31. Kokoon Technology

Founders: Tim Antos and Richard Hall
Founded: October 2013 (launched in May 2015)
Website: www.kokoon.io

Struggling with sleep due to impending deadlines and “general life stresses”, Tim Antos was referred to a sleep clinic and discovered the calming power of audio. It was the miracle cure he’d been looking for but he found that achieving a sleep-inducement state with normal headphones wasn’t possible as they were “bulky, uncomfortable and would easily dislodge”.

Alongside fellow Young Gun Richard Hall, Antos set about creating a solution and started Startups 100-listed Kokoon Technology – thought to be the world’s first sleep-sensing headphones.

The noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones mould to a user’s head and use brainwave technology to monitor the user’s sleep and analyse their sleep pattern. Paired with a smartphone app, this enables the headphones to find the lightest point in your sleep cycle to wake you and gives you a nightly sleep score.

The Startups Awards-nominee raised just under $2m in two months on Kickstarter and saw 10,000 orders placed its headphones.

With retail sales at £299 a pair, Antos and Hall have the beginnings of a potentially lucrative business especially when you factor in additional revenue generated through the premium app subscription service where users can unlock unlimited high-quality audio content for £9.99 a month.

2017 is the year of sleep – just take a look at the businesses ranked in the first and fifth spots of this index – and Kokoon is another great business which is driving growth by helping consumers to have a better night’s sleep; offering more advanced features and superior headphones than its rivals.