Founder's Story
Want to Be on Shark Tank? This is How You Win Even Without a Deal | Ep 220 with Dr. Arjen de Jong Founder of AirTulip
12 May 2025
Dr. Arjen de Jong, an aerospace engineer and founder of AirTulip, joins Founder’s Story to share how clean-room tech, fluid mechanics, and a little smoke visualization led to a Shark Tank pitch—and a consumer sleep product unlike anything else on the market.From clean air in dentist offices to hydrogen water-style traction for your bedroom, Arjen walks us through how laminar airflow can drastically improve health, reduce allergies, and even reinvent how we think about air.Key Discussion PointsClean Room to Clean Sleep: How a cigarette in a laminar flow booth sparked the product ideaPivoting Post-COVID: Why dentistry was the real product-market fit before sleepShark Tank Secrets: The casting line, the 30-minute pitch, and walking away from an offerVisualizing Air: How lasers and wind tunnels helped explain an invisible productConsumer Trust vs. Engineering Genius: Why educating the market is the hardest partScaling a Physical Product: The difference between B2B machinery and consumer DTCLong-Term Vision: From side hustle to orbiting planet—Arjen’s exponential success roadmapKey TakeawaysThink Laterally: The best innovations come from cross-industry application of existing techEducate First, Sell Second: Customers need to believe the invisible before buyingPersonal Experience Sells: Real stories of health improvement drive conversionCommunity = Credibility: DTC success hinges on trust, repetition, and consistencyDon’t Just Launch—Prepare for the Surge: Shark Tank is a spotlight, not the finish lineClosing ThoughtsAirTulip isn’t just another sleep gadget—it’s a physics-first approach to rethinking how we breathe. Dr. Arjen de Jong’s journey proves that the smartest solutions aren’t always the loudest. Tune in to learn how engineering curiosity, strategic pivots, and real-world validation turned laminar airflow into a movement.Our Sponsors:* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Founders Story. Today we have Dr. Aryan Dayoung, an aerospace engineer, a real rocket scientist. So we're going to see if you really need to be as smart as a rocket scientist to understand this conversation today, but...
uh aryan is the founder of air tulip a company reinventing sleep by using laminar and airflow technology to create a purified breathing zone at night which was just on shark tank yep which is like every entrepreneur's dream go on shark tank and then maybe one day exit your company but aryan what was the spark for entrepreneurship for you and why this industry Great.
Yeah, thanks. I actually grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My dad had his own factories making cane rooms. So I grew up already like being like three, four, five year old being around the factory. My tree house was actually blocks of styrofoam that I could like stack up in the corner in the storage space. So it was really fun.
But with that came like this feeling like, hey, you can always do something in a different industry. And sometimes people think you need a large team to do something. The smallest team can make the largest impact as long as you come with something unique from a different angle. So I started with that. I've studied aerospace engineering and specialized in fluid mechanics and all that.
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