I got my first pair of hearing aids in mid-2020, around my 30th birthday. Hearing loss runs in my family, and I had pushed off treatment for nearly two decades. It was time to do something.
Like most people, I opened up Google and started searching. What I found was a fork in the road.
On one side were traditional medical-grade hearing aids that required an audiologist’s prescription. On the other side, there was a wild west of online options ranging from less than $100 to $2,500 for a pair.
I wasn’t sure which option was best for me, so I took both paths.
A local audiologist fit me with ReSound One hearing aids. They cost around $7,000 and come with algorithms to suppress background noise, Bluetooth connection, and rechargeability. You can read my full review of ReSound One here. They are the BMW of hearing aids, and they work brilliantly.
But here’s the problem.
I buy everything online, and as I started writing about my experience on this site, I heard from many readers that didn’t want to spend $7,000.
So I started trying every online hearing aid I could find. Many of the products didn’t work for me but Lively (and a few others) did.
Lively is a New York-based startup with an impressive founding team and the vision to bring the audiology process online. Their online audiologist checked my hearing and programmed my hearing aids remotely.
When my Lively hearing aids arrived in the mail, they worked incredibly well, and I swapped them out for my ReSound One’s for a few months without noticeable issue. Notably, Lively hearing aids cost $1,195 - $1,995 instead of $7,000. You can read my full review of Lively’s hearing aids here.
In December, GN Hearing purchased Lively for around $95M
I’m a personal fan of both brands, and Lively is still a young company which makes the acquisition especially noteworthy.
I wanted to hear more about what this 150-year-old leader in audiology and a three-year-old online startup saw in each other.
So I reached out and was fortunate enough to have a conversation with Gitte Aabo, CEO at GN Hearing, and Adam Karp, CEO at Lively.
I came away from our conversation with a few main takeaways.
#1. Look out for more services from Lively. The brand may soon offer in-person services to supplement its online presence. That’s great for people who want to shop online and want the flexibility for more support in their city.
#2. The future is online. Yes, this one is obvious. We live a lot of our lives here on these screens, and GN Hearing is betting that telehealth will continue to grow in the hearing space. It seems safe to assume that more and more care and treatment will happen online in the next decade.
#3. GN wants to make beautiful hearing aids. Design wasn’t the central theme of our conversation, but GN Hearing CEO Gitte Aabo shared her passion for creating more aesthetic devices. Two thumbs up for this!
