Physical therapy and the didgeridoo aren’t two things you might traditionally put together, but together they helped form Soundly. A game-based app designed to help stop snoring, Soundly uses physical therapy techniques to strengthen muscles and help users get a better night’s sleep.
Brian Krohn, co-founder and innovation fellow at the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities, said that the idea for Soundly came from a Brazilian study. It showed that by playing the didgeridoo, an Aboriginal instrument, one could stop snoring by tightening muscles in the throat and tongue.
“We did ultrasounds of what happens when you play [the didgeridoo], and there are two key vocations,” Krohn said, explaining that your tongue does different motions when you make different sounds. “It’s like a pushup for your tongue.”
After doing these exercises a certain amount of times – Krohn suggested 2,000 times a day, each day for six weeks – the idea is that through this brain to muscle coordination, your tongue gets out of the way and enables easy breathing.
“It’s like any other physical therapy,” said Krohn, a serial entrepreneur whose previous inventions include biodiesel innovations and brain surgery tools. Krohn, a former Rhodes Scholar, developed Soundly with funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Krohn said that one of the biggest challenges developing Soundly was getting people to use it regularly. While physical therapy is beneficial and commonly works, Krohn said, people don’t seem to enjoy it. “That’s why we decided to make it a game for people to play,” he said, comparing it to the online brain tool Luminosity.
A beta version of Soundly has been on the Apple App Store since March 2018, and an improved version is set to launch in August, according to Krohn. Along with co-founder Umesh Goswami and inventor Adam Black, he is seeing mixed results so far.
“About 10-20 percent of people have responded really well,” Krohn said, including his wife who “went camping and didn’t bug anybody!” Another chunk responded moderately well, and a smaller chunk have not seen results. This could depend on whether or not they’re performing the exercises every day, Krohn said.
Soundly’s next move is to research the group that is responding moderately well and use this to improve its technology. With a background in app creation and small company startups, from hops for beer to indoor cycling, Krohn hopes to use his experience to enhance Soundly. This may include moving into the “sleep apnea space,” which the app cannot technically address because it is a medical condition that needs federal approval.
Earlier this year, Soundly was one of six local companies to participate in gener8tor's first gBETA Medtech accelerator, a program that connects early-stage medical startups to mentorship and resources.
“I love that Minnesota is blowing up in terms of startups,” he said. “I’ve been around and doing startups for the past six years, and it used to be an anomaly, but in the past two years there’s been so many programs.” He predicts within the next five years, some of these companies will grow enough to reinvest in the community.
For Soundly, Krohn’s main goal is to be the go-to solution for those struggling with snoring. “There’s 90 million Americans who snore,” he said. “My goal is for them all to know that Soundly is an option."
