Optiks started in the garage of one of its owners, Jenny and Matt Michelsen. The idea for the glasses was born out of one woman's frustration with a complaining husband and worry about the eyes of a boy seemingly tethered to a computer and video games. Jenny Michelsen listened for months to her husband, Matt, a hedge fund manager, complaining about the headaches he got after hours of sitting in front of six computer screens. The headaches, the Michelsens would learn, were a symptom of computer vision syndrome, a collection of minor ailments that build up over time.
As the Rancho Santa Fe woman urged her husband to see an eye doctor, she wondered whether her 3-year-old son, Gunnar, was getting a jump-start on similar problems. If she and her husband believed the computers were getting to their eyes – and they didn't start using electronics until they were in their 20s – what would happen to Gunnar's generation?
An estimated 125 million Americans suffer from what is now commonly referred to as digital eye fatigue or computer vision syndrome, according to the American Optometric Association. Gunnar Optiks is targeting the hard-core of that group: people 18 to 40 in the gaming, tech and creative communities…people who love their computer and are attached to the digital screen.
The two cofounders began their five-year road to launch by talking to medical experts. They wanted to learn about the effect of focusing on a digital image projected on a screen just inches from one's face for hours at a time and years on end. One of those experts was Jeffrey Anschel, an Carlsbad optometrist who has become an expert in computer vision syndrome. He noticed the problem about 17 years ago, when employees of a nearby computer company began complaining about dry and tired eyes and difficulty focusing. They were problems that people generally didn't experience until they were in their 40s, but these patients were in their early 30s. It didn't take him long to make the connection with their computer work. “You can work, shop, communicate and do just about everything from your computer now, and people just don't realize how much time they're spending looking at the screen. The digital images that computers project are one factor contributing to computer vision syndrome. The eye focuses on the hard edge of an image, but digital images don't have a clean edge. As a result, the focus drifts forward and back, causing eye fatigue”.
Anschel also noted, “that people spend long periods focusing on something close to their face. Eye muscles tends to lock into that one position, which is tiring and can push the eye down the path to becoming farsighted. Meanwhile, the eye has to deal with light from conflicting sources, such as sunlight that is much brighter than the computer screen. There's also glare from the light shining into the eyes. And the angle of view for the computer screen, which is straight ahead, isn't desirable. People tend to focus better at objects when looking down, such as reading a book”.
Croft and Michelsen eventually took a prototype to Anschel and explained the important components of the glasses. They had a yellow-tinted lens, which makes images appear clearer. Yellow makes images sharper by adding contrast and filtering out blue light. The lens is also shaped to pre-focus the light into the eyes, so the eyes don't have to do all the work. There's also a purplish iridescence on the lens, which is an anti-glare filter that allows light from the computer in but keeps out distracting reflected light from other sources. The lenses are also designed to be fitted close to the face, creating a “microclimate” that keeps away the dry air currents. This helps keep eyes moist by reducing squinting and maintaining a closer-to-normal rate of blinking – a leading cause of dry eyes.
Croft and Michelsen set out to create a product that addresses all the symptoms of digital eye fatigue. They completed their first prototype five years ago. In early 2007, they founded the company and in October of 2008 they launched their first product. Investors in the company include Peter Thiel (a founder of Pay Pal and early investor in FaceBook),50 Cent, Carl Zeiss Vision, Monster, Inc., and Happy Madison Productions.
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