This post was written by Michael Dempsey & Shelby Newsad
As technologies and sciences progress, they typically diffuse outwards, allowing for better access and understanding, while also reaching a canonical Cambrian Explosion moment. This moment is where novel and emergent behaviors are solidified. Today, this is happening in healthcare at a scale and rate that is hard to ignore as the system continues to fail to deliver and patients are forced to take their health into their own hands.
Across any new behavioral pattern exists a gradient of usage and familiarity as people progress from intrigued to obsessed. Supplements sit at the entry point to much of this in self-directed medicine as a $200B+ industry which has long been plagued with information asymmetry and a lack of scientific rigor. Perhaps there is no area more in need of helping people navigate their health journey’s outside of or in conjunction with the traditional health system than supplements.
At Compound we try to parse and partner with those bringing forward the futures we believe in, which often are driven by technological and societal shifts. It's at one of these intersections that we find SuppCo, a company founded by Steve Martocci and Nick Michlewicz that we couldn’t be more excited to partner with alongside our friends at USV and True Ventures.
Steve and Nick both have backgrounds in bringing communities together and giving them tools to create better outcomes in their lives (in music, in supplements, and much more). In addition, they both have personal stories that led them to crossover from the intrigued to perhaps obsessed spectrum of self-directed medicine.
In an era where technology is empowering individuals to take a more active role in their health, SuppCo aims to elevate the supplement industry to meet these new paradigms by allowing people to create, triage, and share their Stacks, with a focus towards introducing peer-reviewed research and recognizing the individuality of people’s various health goals that they have taken into their own hands.
SuppCo's emphasis on evidence-based recommendations represents a significant shift in an industry often characterized by anecdotal claims. Their TrustScore, which evaluates supplement brands based on multiple attributes, introduces a new level of transparency, while allowing users to track their regimens and outcomes longitudinally. Expert supplement stacks which emphasize different focus areas - such as longevity, fertility, cognition are layered into the platform to demonstrate more tailored interventions. We believe this gives SuppCo the potential to extend beyond individual healthcare, and could play a crucial role in at scale preventative healthcare, potentially alleviating the burden on healthcare systems and improving population health metrics.
One of our core beliefs as a firm is that the time between novel science emerging from research communities and the implementation of said science will continue to shorten, bringing forward faster experimentation and progress. As the canonical institutions that played the role in bridging that gap continue to lose trust and efficacy, we believe change will come. And we’re excited to see SuppCo work at the early forefront of that change.
For more information on SuppCo check out their manifesto and sign up for the beta.
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