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Chronic allergy sufferers know well the daily discomfort of seasonal allergies and environmental allergies. They also likely know about allergy shots — the treatment that requires you to go into an office to get shots on a weekly or monthly basis. But there is a lesser-known treatment, allergy drops, that requires a bit less effort. Wyndly, a startup participating in Y Combinator’s current batch, aims to make allergy drops more accessible to people.
Before the pandemic, Dr. Manan Shah, an otolaryngologist (an ear, nose, throat doctor), would have his patients come in for an evaluation and then prescribe them personalized allergy drops to train their immune system to fight off allergy triggers. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Shah, began treating his patients suffering from allergies via telemedicine. That went well so Dr. Shah and his cousin, Aakash Shah, took their idea to Y Combinator. They showed their idea was working well in Denver, Colorado but wanted help taking it nationwide.
Through Wyndly, Dr. Shah can conduct both allergy testing and treatment via telemedicine. Unlike allergy shots, allergy drops can be taken at home. Wyndly aims to treat environmental allergies, like cats, dogs, dust mites, mold, pollen, trees, grasses and weeds.
“Most people don’t realize there is this other option,” Dr. Shah said. “I think most people think the only option for allergies are shots or taking antihistamines every day. we educate people there is this wonderful therapy and we can make it available to you in the most convenient way.”
Wyndly works by first evaluating a patient’s allergies. Patients can either submit a recent allergy test to Wyndly, or take Wyndly’s at-home finger prick test. Next, Wyndly prepares personalized allergy drops for the patient and sends a vial to the patient’s home. Then, at some point during the day, patients take five drops under the tongue. Dr. Shah said most patients see a decrease in their symptoms after taking these drops daily for six months.
Wyndly costs $99 per month for allergy drop treatment, which could come out to around $594 in total, if a patient takes them for six months. If you become a patient, the allergy test costs $0 but if you don’t become a patient, the test costs $200.
While allergy drops are easy to take, there’s a caveat. Insurance companies typically do not cover the cost of the treatment, while they generally do for allergy shots. But Wyndly says it aims to be the same cost as what someone would pay for insurance-covered allergy shots plus co-pays.
It’s also worth noting that these allergy drops are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. While they are made using the same medications that are FDA-approved for allergy shots, the compounded medication is not itself approved and regulated by the FDA, Dr. Shah said.
Down the road, Wyndly may look to treat food allergies but Shah says there’s not enough data about its safety.
“I just want to see a little more research and for the field to reach a consensus on safety,” Shah said. “We hope to do food in the future if it ends up being proven to be really effective.”
Wyndly is has been in Y Combinator for a little over a month now and has been slowly expanding its offerings. Through partnerships with physicians, Wyndly is able to offer its services in 38 states throughout the country. By the end of 2022, Wyndly hopes to be in all 50 states.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/12/wyndly-aims-to-bring-allergy-drops-to-the-masses/
Even though Kevin Busque is a co-founder of TaskRabbit, he didn’t get the response he was hoping for the first time he pitched his new venture to Felicis Ventures’ Aydin Senkut. Nonetheless, he said the outcome was one of the best things that could have happened.
“I’m kind of glad that he didn’t invest at the time because it really forced me to take a hard look at what we were doing and really enabled us to become Guideline,” said Busque. “That seed round was an absolute slog. I think I spent seven or eight months trying to raise a round for a product that didn’t exist, going purely on vision.”
Eventually, that idea evolved into Guideline, which describes itself as “a full-service, full-stack 401(k) plan” for small businesses. Eventually, Senkut did write a check — Felicis led Guideline’s $15 million Series B round. Today, Guideline has more than 16,000 businesses across 60+ cities, with more than $3.2 billion in assets under management. The company has raised nearly $140 million.
This week on Extra Crunch Live, Busque and Senkut discussed Guideline’s Series B pitch deck — which Senkut described as a “role model” — and how they built trust over time.
The duo also offered candid, actionable feedback on pitch decks that were submitted by Extra Crunch Live audience members. (By the way, you can submit your pitch deck to be featured on a future episode using this link right here.)
We’ve included highlights below as well as the full video of our conversation.
We record new episodes of Extra Crunch Live each Wednesday at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. GMT. Check out the February schedule here.
Episode breakdown:
- How they met: 1:30
- Building trust: 11:30
- Inside Guideline’s Series B deck: 16:00
- Pitch deck teardown: 33:00
How they met
Senkut and Busque met nearly a decade ago, when Busque was still at TaskRabbit. Several years later, Busque launched out on his own and went fundraising for his original idea. Even though he got a no from Senkut, it wasn’t an easy decision.
Looking back, Senkut said he had much more freedom to follow his instincts while angel investing.
“As an institutional fund with LPs, we were feeling the pressure of checking all the checkmarks,” explained Senkut. “It’s amazing how, sometimes, being more structured or analytical actually does not always lead you to make better decisions.”
When Busque came back around after the pivot, looking to raise a Series B, Senkut called it a “no-brainer,” particularly because of the type of CEO Busque is.
“My opinion of Kevin as a person is that he’s an excellent wartime CEO, but also he’s a product visionary,” said Senkut. “We call them ‘missionary CEOs.’ There are mercenary CEOs who can extract every ounce of dollar from a rock, but we are gravitating much more toward CEOs like Kevin who are focused on product first. People who have a really acute vision of what the problem is, and. a very specific vision for how to solve that problem and ultimately turn it into a long-term scalable and successful company.”
Busque said he was drawn to Senkut based on his level of conviction, explaining that Senkut doesn’t always have to go by the book.
“If he wants to write a check because the founder is great or the product is great, he does it,” said Busque. “It’s not necessarily that he has to see a certain metric or growth pattern.”
Building trust
Obviously, years of staying connected and communicating (and not just about Guideline) laid the foundation for building a relationship. Busque said the honesty in their conversations, including Senkut’s initial rejection, lended itself greatly to the trust they have.
Remote-first startups were still controversial in Silicon Valley when we launched Extra Crunch two years ago today. Back then, if you can recall, the rest of the world was not even sure how all those unicorns were going to do on the public markets.
Today, Silicon Valley resides on the cloud and is publicly traded. We’ve covered the stunning changes, and as we help founders navigate the path from idea to first check to IPO, we also tripled the number of Extra Crunch members.
Take 20% off the price of a 2-year Extra Crunch membership
Offer expires Monday, February 15, 2021
Now, as the world glimpses a brighter, post-pandemic future, we are doubling down on the news and analysis that’s helped many early-stage companies make better decisions.
As Extra Crunch enters its third year, we’re putting our foot on the gas so we can bring you more:
- Fresh analysis about today’s most dynamic tech industries.
- Surveys of top investors about trends in your sector.
- In-depth profiles of top companies from their earliest days.
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We’ll also publish more articles with inside tips from industry experts to help you solve nonsoftware problems that face every company like fundraising, growth and hiring, as well as deep dives into different industry sectors and pre-public companies.
We’re tying all of these efforts back in with the editorial coverage and event plans at TechCrunch. And to make this holistic approach truly successful, we’re ramping up efforts to engage and expand the Extra Crunch community.
In recent weeks, reporters and editors have appeared on Clubhouse and Discord to discuss their work with readers. We’re planning to expand this outreach, so stay tuned!
To show our appreciation for your support, we’re offering a 20% discount on 2-year subscriptions through Monday, February 15 to celebrate our second anniversary. If you’re already a member, you can renew at a discount.
If you’re not a Extra Crunch member yet, we hope you’ll join us.
A new BuzzFeed quiz is the first in what Director of Product for Quizzes Chris Johanesen said he’s hoping will be a series of “stunt-y experiments” that the publisher launches this year.
The quiz, timed for Valentine’s Day weekend, promises to “create your perfect boyfriend (or girlfriend) using AI technology.” Johanesen said it’s designed to “poke fun at the situation we’re all in” (quarantine, obviously), as well as the “weird world of online dating.”
To take the quiz, you answer a series of multiple-choices questions about what you’re looking for in your ideal romantic partner.
The questions will probably feel familiar to anyone who’s taken a quiz on BuzzFeed or elsewhere online, but the answer should be a lot more unique: Johanesen noted that in a normal online quiz, there might be “12 or 20 different results that are written, and that’s pretty much it.” With this one, “you could retake it dozens of times and never get the same results.”
Johanesen explained that the BuzzFeed team generated an enormous variety of different profile images using StyleGAN technology. For the text, BuzzFeed staff contributed personality traits, text messages quotes, hobbies and “weird, dark stuff” that the quiz combines algorithmically.
“I think we’re mostly trying to embrace the absurdity of it,” he added. (I saw this myself when I tried out a demo earlier this week and was assigned a girlfriend who wanted to show off her “collection of scabs.”) “We try to match it a little bit to some of your inputs so that it’s not totally random. … An early version was more realistic, but it wasn’t as fun.”
Looking ahead, Johanesen said he’s hoping to create more quizzes that are “more generative,” where a writer might come up with a concept but they don’t have to “handwrite every single option.” Still, it sounds like this approach requires significant editorial work, which Johanesen doesn’t expect to change.
“We could definitely use machine learning models to write a quiz, but it probably wouldn’t be very good,” he said. Instead, the team is interested in “that intersection of what technology can do that humans can’t, and what humans can do that technology can’t.”
More broadly, he noted that BuzzFeed is experimenting to find new ways to refresh the quiz format, for example with the Quiz Party feature and Quiz Streaks.
Minneapolis voted Friday to ban the use of facial recognition software for its police department, growing the list of major cities that have implemented local restrictions on the controversial technology. After an ordinance on the ban was approved earlier this week, 13 members of the city council voted in favor of the ban with no opposition.
The new ban will block the Minneapolis Police Department from using any facial recognition technology, including software by Clearview AI. That company sells access to a large database of facial images, many scraped from major social networks, to federal law enforcement agencies, private companies and a number of U.S. police departments. The Minneapolis Police Department is known to have a relationship with Clearview AI, as is the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, which will not be restricted by the new ban.
The vote is a landmark decision in the city that set off racial justice protests around the country after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd last year. The city has been in the throes of police reform ever since, leading the nation by pledging to defund the city’s police department in June before backing away from that commitment into more incremental reforms later that year.
Banning the use of facial recognition is one targeted measure that can rein in emerging concerns about aggressive policing. Many privacy advocates are concerned that the AI-powered face recognition systems would not only disproportionately target communities of color, but that the tech has been demonstrated to have technical shortcomings in discerning non-white faces.
Cities around the country are increasingly looking to ban the controversial technology and have implemented restrictions in many different ways. In Portland, Oregon, new laws passed last year block city bureaus from using facial recognition but also forbid private companies from deploying the technology in public spaces. Previous legislation in San Francisco, Oakland and Boston restricted city governments from using facial recognition systems though didn’t include a similar provision for private companies.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/12/minneapolis-facial-recognition-ban/
