“There's this opportunity for well-designed technology to help us feel more in tune with our environments, more connected to our emotions, and more in touch with how our bodies feel on a physical level.”
— Sam Shames (COO & Co-Founder of Embr Labs)
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This podcast interview is close to the heart for us…
Today's guest is Sam Shames, Co-Founder & COO at Embr Labs. Embr Labs pioneered the exciting category of thermal wellness technology, starting from their labs at MIT, to growing a company with customers who absolutely love their product (The Embr Wave).
Sam and the Embr Labs team truly embody the pure, honest spirit of entrepreneurship, and one that is grounded in scientific research & innovation. As co-founder and COO of Embr Labs, Sam shares his humble insights and discoveries in company building. If you want to model and adopt a low-ego stance for growing a category defining technology company— watch this video!
“And for us, that's the fundamental belief that technology can— and when it's at its best— should make our lives better.”
— Sam Shames (COO & Co-Founder of Embr Labs)
Highlights
Temperature— a keyboard to our nervous system?
Empowering people to harness temperature for their well-being.
What do you do when no single co-founder should be CEO?
What’s professional wrestling got to do with entrepreneurship?
CFO— Chief Food Officer?
Transcript
Sam Shames
Well, thanks, Jon. And thanks, Arjun. Pleasure to be here and really appreciate the chance to share what we do at Ember Labs. We call ourselves a thermal wellness technology company. Because at our core is the belief that temperature can be a tool to help people feel better, whether that's physical comfort, or actually dealing with things like stress and emotion, and even medical conditions. So, for the past seven years now, we've been obsessed with that idea, and have developed both technology and products to enable people to harness the power of temperature.
Our first product is Ember Wave, it is an intelligent wristband that heats and cools. And what we've shown is with our patented technology, just by changing the temperature of this spot on your wrist, we can not only help you feel up to five degrees more comfortable, but can also help with things like sleep, stress and anxiety, and even hot flashes.
Jon Low
Wow, absolutely amazing, Sam and I would love to an opportunity to give you an opportunity to share a bit about the backstory to Ember because I'm sure you as an athlete yourself or if we do a bit of exercise, at no stage in our lives, do we think, man, I'm getting sweaty, hot— I wonder if there's a more scientific technology driven approach to cooling down or heating up? So, we'd love an opportunity to share the backstory.
Sam Shames
Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's been. It's been an amazing journey. And it started seven years ago, as I mentioned, the summer of 2013. I was going into my senior year at MIT studying material science and engineering. And I've been doing research in a lab where I met the folks that would be my co-founders, and I pitched them on doing a prototyping contest.
I said, “Hey, we should do this summer contest called mad max. It'd be a great way to just prototype and have something to do over the summer besides our research and, you know, best case scenario, we win the $10,000 grand prize and ride off into the sunset.”
Then during the contest, we came up with the idea from actually being consistently too cold in an over air-conditioned lab in June. Okay, having to put on sweatshirts. And we thought this is ridiculous, you know, this lab feels like a walk in fridge. And yet, it's the middle of June (summer). So, we said, “There's got to be a better way, why can't we heat and cool ourselves directly…”
Not knowing if you know that would work out or if it was a particularly good idea, but we built our first prototype that summer. And what we discovered was that we were blown away by the magnitude of the effect the local sensation of temperature could have on how we felt overall. And you know, looking back now that was our first introduction to actually the idea of temperature as a way to tap into the nervous system.
You know, you alluded to this in your question, Jon, most people when they think about temperature, they're thinking, you know, my core body temperature, right? I'm sweating because my core body temperature is elevated, or, you know, I'm sure rain because it's too low. And it's actually a little more nuanced than that. Which is to say, your core body temperature doesn't really ever change except when you have a fever. And when you're actually feeling too hot or too cold, that's because of skin temperature changes, it's because one part of your skin is hotter or colder. And that's really due to these thermo receptor nerve endings which are the nerve endings on your skin, that sense temperature, and how by changing the basically the temperature at any one of those thermo receptor, thermo receptor nerve ending locations, you can tap into the brain and help change the way you feel overall.
So, without knowing all the science the time experienced that firsthand in 2013 we're blown away you know, had our friends try it had strangers try it and everyone kept coming back to saying wow, this feels really good. Warm and cold sensations.
We ended up winning the contest in October of 2013. And the idea went completely viral. We got media attention from wired and the weather channel. And from those articles, we started to get emails from really thousands of people around the world saying two things. One temperature, the biggest pain point in my life, and two, when can I buy this? And it was in reading those stories, and just being incredibly moved by the issues people were dealing with. And you know, their desire that we have for our technology is a way to help that convinced us to actually start a company.
Jon Low
Wow, amazing. Thank you. So, we love how you and your co-founders come from a primarily scientific driven background. Not to say that your personal life is about just data, right? Because I'm sure you have other interests. But as you grew your company, one of the things I remember you mentioning to us is performing multiple roles within the function of company building. And you develop a learning about, you know, who was best suited to do what.
And one thing that was remarkably touching was you and your co-founders somehow arrived at the conclusion, whether it was by yourself or in collaboration with advisors, that it was best to hire an external CEO. Whereas in the environment Arjun and I work with, it's quite common for the technical founders to find themselves in one of those CEO roles, for better or worse. So, could you share a bit about how you came around with that awareness and how you actually found the right CEO to partner with to build this wonderful vision out?
Sam Shames
Absolutely. And it's a great question and an important inflection point in our company. So I think in many ways, it goes back to if you were to draw the ideal founding team for our company. It probably included zero material scientists, not three, you know, we had no embedded systems expertise, no software expertise, no mechanical engineering. And yet, we were saying we were going to launch a consumer product.
So, what we really had to do early on was rely on contractors and really, you know, in many ways, be project managers. But because all of us were in roles where, you know, we didn't have any formal background, we all felt very comfortable kind of just being honest with ourselves. And with each other around, I'm doing this well, I'm not doing this well. And, you know, recognizing that there is going to be some fluidity. And as it so happened in the first couple years of the company, I was in more of an r&d and engineering role, and another of our co-founders was in more of a business role. And then around 2016, he and I sort of both independently came to the conclusion that we each thought both would do a better job at a different role and that the other person would do a better job at our role. So, it ended up working out really well organically.
You know, I was saying, hey, I think I could do a good job at this business side. And Matt had said, hey, I think I could do a really good job at the, you know, science and r&d, you know, so that was in 2016, which at the time, we were going through the industrial design for Ember 1.0, working towards a Kickstarter was sort of the big milestone. We ended up finishing the Kickstarter in October of 2017. It was a really successful campaign. The goal was to raise $100,000 in sales, we ended up raising about $630,000 in sales. And we, you know, we're filling those units, we are now a revenue generating company.
And, you know, what we sort of realized when we looked around the table is that, you know, in many ways that we reached the end of our vision, as you know, co-founders at the time, we thought, okay, you know, your, your hardware product, you launch your Kickstarter, you sell a bunch, and then you know, three months later Apple calls right, and they buy you for, you know, a ton of money and it was very clear that the phone wasn't going to ring and that.
Moreover, we were really dedicated to continuing to grow the company. But that, you know, in many ways, the challenges we were going to be facing, and this next stage of development as a revenue generating company, or less, you know, technical challenges or scientific challenges, as they were, you know, business challenges.
It's hiring the right people to grow the organization, you know, establishing marketing channels, you know, continuing to find new investors. And, you know, what we'd really seen is that, yes, we could, we could learn these things. But if we found someone who was, you know, much more skilled at it, we could accelerate our growth that much faster. So, after a number of those conversations, it became pretty clear that we at least wanted to test the waters and we felt, you know, comfortable enough saying, look, we're doing well as a team.
We could certainly continue to try to do the three of us trying to guide the strategy and keep dividing out this type of work a CEO would do, but we want to engage an executive recruiter, we want to work with our board and just see what candidates are out there. So, we interviewed two dozen candidates and the way we went about trying to hire this.
As you know, first and foremost, cultural fit was really important. So, a lot of interviews with the co-founders, you know, a lot of time just really trying to dig in with this person and live with the culture we built. And then we did homework exercises. So, we had our each CEO candidate who got to a certain round kind of essentially write up a draft business plan. So, you can really see their working style. We also had them come in and give presentations to the full team.
So, we knew that was really important, you know, having at the time we were maybe eight or nine people. So having this person come in and share, you know, what they would be like as a leader and how they would work with the full team. And through that process. The current CEO, Elizabeth Gazda just came in and was, you know, the absolute star and very quickly, the obvious choice, she connected with us all on a really strong emotional level. She had great business expertise in all the areas we wanted to go and just as a leader on the people side, she's just incredibly talented. So You know, it is a very obvious choice. And we were fortunate that she was as excited about Ember as we were excited about her.
Jon Low
Well, what a fantastic learning journey. Yeah, no surprise that you also embraced more diversity in your choice making as well as females, female CEO and she was the top fit that you needed. And so curious, you mentioned, you know, obviously, there was a rigorous process in assessing values and culture fit. Love you to share a bit more about, you know, what are Embr’s values, and how would you describe Embr’s cultural values, whether it's to the internal people and stakeholders building a company or whether it's, you know, customers, partners, suppliers, would love to give you an opportunity to to articulate that because I think it's pretty important.
Sam Shames
Yeah, absolutely. It's something we thought a lot about from early stages in the company. You know, we read enough Silicon Valley blog posts and books to hear you know, culture is something that you want to be intentional about. That said, it's obviously evolved as the team has grown. But you know, some things have remained really fundamental.
So one of them is, you know, the core belief, Ember actually is an acronym. It stands for environment, mind, body resonance. And for us, that's the fundamental belief that technology can and when it's at its best should make our lives better. It should make us feel better for you know, improve our wellness. And in many ways, we feel like a lot of technology over the last decade has fallen short of that potential.
But there's this opportunity for well designed technology to help us feel more in tune with our environments, more connected to our emotions, more in touch with you know, how our bodies feel on a physical level. And of course, we believe temperature is an important tool. But that's reflected in the company in terms of one just a fundamental belief in wellness.
We were never the type of company that was expecting people to work 80 hour weeks, 100 hour weeks. And, you know, we think about how long we, the founding team have been on this journey, we would have been burnt out years ago if we were trying to consistently burn the candle on both ends. So, you know, that's definitely an important part.
Second, I think respect. You know, the reason my co-founders and I have been able to maintain our relationship is because of how much respect we have for each other, and we've built that into the organization and also customer facing right.
One of the things we pride ourselves on is our customer service. It's something that we invest a lot of resources in. And you know, we want to be the company that people are saying, “Wow, this is the experience that changed the way I think about customer service.”
And, you know, we're proud that if a customer who's bought once and wants to return as a question or an investor who has invested millions of dollars in the company is the question, we're going to send them both to the same place because we really trust our customer service agents. So means respect is another important part.
A third value that's really become essential for us is the idea of owning the game. So, you know, the idea that as a startup, right, there's all these things you can't control. You know, there's all these issues where you have to apply creative problem solving, but at the end of the day, it's, you know, it's less about following the rules, and it is saying, look, we're gonna own the game, and we're gonna find a way to get that done. So, I think those are a few that are worth emphasizing.
Arjun Dev Arora
Nicely articulated. Thanks for sharing and being transparent. I'm just really a fan of how you've explicated those values and loved the phrase owning the game. I think that's a really powerful way to, you know, embody the realities of the startup world.
Jon Low
I obviously met you through a common connection, Mike Edelhart (giving him a plug here on this podcast). And you know, one of the things that really drew us to have you share what you've been sharing on this podcast is, I think through you and the team. Even without knowing you, we definitely felt like we could feel like a pure and the pure and honest spirit of entrepreneurism coming through. And, and we think that that's something that is a healthy reminder for anyone in the ecosystem doing innovation, you know, rather than, you know, looking at formulas about what startups and success should look like, you guys all came together from very core roots and grew from there.
So, very glad that you shared what you have shared in the podcast today. But let's switch gears a bit. You know, let's dive more into a bit about Sam Shames. Yeah. So you went to MIT. So you were in material science and engineering. But one thing that not many people might know is that you are on the wrestling team as well. So, what are some of the kind of external to the agreements business, what are some of the activities you do outside that you think, you know, help shape and mold you as a person or what you bring to the table into the team Ember, and these like, lesser known facts?
Sam Shames
That's a great question. So, you know, wrestling is certainly one. You know, I wrestled in high school and college and then I coached for the first three years after college and you know, now still involved with the team on a more peripheral rep level. And it's something that just I really love and speaks to my personality in terms of the inner challenges of the sport, the way it is really just the technique aspect, the one on one nature.
You know, I find this really interesting parallels to wrestling and entrepreneurship, because if you ask people who wrestled they'll say it's the hardest thing they've ever done. And if you ask people who started a company, they'll also say it's the hardest thing you've ever done. So that was definitely something that's been a really big part of my life.
I think the other areas that I'm passionate about that I bring into to work really passionate about cooking and food. You know, as I mentioned, my family didn't get cable until we were in middle school, but even then my mom blocked all the cable channels she was worried about, you know, MTV corrupting her children's souls.
So, I grew up watching Food Network and ESPN. So food and sports are some of the things I love a lot and everyone in Embr knows I'm constantly talking about food and one of my unofficial titles as our Chief Food Officer (CFO). So I make sure we are well fed at all company parties and events.
And I think you know, the other area that I feel like has really helped me at work growing up was very interested in in theater and at MIT was a campus tour guide because I really valued public speaking. It is something I really enjoy. I like giving talks I like you know, feeling like get to share what I've learned with other people. And so I feel like that, you know, interest and expertise has really helped in terms of communication, whether that's to investors to, you know, people at trade shows or conferences or just because on podcasts like this are even more even more general audience.
Jon Low
Well, thanks for sharing a bit about your personal passions with us. And you know, just because we are out of time, I just want to give you an opportunity to share a bit about, you know, Embr began with this. That's right. I'm cooling off, because this podcast is hot. And but, you know, this is why you started. What are some exciting developments you have in store for everyone in the future with respecting confidentiality? Just what you can share? Because Embr, obviously, the brand of what you stand for symbolises much more than a product line.
Sam Shames
Yeah, really good question. And you know, we're incredibly excited about the future. We feel like our positioning and you know, the category of wellness and wellness technology is really something that's gaining more and more awareness and that, you know, we honestly believe that our technology can help millions if not 10s, or hundreds of millions of people around the world.
You know the things our customers use it for today, you know, hot flashes, sleep, stress and anxiety, even more medical conditions dealing with symptoms from MS, those are problems that are just huge in terms of scale. So, that's ultimately our Northstar is trying to help customers and what that means in terms of the work we're doing when the short and medium term new software features so if you look back at the, you know, hardware we released in 2017, is the exact same as what we're selling today.
But the product experience couldn't be more different because of what we've been able to do on the software side, we released what we call waveforms, which are specific temperature profiles for specific use cases. And this year, we've released some ones for sleep, some ones for hot flashes, and that'll be an area of continued development.
We're really excited about other software features. We have things like goal setting that we can do to really help people understand how they're benefiting from using the product. We have a number of clinical validation, or different clinical studies going on. And that's an area we're excited about. Because we hear every day from customers who are saying this change changed my life. And being able to get you know, peer reviewed scientific data is going to help more people who are skeptical, get over that bar and also help people us figure out what are the best ways to, you know, package the technology so that people benefit. And then you know, in the longer term, we're definitely working on new technology and new devices. So don't want to say too much about that. But we're really excited about the future of the ways in which we can deliver, you know, therapeutic temperature sensations to people.
Jon Low
Oh, exciting times. We're very excited for Embr’s future. And I think that's a good place to leave it. But are there any final remarks or words you'd like to share with the audience and the viewers?
Sam Shames
The call to action for the viewers is just to maybe bring a little more mindfulness to your interaction. with temperature in daily life, notice, for example, are you turning up the dial in the shower after a couple of minutes in the morning? And is that because the sensation of temperature feels less strong or is that because, you know, the absolute temperature as measured by a thermometer is not as hot.
Or the other advice I often give is as a really great thing in the thermal science literature called the diving response, which is basically how you can put ice cubes sort of right under your eyes or dunk your head in water, and in doing so basically help reset your nervous system and really actually clear your head emotionally.
So, there's a great blog post I wrote about it called why I dunk my head in freezing water during work and would encourage people especially in the COVID world with a lot of external stresses to consider trying a diving response next time you're maybe feeling a little more overwhelmed.