Persona, a startup that creates and delivers customized vitamin regimens, has secured $4.5 million in venture funding and launched a service to help doctors suggest supplements for their patients.
The Seattle-area company offers a monthly vitamin subscription that arrives in daily dose packages. It also provides a platform that suggests vitamins based on characteristics like gender, age and health. Nutrients that conflict with your medications are screened out, and you can add additional supplements if you wish.
“We provide therapeutic levels of nutrition and we do it on a customized basis,” explained Persona CEO Jason Brown.
Brown said customization is an area where Persona differentiates itself from competing vitamin subscription services like Care/Of, Zenamins and VitaMe. Persona offers 95 different supplements, which works out to five trillion combinations, give or take a few.
Delivery of vitamins, supplements and medications is a growing area, highlighted by Amazon’s acquisition of PillPack for a reported price of nearly $1 billion last year. Seattle startup Pillsy recently announced its own subscription service for supplements alongside its smart pill bottles
Persona’s direct-to-consumer model now has a parallel service for health care providers called Vitamin Packs Pro. Doctors can either create their own vitamin recommendations or use Persona’s assessment.
The company has raised $15 million to date and employs 39 people. The recent round was led by Emil Capital Partners and L Catterton. Called Vitamin Packs when it launched, the company is headquartered in Snoqualmie, Wash.
