The World's Brightest Lamp
My next start up bet, Brighter has built an incredible floor lamp that can transform the lighting industry, increase well-being and elevate mood.
In the ever-evolving landscape of technology and innovation, finding a product that stands out is a rare gem.
Brighter, the world’s brightest lamp, boasts an astonishing 50,000 lumens. It is not just a breakthrough in lighting technology but, in my opinion, a unique investment opportunity, which is why I’m proud to say it’s the latest deal I’m syndicating through WHealthier.
(Note: this round is already closed and I syndicated it outside of AngelList. It is now live on Indigogo and has raised ~$250,000 in just a few days. You can save hundreds on a lamp at the link above).
Feel free to join my syndicate or reply to this email if you want to be notified of future deals like Brighter).
The Brighter Advantage
Lumens are used to measure brightness. The average desk lamp is 1,000 lumens. Brighter, by contrast, is 50,000 lumens, 50x times brighter than a standard bulb.
This level of luminosity opens up myriad applications, from commercial settings in high-end apartments, whose inhabitants care about their well-being to work-from-home professionals who want a more empowering setup to co-working spaces like WeWork that want to stand out from the competition.
Brighter is already being demoed at the Commons in San Francisco, with overwhelmingly positive feedback.
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Wellness Lighting: An Untapped Market
Brighter is swimming in a blue ocean, a completely untapped market of high-end, wellness lighting that currently doesn’t exist.
Founder and CEO Simon Berens recounted his story to me. He was on lockdown during Covid living in NYC and struggling to get adequate sunlight. After relentless searching online, he couldn’t find a home appliance that would give him the lights he was looking for, so he resorted to stringing together a ridiculous series of lights to create the same effect.
After posting his struggles online, a community gathered together and shared similar frustrations. Compelled to bring a solution to the market, Simon founded Brighter.
The high-end lighting market is projected to be 30 billion dollars, with the smart indoor lighting sector growing at 21% annually.
According to a study published on PubMed, more than 1 billion people don’t get enough sunlight, leading to fatigue, depression, and even near-sightedness! (300 years ago almost nobody was nearsighted. Now nearly 50% of the world is! This stratospheric rise in prevalence can be attributed to people spending more and more time indoors without bright light.
What’s more, 260 million people work from home, giving Brighter great potential to tap into a rapidly growing and under-served niche.
Technological Superiority
At the heart of Brighter's groundbreaking performance is cutting-edge LED technology. This innovation ensures superior brightness, remarkable energy efficiency, and longevity.
Brighter lights are completely UV-free and boast a 95+ color rendering index (CRI), which measures the ability of a light source to accurately reproduce the colors of the object it illuminates.
Brighter is also highly customizable — it’s fully dimmable between 0 to 50,000 lumens, and the color temperature is adjustable from 1800K to 6500K. Brighter integrates with smart home systems to automate adjustments throughout the day. For example, users can set the Brighter lamp to follow the brightness and color temperature of the sun from sunrise to sunset.
This flexibility lets users tune their circadian rhythms and sleep patterns for optimal well-being.
It’s both practical and elegant. The upward-facing torchiere design, for example, allows for easy diffusion but also enhances aesthetics.
Light therapy lamps, which are a pain to use and also ugly, are often ineffective. People are supposed to stare at them, 12 inches away, for 30 minutes a day. Who does that?
With Brighter, you can strategically place the lamp in your home office, and go about your business. Research shows that exposure to bright light can have a positive impact on Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
Go to Market Strategy
Brighter will start by targeting two core markets. The first are people with seasonal affective disorder (SAD). For them, Brighter is a pain killer. According to a light therapy researcher, getting people to use a light therapy lamp for more than a week during trials was ‘basically impossible.’ With a pressing need and no viable solution, SAD patients will be excited early adopters.
Second are tech professionals, freelancers, and entrepreneurs who work from home. This hyper-specific focus allows Brighter to cater their messaging accordingly and target their ideal customer directly through ads.
While testing Instagram ads, for example, their primary target was programmers. This attracted several top engineers from companies like Amazon, Meta, and Google, founders of YC backed startups, and executives from mid-sized scale ups.
Targeting these founders, executives, and top employees facilitates the business-to-business (B2B) aspect of Brighter, allowing them to sell to offices.
Imagine an executive gets a Brighter lamp for their house, and realizes how much it improves their day. Inevitably they’ll get one for the office too. Once employees experience Brighter in the office, they’ll want it for their homes too. They may even buy multiple, one for the office, and another for the living room.
The greatest compliment you can give is sharing this with someone you know. Thanks so much!
Investment Thesis
Okay, so the light is cool and all, but does the company itself have legs and is it suitable for investment? I believe so. Here’s why.
High Growth Potential: The light therapy market alone is greater than $1B, and both smart indoor home lighting and high-ending lighting are each $30B industries, but Brighter doesn’t stop there.
It can tap into the global lighting market, both through commercial and personal growth avenues. It appeals to the increasing market of wellness, which is set to reach an astounding 7 trillion by 2025, according to Statista.Asymmetry: Those who follow me know I love asymmetric bets, one where the upside potential far outweighs the downside risk. Brighter qualifies. If Brighter captures a mere modest 1% of the high-end lighting market, it will generate $30,000,000 per year.
At a 10x valuation, that’s a $300,000,000 valuation.Traction: Brighter has raised $250,000 on Indiegogo, and has an email list of over 14,000 people.
The versatility of Brighter’s applications ensures a broad customer base. From home offices and living rooms to thousand-person mega company offices, the scalable nature of this technology caters to diverse lighting needs.Exit Potential: Since Brighter plans to run a lean operation and be a profitable company from the beginning, it will be a natural target for private equity, which often acquires direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands.
Conclusion
Brighter is not just illuminating spaces; it's lighting up a path to a brighter, more sustainable future.
For investors such as myself, I believe this represents a golden opportunity to be part of transformative technology in an untapped and growing market, led by a driven founder.
As the world moves towards smarter solutions with an emphasis on wellness, Brighter stands out as a shining example of innovation and perfectly fits my investment thesis.
Feel free to reach out with any questions by responding to this email, or drop me a comment below.
Alec