Deal to Watch: Powering Positive Health Through Pee

Key Stats:

Summary

Vivoo has been selected as a “Deal to Watch” by KingsCrowd. This distinction is reserved for deals selected into the top 10%-20% of our due diligence funnel. If you have questions regarding our deal diligence and selection methodology, please reach out to hello@kingscrowd.com.

Problem

The health and wellness market is exploding. The Global Wellness Institute estimates that the worldwide wellness market is worth $4.2 trillion, a full 5.2% of global economic output. That figure encompasses several sub-components of wellness, ranging from personal care and beauty to spas; more specifically, the healthy eating, nutrition, and weight loss industry is valued at $702.1 billion, while preventative and personalized medicine and public health is valued at $574.8 billion (over $1 trillion combined). 

Health fads, sophisticated health tracking apps, and an intense focus on optimizing performance are all hallmarks of 21st century society. However, most health tracking options available are limited in personalization. Simply logging the number on the scale each morning, or measuring heart rate during a treadmill run, do not provide holistic data on one’s overall health. 

As we enter the era of personalization, where consumers expect and demand tailored recommendations on anything from music and movies to dating opportunities, the health and wellness industry at large is lacking the capability to truly customize health recommendations. Personalization in health caters directly to consumer demand, but also allows health guidance to drive tangible outcomes for each individual and promote holistic wellbeing. 

Solution

Vivoo is a personalized health solution delivering custom, actionable nutrition and wellness advice based on real biological data. Vivoo users urinate on the proprietary Vivoo strip, wait 2 minutes, scan the strip (which displays specific color shades on eight indicator panels) through the Vivoo app, and receive a health evaluation and actionable tips based on their biological reading. 

Vivoo strips measure pH balance, hydration, energy, ketones, immunity, liver, kidney, and UTI health based on up-to-date urine readings. These measurements power in-app recommendations like “your pH balance is more acidic than normal – try eating plums this week to alkalize” and “your immune system is weakened – drink a cup of hibiscus tea to give it a boost.” Users measure their urine each week to track health changes over time and receive new advice tailored to their changing bodies. 

Vivoo strips are available via a single purchase (four strips for $24.90), a monthly subscription ($14.90 a month for four strips), or a six-month subscription ($9.90 a month for four strips per month). Vivoo has delivered strips to over 6,000 unique users, and has over 500 paying subscribers. The company continues to grow, with 30% month-over-month increases in users; in total, Vivoo has shipped over 30,000 urine testing strips. 

Team

Vivoo’s four co-founders blend expertise in bioengineering, manufacturing, software development, and entrepreneurship. CEO Miray Tayfun was previously the COO of an IOT startup, and has a degree in bioengineering along with go-to-market and strategy coursework at Stanford. COO Gozde lends expertise in B2B sales and manufacturing, and is a graduate of the Mini MBA for Startups program. Ali Atasever, Vivoo’s CTO, is a backend developer who engineered the Vivoo app’s image-reading capability. CFO George Radman was previously the CEO of an acquired startup, and has completed entrepreneurship coursework at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. 

Growth Plan

Vivoo’s most immediate growth goal is to integrate with Amazon Fresh to provide seamless subscription deliveries to users while minimizing the pain of shipping logistics for the company. Subsequent goals include developing a “live chat” feature for users to discuss their results and nutrition plans with certified nutritionists, including new testing parameters on urine strips, and introducing new “packs” (strips) for the elderly, pregnant women, and athletes. 

Vivoo’s ultimate vision is to own the full cycle of a user’s health testing and health/nutrition interventions by matching urine test results with personalized nutritional supplement plans. While the market for personalized nutritional supplements is crowded, Vivoo hopes to differentiate itself by generating supplement plans based on real biological data rather than simple online surveys. 

Why We Like it

• B2B2C partnerships: Vivoo is focused on forming B2B2C relationships with a wide variety of brands that provide alternative, high-volume sales channels beyond direct relationships with consumers. Bayer, Mitsubishi Electric, Bulu Box, TheraBox, and gyms across the country have already signed with Vivoo, and B2B2C partnerships continue to be a priority for scalable revenue growth in 2020 and beyond.

• Subscription model: Vivoo’s urine testing procedure builds a habit among users, who want to continue tracking their health to observe improvements over time. Therefore, a subscription model fits customer needs well – and drives significant recurring revenue. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) will allow Vivoo to more predictably model growth and re-invest in new developments, stabilizing the scale of the company.  
  
• Future product development opportunities: Vivoo’s core product is already an exciting medical technology advancement, but future opportunities are also promising for acquiring new users and generating diverse streams of revenue. Vivoo plans to integrate opportunities to chat directly with nutritionists, develop new tests for the elderly, pregnant women, and athletes, and ultimately offer personalized nutritional supplement recommendations based on test results. 
  

The Rating: Deal To Watch

Investors are bullish on the future of digital health, and the industry appears far from hitting an investment bubble. Health and wellness encompasses so many unique niches that are under-researched and prime for innovation, and IPO or acquisition activity in the space is hot. In sum, it’s a good time to be a digital health investor. 

Four large digital health companies went public via IPO in 2019, including Livongo (current market cap $2.31 billion), Health Catalyst (current market cap $1.21 billion), Change Healthcare (current market cap $1.99 billion), and Phreesia (current market cap $1.12 billion). Scientific, digitally-enabled health businesses often make valuable public companies that deliver outsized returns to early investors. 

Digital health companies are also targets for acquisition, both by incumbent health players and non-health giants looking to deepen their digital health capabilities. Take Amazon’s lucrative acquisition of PillPack, Google’s grab of Senosis, and Apple’s purchase of Tueo Health as signals that tech’s largest companies are eager to develop comprehensive digital health technologies that keep users on one suite of products.   

Vivoo is developing an advanced, proprietary solution to the dearth of personalized health guidance. In the short term, it is monetizing via valuable revenue streams (B2B2C partnerships and consumer subscriptions), and plans to introduce more exciting features in the next several months and years. In the long term, Vivoo resembles many cutting-edge startups that have scaled massively toward IPO, or been acquired by other tech companies; the future is bright for Vivoo investors, making it a Deal to Watch.