345 | Finding Hidden Opportunities in Customer Behavior | with Sam Shames

Sam Shames is the Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Embr Labs, the company behind the Embr Wave: a wristband that heats and cools to help people manage comfort, sleep, stress, and hot flashes.

What started as a project in an MIT prototyping competition turned into a 12-year journey building a hardware company from scratch. Along the way, Sam and his co-founders grew Embr Labs to 200,000+ units sold, $50M+ in lifetime revenue, and $66M in venture funding. A $100K Kickstarter goal became $630K in sales, powered by a loyal community they engaged long before launch.

Sam’s path blends technical innovation with customer-driven growth. From proving the science behind their product, to surviving on $2K a month while raising capital, to pivoting into a hardware subscription model, he’s learned what it really takes to scale an ecommerce hardware brand.

Whether you’re building a DTC product, validating a new idea, or evolving your business model to better serve customers, Sam offers an unfiltered look at the grind, the pivots, and the lessons behind turning a student prototype into a category-defining company.

In This Conversation We Discuss:

• [00:42] Intro
• [01:03] Sharing early lessons in subscription
• [01:34] Connecting through founder communities
• [02:26] Brainstorming solutions to real pain points
• [03:21] Receiving thousands of customer emails
• [03:58] Deciding to sell when demand was clear
• [04:52] Realizing experience changes decisions
• [05:14] Understanding the customer segments
• [06:34] Raising angel and pre-seed funding
• [07:41] Building community through early feedback
• [08:53] Episode Sponsors: Electric Eye, Heatmap, Grow
• [12:05] Preparing manufacturing before crowdfunding
• [14:10] Adapting playbooks as channels change
• [15:36] Spotting misalignment in value capture
• [18:00] Screening customers to limit fraud
• [19:08] Partnering with experts on subscriptions
• [19:51] Highlighting temperature as a daily pain point
• [21:32] Showing value instantly on first try

Resources:

• Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
• Personal temperature control embrlabs.com/ 
• Follow Sam Shames linkedin.com/in/samshames 
• Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/connect
• Clear, real-time data built for ecommerce optimization heatmap.com/honest 
• The Premier Conference for Ecommerce Operators joingrow.com 

If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Transcript

Sam Shames

Obviously, we had no idea what we’re really signing up for. But that's the magic in some way of just being willing to say yes without actually realizing how difficult it's going to be.  

Chase Clymer

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating  real results. 

I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.

Let's get on with the show.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And today I'm welcoming the show Sam Shames. Sam is the co-founder and chief revenue officer at Embr Labs, the maker of the Embr Wave Intelligent cooling and warming wristband. Sam, welcome to the show. 

Sam Shames

Thanks so much for having me, Chase. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. I'm excited to chat. You were one of the first guests of many that I met at SubSummit last week. But by the time this comes out, it'll probably be a couple months ago.  But how did you enjoy the conference? 

Sam Shames

It was great. We're relatively new to the subscription business. So talking to other founders and entrepreneurs who are further along was really illuminating. And I just found everyone to be so friendly and open. Very much rising tide, lift all boats, let's help each other out. And that's just a great environment to be in. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah, it's one of my favorite conferences to go to. And you are correct. Everyone wants to help everyone. It's a great little hidden gem. And I believe next year, they're moving to Kansas City. So put it on your calendars, everybody. It's a great show. I'll be there doing a live podcast again. But Sam, for those that are unfamiliar with Embr Labs and Embr Wave. Can you quickly tell them what the product is? What is it that you guys are selling? 

Sam Shames

Absolutely. So this is an Embr Wave. It is a wristband that heats and cools to help you feel more comfortable, help with sleep, stress, and hot flashes. So with the push of a button, this device actually cools or warms this temperature sensitive spot on your wrist. And with our technology, we can actually have an overall whole body effect. It's very similar to just how dipping your toes in the ocean on a hot day makes you feel better. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. Now, take me back in time. Where did this idea come from? 

Sam Shames

My co-founders and I met as engineering students at MIT. And we came up with the idea through a prototyping contest. We were brainstorming ideas in the lab. And it was so cold from over air conditioning  that we had to put on sweatshirts in June to stay comfortable. And we thought like, “This is crazy. There's got to be a better way. What if we could just heat and cool ourselves directly?" So that was the key question. And then from there was, “Well, what if we try to make a wristband that heats and cools?”

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. How long did it go from this pseudo hack day experiment until you had a prototype? How long were you guys noodling on this? 

Sam Shames

It was over the course of a summer that we built our first prototypes and were really surprised at how well it worked. And then everything changed in October of 2013 when we won the prototyping contest. The idea went totally viral. 

Chase Clymer

Well, you got to tell me about that. 

Sam Shames

So yeah, we won the contest. Our goal going in was never to start a company. It was to win the $10,000 grand prize and fully pay for all the beer and pizza we could want for a semester. But after we won, the standard  MIT news office story about the contest went out. And next thing you know, it got picked up and I'm doing an interview with Wired. And from that media attention, we started to get thousands of emails from people all over the world saying two things. One, temperature is the biggest pain point in my life. And two, when can I buy this? 

Chase Clymer

Well, that's amazing. It's extremely easy proof of concept, finding product marketing fit. What was the timeline between these press articles going out? You starting to get inundated with these emails to like, guess we're building a company. 

Sam Shames

It's probably about a month. So it kept coming. We were talking to people within the MIT ecosystem and they were saying, “Oh, are you guys going to do a startup?” And this was 2013. So it wasn't quite as sort of obvious that that was the path as it is today. Entrepreneurship wasn't quite at the forefront the way it is today. 

But just more and more folks kept reaching out and eventually we were like, “Well, if people are saying they want to buy this, we should probably make a product to sell them and make a company.” Obviously, we had no idea what we're really signing up for. But that's the magic in some way of just being willing to say yes without actually realizing how difficult it's going to be. 

Chase Clymer

Oh, that's a common theme that comes up in the podcast. It's like if you knew what you knew now, would you ever do this? And everyone's like, “No.” But not knowing is the only reason I did it. It's like that blind faith that it will all work out as a young entrepreneur. When you know just enough, it's almost that one principle, you know, just enough to think you're smart, but you don't know anything at all, really.  

Sam Shames

I can definitely relate to that feeling. 

Chase Clymer

What were the steps to turning this into a business and launching whatever the first version of the product was?  

Sam Shames

So it really ended up being 3 key steps. But we didn't really know it at the time. At the time, right after we went viral, we thought, “Oh yeah, how hard can it be to launch a product?” Well, basically, we're six months away from launching, then dot, dot, dot, we're going to get acquired. 

This is going to be a fun year and a half, two year journey. It's obviously been 12 years now, but even just to get the product to market was four years. So during that time from 2013 to 2017, we were again focused on three things. So first was really understanding the market. Who was our customer going to be of the folks who emailed us? What were the different segments of potential customers?

What were the different needs? Who were we best positioned to serve? The second piece was actually understanding science. Why is it that we thought this worked so well? Is it just the placebo effect or is there something deeper going on? And how does understanding the science actually inform the design and the requirements? And then the third piece was actually iterative prototyping. So with hardware, it was actually physically assembling different prototypes, taking them and getting user feedback and kind of going through those cycles.

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. And then to support the company in those 4 years, did you take funding? Was it bootstrapped? How did you survive? 

Sam Shames

We did have some early funding. So we won the $10,000 prize. This is October 2013. We're still students at MIT. That following summer, summer 2014, we did an accelerator that MIT ran. And so we were able to get some funding through that.

Then we started to do some, basically the contest circuit. We ended up being finalists in a wearable contest that Intel did. And so that provided some more non-dilutive capital. Then in 2015, we were able to basically raise a little bit of angel money. The time we're paying ourselves $2,000 a month and coming out of college had sort of felt like we could make that work at the time. And then, ultimately by the end of 2015, we had enough proof of concept with the prototypes, with the market research, with science to be able to raise a pre-seed round and actually set to fund the product development. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. And so 4 years in the science, the prototyping, and looking and researching your customers, how did that impact the actual product launch in the go-to-market?

Sam Shames

Well, it ended up being much more successful than we could have expected. So I think we did those things well and that we really designed the product around and for a specific customer, we engaged them in the process and built the community. So we launched the product via Kickstarter and our goal was to do $100,000 in sales and we ended up doing $630,000 in sales. So we had a really successful campaign and I think a lot of that was the fact that we had had a community of potential customers following us along over the years, the journey, giving updates, trying units. 

So when the time came to say, “Hey, we're launching this.” They were ready to support us. So  ultimately, kind of one of the pieces of advice that I always give to all founders, but especially hardware founders is, to really stay close to your customer. It's so easy to fall in love with technology. But then if you make something that doesn't really have market demand or market pull, you're far less likely to be successful.

Chase Clymer

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Chase Clymer

I've heard from other  founders that have launched on Kickstarter and hit that virality where it was more successful than they thought. Obviously, it's great to have more money in the bank, but it also is now you have more that you need to deliver. Was there anything with the size of the order that you had to place that made it a little more difficult? 

Sam Shames

Yeah, I'm glad you asked. So we, over the years leading up to our Kickstarter, had studied very closely what that other hardware companies were doing. And the pattern we saw again and again was when a company goes on Kickstarter, it meets a goal or it exceeds its goal. It's inevitably not actually prepared to make the orders. And then it's a year late. So you've ended up alienating your best customers because they thought they were getting something a year after you promised it, like a year after they got it back. In fact, a year arrives and you don't deliver for another year.

So we very purposely tried to do it differently. And what we did was we actually started manufacturing before Kickstarter. So part of the reason it went for years is that we finished our product design and that's when most companies start and do the Kickstarter. We said, no, let's finish our product design. Let's find our manufacturing partner. Let's actually build units in production and see, can we actually build the design? Which turned out to be absolutely critical because the initial answer was no.

You know, we had multiple rounds of failed bills with our contract manufacturer because the design was not actually ready for, as they say, design for manufacturing. Only after we had successfully produced a hundred units with production processes on at the factory, did we then go launch the Kickstarter. 

What that meant though, is that we knew what our cost would be. We knew what our manufacturing capacity was. And so when we got orders that were significantly higher, we were able to not just deliver, but actually deliver early. So one thing we're super proud of is we shipped our Kickstarter unit 6 months ahead of schedule. And to this day, we still don't know of another hardware company that's done that. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. Alright. Now, here's another common question. When people have a Kickstarter success, how do you pivot that into growing an actual direct-to-consumer business? How do you get customers outside of the Kickstarter ecosystem? 

Sam Shames

Yeah, it's a great question. And it's really difficult, obviously. Customer acquisition turns out to be the rate limiting step of most businesses once they've developed the product. We tried a number of different things over the years. Early on, it was primarily paid marketing, primarily with Facebook as a channel and using Google. Over time, we really tried to diversify our paid channels.

At this point, we've done everything from direct response television to  paid social to  out of home to direct mail. So we kind of tried that. We've been really successful as well with PR. We actually just had a great spot last week on ABC's The View. And we also try to do our own media and work with partners and try to do sort of referrals and things like that. So you really have to have a multi-pronged strategy. And you have to be willing to adapt. The media playbooks that worked in 2018-2019 are not the same as what worked in 2022. And certainly not the same as what works in 2025. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. And speaking of pivoting and changing and evolving, and what you alluded to at the beginning of the conversation and your reason to be at SubSummit is you're transitioning into a subscription model a bit. So how did that come about? How does it play into the wearable?  Let's talk about that growth avenue for the business. 

Sam Shames

Yeah, absolutely. So we have had a lot of success selling devices. We've shared publicly that we've sold over 200,000 units. So huge success, especially as a new product category. And what we saw as customers were using and loving the product, using it for 5-6 hours a day, using it for multiple years. And on the one hand, that's amazing. 

On the other hand, it felt like there was a misalignment between the value creation for the customer and the value that we were capturing in a way that ultimately was impacting the ability of the business to reach profitability and continue to invest in R&D and invest in new products. And so we thought, what would it look like to evolve the business model so that we're better aligning with our long-term relationship with our customers? 

And obviously we saw what Whoop had done. We saw what Aura had done and we realized, okay, there's clearly a software component. And we're working on some ideas there, but we even looked at like, is there something we can do that's even simpler? And that led us to this idea of a hardware subscription. 

So rather than buying and owning the device outright, we allowed people to basically rent it through a subscription for $20 a month. Or they can start for only $20, they can cancel anytime, they can have as long a shorter duration of their time. And we saw just immediate product market fit for that specific model.

Interestingly enough, customers told us that they really valued the ability to access the  product for an affordable monthly payment and the ability to cancel anytime. So actually specifically saying, we had offered buy now pay later, but specifically letting it be, you know, a low monthly price with the ability to cancel was a unique benefit that really differentiated this subscription. So we grew that business over and we launched it in 2024 and we grew that business from basically zero to about 15,000 subscribers, reaching about a 4 million ARR run rate and saw incredible lifetime value, really strong gross margins and unit economics. And ultimately saw the benefits from an ongoing relationship with our customers. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah, it's amazing. And it's also a strategy that I don't think I've heard before on the podcast. What is the average value of one of the units? And I think the first thing a listener might be like, “What if people are just gonna steal this thing? What happens? I can't give away my multi-hundred dollar thing for $20 a month.”

Sam Shames

Yeah, it's a fair question. So we sell the product for $2.99. And the subscription starts at $20 a month for a refurbished unit, $25 for a new one. We're absolutely concerned about people stealing it. And look, there are bad actors. We screen customers upfront, do a fair amount of it, but it's not foolproof. 

And it's something you have to be willing to acknowledge is going to occur and build into your model, knowing that you can get it down. As you get more data, you can better screen customers. Ultimately, though, you have to look at that as it's a cost of doing business and is the upside from the vast majority of people who you're going to have that long-term relationship with. How does that compare? And in our case, we're fortunate that that math works out very favorably.

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. And now, did you guys homebrew this solution or are using a technology partner to help service this style of retention? 

Sam Shames

Yeah, we did work with a technology partner. Their startup is called Fragile. They were amazing. Their whole specialty is helping hardware companies set up hardware subscriptions and looking at all of the nuances from that customer screening to the accounting and tracking your assets to messaging and customer portals. So they not only helped us get to market significantly faster,  but they really helped us avoid some common mistakes because of their experience executing this playbook.  

Chase Clymer

That's fantastic. Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about around the Embr Waves or the future of Embr Labs as a company that you think would resonate with our audience?

Sam Shames

I'd say the thing I always love to talk about, Chase, is that we all have a relationship with temperature. Our customers consistently tell us that temperature is the biggest pain point in their life, but every one of us has experiences when temperature is a pain point. Whether it's the moments in their life when they're directly feeling too hot or too cold, or moments when you're feeling stressed and out of control and you don't actually even realize it, but the right sensation of warmth in your cooling can really help. 

So I always just encourage people to try to bring a little more mindfulness to their thermal experience. Notice during the day, when are the moments when your feet are cold or your hands are cold and how is that making you feel overall? Or when are the moments when you're sipping a hot drink or a cold drink and you notice that, wow, that sensation really changes how you feel? Because in becoming more aware of that, you start to develop the ability to take action. And that's simple as the basis. 

This is a device that warms and cools on demand and it lets you use that sensation to help yourself feel better. And so, you know, I see huge potential to really, you know, help people incorporate temperature into a health and wellness practice in a way that goes beyond cold plunges or saunas. Those are great. Don't get me wrong, but there's, you know, 23 and a half other hours of the day when you can be using temperature in a more intentional way to help you better achieve your peak state.

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. And I just want to bring up when we first met, just how you just put it on. You'll know what it does immediately. And you put it on my wrist and immediately cooled it and I was like, “This is the best demo I've ever experienced.” 

Sam Shames

Oh, thanks. 

Chase Clymer

It does work. It's a fantastic unit. It's very slick. If I'm listening to this podcast and I want to check it out for myself, either maybe check out your subscription offering or just buy the thing out. Where should I go? What should I do? 

Sam Shames

Yeah, you should go to embrlabs.com or just directly, you can Google us. But I know a lot of marketers try to go direct, always good to avoid having to pay any Google tax. And, you know, we offer a 60 day return policy, so it's not for you, you can send it back. And of course, the subscription is also a great way to just, you know, for 20 bucks, get started and see if it's a good product for you or the person in your life who is always complaining about temperature.

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. And just for the listeners out there, it's Embr Labs without the second E. So EMBRLABS.com. 

Chase Clymer

Awesome. Sam, thank you so much for coming on the show today.  

Sam Shames

My pleasure, Chase. Thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate the opportunity.  

Chase Clymer

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

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Until next time!