Your home might be making you sick
Why we partnered with MoldCo
Your home might be making you sick.
It took me five years to realize that mine was.
In the summer of 2020, my health took a turn for the worse. I’d oscillate from normalcy to having intense spells of low blood pressure, brain fog, and a racing heart rate at random throughout the day. Sometimes after a walk. Sometimes after a meal. Sometimes just because.
When my blood work came back as normal, I became even more confused. We chalked it up to a hypersensitive immune system — misfiring at nonexistent threats. The doctors couldn’t figure out what had put my immune system in that state of heightened awareness, so instead we did the only thing we could — focus on healing symptoms and avoiding triggers.
For five years, I managed symptoms and moved on with life, albeit with a new fascination for chronic illness. Joining Cantos brought me across the country to San Francisco. I moved apartments, then moved again. Slowly, I started feeling like myself again. It never occurred to me that with each move I was changing my environment. That something in my environment may have been the culprit all along.
Mold: The Hidden Epidemic
Turns out, I wasn’t alone.
One in four Americans carry genetic markers that prevent them from naturally clearing biotoxins. That’s 80 million Americans whose bodies can’t filter toxins the way they’re supposed to. For them, even small amounts of mold exposure become a slow poisoning that compounds over time.
And mold is everywhere.
Over 50% of American homes and 85% of office buildings have had water damage. Most of it goes unnoticed — hidden behind walls, underneath floors, in HVAC systems, etc. But the mold that follows doesn’t stay hidden. It disperses into the air we breathe, producing mycotoxins that wreak havoc on susceptible immune systems.
That exposure compounds into an explosion of mysterious, hard-to-diagnose symptoms that send people from doctor to doctor: brain fog, chronic fatigue, autoimmune flares, neurological dysfunction. The CDC estimates that 21% of asthma cases and 96% of chronic sinus infections are directly linked to damp indoor environments. Mold’s reach goes far beyond that.
Six in ten Americans now live with at least one chronic condition, a number that keeps climbing — especially among children, veterans, and the working poor. That is to say — more people live with a chronic illness than not. We’re spending nearly $5 trillion a year on healthcare, with 90% of it going toward managing chronic disease.
What those staggering numbers don’t capture is how many of these conditions start with invisible triggers like mold and other biotoxins.
The Treatment Desert
Our healthcare system isn’t designed to look for these root causes. It’s built to manage symptoms, not investigate why someone got sick in the first place. Environmental factors get dismissed. Patients get labeled with anxiety or “medically unexplained symptoms” instead of getting real answers.
Mold-related illness shows exactly how this plays out. Even when someone finally connects their illness to mold exposure — which takes an average of 2 to 20 years — treatment is locked away in a handful of specialty cash-pay clinics that can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars. The doctors who do understand mold illness often have waitlists measured in months or years. There’s no standard protocol, no insurance coverage, and no accessible solution.
Enter: MoldCo
That’s where Ariana Thacker and MoldCo come in.
MoldCo is building the world’s first platform designed for recovery from environmental illness, starting with mold.
MoldCo supports people from the moment they suspect mold is making them sick all the way through recovery — with blood tests to detect inflammation, dust tests to understand your environment, and personalized treatment built on decades of research.
While patients currently wait months and pay tens of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket for fragmented specialty care, MoldCo delivers comprehensive treatment nationwide immediately through four core pillars:
- Specialized Diagnostics. Advanced biomarker testing that detects biotoxin-related inflammation and genetic predispositions that standard medical panels miss — the reason so many patients get “normal” blood work despite being sick. All via a simple blood test.
- Expert Care, On Demand. Direct access to MoldCo’s vetted, certified mold toxicity specialists — no geographic constraints, no months-long wait times.
- Evidence-Based Treatments, Delivered. Prescription-strength binders, targeted peptides, and compounded therapies shipped directly to patients’ doors to help them detox and recover. Built on decades of research and clinical validation.
- Integrated Care Navigation. 24/7 support through dedicated care navigators who guide patients through the protocol and track progress seamlessly.
In the last six months, MoldCo has gone from unknown to established in the mold illness world — recruiting the world’s pioneering mold doctors (including the “Father of mold treatment” — founding physician Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker), successfully healing patients in closed beta, and generating thousands of sign-ups across all 50 states and internationally.
The results speak for themselves: patients who’ve spent years searching for answers are getting diagnosed and treated within weeks. And the treatment is working—research shows that treatment can resolve 74.4% of symptoms within 8 weeks.
Mold is just the beginning. The grand plan is actually much larger.
Few know that the company is formally called The Immune Company — the same platform approach will expand to tackle Lyme disease (LymeCo), Long Covid (LongCo), and other chronic inflammatory conditions that the medical system is ill-equipped to address.
A Force of Nature
Ariana Thacker, MoldCo’s founder, built the company out of her own desperate search for proper treatment. Her lived experience with mold illness has become her competitive advantage — deeply understanding the patient journey and noticing clinical gaps only a patient can see.
Her ambitions are much grander than just scaling the standard of care. While MoldCo is first and foremost a clinic delighting patients, the team is quietly building out the world’s largest dataset for biotoxin-related illnesses — data that could unlock new treatments, predict patient outcomes, and change how we understand our immune systems.
If you’ve met Ariana, you know she is a force of nature. The first time we sat down to chat MoldCo — an impromptu catch up scheduled on a whim — she had a typed and printed document with research-backed answers ready to go for every question I could have asked. She is utterly obsessed with the mission, knows the clinics and science inside and out, and has quickly built both trust and respect in an industry that runs on pedigree and is often marked with misinformation. Recruiting the world’s most tenured mold physicians to the team within six months of incorporating is a testament to that respect.
Why Now
We’re sitting at an inflection point. Environmental illness is exploding, driven by everything from climate change increasing moisture and mold growth to rising awareness of conditions like Long Covid and Lyme Disease that share similar inflammatory pathways. The market demand is undeniable and growing.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure now exists to deliver sophisticated care remotely and affordably. Telemedicine, easy diagnostics, and specialized compounding pharmacies make it possible to treat complex conditions nationwide in ways that weren’t feasible even a few years ago.
MoldCo proves that root cause medicine doesn’t have to stay locked away in boutique clinics. It can be scaled, standardized, and made accessible to the millions who need it.
It was a no-brainer and privilege to co-lead MoldCo’s seed round, working alongside our friends at Collaborative Fund, Harpoon, Starship, and Boost.
Getting Answers
After five years of searching in the blind, MoldCo finally gave me the answer I’d been waiting for. A quick MoldCo blood test revealed a genetic predisposition and elevated biomarkers consistent with mold illness — biomarkers my doctors didn’t know to test for. Within days I had a diagnosis, a treatment plan, and a doctor who understood what was happening to my body — and how to fix it.
MoldCo isn’t just treating environmental illness, they’re proving that root cause treatment exists. They’re showing that “medically unexplained” symptoms actually do have explanations—and more importantly—solutions.
Mysterious is not so mysterious anymore.
Curious if mold could be affecting you? MoldCo put together a guide and quick symptom quiz to help you find out.
