Saks Snacks #17: Wellness Funding, Burn-to-Earn, Social Tokens, and More

Humane's AR Wearable | Abbott Moves into Consumer Game

Hi friends from Park City, Utah 👋 ,

Here’s our quick health tech content this week, with a new section (#2).

1. 🥑 Snacks of the Week x5, spanning senior care, DIY diagnostics,

2. 🌐 Web3 + Health Snacks x3 - burn to earn concepts & NFT’s

3. 💰 Capital Raise Radar x4 - smart contacts, recovery facilities, NEXT VENTŪRES’s new newsletter, and Levels’ uniqueness,

Weekly Musings

4. 🎙️ Pods of the Week (x3): social tokens, content creation, and Genopets

5. 💥 Spark Moment - scatter focus, sleep technique

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#1 🥑 Snacks of the week (4)

1. AR wearables: Humane uses Android to build what looks to be an AR wearable with laser projected ‘display’ for any surface

Humane, a startup founded by ex-Apple employees, looks to have a different approach that involves essentially an Android-powered wearable camera that uses lasers to project a screen on any surface, including the palm of your hand

They’ve been very secretive but have boldly stated it’s “building innovative tech that feels familiar, natural, and human”, with a mission to "reimagine computing”.

Humane ™ @Humane

"How do you know it’s time for a shift?" hu.ma.ne

2. 👴 Senior Care - The days of collecting intermittent data exclusively within the four hospital walls, ER, ICU, are gone… HealthTech Magazine shares 3 Senior Care Tech Trends to Watch in 2022. The “hospital at home” care model will surge as virtual care tech is adopted and seniors continue preferring staying in their homes and communities.

3. Abbott will expand the glucose monitoring space: the $240B U.S. medical device is moving into making general-purpose consumer bio-sensing wearables. In a health-tech keynote at CES, Abbott’s CEO announced Lingo, its new line of consumer bio wearables intended for general wellness and fitness’ sake. They’re also developing a wearable that continuously tracks ketones.

   

   Lingo will track “key signals” in the body — such as glucose, ketones and lactate — adding that it could also be used to track alcohol levels in the future. Image Credits: Abbott

4. Daniel Kraft, MD’s take on the future of health & medicine- By 2031, expect genome sequence prices of <=$100, including those done with 3rd Generation/ Long-Read Sequencing.  An excellent 15-20 minute read.

A full genome sequence costs 10x less than 10 years ago, at a decreasing cost twice the rate of Moore’s Law.

The nascent Metaverse will be maturing, and the 'Med'averse will be a home for elements of medical education, VR-based treatment, and even healthy social engagement. 

5. ‘21 Trends - DIY diagnostics: From food sensitivity to fertility and the microbiome, at-home test kits are in high demand. Seizing the opportunity, Everlywell raised $250M, notching a $3B valuation and rebranding to Everly Health. Similarly, LetsGetChecked landed $150M at a $1.5B valuation. (from Fitt Insider’s Year-end Review)

#2 🌐 Web3 Snacks of the week (3)

1. '“Burn to earn” venture: I was introduced to Calo Metaverse recently- it’s a fitness app that integrates blockchain, AR + VR, and fitness to make your workout activities more gamified. We’ve covered move-to-earn models in the past, and this project boasting over 83,700 Telegram “community” members was new to my radar.

By burning calories when participating in Calo challenges, users obtain a relative amount of tokens to be used to buy, sell and exchange items (NFTs),

According to Amara’s Law, we tend to overestimate the short-term impact of new technology and underestimate its long-term effect. It’s still unclear whether we will see Web3’s impact on fitness in the short-term but given the recent digital transformation of fitness we may underestimate the longer term impact.

I think the “move-to-earn” space could use a subtle rebrand to “move and earn”, taking the focus solely away from earning to emphasize movement.

2. Another move to earn NFT concept is Stepn, which doesn’t require people to own NFT assets to play, making it a more friendly on-ramp for non-crypto natives.

Adam Saks @AdamLSaks

Just learning about @Stepnofficial Another move to earn to check out. Excited to beta test.

3. Web 3: Could Web3 and NFTs transform the future of fitness or is it another fad? - I appreciated Finn’s exploration of how NFT’s could apply to fitness, his review of existing health and fitness NFT projects, and acknowledgment that these projects are aiming to “drive a collective shift towards more physical movement and a healthier future.”

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#3 💰  Capital Raise Radar Snacks

1. Mojo Vision announced a $45M Series B to put smart contacts in athletes’ eyes, partnering with Adidas, Trailforks, Wearable X (yoga), & other sports brands. The tech still isn’t market-ready - they’re seeking FDA approval.

Mojo is envisioning a world where athletes don’t need to wear bulky wearables or look down at devices. Their recent partnerships show that they’re eyeing the sports market in addition to “helping those inflicted with bodily impairments”

Mojo Lens is ostensibly years away from commercialization, however the company announced at CES 2022 that it’s taking a step forward by partnering with a number of fitness brands to explore how to better integrate its smart contact lenses into sports and training. Mojo Vision has partnered with Adidas Running, Trailforks, Wearable X, Slopes and 18Birdies.

2. Wellness Funding from Fitt Insider: Restore, a health and recovery-service provider, raised $140M in December. They offer IV drip therapy, infrared saunas, red light therapy, biomarker assessments, cryotherapy, compression, assisted stretching, and more. I expect to continue seeing more physical locations designated to general wellness and recovery, such as in-person meditation, breathwork, cold/heat exposure, etc.

Restore’s “Hyper Wellness” offerings include infrared sauna, red light therapy, cryotherapy, biomarker assessments, compression, and more.

Founded in 2015, the company counts 115 locations in 34 states. In 2021, Restore delivered 1.5M services — with systemwide sales growing 158% YoY.

A franchise model, Restore plans to add 100+ locations next year. - FittInsider

3. Putting 💰 Into Performance Optimization: If you’ve resonated with the "human optimization" pieces I've put out, you'll want to follow along with NEXT VENTŪRES’ newsletter. They'll be outlining themes within their human optimization thesis on a monthly basis, such as this one:

Looking ahead, we believe that Terra can also play a huge role in the growth of digital health by turning aggregated biomarker data into real world evidence (RWE) that leads to better clinical care and outcomes.

As I outlined in edition 3, I believe Terra will play a huge role transforming digital health as their API solves a large problem around fragmented health data.

4. Venture Dynamics: Levels’ raised $5million in less than six hours, allowing the Levels community to participate in the round. Here’s their 2021 Year in Review. The way they default to open is admirable, and if you haven’t seen how they build in public, I highly recommend you check it out. As we’ve discussed, this is a prime example of how ventures raises are changing and will continue to change.

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Weekly Musings

#4🎙️ Pods of the Week (‘22 listens)

For those asking to cover web3 concepts, here you go! These were outdated listens from the end of ‘21 but will frame part of a long-form article I’m writing on the intersections of the fitness creator economy and web3.

1. Social Tokens for Creative Communities with Stephanie Pereira

   • Why now? Stephanie brings to life how current creators are subject to the whims of platforms they serve and how they should be focusing on creating value for themselves and their communities

   • Many-to-many community: communities can serve as a flywheel for business growth when they successfully enable many-to-many connections

2. Social Tokens & The Future of Content Creation

   • Current pain points: Hear more from Stephanie where she outlines current tool pain points and how it’s driving content processes to lack intermediaries, and creators banding together.

3. For those that were interested in Genopets (edition 14), but had questions about it, this one is for you.

   • Fundraising mechanics of Web3 ventures: I believe that long term, tokens will be a highly valued new form of equity. If you believe that too, it’s important to understand web3 companies’ structure and fundraising mechanics. Jay outlines that, very similar to SAFEs (simple agreement for future equity), there are SAFTs (simple agreement for future tokens). Similar to traditional VC, the tokens are locked up, have vesting schedules, etc.

   • Token distribution: Jay gives a great basic outline, and if you’re interested in vesting schedules, I recommend this piece.

   • Building Demand before pre-launch - helpful to hear how demand was built for their token by building social channels, aligning the vision and messaging to the community, and grassroots marketing.

#5💥 Spark Moment of the Week - scatter focus

Last week, I stumbled upon an article about how “some of the world's most creative minds (Dali & Edison) used a sleep technique to bolster creativity.

Another friend (who makes music) shared how his best melodies come when he’s drifting off to sleep, so he captures it with a voice memo hum to revisit in the AM.

It reinforced a learning moment I’d had 3 years ago around scatter focus:

Spark moment 1/3/19: Listening to a podcast with Chris Bailey, who wrote "Hyperfocus", and want to remember this amazing story.

"It was Edison who fell asleep with a hand full of marbles. So the idea was that when he fell asleep and his mind started wandering (bc sleep is the same regions of the brain activated during sleep as they do during "scatter focus", except they're activated with FURY when you're sleeping.

When you fall into this deep sleep, you lose control of your motor system. Edison would use this, and when he fell into this sleep, he’d let the marbles go, wake up and capture whatever ideas were on his mind at the time. Salvador dali also used this strategy! Sometimes these ideas are so powerful that they wake us up but we're usually not aware of it. There's a time to be focused and a time to let your time wander so you can get these ideas.

I challenge you to take that 20-30 minute mid-day break this week, completely disconnect from your routine, and let your mind wander!

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Have a creative week,

Adam

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