated (but also abandoned) constantly, and this requires work. Mattresses have been invented long ago, and can be mostly produced by robots. Mattresses should be a commodity, and be priced accordingly.
Hey HN, a guy I went to university with followed through with his idea to make a better alternative to the current camping mattress options. Incase you don't want to go to the kickstarter link (unfortunately it's the only product page he has so far) here's a brief rundown:
- Compressor is 7.5 x 3.25 x 5.5 in, 2.6 lbs.
- Foam mattress
- The vacuum packing takes 2-3 minutes to complete.
I'd love to hear what you all think about it. It looks like he's trying to raise money for injection moulding to produce a bunch now. I've never worked with manufacturing personally but from reading blog posts it seems that this is a difficult part of getting a physical product going.
I have the sense that for people increasingly unable to afford a house or an automobile, an expensive mattress is being presented as the next-more-affordable luxury.
To me, an old R&D principle applies: If you are going to spend so much on a piece of custom hardware that you will be afraid to admit it was a mistake or lacked essential features, better to experiment a little with something simpler first.
There are something like six of these boutique foam mattress startups, of which Casper is one of the newest, cutest, hipster-i-est versions. I've had a Keetsa mattress for about five years now. It's fine -- it was about 20% cheaper than a TempurPedic when I bought it, and the fact that it came vacuum-packed was a gimmick that made it possible to get it into my apartment. It's a little on the firm side, but that's what you get when you have no choice.
(As an aside, nearly twenty years ago, I bought a mattress from the Denver Mattress Company, who were (and are) selling and manufacturing great mattresses for a fraction of the price of the big players. You want to talk about innovation? Talk about those guys, not three hipsters in Brooklyn who got some VC money last year and used it to buy generic foam mattresses from a Chinese supplier.)
That said, there's no way in the world that this market is big enough to support this many startups. Mattresses weren't sold in stores because the companies didn't think people would buy them online; mattresses are/were sold that way because they're like cars -- people buy a new one once a decade. It's hard to build a big business unless you're extracting maximum margin per item sold. It's even harder when five other identical "scrappy insurgencies" are competing on price in the low end of the market.
But hey, cheap VC dollars means cheap mattresses for you. Everyone is thinking about gross revenue and "disruption", but nobody is thinking about business models.
I think that a mattress is a bit simpler than an application with hundreds of thousands of possible interactions. There are not so many different ways you can use a mattress.
> One thing that really stuck out for me was that _everyone_ had memory foam mattresses. The slums, the really slick holiday homes, everyone.
Interesting; I guess it could be explained in-universe by economies of scale, that is, (memory) foam mattresses being faster and cheaper to produce than other types of mattresses. I'm thinking of spring mattresses, which actually have parts and different materials, whereas foam can be just a single block I think? And when you think about logistics, memory foam can be compacted and vacuum sealed for transport.
As somebody having moved to the US a month ago : some of your industries like mattress sound a lot like gigantic scams.
I did not want to pay 2k$ for a good mattress because it is just a stupid rectangle of foam. Each time I read about how they have nasa engineers in their teams to help them innovate on 'mattress technology' I choke up a little. How can somebody write that with a straight face ?
I ended up buying one on amazon (a Zinus if anybody is interested, heard about it in another HN thread)
"But, you see, what we're really trying to do here is redefine the mattress industry, from providing a passive product into more of a compelling interactive sleep experience..."
> Mattresses were a notoriously opaque and user-hostile market. A decade ago I was working at a startup aimed at helping people make better purchasing decisions
Who is this startup, and can they help me identify what I love about my current mattress so that when it's done, I can buy one much like it?
Yes, I can stuff a sack with straw for $2 and call it a mattress, but it's not going to be as comfortable. Making a better product—for some measurement of better—often makes it more expensive.
Mattresses are something we do totally wrong. We could have much more ergonomic designs that were also affordable, washable, less bulky and recyclable.
So? Not everything needs to be a revolution. Casper already revolutionized the mattress industry. They're merely further monetizing that success by introducing a well-designed new product, since mattress sales cycles are so long.
I like the irony! Ehehe. I personally know the Eight team, and it's nice to see them launch a smart mattress.
I think that their smart cover works quite well. They spent a few months refining the experience and debugging the software, and I recently (re)tried it and the experience was flawless.
From my understanding, the smart mattress uses the same exact technology, so unlike other smart mattresses on the market today, this is a battle tested solution.
I don't want to sound too nice and condescending to them, given that I know them. I can only suggest to take a look at it, and read some user reviews. Whether you're going to buy it or not, I'm happy to see a connected device finally built with some good engineering principles in mind.
For all the talk of "changing the world" that comes in the software start-up scene, it's the physical inventions[1] that have more obvious & immediate impact on the world - and by "world", I really mean developing countries instead of our first-world problems(annoyances really). These fast-inflating/deflating mattresses would be very helpful in those countries.
1. http://vimeo.com/53588182
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