In this case, the problem seems to be a complete disconnect from reality itself, at the decision making level of the company. I'm guessing many of an engineer there are saying "told you so".
We're software people who have gotten into hardware, and we're in the sleep space as well.
Our tech was designed to work completely offline, not really for this type of situation, but just because you never know when someone won't have ble.
> but just because you never know when someone won't have
And, with that, you've shown mindset was not too far disconnected from reality. Now imagine not considering that someone may not have a constant internet connection, and you get this company, and closer to what I usually see.
edit: related, we have some air gapped systems. and wow do peoples brain implode with that constraint. from what I can tell, the whole concept of using/deploying compiled binaries/libraries is becoming a lost art.
If you're starting a company like this, hire a seasoned firmware engineer and make sure they have decision making power, and an adversarial relationship with the cloud team.