People told us there was no room for another screen in their lives. We found room. It's on the other screen.
SAN FRANCISCO — Layerr, a startup building what it calls “the next layer of attention,” announced Thursday that it had raised $40 million in Series A funding for its flagship product: a small screen that clips onto your existing phone screen.
The device, called the Layerr One, is a 2.1-inch display that attaches to the top corner of any smartphone and shows “complementary content” while you use your phone. In a demo, a user watching a cooking video on their phone could simultaneously watch a different cooking video on the Layerr One.
“For too long, people have been forced to look at one screen at a time,” said co-founder and CEO Ethan Marsh, 26, who previously founded a company that made a smaller fork. “That’s a limitation. We see it as an opportunity.”
The product
According to the company, the Layerr One uses proprietary algorithms to choose content “that pairs with whatever you’re already looking at, the way a wine pairs with food.” In practice, testers reported it mostly showed short videos of people opening packages.
A premium tier, Layerr Pro, allows users to clip a second Layerr onto the first one, creating what the company calls “a stack.” In investor materials, Layerr describes a future in which “every screen has a screen.”
“People told us there was no room for another screen in their lives,” Marsh said. “We found room. It’s on the other screen.”
The investors
The round was led by a venture firm whose partner described the investment as “a no-brainer” and the founder as “the kind of guy who looks at a phone and thinks, ‘What if there were more phone?’”
When asked what problem Layerr solves, the partner paused for several seconds and said, “Eyeballs.”
Early reviews
Early beta testers have offered mixed feedback. One described the device as “like having a second, smaller, more annoying phone that sits on my phone and watches me.” Another said the Layerr One had “completely changed how I don’t pay attention to things.”
Layerr says it will begin shipping in the spring. The company has already announced its next product, Layerr Lens, which is a contact lens with a screen on it, “for when the other screens aren’t close enough.”