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Once Valued at $3.2B, Wearable Company Jawbone Shuts Down, CEO Launches New Startup: Report (axios.com)
Consumer hardware company Jawbone is being liquidated, according to The Information. From a report: The San Francisco-based company, which once was valued at $3.2 billion by private investors, has hired Sherwood Partners to handle the wind-down process and assume its ongoing litigation with rival FitBit. Jawbone 2.0: Co-founder and CEO Hosain Rahman reportedly has formed a new company, named Jawbone Health Hub, that has hired many of Jawbone's employees and will take over servicing Jawbone's products. BlackRock, which loaned Jawbone $300 million in 2015, has a stake in the new company. No other existing Jawbone investor has a stake in the new startup, with one telling Axios that his firm has been kept in the dark.
When I bought my first Aliph Jawbone headset, I was amazed at the ability of the "noise assassin" to knock down noise. So much so, that I was on the phone during an ice storm, where we had part of our office running on two gasoline generators out in the parking lot. I was on the phone talking to a coworker and turned the noise canceling off and then on and he was amazed that if he didn't know any better, he would never have known the generators were running. Kept with them buying another one that was considerably smaller, but, by the time they came out with "the new era" one, it was a piece of junk. VERY poor battery life, kept disconnecting etc. Sent it back, the replacement didn't work, sent that one back, had poor battery and sound quality. I gave up on them and looked elsewhere. I think they stretched themselves with all the do-dads, speakers, fitness bands, and let their headset part falter. Yeah, a lot of people don't use these, but someone in my line of business NEEDS that type of headset working in a noisy environment and needing both hands free. Hopefully someone will buy/license their noise assassin technology and put it in their headset.