a note from us
- its race day, time to hit a new personal best 🥇
- before the race you scarf down a sugary granola bar that look an awful lot like a bar of chocolate 🍫
- you rocket out of the start but quickly lose energy and end up in dead last 😪
- whether its athletics or other activities, having sufficient energy is critical to performing at your best; this week’s company can track energy levels to help inform what to eat
in a sentence
Levels Health makes it accessible for individuals to track their metabolic health, using a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) that connects to a personalized app
- metabolic health: how well our bodies produce and use energy
- CGM: device that attaches to the arm and gives real-time data on how diet and lifestyle affect health
- Levels app: displays GCM data in digestible metrics to convey how user-specific activities (diet, sleep, exercise) connect to metabolic health
bulleted version: imagine eating a banana and getting a score based on how your body reacts. 10 points! 🍌
the basics
- industry: wearable technology, health and wellness
- year founded: 2019
- company size: < 50 employees
- price: roughly $2,600/year (new CGMs + membership fee)
- user base: 14,000 total, 150,000 waitlist (!)
- notable investors: a16z, LoupVentures, Founder Collective, Basecamp Fund, Shrug Capital
- amount raised: $12.5m
due diligence
what we like
- tackles an epidemic-scale problem: 88% of adults are metabolically unhealthy
- tailored to the individual: avoids activity estimation and focuses on personalized numbers, allowing for effective and actionable outcomes based on which foods and activities positively and negatively impact you
- entering confidently into an explosive yet fragmented market: the fitness tracker market is expected to triple by 2028; Levels’ differentiated approach may allow for them to compete or partner with the big players
potential risks
- learning curve is steep: it’ll take a lot of effort to educate 1 billion plus people on why they should be constantly monitoring their metabolic health (though their blog is pretty great)
- adopting a new accessory that pierces the skin: must convince the public to wear the patch on their arm all day, every day
- not a hardware company: the CGM is outsourced, which may cause costs to stay high (right now over $200/month) and requires two separate apps (LibreLink app to scan CGM & Levels app to synthesize data)
founder profiles
- Sam Corcos (Founder @ Cardash)
- Josh Clemente (prev. SpaceX)
- Casey Means (MD, Stanford School of Medicine)
- David Flinner (prev. Google)
- Andrew Conner (prev. Google, Kifi)
comps
why Levels: the company optimizes the entire user experience as the app delivers the data in a friendly way, allows for concrete and actionable insights, and commits to educating their users and the public