This week at CES, a new ultrasonic chef’s knife picked up write-ups in The Verge, Mashable, and a handful of other outlets after debuting at Unveiled, the opening press event for the big show in Las Vegas. With all the coverage rolling in, the product’s inventor, Scott Heimendinger, could feel confident that everything was going according to plan after six years of work to bring the knife to market, with one small exception.
He wasn’t there.
Of course, Heimendinger had always planned to be at CES. A presence at Unveiled was a core part of his launch strategy, a plan that crystallized over the long six years it took to bring the product from idea to reality. But life intervened in the form of excruciating pain caused by cervical radiculopathy, a condition in which nerves are impinged by discs and bone growth in the neck. The pain became so acute that when Heimendinger was offered the chance to move his surgery up by two months last December, he took it.
Not that the decision came easily.
Last fall, Heimendinger was on a call with his longtime friend, Rand Fishkin, who was not pleased with how he was handling things.
“I was laid up in bed, and all I could do was take out a laptop, totally just drowned in high-dose pain and nerve meds and stuff, and Rand and I had a little video chat,” Heimendinger told me over Zoom yesterday from Seattle. “And (Rand) basically threatened to speak at my early funeral if I didn’t take better care of myself. Like, actually focus on my health.”
Slowing down didn’t come naturally. After all, you don’t nearly single-handedly launch a new consumer hardware product without being wired to push through discomfort.
“That’s a hard thing for me to do,” Heimendinger said. “I’ve kind of been in power-through mode forever, right? Like my whole life, it’s just like, ‘Oh, what do you do? You power through.’”
Eventually, Heimendinger relented, knowing his friend was right. From there, he began making plans for his small team – a single marketing lead and a part-time PR representative – to handle booth duty at Unveiled without him. He was bummed. CES would be the first time many members of the press would get hands-on with the knife he’d unveiled online in the fall, and he knew how easily a small team could get overwhelmed by the roughly 2,000 journalists cycling through Unveiled during its three-hour run.
When Heimendinger told Fishkin how disappointed he was to miss CES and how much the moment meant to him, Fishkin made an unexpected offer: he and his wife would go in his place.
“And, you know, normally I would just say, like, ‘Oh, that’s so nice of you guys, thanks so much, but no, it’ll be fine,’” Heimendinger said. “But I said, I’m going to try something new and try accepting a little more help when it’s offered. And I said, ‘Actually, if you’re serious, that would be incredible.’”
It made sense. As Heimendinger’s first investor and sole board member of his company, Fishkin was deeply familiar with the product and its backstory. He’s also a seasoned marketer known for his viral videos explaining technology and business trends, while his wife, Geraldine DeRuiter, is a professional author with a strong communications background.
“So they’re well-versed in how to talk about the knife and can do so authentically,” Heimendinger said. “And so I said yes and accepted their help, and they were serious and made good on it.”
In the end, the knife didn’t need its inventor physically behind the table to make an impression. Journalists lined up to try it, coverage followed quickly, and the resulting long-tail coverage Heimendinger had hoped for came off as planned.
For those interested in the knife itself, it uses high-frequency vibration, oscillating 40,000 times per second, to reduce resistance as the blade moves through food. Heimendinger says that the knife can reduce cutting effort by up to 50 percent. When powered off, it functions like a traditional, high-quality chef’s knife.
The C-200 is made with Japanese AUS-10 san mai stainless steel, can be re-sharpened like a conventional blade, and is now available for presale at $499, with deliveries expected in January 2026.
For a product six years in the making, CES didn’t unfold exactly as Heimendinger imagined. But sometimes, even for someone who’s spent a lifetime powering through, the most important step forward is learning when to let someone else take the wheel — or, in this case, the knife.
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