Tim Antos joins us to discuss why you can’t forget about NOISE in your quest to improve your sleep! We explor some of the latest in audio technology designed specifically to enhance the quality of sleep. I was particularly excited and grateful to have Tim on the show, considering he’s in the midst of an inspiring Kickstarter campaign that is already on course to hit $700,000 after only a few days on the site. Dive in to learn more about sound, sleep quality, and sleep coaching from an ex-insomniac turned serial entrepreneur. GUEST BIO: Tim is a mechanical engineer and former insomniac. He founded Kokoon in 2013 to make sleep science more accessible to consumers on their own terms. His company have two products that work with an app platform to deliver audio coaching and content tailored to the individual based on their data.
What is the relationship between sound and sleep?
What type of sounds are helpful with sleep, and how can it make your rest more enjoyable?
What audio devices can help with sleep quality? And what are some of the pros and cons of the standard items out there right now?
Switching to audio instead of screens during night time can be beneficial for sleep quality in that it removes light & hyper engagement. Find out how you can use audio to work for your night routine.
Do sounds affect deep sleep?
In what other ways could audio be beneficial for health & sleep?
What can you do specifically to improve your nighttime routines and sleep quality through the modularity of noise?
EPISODE LINKS:
Check out the new NightBuds here: https://nightbuds-smart-earbuds-for.kckb.st/d147707f
Email: Tim@kokoon.io
Instagram: SleepKokoon
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KokoonTech
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/5341680/
Twitter: @SleepKokoon
CONTACT INFO:
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Unknown Speaker 0:04
Welcome to the sleep as a skill podcast. My name is Mollie McGlocklin. And I own a company that optimizes sleep through technology accountability and behavioral change. Each week, I'll be interviewing world class experts ranging from doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Let's jump into your dose of practical sleep training. Welcome to the sleep of the scale podcast. Today's episode is all about sound. And I'd actually had the pleasure of connecting with this company cocoon you may have heard of them, they have been able to create basically headphones that you can use while you're sleeping. They had version one that was a bit bigger, and I actually tended to like those for travel. So on planes and what have you, where is this new item that they've come out with called Night buds. I am particularly excited about I haven't gotten to try the new night buds, but they're on Kickstarter right now. So we actually, were able to rush to get a quick recording about this new product that they're creating. Because it has made a big splash already on Kickstarter, it's only been on there for a few days. And they're already approaching the million mark. So wanted to hear more about what it is that they've created along with this app that also helps a little bit of sleep coaching in there. So get excited to learn a lot about the world of sound, and how that can make a difference for your sleep. And a little bit about our guests. Tim is a mechanical engineer and former Insomniac, he founded cocoon in 2013. To make sleep science more accessible to consumers on their own terms. His company has two products that work with an app platform to deliver audio coaching, and content tailored to the individual based on their data. So let's dive in. And welcome Tim to the sleep as a skill podcast. I'm so grateful that you took the time to be here today, even in the midst of a very exciting Kickstarter campaign that's running. I know you got tons of things on your plate. So the fact that you took time to be here, I really do appreciate.
Unknown Speaker 2:11
Oh, my pleasure. Thanks, me. I'm
Unknown Speaker 2:13
so excited. I know there's so much for us to dive into. And we've been able to we were speaking previously with your kind of your first model edition. And now we're getting to speak about the the updated model, the very exciting new update. So but before we get into all the specifics on that I was hoping you could just share with people a little bit about your backstory of how you became this the guy of sound and sleep. How did this happen?
Unknown Speaker 2:36
Yeah, so it really kind of started as a personal personal problem for me. So my background, originally, mechanical engineer did a bit of time developing medical products before moving into the city with a quite intense jobs in consulting and finance. And there I was working, you know, really late hours, quite stressful jobs, and often kind of finish, just still buzzing from all the stuff that I had to go, you know, stuff that I haven't done all the kind of thoughts that were running in my head. And basically, I've really struggled to just get to sleep, and I'd often kind of wake up during the night, then, you know, all those thoughts have come back again. And, you know, I struggled to get back to sleep. So that that was kind of where the journey all started, for me was my kind of personal challenge just switching off. So I kind of did the kind of usual thing of hitting Google very hard, and just trying out everything I could on there, all the sleep tips and everything, you know, it didn't really work for me. So I ended up getting referred into a sleep pack. And in that sleep clinic, I basically kind of learned all about my sleep, you know, I kind of adopted quite a few really quite bad behaviors and thought processes that that I needed to change and just kind of understanding sleep a lot more really helped me kind of, you know, kind of understand the importance of doing certain things. Because, you know, it's very easy to think, Oh, you know, yeah, of course I do that. But the reality is, is that, you know, often you, you don't do that, and it can really impact your sleep. So yeah, really kind of, I went through this big kind of CBT program at a sleep clinic, and have left there, as a bit of a sleep expert amongst my colleagues, everyone was kind of struggling with sleep where I worked. And I realized that there was a lot of great sides that you know, wasn't necessarily rocket science, but could really make a big impact, just improving sleep. And, you know, I think there's a lot of people I think there's a recent survey done in the UK that about half the population since the kind of viruses descended to the last is having issues with sleep at least once a week. So you know, it's really an issue that's not constrained to the those kind of chronic staffers that get into the sleep tonight. And we can all benefit from better sleep and you know, the sleep experiences is something that I think we can enjoy a lot more And, you know, take more pleasure from. So really kind of the mission where we found a cocoon was how can we take all this great science, it's been developed over all these years, and just make it more accessible to anyone on their own terms, that fits conveniently into their life that doesn't require the doing kind of committing certain time or going somewhere or, or speaking to someone that just fits into their life. And that's really what kind of we created cocoon to be about was just just convenience and accessibility of sleep science.
Unknown Speaker 5:34
Absolutely, yeah. And I completely relate to your story to have, when you have your own struggles was certainly part of my story of when you have this problem, and you want to fix it. And, and not to say that there's a fixing nature of sleep, because it's a, you know, eternal kind of process for us. But having power again, in that area. And you know, some people will either just kind of get resigned to like, this is the new reality for me, but then other people will really take this area on, it sounds like you really did that and learn all that there was to learn for you to really regain that power. So I love that story. And then you really took it to the next level by, like you said, then developing, you know, a whole product and service around this. So normally, I wouldn't, you know, start with the product. But I think it does behoove us to understand like what it is that you've created now, so that we know what we're talking about. And then we can hear a bit more specifics about it. But so and I know there's been different iterations. But this current one is exciting from a perspective of, Okay, we have a whole kind of product suite now offering for people around their sleep. So if you could share a little bit about what is right on Kickstarter, right now, what's happening there.
Unknown Speaker 6:43
Yeah. So on Kickstarter, we got a product called Night bugs. So night bugs are tiny little really, really small, actually, we've worked out the thinnest earbuds you can get for in the year, tiny little earbuds that sit within the year. And basically, they have a number of sensors in and those sensors mean that the audio is intelligent and adapting to you. So our kind of app system, which is where all the kind of smart magic happens, is able to kind of be a bit of a sleep companion, constantly looking after your sleep. And then seeing kind of issues noticing issues earlier, and giving you kind of little nudges little prompts to to improve your sleep over time. And the night bugs experience has kind of got various features to to make, just often, you know habits that people have adopted more enjoyable and easier. So for example, you know, if you like to listen to audiobooks to the wind down before bed, we we've got integrations with platforms like Spotify, and audible, where we enable that audio to adapt to you. So we'll bookmark that place where we drifted off, and so you can come back to the next day, will automatically fade it out as you fall asleep and bring in white noise, protect the sleep. And really kind of one of the things that this product is about is just making audio much more kind of enjoyable and engaging. And then surrounding that with little nudges around to improve your sleep. So little segments of coaching little bits of advice based on your sleep, little bits of data insight that will help you kind of address a certain behavior or habit that's perhaps brand. So we've really designed this product to be just a light layer of of sleep science and sleep insight that's kind of responding to you as you need it.
Unknown Speaker 8:31
Wow, very cool. And I'm hearing this for the first time too. So because I've known about the previous one. But so this is newer, I've seen, you know the video on Kickstarter, but it was just awesome to be able to have this time to speak with you now and learn more about this. So you know, and it's gotten a lot of attention to I mean, it's gone. Just it's really seemed to blown up on there. So that's great. And so having said that, what was it from the sound perspective, and also the education perspective that had you really create this and go to, you know, go to great lengths to make this happen? You know, why is even just speaking that sound? Why is that so important for the quality of our sleep?
Unknown Speaker 9:11
Yeah, so we've shipped about 30,000 of our first product out there. And we've spoken to about nearly 4000 of the users of that product just to really kind of get to grips on how they're using the product, how it's helping what what they valued the most, what their challenges are, and what elements really kind of they want for products to help them sleep. And, you know, some of our key findings are really that a lot of people have tried the kind of the kind of generic sleep tips they A lot of people have tried to get into kind of the kind of heavyweight CBT but just kind of struggled to stick with it and struggle to kind of persevere and what we really wanted to do was, you know, not try and change too many habits too quickly. So we really wanted to just make the experience enjoyable. So something that, you know, we wanted to put the enjoyment of sleep back into sleep, because I think if you start with something pleasurable, then you're more likely to kind of stick with it and adopt it into your routine. And we found a lot of people already have their, their favorite track or their favorite thing they like to listen to. And you know, we don't want to change that, we just want to make that better. And then also see if there's any other things that can be improved around that. So that was kind of one of the kind of cornerstones of what this product was about, was just talking to an awful lot of customers to really understand kind of how we can make products that fit much better into their lives. And another element is, was comfort, you know, comfort is a probably the the biggest concern of everyone sleeping. And so we've spent a long time kind of just really working on, you know, what is the optimal way to crack crack back comfort challenge. So these, these new in ear buds, absolutely kind of tiny in the air, and really, you know, you can barely notice them, even when you're kind of reading around on the side, etc. They're designed so that the, the earbud itself sits beneath the ear cartilage, and the ear cartilage is kind of the heartbeat of your ear. And that means that there's not really any pressure on the above that sitting in the ear. And that tends to be the biggest source of kind of discomfort from from a traditional headphone, or headset. So we've done an awful lot of work really on how do we make that as thin as possible in the year. And you'll see from the kind of funky design that most of the electronics we've taken out of the year, but and located it around the back. And that design actually gives the headphone a lot of stability in the year so that as you move around a lot, it's really they're stable. So yeah, we've done kind of a lot of testing of that. And that's one of the kind of key features the key enablers three say,
Unknown Speaker 12:01
Wow, really interesting, because I do have a lot of clients that, you know, the getting rid of the TV was like a big thing for them. So they removed the TV, but then they still want to have when they wake up in the middle of night want to listen to something or they're having difficulty falling asleep, want to listen to something, but then they haven't quite worked out the details of how to do that without, you know waking up in your ears, like literally unpaid or whatever, you know, just like how uncomfortable that can sometimes be with some of the current models, I've certainly experienced that. So having something like this is exciting to know about for those type of clients that really find value with that, whether I've had different ones that they're listening to audible at different points, and they almost always do like the sleep timer. And then so they have that on but they're you know, still really having struggling to find a way to make it more comfortable. And then the back part of the ear or the to the back part is very comfortable too. So that part's not like you say if you're a back sleeper, that's not a concern.
Unknown Speaker 12:59
Oh, totally. Yeah. I mean, we've we've had kind of probably, you know, well over 100 people testing this and
Unknown Speaker 13:05
the new one. Great, okay. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 13:06
I mean, out of all of those people, no one's remarked on on that at all. So yeah, we chose that position, especially in the bone rail, there is very Uncensored, and it kind of sits naturally in a kind of groove in the back of the head. Yes. So yeah, you just don't really notice it.
Unknown Speaker 13:23
Yeah, it makes me think of like the dream headband. They and had kind of a workaround on the back where you really didn't feel it at all, too. But they still have it I just yeah, it's as far as the the workability of that that's an area that you just don't really feel. So it's interesting. And so, back to kind of the foundations of just still on the sound element of things. You know, I get lots of questions around can sounds enhance our deep sleep, you know, different things, when can you change sleep architecture? Do you have any thoughts on that? Or any ways that are different options for the maybe white noise? Or, as people talk about pink and brown and all these things? Right? Do you have any take one way or the other on that are just a matter of preference? Or do we still need studies on that?
Unknown Speaker 14:06
Yeah, so I've seen some, some studies on that, that have had some kind of really promising results. So you know, I'm certainly a big believer in in white noise. And so our products kind of basically enables people to listen to, you know, the pink noise, the white noise, the brown noise, and they can even specify their own own things if they want as well. And really, I think the big power of that white noise is is just ensuring that the sleep doesn't get disrupted. And I think that's the biggest power for me is that, you know, often, you know, sleep, you know, it might not wake you up, but it may kind of disrupt the sleep a little bit, if there's a noise that that kind of, you know, raises your alertness a little bit and the white noise is really very effective at masking out these kind of differences in audio. So, you know, we did a test of best in class ANC headphones. is white noise. And we found white noise was a lot more effective at basically keeping that person undisturbed, just through the nature of the protection. So kind of Active Noise Cancelling is very good for low assistant sounds, but actually, they're quite good for help eating sleep. But you know, if someone's snoring, that's quite an erratic sound, and often it has some quite, quite high frequencies in there as well. So mask is, tends to be a lot more effective for for sounds like that, as well.
Unknown Speaker 15:32
Yeah, I love that you're speaking to that, that sleep masking because I have a number of clients that have difficulty for one reason or another, they need to isolate the sound just to one person. So as in is, you know, the go to Oh, just get a sound machine, you know, throw that in there, you're good. But it doesn't always work like that for different people. So one, I've had different clients where, you know, the husband hates the sound machine and just will not let it in there, whatever. So certainly, that can be a problem. The other problem, if you are trying to really isolate it, because you are your partner might be a big snore. And the problem with that, because people will, I've gotten used to it, it's not a big deal. But then when you look at some of their sleep stats, you'll see all these micro wakeups, as they are dealing with this noise, very kind of alarming. And as human beings were meant to kind of be on alert to some degree. And so we're hearing this sudden sharp noise, then often we wake up to some element of that, even if we don't quite remember it the next day. So then being able to have that option I do like particularly just right in there. So presumably, it would be louder than just even a sound machine in the space because it would be isolated to you so might help mitigate some of the problems there. Of course, we always want to address if someone is snoring, hopefully, you know, get at the source of that, but ask about that. But I do like that. And then also for new parents, you know, they're kind of alternating responsibilities, who's kind of on duty, or what have you, and they can't just put in those the blanket sound just automatically they need to, you know, I got, you know, I'm on the duty tonight or whatever. So then they can alternate that. And then one person could have the sound protection or basking in that way. So I could see already a lot of different ways that that could help. And then do you envision that as something that people wear every single night? Like, is this something that you wear every night?
Unknown Speaker 17:21
Yeah, totally. So it's at that level of comfort now, where you just don't know, certainly, it becomes a really nice habit, you know, I kind of since going to my sleep, was trying to do a little bit of wine downtime before bed, that's one of the things that I felt, I found personally was was most kind of effective in helping me and, you know, I have various books that I tend to listen to that just just kind of wind me down. So you know, I always kind of do that, and that just tend to, to not often pass out. And so I've Yeah, regular user and deeply a product for people that you know, may not have any issues with sleep, but just, you know, want to kind of keep an eye on their sleep, you know, keep it keep it healthy, keep it going forward. And also just, you know, want to kind of enjoy the experience of, of drifting off. And, you know, we've got this really cool 40 log cabin experience.
Unknown Speaker 18:18
Yeah, I was gonna ask you about the four D.
Unknown Speaker 18:19
Yeah, so So 40, basically, is binaural sound. So what that means is that your mind can process sounds, because it can detect where, where audio is coming from. And what we can do with binaural sound is make it much more immersive. So if you're in that log cabin, you know, the doors over there, you can hear that door over there, you know, with the wind outside, and you can hear the wind or the rain there. And it just makes it much more spatial. And it gives them another dimension of just finding yourself in there. And that's one of the the features of the new app is that each person gets to create their own cocoon. So this is this space, you know that this this audio space where you can kind of just just go to each night. And it can be this kind of log cabin in the store, which is my personal favorite, or you know, it's a kind of tropical beach or you know, it's an underwater place. And he's bought a life for this for the sound. And from there, listen to audiobooks, you can listen to your podcasts or whatever. And it just makes that experience that much more compelling and enjoyable. We find
Unknown Speaker 19:35
really interesting. Okay, so assuming people are looking for solutions for sound, this could certainly be one of those. And then I'm wondering if you could share a bit more about what the app looks like and how that part can really help the get the whole package to help people with their sleep.
Unknown Speaker 19:53
Yeah, so yeah, basically, it's kind of a bit of a kind of digital sleep coach in there. One of the things that we have learned from our customers is that people don't like kind of getting kind of advice put on them to prescriptively. And you know, at the end of the day, it's not the best time to take on lots of information. So what we've really sought to do with our sleep kind of coach technology is just break things down into much more bite sized kind of more kind of smaller chunks that the mind can kind of take on. So we have the sleep coach, and the sleep coach helps in a number of ways. So first off, it'll analyze your data and look for, for certain things, and not present that data. But one of the things that we've taken great care in doing is not, you know, we've seen a lot of studies on the negative impacts of data and tracking on on sleep. So we've really kind of works a lot with our sleep scientists on how we can use that data to drive positive changes and positive mindsets. You know, the data you can dig in, and you can get your kind of typical data if you want that. But the kind of core data is presented in a way to drive habits with little tips and coaching points based on you and how you're sleeping. So you know, maybe you have a problem with your sleep scheduling, and it's really erratic, and, you know, look at how to help you that. And then there's little kind of segments of coaching. So this is kind of audio coaching, that is kind of specific to you that that you can engage with as well. But the app also has a library of just relaxation exercises, soundscapes and has various integrations with you know, Shopify, so not Shopify, Spotify, yes. Yes.
Unknown Speaker 21:48
To the green green logo,
Unknown Speaker 21:51
Yes, I do. I have many clients that would love to be shopping mid, you know, run three in the morning. Yes, that's a big problem we're working on with a lot of them. Yep.
Unknown Speaker 22:00
And basically, they're, you know, people's favorite apps, you know, people often find that they've got this one thing that they just love to see, too. And, you know, we want to enable that rather than kind of force you to do our particular thing, you know, we've got lots of great content on there, if you are on a bit of a discovery journey, but also, you know, if you found your, your thing that, you know, you just love doing that thing, or listening to that thing. It's all designed to integrate and actually enhance that, that experience by adding on that little bit of coaching, maybe at the start, and then having it all adjust to you and adapt to you and then bookmark at the right place.
Unknown Speaker 22:39
Really interesting. You're just sort of making me think of the first model, I remember there was an element that it was kind of a sense, if you had fallen asleep. Does this one do sort of or have that same ability there? Okay,
Unknown Speaker 22:52
yeah. So, yeah, we, we look at your heart rate, heart rate, variability, and motion, and we can analyze that data. And that gives us a bit of an indication of how you're relaxing, the moment that you fall asleep, and also the kind of sleep through the night. That's the data that we use, and we also collect data, kind of our question and answer so you can kind of enhance the system, as you see. So you know, if you can't be able to answer any questions, you have to answer your questions. But if you really want to kind of get the most from it, you can put inputs about you know, your mood when he wake up kind of issues that you had, and he can also edit your your sleep as well. So if if you know that something happens, but you know that the system maybe didn't, didn't say that thing happened, this, you know, we're not always 100% accurate.
Unknown Speaker 23:41
Sure, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 23:42
and enhance the accuracy of it all as well.
Unknown Speaker 23:45
That's awesome. So okay, so it provides for this kind of dashboard of both your sleep results and you can kind of log to if you want to do that don't you don't feel like you have to but if you want to to start kind of pattern spotting or noticing Oh, okay, that had issues sleeping again, and it was related to x y&z the dog that whatever, you can log, all those sorts of things in there, kind of begin to really peel back the layers of what's happening with your sleep and then make improvements in the future with that. That's great. And so as far as the app then there's that sleep coaching that people are kind of going through and guiding them through those essentials of CBT AI to help you know, but bite size very much it sounds it makes me think of like compounding effect of even if you just get like a little bit each day imagine what could happen and like a year's time or what have you. Very, very cool. Okay, so then as far as information for people if you know kind of piques the interest for them around this, of checking this out, at the very least, you know, because I think it it's a very that's why we're excited to get you on here now because it's timely at the moment, you know, getting on to the Kickstarter, but if you could give us kind of directions on what it's set up for Right now and then even in the future after Kickstarter where people can go to learn more about this.
Unknown Speaker 25:05
Yeah. So if you go to night bugs.co, that'll take you to the Kickstarter page, and then it'll in time, that'll take you to the purchase page. So right now, if you bought on Kickstarter, you get just under 50% off. So $149 on Kickstarter now. And that has a free kind of lifetime subscription to the app. So you know, to its very good deal. Now, we've kind of we've benefited a lot from our Kickstarter in the past. So we would like to make sure that people get great value there. And yeah, that has a little video explains it in a much more concise way than I do. And then you have a dig into some of the features. And we've got various blocks on there, you can kind of dig into the journey that we took kind of developing this, you can see kind of some of the customers that they're using already and and hear from them and, you know, also speak, see videos, speak with our sleep scientists on, you know, the detail on kind of what's going on in there as well.
Unknown Speaker 26:04
Wow, very, very cool. Okay, so yeah, I definitely encourage people to check this out, you know, just naturally, I'm in a bit of a echo chamber of just strange things coming through my email with all kinds of sleep, you know, information, right. And it was just great to see all this coming through of the excitement around the night buds and people sharing Oh, my god, they're doing so great. So, you know, definitely check out, take a look at the videos, see if that could be something that could work for you. Because again, if we're looking at you know, we're standing in this approach that sleep is a skill and we talk about a lot of different things we often focusing on, you know, light and temperature and thoughts and all of that. But sound is a really big foundational element and the the training that's going to be coming along with this with the app too. So I do think it's an exciting time to take a look at that. And I so appreciate you coming on the show in the midst of all the excitement to share more. So thank you so much for your time.
Unknown Speaker 27:01
Oh, thank you for having me, guys. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 27:03
Awesome. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 27:06
You've been listening to the sleep is a skill podcast, the number one podcast for people who want to take their sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday I send out something that I call Molly's Monday obsessions containing everything that I'm obsessing over in the world of sleep so head on over to sleep as a skill calm to sign up.