Episode #19: 3D Body Scans: Coming to Your Gym

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  Narrator:
  Today we’re going to talk to a company that has made some Star Trek tech real. This is the Tech Optimist.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  We are reinventing personal health with our AI-powered, photorealistic 3D body scanner to bring a device that can change the way we see healthcare.

  Mike Collins:
  It’s not just the pounds, it’s not just the stuff that you can’t see, but I do think this kind of thing can be a huge tool in that journey for people.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  We will be able to model the performance of athletes by modeling their musculoskeletal structure.

  Narrator:
  In a world captivated by criticism, it’s easy to overlook the groundbreaking technologies shaping our future. Let’s shine a light on innovators who are propelling us forward. As the most active venture capital firm in the U.S., we have an exceptional view of tech’s real-world impact. Join us as we explore, celebrate, and contribute to the stories of those creating tomorrow. Welcome to the Tech Optimist.

  As a reminder, the Tech Optimist podcast is for informational purposes only. It’s not personalized advice and it’s not an offer to buy or sell securities. For additional important details, please see the text description accompanying this episode.

  Mike Collins:
  Hi, welcome to the Tech Optimist podcast. Today, we’re visiting with another early-stage AV portfolio company, Shape, and its CEO, Alex Wayenberg. Alex, welcome to the show.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  Thank you.

  Mike Collins:
  So just kick it off and tell us a little bit about Shape and what you guys do.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  Yeah, so I’m co-founder and CEO of Shape, and we are reinventing personal health with our AI-powered, photorealistic 3D body scanner that is called ShapeScale. It actually tracks how your body shape changes over time. For example, by tracking your 3D body shape, when you lose or gain four pounds, we can actually show you exactly where. And that matters a lot because you could have gained four pounds of lean mass in your upper body and be overall healthier and you’re going to live longer, or you could have gained four pounds of fat in your midsection, some of it being visceral fat, which would dramatically affect your life expectancy.

  Mike Collins:
  Yeah, so I mean as I think most of our listeners know, we think the class of GLP-1 drugs is a pretty significant technology and we’re just at the beginning phases of it, but over the next decade, we think this is going to have a profound impact on society. I’ve shared publicly that I’ve dropped 55 pounds. I’m an ex-athlete, but with COVID and life, I had put on some extra weight, and we’re actively looking for investments in this space. Shape I think is a great example of it.

  So moving beyond, for us it was two themes: GLP-1 means people are going to be more interested in their body composition beyond just a number on a scale. And this combination of software and hardware we think is also a theme that is going to be really important over the next decade. I’m a big believer in Alex as a leader, and those are the two things we look for: a big opportunity, a change in the marketplace, and a team that we can get behind early in its development. So we’re super excited about Shape.

  Tell us a little bit about the business strategy, Alex. I think there’s both—you think of the consumer side—but also, how do you think about this from a business model standpoint?

  Narrator:
  Shape, as mentioned, has launched their premium product, ShapeScale. Alex next begins to dive deeper into their business model, but I wanted to share Shape’s mission statement from their website to prep your mindset for the conversation that ensues directly after this.

  Our mission at Shape is to empower individuals to take control of their health and wellness through innovative technology. We strive to create a world where tracking and monitoring physical fitness is effortless, accurate, and accessible to all. By bridging the gap between the human body and technology, we aim to revolutionize the way people understand and improve their health. With a commitment to design, engineering, and data science, we are dedicated to pushing boundaries and delivering products that inspire and improve lives.

  Let’s get back into the conversation. Take it away.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  Yeah, I mean we thought initially to go directly to the consumer, but we realized there are so many things that we can actually learn from experts in the field—whether they’re personal trainers, coaches of professional sports teams, bariatric surgeons, weight loss specialists, or even plastic surgeons. There are so many things that we can learn from them by going B2B2C first, and at the same time growing a very healthy business in terms of annual recurring revenue that it was too good of an opportunity to pass on. Because all these learnings that we can take from these experiences, we can later bring them to people’s homes in a lighter version.

  Obviously, we’re not going to replace your doctor. But that allowed us to really have a very interesting and I think innovative go-to-market strategy where currently, we’re in 100 business locations, including weight loss clinics, gyms, personal trainers, plastic surgeons, and even physiotherapists that are using our product. By the end of this quarter, we’re going to be in 200 locations, literally doubling that number in less than a quarter. That allows us to reach a lot of people and get a lot of learnings, and that’s what a startup I believe should do.

  Mike Collins:
  Do you sell these units? Do you lease them? Is it a flexible approach that way? How do you—

  Alex Wayenberg:
  That’s an excellent question. Actually, from the get-go, we realized that, and that goes back to the trend you were mentioning about hardware plus software. There are incredible synergies there of having a physical device that captures a unique dataset that is personal to you. And then on top of that, we put in AI and intelligence to provide unique services. So in the end, we are more of a software-as-a-service platform, and the hardware is just an enabler.

  So businesses are getting ShapeScale for $200 per month with no upfront cost. We’ve signed up a lot of businesses. We have been growing over 50% month over month for the last nine months—from 10K in ARR at the end of Q3 last year to almost 450K in ARR at the end of this quarter.

  But we’re doing the same for consumers as well—we will sell them the device, but most of the value they will get is through software and services. Therefore, there’s a recurring payment for consumers as well, a small subscription depending on what level of personalization you would like and what level of service you would like.

  Mike Collins:
  Yeah, no, and I could see from a business perspective, if you could close one new plastic surgery case or you could sign up a couple more people into your gym, the ROI on this is probably—they’re doing it from a very business development perspective, I assume. So I think that’s probably a segue right into our audience in the Alumni Ventures community, which is the ask: “Hey, if this is something that might help you in your business.” Can you just rattle off the kinds of people again, Alex, that might be interested in the ShapeScale?

  Alex Wayenberg:
  Yes. So if you can introduce sports teams, coaches, personal trainers, weight loss doctors or clinics, bariatric or plastic surgeons, we can help them bring their practices or businesses to the next level by providing unique insights for them and their clients.

  One example I want to give is a weight loss clinic in Las Vegas that’s working with GLP-1 that tripled their conversion since they started using ShapeScale by showcasing what is going to happen to their clients in a very visual way. They went from a 30% sign-up rate to a 90% sign-up rate literally by incorporating this in their sign-up process.

  So that’s the first ask I have for the community. The second one—we’re building a product that we want to put in everyone’s home because that has incredible implications for health and healthcare. So if you are thinking of getting one for your home, we’re going to have a special discount for Alumni Ventures when we launch officially at the end of this year.

  Mike Collins:
  And again, I would also say because we’re going to be picking up one for our company here, I would encourage you as kind of an employee benefit. I know that there are something like 16 million Americans on GLP-1 drugs. That number will probably double, I think, in the next 12 to 24 months as supply increases and knowledge increases.

  I know at our company of 125 people, the number of people on this medicine doubles every six months. So again, as a corporate benefit—Alex, if you’re an AV portfolio company or just a friend of Alumni Ventures—reach out to Alex. I think there are some HR departments and people in culture where increasingly this is something that could be made available, maybe in the same room where we reserve a space for nursing mothers or parents. You can put it in there privately for sure.

  But again, I think as people think about this lifestyle choice, the before-and-after picture—or during—it is really, I think, one of the bits of advice that I personally give to friends and family that are going on these drugs. I think it is a great idea to take a picture once a month for your journey. Because really it’s not just the pounds, it’s not just the stuff that you can’t see, but I do think this kind of thing can be a huge tool in that journey for people.

  Keaton Nankivil:
  Hey everyone, taking a quick time out so I can tell you about the Sports Fund from Alumni Ventures. AV is one of the only VC firms focused on making venture capital accessible to individual investors like you. In fact, AV is one of the most active and highly rated VCs in the U.S., and we co-invest alongside renowned lead investors.

  With our Sports Fund, you’ll have the opportunity to invest in a portfolio built around tech and business advancements across the sports world—from personal wellness to sports media to team ownership. This fund is focused on companies that have the potential to tap into the massive global sports market, which is expected to exceed $250 billion by 2030.

  To get started, visit av.ac/funds/sports. Enjoy the rest of the show.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  Oh yeah, I mean it’s the perfect companion for these kinds of treatments. First of all, it creates more engagement and the visuals speak for themselves. Some people also don’t realize they’re losing so much and so fast. And so this helps them reconnect with their body and understand, “Hey, this is what is happening, this is where I’m losing the weight.”

  Typically, it gets them even more excited to be on that journey and take other steps that are also necessary. And I think you’ve been talking about this in your other interview about GLP-1—that you need to have at some point the lifestyle change. You need to get the food noise under control. You need to get that diet a little bit higher in protein. You need to get the exercise going.

  ShapeScale is amazing for that because at some point you get on a plateau. You’re losing the fat, but you want to do more effort. More effort means you’re going to start exercising. You’re going to feel better about exercising because you’re not going to hurt yourself. You’re going to build lean muscle mass, and that’s great, especially as you age, for bone health—because it’s going to maintain your bone density, your mobility, and your posture.

  So your weight is going to stop changing at some point. But ShapeScale can actually show you what’s going on. Some people have lost zero weight, but you can literally see the volume moving from the bottom of their waistline up to their body and their legs. They’re adding literally years and years to their life expectancy.

  Mike Collins:
  No, I couldn’t agree more, Alex. I mean, it’s almost like the twin pillars of weight loss: one is the weight loss and losing the fat, but then it’s about exercise, flexibility, lean muscle mass.

  I was with my brother in Colorado, Summit County, this past week. We’re similar ages, late fifties, and wanting to continue to ski, to bike, to go on long hikes at altitude, to fish, fly-fishing—you’re squatting, you’re casting, those kinds of things. If you want to do those in your sixties and seventies and maybe even your eighties, again, this is just another tool, I think, to motivate and monitor your progress as you put in the work.

  Talk to me a little bit about sports. I can think about football teams and those kinds of things. What’s your perspective on this as a tool for teams in sports?

  Alex Wayenberg:
  Well, right now it’s not our main focus because we’re just seeing more traction from other segments—typically, weight loss and plastic surgery. We’re seeing a lot of traction on that side. But we do have a very strong base in sports, and I think it’s going to be an incredible tool.

  First of all, right now, we can do body composition in a pretty advanced way by directly inputting your body shape into an AI model that correlates it with a DXA scan. We have a dataset of a thousand DXA scans and we are getting some amazing results. We can estimate visceral fat, bone mass, and lean muscle mass, so we can do all the BMR calculations.

  We do 90% of what the DXA scan does without actually having to do a DXA scan. For a team, it’s like 10 minutes for each athlete—it’s a one-minute scan per athlete. We have face recognition, so they can just step one by one on ShapeScale. Even if they just want to measure weight, we can deactivate the scanning and they can just get the weight of everyone on the team in literally two minutes because of this technology.

  But beyond that, when you think from a musculoskeletal standpoint, we will be able to model the performance of athletes by modeling their musculoskeletal structure and, in the end, help them perform better. Because in the end, it is physics—and by inferring that structure, we will be able to provide a highly personalized plan to get those athletes, already at the 99%, that last 1% improvement to beat the competition.

  That’s what we’ll be able to provide in the future. We still have some work to do on that, but we can, for example, already animate the scan. We can already model a lot of things and infer what is going on inside just by looking at the outside of the body through this correlated dataset.

  And that’s what gets me excited—I’m an athlete, right? The origin story—maybe we’re going to talk a bit about this—is that I used to do gymnastics at a pretty high level, training 20 hours a week with champions, etc. I keep doing sports every day here in San Francisco. So bringing a new technology to athletes to help them perform is something that I care deeply about.

  Mike Collins:
  Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about the origin story. How did you get off the ground? Where have you been, and tell us a little bit more about where you’re going, Alex.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  Exactly. So like I said, I was an athlete training in gymnastics 20 hours a week. I’ve always been in great shape. I’m one of the lucky ones to be born almost like that and have this asset—that was until I moved in 2010 to China for work.

  And there’s one thing that you need to know about me: I love Chinese food. So when I moved to China, I started eating Chinese food pretty much breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was mostly a high-carb diet—noodles, the delicious bao and dumplings.

  After a couple of months, my wife asked me if we were getting pregnant—and she was talking about me. That was the first time in my life I felt like, yeah, actually. It’s a little bit like the story about COVID—things got in the way and I was working hard and not taking care. So I hired a personal trainer and I started a protein-rich diet. I did that for five weeks, and then I bought the latest connected scale. I was very excited, and after a couple of weeks, what happened? Well, obviously, I gained four pounds.

  Mike Collins:
  Muscle—happy to be back.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  Because I build muscle pretty fast, and muscles are denser. Then I looked at myself in the mirror and I realized I looked different. My clothes were fitting differently, my shoulders were opening up, my posture was better, and then it hit me—how many people are struggling with that same problem, especially the ones that are not as fortunate with their metabolism or with sports as I was?

  What must their journey have been like? And it also made me realize, “Wait—we’re measuring the wrong thing.” If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  The body shape change actually provides you with a more engaging experience—that’s important, the engagement in the feedback loop—but also a faster feedback loop. You start doing a new routine, you can see the effect, and that directly hit me. Another thing that hit me is what you said about the combination of hardware and software, because I had worked all my life on building hardware products. The most important thing is actually the data that they collect and what you can do with it. This becomes increasingly important, especially in the age of AI.

  Mike Collins:
  AI, yep.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  If your device can capture a unique dataset and extract insight from there, well, that’s it. Someone would have to recreate that dataset. And that’s what takes the time, right? The algorithm is always getting better.

  Mike Collins:
  And the other thing I think that was part of our beta with you and the company, Alex, is the evolution between version one, version two, version three. We just think that there’s huge option value here with the data. Obviously, B2B and B2B2C can provide a great structure for that. I think the technology of what you’re going to be able to learn about the human body from these kinds of scanners will grow over time, in our opinion.

  And I also think if we’re going into a world that is more digitized as well, I think there’s a future that may be 5, 10, 15 years away where this device—or a device like it—that is scanning and knows your body can be kind of a virtual agent for you. Once you scan it, once you scan Mike, it’s not a huge step to create a virtual avatar of Mike, right? So again, I think whenever you invest in a company like Shape, you’re somewhat buying an option on what Alex and his team and the data as a platform could become, especially because this is not a Series D that we’re participating in where they’ve already figured that all out. It’s likely to evolve.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  I personally believe it’s one of the greatest opportunities of this century to bring a device that can change the way we see healthcare. I mean, every science fiction movie has a body scanner that magically can detect an anomaly in your body and potentially say, “Okay, this is what needs to be done.” Well, it’s not going to be a CT scan because that’s radiation. It’s not going to be an MRI machine because it would send every metal object in your house flying around, right?

  Narrator:
  Alex here brought up a really fun concept that I wanted to dive into a little bit just for fun. He talked about how in sci-fi movies and TV there are sci-fi body scanners or genetic technology examples throughout pop culture. I wanted to share a few because I think some of them are really cool and from some of my favorite movies.

  We’ll start with the OG from the 1966 Star Trek series. In The Wrath of Khan, Kirk uses a retina scanner to access Project Genesis data. At the beginning of the episode, I gave you a teaser about the tricorder. The tricorder is that handheld device that Spock and Kirk and all of them use to scan and record technical data. There’s also a medical version that can diagnose diseases and record body stats—more along the lines of what Alex was talking about.

  Then we hop to something more modern—Wall-E from 2008. Eve is a perfect example of this. Eve (E-V-E) stands for Extra-Terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, and she’s a droid equipped with a scanner to detect self-sustaining life. In the movie, when Wall-E shows her the boot full of a plant, she absorbs the boot with the sustaining life in it and then shuts down. That’s essentially what the whole movie is about. That was pretty cool scanning technology by Disney.

  Staying in the Disney realm, we’ll end with J.A.R.V.I.S. from the Iron Man movies. Not only is J.A.R.V.I.S. an exoskeleton personal assistant for Tony Stark, but he also scans Tony Stark’s body, his equipment, and his suit to make sure his operation is at peak capacity.

  So yeah, I figured I would just share a few fun sci-fi genetic technology examples. Let’s get back into the interview.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  But imagine a device where you walk in front of it and it automatically watches over you. Today, it’s a robotic scanner that rotates around your body, but eventually, it’s going to be included in your wall. You’ll walk out in front of it every morning and it’s going to watch over you.

  It’s not just about fitness, dieting, and aesthetics. Dermatologists are already saying, “Oh wow, you can take a picture every time of the same location with guaranteed photographic quality.” We can track melanoma like this—that’s exactly what we do. We’ve found dozens of things like that, including breast cancer, deep vein thrombosis, stress fractures, and infections that we could catch early on.

  That’s one part of it that I deeply care about because one of my brothers passed away from cancer—a form that could have been treated if it had been caught earlier.

  There are so many insights, and nobody has looked at your body in terms of imaging without radiation or high magnetic fields—just using visible and non-visible light, hyperspectral if you wish. That’s one thing.

  Another opportunity is that if you create a device that people use every single day, you become the front end. You become like Amazon. If I tell you Amazon is going to build something on top of having people coming every day to their store, you believe them. If I tell you FedEx is going to build Amazon, you laugh and say, “No way.”

  Having that unique, regular connection with the user almost every single day because we’re in their home—that’s why it’s the greatest opportunity. Think about hurting your knee and having it swell. We already have your credit card and insurance information. The AI automatically finds a covered compression wrap that includes lidocaine or anti-inflammatory capsules that you can get for free. ShapeScale is going to get you free, personalized products delivered to your home based on your body shape and what’s going on with your body. That is a new form of healthcare. We have basically created real preventive healthcare.

  Mike Collins:
  I mean, if you think about the future of healthcare, it starts with the data—meaning the measurements, the blood work, the visual scans, all of that. I think where we’re headed is that increasingly, nursing and doctoring—at least initial diagnosis or triaging—is going to become more and more AI-driven and software-driven to allow people to focus on higher value-added tasks and oversight.

  Surgery obviously is not going to be done by robots for a long time, but I do think scanning and data—whether through wearables or a whole-body scan—is going to have a role. So again, I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for Shape and what you’re doing.

  Alumni Ventures:
  Ready to invest in the next wave of healthcare innovation? Alumni Ventures Healthtech Fund provides you with cutting-edge access to disruptive medical startups. From groundbreaking treatments to revolutionary medical devices, we help you create a venture portfolio in this rapidly changing space. Visit av.vc/healthtech to get started.

  Mike Collins:
  Alex, what’s next for Shape?

  Alex Wayenberg:
  Well, we just finished building our 10,000-square-foot factory near Shanghai, and now we have our first mass-produced batch of 1,000 units. We actually got the first 100 delivered last Friday. We’re pretty excited about this.

  Mike Collins:
  Congratulations.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  I mean, we already have a lot of businesses and homes. We actually have all the metrics we need for Series A or even Series B level. Our NPS is in the high sixties. We’re getting organic business, people expanding installations, and even some metrics are Series B level—like our CAC payback time is less than six months, our churn is less than 10%.

  We know how to further improve this because it’s an early product. We’re still learning, constantly talking to our customers, and making improvements and fixes they ask for. The only metric we’re still working on is that we think we’re a bit early in terms of revenue. Our target is to hit $1 million ARR. We are executing super fast on that. Like I said, we’re growing 50% month over month, so we’re going to hit this in the next two quarters. With the round we just closed, we have enough money to reach profitability by the end of the year.

  So yeah, we’re going to look at opening our Series A once we hit that $1 million ARR.

  Mike Collins:
  Wow. Super. It sounds like you’re well on track. So Alex, as an athlete, tell me your favorite productivity hack.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  I mean, a cold shower or cold plunge in the morning. I get that for free here in San Francisco because I’m surfing at first light.

  Mike Collins:
  Okay, there you go.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  So this morning we were surfing under the bridge with one of our computer vision interns.

  Mike Collins:
  I would say, sorry to interrupt, but a third of the venture capitalists in the morning—you’re likely to raise your Series A just by getting up and cold plunging under the bridge in San Francisco. Just introduce yourself a lot, Alex.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  Yes.

  Narrator:
  Honestly, with this productivity hack that Alex shared—the cold plunge—I wanted to look into a few benefits because I’m starting to think about maybe doing a cold plunge every morning. I think it’s a really cool idea.

  So here are a few benefits from doing a cold plunge or cold shower every morning. Cold plunges may help treat depression and improve mood by increasing dopamine and endorphins in your body, which can make you feel happier and more alert.

  Research also suggests that cold plunges can lead to long-term mental health benefits such as reduced anxiety and depression. Physically, cold plunges may help with pain relief—cold water therapy can reduce swelling, lessen pain, and speed up muscle recovery.

  It can also help with inflammation, blood circulation, metabolic efficiency, blood sugar regulation, and insulin sensitivity. Overall, it seems like a pretty good thing to start adding to your morning routine.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  The body shape change actually provides you with a more engaging experience—that’s important, the engagement in the feedback loop—but also a faster feedback loop. You start doing a new routine, you can see the effect, and that directly hit me. Another thing that hit me is what you said about the combination of hardware and software, because I had worked all my life on building hardware products. The most important thing is actually the data that they collect and what you can do with it. This becomes increasingly important, especially in the age of AI.

  Mike Collins:
  AI, yep.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  If your device can capture a unique dataset and extract insight from there, well, that’s it. Someone would have to recreate that dataset. And that’s what takes the time, right? The algorithm is always getting better.

  Mike Collins:
  And the other thing I think that was part of our beta with you and the company, Alex, is the evolution between version one, version two, version three. We just think that there’s huge option value here with the data. Obviously, B2B and B2B2C can provide a great structure for that. I think the technology of what you’re going to be able to learn about the human body from these kinds of scanners will grow over time, in our opinion.

  And I also think if we’re going into a world that is more digitized as well, I think there’s a future that may be 5, 10, 15 years away where this device—or a device like it—that is scanning and knows your body can be kind of a virtual agent for you. Once you scan it, once you scan Mike, it’s not a huge step to create a virtual avatar of Mike, right? So again, I think whenever you invest in a company like Shape, you’re somewhat buying an option on what Alex and his team and the data as a platform could become, especially because this is not a Series D that we’re participating in where they’ve already figured that all out. It’s likely to evolve.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  I personally believe it’s one of the greatest opportunities of this century to bring a device that can change the way we see healthcare. I mean, every science fiction movie has a body scanner that magically can detect an anomaly in your body and potentially say, “Okay, this is what needs to be done.” Well, it’s not going to be a CT scan because that’s radiation. It’s not going to be an MRI machine because it would send every metal object in your house flying around, right?

  Narrator:
  Alex here brought up a really fun concept that I wanted to dive into a little bit just for fun. He talked about how in sci-fi movies and TV there are sci-fi body scanners or genetic technology examples throughout pop culture. I wanted to share a few because I think some of them are really cool and from some of my favorite movies.

  We’ll start with the OG from the 1966 Star Trek series. In The Wrath of Khan, Kirk uses a retina scanner to access Project Genesis data. At the beginning of the episode, I gave you a teaser about the tricorder. The tricorder is that handheld device that Spock and Kirk and all of them use to scan and record technical data. There’s also a medical version that can diagnose diseases and record body stats—more along the lines of what Alex was talking about.

  Then we hop to something more modern—Wall-E from 2008. Eve is a perfect example of this. Eve (E-V-E) stands for Extra-Terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, and she’s a droid equipped with a scanner to detect self-sustaining life. In the movie, when Wall-E shows her the boot full of a plant, she absorbs the boot with the sustaining life in it and then shuts down. That’s essentially what the whole movie is about. That was pretty cool scanning technology by Disney.

  Staying in the Disney realm, we’ll end with J.A.R.V.I.S. from the Iron Man movies. Not only is J.A.R.V.I.S. an exoskeleton personal assistant for Tony Stark, but he also scans Tony Stark’s body, his equipment, and his suit to make sure his operation is at peak capacity.

  So yeah, I figured I would just share a few fun sci-fi genetic technology examples. Let’s get back into the interview.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  But imagine a device where you walk in front of it and it automatically watches over you. Today, it’s a robotic scanner that rotates around your body, but eventually, it’s going to be included in your wall. You’ll walk out in front of it every morning and it’s going to watch over you.

  It’s not just about fitness, dieting, and aesthetics. Dermatologists are already saying, “Oh wow, you can take a picture every time of the same location with guaranteed photographic quality.” We can track melanoma like this—that’s exactly what we do. We’ve found dozens of things like that, including breast cancer, deep vein thrombosis, stress fractures, and infections that we could catch early on.

  That’s one part of it that I deeply care about because one of my brothers passed away from cancer—a form that could have been treated if it had been caught earlier.

  There are so many insights, and nobody has looked at your body in terms of imaging without radiation or high magnetic fields—just using visible and non-visible light, hyperspectral if you wish. That’s one thing.

  Another opportunity is that if you create a device that people use every single day, you become the front end. You become like Amazon. If I tell you Amazon is going to build something on top of having people coming every day to their store, you believe them. If I tell you FedEx is going to build Amazon, you laugh and say, “No way.”

  Having that unique, regular connection with the user almost every single day because we’re in their home—that’s why it’s the greatest opportunity. Think about hurting your knee and having it swell. We already have your credit card and insurance information. The AI automatically finds a covered compression wrap that includes lidocaine or anti-inflammatory capsules that you can get for free. ShapeScale is going to get you free, personalized products delivered to your home based on your body shape and what’s going on with your body. That is a new form of healthcare. We have basically created real preventive healthcare.

  Mike Collins:
  I mean, if you think about the future of healthcare, it starts with the data—meaning the measurements, the blood work, the visual scans, all of that. I think where we’re headed is that increasingly, nursing and doctoring—at least initial diagnosis or triaging—is going to become more and more AI-driven and software-driven to allow people to focus on higher value-added tasks and oversight.

  Surgery obviously is not going to be done by robots for a long time, but I do think scanning and data—whether through wearables or a whole-body scan—is going to have a role. So again, I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for Shape and what you’re doing.

  Alumni Ventures:
  Ready to invest in the next wave of healthcare innovation? Alumni Ventures Healthtech Fund provides you with cutting-edge access to disruptive medical startups. From groundbreaking treatments to revolutionary medical devices, we help you create a venture portfolio in this rapidly changing space. Visit av.vc/healthtech to get started.

  Mike Collins:
  Alex, what’s next for Shape?

  Alex Wayenberg:
  Well, we just finished building our 10,000-square-foot factory near Shanghai, and now we have our first mass-produced batch of 1,000 units. We actually got the first 100 delivered last Friday. We’re pretty excited about this.

  Mike Collins:
  Congratulations.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  I mean, we already have a lot of businesses and homes. We actually have all the metrics we need for Series A or even Series B level. Our NPS is in the high sixties. We’re getting organic business, people expanding installations, and even some metrics are Series B level—like our CAC payback time is less than six months, our churn is less than 10%.

  We know how to further improve this because it’s an early product. We’re still learning, constantly talking to our customers, and making improvements and fixes they ask for. The only metric we’re still working on is that we think we’re a bit early in terms of revenue. Our target is to hit $1 million ARR. We are executing super fast on that. Like I said, we’re growing 50% month over month, so we’re going to hit this in the next two quarters. With the round we just closed, we have enough money to reach profitability by the end of the year.

  So yeah, we’re going to look at opening our Series A once we hit that $1 million ARR.

  Mike Collins:
  Wow. Super. It sounds like you’re well on track. So Alex, as an athlete, tell me your favorite productivity hack.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  I mean, a cold shower or cold plunge in the morning. I get that for free here in San Francisco because I’m surfing at first light.

  Mike Collins:
  Okay, there you go.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  So this morning we were surfing under the bridge with one of our computer vision interns.

  Mike Collins:
  I would say, sorry to interrupt, but a third of the venture capitalists in the morning—you’re likely to raise your Series A just by getting up and cold plunging under the bridge in San Francisco. Just introduce yourself a lot, Alex.

  Alex Wayenberg:
  Yes.

  Narrator:
  Honestly, with this productivity hack that Alex shared—the cold plunge—I wanted to look into a few benefits because I’m starting to think about maybe doing a cold plunge every morning. I think it’s a really cool idea.

  So here are a few benefits from doing a cold plunge or cold shower every morning. Cold plunges may help treat depression and improve mood by increasing dopamine and endorphins in your body, which can make you feel happier and more alert.

  Research also suggests that cold plunges can lead to long-term mental health benefits such as reduced anxiety and depression. Physically, cold plunges may help with pain relief—cold water therapy can reduce swelling, lessen pain, and speed up muscle recovery.

  It can also help with inflammation, blood circulation, metabolic efficiency, blood sugar regulation, and insulin sensitivity. Overall, it seems like a pretty good thing to start adding to your morning routine.