Lifesum — Helping people live healthier lives
Having actively looked at number of digital health companies over the past 24 months, I am happy to announce that we have led an investment in Lifesum, a mobile nutrition management company out of Stockholm, Sweden. We are excited about the space and being part of Lifesum’s journey to make it simple for people everywhere to live healthier.
A large and attractive market for personalized health
According to the WHO, worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980 — there are already more than 1.9 billion overweight adults in the world, over 600 million of whom are considered obese. Being overweight or obese is a major risk factor in a wide range of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases such as heart disease and stroke, diabetes, arthritis and certain cancers, according to the same report.
We believe personalized nutrition management and coaching offers an enormous opportunity to help people take better care of themselves. Together with regular exercise and sleep, weight management through proper nutrition can help prevent some serious chronic conditions. Furthermore, having followed the development of the mobile ecosystem of the past 10 years, we are convinced that the increased usage and stickiness of smartphones will make mobile the right channel for delivering personalized health services.
With an established, growing business serving 15 million users, Lifesum is well positioned to become the leading service for helping people establish healthier lifestyle habits as it continues to innovate its mobile subscription service and engage people in their personal health.
An experienced team with a great vision
Aware of the challenges of building a nutrition coaching solution that retains high customer engagement and help users achieve real-life goals, we knew we needed to find an A-class team to back. During our meetings with Lifesum’s management, we realized that we had not only found a team with an extensive experience from scaling of online business at Spotify and Stardoll, but also a team that shared our vision of a holistic and user-friendly coaching platform.
Lifesum’s strength lies in its great design and branding capabilities — already recognized by major players like Apple, Google and Samsung. Lifesum breaks down major — sometimes overwhelming — goals, such as losing weight, into smaller and more manageable bites. What I have learned from investing in other mobile services like mobile gaming companies is that metrics-driven product development is the key to long term usage. I think many consumer services have still plenty to learn from the gaming companies in this area and there are enormous benefits to unlock by applying those methods to other verticals such as digital health. As the team continues to perfect the Lifesum user experience, we are confident it will help users increase their likelihood of achieving targeted, real-life results. Similarly, we think that the use of artificial intelligence and speech recognition technology can lower the need for manual efforts by the user, further increasing the convenience of such a service.
Betting on a healthier future
The time for digital healthcare is now and as the food consumption vertical is also undergoing a massive transformation through digitalization we expect to see a lot of innovation in the cross section of these two areas. I am excited to join the Board and be part of the Lifesum journey. The greatest opportunity for growth is still ahead thanks to the exciting product roadmap the team is working on. Now is the time to help people live healthier lives through personalized nutrition.
