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Alleviate

Alleviate makes self-treatment systems for common musculoskeletal injuries as an alternative to traditional physical therapy.

Boston, MA, USA

One Liner

One Liner
Alleviate makes self-treatment systems for common musculoskeletal injuries as an alternative to traditional physical therapy.

What Problem We are Solving

Problem
Alleviate addresses a large and growing need for access to quality care for chronic musculoskeletal injuries. The injuries on our list are common, debilitating, and have poor outcomes in the US despite being treatable with a "near-cookie cutter" method that makes them rife for a self-guided approach. Our customers are active, and feel that an important piece of what makes their lives enjoyable has been taking from them by chronic pain. Our target consumer is one who wants to take an active role in their recovery from pain, whether they are an Active Boomer, On-Your-Feet worker (eg Nurse, Firefighter), Elite Athlete, or Recreational Runner.

About Us

About Us
Our first product is a system for Plantar Fasciitis (PF), an often-chronic inflammation of the bottom of the foot that affects 10% of the US population, with about 3MM new diagnoses per year. Our PF offering consists of four components, woven together into one cohesive experience that the customer uses at home to self-treat: A wearable brace, a self-massage / myofascial release tool, an interactive digital exercise program, and high-touch expert service / guidance. We have direct-to-consumer ecommerce sales of >$200k, profitable unit economics, and monthly sales growth since launch. Each component was developed in-house, has been thoroughly tested for effectiveness, patented and even honored with international awards for Product Design. We are starting with PF, but there are ~10 other pathologies that are treatable with applications of the same underlying IP as our PF offering (eg Tennis Elbow, Runner's Knee, others). In summation, consumer out of pocket spend on those pathologies constitute a ~$10BN total addressable market in the US. Alleviate's model already works as "just" a simple company that sells physical Plantar Fasciitis products over the internet direct to consumer. Launching new verticals, subscription software offerings, insurance reimbursement, Telehealth, etc are all opportunities for upside we will pursue to penetrate the TAM and drive scale -- but the fundamentals of the base product offering are already significantly de-risked.

Venture Highlights

Highlights
- Referred to TCA by Tim Schneider, currently considering investment through HBS Alumni Angels
- Loft Brace was honored with International Red Dot Award for Product Design, the most prestigious award in Industrial design.
- First Runner-up in Harvard Business School Alumni New Venture competition
- Backed by Oregon Sports Angels, Harvard Business School Alumni Angels, The WayFund (Angel group investing in former Wayfair employees), and numerous sophisticated individual angels, including public company CEOs, MDs at top-tier PE firms, and physicians. 
- Selected as a Trusted Partner by Talar Medical, a leading Physician organization in podiatry
- Net Promoter Scores consistently >70

Business Model

Business Model
The business model of today is that of a simple eCommerce brand.  We sell our products for an Average Cart Size of $135, with blended COGS of $43 and CAC of $81, making us profitable at the customer and unit level from the first purchase.   (note:  we will continue to improve the COGS and CAC #'s as we scale and develop).

The business model of tomorrow (targeting <12 months from now) will be one where we still make a significant portion of our revenues from physical product sales, but where 20-30% of our revenues will be from recurring subscriptions to our Coaching App.  This allows us to grow LTV and scale more rapidly. 

Further down the road, we expect to be able to offer our products as reimbursable medical devices, and provide highly differentiated telehealth Physical Therapy services.  

This phased approach has allowed us to get to market and start selling quickly without a huge amount of up-front capital.

Competitive Advantage

Quote
To Investors:  What makes us special as an early-stage investment is that we already have a business that fundamentally works.  We sell need-based physical products to happy customers in a huge market with profitable unit economics.  That provides us a very stable platform on which to build a world-class, much more differentiated digital offering with an uncrossable moat.  We are extremely resource-efficient and disciplined with our capital.

To Customers:  What makes us special to our customers is how we make them feel - confident and taken care of.  Our category is full of snake oil and charlatans, and we trade on credibility and genuine support.  Our products are best in class, we consider that table stakes -- but we get daily compliments from our customers that they're amazed by our level of service.  

Revenue

Revenue To Date
$250K
MRR
N/A
Revenue YTD
$185K
Burn Rate
$80K

Users

Total Users
4K
Total Users (Past 30 Days)
250
Daily Active Users
N/A
Monthly Active Users
N/A
Total Paying Users
4K
MoM Growth Users
N/A
Organic Traffic %
N/A

Customer Costs

CAC
$78.00
LTV
$130.00
Churn
N/A
Margins
70%

Go-To Market Strategy

Business Strategy
Our Go-To-Market strategy has been to first launch our products on our D2C website, Alleviatetherapy.com -- and drive traffic using a combination of Google Search Ads (targeting customers who are actively researching their diagnosis and trying to find a credible solution) and Instagram Ads (targeting consumers who are already using a product that isn't working for them and audiences with a high likelihood of PF, eg runners and firefighters).  We have then supported those paid media placements with organic social and SEO / content marketing blog content to lower acquisition costs while building brand credibility.  

Once we established consumer traction, we grew our reach through 3 reseller channels : medical professionals dispensing our products to their patients, online marketplaces targeting consumer health spend, and then retail (still in progress).  All 3 of our wholesale channels have repeat POs, and we are looking to open additional channels.  

From there, we will look to grow wallet-share and recurring revenue by providing subscriptions to premium content, a subscription-based coaching app, personal coaching services, accessories, and other value-add upsells.  

In a future state, we expect to invest in clinical trials for our products so they can be covered by insurance, further growing reach in the medical channel. 

The parts of this "Go To Market Playbook" that we have executed have been successful in our Plantar Fasciitis vertical, so we expect to repeat it for Tennis Elbow and others as they become ready for commercialization. 

 

Competitive Analysis

Competitive Analysys
1.  We are laser focused on specific pathologies.  We go deeper into the nuances of plantar fasciitis (and tennis elbow...etc when we launch them) than Prehab Guys, Theragun, or The Ready State ever will.  They compete by having "a solution for every problem" -- we compete by having a COMPLETE solution for your specific problem.
2.  Seamless integration of physical products and digital content.  By controlling all aspects of the experience and feeling ownership over the end-to-end customer journey, we de-mystify the process for the consumer and give them a feeling of support and empowerment they can't get by cobbling together products / content from multiple sources, which often have conflicting information.

Competitor Website
Fasciitis Fighter www.fasciitisfighter.com.au
Prehab Guys theprehabguys.com
The Ready State thereadystate.com

Networking

Networking
We are open to meeting up to grab a coffee, or just to chat. We would really enjoy your feedback and insight into our venture and would be happy to discuss anything that you are currently working on to see if we can be of service!

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Capital

Loading...
Name Amount
Amount Left $250,000.00
Amount Raised (This Round) $500,000.00
Amount Raise To Date $1.8M
Type of Raise Convertible Note

Valuation
N/A
Preseed
$1.8M

TAM SAM SOM

TAM
$50B
SAM
$10B
SOM
$1.2B

Business Stage

Business Stage
Paying Customers

Business Type

Business Types
Investor-Backed

Categories

Social Entrepreneurship
B2C
B2B2C
Internet
E-Commerce
Fitness
Technology
Social Media
Healthcare
Design

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