Society is more health-conscious than ever before, and people are seeking personalized solutions to optimize their health and wellness that are convenient. Base is the at-home lab testing subscription that uses saliva or finger-prick testing to analyze and assess various categories or “tracks” to reveal more about an individual’s health. Once test results are available via the app, Base’s partner network of physicians and nutritionist help you understand the results and develop a plan. Initially, the company is focused on six everyday issues that may be bothering you but you haven’t found the time to get to the doctor’s office to address like energy levels, stress, sleep, diet, and sexual wellness. A test costs $55 on a subscription basis and the app which gives you access to a team of health professionals and scientists runs $4.95 per month.AlleyWatch caught up with Founder and CEO Lola Priego to learn more about the genesis for the company, the launch, and the company’s first funding from investors that include Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, Lakehouse, AmplifyHer Ventures, and K50.
HealthTech
Where We Are Investing Now: Longevity and Aging Economy
Longevity and Aging Economy will be one of the core investment areas for Social Starts for the remainder of 2020. Longevity ties strongly into Health and Happiness: “Healthspan”—the number of years a person can expect to live with full health and no activity limitations—is an emerging concept in this area and should stand at the […]
Where We Are Investing Now: Health Tech
Because of the inextricable tie between health and happiness, there exists an equally strong connection between happiness and health. Now, powerful new science is opening whole new categories of products capable of contributing to happiness. Therefore, we see Health Tech as a central investment focus area.
Aetion Adds Another $19M to its Series B to Make Sense of Drug Development and Treatment Data
Clinical data has the potential to transform the healthcare system and we are in the midst of a healthcare data revolution. However, health care data can be unique and difficult to measure. Aetion, the Real World Evidence Platform®, allows the healthcare industry to make critical decisions about treatments and drug development from a high-level and detailed perspective. Real World Evidence leads to informed decision-making and Aetion, founded by two physicians from Harvard, enables this with a focus on technology and big data. CEO Carolyn Magill shares more about how the company powers regulators, biopharma, payers, and health technology assessment (HTA) bodies, the company’s future plans, and Aetion’s Series B, which brings the total round size to $82B extension. Aetion has now raised a total of $93.6M across five rounds.
Where We Are Investing Now: Health and Happiness Digitally-Native Vertical Brands
We believe that successful digital brands have these characteristics…
Trusty.care Raises $1.5M to Offer Healthcare and Financial Planning Solutions for Medicare Patients
“My younger brother was in a car accident and didn’t have health insurance. The experience of seeing the financial impact of insurance on individuals is at the heart of what we do. For retirees, health care costs are their second-largest expense during retirement and the best way to control those costs is getting the right insurance.” The healthcare system has become increasingly complex for retirees and Trusty brings much-needed transparency for a financially vulnerable population. CEO and Cofounder Jo Schneier shares more about this mission-driven benefits management platform that empowers brokers and financial advisors to deliver prudent service to their elderly clients.
What We Look For In Deep Science Pitch Decks
Pitch decks come in a lot of flavors. We’ve seen five pages, we’ve seen fifty. We’ve seen them sparsely punctured with bullet points, we’ve seen what might have happened if David Foster Wallace wrote a novel in PowerPoint. Where’s the golden mean? What can you throw away and what sparks joy?
Ro Raises $200M to Become NYC’s Newest Unicorn
The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of nearly anything that can be done remotely and telehealth has been one of the immediate beneficiaries. Ro is the digital telehealth company whose digital clinics allow patients to leverage technology for affordable access to common health services. With this latest funding, Ro has tripled its valuation from in the last fifteen months since its Series B (this round comes at a $1.5B valuation) and is on pace to do $250M in revenue this year. We caught up with CEO and Cofounder Zachariah Reitano to learn more about the company’s impressive growth, plans to double the size of its engineering team, and the latest round of funding from investors that include General Catalyst, FirstMark Capital, Torch Capital, SignalFire, TQ Ventures, Initialized Capital, 3L, BoxGroup, and The Chernin Group.
Ergatta Raises $5M to Fuse Rowing Machines with Competitive Gaming to Improve At-Home Fitness
“Investors don’t like hardware, and rowing can be perceived as a niche interest. We had to respond to concerns like ‘what if Peloton copies your content,’ and manage the difficulty of effectively demo-ing our product given that it’s a large piece of hardware and COVID-19 made transporting the rowers a bigger challenge.” Learn more about how Tom Aulet of Ergatta, a connected fitness startup that offers elegantly designed in-home rowing machines with a gamification element, was able to successfully raise $5M for the company during the pandemic from investors that include Greycroft and Techstars.
Individual Health in the Time of the Pandemic
Mike Edelhart of Social Starts walks us through some observations on how COVID-19 has impacted trends from a VC’s perspective.
TARA Biosystems Raises $10M to Grow Human Tissue Outside of the Body to Aid in the Development of New Drugs
The average time to get a drug to market, crossing FDA hurdles, is 12 years and costs in excess of $1B. And in those twelve years, there is animal testing, human trials, and dozens of other steps that a company needs to go through. TARA Biosystems has found a way to generate human tissue OUTSIDE of the body that can be used in the drug development process to test safety and effectiveness without harming animals or risking human life. CEO Misti Ushio shares some insight on the potential of in vitro biology for drug development, TARA Biosystem’s different lines of business, and recent funding round from investors that include OMX Ventures, Merieux Equity Partners, Partnership Fund for New York City, Trancos Ventures, DEFTA Partners, and Tachyon Ventures.