Active Overwatch 029

Here’s your weekly roundup of news, trends, and stories in the health & fitness space. A list of what’s happening, new innovations, interesting finds, and more.

Weekly roundup

Oura raises $75M from Dexcom. The partnership will enable two-way data flow between Dexcom glucose biosensors and the Oura Ring. Providing users a metabolic health management experience.

• Glucose monitors continue to grow in popularity and Oura is clearly going after this space hard. They already acquired the metabolic health company, Veri, earlier this year and this new partnership with Dexcom will expand their metabolic health tracking even more. Other popular CGMs include Lingo by Abbott and Levels, but what separates Oura is the pairing of this glucose data with their ring that tracks sleep, workout activity, stress levels, and more. So users can see much broader correlations between health metrics.

Ladder raises over $100M in funding. Including $15M in a Series B round, and an additional $90M in go-to-market funding. Ladder is on track for 200% growth and 150,000 members by the end of 2024.

• Ladder has been on a tear. Their growth strategy deserves a much bigger breakdown that I’ll make a video on soon. But with this funding, I wanted to share a couple stats that blew my mind (shoutout Philip Edsel from the Ladder team for these). These stats are a testament to Ladder’s success, but also a bit alarming for the health of venture capital in this space:
  • Ladder is the first U.S. fitness technology company to announce a venture capital raise in 2024.
  • The last venture capital raise in this space? Also Ladder. When they raised a Series A in December 2023.
  • Ladder is the first U.S. consumer app company to announce a venture capital raise in 2024 (excluding AI).

Whoop adds psychedelic and drug tracking. You can now log drug use in Whoop’s journal feature, including the use of Ketamine, LSD, and Psilocybin. So users will be able to see the affects on their recovery and biometrics.

• On one hand, I like that Whoop is adding more tracking capabilities to their wearable and app. But on the other hand, I wonder if this type of expansion is truly a good value add. I can’t imagine the middle of a venn diagram for psychedelic users and fitness wearable users is that big. I think there are more important areas they could expand that would provide higher ROI and more interest from users such as hydration tracking or glucose tracking (like Oura is doing).

Puresport hijacking Black Friday. To highlight the excessive gifting that happens this time of year, they ran a campaign that sent 500 empty boxes to athletes and influencers. The boxes contained return labels asking the recipients to send back anything they have in excess, items over-gifted by other brands, or things that are new that they just don’t need.

• I wanted to highlight this for a couple reasons:
  • First, I always like when companies do something unique and off the beaten path. Every company out there sends free PR boxes to influencers and usually they are so basic that it leads to minimal attention and ROI. I bet this empty box campaign by Puresport garnered more attention and ROI than most traditional PR campaigns
  • Second, I just like the message. It’s true, there is excessive gifting in this space and it’s quite wasteful at times. I was just gone for a week and came home to 8 PR boxes. This campaign is a nice reminder that we live in a world of abundance and we should be giving back more.

David Beckham launches IM8. A wellness brand offering daily nutrition supplements. Including a daily powder for energy, immunity, and digestion. And a longevity pill for anti-aging, cellular energy, and brain & heart health.

• Just two quick things about this:
  • First, I like the branding. It’s minimal and the faded maroon color is unique and different than other brands in the space, making it stick out. The packaging is also quite slick with the geometric shape. Well done.
  • Second, though David Beckham is the co-founder, he hasn’t really posted about it much. Just one post on his Instagram feed and he doesn’t even promote it in his bio. For these celebrity brands to be successful, they really need to utilize the built in distribution of the celebrity. Just something to keep an eye on…

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