The Intersection of Behavioral Psychology and Sleep Technology with Percy Founder, Conner Herman
What happens when the discipline of a military career meets the world of innovative sleep technology? Join us on this episode of the Hatch Podcast as we sit down with former Air Force intelligence officer Conner Herman. Conner shares her extraordinary journey from post-9/11 operations to founding Percy, a startup revolutionizing sleep care for individuals with autism. Her transition was fueled by her personal battle with postpartum depression and a profound understanding of the crucial role sleep plays in overall health. Her story is one of resilience and innovation, proving that military precision and personal challenges can lead to groundbreaking solutions in sleep care.
Discover how severe burnout and a grand mal seizure led Conner to study behavioral psychology and uncover the science behind sleep behaviors. This understanding has been instrumental in creating Percy, an AI-driven solution designed to implement effective sleep interventions without medication. We also explore the transformative support of the Hatch Powered by Bessel program, which has been pivotal in advancing Percy’s mission. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone fascinated by medical innovations and their real-world impact.
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Key Topics Covered:
– Conner Herman’s journey from Air Force intelligence officer to health tech entrepreneur
– The impact of personal health challenges on professional direction
– The science behind sleep behaviors and the importance of sleep in overall health
– How Percy is revolutionizing sleep care for individuals with autism using AI technology
– Overcoming challenges in developing non-pharmaceutical sleep interventions
– The role of the Hatch Powered by Bessel program in supporting Percy’s mission
– Insights into behavioral psychology and its application in sleep technology
Guest Bio:
Conner Herman is the founder of Percy, a startup dedicated to revolutionizing sleep care for individuals with autism through AI-driven solutions. A former Air Force intelligence officer, Conner’s personal experiences with severe burnout and health challenges led her to study behavioral psychology and focus on the science of sleep behaviors. Her work combines military precision with innovative technology to improve patient outcomes without the use of medication.
Links & Resources:
– Learn more about Percy at www.percysleep.com
– Connect with Conner Herman on LinkedIn: Conner Herman
– Learn more about the Hatch Powered by Bessel program: www.hatchfairhope.com
Join the Conversation:
Follow Hatch Fairhope on social media for updates, and subscribe to the Hatch Podcast for more conversations with innovators pushing the boundaries of technology and healthcare.
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Transcript:
Intro:
Hatch Hatch. This is the Hatch Podcast, where technology comes to life. A Hatch Fairhope production.
Host :
At Hatch Fairhope, we’re all about cultivating creativity, driving innovation and accelerating growth. Welcome to the Hatch Podcast. Each episode will bring you inspiring conversations with innovators who are pushing boundaries, solving problems and building the next wave of success. Today at Hatch Fairhope, we’re diving into the cutting edge of healthcare technology with a visionary who’s making waves in the world of traditional sleep care. Conner Herman is the innovative force behind Percy, a company that’s rethinking how we approach sleep care for individuals with autism and beyond. Percy’s AI-driven technology is helping bridge the gap between patients and healthcare providers by offering a smarter, more proactive way to address sleep issues. Connor’s journey in bringing this groundbreaking idea to life is both fascinating and impactful, and I’m excited to dive into this story and technology that’s making a real difference in the world of sleep health care. Conner, welcome to Fairhope.
Host :
Thank
Conner Herman :
Thank you.
Host :
Well, we’ll just jump right in. We were talking earlier about how your kind of entry into the startup environment was not a typical one. You kind of got there in a non-traditional route.
Conner Herman :
Yes, I started out in the military. I went to the Air Force Academy and my career field was intelligence. I chose to be stationed at McGuire Air Force Base, which is in New Jersey, and that was near where my husband lived in New York City and he was my boyfriend at the time. So my parents were unhappy about that choice because I could have been anywhere and the Tempo was not highly operational. We were supporting Operation Southern Watch in southern Iraq at the time and I really wasn’t sure about what my role was in the Air Force until 9-11 happened and that shifted everything. That shifted everything.
Conner Herman :
Overnight. We were sent into Qatar to start the transition of moving the Combined Air Operations Center from Saudi Arabia into Qatar and there was nothing there but a runway and us and we had to really rewrite the way that we performed our operations and I loved it Every day. It was scary and important and you could see the tremendous value that we were adding at the time. And after that I got to do a few more bases and I think that’s where the confidence came from to be a part of a expeditionary type environment, which is exactly what a startup is.
Host :
Right, you said you loved the idea of getting. There was no playbook at the time.
Conner Herman :
No playbook
Host :
And you got to write your own and you loved it.
Conner Herman :
Yep
Host :
So you got married shortly after.
Conner Herman :
Yep, I got married and we moved to DC and I got out of active duty. At the time I was sad for about six months because I missed it. It’s being in the military is the time. I was sad for about six months because I missed it. Being in the military is the best and so I was lucky enough to be near the National Security Agency, so I took active orders there and ended up running an expeditionary SIGINT office there and that was kind of a startup environment too. We were taking people who did not think that they were going to be deploying and teaching them how to be on the front lines and use equipment, and there was really no formal department at the time that we were doing that. So all of the systems and services and support that comes from being a part of a large company really wasn’t defined at that time. So it was kind of us and everybody else and getting to be a part of the growth and development of that mission was extraordinary. It felt like the most important job of my life and at the time I was pregnant with my first son and did not realize that I had postpartum depression.
Conner Herman :
I felt different after I went back to work.
Conner Herman :
I went back to work after he was five weeks old and like I still kind of cry when I think about it because like I can remember being very confused about what was happening to me and I let my active orders go and moved to New York with my husband and when I got there, I my son we’ve got my son sleeping.
Conner Herman :
I found support and once I started sleeping, I realized I’m still the same person. I wasn’t a different person now that I was a mom. I was both, and the awakening that I had made me feel like there’s something missing in the healthcare system, If it allowed me to get where I went and there were no safeguards in place and I had resources and I could spend time figuring out what was wrong with me and what about everybody else. And so that’s really when I became fascinated with the idea of helping people with sleep, and to me it was just an extension of what I was doing before, which is saving lives just through sleep now, and so my partner, Kira, and I we decided we were going to do it if nobody else was doing it, and we had no business doing it but we did
Host :
If for no one else but the new moms.
Conner Herman :
Right.
Conner Herman :
Like we were just like well, nobody else is doing this, so let’s figure this out. And so we were going to understand sleep and what people could do to improve it. And we wrote out this whole plan and we started using it with our friends. I would go and spend the night on the floor in the nursery and, I kid you not, it worked every time. I mean, it felt like magic really. We didn’t understand truly, like all the reasons why what we were doing worked. But we did it with more people. We did it with older kids, we did it with younger kids, we did it with different kinds of places where people live, different kinds of families, different kinds of cultural backgrounds, and somehow we were able to fit in to make it work. And we started training consultants and then they started to do it. We got to meet the most amazing people in the world and, at the end of the day, what we were doing wasn’t scalable. I ended up having a grand mal seizure because I wasn’t sleeping anymore. Because because I was up all night
Host :
to help other people. .so So what were some of the techniques in the sleep training?
Conner Herman :
The way that we approached it was kind of like marathon training, you know, because a lot of people think that sleep is about a trick. You know, it’s like something that you do in the middle of the night and somehow something’s going to work. But we were, like you know, if you think about it like training for a marathon, you just wouldn’t wake up one day and say I’m going to go run a marathon today. There’s a lot of work that goes into setting up the environment so that you’re successful, which involves everything from training to getting the right support system, to understanding what track you’re. You know what’s the pathway. Are there people along the way that are going to be offering water? What’s the goal? How do you recover at the end and really thinking about sleep and making a change like this to your family? There’s ripple effects everywhere. So what’s going on in the lives of the grownups in the house Period? Lives of the grownups in the house period? Like, because if we’re going to create change and you have something ginormous going on at the same time in your life, this is not the time. You know, we do not want to start. You know, creating change the day before you start a new job, or you have a big job interview, or somebody’s going on a trip. I can’t tell you how many people would call me and say, hey, my husband’s going out of town this weekend. He really doesn’t like change, so I’m going to. I’d love to do this while he’s out of town, and I was like that is the recipe for disaster, because his life is going to be changed forever when he comes home and he will have had no say in any of it. And so really getting the parents on the same team, aligning them on what’s to happen, figuring out their support system for each other, I mean like we would do these things called nurture lists and each person would spend some time writing down things that made them feel nurtured and we would share them between the couples. And it wasn’t like they weren’t intended to be like very big things, but just little things that you can do to focus your actions when you yourself are going through something too right, you know, because we don’t want to make it too hard to nurture each other, but we have to make sure that we’re doing things that communicate that, and so if we can fill each other’s cup, if we know that we’re doing this and becoming a stronger parenting unit together. If we’ve laid out all of these, you know, do not invite your mother-in-law to come stay with you while you are not your best self. You know these are, it’s simple things that make a big difference in the long run of and being successful.
Conner Herman :
And then it’s about understanding what’s happening.
Conner Herman :
You know, a lot of times we don’t realize the stories that we tell ourselves about.
Conner Herman :
What’s happening, and those stories are relating to our history and what we’ve learned and what we’ve read online and what we think and we don’t realize Like that story is our unique experience and our child is not privy to any of that Right, and so that narrative that we place on them is not their narrative. And learning to experience what that child is experiencing from their vantage point, like what they know how do you communicate to them without your history getting in the way is a skill that a lot of people haven’t even considered when they’re new parents. And also just the predictive nature of being like, okay, I’ve done this thousands of times, this is going to happen. If this doesn’t happen, this is going to happen. And the comfort of those things happening builds trust in what you’re telling them and so they know that you’re going to get through it. And when they relax and believe, then the baby relaxes and you realize sleep is a natural phenomenon. It’s the best job in the world because we were built to sleep.
Speaker 4:
We’re literally like, I mean, if you think about it, like we’re supposed to sleep, like the outcome of what I do is a given.
Host :
Yeah, it’s probably my favorite things to do.
Conner Herman :
Yeah, exactly
Host :
Exactly oh and talking about newborns, I mean they are reacting to, they pick up on any energy that we’re putting off any of the anxiety.
Conner Herman :
And yeah, they can’t calm if we’re not calm. Yes, like I would calm Kira, she’s my partner and when my son was transitioning to in naps and I call her and I was like I just it’s the darndest thing. And and she was like Connor, have you? You know, are you monitoring yourself? Cause I feel like you’re up? Are you really believing? And I was like, holy moly, no, I was not. I was so busy looking at all the other things, like I’ve done this so many times for other people but I wasn’t regulating myself and once I was able to stop and recenter then he slept. But I think when you’re in the middle of it, having that comfort of somebody there who’s experiencing it with you, who can believe on your behalf, really changes the game for a lot of people.
Host :
So you were your client support system, which was great for them, but what was it doing to you?
Conner Herman :
Well, I was great for them. But what was it doing to you? Well, I was dying. I was not my best self. I was not sleeping anymore. I had two children, three children by the time we had written our book. I had three children, and when they were sleeping, I was working, and so I stopped sleeping. I had a grand mal seizure and my husband came to me and said your job is ruining my life. And I agreed with him.
Conner Herman :
It wasn’t feasible to keep up this pace as much as I wanted to do it. And you know, long story short, I ended up going back to school because I wanted to understand why I felt like I discovered something, why it worked. And then how could I scale it to everybody? Like what good is knowing something if you can’t get that information to people? Right, if you can’t get that information to people. And so what I discovered when I went back and got my degree in behavioral psychology is that sleep is not a behavior Like we all, like we treat it like. It’s a behavior like I’m going to go to sleep.
Host :
But it’s not a behavior, right. Or my child’s a good sleeper, yeah, yeah. Or my child’s not a good sleeper, right, yes, yes.
Conner Herman :
And oh my gosh, we used to ask questions to parents like can you describe your child’s personality? And you know, for the kiddos who weren’t sleeping, it was always negative, right.
Conner Herman :
And then, of course, you discover they’re not that at all, they’re just incredibly tired, right, and I mean how. None of us want to be judged, our personality judged on how we behave when we are exhausted.
Conner Herman :
No, we do not. Especially me, so so anyway, what I discovered is that sleep is a response to an appropriate behavior, and the way that I like to think about it is very few of us worry about digestion. So we all wake up, we have breakfast in the morning, you know, maybe you have some toast or scrambled eggs and we’re not sitting around the breakfast table worried about whether or not we’re going to digest it, like we might, you know, have some digestive problems that we want to work on, sure, but the body will engage in digestion. It’s an automatic response, right? We?
Host :
Would never think in terms of digestion being a behavior.
Conner Herman :
Correct, exactly, or part of your personality, right.
Conner Herman :
And so and sleep is the same way, it’s just, you know, for eating. It’s so clear to us the pairing of the behavior and the physiological response. We know how to elicit it. We can have a motivation for hunger and we know to walk to the refrigerator, open it up, grab a snack, eat the snack. Response of digestion happens. Motivation of hunger decreases, right. But we have a motivation for fatigue and we do all sorts of stuff. We throw spaghetti at the wall, hoping that sleep happens maybe, and that’s where the big problems come.
Conner Herman :
And so when you are and for a lot of people they’ll figure it out They’ll get there somehow. There’s a lot of reasons for that that we don’t have to get into. But, like, if you have a comorbid condition, like epilepsy for instance, the more, the worse sleep you get, the more seizures you have. Well, if you’re not sleeping, that’s a, that’s a deadly, you know problem, right. And so if you’re a doctor, you got to treat it and how do you treat it? What are your options? You got to treat it and how do you treat it. What are your options? Well, your options are medicine. Medicine we got to geticit. Healthier sleep, require less medicine for sleeping, and that could really improve their chronic condition and experience of their life.
Conner Herman :
And so what I discovered when I was in school is that behavior analysts are a thing I had no idea. I thought I was going to a behavioral psychology program, I was going to learn about psychologists. I had no idea. There’s a lot of luck that happened here and I discovered a science called applied behavior analysis and that is the science of increasing and decreasing behavior, and that it’s like physics.
Conner Herman :
There are things that you can do to result in a behavior change and if you apply all of these different principles, you can elicit the change that you’re looking for. Apply all of these different principles, you can elicit the change that you’re looking for. And it’s a field that is focused primarily on children with autism right now, because that’s where the greatest need for this type of science is, because we can go in and find certain skills and train them and give them practice and focus and really improve the quality of life and independence of a child, especially with early intervention. But behavior is behavior right is behavior right. And so I read this article, journal article by Dr Chunying Zhen, where she took children with autism who were medicated to sleep and she took them off of their meds and did a behavioral intervention, and what she found is that sleep improved dramatically once treatment began and it maintained Wow.
Conner Herman :
And they did not have to go back on medication. And so, if you can think about an entire community, 70% of people with autism have clinically significant sleep problems and Dr Jin showed that, even though they’re getting behavioral treatment, sometimes you know 15, 30, 40 hours a week of daytime behavior therapy, behavior therapy at night is not possible because you need to get video, we need the data right, we need somebody there to collect all of the data, to do lo and behold the same stuff that I was doing when I had a grand mal seizure and I was trying to collect all that information. We’re doing it the same way
Host :
Right right, okay, so, and that kind of brings us to where Percy comes in
Conner Herman :
That’s right.
Host :
That is the problem that Percy solves.
Conner Herman :
That’s right. So that’s right. So we know behavioral interventions work for sleep, but we can’t do them because we to put together that narrative that I need from a parent all like the duration and the time of things and the cadence of these events, so that I could start putting together a clear story of what was actually happening at night. And if I could do that, then I could measure it through the night in frequency, rate, duration, and put together an intervention plan that allowed me to make sure that things were moving in the right direction and also that we needed to pivot.
Host :
So can you give me an example of, like what kind of things are you monitoring on the device?
Conner Herman :
What I want to know is how often you’re waking up and how you’re falling asleep each time. So a lot of people will wake up in the middle of the night and they’ll engage in all sorts of behaviors Like maybe they turn on the TV, maybe they watch TikTok, maybe they do the crossword, I don’t know, like when they wake up, what are they doing to try to get sleepy and fall back asleep, or you know I mean a lot of people think, well, I’m up, I might as well plan my day send these emails.
Conner Herman :
You know, sometimes when I wake up I enjoy it. You know it’s quiet. I have four children. You have four children. Like, how often is it quiet in your house and I feel like I don’t know. This is an opportunity to do stuff or just to feel my in my solitude and thoughts for a minute. Um, the problem comes into place when you see, when you think there’s a problem, when you think that you’re awake because there’s a problem and that there’s nothing you can do to get back to sleep. Like there’s a difference between being held hostage by the idea that you can’t go back to sleep versus I’m going to indulge.
Conner Herman :
Right.
Host :
Right. I’m waking up refreshed. I could start my day a little early.
Conner Herman :
Or maybe just I’m going to take this time and then I’ll go back to sleep because it’s three o’clock. Maybe I’ll spend 30 minutes, you know, thinking about this thing. That’s on my mind and we don’t realize that that’s an indulgence. Some people will think, well, I can’t sleep because I’ve got this on my mind.
Host :
So, that’s not necessarily something you would pick up and call oops, that’s a red flag, that’s for a sleep problem. Just because you’re waking up.
Conner Herman :
I what I want to know is are you? what are you doing when you’re awake? Like, are you getting out of bed? Are you turning the lights on? How often is this happening? Like what’s happening before you wake up? Like is there a vocalization that’s causing you to wake up and you get out of bed and you leave the room? If it’s a vocalization and you get out of bed and you leave the room, does that mean that you have a medical condition or do you have something environmentally happening in your house? Right, and so if you think about that, like, how often is that happening? And then what are you doing when you come back? Are you on your phone? Then you know so. Do you disappear for 45 minutes, come back, get on your phone, like, what’s your sleep after all of that? And then how do we, if I understand that these environmental things are happening, what happens when those environmental things aren’t there? Are you able to still sleep through the night? Able to still sleep through the night? Like, how do we, how do we put, how do we arrange the environment to help you make the right choices and also feel like you can go back to sleep, because part of it is practice, pairing, behavioral quietude and the response of sleep. So it’s about you know understanding what the behavior is first, so that we can introduce an alternative behavior.
Host :
really trying to discern whether or not an individual has a legitimate, maybe underlying, medical problem that’s really, you know, causing their insomnia or sleep problems, or is it all environmental? And I don’t want to assume or put words in your mouth, but you know, maybe cases where sleep quote-unquote sleep problems are being overdiagnosed, when really some of this, a lot of it, could be solved with the behavioral changes that you’re talking about.
Conner Herman :
Well, you know, maybe the diagnosis is right because of the impact that it’s having on somebody.
Conner Herman :
But the cause being right, yeah, or like the solution. How do we get you out of here without having to put you on clonidine? Right, right, right and and? Is it possible? Or can we reduce this? This heavy sedate sedation? You know’s a potential medical condition that we need to address, but we also need to help address these behavioral challenges, and a lot of people aren’t aware of what their behavior is and how often it’s happening. I find that we’re all just exhausted from sleep, do’s and don’ts.
Host :
So, for the person who may not necessarily, like me, be well-versed in all things medical technology, can you explain a little bit about how Percy works?
Conner Herman :
So Percy uses a number of sensors. We have IR, thermal, radar, light, sound, and we are using those inputs to do what’s called sensor fusion, where we take those data points and say okay, this is what’s happening based on this data, and then we’re training an algorithm to notice those patterns.
Host :
Describe what person I’m looking at it right now and to me, I think. When I look at it I’m thinking, oh, maybe like a little sound machine.
Conner Herman :
It’s kind of shaped like a little sound machine that you might put by your bed. Yeah, it’s tiny, you know, but it’s like I like to think about it like a little clock, like a little tiny alarm clock that’s kind of sitting next to you, but it’s not really, and you just direct it towards yourself and we can hang it on the wall, we can put it on the bedside table and and it just connects to your wifi and collects over time. Because the overtime data, that’s what we want. We want to be able to see, okay, what’s going on when things aren’t going well, and then how to how to how to address them and get them back on track.
Host :
So Percy will first be used to help treat children with autism. Like that’s your first goal.
Host :
Yes, that’s our first market.
Conner Herman :
Okay, yeah that is our first market and that’s because the autism community has the greatest need. Autism community has the greatest need, with 70% with clinically significant sleep problems. That number is astounding. It means that something is going wrong, because human beings are supposed to be able to sleep at night. So what’s going on? Why are so many of these people struggling?
Host :
I think that it’s about being able to look at sleep through a behavioral lens and learn how to communicate, how to teach, how to foster these necessary habits that will enable that behavior to happen. So one of the things questions that I anticipate as this kind of moves out into a broader, more general market is so how is this device different from the information that’s being tracked on my Apple Watch or my Whoop, for instance?
Conner Herman :
So biometric readers, yes, okay.
Conner Herman :
So I think that’s why there’s an opportunity for us, because most of the sleep products that are out there are really focused on what’s going on and, so to speak, a little bit behaviorally, we would say they’re focused on your internal environment.
Conner Herman :
Say they’re focused on your internal environment, so your heart rate, your breath rate, you know, intuiting your sleep cycle. We can get a very good picture of the quality of your sleep using these devices, and it’s really good data to have if you’re working on improving the quality of your sleep and you’re kind of testing things here and there. The problem for a lot of people is that they can’t sleep, and so that data isn’t going to help you get out of that, and so if you think that you can’t sleep or you have to go through a lot of work to get yourself into that sleep state, then you’re more likely to go to a doctor and you’re more likely to get a prescription for medicine. You’re more likely to get a prescription for medicine, and so the limitation is really telling you what you’re doing when you’re awake, so that we can create a treatment plan to help you adopt different behaviors that will elicit sleep.
Host :
Can you talk a little bit about your experience with the Hatch Powered by Bessel program and working with Chris?
Conner Herman :
Oh, my gosh, it’s been amazing. So this is the first, we’re the first cohort and I have to say I have never been treated so well by any organization.
Speaker 4:
That’s wonderful to hear. I’m a startup founder. I am used to flying in the middle seat on the back row. It’s almost a badge of honor now because I’m like I got the best deal on this flight.
Conner Herman :
But being able to stay at the Jubilee.
Conner Herman :
You guys paid for our flight, I mean you have fed us, you have worked on our pitch decks, you’ve given us access to investors, like I have felt so taken care of and supported through this journey, and not only the resources but just the enthusiasm of the community that has surrounded our efforts to get our important technology to market. There is an energy in Fairhope. It’s about growth and transition and it’s exciting to be here and it’s exciting to build community with all of the other cohort members. We’ve leaned on each other, we’ve helped each other and overall it’s just been such a wonderful experience.
Host :
So what are next steps? As far as Percy goes, what’s the future look like?
Speaker 4:
Where are we?
Conner Herman :
We. Our technology is going to be finished and ready for demo in just a few weeks, so we’re hoping to go out and start demonstrating how it works, and we have a number of companies who’ve expressed interest in participating in our pilots, so that’s going to be really exciting because we’re going to actually be able to start showing how it works in a treatment environment and the impact of having this data on sleep therapeutics. So once we’re able to demonstrate that, it will be a no-brainer. Right now, I think that there’s a lot of sleep technologies out there that promise a lot of things, and it’s hard to discriminate between what’s a shiny penny and what’s actually going to work, and I’ve been doing this long enough. I know 100%. I’m confident, that if I can get you the data that you need, we will be able to really start to scale sleep behavior interventions and really start to address the fundamental problems at night without the need for medicine Over a long period of time. It’s going to be amazing.
Conner Herman :
When you don’t know how to fix your sleep, it can ruin your life, and we always say that good lives are made out of good days, and good days begin with a good night’s sleep. And so, while we are focusing first on the autism community. Our technology is unbounded, we you know, every time I meet with somebody, they’re like I need this and I was like I’m building this for you too. This is not specific to the autism community. This is something that they desperately need and I think we should focus on filling that need first, but we are going to be able to move into other segments and address other problems that people have, and that’s our goal.
Host :
A good life is made of good days, which are made up of a good night’s sleep. Yes, I think that’s probably a great place to end this and wrap it up.
Speaker 4:
Thank you, thanks so much, connor.
Host :
This has been very enlightening and I’ve just enjoyed having this conversation with you, thank you, thank you so much.
Intro:
Hatch. This has been the Hatch Podcast, a production of the Hatch Team in Fairhope, alabama. Host Stephanie Glines, producer Tim Scott, executive producer and creator Keith Glines. Visit hatchfairhopecom for more information.