Saks Snacks #14: Smart Crib, First Sleep Venture Fund, Forward Ambulation | Glucose Competition | Spark Moment on Play
Peloton Enters Strength Training Arena | Gut Health & Productivity | Spontaneity & Play, Like Zorba |
Hello amigos 👋 ,
Check out the topics below - as always, let me know what can make a better learning experience for you.
Let’s dive in, starting with 4 capital raises split across the first 2 sections!
😴💰 Capital Raise Radar (Sleep)
🍬💰 Capital Raise Radar (Glucose Wars)
🥑 Snacks of the Week x 4 - giftable wearables, Peloton enters connected Strength, true cost of food.
➕How are this week’s raises & snacks connected?
🎙️ Health Tech Pods of the Week (x2): Gut Health & Productivity
💥 Spark Moment of the Week - Washington Square moment & spontaneity
#1 💰😴 Sleep - Capital Raise Radar Snacks (2)
Heard of smart cradles?
Cradlewise’s recent $7m raise unlocks a new round of growth, allowing investment in advanced sleep analytics. It’s a built-in baby monitor that detects early wakeup signs. They’re also considering adding a smart scale to the crib to track weight along with the baby’s sleeping patterns.
“There are 50 baby monitors on the market that notify you when your baby wakes up - that’s too late. When my husband & I had our first baby, we quickly learned that as soon as she twitched, we ran over and rocked her. You can’t do that every time — you can’t watch the baby 24/7. Why isn’t there a crib that can monitor for signs of waking,” wondered Radhika Patil, the co-founder and CEO of Cradlewise. When they failed to find a smart crib that acted the way they wanted, they decided to build one, starting with the quality of the bounce
Talking about sleep…
Sleep Venture Fund: Supermoon Capital Launched the first venture fund focused on sleep back in August, globally investing in pre-seed through Series A startups working on science-backed innovations aimed to improve sleep. They seek to partner with medical teams solving sleep disorders, making products that help people get better rest, and exploring some “untouched corners” of sleep science, including dreams.
#2 💰🍬 Glucose Wars - Capital Raise Radar Snacks (2)
The funding in the space continues. We’ve talked plenty about the glucose monitoring space - from Apple’s raman spectroscopy patent (Ed. 3), to Graphwear’s nanotech-based approach (Ed. 11), to my own fueling experiments while marathon-training when I tested Nutrisense’s product with the help of their nutrition coaches (Edition 6).
Here are 2 new raises from the last 2 weeks:
Signos raises a $13M Series A to give real-time weight-loss advice based on blood glucose levels, helping users determine what to eat, and when.
At the heart of the system is Dexcom‘s G6 continuous glucose monitoring devices, which are typically used for diabetes patients. Dexcom became an investor in Signos’ most recent investment round as well, as a strategic investor.
Biolinq secures a hefty $100M to kick-start the development of its noninvasive glucose sensor patch as the race for the next major advancement in diabetes tracking technology continues to heat up
#3 🥑 Health Tech Snacks of the week
Which health wearable to treat yourself with this holiday season? - this quick web flow can help you understand what wearable is “best” for you based on your primary health focus, goals, budget, and style preferences.
Peloton enters connected strength training, releasing Peloton Guide, an AI-powered camera that tracks your strength-training workouts.
Can Peloton’s new product help them overcome their underwhelming projections, supply chain issues, and riders’ declining usage (down from 26 a month to 16.6 a month in last earnings call. Peloton has built a strong community, primarily led by its talented instructors who provide coaching, entertainment, and cheerleading (as described by a more traditional trainer I know). However, I’m not sure the more “affordable” new product priced at $495 will help Peloton recover.
How your sleep wake cycle influences your performance - Chronotypes are rough estimates of our natural tendency to be more alert at certain times of the day or evening and sleepy at other times. How can you determine your chronotype? Here you go.
The most common questionnaire to determine a person’s chronotype is the Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire. The MEQ puts people into 3 chronotypes: morning types (M-types), evening types (E-types), and neither types (N-types).
🥑 You are what you eat.
True Cost of Food: Measuring What Matters to Transform the U.S. Food System - This report outlines the true cost of food, which includes the impacts on our health, the environment, biodiversity, livelihoods, and more.
#4 ➕ How are this week’s raises + snacks connected?
Sleep is the human reset button.
Studies show that depriving healthy young men for 3-4 consecutive days will drop testosterone levels to those of someone 10 years older than them. This same deprivation has also shown up to a 40% impact on blood glucose levels. For reference, to induce the same effect, you’d need to gain ~20 pounds of obese mass in a four day period to have the same impact.
Studies also show that limiting adults to 4 hours of sleep will induce a 70% decline in critical anti-cancer immune cells (natural killer cells).
Sleep and all health pillars are interconnected, and I look forward to covering the innovative ventures and medical teams exploring new frontiers of sleep science.
#5 🎙️Health Tech Pods OTW - gut health & productivity
How can we maximize our productivity with biologically-proven tactics?
This was recommended by a member of the Saks' Snacks community, and I loved Huberman’s explanation of one of most important daily “protocols”, forward ambulation. (fancy words for “walking forward”)
“We know that forward ambulation generates the same types of eye movements that cause optic flow and reductions in amygdala activations.”
What can we learn from this? This helps explain why AM walks can be so beneficial. In addition to getting sunlight in the eyes early in the morning, taking a morning walk is about getting into optic flow, reducing amygdala activations rather than burning calories or “exercising”.
Understanding gut health: An underrated and misunderstood area of our health is our gut health. Expect this to change in the next decade. Listen to Dr. Lipman and Dr. Rountree explore dietary factors, supplements, and other measures for supporting optimal GI health
I enjoyed the host’s metaphor to describe how prebiotics and probiotics work together. Prebiotics are like fertilizer - if the soil in your garden is sterile, then you can throw endless seeds in (probiotics), and they’re not going to do anything if they don’t have the right type of nutrients. Prebiotics are the nutrients that feed the probiotic.
#6💥 Spark Moment - Spontaneity + Maintaining Sense of Play
10/12/21 Daily Moment Spark moment from Washington Park
Last month, I was on the bus commuting back from work.
I was entrenched in a 20-minute article on “Why The Internet was having a Kodak moment”. It was mind-blowing content about web3.0.
I looked up from my phone and saw...
A sheepadoodle pup running full stride, playing freely in Washington Square.
At this point, I was halfway done commuting (10-15 minutes left).
Before I realized what my body was doing, I spurred into action, stumbling through the aisle with my 2 bags.
I was off the bus 5 seconds later, staring at a sunny, clear blue-sky day in SF.
I sat down on a bench and journaled briefly.
I looked up and watched a mom throwing a baseball to this little boy (no older than 3) clad in a camo hoodie and olive green sweats.
You couldn’t miss the smile on the mom’s face as she underhanded it.
The kid played with so much energy and carefree enthusiasm.
It was a precious moment I wanted to remember so I wrote it down (and then repurposed it for this section).
Do you ever have those moments that you want to remember every detail?
The kid didn’t celebrate the larger hits - I found this interesting. His temperament was the same on his swings and misses and his swings where he hit the ball far… something we can all learn from.
His spirit reminded me of my favorite fiction book protagonist, Zorba the Greek.
Zorba was a Greek working man who maintained a zest for life and a fire that can’t be tamed throughout his entire life.
Zorba’s life is rich with all the joys and sorrows that living brings and his example awakens in the narrator an understanding of the true meaning of humanity. This is one of the greatest life-affirming novels of our time.
A few reasons why I chose this as the spark moment of the week.
There’s beauty in spontaneity. It reaffirmed my own personal balance between structure, planning, etc. with the carefree side of life.
Simply getting outside has so many benefits - in addition to it being fun, viewing late afternoon/evening light supports sleep.
Airdrop is a wonderful tool. I shared the video with the mom & hope it serves as a precious memory they have for life. I’ll keep capturing moments for others and simply share it like I did with this one and in edition 11.
It reminded me of a college discussion in March ‘19 around an article titled “Taking Play Seriously”
“Look at life without play, and it’s not much of a life. If you think of all the things we do that are play-related and erase those, it’s pretty hard to keep going. Without play, there’s a sense of dullness, lassitude and pessimism, which doesn’t work well in the world we live in.’’
Concluding thought: What’s 1 way you can find “play” in your every day life?
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Have a creative week,
Adam