Vivoo, The Startup That Takes Your Urine And Gives You Personalized Health Advice
We had the opportunity to interview Miray Tayfun, Co-Founder and CEO of Vivoo. The first at-home wellness tracker that use urine to provide personalized insights and recommendations unique to the user's body.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and Vivoo?
A: We’re a bunch of young, health conscious women, with various degrees in bio-science. We wanted to have access to personalized healthcare, but found out that the market for health and wellness was very expensive and lacked accuracy and personalization.
So we decided to come together, use our scientific qualifications to create a solution that is accurate, personal, and cost- effective.
Vivoo is the first at-home wellness tracker that use urine to provide personalized insights and recommendations unique to the user's body while it helps them track their hydration, immunity, pH, energy levels, kidney & liver functions and so much more!
Q: How did you get the idea for Vivoo?
A: Well as founders we are a part of a healthy conscious community. We tried so many solutions on the market but there were too many voices in the health and wellness world with very little personalization. Solutions in the market are generic and it doesn’t work for individuals.
Q: What is the main benefit that your company provides to the health world?
A: Personalized health and wellness advice based on your urine data! It takes just 2 minutes to take a test and you’ll see your results on your mobile application instantly after you take a picture of the Vivoo sticks.
Vivoo App measures 7 core health parameters based on an at-home-urine test. Currently we help you to track your hydration, pH, ketones, infections, UTI’s, kidney and liver parameters.
Vivoo, provides you with health advice, mainly what to eat based on the 7 parameters, your wellness score, and a journey to a better, longer life.
YOU-specific health advice, YOU-specific diet regiment. On top of that a community to support your wellness journey with tools to build habits and tools to make your health and wellness journey easy.
Real Nutritionists and wellness experts with 24/7 live support rewards based on your performance is on the way!
In a nutshell; Your Body's Health and Wellness Voice in your pocket.
Q: What makes your company different from others in your space?
A: First of all Vivoo is personalized, it evolves and changes based on your body's needs. We all know there is a lot of fad in the market but Vivoo is based on science and it will always stay like this.
Rather than complicated graphs and long explanation paragraphs, Vivoo provides simple and easy to follow solutions and guidance. Simply on-the-clock wellness coaching on your mobile phone.
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Q: Did you hit any roadblocks that almost caused you to throw in the towel?
A: They come almost every week. But the biggest challenge was fundraising while figuring out a whole supply chain, build an app, managing the production and the team.
Q: What was the final push that lead you to take the risk to create your own company?
A: As a serial entrepreneur, I carry that push inside my brain. The courage was not the problem but I knew I needed to make the planning so detailed from the first day to make this a success. The risk is always there, I focused on the risk analysis and solutions rather than worrying about the risks.
Q: Where do you see the company in 5 years and how do you plan to get there?
A: Vivoo will be the go-to health and wellness, personalized, solution and lifestyle provider.
We will get there with accessible, easy to understand, easy to follow, science-based, evidence-based, personalized wellness advice that evolves with your needs and grows with your body.
Q: Are you looking for additional funding or have a crowdfunding campaign? If so, what are you looking for in a potential investor, and how can interested readers get in touch/learn more?
A: We closed our seed round recently and had a crowdfunding campaign on Republic, we are looking for strong partners for series A.
Q: Is there any advice you'd give to other aspiring entrepreneurs?
A: If you believe that your idea is important enough to be a big business, just go for it. On the road you will learn how to make it.
Q: Is there anything else you want to share with our audience?
A: Thank you so much for reading, please visit www.vivoo.io to learn more. Here is a 50% discount code for you; ‘’ talkmarkets50off ‘’
Disclosure: Startup Watch is a platform TalkMarkets provides for startup company executives to discuss their companies in depth. TalkMarkets provides a suggested list of questions but the format ...
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Hi @[Miray Tayfun](user:130396), I love the premise behind Vivoo, in striving to achieve personalized healthcare, with the help of technology and sensitivity to cost-effectiveness. I could be wrong, but but my assumption is that urine and sweat are quite similar in chemical breakdown, with different levels of concentration and a few different components. If it is okay to ask, why did Vivoo decide to use urine as the model, instead of sweat?
Hi Isaac,
Thank you so much for your question.
We use urine due to convenience, sweat is a little challenging when it comes to sample collection and testing. People urinate 6-7 times a day and urine testing tools are so standardized compare to sweat. Sweat, blood, urine, saliva, stool, these all have great opportunities when it comes to data. If you are interested in please check the human metabolome database.
hmdb.ca/metabolites
This is a fun tool to see opportunities.
What's your valuation?
But wouldn't sweat be more... sanitary?
@[Miray Tayfun](user:130396), this is a good question. I certainly would have been more comfortable. Do you have a good answer?
Vivoo has since been reported by Truth In Advertising - see https://www.truthinadvertising.org/vivoo/. It falsely advertises the ability to track immunity / immune system strength and energy levels (neither of which can be done reliably with a urine test) without any supporting evidence.
Is this true @[Miray Tayfun](user:130396)?
I'm not sure if you'll get a reply, but they've since (mostly) pulled the claim to track "immunity" and "immune system strength" from their website. However, they are still claiming to track "infections", which is misleading because they are already tracking UTIs (urinary tract infection) using exactly the same biomarkers (white blood cells + nitrite). "Infections" could be viral, bacterial, lower urinary tract, upper respiratory...etc. There is no evidence that infections in general can be detected from urine, it is very specific to urinary tract infections, and even then the UTI test has a false negative rate as many UTIs do not produce any WBCs or nitrite.
Hi Jen, did you ever get a response from the company about this? Sadly @[Miray Tayfun](user:130396) did not bothering replying to anyone here about it, which leaves me to assume it is true. Though perhaps she still will.
Thanks for sharing this info Jen.
My pleasure!
Still sounds like a pretty cool concept, even if not 100% accurate.
I absolutely agree the concept is great, and I think the team is generally well intentioned and want to help people make healthy choices. You can also find a couple of other startups in this space with different approaches. The issue is that here people are buying a product based in part on something which is 100% untrue. Selling a test that is only known to test UTIs (and even then unreliably) but saying it also tracks "infections" is like selling a urine blood test and telling you it is a "cancer" test because blood can appear in urine if you have bladder cancer (but also other reasons like kidney stones). The app itself says there is "no risk" of infections or UTI if nothing is seen in the urine. FYI I am a chemist and nurse by training. I am not trying to be vindictive, but I care about protecting patients and people.
Very impressed with what you've accomplished at such a young age, @[Miray Tayfun](user:130396).
My initial reaction was EWWWW! But the more I read, this is actually a really intriguing company.
Hi Ayelet,
If that is your comment you should definitely try :D I'm sure you'll be surprised to see how fun it is.
www.vivoo.io
@[Miray Tayfun](user:130396), do you think the pandemic has negatively impacted your crowdfunding efforts?
Hi Danny,
We closed our first campaign during the pandemic. We are planning to open the second one in a month. I believe this period was a huge win for wellness and health companies. It didn't have any significant impact.
How did the campaign do? You are still planning on a second? You are not concerned that with millions now unemployed, it might negatively impact the amount of money you can raise in a crowdfunding campaign?
Hi Danny,
Of course, I am concerned. The economy is not promising to reach the full funding amount. But, as a consumer company, we want to give the chance to our users to invest in Vivoo. The first campaign was for US investors only and we have a big following from all around the world who want to invest.
Just wondering if you were going to address the concerns left by Ms. Brocken above.
Are there any others in your space? I've never heard of anything like this before and am curious about possible competitors.
Hi Alpha,
Thank you so much for your question. There are a few competitors with similar business models but they haven't launched. We've been in the market for over 8 months now.
Kind Regards,
miray@vivoo.io
Congrats!