037 - What I'm Reading: Week of April 1st
👋 Hello everyone.
🔗 Links in this newsletter route back to my blog or directly to the original content.
⭐️ = What excites me most this week.
💭 Y-Combinator hosted its Winter ‘22 Demo Day. I have highlighted some of these companies YC below. For full coverage (including loads of Fintech, AI, crypto startups, opinions, and more see TechCrunch). The complete list of participants is here.
This week be inspired by a wash on sunscreen concept, the lack of data around drug safety and pregnancy, Dyson’s first wearable, a way to reduce breastmilk waste, contacts with an AR heads-up displays, a company tackling cow farts, micro-plastics in our blood, rapidly printed personalized supplements, gene therapy through a topical gel, a report on our lengthening lifespan, and so much more.
🗞 NEWS & PRODUCTS
🇮🇳 IDAM House of Brands, is an Indian based roll-up similar to GlobalBees. Since July 2021 it has acquired 7 brands across beauty, skin, wellness, and food. They are hoping to expand to a house of 10 brands, with a revenue of $1M per month for each brand.
🇨🇳 👣 P&G is receiving backlash due to a post on WeChat in China implying women have smellier feet than men. This led to a prompt backlash. Consumers and media outlets called out P&G as misogynistic, resulting in some consumers boycotting brands sold under the parent company. How long and how lasting this backlash will last is unclear.
🗣 According to WhatsApp, people are sending over 7 billion voice messages a day, WhatsApp is finally added some much needed improvements (including playback before sending)
⭐️ 🤰 An article in Science explores the complex relationship between pregnancy and drug safety, highlighting the massive data gap when it comes to drug usage during pregnancy. The issue around medications is complex, and many women will stop taking certain medications during their pregnancies to ensure the healthy development of their baby. The primary reason for this is a lack of data on the impact of the drug on a pregnancy.
In the case of skincare, not as serious as some of the conditions covered in the paper, many skincare ingredients are not recommended during pregnancy, largely due to a lack of data. Much like with the many other areas of female health (see the article on endometriosis in the FemTech section) the gaps in data/research present a massive white space that needs to be filled.
🧴 Skin / Personal Care:
Beauty and personal care is the third largest category on Alibaba’s B2B marketplace, boosted by growth in male grooming, hair extensions, tools, skincare, and more.
⭐️ ☀️ UVIE, a concept, is a rinse and go wash on sunscreen bar.
Superdrip is a new brand targeting hyperhydrosis, launching the first sweat-positive focused consumer brand.
Reuty a beauty app for skin, hair, and nails. It is leading with transparency. The app analyses skin, helps consumers find the best products for their needs, and makes it easy to sort through ingredients. They are also creating a platform for honest reviews. Reuty sounds a lot like Mira.AI, and could have similar challenges when it comes to scaling.
Hims/Hers expanded its skincare line to include new facial cleansers, moisturizers, daily SPF, spot corrector, and face oil.
👩🦱 Haircare:
💊 Supplements:
NOOCI, is bringing Traditional Chinese Medicine to the modern era with plant-based supplements for optimized women’s health.
🐶 Dog is Human: a new supplement startup for dogs, starting with multivitamins.
🍄 7 Flower, another functional mushroom spray for sleep & focus (similar to SuperMush).
🧺 Home Care:
byMatter, new high-performance cleaning formulas including a bioactive surface cleaner and a fabric refresher spray.
Guests on Earth, a Toronto based startup making home-care like self-care, with better formulas and sustainable/refillable packaging.
Cleanly: The first ‘natural’ laundry detergent. The detergent sheets are formulated with four ingredients: coconut oil extract, vegetable oil extract, coconut husk extract, and deionized water.
🛍 Retail:
Instacart is offering a SaaS product to help grocers manage e-commerce, fulfillment, ads, and insights, and data. An interesting move due to the highly competitive delivery landscape.
Shopthing: A video shopping marketplace which recently raised $10M to increase its shopper team.
🇮🇳 YC - Shopr.TV: Described as “Twitch for fashion and beauty, where creators can broadcast, build an audience, and monetize by selling over live streams.”
👩🔬 Femtech:
Neo.Life explores why women can’t get diagnosed with endometriosis.
🇮🇳 YC - Janani: An at home diagnostic fertility platform to help people suffering from infertility and sexual disorders.
⭐️ 🍼 YC - Bby designed the first wet condensing device for breast milk that completely spares the biome, resulting in biologically and immunologically active powder. Currently being tested at hospitals, the device removes water from breastmilk, turning it into a powder, making it easy to store and reconstitute for later use, all while preserving its actives.
YC - Syrona Health: Virtual Women’s health clinic for enterprise - offering support across a number of female health challenges from endometriosis to menopause.
YC - Anja Health - personalized cord blood banking (where stem cells can be retrieved from the umbilical cord and placenta for later use). This startup is hoping to make blood banking more accessible.
🩺 Digital Health: Wearables, Smart Devices, and More...
⭐️ Mojo Vision is getting closer to making AR heads up displays through contact lenses a reality…and a future where we can live in a mixed reality metaverse.
Dyson is launching the Dyson Zone, a personal air-purifying mask with bluetooth headphones, this is their first wearable.
🗓 Google added the ability to see doctor availability, when searching for a practitioner on the search engine.
Zensory app, using a multi-sensory approach (audio, breathing, smell & taste, doodling, an acupressure) to improve mood & performance.
🇳🇬 YC- Remedial Health: A B2B e-commerce and fintech platform for pharmacies and hospitals in Africa.
🚽 YC - Starling is developing a medical device that can be placed in your toilet to actively analyze urine for proactive health interventions.
🧠 YC - Craniometrix - A D2C SaaS solution, diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease 3X faster, through your phone.
🧬 YC - Nest Genomics - SaaS for health systems automatically developing personalized care plans for patients who had genetic testing.
YC - Spot is making it easy for startups to offer at home diagnostics and efficacy testing through an API.
♻️ Sustainable Design:
Crunchbase Insights: The Startups Driving Sustainable Packaging.
⭐️ 🐮 YC - Alga Biosciences is developing a kelp based feed additive which prevents cows from a burping, a major source of methane gas.
🔬RESEARCH
🩸 Micro-plastics found in human blood for the first time. Raising alarms about pollutants.
Unilever published findings in Nature about the ability of body lotion to improve the skin microbiome of those with dry skin, with prolonged use.
⭐️ Stanford researchers developed a gel that acts as an effective gene therapy for those suffering from ‘butterfly children’ disease (Epidermolysis bullosa), a rare genetic disorder.
⭐️ A new 3D printing method allows drugs to be personalized & rapidly printed.
New research links sandalwood oil efficacy to protecting the skin against oxidative stress.
🧐 REPORTS
⭐️ McKinsey: At least six years of higher quality life for everyone is within reach.
⭐️ ThingTesting: The Shifting Acceptance of ‘Unclean’ Ingredients.
💊 ChinaSkinny - China Supplements White Paper 2022.
First and First Consulting: Men’s Supplement Use for Hair, Skin, & Nails is on the Rise.
👅 Food Dive: A Look at How AI is Revolutionizing the Taste Testing Industry
Data.AI: State of Mobile - 2022.
The Nation: The Brave New World of Legalized Psychedelics Is Already Here.
💡Enjoy,
-Anne