The truth is a lot less exciting. We got into YC and registered the company name that night, and the domain name was available. The Ro connection was pointed out later. If we are forced to rebrand, we will be more thoughtful.
lmao this comment is going to be pulled up by the plaintiff's lawyers and used to show willful infringement. someone's going to be paying treble + plaintiff's legal fees
seriously though you should probably consult a lawyer about whether to change the name, especially given that you've posed this comment in public
GLPs have lower effectiveness for the vast majority of overweight and fat people than macrocodex. You can look up GLP non-responder data; furthermore, many people use GLP-1 in a knee-jerk fashion, crashing their nutrition, which may result in loss of lean mass, bile issues, and gallbladder stone risks.
Please don't harangue people about exercise and diet on HN. Everyone has heard it countless times here and elsewhere. Obviously, many people find that approach doesn't (easily) work. Yes, it's well known GLP-1s can have negative effects. Many people still find them beneficial anyway, and many people take measures to address the negative effects. None of this is simple or easy, so please stop making it out like it should be a simple or easy decision for people to just do as you suggest.
In HN guidelines terms, these sections are relevant:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Pushing drugs to people which can crash your appetite is much more dangerous than promoting exercise and diet to sedentary people.
Getting 20 kg overweight only requires a 100 kcal surplus over a period of 4 years.
That's not proof that diet and exercise are not working, and it doesn't prove you need GLP-1s to resist an extra 100 kcal a day. Two slices of bread have 130 kcal for comparison.
It’s this repetition of caloric balance dogma that’s most unhelpful and unwelcome here. If if was that simple, everyone would already have done it. Appetite and metabolism are not that simple and continuing to insist that they are serves only to alienate anyone who isn’t already committed to that worldview. Nobody disputes that there are risks that need to be understood and addressed.
> Appetite and metabolism are not that simple and continuing to insist that they are serves only to alienate anyone
Funny enough, you want to argue with people who have done some real work in this field and produced results in thousands of people? But you do not provide any refutation.
We've written this algorithm; it factors all the math and current research. Let me know if you have any evidence to refute this, or if you have any paper or mechanism we do not already factor in.
Here's our claim: "Guaranteed results within 2-4 weeks of using macrocodex, people will see weight loss or weight gain depending on what they want."
And we do not even have a paywall, ads, or upsells in our proof-of-concept app, which implements this algorithm.
Other than this we've people already seeing benefit from our approach, just because you failed to apply deficit doesn't mean "calorie deficit" doesn't work or "calorie balance" is flawed, you simply fail at figuring out how much you actually burn
Also, we are challenge any organization to perform trial:
Macrocodex vs. GLP-1 drugs: on average overweight and obese individuals
Our data demonstrate Macrocodex will come out ahead of GLP-1 drugs.
Now that I've looked through your comment history, I see that you've been using HN for self-promotion, which is also against the guidelines.
If you have material consisting of novel research that the audience will find intellectually gratifying, you're welcome to share it as a standalone post.
It's not good community participation to hijack other people's launch posts with this kind of antagonistic commentary when you have a competing agenda.
Edit: removed initial mistaken accusation of failing to disclose competing product.
OK, sorry for that; I've removed the accusation of failing to disclose your competing service.
It's still not great community participation, piggy-backing onto someone else's launch thread with these kinds of comments, and repeatedly insisting that weight loss via diet and exercise is easy (people have been saying it for decades and it clearly isn't, otherwise there would be no demand for GLP-1 drugs).
The case remains that your style of participation on HN is self-promotional. If you want to generate attention for your research and program/app, please earn the exposure by writing a deep-dive post that can engage the intellectual curiosity of the HN audience.
This is a really beautiful site. Thank you for sharing it.
I think the only thing that separates us is that we manufacture the drugs and probably own more of the supply chain than they do. But they're doing a much better job on the front end.
Yeah, they are pretty polished. But I've been with them for a few years and in the beginning their site was very much not polished, however, their products, service, and focus were a beacon.
You seem to know a lot about this, and I was nodding along with a lot of your points as I was reading.
I was Stripe's first customer in 2010, so we solved the credit card processing issue :) it turns out that being in YC is good for more than just money.
You are right about HIPAA, everyone thinks this is much harder than it actually is, but GCP, OpenAI, Linq, everyone has given us a BAA.
We're definitely not trying to go after the market of people that are comfortable buying from Chinese suppliers and risking their health. When I built my mask factory, our masks were absolutely more expensive than Chinese masks, but what people were buying was a guarantee that it would meet certain filtration requirements. Some people are willing to pay for safety, but it's not important to everyone.
The only thing I really disagree with with you on is that this isn't a YC-scale company.
We are growing 56% compounded week -over-week, and I have every expectation we'll do $10 million this year, $100 million next.
We are making something that people are already buying and getting it to them in a safer, more cost-effective way.
> We're definitely not trying to go after the market of people that are comfortable buying from Chinese suppliers and risking their health
Just being able to buy from a truly trusted vendor and not pay big pharma markup and I'm there. "Personalized" sounds cool, but all of that is fluff around affordable and trustable meds.
Don’t newly produced meds require new FDA clearance/approval, with clinical testing and all the like? I mean how else can you prove that your new drug production is effective and causes no new harms
Would love to hear more about this, sounds like a fun time.
Are you planning to move from peptides to generics in the future?
Also, considering you are looking at full vertical integration, is blood testing going to be a part of the pipeline in the future or will you partner with service providers? (I assume the latter until you grow enough to expand into that?)
While peptides are currently the hot market, I definitely can see the feedback loop being a great growth driver. Having a "hands-off" medication management with doses changing based on periodical labs result would be amazing - I am on a generic med (T4) for an autoimmune, and the process is annoying:
- Get labs done
- Schedule an endocrinologist, wait
- Reach out to my GP, have them bump my medications
- Wait for them to answer/arrange a checkup
- Wait for it to clear with the pharmacy
- Repeat
If this could be condensed in a loop that is basically get labs done -> pick up prescription, it would both reduce waiting time and reduce pressure on the med system, plus could be a huge data source on drug interactions.
Oh, and one last thing - considering the peptide market is currently full of grey/black market companies, drop-shippers and affiliate resellers, how do you plan to market it?
Especially judging by the site design, if I saw this link elsewhere I'd think it was AI dropshipping slop - no offense - mostly due to classic Claude design and the AI generated bottle/video.
Besides that, congratulations on the launch - love the vision and the future it can bring, hope you become at least a decacorn!
The dosing starts out surprisingly simple. The magic is in the feedback loop: asking the patient how they're feeling, if they're getting the effects they want, and then having their doctor review and approve a new dose.
Point taken that RUO people are just yoloing this, I was one of them. Now, I can tell you that having a doctor in the loop with my health is very helpful.
I guess I'm trying to figure out what the secret sauce is that makes this a YC company, there are at least dozens, probably hundreds of telehealth GLP prescribers, manufacturing it yourself doesn't really seem like a value-add, all of them will compound with B12 for the reasons you mention elsewhere, it's hard to believe that "tell your doctor you're having side effects and they will adjust your dose" is a YC-worthy innovation. What am I missing?
I get owning the supply chain and the compounding part.
There is big deal about 503a and 503b compounding pharmacies as well.
That's why the website copy is overdone with "for you" to qualify as and the example on the bottom shows Semaglutide and Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin b12) because that is the current FDA loophole.
They can not just offer the main compounded chemical/medicine but must combine it (alongside blood tests, supposedly but every other MSO skirts this by suggesting higher BMI during intake or a selfie.)
Any 503b compounding pharmacy selling compounded, non-additive Semagluitide is breaking the law.
A 503a is the loophole because the prescriber, "determines" and documents that the product change is neccessary/significant difference for said patient.
The current risk (or perhaps pro depending on how you want to look at it) in this political enviornment is positioning the company in a place to run foul of the FDA. Florida based compounding pharmacies are divesting from GLP-1's (e.g. BPI https://bpi-labs.net/ ) due to legal threat.
I respect the regulatory arbitrage, but for example Uber and Airbnb both arguably had pretty revolutionary tech layers on top of that. Trying to figure out what the equivalent here is.
Well, there are two big equivalents here:
One, Uber successfully lobbied cities (NYC DeBlasio comes to mind, but there was one in London) - getting to a scale before meaningful enforcement action (which sometimes means investors maintaining their trust in the team, and the team sticking through the lawsuits) usually means you now have a customer base that is of voting age, and can substantially impact politics.
Two, Chevron deference is over. This is linked somewhat to the first - the overreach of federal agencies is now judicially balanced against the economic impact, not merely presumed authorized by Congress. Under this SCOTUS it is relatively uncertain which way FDA's authority will be curtailed - people will try, the fact that FDA wants to regulate the sale of non-invasive diagnostic equipment and mobile apps.. does warrant review and political discussion.
I'd wager the technical advantage is on the backend not the consumer facing. You'd be surprised how unsophisticated an unoptimized a lot of industries are.
On the manufacturing side of the world, "did this thing show up when I expected" is a remarkably difficult yet valuable question.
Previous YC founder so they’re already connected and vetted. Since then they’ve proven another 0-1 success with masks and manufacturing. Now they’re onto something very obviously hitting tailwinds.
The investment is peanuts to the fund. You’re missing the full-story deck and if they’ve shown traction it seems like a no brainer.
(btw for Lloyd the founder, Jason hired me right here from HN for ownlocal. It was my first professional software job. You guys made my career. Thank you)
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