Mike Plitkov said he knows what it's like to carry on your life in stress.
He said he worked long hours and gained weight while building his first company. After leaving his company (Adtech company called Appness), he said he tried a lot to lose the pound: extreme training, calorie tracking, fasting. “Consistency was a difficult part while it was working,” he told TechCrunch.
What he really wanted was a coach to hold him accountable, he said. So in 2019 he launched Simple, a health coaching app with AI to help people lose weight. Then, in 2023, he added that outstanding feature. An AI coach named AVO helps to provide customized advice to the needs and advancements of users.
“We wanted to help people lose weight without the guilt or crushing that arises from a toxic diet culture,” he said.
The company has built the company in its current $160 million ARR with 700,000 subscribers, he said Wednesday that it has closed a $35 million Series B funding round led by actor Kevin Hart's Heartbeat Venture. The company has raised $45 million in total funding.
Prytkov had an early co-founder, then left the company, leaving him at the helm and solo.
Avo handles more than 100,000 coaching conversations a day, and nearly 300,000 meal logs daily, Prytkov said. Users fill out the form to help them build personalized programs and are referred to AI coaches. It collects information such as dietary logs from user input and performs assessments that acquire habits and nutritional quality, he said.
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“Coaching will be provided through chats equipped with LLMS that adapts tone and content to each person, along with long-term context and memory for constitutional tweaking,” Prytkov added.
Obviously, the app is a direct competitor of Noom, the industry's most popular behavioral diet app with perhaps millions of users. And it competes with weight watchers and myfitnesspal. Prytkov said he is different from his competitors as he does not offer general lessons, track calories in general or challenges with supplying GLP-1 drugs.
“We offer personalized coaching as well as tracking,” he said. “AVO adapts daily planning beyond nutrition, fasting, movements and habits to provide real-time dietary feedback and tailored check-in.”
However, it serves as a “action engine” that helps to complement GLP-1 users and their medications and helps to maintain routines after MEDS has stopped.
Although the app's coaching premise has not changed, the rise of LLMS has been a boon for personalization. “AI changed both the product and the model,” he continued.
“In every conversation, all recorded meals will be fed into a closed-loop learning system that updates each person's profile and improves the cohort-level model,” he said. “Each iteration, AVO becomes more accurate and aggressive.”
Prytkov said Hartbeat approached the company after launching Avo two years ago. The company had already made some health investments.
“We weren't looking for investors at the time, but we agreed because we felt Hartbeat Ventures was the perfect fit for us,” he said. Others in the round include the liquidity of private credit companies.
Meanwhile, Prytkov believes that users are being handed over to the app because they don't feel clinically about the app. He said Virtual Wellness has proven to be affordable and accessible, making it a “default front door” for weight management. Next, he hopes to expand the company's GLP-1 companion capabilities and launch a specialized women's health and middle-aged program.
Eventually, he plans to expand beyond weight loss and create a health app that will help you sleep, stress and move.
“Our vision is to become a health duo apple,” Plitkov said. “The goal is simple. It's the most effective way to become a companion to the fun health people use every day and develop healthy habits.”