From pills to personalisation: The next episode at Hapi.
Back in October last year, we announced the move from our former brand Noots to our new and current brand Hapi; and in March we outlined further changes to our flagship product Flow.
We have since improved our supply chain, implemented far better QA protocols and simplified our team structure. We’re also close to rolling out Flow enhancements and releasing our sleep product Doze.
However, it’s time for Hapi to go big or go home, and once again forster in dramatic change 🚀🚀🚀
When I started our company back in 2015, my initial vision was to create a personalised nootropics service. Below is a screenshot I have saved of our very poorly designed landing page and drug-dealer style pill-packs ⬇️
The idea was to create a service where people could choose a goal such as increasing their focus, improving their energy levels or reducing stress, and we would send ‘personalised’ packs of nootropics to them every month.
Beyond that, add further personalisation based on other characteristics such as gender, age, genetics and health etc.
Although we did in fact begin our journey selling dodgy looking pill-packs, we opted for the simpler path of a single product and decided against the personalisation path.
At the time we said this would be a temporary thing until we ‘got traction’… but we kept pushing it back… and back… and back, until eventually the original vision faded into the abyss.
Fast forward 6 months, an aha moment and all-nighter later, and I was recording a video pitch at 5am in the morning to my co-founder at the time, explaining a refined concept of the overall vision.
If you’re able to tolerate extreme cringe, lots of um’s and my voice after 22 hours of being awake, you can check out the video from 2015 below. The YouTube speed setting is your friend here ⬇️
This is where Hapi was born.
Just after creating this video is when the name Hapi came to me.
The name is actually an acronym: Health-API.
In the technology world, API stands for Application Programming Interface. In simple terms, it’s a general way to describe how different application protocols interface with one another.
As my vision was to create a system for optimising human health, it seemed like a nice play on words and friendly name in general.
In essence, the refined vision was to help people optimise their bodies holistically, by looking at the body as a set of systems and improving each area is some sort of hierarchical fashion.
The next chapter of Hapi.
And so… it’s with great excitement that today we’re announcing our pursuit of the grander Hapi vision!!!! Woo-hoo! 😀
We have put it off for far too long, and as one of our advisors said recently: If we don’t do it now, somebody else will and it will be too late.
What’s our goal?
Our ambition is to create a virtual wellness coach app that can help people holistically optimise their body, using a data-driven approach.
The idea is to feed in biometric data from third party sources, learn from said data, and offer practical, personalised recommendations as to how one can improve each area of their wellbeing.
The fundamental concept we’re starting with is a “Hapi score”, which is a score of ones overall wellbeing. This score is constituted by several sub-categories: Sleep, nutrition, fitness, cognition, happiness and lifespan.
Our app will help you to optimise each area, one-by-one, until your scores reach an “optimal” level.
Our aim is to achieve such a feat using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning practices, essentially teaching a machine how to analyse and learn from biometric data, and systematically coach people from a low-performing to a high performing state of being.
That’s about all we can reveal at this point in time, as it’s still early days and we have a lot of planning to do before we know exactly what we’re going to build out over the coming year!
Where do we go from here?
First of all, we will be moving forward with our existing products until it’s time to move on, at which point we will be discontinuing our pre-made formulations and offering a far more personalised service.
Our current focus is to develop an alpha version of the Hapi app (I guess it’s time for me to finally learn JavaScript), and recruit as many alpha-testers as we can to refine the concept. You can signup here.
From there we’re going to get back into fundraising mode, and aim to raise a substantial round of funding to make this vision happen. If you’re interested in contributing, or know someone who might be, let’s chat.
Finally, if you would like receive updates for our new project or become a tester for early versions that we release, signup below! ⬇️
Exciting times ahead, I’m absolutely pumped!!
— John, CEO at Hapi.
