Though debate continues as to whether the average person needs eight glasses of water per day, many of us still forget to stay hydrated when we’re busy.
Hidrate co-founder and recent University of Minnesota graduate Nadya Nguyen found out the hard way.
On the bus home from a 10-hour volunteer shift at
TEDxMinneapolis, Nguyen felt faint and disoriented. Her head was pounding. With effort, she recounted the events of her jam-packed day and realized that she hadn’t taken a single sip of water since the morning. She simply hadn’t had the time, to say nothing of the mental bandwidth necessary, to stop what she was doing and take a drink.
Then it hit her: In the age of cloud-connected smartphones and tiny, powerful sensors, she didn’t
need to remember to drink water. She could simply build an app that connected to a special water bottle that would remind her to hydrate. Along with three other recent U of M grads, she built out the app and a prototype water bottle—called Hidrate—during least year’s
Twin Cities Startup Weekend.
“It’s so easy to forget to take care of yourself when life gets busy,” says Nguyen. “I wanted to create something that would make life better for people in this small but important way.”
The idea is breathtakingly simple: Users download the app for free on their phones and enter personal parameters (weight and other factors), location (temperature, relative humidity and altitude can affect water needs), and daily activity level, editing over time as this information changes. Hidrate uses this data to create a personal “daily water goal,” expressed in both ounces and water bottle equivalents. The app syncs with a 24-ounce, BPA-free, dishwasher-safe water bottle that can sense its own fill level and updates your total daily intake whenever you take a sip. If you go too long without drinking, a reminder message appears on your phone; if you really fall behind, the bottle glows gently until your fluid intake gets back on pace.
Hidrate isn’t the first smart water bottle to hit the market. But the talented, driven team enjoys the benefits of a heavily discounted shared workspace at
Startup Venture Loft in the North Loop — a huge help for any startup operating on a shoestring budget.
The
company’s Kickstarter campaign, launched June 1, had a seemingly ambitious goal: $35,000. Thanks to tremendous support from what Nguyen calls “a dedicated group of early adopters” and
a high-visibility mention in widely read tech publication TechCrunch, the campaign blew through that ceiling in a couple days, notching nearly $200,000 from more than 2,500 individual donors in its first week. Everyone who donates $39 or more gets a personal bottle, with delivery expected in December 2015 or January 2016.
The Kickstarter campaign’s proceeds will mostly cover costs for the initial bottle-manufacturing round, which is likely to be larger than expected given the campaign’s success. Nguyen and the team are still working out a retail price for the bottle, but “it’ll probably be in the $39 to $45 range,” she says.
For now, interested buyers can reserve a bottle — in the color of their choosing — on Hidrate’s website. Longer-term, Nguyen expects to sell through gyms, sporting goods stores and other retailers. The team is already courting potential partners, though nothing’s ready to announce.
“We’re willing to work with any gym, specialty store or retailer that caters to our customer base,” says Nguyen. “We’ve been blown away by early demand for the product and can’t wait for the next phase of our growth.”
Hidrate Jobs i
n Minneapolis
- iOS Mobile Developer
- Android Mobile Developer