How would you describe your business idea to a potential investor?

Tinus has created an innovative patent-pending technology for area-distributed sound transmission via bone conduction. The first application is a pillow for tinnitus patients with sound isolation to the outside. This means any desired sound can be played via Bluetooth connection, but this sound can only be heard by the person who is in contact with the pillow. The aim is to distract the subconscious to make it easier to fall asleep. If someone suffers from harmonic tinnitus, we can even do noise canceling. Tinus is the only solution that offers comfort and sound isolation.

What problem do you want to solve, what is your goal?

A critical phase for tinnitus patients is the phase of falling asleep, due to a lack of surrounding noises. As a result, even mildly affected tinnitus patients often suffer from problems falling asleep and lack of sleep.

Our vision is to ensure people who suffer from tinnitus or general sleep problems can fall asleep easyly. Especially secondary diseases, such as depressions, can be reduced. Current solutions do not cover all aspects and need these user groups have within one product.

How did you come up with your idea/concept?

The founding team met in September 2019 during “Think.Make.Start”, a course of the TU Munich. The aim of the course was to discuss a self-chosen problem, validate it with surveys, customer insights, and scientific work to develop a functional model for a solution approach. Each of the three founders has at least one beloved relative who is faced with the problem of tinnitus, which brought the disease into the focus of the team. With an intrinsic motivation, the team committed to improve the falling asleep phase for tinnitus patients and bring sleep as a gift into as many households as possible.

What is your business model?

Our go-to market strategy is a B2C business model with selling our pillow through our own e-commerce store. At a later stage, we are also planning to get certified as a medicine product. This allows us also to have a B2B business model in cooperation with doctors and health insurance companies.

Who is your target group?

Our primary target group are chronic tinnitus patients, ideally in a fixed partnership. They are between 30 and 65 years of age and suffer from problems falling asleep due to high exposed physical strain, stress, or loud environmental noises on a daily basis. They do not want to be a burden to their partner. Of course, our innovative music pillow can also be used by people with general sleep disorders or for the application of music therapy.

Why music or sounds for tinnitus?

The German Center for Music Therapy Research has found that the areas of the brain involved in processing music are almost identical to those involved in tinnitus. Tinnitus sufferers can learn to direct their perception specifically to the music or sounds in order to perceive the tinnitus as less present. Tinnitus is demonstrably perceived as more intense when the sufferer concentrates fully on it. This is exactly where we start with Tinus and help people in a phase where they suffer the most due to missing surrounding noises.

How do you stand out from the competition?

Standard headphones can lead to unpleasant ear pressure and therefore 8 wake up phases on average per night. Other solutions, such as TV or radio, do not provide sound isolation for your partner. The same applies to competitive music pillows. In addition, they do not provide a comfortable sleep due to the installed hard plastic speaker. Medicine is not recommended for permanent use.
It is important to state that we focus specifically on the phase of falling asleep only. We do not heal the disease itself, but support tinnitus sufferers to cope with the symptoms and get back their sleep and life quality plus reduce second diseases.

Why did you decide to work with XPRENEURS?

We heard about XPRENEURS from the UnternehmerTUM ecosystem. The program’s focus is on early-stage startups and the XPRENEURS team consists of experienced startup mentors who can give valuable input, which allows us to push Tinus to the next level during our EXIST scholarship. Furthermore, Xpreneurs provides access to an enormous network of industry experts and potential investors.

You can get more information about Tinus on their website, follow them on Facebook or Instagram.

You want to become part of the XPRENEURS incubator program as well?
Get more information and apply at https://xpreneurs.io/.