Visible · B2C · wearable for pacing chronic illness
Buy Polar's heart-rate sensors retail, then wholesale, then co-design a custom band
Real-time data other wearables couldn't give; guest calls it a productive partnership
Workedpartnershipsfeature-development
What they did
API aggregators (e.g. Terra) couldn't give real-time, accurate heart rate. Bought a batch of Polar heart-rate sensors, shipped them to users and integrated via Polar's open SDK to prove the concept. Then got a call with Polar, bought the armband wholesale and passed savings to members. After about a year, asked Polar for better battery, easier charging and accelerometer data; Polar built it with a few other customers.
What happened
Custom Polar-built device with the features Visible needed; savings passed to members.
- Stage
- hardware
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · $10M ARR Without Ever Testing A Paywall — Luke Martin-Fuller, Visible“So we just bought some and shipped them out and integrated. They have a kind of open SDK and that was enough for us to prove out the concept.”
“And we started buying that initial device, which was an armband sensor kind of wholesale through them. And we were able to pass on those savings to our members.”
“We need to improve the battery life. We'd like to make it easier to charge. We would love to include some accelerometer data because we know that that's going to be really valuable to our members.”
Related topics
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- Visible: Move the web funnel off a flaky no-code tool so you can test itGuest's biggest win of the year; test results still to come
- Visible: Launch an AI feature that explains your health data in plain languageEarly-access users hated it; back to the drawing board
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- Visible: Stay cash-flow positive to $7M revenue, then raise a small, quiet Series ARaised at ~$7M revenue from an aligned investor; funds data science and product