Startup of the Week: ZOE

Startup-of-the-Week
  • ZOE was founded in 2017 by Tim Spector, Jonathan Wolf and George Hadjigeorgiou.
  • The startup helps users to better understand their body and its response to food.
  • So far, ZOE have raised $47m over 3 funding rounds.

Website: https://joinzoe.com/

Our Startup of the Week for this week is ZOE!

ZOE (named with the help of its Greek co-founder, ZOE meaning “life” in Greek), is a biotech startup dedicated to nutritional science, on a mission “to help people eat with confidence.” ZOE gains insights on their users’ gut microbes, as well as their blood fat and blood sugar to help them sustainably adjust their nutrition.

The startup gains its insights on users through a few different methods, asking for a stool sample as well as requesting users to carry out a finger-prick blood test and use a continuous glucose monitor (CGM).

6 weeks after users complete their tests, they’ll receive a personalised insights report, which will enable them to follow a 4-week action plan tailored to each user’s personal biology. ZOE aims to empower users to understand their bodies better and make more informed decisions for their health through such insights.

 

 

ZOE was founded by Tim Spector, Jonathan Wolf and George Hadjigeorgiou, inspired by co-founder Tim’s study of 13,000 twins. The study explored gut microbes, genes and lifestyle, where Tim found that even identical twins could have extremely different responses to certain foods, and that the key to eating right was understanding how your own unique biology works.

The ZOE team state: “ZOE was designed to be something new. Our bet was that new technologies could enable scientific research at an unprecedented scale, allowing us to understand individual responses in the real world.”

“All three of us – Tim, George and Jonathan – have made significant changes to the way we eat, as a result of our research. We are excited to be able to make this cutting edge research available publicly to anyone who wants to join ZOE on this journey.”

So far, ZOE have raised a total $47 million in funding over the course of 3 funding rounds – their latest announced in May of 2021, which raised $20 million.

ZOE has also launched the world’s largest ongoing COVID-19 study, with more than 4 million contributors from around the world, led by co-founder Tim Spector. You can find out more about the ZOE COVID Study here – https://covid.joinzoe.com/