Drinking water is the simplest thing we can do to feel our best every day. But with daily distractions, millions of us don’t take care of ourselves the way we should. We simply forget. That’s why we built HidrateMe, a connected water bottle that tracks your water intake and makes sure that you’re hydrated all day long.
The HidrateMe bottle is a 24 oz. – 710 ml. reusable water bottle, made out of BPA free Tritan plastic. It’s dishwasher safe and comes with a leak proof cap. The sensor stick inside the bottle automatically tracks how much you drink throughout the day. It sends information to the Hidrate app on your phone and glows when its time to drink more water. The bottle comes with a replaceable battery that lasts over a year, so you never need to recharge it.
We carry our water bottles with us everywhere, that’s why we designed a bottle that could transition from the office to the gym. It’s a natural extension of yourself.
It’s sleek, elegant, and smart. Surprise! There’s a ripple design under the lid! We love the little things that makes you smile. The HidrateMe has a pour style mouth piece that’s simple to use.
The Hidrate app is fun and easy to use. Here is a little demo video of the app and how the bottle works and syncs via Bluetooth. Plus it glows if you haven’t had anything to drink for an extended period of time to remind you to stay hydrated.
Our app is as friendly and playful as it is easy and effective to use. Oh and the best part, the app is completely FREE and works on iPhone and Android! The app will be available for download winter 2015.
Designed with you in mind, our app has a friendly and thoughtful user interface. Starting with your height, weight, age and activity level the app calculates just how much water you should be drinking throughout the day.
Its easy to see your progress towards your goals, and you also receive reminders if you fall off track. The app also integrates with your wearables to help tune your water goals even more accurately to your activities. Using your location, the app can adjust your daily water goal depending on the temperature, humidity, and elevation of your surroundings.
We’re young entrepreneurs who are passionate about design, community, and the small things in life that help us all feel better. We all met at the University of Minnesota, in the start up capital of The North. Our team includes left to right: Alexander “Ham” Hambrock, Coleman Iverson, Nadya Nguyen, Daniel Worku, and Alexandra Feeken. We’re a team of engineers, designers, marketers, and developers.
In September 2014 our CEO Nadya pulled together a team of fellow University of Minnesota students for the Google Startup weekend in Minneapolis, Minnesota to build the first smart water bottle prototype. In just 54 hours we built a water bottle that tracked water intake and synced to a mobile app on a smartphone.
We won third place and people began asking when the water bottles would be available for purchase. That’s the moment we knew they were on to something. The team worked evenings and weekends for 7 months before being accepted into the Sprint Mobile Health Accelerator powered by Techstars.
We quit our jobs and left everything behind to work on a product that we believed in. The program is a 3 month-long intensive on-site experience in Kansas City, MO in which 10 mobile-health companies selected from around the world receive funding and mentorship to accelerate their businesses.
We reiterated multiple bottle designs before deciding to go with the final Hidrate Me. The lid was another challenge in itself and we 3D printed and tested several before finalizing our design.
Manufacturing the Bottle
Many small companies face difficulties when it comes to manufacturing new products, from design problems to unexpected costs. That’s why we’ve made it a priority from the very beginning to involve manufacturers every step of the way, catching issues before they had a chance to become problems. Members of our team have seen multiple products through from concept to manufacturing.
Shipping in Winter 2015
We plan to place the manufacturing order by the end of June 2015. We’ll be reviewing samples in August and September. December of 2015 / January 2016 is our shipping estimate when we account for both making revisions and getting the first shipment in from the factory.
Battery Life
Our testing shows that the included battery will power the Hidrate Me bottle for well over a year. We are still doing additional testing and tweaking to make sure that the battery life will be at least a year.