
Thanks for your willing to invest in our company
As a doctor, almost 100% of my patients complained about scales and their numbers. Many times they gave up on their weight loss journeys because the numbers of the scales were not showing improvements. And somehow they were right: weight requires to be measured as a dynamic parameter because our body weight can fluctuate 3 kg in one single day! So if a patient gains 2 kilos in two weeks, his or her weight could still be within the natural weight fluctuation and trending in the right direction.
In 2015, I started to work on finding a solution for the problem of short term validation of weight loss. It has been a long journey that involved 4,000 people that downloaded and tested our concept in Brazil, the US, and the Netherlands. We learned a lot with them and now, with your support, we are offering an improved and friendly version of our solution, Sinque.
So, let's scale up and Sinque!
Best regards,
Renato Romani MD MBA
Founder | CEO
Frequently asked questions
Fundraising
What is your monthly burn rate? What is your runway?
Is it correct that the maturity date of all loan agreements will be based on the signing date of the first agreement? I that case: could you let me know what date will be the maturity date?
We hope to reach an investor before the loan agreement reaches the maturity date, which will allow you to receive shares with an increased value.
The maturity date is 36 months following the date of signing of the first of the Permitted Convertibles. We are signing the first ones this week. Therefore the date will be March 6th, 2023.
Are there (or will there be) any other type of loan agreements (such as bank loans) besides the convertible loans?
Yes. We are applying for some loans from Innovation Quarters and another loan for innovation at Rabobank. Both loans are for startups and offer a lot of advantages compare to the others in the market.
Would it be possible to provide some insight into the method that will be used to define the fair market value?
Well, that is a Ph.D. thesis, right? The discounted cash flow analysis is the one that we will use. But, in the case of investors, they, typically, apply their methods of evaluation, at that time, we will use Rockstart Accelerator and their legal department to support us.
Sales and Markt.
How we are acquiring clients?
By asking them to join please anybody us!
What have you identified as the most effective way to acquire customers and get the number of LOI's you have?
What have you identified as the most effective way to acquire customers and get the number of LOI's you have?
We looked for large health promotion programs that depend on the work of the different health providers to be effective. My experience in this field allowed us to know their main pains: costs, lack of metrics, and obscure results.
In Brazil, my network brought me in front of decision-makers in large workplace wellness program providers, like Mantris, Sesi, CLM, and Einstein Hospital in São Paulo.
I could then explain that Sinque reduces costs, improves outcomes of health promotion programs, and monitor (in real-time) the impact of behavior change.
A good power-point and a little bit of charisma :) helped us to have the opportunities to do our first trials and pilots.
We did a lot! With just 12 large traffic scales, we reach 4,000 users in three years of testing.
The results were very encouraging, but we realized how much we needed to invest in our technology and on our interface to make Sinque a success. Last year, in October, I came back to Brazil, and with our team, we were able to sign three LOI's with large accounts. We are delivering the first Scally in March.
What is your actual sales model?
What evidence do you have that end users are going to download your app and buy your device?
We started in our garage, literally.
The problem always was how to make people step on the scale.
I started this business-concept with a simple website where people could use their smartphones to insert weight. What a disaster! After months (and a lot of saliva), I could get 50 people, and they give up in two weeks or less. Well, the interface also sucks at that time.
Then, we developed a large traffic scale that did not show numbers, and people could measure their weight with clothes. A lot of work to measure thousands of clothes :)
Done! We created an "IoT numberless weight monitor for large traffic areas."
Then we tested in Brazil in a large gym chain, and we jumped from 50 to 1,500 users in two months! Then another disaster... My web-browser-app was not prepared at all for this volume of people, as well as my cell phone to receive customers with some problems and ideas. Also, we had some technical issues with these machines.
Back to the garage!
We reduce our pilots to small groups with a focus on our app and our reports. Even with these scales not working well, we did pilots in the US and Brazil, allowing us to talk with end-users, clients, fitness, and wellness providers and have a better overview of what we need to do. Today, we have more than 3,800 users registered, with only 12 of these scales installed.
Here a personal life parentesis, last ten years, I have been the stay home dad and my wife, C-Level executive from multinationals companies, is "leading" our family. So, lats ten years we lived in four different countries if you agree that Minnesota and Wisconsin are quite different :)
We are preparing to install 30 of Scallies next few months; that's why I'm now looking for funding. It is time to scale up!
What are your margins? Do you have enough feedback from the market to feel comfortable with your margins? What work do you need to do to understand this best?
Today, we are asking a monthly fee for our services to health promotion programs and health providers. And we sell our home monitor to our users.
We are learning our pricing and realizing that companies compare our services with actual weight loss programs in the market, which can increase our margins. Today, we are working with margins around 20-30% (with the home monitor margins are 55- 65%), but it seems to us that we can increase our prices.
The work that we are doing on this topic is to offer companies a “basic” model with one Scally, 250 users, a “basic” report, access to a small number of providers, and reducing the personalization content in our app and our Scally.
I believe that here is the topic to research! We have open doors with our clients in Brazil. Therefore it will be easy to understand how we can increase our margins.
Will Sinque approach their clients directly, or will the providers stay in between?
We signed these LOI's with large corporate health providers* - we call them health promoters. In Brazil, this is a commoditized service. Therefore their margins are very tight. Today, these companies (health promoters) are "under pressure" to offer services related to wellness/fitness to their employees. As you know, these workplace wellness programs have a lack of metrics and lower adherence and retention rates.
They, health promoters, are offering Sinque to their clients (companies that are looking for wellness programs). We (1) install Scally in these clients, (2) bring a network of non-medical health providers to their employees, and (3) we monitor the impact of this implementation.
Health promoters pay a small fee to have access to their aggregate reports to know Sinque usage and results. Clients pay a monthly fee to activate their group for users, to upload their content, to have offers of providers, and to monitor the population results and usage.
How we attract non-medical health providers (personal trainers, fitness centers, nutritionists, dietitians, wellness coach...)?
These LOIs allow us to say that they can offer their service to more than 900.000 people! Which they usually are impressed. But what makes then realize that Sinque brings value are three main reasons:
1) Sinque help them to improve results with their clients that want to lose weight (these professionals lose 70% of their obese and overweight clients in less than a three months)
2) Sinque is a weight monitoring tool. So they don't need to change their work-flow or start to use a "new app". Our main feature is an easily-to-set-up automatic remote program for daily use. Sinque is a 15-sec interaction a day, where people monitor their future weight trend they can receive a specific message (designed to that group of users - for instance, male, 45 yo, overweight, losing weight). Still, Sinque helps users and coaches to know if they are in the right direction. It is a tool that validates their efforts (trainers/coaches and users).
3) Increase their revenues. They have 20% commission on the home monitor sales, offer their services to a population that wants to do something (better target publicity) for a lower price, and have access to other products and services to offer to their clients on our platform.
What are we doing to bring non-medical health providers to our network?
These LOIs clients (health promoters) already have some health providers in their network. But, we learn that: (1) health promoters do not have staff and resources to take care of this network, and (2) providers complain about the lack of support from health promotion programs. So, our health promoters are connecting us with their health providers and allow them to work with Sinque.
Would the providers or promoters commit to certain quantities of monitors contracts?
Promoters use Scally (large traffic monitor) to invite their employees to participate in this program; providers can have Scally to promote their programs. Still, we realize that they prefer to sell our home monitors.
Business
What is the problem that Sinque is solving?
What is the solution that we are offering?
What we see as the top 1-3 challenges