Jason Elliott is the co-founder and President of Perfectly Snug — the sleep solution company behind the popular dual-climate controlled Smart Topper and app. The Smart Topper keeps the user and their partner at an ideal temperature all night, resulting in a deep, restful sleep. The integrated technology senses body temperature and auto-adjusts the amount of cooling or warming to ensure each person stays comfortable. Users can also set preferences and sleep/wake times for each person using the Perfectly Snug App.
How did Perfectly Snug come to be? For years Jason was perpetually tired even though he was in bed nine to ten hours, while his wife was well rested with seven to eight hours. It took him an hour to fall asleep and would toss and turn all night, waking up too hot, too often.
What is Perfectly Snug all about?
Perfectly Snug’s purpose is to help people sleep better. Many people struggle to sleep well because they are too hot or cold, and couples often disagree on the temperature of their bedroom or bedding. In fact, 80% of couples have ongoing disagreements on their sleep environment temperature to the point that 30% have open conflict eroding their relationships.
Temperature has a huge impact on the quality of sleep that you get. The relentless tossing and turning that a hot sleeper experiences fragments their sleep and they often wake completely unrested. The cold sleeper, curled up in a ball trying to stay warm, wakes with muscle tension, and a general haze clouds their mind all day from a lack of good sleep.
I had experienced terrible sleep for many years and it was affecting my mood, productivity, stress levels, desire to exercise, and even my relationships. I was desperate for sleep and I needed a solution to this problem. My business partner, Marty Furse, and I decided to take matters into our own hands when I couldn’t find a suitable solution that existed in the market. That’s when we formed Perfectly Snug and developed the Smart Topper, an innovative device that actively manages the temperature of your bed.
The Smart Topper is a two inch thick layer that you put on top of your mattress. It monitors and keeps you at your ideal temperature all night by sensing your temperature and actively cools with airflow or warms you up. Every feature of the product has been meticulously designed to help you sleep better. I designed the topper to improve my sleep, taking much time and testing many prototypes. I have to say, my wife was a good sport for the many months that I had sensors wired to our bed and a data acquisition system at the bedside tracking our sleep and the performance of various prototypes.
The Smart Topper has independent controls for each side of the bed so you can each set your ideal temperature. We developed a simple phone app that allows you to set your preferences. We also included built-in buttons located beside your pillow that allow you to adjust the temperature setting during the night if needed. This means there is no peripheral equipment attached to the bed that adds clutter to your bedroom. Most importantly, it helps many people with sleep temperature trouble sleep well.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I am an engineer by trade and have worked in various industries for the past 20 years developing products such as hydrogen powered engines, laser optical systems and large scale solar generators. I have experienced small and large companies and have driven development projects from concept to manufacturing on a multinational scale. Opportunities to develop something new always excited me, and in keeping with this, I had always aspired to start a company. I’d think, “What an opportunity it would be to not only develop a product that benefits people but also to develop a team who themselves would benefit from the community that we would build!”
I had been meeting on and off with like-minded would-be entrepreneurs for years but we could never hone in on “the” idea that was worth pursuing. I realized years later that what was lacking wasn’t “the” idea, but actually the effort I was willing to put in to find “the” idea. Life was busy. I had good employment. It was a big risk.
My good friend and now business partner, Marty, kept urging me to take the risk. He had previously started two successful high-tech companies and came with a wealth of experience and skill. About 3 years ago, he gave me a logbook and said, “Let’s do it”. Our kids were getting out of the helpless stages and my time was feeling more available. We started putting in some effort brainstorming and sketching out business plans for some ideas but none really worked for us. One night my family was visiting theirs. While we were putting the kids to bed, I said to Marty, “What I really need is a thermally regulated bed!”. He said, “That’s a great idea!” and we were off, kind of.
Over the next couple of months, I struggled to find time to make any progress into our venture. My job was demanding all my time and energy. We weren’t sure that the product idea would appeal to consumers or that we could even make such a product successfully, even with our extensive product development experience, but we had to take the risk. I quit my job and suspended all spending on non-essentials.
The next few months were dedicated to figuring out how to make a product that would take care of a sleeper’s body temperature and determining if people would actually buy it. Eight months later, we exhibited our first functional prototype to future customers at a local home show. The response was more positive than we expected. Some women suffering from terrible hot flashes were kneeling in our booth hugging the Smart Topper saying “Where have you been all my life?”. At that point, we figured we had a shot.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
- You need to have a team with a wide range of skills. The more you can do yourself the faster you will go and the more likely you will succeed. Ask yourself, “What is core to this company we are starting?” and make sure that your team can cover the core skills. As a founder, you will need to do everything. On any given day, I could be looking for venture funding, sewing products, managing an e-commerce marketing team and fixing a software bug.
- You need the skill of failing fast. You will never know the answers to the problems you face. Pick a direction and run that way, fast. If you fail, that’s ok. Figure out your biggest risks, develop a plan that quickly tests that risk and see if you fail. It’s better to know earlier than find out after investing a lot of time and resources.
- You also need faith. Without being able to trust that you will be ok, win or lose, it is extremely stressful to take risks. Having a good team of stable thinkers around you is key as they will keep you stable. Personally, I do a lot of praying to keep my course steady. You can’t do it on your own.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
At this time, we have been marketing the Smart Topper for less than a year and have been experiencing happy customers and growth to our delight. Our focus over the next season of our company is promotion. People need to hear about us and the Smart Topper, so awareness is our top priority – We want to improve as many people’s lives as possible through sleep! Promotion is a challenge and a balancing act between taking time for organic growth and going faster by marketing spend.
How have the pandemic and Lockdown affected you or your new business?
Developing a product during the lockdown wasn’t so bad as a small team. Most of the work could be done remotely anyway. Marketing and launching sales during a time when we couldn’t have customers touch and experience the product wasn’t good for us. We had always planned on selling direct to customers from our website but figured we needed some early physical presence in malls and various shows to spearhead the promotion of our product. Because of the pandemic, we couldn’t do this so we focused on our online presence and media exposure, which has worked but likely at a slower pace. You have to adapt to your environment.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
We’ve developed a better product than anything available on the market to solve sleep environment temperature issues. Although there are other products that advertise to ease sleep temperature issues, like cooling foams, we’ve created a product that actually does the job. I sleep better and many others do too.
A good rule of thumb for starting a business is to set your goals on being the best at what you do. Go faster, develop best-in-class products and hire smarter people.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
- One of our rules was to develop a product that people are already looking for and buying. This takes a huge amount of risk out of a startup. We consciously violated this rule and it has made it more difficult for us. It takes longer to educate customers, costs more to reach customers, and ultimately impacts growth rates. We often reflect on this when related challenges come, but in this case we think the benefit to customers and us is worth it.
- We also violated our rule for possessing all core skills within the founding team. For us, e-commerce was core to our success. We had marketing experience but always for B2B technical products. We lacked e-commerce experience and had to compensate with some excellent talent. This worked well but we would have gone faster and made less mistakes if this skill was within our founding team. We spent a lot of time getting up to speed.
- We underestimated the time impact of regulatory approvals. I had worked on highly regulated technical product developments in the past and was always frustrated by this part of the world. We thought our product was simple enough to complete the required 3rd party regulatory approvals quickly, however, I learned that as a startup, other people are not so interested in your time objectives and you don’t have a lot of financial clout to make them interested. The regulatory process has limited options to shop around so you are at their mercy. It didn’t feel good. The key there was to plan in some contingency funds and time as you will likely need some when things go wrong.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Starting a company is an emotional roller coaster. Sometimes you’re sure that you are doing the right thing and other times it is not so clear. For me, it is often tied to feedback. On a day where sales are good and a customer calls to thank us for helping them have a better life, it is easy to feel good about what we’re doing. On a day where the sales are slim and some equipment breaks and we scrap some material, it feels much different. This is when I lean on our team for stability in our direction. It’s good to set your perspective over the longer term and often this comes from reflective discussion with wise people by your side.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
- Shopify – We investigated many e-commerce platforms and have determined that Shopify is the best fit for a company like ours. They support many 3rd party add-ons that provide almost everything a smallish company needs. There are certainly frustrations and limitations with Shopify but overall it supports our need to move quickly.
- PageFly – One of the frustrations we have with Shopify is the lack of creative website flexibility. We have found that PageFly is an excellent fix for this issue. It allows us to rapidly and flexibly develop web content.
- G Suite – This is likely obvious, but I’m amazed at how effective and easy G Suite is for business. We use it for most of our core computing needs. It certainly isn’t as feature rich as other options but it is very functional for a startup.
What’s a productivity tip you swear by?
Get good sleep! I realize that this advice seems biased coming from a sleep solutions startup founder, however, I can testify that the quality of sleep I experience has the largest impact on my productivity than any other variable. This is why we started the company! I remember in university being completely undisciplined in getting regular sleep. I would be in a sleepy fog through classes and have to put in more effort later to figure out what I missed. I figured this out and started disciplining myself to go to bed on time. Everything has been a lot easier since!
Most people don’t get enough sleep or get poor quality sleep. Often this is compensated for with coffee, which isn’t healthy. My advice is to get regular, good quality sleep and life will be easier and healthier.
Can you recommend one book, one podcast, and one online course for entrepreneurs?
All of my entrepreneurship learning has come from experience and relationships. I am an odd person who must force myself to read and gravitate to learning by doing. Of course, I reference various random resources when I have specific knowledge needs but there is no single book, podcast, or course I could recommend. I find that people spend too much time learning without doing. Hands-on experience is far more valuable. I think this is a weakness of mine, but it has resulted in a very pragmatic approach to learning and very high personal productivity.
What helps you stay driven and motivated to keep going in your business?
Knowing that what you are doing is good and matters to people enables me to take joy in what we are doing. Working with an attitude of thankfulness and joy is a completely different experience from anxiety and fear. I purposefully consider this on a daily basis and align my attitude by being thankful. I am thankful for my customers, employees, investors, and the opportunities I am blessed to have.
What is your favorite quote?
“Do to others what you would have them do to you.” I think this saying guides all facets of my life very well.
What valuable advice would you give new entrepreneurs starting out?
My advice is to take the risk in starting a company. It is worth it. Just make sure that you do it for the right reasons and with a team that possesses the skill and experience to do it well. There are many things (finances, skills, team, business viability, …) that all need to be in place to succeed. Don’t start into a business without understanding all the pieces you need or you are signing up for stress and failure.
How can readers get in touch with you?
If you struggle with sleep I would love to talk to you about your situation and see if we can help you. There is a contact us form on our website perfectlysnug.com that you can fill out and I’ll respond.
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