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Jawbone, known at the beginning as AliphCom, first stood out for the quality of its headphones
and wireless speakers and later, for its wearables.
The willingness to find new market niches to jump into them meant that finding investors
was never a problem for this company.
That is what the relevant venture capital firms have invested in it.
By 2014, the company had raised $900MM and was valued at just over $3B. But all that
money did not help it cope with its strongest competitors, including Fitbit, or deal with
customer service problems.
Jawbone’s case was listed by the CB Insights consultant as the second-worst bankruptcy
of a VC supported company supported in the United States.
How did this happen? This is Startup Forensics: Jawbone.
The British-Lebanese Alexander Asseily and the American son of Pakistani immigrants Hosain
Rahman met at Stanford University and decided to create a company called AliphCom in 1999.
Their goal was military technology. They focused specifically on developing a device that was
capable of canceling noise, to make it easier for soldiers in combat to communicate clearly
with each other.
With this concept, they approached DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
of the United States Department of Defense closed a contract in 2002.
They created a mobile phone headset called Jawbone, a name that the company would later
adopt.
The headset had the ability to erase the background noise that surrounds the user so that whoever
is on the other side of the line will only hear the conversation.
The headset increased the volume of the voice for both parties, automatically, eliminating
the need to shout during the dialogue.
Soon the company saw commercial value in this technology and hastened to take it to the market.
Sales boomed and between 2007 and 2008 the company had significant profits. However,
Asseily began to have less prominence in the company and returned to London. Hosain Rahman
became CEO of the company.
Success also came because driving laws allowed the use of hands-free in several US states,
and this favored the race in the use of wireless headphones.
In June 2007, Aliph announced the arrival of its Jawbone Bluetooth headphones, with
Noise Shield noise cancellation, to 157 Apple Stores. The devices would be sold alongside
the iPhone for $ 119.
A press release following the announcement said:
Hosain Rahman, the CEO of AliphCom said they were confident that their customers would discover
Later came Jawbone 2 and Jawbone Prime in 2009, which CNET called
The company seemed to be more confident and decided to explore other products, such as
wireless speakers. First came Jambox in 2010, and fortune smiled again at this company because
the speaker was one of its best selling products.
In 2011 Big Jambox arrived, a wireless device.
Big Jambox offered 15 hours of use, thanks to its 2,600mAh battery. It also came equipped
with a USB connector, through which you could update the software, a Jack input and a button
to pair with another device via Bluetooth.
However, it meant nothing for the company to arrive before its competitors. As time
went on, bigger companies that could produce more and with better prices forced them to
pivot.
They pivoted towards a consumer technology company as well, but mainly aimed at monitoring
physical activity and health.
In 2011, AliphCom became Jawbone and opted for wearables, physical activity tracking
bands, a market that was just beginning to flourish.
The arrival of the company in this market category was one of the reasons why it managed
to attract abundant venture capital from recognized firms, including Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz,
Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and even a sovereign fund of investment,
that is state investment.
That was when Jawbone raised $900MM and was valued at $3B.
After its transformation, the company opted for a new bracelet called UP, which had an
elegant and easy to wear design. It was also water-resistant and had an accelerometer.
What could be done with this device? The device was designed to track daily routines: for
example, to know how much and how fast users walked, the number of calories burned, as
well as the number of hours slept and their sleep quality.
The bracelet synchronized data in an application.
Its introductory price was $ 99.
The third generation of physical activity trackers, the dubbed Up 3, began bringing
problems to the company in 2014.
First, it came with a flaw that made Jawbone stay out of the Christmas sales season.
Then, they ensured that the device would have a heart monitor, which represented a whole
innovation in the wearable world. It was later proven not to work well.
Chris Welch, a reporter from The Verge tested the bracelet and said:
Instead, the company opted to offer the resting heart rate measurement, ensuring that this
was a good health indicator.
Another of the inconveniences that users noticed was the lack of a screen to display information.
So it was always necessary to synchronize data with a smartphone.
Although it was brave to take part in the wearable market, Jawbone failed to take hold.
Until just 4.4% of the market pie was left.
In 2015, strong competitors began to appear, including Apple with the expected Apple Watch.
Also, Fitbit was on Jawbone's heels and before their IPO, the company
sued them before the California State Court.
As reported by The New York Times, in May 2015, Fitbit was accused of
the complaint continued.
That same year, Jawbone closed its office in New York and ceased 60 employees in November.
The excuse? The same that other companies that are forced to reduce their payroll usually
offer: restructuring.
A spokesman for the company told The Verge at the time that:
That was the second cut that Jawbone was forced to make in 2015 because, in June of that same
year, 20 people were fired.
The IDC firm ranked Jawbone as the fifth largest wearable manufacturer with 4.4% of the market,
for the first quarter of 2015.
Fitbit ranked first, followed by China's Xiaomi, Garmin and Samsung.
For 2016, while Fitbit sent 22.3 million devices to its customers, Jawbone sent less than
20% of that.
From then on, the problems multiplied for the Californian company. There was financial
turmoil, suspension of customer service, a decrease in inventory and even the departure
of executives.
The company stopped manufacturing and selling its physical activity trackers in 2016, and
then sold its remaining inventory to a reseller.
Among those problems, the most controversial one was to suspend customer service.
Jawbone stopped offering forums on its website and responding to customer inquiries with
defective hardware.
You just can't stop supporting your customers.
Especially if there's a warranty period.
Even their social networks remained idle for months and several publications on sites such
as The Verge noticed. Jawbone declined to discuss the issue when confronted.
With nothing else to do, in 2017, the CEO of Jawbone decided to liquidate the company
and jump ship but jumping to another, which he named Jawbone Health. He brought
some of the previous employees with this new company.
In May 2019, the idea that Hossain Rahman pursued with Jawbone Health seems to remain
alive. He intends to use personal devices, Artificial Intelligence and other technologies
to detect chronic heart problems when they just begin to develop.
But Jawbone, one of the pioneers of wearables is nothing more than the memory of a startup
that died too soon.