英文原文

Your own sleep coach

(Fortune Small Business) -- Few of us make money by losing sleep. But three grad students at Brown University in Providence built a company around sleep deprivation.

Jason Donahue, Ben Rubin and Eric Shashoua were working late nights in Brown's business and engineering schools -- and began thinking about ways to sleep better. They discovered they weren't alone in burning the midnight oil. Around 20% of Americans get less than six hours of rest a night. (See our cover story, "Make Sleep Work for You," September 2008.)

The friends imagined a smart alarm clock that could track how much time we spend in the most restorative stages of the sleep cycle: REM and deep sleep. What would it cost to design such a thing?

Answer: five years of research, 20 hires, $14 million in funding and a whole lot of doubting from investors and scientists.

The trio's company, Zeo, based in Newton, Mass., launched its product in June. The Zeo device uses a patent-pending headband with tiny sensors that scan your brain for signs of four sleep states: REM, light, deep and waking sleep (which saps your energy). The smart alarm clock displays a graph of your sleep pattern and wakes you as you're transitioning out of REM sleep (which is when you're least groggy). In the morning you can upload the data to the company's Web site, and so track your sleep over time. The cost, $399, includes six months' access to one of Zeo's online sleep coaches.

Most of the feedback comes in the form of Zeo's ZQ score -- an index of how well the device thinks you've slept.

"Zeo allows people to unlock this mysterious black box of sleep," says Dave Dickinson, a veteran health-care CEO whom the founders brought onboard in 2007 to run the business side.

Whether any of this actually improves sleep is up to the consumer, who will also need to make lifestyle changes like cutting out alcohol before bedtime or caffeine after 3 p.m.

"No one should mistake it for a diagnostic tool," says Darrel Drobnich, chief program officer at the National Sleep Foundation (though he does say Zeo is "a neat product that can educate people").

That Zeo exists at all is remarkable. When the trio first started shopping their idea around, scientists told them no consumer product could match the costly monitoring equipment of professional sleep labs. Their first prototype was made from a headband and an Altoids mints tin, which Shashoua admits turned off investors.

"When we had a better-looking prototype, that changed," he says.

Eventually the startup scored $14 million, mainly from venture capital firms Trident Capital and iD Ventures America. It also won over renowned sleep scientists, such as Harvard Medical School's Charles Czeisler, who now sits on Zeo's advisory board.

For now the company is selling Zeo online only. Dickinson is looking at distribution deals with stores that carry consumer health-care gadgets. He also plans to expand to countries such as Australia, where sleep deprivation approaches U.S. levels.

参考翻译

(Fortune Small Business)——我们很少有人能从失眠中赚钱。但是在普罗维登斯市的布朗大学（Brown University），三名研究生却创立了一个有关睡眠不足的公司。

杰森•唐纳休（Jason Donahue）、本•罗宾（Ben Rubin）和埃瑞克•沙舒瓦（Eric Shashoua）就读于布朗大学商学院和工程学院，他们经常熬夜学习，于是开始寻找改善睡眠的方法。他们发现，开夜车的并不只有他们三个，20%的美国人每晚休息时间还不足六小时。

于是，他们设想发明一种智能闹钟，跟踪人们睡眠周期中睡眠质量最高阶段的时间长度：快速眼动睡眠（REM）和深度睡眠阶段。那么，设计这样一个产品的成本有多大呢？

答案是：五年的研究，20个雇员，1400万资金，以及投资者和科学家们的质疑。

三人成立的公司名为Zeo，总部位于马萨诸塞州牛顿市，六月开始正式投入生产。Zeo设备使用了一种拥有专利权的头带，上面有许多微小的感应器，能扫描大脑，从而反映大脑的四个睡眠状态：快速眼动睡眠、浅度睡眠、深度睡眠和醒觉(这种状态会消耗人的精力）。这种智能闹钟能显示人的睡眠模式，并在快速眼动睡眠快结束时发声使人醒来（这也是人最软弱无力的时候）。每天早晨，你可以把数据上传到公司网站上，一段时间后，就可以追踪自己的睡眠状况。Zeo的价格是399美元，购买者还可以得到一名Zeo网上睡眠教练六个月的指导。

大多数的反馈都是以Zeo“睡商”（ZQ）分数的形式反映回来——即设备对睡眠质量的判断指数。

戴夫•狄更生（Dave Dickinson）是一名从事医疗保健行业的资深首席执行官。他说，“Zeo使人们打开睡眠这个神秘的黑匣子。”Zeo的创立者在2007年邀请他加入负责公司的业务。

这项发明能否真的改善睡眠质量得由消费者来判断，消费者还必须改变生活方式，比如睡前不能喝酒、下午三点后不喝咖啡。

全国睡眠基金会（National Sleep Foundation）的首席程序官戴若•卓布尼奇（Darrel Drobnich）说：“不能把Zeo误当成诊断工具。”（尽管他也说，这是一种“能教育大众的好产品”）。

Zeo的存在本身就是件不平凡的事。当三个创始人开始到处推广他们的产品时，科学家告诉他们，没有任何消费产品能比得上专业睡眠实验室里昂贵的监测设备。Zeo产品最初的原型由一个头带和一个Altoids薄荷口香糖锡罐制成。沙舒瓦承认，这个设计确实吓退了一些投资者。

他说：“我们后来设计了更美观的造型，改变了这个局面。”

最终，这个开发过程花了1400万美元，资金主要来自风险投资公司Trident Capital和iD Ventures America。它还获得了著名睡眠科学家的支持，比如来自哈佛医学院的查尔斯•切斯勒（Charles Czeisler），他现在是Zeo咨询委员会的成员。

目前，Zeo产品只能通过网络出售。狄更生正在寻找可以合作的医疗保健器材经销商。他还计划进军睡眠不足状况类似于美国的国外市场，如澳大利亚。