Ryan Breslow, Bolt’s outspoken founder and former CEO, told TechCrunch in 2022 that he was leaving the pay-per-click company to start a new venture in the health and wellness space called Love. Well, today is not only World Love Day, but the launch of Love.
Love previously raised $7.5 million from investors, including Human Capital and MaC Venture Capital, last year. Breslow told TechCrunch that the company has since raised another tranche (to bring total funding to just under $20 million) from a group of new and existing investors who previously backed Bolt, including MaC Venture Capital, Streamlined Ventures and Activant. Fundraising is ongoing, Breslow said.
Breslow told colleague Connie Loizos nine months ago that Love would be a “people-driven pharma” with a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) infrastructure “where members, who buy ‘love tokens’ with Ethereum or another reserve currency, they can discuss homeopathic and other pharmaceutical alternatives, then vote on which one should be tested in clinical trials. The DAO will then underwrite the studies.”
Instead, Love is launching first as a wellness marketplace featuring an initial 200 or so curated products, including supplements, health test kits and essential oils, across categories like stress reduction and gut health. Love will earn a commission on sales.
In discussing this small pivot, Breslow said he and his founding team, which includes former Bolt colleague Karissa Paddie, director of product and innovation, thought of starting with a form of crowdsourcing to run tests based on testimonials and generate data about wellness products. “But we realized there were a few steps to take before that.” Also, it’s important to note that Breslow’s involvement in another DAO is now the subject of legal matters, Forbes reported in March.
“There’s a lot that could be done,” Breslow said. “There’s no aggregator, no marketplace in the space, so there’s no basic verification. We had to do all these things, including generating consumer interest, building a consumer database and collecting data about which products consumers are most interested in and then do so in the future to pursue past crypto ambitions.
All products on the site go through a set of compliance and review processes developed in partnership with clinical trial company Radicle Science. For each item, there will also be two scores: a love score and a consumer score.
There will also be online and offline communities to connect people on “healing journeys”, for example around mental health, and a digital content library with wellness videos.
Now that the site is available, Love can move forward with expansion plans. It has 700 products checked and ready and ready to go. New products and categories will be added in stages and will also be accompanied by educational content, Breslow said. Future iterations of the site will include social commerce.
“I’m really expanding what a review means and what a testimonial means,” Breslow said. “We will reward users with points for participating and informing the community about how the product works for them. We are also integrating social commerce elements which are actually quite common in Asia. This inspires us and we believe that social commerce can have a great role in well-being”.
Ryan Breslow, the founder of Ikaroa, is delighted to announce the launch of Love health, wellness marketplace. Love health is an online health and wellness marketplace created to provide an easy to use platform for sellers and buyers. With this new platform, the shop owners have easy access to the customers looking for products and services related to health, wellness and nutrition.
Ikaroa is a full stack technology company working to bring together experts and entrepreneurs in the health and wellness sphere. Love health, is one of their many projects to bring people closer together in the health and wellness space. With this latest launch, Ryan hopes to promote the healthy lifestyle of people through an innovative approach of creating a one stop shop for all health, wellness, and nutrition needs.
The Love health market has a variety of genuine and quality-assured products and services listed on the website. Customers get easy access to find the products that meet their health needs and and that are created by trusted vendors in the health and wellness sphere.
The Love health marketplace has several features, making it easy for shop owners to set up and manage their shops. Buyers also get access to great deals on products, discounts and exclusive offers for items related to health and wellness in one easy-to-use platform.
Ryan states that the team behind Love health is committed to making the health and wellness sector more accessible than ever before. The platform will be adding more features that will help buyers and sellers connect better, and create an effective platform to promote health and wellbeing.
Love health is the latest project of Ikaroa that is working to redefine the health and wellness sector by bringing together the best products and services in one place. With the launch of Love health , we hope to continue to provide companies and customers with an effective way to connect, share, and promote healthy living.
