Drinking water, it’s something we all do on a daily basis. Unfortunately most of us don’t drink enough of the stuff. We all have busy schedules and our hectic days can have us running around for hours without a single sip. Daily distractions get in the way and millions of us don’t take care of ourselves the way we should. That’s where HidrateMe comes in. HidrateMe is a smart bottle that tracks your water intake and makes sure that you’re hydrated all day long.
The bottle
The HidrateMe bottle is a 24 oz. – 710 ml. reusable water bottle, made out of BPA free Tritan plastic. You can put it in the dishwasher and it has ‘a leak proof cap’ so hopefully it won’t submerge the contents of your bag. The built in sensor automatically tracks how much you drink throughout the day. It sends information to the Hidrate app on your phone that notifies you when its time to drink more water. The battery is easily replaceable and it lasts over a year, so you never need to recharge it. So unlike fitness wearables, like the Jawbone Up that needs constant charging and manual inputs for your drinking habits, the HidrateMe bottle does it all for you. This means that you will actually use it as it is – it isn’t a chore to track your intake.
As is the trend with fitness trackers, like the Jawbone Up, it needs to look the part in any environment. That’s why the HidrateMe team designed a bottle that would look good in both the gym and the office.
The App
The HidrateMe app is super friendly and very intuitive – the app is obviously free and works on both Android and iOS from day one. Launch the app for the first time and a very clean Apple style interface greets you. You start off by inputing a bit of data about yourself: height, weight, age and activity level. This allows the app to calculate precisely how much water you should be drinking throughout the day.
You can easily track your progress towards your goals, and you will receive reminders if you start losing the plot and fall off the wagon (or is it on the wagon?). The app can also integrate with your wearables to help tune your water goals even more accurately to your activities. The app is really very clever and can adjust your daily water goal depending on the temperature, humidity, and elevation of your surroundings via location information shared from your phone.
The Team
In September 2014 HidrateMe CEO Nadya pulled together a team of fellow University of Minnesota students for the Google Startup weekend in Minneapolis, Minnesota to build the first smart water bottle prototype. In just 54 hours they had a working prototype. A water bottle that tracked water intake and synced to a mobile app on a smartphone.
They won third place and people began asking when the water bottles would be available for purchase. That’s the moment the imaginary light bulb went off and they knew they were on to something. The team worked evenings and weekends for 7 months before being accepted into the Sprint Mobile Health Accelerator powered by Techstars.
They then quit their day jobs and left everything behind to work on HidrateMe. The team went through multiple bottle designs before deciding to go with the final HidrateMe. The HidrateMe bottle is currently on Kickstarter and is proving to be one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of 2015.
Bonus Q&A with the HidrateMe team!
Bizzvenue was lucky enough to squeeze in a quick Q&A session with the HidrateMe team and here it is:
1. What inspired this project?
After a long day of volunteering one of our team members felt tired and sluggish, and realized she hadn’t had any water to drink for the entire day. She began asking friends if they had this problem, and realized that drinking water is so easy to forget when life gets busy.
2. Why should our readers back your campaign?
We are making a product that is meant to help people feel their best everyday. People don’t know how good they could feel if they were properly hydrated each day.
3. Do you have any future plans for the product that you can share?
We have big plans for the product in the future, but unfortunately I can’t share them yet. So stay tuned.
4. What are your tips for entrepreneurs who want to get a Kickstarter campaign going?
Do 80 percent of the work for you Kickstarter before you even launch your Kickstarter. Build up email lists, gauge interest from real customers, and find your product market fit before you do anything else.
