consumer-health
(22)
The Pet Store That Followed Ukraine West - Then Doubled in Size
MasterZoo lost access to most of its stores when Russia's full-scale invasion began. It answered by moving with its customers, rebuilding its logistics and growing from a regional chain into a national pet-care system.
The $2.9 Billion Vitamin Cabinet That Learned to Travel
iHerb began with one herbal remedy and grew into a cross-border machine for the bathroom cabinet. Its real product is confidence - the right bottle, from a traceable source, delivered before global distance becomes the customer's problem.
The Hearing-Aid Company That Put the Internet in the Waiting Room
audibene did not try to squeeze an audiology clinic into a browser. It built a digital front door, then kept the local expert in the room.
Kenvue
Spun out of Johnson & Johnson with Tylenol, Neutrogena and Band-Aid in tow, Kenvue became the biggest name in consumer health almost overnight - then spent 2025 fending off activists, a CEO exit, an autism-claim firestorm and a $48.7 billion buyout.
Bayer
Bayer is trying to make one science company work at three speeds: the long clock of drug discovery, the seasonal rhythm of farming and the everyday urgency of self-care. Its turnaround will depend on whether that range becomes an advantage rather than a burden.
Haleon
The company you have never heard of makes the toothpaste, painkillers and vitamins you buy without thinking. Here is how GSK's cast-off brands became a £30 billion bet on self-care.
Pineapple Products
Pineapple Products is a direct-to-consumer health supplement company that builds and operates a portfolio of consumer wellness brands. Founded by Brett Allcorn, it started as classroom seminars in New York City and grew into a house of brands that pairs original product formulations - including probiotics with unique metabolic strains - with strong storytelling and partnerships with doctors, personalities, and influencers. The company creates, markets, and oversees smaller brands under a single parent, aiming to build products it believes don't yet exist in the market.
Great Many
Great Many is a New York-founded hair growth company that pairs in-studio clinical treatments - PRP injections and FDA-cleared laser therapy - with a telehealth platform and a line of growth-focused hair care products. Started in 2024 by Heyday co-founder Michael Pollak and former Estee Lauder omnichannel VP Steve Klebanow, it treats hair loss as a health category rather than a taboo, building consultative studios (NYC, Atlanta, Washington DC) around scalp assessments, microscopic follicle imaging and clinician-led plans for both men and women.
NeuroAge Therapeutics
NeuroAge Therapeutics is a San Francisco tech-bio company that measures how old your brain actually is - and tries to make it younger. Founded in 2022 by physician-scientist Dr. Christin Glorioso, the company's flagship NeuroAge Test blends brain MRI, cognitive games, proprietary RNA blood biomarkers, and genetic screening into a single 'brain age' score that aims to flag dementia risk up to 30 years before symptoms appear. The longer-term goal is bolder: small-molecule drugs that reprogram aging neurons back toward a younger state.
Primal Health
Primal Health is a Minneapolis-based molecular biotechnology company reinventing oral care by rebalancing the microbiome instead of nuking it. Founded by Berkeley-trained microbiologist Dr. Emily Stein, the company uses its patented SMMRT (Selective Microbial Metabolism Regulation Technology) to put harmful mouth bacteria on a 'keto diet' - blocking their ability to feed on sugars while feeding the beneficial ones. Its two brands, Daily Dental Care for people and TEEF for Life for pets, deliver clinically studied lozenges and prebiotic powders that support gum health, fresher breath and a healthier oral ecosystem for humans and animals alike.
Pandia Health
Pandia Health is a doctor-founded, women-led telehealth company that prescribes and delivers birth control, acne treatment, and menopause hormone therapy across the United States. Founded in 2016 by Stanford-affiliated physician Dr. Sophia Yen and a team of clinicians and operators, the company built its business on a simple bet: most American women still struggle to get continuous access to hormonal medication, and a recurring, mail-order subscription paired with a board-certified physician network can fix it.
Concerto Biosciences
Concerto Biosciences is a Cambridge, Massachusetts microbiome company that turns microbial ecology into health products. Its patented kChip platform screens millions of microbial interactions in nanoliter droplets to discover 'ensembles' - small, defined groups of microbes that work together to shepherd a damaged microbial community back to health. The company's lead program, ENS-002, is a topical live biotherapeutic for atopic dermatitis that suppresses Staphylococcus aureus without nuking the skin's helpful microbes. Founded in 2020 by scientists out of MIT and the Broad Institute, Concerto pairs ultra-high-throughput biology with AI to make microbial communities predictable and engineerable.
Huckleberry Labs
Huckleberry Labs is an Irvine, California parenting-technology company that pairs pediatric expertise, data science, and AI to help families improve children's sleep and daily routines. Its Huckleberry app tracks sleep, feeding, and development, and uses the SweetSpot predictive engine to recommend optimal nap and bedtime windows. Founded in 2017 by Jessica Toh and Seng Oon Toh after their own sleepless nights as new parents, Huckleberry is used by more than 5 million families worldwide and has expanded into context-aware AI guidance with the 2026 launch of Berry.
Magic Mind
Magic Mind makes a 2-ounce 'mental performance shot' built from a blend of around a dozen nootropics, adaptogens, vitamins and antioxidants - think lion's mane, ashwagandha, L-theanine and ceremonial matcha - designed to deliver calm focus without the jitter-and-crash cycle of a big cup of coffee. Founded in 2020 by James Beshara and William Hicks, the brand started in a San Jose commercial kitchen, grew through direct-to-consumer subscriptions, and has since pushed into national retail including Whole Foods, Erewhon, Sprouts and Albertsons. It raised a $12.4M Series A in September 2025.
RYZE Superfoods
RYZE Superfoods is a Boston-based direct-to-consumer wellness brand best known for its mushroom coffee - a blend of organic instant coffee, organic fiber, and a six-mushroom 'Super6' functional blend (cordyceps, lion's mane, reishi, turkey tail, shiitake, and king trumpet). Founded in 2020 by Harvard classmates Andrée Werner and Rashad Hossain, RYZE pitches a calmer, lower-caffeine ritual that delivers focus and immune support without the spike-and-crash of regular coffee. The company grew largely on early seed money plus aggressive social and influencer marketing, reaching reported revenue in the tens of millions while expanding into matcha, hot cocoa, creamers, and other functional blends.
ONVI, LLC.
ONVI is a Chicago-based oral health technology company building what it calls an operating system for dental care. Founded by dentist Dr. Craig S. Kohler, the company pairs camera-equipped brushes - led by the Prophix video toothbrush - with a HIPAA-compliant software platform, ONView, that links what people see in their own mouths to their dentists. In August 2025 ONVI launched a $25 million Series A to commercialize a six-product hardware-and-software system aimed at closing the visibility gap between dental visits.
Create Wellness
Create Wellness is a New York-based consumer health company that built the world's first creatine monohydrate gummy, turning a messy, bodybuilder-coded powder into a low-sugar daily habit. Founded in 2022 by husband-and-wife team Dan and Sienna McCormick, the brand sells creatine gummies, electrolyte stick packs, and unflavored powder direct-to-consumer and through Target, GNC, The Vitamin Shoppe, Sprouts, and Wegmans. With more than 250 million gummies sold and $25M+ raised across Series A and Series B rounds, Create is trying to take creatine from the 2% of people who use it to the other 98%.
Pawp
Pawp is a New York-based digital health clinic for pets that gives members unlimited 24/7 access to licensed veterinarians by chat and video, plus an optional $3,000 emergency fund - all on a single low monthly plan that covers up to six dogs and cats per household, with no age, breed, or pre-existing-condition restrictions. Pitched as an affordable alternative to traditional pet insurance, it aims to cut out unnecessary vet visits and prevent the financial euthanasia that happens when owners can't afford emergency care.
GoodRx
GoodRx is a Santa Monica-based digital healthcare platform that helps Americans find lower prices on prescription drugs. It aggregates real-time pricing and discounts from pharmacies nationwide so consumers can compare costs and access free coupons, then layers on telehealth visits, manufacturer savings programs, and tools for pharma and employers. Since 2011 it has helped tens of millions of people save an estimated $70+ billion on medications.
The Mind Company
The Mind Company is the San Francisco-based mental fitness studio formerly known as Elevate Labs. It makes science-backed mobile apps - Elevate for cognitive training, Balance for personalized meditation, and the new Spark puzzle app - that have together crossed 80 million downloads and collected Apple's and Google's App of the Year honors.
Evidation
Evidation is a digital health company that gathers real-world health data from millions of consenting individuals through its Achievement app, turning everyday signals from wearables, sleep, activity and surveys into insights for clinical research, life sciences partners, and personalized health programs.
Lumos Labs (Lumosity)
Lumos Labs is the San Francisco company behind Lumosity, the brain-training app that turned cognitive exercises into a daily habit for more than 100 million people. Founded in 2005 by Kunal Sarkar, Michael Scanlon, and David Drescher, Lumosity packages neuropsychology-inspired tasks - memory, attention, processing speed, problem solving, flexibility - into short, gamified workouts. Its database of player performance, the Human Cognition Project, has fueled collaborations with researchers at Stanford, Harvard, Cambridge, and beyond.