In the city that never sleeps, one company is betting people will pay thousands of dollars to spend the night in the same type of bed used by Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and NBA player Jimmy Butler.
Eight Sleep is best known for making mattresses, having crowdfunded its first project on Indiegogo in 2014, but the brand describes itself more broadly as a “sleep fitness” company.
“Lack of sleep is the new smoking,” CEO and co-founder Matteo Franceschetti told the Post about the cultural obsession with getting a good night’s rest.
“I think of sleep like exercise,” Franceschetti added. “You have to be consistent – go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time – and you’ll see results. That’s what inspired me to come up with the concept of sleep fitness.”
Franceschetti believes that its recently launched mattress topper, the Pod 4 Ultra, can help with mattress expansion. The topper uses body-scanning sensors to detect if you’re too cold or hot, then uses hydro-powered heat technology to change the temperature to enhance your sleep cycle. You can also set an alarm so the bed gently vibrates to wake you.
It will detect if you are snoring and the pod cover will lift up to change your sleeping position and ideally stop you from chopping logs.
The topper also collects data on your resting heart rate and how deep your sleep is each night, then offers tips via the app, like your ideal bedtime.
You can change the position and temperature manually using the app or by simply tapping the side of the bed.
The Pod 4 Ultra isn’t cheap at $4,249, but Franceschetti believes the product’s flexibility — you can add it on top of your existing mattress rather than buying a new one — will help bring “sleep fitness” to an entirely new demographic.
The company also makes its own temperature-regulating mattresses that retail for $1,500 to $2,000, but Franceschetti said it wants to be known as more than just a “foam company.”
Franceschetti, his wife Alexandra Zatarain, and two other co-founders decided to base their headquarters in New York City, specifically in the Flatiron District, because Franceschetti says the best design and engineering talent is found there.
New York is an international hub, so it made sense to choose there.
“For global companies, this is one of the best locations to easily meet with team members,” he adds, “and from here it’s easy to travel to our offices in Boston or San Francisco, or even to China or Europe.”
The Pod 4 Ultra arrives at the height of the biohacking craze, in which the rich and powerful from Silicon Valley to Wall Street are embracing methods to optimize every element of their lives, including rest.
“Based on your biometric information, we will act on your behalf and bring you convenience. You don’t have to do anything. Just go to sleep, just like you have for the last X number of years, and you’ll wake up more refreshed,” Franceschetti said.
“Many people in the technology industry who are serious about longevity, health, fitness and peak performance know that getting eight hours of sleep optimizes brain performance,” Franceschetti added.
He believes Jeff Bezos’ key to success is Make 3 good decisions a day“Your brain needs eight hours of sleep to perform at its best,” Franceschetti says, “and we already know that adjusting your temperature can help you get into deeper sleep faster. … So in a few years, you might be able to get more rest by sleeping just six hours.”
While many of the hyped-up new mattress companies like Casper have seen demand surge and then decline over the past few years, Eight Sleep is confident that its innovation and advancements in wellness technology will remain relevant going forward.
“The overall strategy will be a portfolio strategy. There will be some cheaper products, there will be some more expensive products,” he said, likening it to Tesla having a wide price range.
Among the sleep-improvement devices Eight Sleep is developing is a mattress that scans the user’s body every night to detect health conditions such as heart disease.
This story is part of “NYNext,” a new editorial series showcasing innovations and those leading the way across industries in New York City.
Franceschetti is already testing his next products: blackout curtains and a temperature-regulated hyperbaric oxygen tank.
