Welcome to our weekly update on Dromadis Health! 👋
As usual, comments and feedback are suuuuper welcome. Email us, comment on this post, or just reach out for a chat, we’re friendly people! 😁
Quick refresher
We’re building Asparagus, the first device that measures your nutrition balance, effortlessly. It works by analyzing your urine, directly from your toilet bowl. 🚽
This week, in short
YC Interview – we prepped for it, took it, and heard back! We also talked about Asparagus with influential people in the health monitoring space.
Week #11 accomplishments
🍏 We talked to health professionals and influencers
This week, we had discussions with some of the UK’s most influential nutritionists. They were excited about how Asparagus could help their patients build accountability for their diet balance, and give more personalised advice.
They joined the early access list of Asparagus, and will be receiving a prototype device in early 2021!
💬 We did a lot of pitching
The big challenge of the week: ace the YC interview. We spent a lot of time working on our narrative, practicing our pitch, and getting our numbers together.
A big thank you to Holly, Shawn, Alex, Tiffany, Patrick, Léa, Mike, David, and Josh for the great pitching advice! 👏
🎉 We had our YC interview
It was on Thursday evening. We were very excited and as ready as we could have been.
We chatted with Geoff Ralston, Kirsty Nathoo, and Tommy Kilmer. And they started with the infamous:
So… what do you do?
After briefly presenting Asparagus, we discussed the insights the device will provide, our unit economics, defensibility, team. It was fast, 10 minutes felt very short.
🙊 We heard back
What you’re most curious about… We received an email on Friday at 2:30AM:
Hi Ali and Rosalia,
Thanks for talking to us today. Unfortunately, we've decided not to fund Dromadis Health this batch. We think this is an interesting idea and we can see a niche market for people who track this kind of health data, although we're not convinced that a daily tracker is necessarily the right cadence. However, based on our experience with companies manufacturing such devices, we think it is going to take more than a couple of months for you to get a working prototype that you can start to really test, especially since this is going to be sitting in a pretty harsh environment!
Generally we find that people get the most out of YC when they have something they can sell, rather than just working on the tech / manufacturing and so we would love to see an application again from you in the summer, with a working prototype.
We wish you the best
Kirsty
💭 Thoughts
Looking back, applying to Y Combinator has been an incredible experience for us as a team. We are very proud and happy to have made it to the interview stage, only 3 months into Dromadis.
Obviously, we were disappointed by the result, but very happy with the clarity of the feedback. During the interview, YC seemed convinced that there is a market that wants an Asparagus in their bathroom. And they believed that we could build it. If the biggest push-back point is that our product is too early, then we’re happy. We are confident we can deliver.
Following on their feedback in the email – are daily measurements necessary? Absolutely. This is the only way to build a full picture of how your body reacts to the food you eat. Reports don’t need to be daily, but measurements should be.
Device timeline? We’re still on track to build a fully integrated Asparagus prototype by February, with one functional sensor. We will be shipping the first devices in late 2021.
Writing up the application was the first exercise we tackled together as a team, and it was a fantastic. Preparing for the interview this week significantly improved our narrative and made us a stronger team.
On and onwards! 💪
Remember this?
Throwback to the Week #0 post and our YC team video – we’ve been a long way since!
What’s next?
💬 More health influencers outreach
📈 Grow our following
🔧 Continue working on the sodium sensor MVP
Thanks for reading our update, please leave a comment or question below. Feel free to share this newsletter with whoever you think will find it interesting!
See you next week 👋
I am counting on you and on your brillant idea to improve my health and my well-being #BestStrongTeam and can’t wait to try using Asparagus and I can assure you I am not the only one
Keep it up and #BestOfLuck❤️