Hears earplugs – Bob Verlaat stopped wearing ugly, uncomfortable earplugs after music festivals left him with ringing and slight hearing loss in his left ear. Teaming up with his childhood best friend, Nick, he invested two years in R&D and launched Hears in 2024 with an empha
The first sign for Bob Verlaat wasn’t dramatic—just a sound that wouldn’t quit.
By the time he was 21. after years of enjoying loud music too close to the speakers. he started experiencing ringing in his ears. Not long after, he noticed slight hearing loss in his left ear. He says he’s lucky: his condition doesn’t hit as hard as it does for some people. For him, the ringing shows up mostly when he’s in bed.
But even with a less severe outcome, the problem had become impossible to ignore. He knew he should protect his ears. He just didn’t, because the earplugs available at the time felt wrong for the moment. They were ugly, uncomfortable, and deadened the music he wanted to enjoy.
That mismatch—between what festivals demanded and what the market offered—turned into a business idea, and then into Hears.
Verlaat was already building companies with his childhood best friend, Nick. Before Hears. the pair had worked together on another venture. Dore & Rose. selling silk pillowcases and later expanding into a range of sleep products. Verlaat’s understanding of branding paired with Nick’s marketing expertise helped that company grow quickly; today it generates about $30 million in annual revenue.
Running two companies at the same time was not the plan, but it worked.
Because they’ve been best friends since they were 12, Verlaat says they can be fully honest with each other, and that kind of trust makes decisions quicker. Their responsiveness has helped them scale both businesses to millions in sales.
At Hears, the product design started with the reasons he hadn’t worn earplugs in the first place. The company invested about two years in research and development before launching in 2024.
Verlaat says the earplugs had to look good and be instantly recognizable—“super aesthetic” in his words—and that meant they could be treated like a brand, not just a medical accessory. His goal was also to make the product something other brands in the festival scene would want to partner with.
After that came sound quality. Verlaat says he didn’t want a simple muffling effect. The point, he explains, was to keep music clear.
Hears ultimately focused on an exclusive sound-filtering technology. Verlaat believes the company’s earplugs are the clearest available, and he points to customer response: in its first year, Hears did $7 million in sales.
While Hears required his attention, Dore & Rose didn’t disappear. Verlaat and Nick hired people to lead Dore & Rose. and although they still keep track of day-to-day work at the company. they now have employees who handle tasks better than either of them could. That shift freed them to concentrate on Hears.
The business model itself also shaped their day-to-day lives. Hears has an office in Amsterdam. but Verlaat describes the team as global. built around hiring top talent wherever it is based. A remote setup also allows travel—something he seems to treat as part of how the company runs rather than a break from it.
Right now, he says he and Nick are in Bali together. At times, they travel separately. Verlaat has run the business from Dubai, South Africa, and Spain, and he often stays away for at least a month or two, renting a house with office space.
During those stretches, he tries to keep routines intact, including exercising and eating healthy foods. His days still fill up with meetings, but he makes time for surfing and for the sun—small details, he says, that matter to him.
Work-life balance, in his view, is a different question.
He doesn’t think about it much because his life is integrated with his work. He still likes to go out once a week—usually on a Friday night—but on the other six days. he says he can’t wait to get back to his laptop. He adds that he’s not worried about burnout because he genuinely enjoys running the company and says he’s having so much fun.
The story is built from a personal problem—ringing after music festivals—and turned into a product engineered to solve it: earplugs that are more attractive, more comfortable, and designed to preserve the clarity of sound rather than simply reduce it.
Hears now sits alongside Dore & Rose, and the scale is measurable. Dore & Rose brings in about $30 million a year. Hears, launched after roughly two years of research and development, reached $7 million in sales in its first year.
For Verlaat. the key contradiction was simple: he wanted to enjoy loud music. but the earplugs that existed made it hard to do both. In 2024. he set out to fix that—using a childhood partnership. a brand-first design. and a technology he says delivers clarity—before the ringing took even more from him.
Hears Bob Verlaat Nick Nijhof earplugs hearing loss music festivals Dore & Rose silk pillowcases sleep products Amsterdam office remote team R&D 2024 launch sound-filtering technology