Ah, true love.
Everyone was surprised — even Michael Arrington was left speechless and said he was “discombobulated” — after Julia Hu was proposed to onstage during her special product announcement at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City.
Hu, CEO and founder of LARK, was near the end of her presentation when someone called out that she had one more slide left to go over. As she clicked on the last slide, she screamed as her boyfriend came running up onstage to place a ring on her finger. It was the first ever TechCrunch Disrupt proposal and we caught the whole thing on camera.
It was sweet, touching, and hilarious. For those of you who haven’t had the chance to watch yet, the proposal and the backstage interview are below.
A huge congratulations to Julia and Jeff!
You going to have a seat?
Yes.
So, you have been
working with a company
in China called PCH.
Oh, oh my god.
We’re going to be OK.
Someone put the slide back up.
Oh my god.
ou .
Sorry.
What ‘s happening right now, just so the audience knows.
Did you just get engaged to be married?
Yes Yeah.
You didn’t actually ask her, you just put-
I asked her on the flight Yes .
Do you guys
want to reverse that and redo it?
Let’s try that again.
All right.
Okay.
So.
Julia, will you marry me?
Oh my God, yes.
I’ve only been waiting for it.
I didn’t know that was going to happen.
Me neither.
Now we get back to business.
How did we, how did that get screwed up.
Is the slide, you guys all saw the slide.
I was like forget that, let’s move
on, we got stuff to do
in the middle of your, so That was 11 years, thank you.
Alright.
I’m ready again.
You had no idea that was going to happen?
No, Did you see me?
Yeah, it took me
a little while to figure out what
was going on but Oh my God.
Did you know that was going to happen?
Or you saw the slide.
Alright.
He it just stole my thunder, didn’t he?
You said yes, because you wanted
to get married, right, it was just
in front of everyone, I
mean, that’s a good thing, and everything?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
My PR firm told me to do
that, no, I was just kidding
Did your P.R. firm actually set this up.
Congratulations.
Jeff congratulations.
Thank you.
Hi, it’s Matt Burns with Crunch
Gear, I’m here with Julia Hu
of Lark this fantastic little
sleep aid but first before
we get to this something fantastic happened on our stage.
Oh my god it was so shocking.
you broke an alarm clock but more than that right?
that’s right.
you got engaged?
yeah.
that’s fantastic.
he totally sprung it on .
And everybody, nobody.
Not even Mike?
Not even Mike, and he loves surprises.
So that’s fantastic, well congratulations.
Thanks
Hi, it’s Matt Burns with CrunchGear.
I’m here with Julia Hu of
Lark, this fantastic little sleep aid.
Yup.
But first before we get to this, something fantastic happened on our stage.
Oh my gosh, it was so shocking.
Well, you broke an alarm clock, but more than that, right?
That’s right!
So, you got engaged?
I got engaged.
Yeah.
That’s fantastic.
And-
He totally sprung in on me.
And everybody- nobody knew.
Not even Mike.
Not even Mike and he loves surprises.
So that’s fantastic.
Well congratulations.
Thanks.
So let’s get back to the Lark.
Can you tell me a little about it?
Yeah, actually I started it because of Jeff.
He used to wake me up
every morning, and go
running and so, I
had nothing to do, I wasn’t
gonna, you know, kick him out
on the streets so I made this happened.
Well that’s fantastic that you are engaged now.
And I know.
And now he gets to live a life with Lark.
Yes, exactly.
So it goes on your wrist.
and you launched this last year
at TechCrunch, San Francisco, right?
Yeah, exactly, it was a concept
that we had thought of
through MIT, when I was a
grad student there and we
got together a bunch of engineers,
won a couple of business
plan competitions.
Right.
And then
built this up.
We went stealth after we raised
a round after TechCrunch,
and today the product’s out!
That’s fantastic.
So the-the big news here
is that you working with PC Edge International, right?
Yes, yes.
You are one of their first major
clients, so could you
tell me a little bit about that process
about how from start to
finish went Yeah.
They work with
much much larger companies, they
chose us to partner, to
become their first inaugural
project for PC Edge Accelerator,
which is sort of I thought
that would be the Y Combinator,
but for hardware start ups. So,
you know they came to us.
We had a lot of market data.
We had prototypes but we
had no idea how much
it took to get from concept to product.
Sure.
So they helped with all the product sourcing.
They helped with initial conceptual designs.
They helped with sourcing all the materials.
Yeah, because getting a gadget to market is hard.
Yeah, yeah.
And so they really took a lot the pain out of it.
Exactly.
Making a web app is relatively easy in comparison, right?
Well everything has its challenges,
so, I think we’re really
good at technology innovation, at
software development, all our
online portal and sleep science.
But they’re really good at taking
the headaches away from you
know, what Velcro do we use.
What Velcro did you use?
We actually sourced an extremely soft, breathable Velcro that’s actually like a fabric. And we went to stores all across the US trying to find this; nothing. They found it in two
weeks in China, so.
You know sleep aids have been
out for a while and we’ve
seen quite a few at
CES, but this one’s different in that it doesn’t go on your head.
Yeah well we want you
to sleep well, Right that’s the
thing, So this is hopefully very
invisible that was our
major major concern and we
want it to be something that you could use everyday.
At the fundamental core of it,
lark is a way to
wake up great and not wake anyone else up.
So hopefully it’s solving a pain.
And then f you want
to improve, like you improve
with fitness, then we can
personally coach you through all of our sleep science.
I have two kids, and I do not sleep very well.
Oh my god.
Is his is gonna help me?
Well, so we will help you
to be much more efficient in
your sleep, and also we
will tell you a couple of
tips of being able to
shift your sleep pattern so
that you can sleep and fall asleep earlier in the day perhaps.
So, when you get woken
up in the morning, it might
not be as jarring for
you, or you can put the lark on the kids.
Yeah, that’s what they need.
And see if they can be trained to sleep better.
Man, they need something.
Even Benadryl won’t work.
Oh my god.
Well thanks so much, Julian and Jeff.
Thanks you so much.
Congratulations, so much.
Thank you.
We’re so excited.
Great.
lark.com.
When does it come out.
I’m sorry.
Today.
Today.
So you can order today online
or here at the booths.
It’s one twenty-nine for Lark
and one eighty-nine for Lark Pro,
which includes the seven
day assessment and the personal sleep coach for a year.
Great.
Article source: TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hULcc-kVvmY/