From vitamins to minerals to weight loss pills, consumers have thousands of dietary supplements to choose from.
But what if you could find a formula made just for you?
Enter Rootine, a Nashville-based precision health startup. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to look at individual DNA, blood, and lifestyle test results, Rootine creates a “hyper-customized” daily micronutrient formula.
And it seems to be taking off.
In addition to gaining celebrity clients like Carolina Panthers player Brian Burns, Rootine has landed $3 million in seed funding.
“The future of health is data-driven and personalized,” said Rachel Soper Sanders, co-founder and CEO.
The raise boasts an eclectic mix of investors, including Novogenia GMBH, DSM Venturing, Duro VC, Launch TN Impact Fund, Cleo Capital and 20-plus angels including founders, executives, and clinicians from Havenly, Eterneva, Facebook, SoFI, Notion and Eight Sleep, among others.
Sanders said “around 50%” of participants are from underrepresented investor communities including women, people of color and the Latinx community.
The funds will be used towards investing in product and software development and expanding its team, which is currently at eight full-time employees.
“We are actively hiring specifically in engineering and customer experience,” Soper said.
Booming business
The global dietary supplements market size is expected to reach $272 billion by 2028, according to a recent report.
The pandemic has only helped fuel this growth, “with the increasing demand for immunity-boosting supplements, including vitamins, minerals, and several herbs,” it said.
Back in 2018, Sanders, a Harvard Business School grad who previously worked in product and strategy at naviHealth, founded Rootine alongside Daniel Wallerstorfer, a molecular biologist and geneticist based out of Salzburg Austria.
They had met through a mutual mentor at Techstars, a global platform for investment and innovation, and the professional sparks flew, Sanders recalled.
“We both knew that nutrition was a key part of optimizing how we felt and performed every day, but when we looked at the solutions available at the time, we were unimpressed with the status quo, so we did something about it.”
“The result of our unique scientist/CEO partnership is Rootine.”
Even before the pandemic, they started building a “remote-first” workplace with headquarters in Nashville.
“Nashville is the center of healthcare in the United States, has a great startup community that is growing fast, tons of entertainment, and the cost of living is more affordable than many cities on the coasts,” Sanders said. “For logistical reasons, the central location also makes a lot of sense to service the US market.”
Going forward, Sanders said the company will continue operating remote-first but will have a physical location in Nashville as a home base post-pandemic for in-person events and collaboration both for the Rootine team and our member community.
“We are entering a new era of human performance,” Sanders said. “Finally, there is a health stack for the empowered consumer and Rootine is an essential contributor.”
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