Tim Rosa, CEO of Somnee

In this Q&A, you’ll hear from Tim Rosa, CEO of Somnee, creator of a neurostimulation wearable for better sleep. Merging experience from his time at Fitbit with co-founder Dr. Matthew Walker’s sleep health expertise, Tim discusses product revelations, a sleep aid epidemic, and selection for the NBA’s Launchpad incubator.

Tell us about Somnee.

Tim Rosa: Somnee is pioneering a new era in sleep technology with a neurotech headband that doesn’t just track your sleep — it actively improves it.

Using medical-grade EEG+ sensors to map your brain activity, it delivers proprietary, personalized neurostimulation (tACS) that fine-tunes itself over time to match your unique brain rhythms.

Somnee is the only device of its kind that helps you fall asleep faster (sleep onset), stay asleep longer (sleep maintenance), and improve the overall quality of restorative sleep.

The differentiator is our closed-loop design, level of personalization, and direct approach using tACS versus less-effective forms of neuromodulation. Many sleep products either track or attempt to influence sleep, but few do both effectively while driving all-around improvement.

Our app and sleep journal take it a step further, helping users track patterns to better understand how their sleep quality evolves. That’s something that Somnee co-founder Dr. Matt Walker is big on.

A professor of neuroscience at UC Berkeley and author of Why We Sleep, he loves having both subjective and objective data sets to help connect the dots between daily practices and sleep quality — as opposed to relying heavily on a wearable score from an indirect source for sleep data, like the finger or wrist.

What led you to pursue this opportunity?

TR: I was introduced to Somnee by Dr. Matt Walker and Vinod Khosla (founder of Khosla Ventures). At first glance, the science was impressive, but I wasn’t going to sign on unless I believed in the product and would use it myself, so I asked Vinod if I could test it out.

I’d struggled with sleep for years—I tried everything from CBD gummies to magnesium, melatonin, and even THC—so I was curious about what Somnee could do. On my third night, I fell asleep mid-session. I was shocked. That’s when I knew we had something game-changing on our hands.

Seeing the impact, sleep affects every single one of us, every day — though, most of the time, we fail to see the full effects. Poor sleep affects everything from mood and focus to metabolism, long-term health, and athletic performance. It’s not just about feeling tired; it’s about overall well-being.

So, that’s what motivates me: building something that genuinely makes people’s lives better.

How are you scaling up?

TR: I was hired as the CEO about five years after the initial R&D phase, so my role is to build a world-class team, drive the commercial and growth plans, and turn Somnee into a coveted brand.

My passion has always been launching and scaling beloved products and services. I did this at Fitbit, where we scaled from a niche product to a top-20 consumer brand and global category leader, selling over 140M units.

I’ve always believed that to build great products and brands, you must be obsessed with your customers and win their hearts and minds — understanding their pain points and ensuring every part of the experience resonates with them.

That’s what we’re focusing on right now as the bedrock of Somnee: creating incredible new products that build trust and delight at every touch point.

How big can this get?

TR: As massive as the sleep industry is, a third of Americans still don’t get the quality sleep they need to perform and feel their best. To make matters worse, many of us don’t even realize how damaging a lot of the most popular sleep aids are!

For example, many don’t know that melatonin is a hormone, and there have been massive issues in the supplement industry with inaccurate labels and hidden ingredients. Ambien, meanwhile, should only be used as a short-term medication, and yet millions rely on it for years.

This isn’t just a US problem. The reality is that there hasn’t been a truly effective, safe, long-term solution for sleep issues worldwide — that’s what we hope to change with Somnee.

How do you reach your core customer?

TR: Somnee is for anyone who wants to understand and improve their sleep. We’ve seen everyone from exhausted parents to veterans suffering from decades of insomnia to high-performing CEOs and athletes take their sleep to the next level.

We’re not just looking to sell a product; we’re building a household brand backed by science and validated by the medical community. That’s why we’re prioritizing clinical research and working to align every step of the Somnee journey with what our customers want and care about with their sleep.

The growth and scale will come as we execute for the short term but with a much bigger, longer-term vision.

What’s next on the roadmap?

TR: One of our biggest milestones is our selection for the 2025 class of the NBA Launchpad program — the league’s initiative to enhance athletic performance with emerging technologies.

After an intense evaluation process, Somnee was the only wearable or sleep health company chosen! So, this March, we’ll kick off our pilot cohort study with the NBA to further define how better sleep improves performance. This partnership is a huge moment in validating Somnee’s impact at the highest level.

Beyond elite sports, we want to promote “sleep fitness” for a much broader audience — helping everyday athletes, shift workers, and high-performers improve their sleep without pharmaceuticals.

Since I’ve taken the helm at Somnee, we’ve been laser-focused on optimizing the user experience —r edesigning the app, refining the headband’s form factor, and making the technology more intuitive, functional, and accessible.

With that said, we’re launching category-defining new products and an updated service this year… stay tuned.

Anything else you’d like to share with readers?

TR: For a long time, success was tied to this idea of hustling nonstop — working late, grinding through exhaustion, and wearing sleep deprivation as a badge of honor. But the reality is that approach burns you out. I’ve been there. I’ve gone through it firsthand. And no matter what you think, that approach isn’t sustainable.

What’s exciting now is that we’re seeing a shift. People are starting to realize that sleep isn’t a luxury — it’s fuel. It makes you sharper, more creative, higher performing, and ultimately more successful in the long run.

At Somnee, we believe sleep is the foundation of everything — your health, happiness, focus, energy, and performance levels. When you get it right, everything else falls into place.

We’re here to help people get the best sleep of their lives and feel the difference every single day. Sleep more, live more!

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