Sorry, I Was Busy Running

Happy Wednesday Thursday. Yeah I know I’m off by a day, sometimes work just gets busy. Point is we still made it for the week.

Personally, I think these are some of the best few weeks of the year we have ahead of us. Playoff hockey is here, Kentucky Derby weekend, PGA Championship in Charlotte, Memorial Day weekend, and just great weather.

People are getting healthier. That’s actually the wrong way to put it. People are trying to get healthier. Whether it's working out more, eating better, or taking supplements, there has been an explosion in people (mainly Gen Z’s) trying to live a healthier life. This inflection point feels like it happened after the pandemic, or it’s because I graduated in 2022 and when everyone graduates college they realize that they can’t drink 30 Busch lights and eat fast food all weekend without feeling like shit. Nonetheless, it’s a noticeable trend. 

While the trend has become noticeable in the last few years, it is now picking up steam in the capital markets. Most notably, the running technology startup, Runna, was just acquired by Strava for a rumored $40m. This startup was plastered all over social media with ads and influencers partnerships. This seems to have worked, because 40 sheets ain’t too bad for just over 4 years in business. 

So today we are going to talk about why this trend of “being healthier” feels like it’s taking off, as well as the companies and startups that are benefiting from it.

The Trend is Growing

This trend of getting healthier, whether it be by working out more or eating healthy, has largely been influenced by social media and peer pressure over the past few years. If you are friends with people who run, eat well, and sleep well, it's more than likely that you are going to fall into those trends. For example, I ran a half marathon last year simply because my hockey friend said he was going to do it. Since I am insanely competitive, I signed up with the sole purpose of trying to beat him. Side note, I didn’t, but he is 5 inches taller than me (longer stride) and I can still kick his ass in golf everyday (sorry Dom). Anyways, this premise feels like basic psychology. You follow what your friends and peers do. “Getting healthier” is an interesting one because people love to talk about it and almost compete with how “healthy” they are. Go up to any semi-jacked friend group at a bar and ask who benches the most and watch as they unfold into an argument. 

Point being, it feels the social pressure to be a healthy person has picked up in recent years. There is not a single factor I can point to, but I will definitely say that social media and influencers have played a part. From regular influencers all the way to real health nuts like Andrew Huberman and Bryan Johnson.

The Venture Side

This popularity has also leaked over to the venture side. According to Rock Health, in Q1 of 2025 digital health funding saw $3.0b across 122 deals. Looking at early stage in particular, 83% of these funding rounds were deals Series B and below, showing an appetite for newer health tech companies. 

Also, it seems as if someone is watching me write this newsletter because just today, Superpower announced a massive $30m series A fundraise. Roughly a year ago, Function Health, their main competitor, raised around $53m in their series A round (we will talk about these guys later).

If you are new to venture capital and don’t know much about series A rounds, I’ll provide some clarity. Those are absurd funding rounds for series A, I would say you typically see between $5m-$20m for a series A. 

Some Winners 

Whoop

Definitely a more established company in this space with recent secondary market valuations around $1.5b. I personally have been a user of their product for about 5 years now and love it. It shows my recovery and sleep score everyday and serves as a number to attach to my health on a daily basis. 

With that being said, the product is stale. There haven't been many changes to it in the past year, and basic functionality, like recording my splits on runs, is still not a feature. Imagine if the IPhone got released every year and only had a little bit of functionality changed to it. Wait, that's a bad example because that’s exactly what Apple does. Whoop is not Apple, they need to pick it up. 

With that being said, I still believe Whoop has the opportunity to build an incredible product. They have wearable technology attached to their users' bodies 24/7. They know exactly what my heart rate was on a random Tuesday in June of 2022. The amount of insight they can provide me to become a healthier human is nearly unlimited. So in short, I still believe in the product despite the staleness. I will also say, it is rumored that the Whoop 5.0 will be coming out soon and we can expect massive updates then. 

Function Health

Probably one of the coolest companies I have seen come across my radar in the past few months. Function is essentially trying to serve as your new primary doctor. For $499 a year, you take 100+ lab tests through blood work and get a full picture of your true underlying health. You also get insights from top doctors and advice on how to become healthier.

To me, this is the future. I cannot stress enough how dumb yearly physicals are. You go into a doctors office, give them vague problems you have, and sometimes they will give you a script to go get a blood test. Physicals should simply be a yearly blood test that measures hundreds of vital indicators. From here, you can know exactly where the problems are in your body and what you need to do to fix them.

Companies like this are going to replace your yearly physical in the next 10 years and will be the go-to “doctor” whenever you have an underlying health problem.

HYBRD

HYBRD is taking a similar approach to that of Strava. Co-founded by a good friend of mine, they are targeting a niche community of athletes who are traditionally underserved by current products on the market. If you are constantly running and lifting, or what you would call a hybrid athlete, it is hard to train and measure how you are improving week over week or how you compare to others in your age group. HYBRD helps you track all of this in one spot. 

There are a few reasons I love this product. First being how the founders built it for themselves. They experienced the problem first hand and built the solution from scratch. This is how great products are made. Second, they are lean and leverage AI to help build their product every single day. This means operating costs are low and they don’t necessarily have to look to become a billion dollar company. Third, I mentioned earlier that “getting healthy” a lot of times comes from social pressure. On the same token, people in communities like these talk a lot. They talk about training, new workouts, recovery practices, and technology they use. If you build a successful product in this space, it can spread organically very easily.  

What this means

I believe healthcare is a space that is going to be redefined by AI and better technology. Function is a great example of this. With that, people are only going to continue down the trend of getting healthier. Maybe not everyone can afford yearly blood work, but now with Function they can. 

New technology and products like I laid out above will continue to pick up steam and become extremely investable companies. If you have a hyper-focus on this space, I believe it will pay dividends when it comes to investing.

Song of the Week

That’s Life - Frank Sinatra

I don’t think I need to explain this one much. It’s Frank Sinatra.