OurCrowd is investing in Mark One, the Silicon Valley startup behind Vessyl, the world’s first smart cup that identifies the calories and nutrients of any beverages it contains and tracks user nutrition and hydration habits. Vessyl, which has already pre-sold $3.5M directly through its website, is being taken to market by a team with engineering and brand marketing expertise from Apple, Microsoft, and Nike. This round in which we are investing is being led by Intel Capital, with previous participation from investors Felicis Ventures and Horizons Ventures (top-tier venture firms with over $10B in collective exits).
Note: due to the dynamics of the round, Mark One will only be available for investment by OurCrowd members for three weeks.
Join us for a webinar to meet CEO Justin Lee, VP Ops Osei Van Horne, VP of Marketing Nic Barnes, and Dir Sensor Technologies Ryna Karnik on Monday, May 18th at 9AM Pacific / 12PM Eastern / 7PM Israel.
Reserve your seat by emailing asher@ourcrowd.com
Three reasons why we’re excited about investing in Mark One:
- Highly experienced team: Taking a new category of consumer devices to market poses enormous manufacturing, marketing, and distribution challenges. Mark One has attracted a team of highly experienced engineers, marketers, and executives from major consumer brands to fulfill its vision. VP Engineering Hamid Mohammadinia was recruited to Mark One after serving as Microsoft’s most senior product development and hardware engineer for the Hololens, a groundbreaking augmented reality headset released this year. Microsoft had recruited Hamid from Apple, where he served as the lead manufacturing engineer for fourteen generations of the iPod, iPad, and the Apple Watch. VP Design Jason Mayden joined Mark One after over a decade at Nike, where he was global design director for Brand Jordan. Earlier, Jason was a lead designer for Nike’s digital platform, Nike+, and their wearable fitness tracker, the Nike Fuelband. CEO and co-founder Justin Lee started work on the Vessyl cup by recruiting renowned industrial designer and Mark One co-founder Yves Behar, who currently is Chief Creative Officer of the multi-billion dollar consumer electronics company, Jawbone. Yves has also been a chief designer for the One Laptop per Child project, and for products at Samsung, BMW’s MINI, and Sodastream. With this and other talent on board, the Mark One team has made significant progress in product prototyping and in arranging the manufacturing vendor network, retail and distribution partnerships, and early branding and promotional frameworks to make Vessyl a commercial success.
- Top-tier co-investors: This round is being led by Intel Capital, and joined by previous investors, including The Collaborative Fund, Felicis Ventures, and Horizons Ventures. Collectively, this group has backed a number of top-performing companies in the wearables and activity tracking space including Basis Science (acquired by Intel for $100M in 2014), Misfit Wearables (last valued near $200M in a 2014 private financing), and FitBit (recently filed for NYSE listing).
- Strong consumer trends: Long-term shifts in consumer attitudes that fueled the multi-billion dollar rise of the fitness and activity tracking and wearables space are now manifesting in an adoption of smart devices and applications that track consumption and nutrient intake. Detailed nutrient tracking is not new. Weight Watchers, founded in the 1960s, has seen generations of Americans precisely tallying their meals. More recently, nutrient tracking apps have garnered tens of millions of active users entering food and beverage information into their phones. Incumbent companies across a wide array of industries have been forced to respond to these consumer behavioral trends. Take, for example, Under Armour’s acquisition of mobile app MyFitnessPal for nearly $500M earlier this year. Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Google and others have been driven by similar trends to unveil wearable products with a focus on fitness and activity tracking. Unlike the case with these wearables, though, nutrient tracking has required tedious manual entry and imprecise guessing of food & beverage nutritional value. The ability for Mark One’s technology to accurately gauge calories and nutrients without active user input is a natural progression for the field and the pre-sale of over 35,000 Vessyl units underscores the demand for this class of product.
Meet the Team
Join us for a webinar to meet CEO Justin Lee, VP Ops Osei Van Horne, VP of Marketing Nic Barnes, and Dir Sensor Technologies Ryna Karnik on Monday, May 18th at 9AM Pacific / 12PM Eastern / 7PM Israel.
Reserve your seat by emailing asher@ourcrowd.com
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Hamid Mohammadinia, VP Engineering
Hamid was the head of engineering manufacturing on 14 generations of iPod (Nano, Classic, Shuffle, Touch), and all four generations of iPad – including iPad Air. Hamid was then recruited from Apple by Microsoft, where he was the most senior product development and hardware engineer for the Hololens, a groundbreaking augmented reality headset unveiled earlier this year. |
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Jason Mayden, VP Design
Jason was the Global Head of Design for the Jordan Brand, Nike’s second-highest grossing line of footwear. Earlier, Jason served as the Director of Innovation for Digital Sport at Nike where he helped develop Nike’s wearable device, the Fuelband. |
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Ryna Karnik, Director Sensors
Ryna worked with Microsoft on the teams that shipped Xbox One and the Microsoft Band. Ryna was the primary optical engineer for the Band project, responsible for early development and testing of always-on optical heart rate sensor hardware for mass production. |
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Nicholas Barnes, VP Marketing
Before he joined Mark One, Nic led global consumer strategy at Levi Strauss & Co. Before his work at Levi’s, Nic surveyed and analyzed consumer segmentation and market modeling to build and launch brands at Procter & Gamble.
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Yves Behar, Co-founder and Adviser
Yves is the founder of FuseProject, a well-respected design firm with deep relationships with many consumer brands. Yves is a Co-Founder and adviser to Mark One, and is currently Chief Creative Officer of Jawbone. |
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Justin Lee, Co-founder and CEO
Justin studied biomedical computing at Queens University in Ontario, during which time he began working on the early technology behind the Vessyl concept. First recruiting Yves Behar to produce the initial product, Justin constructed the Mark One team around Vessyl and today serves as its CEO. |