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70 views- Mar 05, 2016 · I write about the many issues technology entrepreneurs confront. full bio → Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Taking Vitamins Goes High-Tech
I write about the many issues technology entrepreneurs confront.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
When
you think of highly personalized, tech-oriented health care, you tend
to think of the type-A Silicon Valley personalities who obsess over life
hacks. But the ideal first patients for Vitagene, a startup that
customizes supplement packages, turned out to be an unexpected group:
weight-loss-surgery patients. The surgery makes it necessary for
patients to take a medically required list of nutrients, which means
they are the perfect group to test the idea that by marrying science and
technology, dietary supplements can move past the hype and into the
realm of solid science.
Supplements are a $32 billion per year market that is increasingly popular with entrepreneurs. Eric Ryan, the founder of Method cleaning products, has turned his eye to supplements with his new company, Olly. In December, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced a $2 million seed investment in Nootrobox — a supplement company that markets its pills in attractive little glass bottles labeled “Rise,” “Sprint” and “Yawn.”
Vitagene, a San Francisco-based startup founded two years ago, is the latest guest at this party. The company began working with bariatric surgeons in November, gathering blood tests, genetic profiles and detailed lifestyle and diet assessments from post-surgery patients. Each beta patient now gets a monthly shipment of vitamins and supplements tailored to their own body makeup. Vitagene frequently tweaks the mix as more data comes in from the patient’s doctor. Eventually the company hopes to expand its service to other types of patients and to consumers more broadly.
The idea for the company came from co-founders CEO Mehdi Maghsoodnia
and Chief Medical Officer Reza Malek, who is a physician. Both had been
“involved in some capacity in the past with companies that are trying to
assess your health, model your well-being and give you
recommendations,” says Maghsoodnia. But they found the lack of
“actionable things you could do to make an impact in your life”
frustrating.
Both men were in their late 40s, and they and their friends were beginning to run into the usual midlife health issues. They wondered if it might be possible to use increasingly precise health assessment and modeling to tell people exactly what vitamins to take. Supplements were where prevention-minded consumers were spending their money anyway, so why not take the guesswork and pseudoscience out of deciding what pills to buy?
Supplements are a $32 billion per year market that is increasingly popular with entrepreneurs. Eric Ryan, the founder of Method cleaning products, has turned his eye to supplements with his new company, Olly. In December, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced a $2 million seed investment in Nootrobox — a supplement company that markets its pills in attractive little glass bottles labeled “Rise,” “Sprint” and “Yawn.”
Vitagene, a San Francisco-based startup founded two years ago, is the latest guest at this party. The company began working with bariatric surgeons in November, gathering blood tests, genetic profiles and detailed lifestyle and diet assessments from post-surgery patients. Each beta patient now gets a monthly shipment of vitamins and supplements tailored to their own body makeup. Vitagene frequently tweaks the mix as more data comes in from the patient’s doctor. Eventually the company hopes to expand its service to other types of patients and to consumers more broadly.
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Both men were in their late 40s, and they and their friends were beginning to run into the usual midlife health issues. They wondered if it might be possible to use increasingly precise health assessment and modeling to tell people exactly what vitamins to take. Supplements were where prevention-minded consumers were spending their money anyway, so why not take the guesswork and pseudoscience out of deciding what pills to buy?
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Vitagene’s early days were tough, Maghsoodnia says: “The first year
was a lot of failures.” The pair hired data scientists and started
poring through the thousands of studies that proved and disproved the
benefits of different supplements. It’s hard to figure out what works
and what doesn’t because research studies often conflict — and doctors
don’t always know, either.
What Vitagene eventually built, Maghsoodnia says, is an algorithm that sifts through the available research findings and applies it to the database of Vitagene users to suggest supplements that work for each patient’s own medical profile.
What Vitagene eventually built, Maghsoodnia says, is an algorithm that sifts through the available research findings and applies it to the database of Vitagene users to suggest supplements that work for each patient’s own medical profile.
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