The CQ | Fay Emerges From Stealth With $25M to Reshape Nutrition Care — For Consumers and Dietitians
Plus the Forerunner Team's Must-Reads of the Week
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By Nicole Johnson, Partner at Forerunner
We’re leading the series A for Fay, a platform enabling consumers to access registered dietitians (RDs) at little to no cost through insurance while empowering an overlooked, lesser-served sector of healthcare providers to build their personal businesses on their own terms. Fay stood out as the company to partner with in this space based on their tremendous impact and scale in a relatively short period of time, demonstrating immediate resonance with RDs—along with their product sophistication, unique model, and the caliber of the team.
Fay comes at a critical moment with nutrition across American culture, health, and public interest. There’s no shortage of evidence illustrating this reality:
Obesity rates in America hover around 41%, up from 11% in 1990, and the WHO has declared obesity an epidemic that continues to worsen.
About half of American adults have 1 or more preventable chronic diseases, many of which are related to poor-quality eating patterns — including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, some cancers, and poor bone health.
Consumers are fundamentally rethinking the way they approach their health, as evidenced by the ballooning popularity of better-for-you food products, GLP-1s, wearables, and newfound interest in proactive healthcare.
We know empirically that RDs can effectively support individuals in managing and preventing conditions through nutrition care, but there’s a general lack of consumer awareness about the role that dietitians can play, not to mention, the broader role food and weight play in our larger health. This issue is compounded by limited in-network coverage, sticker shock with out-of-pocket costs, and the overall de-prioritization of proactive efforts within the healthcare system.
Founded in 2022 by Sam Faycurry and Mark Stefanski, Fay connects patients with registered dietitians who deliver personalized nutrition and lifestyle counseling at little to no cost for consumers through in-network care. Fay has always operated by putting RDs first, offering providers the ability to accept insurance and run their business through the Fay Nutrition platform. At Forerunner, we refer to this model as a digitally-native franchise, where small business entrepreneurs can run their business through a platform with supporting tools and resources needed for scale, all while incentives are aligned to ensure value accrual is greater through the platform versus off.
We believe this team and this model are best positioned to reshape nutrition care at time when Americans need it most. Read more about their series A raise and what’s ahead in TechCrunch.
What We’re Talking About on Slack:
The goal of many Gen Z and millennial women is now to be a DINK—”dual income and no kids.” According to a new report, 35% of millennial and 32% Gen Z women don’t want children at all, with money as a major reason. Since 1960, there’s been a 140% increase in married, childless households.
‘Gray’ divorce is sky-rocketing among baby boomers and it can wreak havoc on their retirements. Overall divorce rates have gone down over the last two decades, but they’ve risen for older people. Since the 1990s, the number of couples who are 50+ and have divorced doubled. For those 65+, the rate has tripled. It could be they’ve waited until their kids have grown, that divorce has become more socially acceptable, or just because spending more time together resurfaces old resentments. Either way, it’s more complicated to separate finances after decades of accruing assets and each individually have less time to rebuild for retirement. The financial impact is harder on women, because they are often the ones who have left the workforce to care for children, and many may be trying to get a job for the first time in decades. A 2021 study found that women 50+ experience a 45% decline in their standard of living post-divorce, compared to 21% for men.
Why is inflation so stubborn? Ask your local small business. Over 80% of entrepreneurs cited increases in wages and benefits as having a significant impact on their businesses, followed by the rising costs of commercial insurance (68%) and goods/inputs (67%). They say they need to pass on those cost pressures to consumers in order to stay afloat. More than half of small-business owners said they plan to raise prices in the next 12 months, and 64% said they’ve already raised prices in the last 12 months.
Gen Alpha already has billions in spending power—and they want Nikes and Starbucks. A recent survey of parents (mostly millennials), with children aged 8 to 13 and a median household income of $75,000 - $99,000 found the typical Gen Alpha kid spends $45 each week, amounting to $50 billion a year when you put them all together. They’re getting money for chores (69%) or as a reward for good behavior or grades (73%), but 47% are doing odd jobs such as babysitting and 36% making money through online selling or reselling.
High interest rates are hitting poorer Americans the hardest. Nearly 56% of people who make less than $25,000 carried a credit card balance in 2022. Meanwhile only 38% of those who made over $100,000 did. “The divergence puts Fed officials in an uncomfortable position: Free spending by wealthy households means high interest rates have done little to curb consumer demand. But with few other inflation-fighting tools, policymakers have little choice but to keep interest rates high—even if those policies hurt families that are already struggling.”
The Wall Street Journal reports on the quest for treatments to keep weight off after Ozempic. Some say new drugs or procedures that keep weight off could create a bigger boom than the weight loss drugs themselves, since maintaining weight is a lifelong challenge and even affects those who haven’t taken Ozempic.
OpenAI debuted GPT-4o, a faster, more advanced model that can convincingly interact like a human and is free for all ChatGPT users. “I felt that I was witnessing the murder of Siri.”
Startups aim to fix ‘broken market’ for child care. In the U.S., more than half of all children live in a “child care desert,” and it can feel nearly impossible to find the child care centers that do exist when only about 40% of providers have a website. Several startups are looking to bring the $60 billion child care industry into the digital age by collaborating with states to develop databases to help parents find available care. But there are many challenges in making this work: licensing regulations vary from state to state, pooling together data is difficult, particularly from different agencies that use different systems, and there’s sparse info on factors like cost and business hours.
The loneliness epidemic has given rise to a new crop of startups aiming to help people connect in real life. Several of these new apps are looking to be the “anti-dating apps” by arranging casual IRL meetups and hope to make money through subscriptions, event tickets, and brand deals. Says one Cofounder: "I believe the conventional 'make friends' apps too closely mimic the dating model, which can feel awkward and high-pressure for making friends. These apps should instead foster a low-stakes, group-focused environment."
This is what happens when you ask an algorithm for relationship advice. BBC investigates whether AI can offer wisdom on interpersonal dilemmas. What they found is that the chatbot was able to provide good insight on the possibility of change, compromise, and conflict resolution, but it didn’t offer much in terms of intellectual humility or consideration of different perspectives. The psychologist who conducted the experiment noted the potential practical uses of AI to help people explore alternative viewpoints on a troubling situation, suggesting that a chatbot can be trained to model itself on reknowned thinkers to talk us through our problems.
Portfolio Highlights:
Faire CEO and Co-founder Max Rhode wrote an op-ed for Fast Company on indie retailers’ secret to success.
Chime is named a CNBC Disruptor for the fifth year in a row. Bloomberg, Reuters, PYMNTS announce the launch of Chime’s MyPay, earned wage access service.
Glossier’s original Balm Dotcom is back by popular demand, covered in WWD, Glamour, AdAge and more.
Zola co-founder Shan-Lyn Ma is profiled in Inc.
TechCrunch, CNET, and Forbes report on OURA’s latest heart health features.
Katarina Schneider, founder of Ritual, and Lindsay Dahl, chief impact officer, weighed in on Amazon’s new policy for dietary supplements in ModernRetail.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Forbes cover Faire’s latest Main Street Shopping report.
Necessaire’s The Body Acne Solution is a winner of 2024 Allure Readers' Choice Breakthrough Awards.
Glossier is named one of BeautyMatter’s Future50 2024, with insight on the brand offered by CMO Kleona Mack. The Business of Fashion highlights Glossier’s grant program and continued support of Black entrepreneurs in beauty.
There are ~580 open jobs at Forerunner portfolio companies, check them out.