This Startup Spent Seven Years Designing a Cup
Cups: we all use them. But how do we know what's splashing around inside? Thanks to Vessyl, humanity will never again struggle to remember what we just poured into our glass.
Justin Lee, co-founder and CEO of Vessyl's parent company, lays out the problem we face:
Within this field of consumer health, we've seen these really interesting activity trackers. And at our company, we think they are really powerful. But what we consume—you know, our food, our beverages—that's as important, if not more important, than burning calories through exercise. To solve this problem, we're introducing our first product: the Vessyl.
Vessyl isn't just a cup: it's a 13-ounce, Bluetooth-enabled, smartphone-syncing, battery-powered supercup. Just dump any beverage from its low-tech, labeled container into Vessyl, and the supercup's display will light up, telling you exactly what you are drinking.
According to The Verge's Ellis Hamburger, who was given an hour to experiment with pouring liquids into a cup, Vessyl's drink detection tech is damn accurate.
Let's cut to the chase: while I only had an hour with a Vessyl prototype, I tried nearly a dozen beverages in it — and it successfully identified all of them. Within 10 seconds, the device, which currently resembles more of a Thermos than a finished product, recognized Crush orange soda, Vitamin Water XXX, Tropicana orange juice, Gatorade Cool Blue, plain-old water, and a few other beverages, all by name. Yes, this cup knows the difference between Gatorade Cool Blue and Glacier Freeze.
All that sounds pretty pointless, unless your brain routinely fails to write to disk. But the company claims beverage identification will help users make healthy decisions "in real time" by monitoring how many calories, fats, and protein they slurp up.
The main goal is to actually help you make healthier and more informed decisions in real time. Little by little these decisions translate into big changes over time, so much so, it can transform your life.
The Vessyl has been seven years in the making, and the team here at Mark One has been working so hard to create a product that can really make an impact on your life.
All that from a $199 cup.