At Start-A-Factory, we work with many different teams. Our teams are as diverse as the hardware requirements. Therefore, we want to present the startups and projects to you and are happy to tell you about Pauline from Hearable Labs.
The idea behind Hearable Labs is to help headphone companies to build hearables. Pauline and Hearable Labs do this in three different ways: through feasibility studies , engineering services – developing hardware and software for their product – and by licensing hearable technologies that they have already developed. This enables hearables to get to market faster.
The team of Hearable Labs has been working on hearables for many years. Since they worked on these emerging technologies before most people heard of them, they have a head start in the field, for example knowing what works and what doesn’t. Their core competencies are in electronic engineering, digital signal processing, and psychoacoustics – all essential skills to build hearables that look, work, and sound great.
“We’ve won a lot of prizes for our hearable designs, most notably winning the MIT Grandhack in the US in 2019 – one of the biggest hackathons in the world. I think this is because the idea of hearables really resonates with people, and because we back that up with a solid team and a realistic plan for making this future we all talk about a reality.”
Pauline O'Callaghan
Pauline is from Ireland, and studied electrical engineering and physics. She moved to Berlin to start Hearable Labs because she wanted to join the great hardware start-up scene over there. Which she did by joining Start-A-Factory at Fraunhofer IZM. The collaboration with them is beneficial for her, as she said, because she and her Start-Up have access to experts in different engineering fields, especially with the group Wearable Electronics.
Future Talk: Pauline’s team is developing futuristic technologies with a huge potential to improve our daily lives. Hearables could replace smartphones as our primary way to access information when we’re on the go - keeping us in the real world with our heads up and hands free.
Curious now? Read the full interview with Polly on our Real IZM blog here!