The quiet months at Lumora

For months I've said almost nothing publicly about Lumora. That was deliberate. Ben and I decided to do the quiet part first. Now there's enough real progress that staying quiet started to feel like hiding.

Here's what those months actually looked like. It started with an idea about sleep, and the first job was finding out whether anyone besides us cared. So we ran customer discovery interviews and listened to people describe how they sleep and what they'd already tried to fix it. Then came prototypes. Then conversations with manufacturers, which move at whatever speed the manufacturer decides they move at. None of it was glamorous and most of it was slow. I'm told slow is normal. It still didn't feel great.

The product combines light, sound, and temperature into one sleep experience. The goal is simple: help people sleep better and wake up naturally. Each of those three things affects sleep on its own. We want them working together in a single place, instead of leaving you to duct-tape something out of separate gadgets on your nightstand.

Right now the first prototype is in transit to my front door. I've refreshed the tracking page enough times that the carrier probably thinks I'm a bot. Months of interviews and calls are about to turn into an object I can actually hold, and I don't think any of it will feel real until the box does.

My co-founder Ben has been in it with me the whole way. A while back we pitched Lumora at Geekdom's competition and won, which came with $1,000 and a pitch video that's passed 40,000 views. The money was useful. Watching the view count climb was mostly just strange (in a good way).

I still can't share everything publicly yet. What I can point you to is the waitlist at uselumora.co. People on it see the product before anyone else and lock in founding pricing. The prototype box should be here soon. When I open it, that's the next post.