10 Years of Corporate Success at Sleep Cycle: How we did it

GOTHENBURG, Sweden – Jul. 20, 2019 – As part of Sleep Cycle 10 year anniversary, Sleep Cycle CEO Carl Johan Hederoth shares his thoughts on the success over the years.

Success in the app business takes effort. In the ten years since Sleep Cycle’s founding, we’ve been on a constant growth path – but, in addition to great success and pride in our longstanding position as one of the top apps in health and fitness, we’ve learned a few things. We’re still having a great time, and, as entrepreneurs, we thought it would be useful to share some principles that have helped us grow each year.
 

Relentlessly focusing on product

A key to our success is an intense focus on user needs. People want and need better quality sleep, and some 80 percent of people report difficulty sleeping. Our goal is to wake users naturally – and at the right time – in order to make sleep more effective and restful. We want to deliver better sleep. Just focusing on those areas– every day – without switching focus or pivoting, is critical to our success. We seek to remove obstacles for customers who use our product by being close to them and having open conversations about where their product experience might fall short. We maintain a “healthy obsession” with our product, and that focus is why Sleep Cycle has done very little marketing. Our growth is organic because people love Sleep Cycle and the results it delivers. Put simply, it always does what it’s expected to do.
 

Not giving up on technical challenges

Technology product development means that there are occasional roadblocks. When that happens, successful firms attack the problem with thoughtful effort and lots of resources. For example, Sleep Cycle encountered issues with sleep analysis features that rely on handset microphones – specifically, the varying quality of hardware on Android devices, which gave inconsistent results. To keep Sleep Cycle hardware-agnostic, we allocated significant resources – including all of our engineers, for six months – into dealing with this issue. In the end, we solved it and built a better product. Today, whatever phone you use or whatever microphone is in your phone, Sleep Cycle analyzes your sleep in the same way. This gives better results for our customers and, ultimately, for our company.
 

Building the best team and staying committed

Startups begin with a founder and a vision. These are people who are used to doing everything alone. However, that approach doesn’t scale, and hiring the right people is critically important. Not only are there more people to do the work, but there are also more of the right people to generate constructive ideas. In addition, entrepreneurs must stay committed. It takes time to build a company, and there is no such thing as overnight success. Don’t give up too early!
 

Finally, staying sane

Working very long hours and putting a lot of pressure on one’s self can lead to burnout. Maintaining reasonable work hours and separating work and private life can help one to stay sane and build a company and a career for the long term.

Media Contact:

Malin Arbrahamsson

Head of PR & Partnerships 

Sleep Cycle

press@sleepcycle.com 

+46 (0) 739 726 424

About Sleep Cycle

Sleep Cycle is one of the world’s most popular sleep applications and tools for tracking and analyzing sleep habits with more than 2 million active users in more than 150 countries. Using patented sound analysis technology, Sleep Cycle tracks sleep patterns and analyze data about everyday activities and factors affecting sleep quality. The results are presented in easy-to-read graphs and insights. Sleep Cycle offers its users help to fall asleep more easily with a large library of relaxing music, meditations and stories, and wakes its users in the lightest sleep phase, which simulates the feeling of waking up naturally without an alarm clock. Sleep Cycle’s headquarter is located in Gothenburg, Sweden and has 27 employees and the company’s mission is to improve global health through better sleep.