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COREDUMP #017: Building and Scaling a Startup in the Ultra-Competitive Health Wearables Market
Chapters
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| Intro & Teasers
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| From Software to Hardware: The Leap of Faith
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| The Harsh Realities of Hardware
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| Iterating Fast Without Breaking People
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| Redefining A/B Testing in Hardware
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| Why Ultrahuman Built Its Own Factory
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| Scaling Production Across Continents
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| Managing Complexity: 20 Hardware Revisions in a Year
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| Firmware Velocity & Observability with Memfault
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| Health Tech Meets Regulation
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| Shared Codebases & Fast Iteration Across Products
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| Building the Machines That Build the Rings
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| Responsible AI & The Future of Health Wearables
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| Closing Reflections & Key Takeaways
Listen to the Podcast
About the Webinar
In this Coredump Session, François Baldassari and Chris Coleman sit down with Ultrahuman co-founder Vatsal Singhal to unpack what it takes to build and scale a hardware startup in the fiercely competitive health wearable market. From transitioning from software to hardware to building responsibly with AI and machine learning, Vatsal shares what it means to blend deep engineering rigor with a mission to improve human performance. This conversation explores the challenges, surprises, and future of health-tech innovation at the edge.
Key Takeaways:
- How Ultrahuman transitioned from a software-first mindset to mastering complex hardware development.
- Lessons learned moving from large-scale software systems to building precision-focused health wearables.
- Why building hardware for health requires a fundamentally different level of accountability and rigor.
- The role of machine learning at the edge and how it enables better, faster insights while managing battery and compute tradeoffs.
- How responsible use of AI in health applications shapes product design and user trust.
- The importance of rapid iteration cycles and adopting software methodologies in hardware innovation.
- Insights into how Ultrahuman’s internal teams use AI not just in engineering, but across all business functions.
- A look at what’s next for health-tech — and where innovation is heading in wearables and bio-sensing.
Speakers
Co-Founder, Ultrahuman
Vatsal Singhal
Vatsal Singhal is an experienced Co-Founder with a strong background in consumer tech and new-age technologies. He is currently the Co-Founder of Ultrahuman, a company that specializes in developing innovative products that help people improve their physical and mental health. Vatsal has a keen eye for product/program management and a strong business acumen, which makes him an asset to any organization. Before founding Ultrahuman, Vatsal worked as the Associate Vice President and Head of Product and Engineering for the listing business at Zomato, where he was responsible for managing the big data platform. Prior to that, he co-founded Runnr, a B2B last-mile logistics platform that helps SMEs in India book, track, and manage customer deliveries. Runnr employs more than 1.5 lakh people and is present in more than 150 cities. Vatsal has a Bachelor of Engineering in Information Science from PES and has completed his schooling from SAJS.
Founder & CEO, Memfault
François Baldassari
François Baldassari is the CEO and Founder of Memfault. An embedded software engineer by trade, François was driven to start Memfault by his passion for tooling and automation in software engineering. Prior to Memfault, he ran the firmware team at Oculus and built the operating system at Pebble. François has a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Brown.
Co-Founder & CTO, Memfault
Chris Coleman
Chris Coleman is the CTO and Co-Founder of Memfault. Prior to founding Memfault, Chris was an embedded software engineer at Pebble and Fitbit where he led efforts across the firmware stack and developed a reputation for tracking down and fixing challenging firmware bugs. That, coupled with his passion for using tooling to efficiently deliver high-quality hardware products, drove him to start Memfault.