Where We’ve Been

August 21st, 2015. That was the date I officially started my journey leading Pzizz. The company is over 16 years old, and has been through all sorts of roller-coaster rides over the years. It used to be hardware, then desktop software, then first-generation mobile apps. But when I came on board all of that was ancient history.

The company wasn’t making any money. There was no team to speak of. The apps had quite a few bugs, accumulated from a lack of consistent updates.

But people loved Pzizz. You could read it in the thank you emails and posts on social media. Pzizz had made such a positive impact on so many people’s lives. Pzizz, at its core, had so much potential to do good, but it needed a new start.

So that’s what we did. Day by day, brick by brick. We formed a new team of incredibly talented people to rebuild Pzizz from the ground up, while reaching out and engaging with the original minds behind the product to fuse the old and the new into something we could all be proud of.

It wasn’t easy. Actually, it was insanely difficult. But we pushed through. We managed to be accepted into one of the top startup accelerators in London. After being told “no” over and over and over again by nearly every investor, we raised enough money to begin redevelopment.

We engaged the Pzizz community and got them involved and excited again. We asked users what they wanted for the future of Pzizz, and boy did they respond in a big way. We got great feedback from people on what they cared about and used that as the template to guide us for the next generation of Pzizz.

Also, with our dorky sense of humor, we started something called the Pzizz Pioneer Program (The Pzioneer Program!) that saw over a thousand users from around the world take part in helping shape our destiny. It’s an incredible program and I can’t thank all of the Pzioneers enough for taking part in it. You guys are rock stars.

We’ve had some big wins along the way. JK Rowling gave us a big thumbs up on Twitter. We were featured in WIRED magazine. We partnered with Metronaps to power the audio experience in their nap pods. We tripled the number of downloads, and doubled the growth, without spending a dime in marketing. And so much more. It was a whirlwind year.

And now it’s time for us to reveal what we’ve been working on for you…

What We Built You

Based on all the survey feedback you gave us, in-depth user interviews, and our own vision for where the sleep industry needs to go, we’ve created an all new Pzizz.

The new music system was built by Rob, one of the foremost experts in functional music and one of the same guys behind Inception the App, and the Dark Knight Rises Z+(each for their respective movie franchises).

There’s 10 times more musical content to experience (we call them ‘Dreamscapes’ now). They were made by Ethan, our brilliant in-house composer/musician/audio engineer and his brother Elliot, who works in experimental psychology and helped guide Ethan with the latest research in psycho-acoustics. They both did incredible work and I’m constantly amazed by how beautiful (and effective!) the dreamscapes turned out.

The new apps were developed by our team in Toronto, a group of world-class iOS/Android/Web developers and designers. Kevin, Tehsin, Dawson, Alex, Miranda, Paul, Emily and Siena did wonders on the UI/UX and created a new technical infrastructure that we can do some magical things with (more about that in the next section).

Here’s a list of all the things we made you in this new version so far:

• All new ‘Dreamscapes’ (music) to listen to! Ten times more! With more added every month so that every time you use Pzizz you’ll have a distinctly different musical experience right from the beginning.
• Female voiceover for those nights where “Michael” just isn’t doing it for you!
• Sleep module ‘wake-up section’ to wake up feeling EVEN MORE awesome in the morning. We spend three and a half minutes gently waking you up from slumber
• Pzizz history, to keep track of what you’ve listened to (and even listen to it again!)
• ‘Skip Dreamscape’ button so you can stop hearing sounds you don’t like
• Upped our alarm options with more built-in alarms and also the ability to control alarm vibration
• Separate music and voice fade out timers so you can fade Pzizz to silence after a period of time
• The sleep module now has the ability to do ‘Suggestions;’ comforting words while you sleep
• A brand new streamlined user interface and experience
• Create an account! So you can sign in from any device and have your Pzizz settings and favorites come with you
• You can change the audio settings live while you are in session (amazing for finding the perfect volume between music and voice)
• And more! Go explore it :)

Where We’re Going From Here

This is really just the beginning. We’ll be pushing out monthly updates to the platform, including new dreamscapes, scripts, features and all sorts of other goodies.

Here are the things we are actively working on right now:

• The ability for the app to detect your heartbeat and frequency of breath incredibly accurately without touching you or needing a wearable or putting the phone on your bed. We can then use this technology to understand your sleep phases and quality, and create features like a sleep cycle alarm clock and data dashboard to give you insights on your health and well being.
• Focus Module; music for work, to help you be more productive
• More Dreamscapes
• More voice scripts

The broader vision is to create an intelligent system that is personalized to you that keeps getting better each time you use it. At the end of your sessions we’ll ask you to rate how it went. We will then take those ratings and combine them with the feedback from the sensors to continuously optimize the experience for you over time. Eventually we’ll get to the point when we can personalize it in real time, based on how your body is responding to the sound.

We have a ways to go to get there, but the goal is to build the best solution in the world for sleep, focus and a host of other areas. It’s going to be an amazing journey, and while it’s a big task, it’s doable, and we’ll get there one step at a time.

Your Discount For Being Awesome

Thank you for reading this incredibly long message. And for reading all the messages that came before it. And for being a user and loving Pzizz. Thank you for the years you’ve been with us. Thank you for all the emails, facebook posts, tweets, and testimonials. Thank you for being a beta-tester. Thank you for believing in us, and for believing in the future of Pzizz.

In recognition and gratitude, we’re giving you a big discount on the launch of the new Pzizz. It’s about 60% off the retail price (it will vary slightly by your country and currency).

[Discount link removed. If you’d like to redeem, please email Support@Pzizz.com]

Note About Pricing

Any time a product switches from being free to being paid, it’s a sensitive issue. Here is my commitment to you: all the features and sounds that were part of the old Pzizz will continue to be free, as a gift to you. If you believe in what we’re doing (bringing great sleep to the world!) and want to see us continue to update and develop Pzizz, we’ve given you the ability to support us within the new app for the new features and content.

The pricing is based on a subscription model. We choose this model because it will allow us to continue supporting Pzizz for the long term and building you great additions (which will be added to your subscription at no extra cost).

The Pzizz subscription has monthly, yearly or three-year options, with discounts the longer you subscribe for. I know some users have voiced concerns that they don’t like subscriptions, which is why we created an affordable three-year option that doesn’t auto-renew; that way you can pay once and forget about it for quite awhile.

Seriously this post is still going?

Alright, alright, I’m done… for now! The iOS app should be available as an update to your existing app shortly (if it’s not there already). Download it and let us know what you think! As always, just email me back with comments, feedback, jokes, quotes, and whatever else you think up :)

Try Pzizz. We design soothing audio that’s clinically proven to help you get better rest. Available on iOS and Android.