Aro 📵

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.

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.

• 🚗 Use cases: The company initially targets families for use at home but has the potential to expand and tailor products for the car, the workplace, and the solo user.

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.

Founder Profile

• Heath Wilson: Previously founded eVestment, which was acquired by Nasdaq.

• Joey Odom: Previously worked as a regional director at Stan Johnson Company.

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.

📌 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

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.”

✍️ Written by Brett and Sam

🗣 SHARE THIS FEATURE 🔍 EXPLORE PAST FEATURES 🎙 PITCH US 📢 ADVERTISE