PreIPO INTELLI™ Weekly Insights | Series 57
Friday, November 10th 2023 | Volume 1 Series 57 | Innovative Solutions Unveiled: Health Simplified, Code-Free App Development, and B2B Unicorn Emerges
Hello everyone! We hope you're having a fantastic Friday! As the week comes to a close, we are excited to bring you the newest edition of the INTELLI™ Newsletter, packed with all the latest news and updates. This week's innovations showcase groundbreaking developments across health, app development, and business solutions. Heali, a health-focused startup, introduces a personalized platform with AI scanning for simplified health management. In app development, Sutro stands out by revolutionizing the process, allowing the creation of entire applications within minutes without coding. On the business front, Enable secures unicorn status with a $1 billion valuation, streamlining B2B rebates through data and analytics, emphasizing revenue growth and strategic expansion.
Heali: Revolutionizing Health Management through Personalized Nutrition
Taking charge of your health can be overwhelming, especially when faced with countless options and no clear starting point. This is where Heali, a newly launched startup, steps in. Heali offers a personalized platform designed to simplify health management by removing the guesswork for individuals seeking to address and control their health conditions through evidence-based nutrition protocols.
Kyle Dardashti, co-founder and CEO of Heali, understands the challenges of embarking on a nutrition journey firsthand. Afflicted with Crohn's disease, he represents one of the many Americans dealing with chronic conditions that can benefit from nutritional coaching, even if they are unaware of it.
Dardashti's journey led him to explore alternative approaches, eventually discovering a dietary protocol with comparable efficacy to pharmaceutical solutions. This positive experience prompted him to delve into the realm of medical nutrition therapy. However, he found existing protocols to be complex, essentially requiring individuals to become food scientists to discern effective ingredients.
Recognizing the need for a more accessible solution, Dardashti envisioned leveraging technology to streamline the analysis process. Heali distinguishes itself in the crowded personalized nutrition market by offering proprietary dietitian-led, scientifically supported nutritional guidance and personalized meal planning. The app employs artificial intelligence in its scanning feature, allowing users to scan restaurant menus and receive recommendations for safe meal options.
Heali's platform includes familiar features such as meal planning, tracking, a grocery store scanner, recipes, and recommendations. Notably, the app allows users to search for recipes based on specific medical conditions, health goals, and dietary preferences, offering over 30 cuisine options with cultural sorting capabilities. The platform has garnered recognition from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control following in-market testing and clinical trials.
Initially focused on 30 chronic conditions, Heali has expanded its scope to cover over 200 conditions, each with tailored nutrition protocols. Positioned as the "first clinical-grade hyper-personalized nutrition platform," Heali has demonstrated positive outcomes in beta testing, particularly for patients with irritable bowel syndrome.
Heali provides its app through healthcare partnerships, such as the one with Boston Heart Diagnostics, and as a standalone software-as-a-service option, Heali Intel, for food businesses interested in offering food-as-medicine solutions. Despite being in the early stages, Heali boasts over 10,000 users. The company recently secured $3 million in seed funding led by Astanor Ventures, with plans to accelerate product development, expand partnerships, and enhance its commercially tailored meal suggestions. Future initiatives include introducing one-on-one health coaching and expanding grocery delivery options through its Instacart relationship.
Sutro unveils an AI-driven approach to app development, requiring no coding skills
Sutro, an innovative AI-powered startup, is poised to reshape the landscape of app development by introducing a platform that enables the creation of entire production-ready applications in a matter of minutes, eliminating the need for coding expertise. Launched in late 2021, Sutro leverages the capabilities of artificial intelligence, incorporating GPT-4 and other language models, along with rule-based compilers, to automate various facets of the app development process.
Tomas Halgas, the founder of Sutro, envisions the platform as an all-encompassing product team, freeing up founders to concentrate on their unique ideas while Sutro automates tasks such as AI expertise, product management, design, hosting, domain-specific coding, compiling, and scaling. The goal is to simplify app development to the point where it becomes as straightforward as creating a website.
The platform operates through a prompt-based system, where users describe their desired app, and Sutro, powered by large language models, generates iOS, Android, and web clients along with the production back end. To enhance user flexibility, Sutro provides a studio toolkit, allowing users to make high-level changes effortlessly, such as adding features or tweaking design elements. Users can also input custom code, components, and integrations.
Sutro addresses the time-consuming and often intricate aspects of app development, where developers traditionally spend days on infrastructure, authentication, security, and other foundational elements before delving into the creative aspects of their ideas. By automating these common tasks, Sutro aims to streamline the entire process and empower creators to focus on the uniqueness of their technical products.
The platform combines the strengths of AI, particularly GPT-4 and other language models, with proprietary rule-based compilers. While AI handles much of the workload, the compiler side employs proprietary technology to initiate the app development process through prompts.
Currently used by 715 makers who have built 934 apps using the system, Sutro operates on a subscription basis. Pricing details are being discussed privately with vetted customers, with the assurance that it represents a fraction of the cost of hiring a traditional development team. The startup, based in London and San Francisco, has garnered previous funding of $2.2 million from Eniac Ventures and angel investors, including Peter Welinder, VP of Product and Partnerships at OpenAI. The company recently unveiled its new landing page and is now open to access requests from interested parties, marking a significant step in its journey to democratize and simplify the app development process.
There's a new unicorn in town as Enable reaches a valuation of $1 billion 🦄
A new unicorn has emerged, and its name is Enable. This rebate management platform recently secured $120 million in a Series D funding round, pushing its valuation to a pre-money figure of $1 billion. Notable participants in the funding round included Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Insight Partners, and Sierra Ventures. With this latest injection of funds, Enable's total raised capital stands at $276 million.
Enable specializes in providing a platform tailored for businesses, particularly manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, enabling them to efficiently manage their business-to-business (B2B) rebates. B2B rebates are commonly offered to customers when specific benchmarks are met, such as reaching a certain spending threshold, purchasing specific products, or referring customers. The challenge lies in maintaining accurate records of these benchmarks and tracking a buyer's progress toward achieving them.
Co-founded in 2016 by CEO Andrew Butt and Denys Shortt, Enable utilizes data and analytics to deliver insights into B2B rebate deals and incentive data. The platform assists businesses in co-authoring, proposing, and executing rebate-related deals with their customers. Moreover, Enable streamlines the process with automated workflows, including auditing tools, for creating and negotiating rebates with partners and buyers.
Andrew Butt attributes Enable's success to its dedication to driving revenue and margin growth for its customers. The platform's effectiveness has resulted in significant expansion, with top-line revenue doubling annually over the past four years, now serving over 10,000 brands.
Enable's recent strategic moves provide insight into its future growth areas. Last December, Enable acquired Profectus Group's rebate deals management platform, expanding its reach in Australia and incorporating Profectus' auditing and compliance technologies. Additionally, Enable introduced support for special pricing agreements and added inventory rebate accounting in recent months.
The Series D funding, led by prominent investors, will enable Enable to accelerate the development of collaborative products and scale its team to meet market demands. Specifically, Enable plans to increase its headcount from 550 to 600 employees by the end of the year. The company's consistent growth and strategic approach position it as a significant player in the B2B rebate management space.
As always, stay tuned for more updates and insights from the team at INTELLI™.