Setting the Scene
Your latest screen time report: 7 hours and 344 pickups per day. 😳
Shocked at the stats, you reflect on your phone behavior.
You can’t sit through a meal without checking notifications.
You scroll through social media while watching movies and wonder why you always miss the plot.
You spend so much time on Twitter that your thoughts have been reduced to 280-character snippets. 💬
Motivated to address your screen addiction, you throw your phone in a drawer.
Two minutes later, it ends up back in your hands. 😬
This week’s company provides a solution to help users cut back on phone use.
In a Sentence
Aro is a habit-forming device and platform that helps users manage their phone use.
Device: Users put their phones in the Aro Home box, which acts as a visual cue to take a phone break.
Platform: The app pairs with the box and tracks time away, sets reminders, and gamifies the habit.
Bulleted version: Aro's habit-forming technology acts like a personal trainer for screen time, coaching users to disconnect from their phones and fostering healthier habits through visual cues and gamification.🏋️
The Basics
Industry: Productivity
Headquarters: Knoxville, TN
Year founded: 2019
Employee count: 6
Investors: Founders and angels
Amount raised: $2M
Target market: Families
Business model: B2C subscription (device included with membership)
Early traction: 1000+ memberships, 150,000+ hours logged
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
Looking to better your business? Subscribe to Business Briefs.
This easy-to-read newsletter is designed for founders, entrepreneurs, and business owners. Learn trade secrets, business trends, and funding ideas so you can grow your business.
Due Diligence
WHAT WE LIKE
🤯 Hold the phone: Phone use has quadrupled since 2019, and nearly half of adults admit to using their phones too much.
While most people recognize the health and productivity impacts, they struggle to cut screen time with existing solutions.
🔁 Retention: Aro’s software-driven approach builds retention, engages users, and creates a steady stream of recurring revenue.
POTENTIAL RISKS
🗓 Behavior shift: Aro must adapt to user behavior to create a product that engages them for the long term, recognizing that the average person abandons a new habit after seven weeks.
💳 Subscription required: Aro may limit its serviceable available market by requiring subscription payments with the home device, as many households seek to limit subscriptions.
🧘♀️ Digital wellness: The digital wellness and habit tracking markets have frequent new entrants and established market leaders that may pose competition.
Additionally, leading smartphone providers may choose to improve their native screen time tracking products.
Cartoon by JRP
Founder Profile
Heath Wilson: Previously founded eVestment, which was acquired by Nasdaq.
Joey Odom: Previously worked as a regional director at Stan Johnson Company.
To request an introduction to the founder, respond to this email.
Comps
Opal: Backed by SpeedInvest, Secocha Ventures, Nico Wittenborn, Harry Stebbings, and more.
Freedom: Backed by Pilot Mountain Ventures.
Wellspent: Backed by angel investors.
Block: Backed by T-Mobile’s Futurelab.
Why Aro: As the only solution for families that combines a well-designed habit-forming device with a sticky wellness app, Aro has the potential to ring in a new era of phone-life balance. 📳
📌 Bulletin Board
🤯 Phone stats: We thought we’d leave you with some stats from this week’s research.
The average American picks up their phone 344 times a day, or once every 4 minutes.
We spend an average of 50 minutes on our phones before bed.
Silencing notifications actually leads us to check our phones more frequently.
🍿 Keeping up with past companies: Chestr, a shopping wishlist platform, recently launched their iPhone app.
🗳 Cast Your Vote
What do you think of Aro?
Last Week Today
The results are in: Cytix, a security testing platform, was voted a winner by 74% of voters.
Subscriber feedback: “There’s definitely a need for the product, and they seem to be ahead of the curve for continuous testing.”
