Owlet

"I received more training to get my driver's license than I did to become a parent," Kurt Workman wrote in Utah Business. In 2012 he was a chemical engineering student at BYU, and his lifelong friend Tanor Hodges worked with pulse oximeters at University of Utah Hospital. The pair wanted to put one in a baby's sock.

That November their six-member team took first place at BYU's Student Innovator of the Year competition. Workman and five friends built Owlet, run from Lehi. The company dates its founding to that year. The first design failed, and the team went a year and a half without paychecks, burning all $100,000 from Techstars and throwing away 2,000 finished socks. The Smart Sock went on sale in October 2015.

In October 2021 an FDA warning letter said the Smart Sock's heart rate and oxygen notifications made it a medical device that needed clearance. Owlet pulled it from US sale. The Dream Sock replaced it in January 2022, and a version with health notifications now carries FDA marketing authorization.

Workman returned as CEO in April 2026. At 13 he ran a paintball company in Farmington, hosting backyard games for friends who were also his customers.