This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Kurt Workman, co-founder and CEO of Owlet, the only over-the-counter, FDA-cleared wearable baby monitor. Workman and his co-founders Zach Bomsta, Jordan Monroe and Jacob Colvin met in college and launched Owlet in 2015, building it from $0 to $20 million in revenue in its first year. The company went public in 2021.
Owlet has served more than 2.5 million babies, monitored more than 21 trillion heartbeats and collected two billion hours of sleep data, per the company. Additionally, Owlet just launched its new Baby Safety Task Force, a committee created to raise baby safety standards across the category, in partnership with legislators, clinicians and other brands. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.
I’m a dad of three. My oldest is 12, almost 13, and my youngest is seven. So this product really came from a dad’s perspective, not from an engineer’s or clinician’s. I studied chemical engineering, but it was the wrong kind of engineering for what I ended up doing with the rest of my life.
When my wife was a baby, she had an undiagnosed congenital heart defect. They sent her home from the hospital, and she had a coarctation of the aorta and then a bunch of holes in her heart. Ten days later, her mom just happened to check on her when she was going into cardiac arrest, and they rushed her to the hospital. Luckily, they were able to do heart surgery that saved her life.
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