Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Nutrition |
Founders | Geoffrey Woo, Michael Brandt |
Headquarters | |
Area served | United States |
Website | ketone |
Ketone-IQ is an American company that specializes in manufacturing and distributing a ketone drink. [1] [2] [3] Previously known as Health Via Modern Nutrition, Inc or "HVMN," the company re-branded itself to Ketone-IQ in May 2024. [4] [5]
The company was founded as Nootrobox in 2014 by Geoffrey Woo and Michael Brandt. [6] While forming the company Woo was an Entrepreneur in residence at venture capital firm Foundation Capital, [7] while Brandt worked as a Google employee, a freelance photographer, and an adjunct professor at the Academy of Art University. [8] [9]
In October 2015, the company announced that Silicon Valley angel investors including Marissa Mayer and Mark Pincus had invested $500,000 in the company. [10] In December 2015, Andreessen Horowitz led a $2 million venture capital round in the company. Chris Dixon, who has experience at companies like Soylent, led the investment for Andreessen Horowitz. [11]
In August 2016, the company partnered with 7-Eleven locations in San Francisco. [12] In January 2017, Woo and Brandt were named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in Consumer Technology. [13] In June 2017, the company changed its name to H.V.M.N., which stands for "Health Via Modern Nutrition". [14] In 2018, HVMN products affiliated with United States Special Operations Command were tested as part of Operation Tech Warrior hosted at the National Center for Medical Readiness. [15] In 2023, HVMN launched in nationwide grocery retail in Sprouts Farmers Market. [16] In 2024, HVMN signed a 3 year partnership with Visma–Lease a Bike (men's team), a top UCI World Tour team. [17]
In 2024, the company re-branded itself to Ketone-IQ and ketone.com, which is the name of the company's primary product. [18]
In November 2017, the company's first commissioned clinical trial found that one of its supplements was less effective in many ways than the caffeine (a cup of coffee) used as the control. The company then asked researchers to change the name of the product to distance it from the analysis. [19] [20] The company, however, linked to the study on their website as of 2018. [21]
On September 13, 2018, HVMN was the nutrition sponsor for cyclist Vittoria Bussi, who broke the UCI Hour record using HVMN Ketone drinks in the training run up and on the day of the world record. [22] In the 2019 Tour de France, multiple cycling teams including Team Jumbo–Visma and Lotto–Soudal confirmed use of ketone ester for performance and recovery. [23]
In 2019, the United States Special Operations Command awarded HVMN a $6M research contract for a two-phase study to investigate impact of ketones on soldier performance at altitude, in mountains, on fighter jets, and in space, and researching how ketones impact cognition, physiological reserve, and oxygen availability under stressors like hypoxia. [24]
In 2016 the company instituted a weekly intermittent fasting day for staff. [25] This was in line with a fad among Silicon Valley companies and workers at that time to use biohacking techniques in the workplace. [26]
Marc Lowell Andreessen is an American businessman and former software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard. Andreessen is also a co-founder of Ning, a company that provides a platform for social networking websites and an inductee in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame. Andreessen's net-worth is estimated at $1.7 billion.
Nootropics, colloquially brain supplements, smart drugs and cognitive enhancers, are natural, semisynthetic or synthetic compounds which purportedly improve cognitive functions, such as executive functions, attention or memory.
Chris Dixon is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and previously worked at eBay. He is also the co-founder and former CEO of Hunch. He was #1 on the Midas List in 2022. Dixon is known as a cryptocurrency and Web3 evangelist.
Benjamin Abraham Horowitz is an American businessman, investor, blogger, and author. He is a technology entrepreneur and co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz along with Marc Andreessen. He previously co-founded and served as president and chief executive officer of the enterprise software company Opsware, which Hewlett-Packard acquired in 2007. Horowitz is the author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, a book about startups, and What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture.
Ted Wang is a Partner at Iconiq Growth, the venture capital division of Iconiq Capital, a global multi-family office and venture capital firm. His also a board partner at Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage venture fund based in the Bay Area. Wang invests in both enterprise software and consumer facing technology companies and has investments in companies such as Drata, SVT Robotics, Vic.ai, Lumatax, Fullcast.io, and Aura Health. He also assisted companies in understanding the metrics needed to achieve Series A and Series B financing.
Andreessen Horowitz is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of April 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by assets under management, with $42 billion as of May 2024.
Angela Benton is an American businesswoman. Benton founded NewME (acquired), the first startup accelerator for minorities globally in 2011. She is a pioneer of diversity and one of the most important African-Americans in the technology industry. She has helped minority-led tech companies raise over $47 million in venture capital funding.
Cyriac Roeding is a Silicon Valley-based German-American entrepreneur and investor. He serves as the co-founder and CEO of Earli, an early cancer detection and treatment firm based in Redwood City, California. Earli is based on Synthetic Biopsy technology from Stanford University, and is funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Perceptive Advisors, Casdin Capital, Sands Capital, Menlo Ventures, ZhenFund (China) and Marc Benioff. Roeding is also a co-founder and chairman of the board of Rewind Co., a diabetes type 2 reversal company. Roeding's venture investing focuses on AI, brain-to-machine interfaces, consumer businesses, biology meeting software and engineering, and consumer robotics. He served as EVP at Paramount Global / CBS, where he started the division CBS Mobile and brought it to profitability, and as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Kleiner Perkins and its iFund with Apple Inc., where he co-founded and led mobile shopping app shopkick with $22M of venture capital to a $250M cash acquisition by SK Telecom/SK Planet and 20 million users. Shopkick rewards users for just walking into retail stores such as Target Corporation, Best Buy, Macy's and Walmart and engaging with products from Procter & Gamble, Pepsi, L'Oreal etc., driving over $1B in sales annually for its partners. Fast Company ranked shopkick one of the world's 10 Most Innovative Companies In Retail, alongside Apple and Starbucks, and Entrepreneur Magazine placed Roeding on its cover.
Jeffrey D. Jordan is an American venture capitalist at the Silicon Valley firm Andreessen Horowitz and the former President and CEO of OpenTable.
John O’Farrell is an Irish venture capitalist at the Silicon Valley firm Andreessen Horowitz, which he joined in June 2010 as its third general partner. He serves on the boards of PagerDuty, Slack, Factual, GoodData, Granular, IFTTT, ItsOn and the Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties.
Belly was a loyalty program founded in August 2011 in Chicago by Logan LaHive and Craig Ulliott, receiving its initial round of around $3M in funding from Chicago-based venture capital firm Lightbank.
Clinkle was a mobile payments company founded in 2012. In 2013 they raised $25 million and the product launched to college students on September 24, 2014.
CipherCloud is an American software company providing cloud computing security to businesses. The company was established in 2010 and is based out of San Jose, California.
Naval Ravikant is an American entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder, chairman and former CEO of AngelList. He has invested early-stage in over 200 companies including Uber, FourSquare, Twitter, Wish.com, Poshmark, Postmates, Thumbtack, Notion, SnapLogic, Opendoor, Clubhouse, Stack Overflow, Bolt, OpenDNS, Yammer, and Clearview AI, with over 70 total exits and more than 10 Unicorn companies.
Teespring is an American company that operates Spring, a social commerce platform that allows people to create and sell custom products. The company was founded in 2011 by Walker Williams and Evan Stites-Clayton in Providence, Rhode Island. By 2014, the company had raised $55 million in venture capital from Khosla Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. In 2018 Spring launched its merchandise shelf integration in partnership with YouTube, enabling creators to sell their products directly below video content, and expanded this business model with similar integrations for Twitch, Instagram, TikTok, etc. in the years following. Over the past few years, Teespring has had to make significant reforms to its safety operations in response to criticism over apparel that promoted violence and racist messaging. In 2019 Chris Lamontagne became CEO of Spring. In 2021, Teespring was rebranded as Spring.
Dave Asprey is an American entrepreneur, author and advocate of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet known as the Bulletproof diet, about which he has made claims criticized by dietitians as pseudoscientific. He founded Bulletproof 360, Inc. in 2013, and in 2017, founded Bulletproof Nutrition Inc. Men's Health described Asprey as a "lifestyle guru".
Martín Casado is a Spanish-born American software engineer, entrepreneur, and investor. He is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, was a pioneer of software-defined networking, and was a co-founder and the chief technology officer of Nicira Networks.
Balaji S. Srinivasan is an American entrepreneur and investor. He was the co-founder of Counsyl, the former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Coinbase, and former general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Sriram Krishnan is an Indian-American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. He is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Geoffrey Woo is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist who is the founder of Ketone-IQ, Archive, and Anti Fund, a venture capital firm he co-founded with Jake Paul.