Illustration credit: A.E. Kieren
Nearly five years after Vu founded Misfit, he is widely regarded as one of the legitimately transformative minds within the realm of wearables technology. It may well be in his blood: Vu revealed last year that, as a child, he built and wore “a vest with embedded speakers and a special pocket to plug in a Walkman.”
Truly, Vu has always strived to make wearables, well, wearable. “All the science in the world won’t save us if we can’t reliably gather data,” he told MM&M in 2014. Misfit’s product line incorporates the Shine 1 & 2 and Flash wrist-worn fitness trackers/sleep monitors. But as Vu points out, “Wearables are only the first step in a bigger movement toward more connected devices and ambient monitoring.” To that point, Misfit has added Link (an activity monitor/smart button), Bolt (a wireless smart bulb) and Beddit (a sleep monitor).
Misfit was acquired by Fossil Group in November for $260 million.
