A mission and a vision renewed: A Trinity entrepreneur returns to improve health one fast at a time
Once you’re a Trinity entrepreneur, you’re a part of the Trinity family for life. It’s hard to imagine a founder who epitomizes this more than Mike Maser.
We first met Mike after he founded the health and fitness startup Fitstar in 2012. We were proud to lead his Series A, and as a board member at his company, I had the immense privilege of collaborating with him closely until Fitstar’s successful acquisition to Fitbit. Mike is a brilliant entrepreneur with incredible values, unshakable integrity, and a longstanding passion to unleash technology’s potential to improve lives. In short, he’s the sort of mission-driven founder investors dream of collaborating with again and again (and again).
Both because of our respect for Mike as an incredible entrepreneur and our deep-rooted interest in the wellness space, we’re thrilled to participate in the seed round of his new company, Zero.
With Zero, Mike is tapping into the large and rapidly growing multibillion-dollar wellness market. In our day and age, it’s amazing how little we truly know about nutrition and health, despite its obvious importance on a human level as well as its staggering economic cost — nearly 18% of US GDP. That’s why Trinity has a rich history of investment in the wellness space. In addition to Fitstar, Bulletproof, started by another longtime Trinity entrepreneur Dave Asprey, is on a mission to improve human performance, and 10% Happier helps people use meditation to improve sleep, health and happiness. On a personal level, many of the partners at Trinity are into health, wellness and biohacking, and several of us engage in fasting as a central component of our health regimen. Fasting has been around for centuries and has been used to help people lose fat, increase muscle, improve mental clarity, manage blood sugar and cholesterol — and even fight cancer, as Mike learned first-hand.
Several years ago, Mike was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Fasting was a part of the regimen that, along with chemotherapy, fueled his remarkable recovery; it reduced chemo’s side effects, eventually helping Mike become cancer-free. Given his powerful first-hand experience with the power of fasting, Mike is the obvious choice to take what started as a side project created by True Ventures partner Kevin Rose and turn it into a fully-fledged health platform. The Zero app is a fasting tracker for intermittent, circadian rhythm, and custom fasting and is the top-ranking fasting app in the App Store. As of August 2019, it has already enabled more than 35 million fasts and is the perfect springboard for the new Zero health platform which will empower health conscious individuals to take more direct control of their health, whether their goals are to lose weight, improve performance or fight cancer.
Mike is an entrepreneur with a mission and a vision. Under his leadership, Zero will empower millions to lead the healthy lives they crave through scientifically sound education about the benefits of and healthy approaches to fasting; a suite of fasting products to make it easier to get started and stay on track; and community to help users feel connected and motivated through their fasting journeys. Learn more about Mike’s vision for Zero here, and check out the excellent TechCrunch article here.
Congratulations on your new pursuit, Mike. We’re thrilled to begin another adventure together encouraging healthy living — in this case, one fast at a time.
