Wed Mar 22 '23 Announcement
about 1 year ago
– Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 09:33:01 AM
Hey Backers!
We have some amazing news to share: Eno has been acquired by Moonshot LA!
We’re so excited to finally be able to share this with all of you. Over the past months, we have been working with the team at Moonshot to prepare for this launch of the next phase of Eno’s journey. We can’t wait for you to see what Roy, Ali, and the team at Moonshot have planned.
Over the next weeks and months, you’ll hear more from the team at Moonshot about their plans, and what they have in store. For now, here is a bit of context about the acquisition, and what this means for the Eno community.
Who is Moonshot LA?
Moonshot LA is a boutique start-up incubator that teams up with exceptional entrepreneurs to support the growth of products with impact.
Moonshot is led by two incredible people: Roy Burstin, and Ali Mostoufi. Together they have a huge breadth of experience in product development and scaling startups – we feel they are the perfect fit for taking Eno to the next level. David and I have been working with the team at Moonshot for several months now, to share what we’ve learned and help get them setup for the relaunch of Enophone.
Most importantly, Roy and Ali share our vision for what Enophone can become. We started Eno to build the future of mental fitness – a world in which technology can enable us to measure, understand, and improve our cognitive health and performance. Roy and Ali fully share our vision, and are full of ideas for how to take Enophone to the next level. We’re incredibly excited to see what their team will achieve with our technology.
What does this mean for my Enophone?
Moonshot is fully committed to supporting Enophone moving forward.
The team at Moonshot are excited to continue building on the existing Enophone platform, to help make the most of this incredible technology. Planning for new production batches of Enophone hardware is already underway, with new customers able to get their hands on an Enophone as early as April 2023.
The team also has some incredible software features planned, starting with a new mobile app to be released later this year. All new features will be 100% compatible with your existing Enophones, which will be fully supported moving forward.
The team at Moonshot believe in the future of Enophone, and are working hard to propel this vision forward. We’re incredibly excited to have them onboard to help create the future of Eno.
How can we stay in touch?
Over the next few months, Ali and Roy will share more about their plans for the product, and the Eno brand.
Some of you may have received an email from the Moonshot team already, announcing the new launch of Eno. Any email addresses ending in @moonshot.la or @vct.net are theirs, and can be trusted. You can also visit Eno’s new website at https://getenophone.com.
The best way to get in touch with the Eno team is through social media:
You can also reach me (Jacob) on Linkedin, if you’d like to stay in touch.
* * *
Last month marked the 7-year anniversary of David and I creating Eno. Since then, we’ve poured everything we had into bringing to life our vision for a mental fitness tracker, powered by the world’s first brain-sensing headphones.
Today, we’re proud to be handing off this vision to Roy and Ali’s capable hands. We can’t wait to support them in writing the next chapter of Eno’s journey, and are excited to see what their creativity and ambition will enable.
To all of our backers: thank you for enabling this incredible experience, and for supporting us throughout. We are incredibly honored to have been able to bring our vision to life, and grateful to have shared this experience with you all.
Welcome to the new Eno.
As always, lots of love,
Jacob & David
Thu Dec 1 '22 Announcement
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Dec 01, 2022 at 01:12:39 PM
Hi Backers,
It’s with a heavy heart that we share that Eno has run out of cash, and won’t be able to keep operating.
Over the last 7 years, we have strived to provide detailed updates giving a transparent look into what it’s like to build a new technology like Enophone. This will be our final update, describing what led to the decision to close Eno.
ENO’S TIMELINE
When we started Eno back in 2016, our vision was to build the world’s first brain-sensing headphone - in essence, to do for mental fitness what Fitbit did for physical fitness. We spent our first year working with neuroscience researchers, product designers, engineers, and business leaders to validate this idea, and in that time we created the first working iterations of our brain-sensing headphones.
When we launched the Kickstarter campaign in 2017, the incredible response validated our concept, and provided funds to kick off mass production. We used this momentum to raise some additional seed investment and grow our engineering team, and began creating processes to manufacture our product at the scale of thousands of units. By 2019, roughly 2 years later, we had started to ship our first production units.
The pandemic in 2020 threw a wrench in our schedule, putting our production on hold. Because our team was no longer able to visit our factory in China, progress there slowed to a halt. On top of that, the lead-times for many components grew to 6 months, and prices of some chips increased by over 10x. It took nearly a year to get our manufacturing line back up and running remotely, and to ship our first production batch of 2,500 Enophones.
In 2021 we were able to raise a second investment round with three main goals: to ship all remaining Enophone pre-orders, to release the software features planned for v1.0 of the Eno app, and to prepare a marketing campaign to start selling the newly produced Enophones. By summer 2022, we had achieved all three of our goals, shipping over 5,000 Enophones to our backers across 80+ countries. At this point, earlier this year, we were optimistic about our ability to continue scaling Eno past this first product.
WHAT HAPPENED
As a pre-profitability startup, Eno relies on external investors to help fund the R&D costs required to build our product and grow our company. Having finished our manufacturing, Eno had planned to raise a larger round of funding in the second half of 2022, to put towards sales growth and new software development.
In Q3 2022, the fundraising market took a dramatic downturn. New VC funding decreased between 50% and 80%, as investors warned of an oncoming recession. As a hardware startup, the continued supply chain issues compounded this. As a result, Eno was unable to raise the funding needed to maintain our operations. For the last 6 months, we have worked to try and find alternative funding sources, but we have been unsuccessful.
This month Eno officially ran out of cash, and we were forced to make the difficult decision to let our team go, and begin the process of closing the company.
It has been a very emotional month for our team, as we reflect on the 7 year journey of building Eno. While we feel deeply sad and disappointed that Eno will not continue, we are also very proud of what we accomplished, and incredibly grateful for the opportunity we were given to bring to life the vision we had for this product. Without the help of our backers, none of this would have been possible. We are forever grateful for the support you provided us throughout this journey - to say that it has been life-changing for us is an understatement.
WHAT’S NEXT
As of today, Eno has ceased all operations and filed for bankruptcy.
Since we can no longer pay for server and maintenance costs, the Eno app will cease to function at some point over the coming months. Enophone’s audio functions will be unaffected, and will continue to operate as intended.
We won’t be answering any other messages moving forward. If you haven’t received your Enophone device, we won’t be able to ship it, as we don’t have the funds to cover the shipping expense.
To those of you who are disappointed that Eno will not continue beyond this product, know that we share in your sadness. It's my hope that the learnings we shared through Eno will help the next generation of innovators in neurotech, wearables, and mental fitness continue building in this category.
Lastly, I want to thank you all again for your support throughout this journey together. It's been an honour and a pleasure speaking with so many of you over the past 7 years. If you would like to stay in touch, or be notified of any future projects that I work on, I’d invite you to connect with me through LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobflood/.
Jacob, David, and the Eno Team
Thu Apr 14 '22 Announcement
about 2 years ago
– Thu, Apr 14, 2022 at 01:12:44 PM
Hey Backers!
We have been eagerly waiting to share this update for a long time. Today we finally get to announce the great news: next week we are receiving enough Enophones to ship all remaining pre-orders!
We’re incredibly excited that all of you will be receiving your Enophones soon. This update we’ll be focusing on the logistics, to make sure all of your Enophones ship as quickly as possible. Please read each section below closely.
Next week we are receiving enough Enophones to ship all remaining pre-orders!
Whether you ordered through Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Thinkmindset.com, or Enophone.com, you will be able to receive your Enophone in the next few weeks. However, there are some steps you need to take in order to confirm your shipping addresses, so please read the full update very closely to avoid any delays in shipping.
Lastly, we’ve opened more slots for our Meet the Eno Team video calls. Please use this link to sign up, so you can share your feedback with our team to help make Eno’s product better for you. Each participant will receive $20 for their time!
We are all incredibly excited to have achieved the milestone of shipping all of your pre-ordered Enophones. We want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who’s supported the campaign – without you, this never would have been possible.
Of course, our journey doesn’t end here – shipping Enophone is only part 1 of our quest to build an incredible product that lives up to our vision of a Fitbit for your brain.
Our team has been hard at work on v0.7 of our app, which we will be releasing in the coming weeks. This update will be our biggest yet, introducing new features that will define the future of Eno. As our backers, you’ll be the first to experience this new update.
We can’t wait to share this with you very soon.
