Nanit failed my family, so I built Harbor. Now they’re threatening us with legal action.

As the Cofounder of Harbor, I have to share what’s happening.

When my son was a few months old, I woke up to discover our Nanit app had crashed, leaving him unmonitored all night. It is a horrible feeling as a new parent to realize your child has been unmonitored for hours because your baby monitor failed. Because of this experience — something countless parents have told me they have gone through as well — I set out to build Harbor, a baby camera and dedicated monitor that works with or without the internet, giving you the best of both worlds.

I learned the hard way: parents simply cannot rely on an app on their smartphone to be a baby monitor.

I’m building Harbor because Nanit failed on my family and my son.

Recently, Nanit had a law firm send Harbor a cease and desist letter (shared below in its entirety) regarding an advertisement we ran that showed a Nanit connection failure notification. People should know the facts. Parents deserve the truth about the products they use. And Harbor will not be intimidated by baseless legal threats. I’m not surprised to discover that Nanit would threaten Harbor as we tell our story of how Nanit failed us.

Here is the reality:

• Apps on phones are not completely reliable to notify you of disconnects or failures.
• If your phone is dead, no baby monitor phone-based app can alert you that this is happening. Also, if you have your phone on “do not disturb” or “sleep” modes, you run the risk of not being notified of its disconnection. If your phone dies, no baby monitor phone based app can tell you this has happened.
• Harbor created a product to rectify this problem.

Our law firm has formally responded to the cease and desist (shared below in its entirety). We respect trademarks and are well within the legal parameters, simply demonstrating and highlighting failure points. Humorously, Nanit says that this ad (which included a photo of me throwing an app-based camera in a trash can) “is likely to cause confusion among potential customers and the public, misleading them to believe that your company’s products are affiliated with or connected to Nanit, or that your company and Nanit are related in some way.” To be clear, Harbor and Nanit are not related. Harbor is better than Nanit.

Our mission is to create happier parents and healthier families, one restful night at a time. We also refuse to use fear-based marketing tactics and will not be selling baby biometric-tracking devices given their unreliability and the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics. We’ve built a solution for parents based on the experience of our competitor devices failing on us, and telling that story is just a matter of fact.

We won’t be intimidated by legal threats from telling our story.

Parents and kids deserve the best. So we’re building it for them.

Here is the notice we received from Nanit’s legal counsel, with the only edits being shielding email addresses & phone numbers.

Here is the ad referenced.

Here is Harbor’s response with emails & phone numbers redacted.

Kevin Lavelle, Dad & Husband

CEO & Cofounder of Harbor