“I’ll sleep once I’m lifeless” is out. “I sleep eight to 9 hours an evening” is in.
Only a few years in the past, hustle tradition mandated that work ought to take priority over relaxation, and in the event you have been spending one-third of your life asleep, that was wasted time. CEOs and entrepreneurs bragged about getting simply 4 hours an evening in mattress, and that perspective filtered all the way down to anybody aspiring to success. To cite Nas, the bard of enterprise capitalists: “I by no means sleep, ’trigger sleep is the cousin of dying.”
A number of elements have led to a more healthy shift in perspective about sleep—and with it, the rise of the Eight Sleep Pod Pro. (The firm doesn’t name it a mattress, however this isn’t a nut milk sort of factor the place some conventional commerce group is making an attempt to cease them or one thing. It’s a mattress.) The iPhone shortly gave rise to the quantified-self motion, as apps and sensor-based equipment gave folks eager about managing their very own well being some fundamental instruments to take action. These physique hackers began with train—bear in mind when counting steps was all the rage?—after which moved on to optimizing their meals consumption, popularizing the paleo and keto diets in addition to intermittent fasting (which, of course, you tracked through an app).
After you’ve tuned up your health and your food regimen, there’s actually just one facet of life left to tweak and maximize: sleep. Mix that with COVID-19, which led even the most hardcore rise-and-grind sorts to reassess their existence and focus extra on their total well being. Geoffrey Woo, cofounder and government chairman of HVMN, a vitamin startup, acquired his Eight Pod in 2020. “I used to be monitoring all these things anyway,” he says, referring to such metrics as resting coronary heart fee and heart-rate variability that Eight measures. “It could be useful to forestall me from dying in a world pandemic.”
The sleep tech pattern began in earnest in 2015 when the first era of the Whoop exercise band was launched, and the Oura ring and the Eight Sleep Tracker and Smart Bed Cover had profitable crowdfunding campaigns. Every of these merchandise has its advantages and its adherents, however Eight Sleep and its military of tech influencers are main the manner. Its absolutely optimized mattress has impressed greater than two dozen tech-founder clients to spend money on the firm, which has raised over $150 million. A queen begins at $2,995, although I’m advised the firm’s hottest product is its queen-sized Pod Pro cowl, which retails for $1,795.
Why is Eight the one? I spoke to 4 of these 24-plus techies to get the reply.
Table of Contents
Temperature management is a really cool characteristic
“It’s the cooling that drew me in,” admits Patrick O’Shaughnessy, companion at the VC agency Positive Sum, CEO of O’Shaughnessy Asset Management, and host of the widespread Invest Like The Best podcast. Once I ask Anthony Pompliano, the investor and digital media creator, what his favourite characteristic is, he doesn’t hesitate. “The temperature management, for certain . . . the skill to make it chilly.” The manner that the Eight Pod works is every mattress has two zones—so companions can personalize their expertise—and water circulates by way of a grid system to control temperature. Customers can set it anyplace between 55 and 110 levels. (The Pod simplifies it to a -10 to +10 scale, which interprets to that temperature vary. Any temperatures cited listed below are tough equivalents primarily based on the firm’s scale.)
O’Shaughnessy, who’s been utilizing the Eight Pod for a few yr and a half, dozes off at a brisk 65 levels. “I like sleeping in an iceberg apparently,” he says with amusing, noting that the temperature rises barely in the night time to about 70. He estimates that he was sleeping about seven to seven and a half hours an evening earlier than getting the Eight Pod and now sleeps about eight to eight and a half.
It is aware of while you’re sleeping, it is aware of while you’re awake
Sensors in the mattress measure resting coronary heart fee, coronary heart fee variability, and the time spent in sleep phases (mild, REM, deep). Customers can analyze their knowledge. “My coronary heart fee, my deep sleep bought a lot better over time,” says Pompliano, who resolved going into 2020 to concentrate on more healthy residing, setting a objective of eight hours of sleep an evening. He stop consuming, managed the mild and sound in his bed room, however quickly the Eight grew to become “a no brainer,” saying that he might see the “quantifiable and qualitative” distinction. He begins the night time at about 70 levels, then has the temperature drop to about 67 earlier than rising to 75 when he wakes—and his sleep now additionally clocks in between eight and eight and a half hours an evening.
Advertisements
The Eight Pod additionally affords customers the alternative to view their knowledge over time to evaluate how they’re doing. “I can look again at instances in my life when work was disturbing, and my resting coronary heart fee was considerably greater,” says Ankur Nagpal, founder of the on-line course platform Teachable who now invests through his VC agency Vibe Capital. He begins the night time round 70 or 71 levels, waking up with the mattress at 79—and he, too, now averages eight hours an evening. “No gadget can repair the root causes of stress, however it places up a mirror to your habits and way of life and says, ‘You want to take care of this factor.’”
Recreation on
Eight Sleep makes use of particular person knowledge to calculate a nightly “Sleep Health” rating between 1 and 100. “Having some quantitative suggestions, some quantity that claims you probably did a greater job in the present day, is useful,” says Woo. “It’s useful to gamify.” The longtime biohacker was inquisitive about Eight after having tried opponents and performed with Oura and Whoop. He will get into an 84-degree mattress, which dips all the way down to 78 in deep sleep after which rising to 87 levels at wake-up time. “I’m a worse human with no sleep,” Woo admits, however he now will get eight to 9 hours an evening.
Like everybody else, Woo can’t assist however expose these particulars. As Pompliano says, “You could have an excellent night time’s sleep, it’s a must to inform everybody. If in case you have a foul night time, it’s a must to inform everybody. Huge phrase of mouth.” It’s that impossible to resist component of the Eight expertise—customers are naturally motivated to share their sleep tales with others—that appears to have been a big driver in these tech founders desirous to be Eight buyers and never simply clients.
Once I ask “Pomp,” as he’s identified, how he manages prioritizing sleep together with his skilled tasks overlaying Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, which commerce 24/7, he says that our always-on atmosphere means, “You want extra restoration. Higher sleep is half of health.” The stress of hyperconnected residing can degrade sleep—even in the event you’re not a startup founder, even in the event you’re not shopping for the dip in a Bitcoin selloff. Woo laments the tradeoff we make for residing in “tremendous dense, loud cities.” However, he provides, this mattress takes “the greatest of modernity to alleviate the worst components.”
