When Janne Kyllönen tried on a pair of noise cancelling headphones for the first time, he had no idea that moment would change the trajectory of his career.
Standing there in that crowded Beijing airport store, he immediately felt calmed when he put the headphones on, but knew they were too bulky to travel with. So, a few years later and after ending his job with Nokia, he set out on his journey to make a more travel friendly earbud that would be just as effective in cancelling noise as any regular headphone set. And to say he accomplished that would be an understatement.
His company, QuietOn, now boasts $10 million in sales every year and helps countless people regain their relaxation and sleep in any environment.
Allow me to introduce Janne Kyllönen…
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I am Janne Kyllönen, founder of QuietOn. We make active noise cancelling earbuds designed for sleeping. No music or masking sounds, just silence in a tiny and comfortable form. Our device cancels snoring, city noise and other sleep disturbing noises efficiently. In other words, our business is here to save marriages.
I used to work at Nokia, leading innovation teams to find better and better user experiences. I was travelling a lot, and once, I was in an Beijing airport and tested active noise cancelling headphones. When I put them on, I immediately felt how much my stressed body started relaxing, almost all of the noise pollution disappeared and I just enjoyed my personal space. But I didn’t buy those devices, because they were just too big and clumsy. I was sure that I would never end up carrying those with me. A couple years after that, the Nokia mobile phone development came to an end and it was a time for me to start thinking about what to do next. I had several ideas for a company, but the most important inspiration I had was that experience with the noise cancelling headphones years ago. I contacted my old colleague Matti Nisula, who is the expert both in audio and signal processing electronics, with a question; “is it possible to make an active noise cancelling device so small size that it fits inside earplugs and you can sleep with it?”. Matti said that he didn’t know, but we should try.
Me and Matti started by looking through the internet to see if active noise cancelling earbuds existed. In 2015, there was not that kind of solution. At that time, even basic BT music listening earbuds were not available.
We started by finding signal processing simulation tools, and by making simulations. Then, we started to design schematics for the electronics. After that we build a macroboard prototype with wires and started testing the performance. After couple of months, we were ready to proceed actual size prototypes. We did layout design also by ourselves and ordered circuit boards from china. Actual component assembly was done manually with soldering under a microscope. The mechanics, we built by using speaker cavity pipe, hot glue and nail polish to finish the top surface. Our result was ugly, but functional. We started doing user testing with our friends and everybody said it was amazing innovation.
I managed to get opportunity to pitch the product to Finnair (Finnish national airline). I had small audio system in my backpack with a subwoofer. I played airplane cabin noise in the meeting room and then gave them the nail polish protos for a test. The Product and Marketing head of the Finnair tested it and said immediately, “if you can make this look a bit better we would like to have a co-operation with you.”
After that meeting I called Matti and said that we need to establish a company. Set up of the company was quite easy:
That gave us enough resources to be able to file a patent and make, along with our partners, our first set of prototypes that looked almost like a final product. With those we made, we did a usability study project in Finnair flights facilitated by the cabin crew. After we got great feedback, we knew that we should continue to B2C markets.
We started our presales on Indiegogo. The first day we sent thousands of emails to all of our contacts to ask for support of our campaign. With that, we were able to get $10k in sales on the first day. That was enough that the Indiegogo algorithm put us on the front page as a trending project. Then the sales really started. I think that our campaign’s $50k target was reached on second day. Our Indieogogo campaign ended after a year, and that is when we started deliveries. At that time, the total sales were $1.3M.
We still do a lot of airlines in-flight sales, but still the most important channel is our own web shop. Our marketing is mainly Google ads, Meta and influencers.
Matthew Walker’s Why we sleep has been one of the biggest influences. It has taught me to value my own sleep and live more healthily, and also given me the extra boost to run the company because I know our solution is so valuable.
20VC is great podcast for all the entrepreneurs. After you have listened what VCs are looking for you, can make a killer pitch deck and collect the money.
Business is looking good. Our new flagship product QuietOn3.1 is getting amazing reviews all the time and that has boosted up the sales a lot. Our revenue growth last year was almost 70% and it will be something similar this year. Our mission is that QuietOn will be the synonym for sleep earbuds in the future.
Start working on your idea right away. Build prototypes and get customer feedback early. If you are not at least little bit embarrassed how your prototype looks when you are introducing it the first time, then you are too late. 🙂
Best way to contact me is via linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jannekyllonen/
More information about QuietOn can be found here: quieton.com
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