Nebia Shower Head Start-Up

Nebia , a Shower Head Start-Up, Receives Funding From Timothy Cook of Apple

The strangely intimate sales pitch has proven effective. The six-person start-up in San Francisco, which has developed a water-conserving shower head, already has received funding from some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names. Its first investors, most of whom have showered with the product, include Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple. In addition, Nebia has received funding from Michael Birch, a founder of the members-only club the Battery, Y Combinator, the start-up incubator, and from the Schmidt Family Foundation, which was co-founded by Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google.

Nebia said its shower head, which looks like a circular street lamp hanging from the base of an aluminum iMac, reduced water consumption by as much as 70 percent. The product uses nozzles to break water up into tiny droplets, which increases the surface area of where the spray can go. While the average shower takes 20 gallons of water, Nebia said its product used six gallons.

“Nebia’s showering technology has the potential to be transformative,” said Wendy Schmidt, president of the Schmidt foundation, in a statement. “It’s innovative and elegant, and can also have a significant impact on water use — not just in California, where we’re experiencing a severe drought — but around the world where fresh water resources are limited.”

Apple declined to comment, except to say Mr. Cook’s stake in the start-up was a personal investment. Nebia declined to say how much money it had raised.

Since October, Nebia has tested prototypes of the shower head inside locker rooms in some Equinox gyms and on the campuses of Apple, Google and Stanford University.

In my testing of a prototype, the multinozzle shower head produced a misty spray (the word nebbia in Italian means mist) that immersed me in water, unlike traditional shower heads that shoot pressurized streams of water. It made my hair feel flat and uncooperative, though my skin felt soft and relaxed.

“We want to own that space, but with a better sense of both experience and water conservancy,” said Carlos Gomez Andonaegui, a founder of Nebia, about the shower head market.

Source: Bits

Read More Related Content On This Topic - Click Here

Media

Taxonomy

• Innovation
• Technology
• Solutions