June 17, 2015 at 15:3723-year-old startup raised $ 40 million in round with Asia's largest investment fund Temasek
They invested $ 40 million in a sleep monitoring device as part of the last round of financing. The device developer, Hello, received a valuation of $ 250 million. The round led the Singapore-based Temasek Foundation . Last year, the company raised $ 2.4 million on Kickstarter .
Hello has several competitors in the market of intelligent systems for tracking the physical condition of a person. Among them is a Fitbit fitness bracelet , for example. Hello consists of a Sleep Pill sensor (mounted on a cushion) and a Sense analyzer. It monitors the sleeping state and the characteristics of the room - lighting, temperature, noise level. Hello founder is James Proud, 23, a native of London.
He independently mastered programming at the age of 9 years. As a teenager, James created a service for finding live performances by various Giglocator musicians . At 19, he went to live in San Francisco and went into business. He was assisted in this by venture capitalist Peter Thiel . Education Proud never received.
In 2012, the Giglocator was sold for a million dollars. The money received was used to launch the Hello project.
In 2014, famous figures in Silicon Valley invested in the company, such as former PayPal president David Marcus , now the head of the Facebook division , Hugo Barra , who manages the international operations of the Chinese companyXiaomi , and Shaquille Khan , an entrepreneur and consultant working with Spotify and Horizons Ventures Investment Fund . The total investment amounted to $ 10.5 million.
Consumer electronics production requires a lot more investment than software development. Therefore, cooperation with large investors and their interest in this area largely determines the success of the project.
The fund Temasek said that they have an interest in high-tech start-ups, pass "Vedomosti". So, Hello can count on his further assistance.
Hello has several competitors in the market of intelligent systems for tracking the physical condition of a person. Among them is a Fitbit fitness bracelet , for example. Hello consists of a Sleep Pill sensor (mounted on a cushion) and a Sense analyzer. It monitors the sleeping state and the characteristics of the room - lighting, temperature, noise level. Hello founder is James Proud, 23, a native of London.
He independently mastered programming at the age of 9 years. As a teenager, James created a service for finding live performances by various Giglocator musicians . At 19, he went to live in San Francisco and went into business. He was assisted in this by venture capitalist Peter Thiel . Education Proud never received.
In 2012, the Giglocator was sold for a million dollars. The money received was used to launch the Hello project.
In 2014, famous figures in Silicon Valley invested in the company, such as former PayPal president David Marcus , now the head of the Facebook division , Hugo Barra , who manages the international operations of the Chinese companyXiaomi , and Shaquille Khan , an entrepreneur and consultant working with Spotify and Horizons Ventures Investment Fund . The total investment amounted to $ 10.5 million.
Consumer electronics production requires a lot more investment than software development. Therefore, cooperation with large investors and their interest in this area largely determines the success of the project.
The fund Temasek said that they have an interest in high-tech start-ups, pass "Vedomosti". So, Hello can count on his further assistance.