5 Key Lessons from a Sleep Tech CEO on Brand Building

Tim Rosa remembers the day he realized his true calling.

When he was chief marketing officer at Fitbit, the wearable fitness tracking device, he pored over emails, forum posts, and support logs. There, he found inspiring stories from customers: One said the product helped them detect a heart problem; another said the product helped them reverse their type 2 diabetes and finally get pregnant.

“Reading these stories really brought me to tears,” Rosa says, “and from then on I knew my mission was to help people by doing good and creating beautiful products and services that improve their lives.”

Currently, Rosa is Somnyis a pioneering neuroscience-based sleep company whose flagship product is a neurostimulator that helps users fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and improve overall sleep quality. Rosa wants to improve lives by solving one of the most basic human needs: quality sleep.

This week’s guest is Rosa A Day in the Life Podcast with John BeerIn the interview, he talks about his journey from working as a marketing executive at ESPN, 2K Sports (launching the NBA 2K series), and Fitbit, where he was so busy he would sleep under his desk, to discovering the value of sleep later in life and pouring that passion into Somnee.

He also shares some valuable wisdom he’s gained over his years in business.

Build a brand that captures hearts and minds

“The most important thing is to be relentless about understanding your customer,” Rosa says.

For Somnee, that meant first combing through customer feedback, engagement metrics, support logs, and qualitative and quantitative research to understand their needs on a personal and emotional level.

“By putting your customer and your brand at the heart of how you build your company, you can use that as a guide to make decisions,” he says.

But customers only know what they know, and as a leader, being innovative and introducing pioneering new products, experiences and features requires taking some calculated risks, especially as a challenger brand or category creator.

“The reality is, whether you’re in a consumer business, an enterprise business, or healthcare, at the end of the day, someone on the other end wants to use, buy, consume your product,” he says. “Your job is to win their heart and their mind. Period.”

Related: 5 Proven Strategies to Retain Your Best Customers

Recognizing personal suffering as a potential business opportunity

When venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and Matt Walker, PhD, a sleep scientist at UC Berkeley and author of Why We Sleep, first approached Rosa about Somny, he had serious sleep problems.

He had tried magnesium, CBD, and THC edibles, but nothing worked. When Rosa looked at Somny’s website, he found the company’s products confusing and was honestly skeptical, but he decided to try the product for himself for 14 days before taking on the CEO role.

“They sent me the device and I went through the journey. By the third session, I fell asleep with the device on and was amazed by the fact that it really worked. However, I felt we needed to elevate our brand, products, website and services to reflect the amazing innovation behind the science and technology.”

He realized they’d discovered something special: if Somny could help others with the same sleep disorder as him, the rest could be history.

Related: This entrepreneur hid her car from salvage agents after going bankrupt, but now her sound healing pods are revolutionizing health and design

Harness the power of personalization

One of the key innovations behind Somnee’s technology is its focus on personalization. Rosa says the company’s patented “closed loop” product uses a comfortable sleep headband and an electroencephalograph (EEG) to read brainwaves and understand individual patterns for optimal sleep. This is the same technology used in some of the world’s most advanced sleep labs.

“The language of the brain is essentially electrical frequencies,” he explains. “We use EEG sensors to establish a baseline. Once that’s done, our AI model applies gentle, personalized neurostimulation at the optimal frequencies specific to you, helping to calm your brain and prepare it for sleep. It can reduce the time you spend asleep by 50% and improve your overall sleep quality.”

Rosa argues that this personalized, closed-loop approach is the future of consumer health tech and wellness products, which are no longer just about tracking sleep but actually improving it.

Simplify complex business challenges by applying the “rule of three”

Throughout his career, Rosa has used the triple mindset to tackle complex problems and communicate effectively.

“I think in threes: What three things will I do to win?” Rosa explains.

This “rule of three” applies to everything from product development to customer communications, and it helps streamline strategy and prioritize action, he says.

Rosa uses this principle to prioritize and build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). By focusing on the three most important aspects, Rosa helps her team stay focused and avoids getting bogged down in unnecessary details.

Related: This Fitness CEO Ignored Advice to Rebrand What happened next was a crash course in business focus.

Leveraging partnerships and data to build a powerful ecosystem

Drawing from his experience at Fitbit, Rosa emphasizes the importance of creating customer personas and cultivating an ecosystem around the product and customer needs. He envisions Somnee eventually rolling out APIs and collaborating with other wearable and services companies to build a more comprehensive health tracking ecosystem.

“I see wearables, human performance services, and healthcare as strategic partners,” Rosa explains. “I want to foster an ecosystem of partner products and services that leverage clinical-grade datasets to help others. Good data in, good data out.”

Rosa’s journey from sleepless marketing executive to sleep tech innovator has been rewarding in many ways, but he says the most impressive part has been hearing from his customers: Like Fitbit, Somny is helping people and changing lives.

He tells the story of a Vietnam veteran suffering from insomnia and PTSD who was dependent on sleeping pills and could only sleep 3.5 hours a night. After using Somny for 30 days, he increased his sleep to 7 hours and made 15-minute Somny sessions part of his nightly pre-bedtime routine.

Or when Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff emailed Tim to say he loved Somnee so much, it had dramatically improved his sleep and health, so much so that now even his wife is using it.

“It reinforces my purpose, which is to help people, help them perform and live better lives, by putting out really good products that have a real impact,” Rosa says.