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XThis Startup Made a VR Experience to Reduce Chronic Pain
Breanna de Vera is dot.LA's editorial intern. She is currently a senior at the University of Southern California, studying journalism and English literature. She previously reported for the campus publications The Daily Trojan and Annenberg Media.
Josh Sackman, co-founder and president of AppliedVR, was born with congenital joint ligament abnormalities that left him with weak joints and introduced him early on to the world of health care.
The chronic pain sent him to hospital and doctors offices over the years. His surgeries and treatments often left him stressed and feeling isolated.
"Chronic pain is something that impacts 100 million Americans, just in the U.S. alone," said Sackman. "And [it affects] 1.5 billion people worldwide, costing $635 billion more than heart disease, diabetes and cancer combined."
Sackman recalls his eight-year-old self coming out of surgery in pain. He has had reconstructive surgery on his shoulders three times and several other related surgeries. His experiences inspired him to build a company that will lessen and make the chronic pain more manageable for others. He has had reconstructive surgery on his shoulder three times and several other related surgeries.
AppliedVR's products use virtual reality to take patients through mental exercises that help them cope. It's an option that could appeal, especially for those seeking alternatives to heavy drugs. The startup raised $29 million to continue developing products that help patients alleviate chronic pain, postoperative pain and anxiety. It's competing against companies like San Francisco-based Karuna Labs and Massachusetts-based XR Labs, which are also looking to treat chronic pain with virtual reality solutions.
"The pandemic was really disruptive [for health care]," Sackman said. "The typical care patients receive for chronic pain includes physical therapy visits with their doctors, often [also] injections, implants, surgical procedures and a number of other things that were just off access… We are addressing their quality of life, making fundamental improvements to how they're able to live their life, especially when dealing with pain, stress and isolation, more than ever."
Sackman and his co-founders Matthew Stoudt and David Sackman launched the Los Angeles-based company at the start of 2015. They had a shared interest in VR, but from a variety of perspectives. Stoudt's background was in advertising technology, and after watching a TedX talk on virtual reality, he saw a future in which screens in hospitals could do so much more than advertise. David Sackman previously worked at Lieberman Research, where he learned that VR has the ability to change behavior and build empathy.
"Virtual reality has so much promise and potential through all the studies and research we're seeing, but there were limitations around the hardware in terms of the form factor and pricing and usability," Josh Sackman said. "Our vision kind of came from translating concepts and design principles that have been proven in academic labs and translating them into real world applications."
After launching, the three got to work on their first product, SootheVR. It's already on the market, used by hospitals as a general wellness tool to help patients relax and be distracted from their pain. AppliedVR is expecting FDA approval for another version of SootheVR by the end of the year.
AppliedVR plans on using the Series A funding to further develop EaseVRx, the first virtual reality prescription treatment granted a "breakthrough device designation" by the FDA. This designation provides it closer access to the FDA, and could also mean it is covered by Medicare.
EaseVRx is a daily program that targets chronic low back pain. Patients put on the VR set and participate in an eight-week program that teaches different positive habits and coping skills to approach their pain management. The company will also double their team in the next year across all teams, including engineering and product marketing, said Josh Sackman.
The round includes investors F-Prime Capital, JAZZ Venture Partners, Sway Ventures, GSR Ventures, Magnetic Ventures and Cedars-Sinai. Many of these funds have other investments in the health care field, and it brings a diverse perspective to AppliedVR's decisions, Josh Sackman said.
"People very rarely think of the board, or their investor base, as part of their team," Josh Sackman said. "We try to, and really think through the same criteria of who we would hire, would bring into the business."
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Breanna de Vera is dot.LA's editorial intern. She is currently a senior at the University of Southern California, studying journalism and English literature. She previously reported for the campus publications The Daily Trojan and Annenberg Media.
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Astroforge Raises $13M To Mine Asteroids
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Y Combinator startup Astroforge wants to use its new $13 million seed round to mine asteroids.
The Huntington Beach-based company aims to become the first company to bring asteroid resources back to Earth, TechCrunch reported Thursday. Initialized Capital led the funding round and was joined by investors Seven Seven Six, EarthRise, Aera VC, Liquid 2 and Soma.
“When you look at the opportunity here—and the opportunity really is to mine the universe—this is such a huge opportunity that investors are willing to make the bet on a longer time horizon,” Astroforge co-founder Matt Gialich told TechCrunch.
Virgin Orbit veteran Gialich launched the company alongside his co-founder, SpaceX and NASA alum Jose Acain, in January; the four-person firm, which Gialich said is now hiring for seven more positions, hopes to successfully mine an asteroid by the end of the decade. The seed money will fund Astroforge’s first two missions, with its first being a demo flight scheduled for a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare launch next year.
While Astroforge is keeping the specifics of its technology close to the vest, the company told TechCrunch that it involves a “high-rated vacuum” and requires a zero-gravity environment, but won’t involve actually landing on the asteroid itself. The company is eyeing asteroids ranging from 20 meters to 1.5 kilometers in diameter that carry high concentrations of platinum-group metals, which limits its potential targets to less than 1 million of the 10 million asteroids near Earth.
Astroforge wouldn’t be the first to attempt this science fiction-esque endeavor, though commercial space mining has faced financial and logistical obstacles that no company has yet overcome. NASA, for its part, is counting on the private sector to realize the U.S.’s space mining ambitions, then-deputy administrator Jim Morhard told dot.LA in 2020.
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Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Illumix Founder Kirin Sinha On Using Math to Inform Creative Thinking
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
Kirin Sinha wanted to be a dancer. When injury dashed that dream, she turned to her other passion: math.
On this week’s episode of the Behind Her Empire podcast, host Yasmin Nouri talks with the founder and CEO of augmented reality (AR) technology and media platform Illumix.
Sinha received degrees from MIT, the University of Cambridge and LSE and founded a nonprofit to help middle school girls with their math skills. She ventured into AR while perusing an MBA at Stanford. Since founding Illumix in 2017, Sinha has raised $13 million from investors including Lightspeed and Maveron Ventures.
Her background in mathematics informs how she problem solves as a CEO, she said. Both math and her dance background taught her to seek out creative solutions.
“A lot of people think that math is very rote and analytical, but at its core it's truly not,” Sinha said. “It's about being creative. It's about having this building block for expressing and understanding the world around you.”
That creativity is bolstered by habits her mother taught her, such as surrounding herself with affirmations drawn onto post-it notes to bolster her spirits. Working in AR, Sinha said she's aware that what people surround themselves with impacts their inner world.
“Your diet is the people around you,” she said. “It's what you surround yourself with. It's the images and the words that surround your day-to-day life. I really spend a lot of time thinking about how can you improve the wider sense of the word diet around you.”
A crucial part of Sinha’s diet is carving out time for a daily walk to dedicate time to ponder Illumix’s future. Reflecting on big-picture goals and challenges allows her to consider how AR changes the ways people engage with the space around them.
Hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast. Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radioor wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Editorial Intern Kristin Snyder contributed to this post.
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Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
Rael Raises $35M To Grow Its Organic Feminine Care Brand
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Rael, a Buena Park-based organic feminine care and beauty brand, has raised $35 million in a Series B funding round, the company announced Wednesday.
The funding was led by the venture arms of two Asian companies: Japanese gaming firm Colopl’s Colopl Next and South Korean conglomerate Shinsegae Group’s Signite Partners. Aarden Partners and ST Capital also participated, as did existing investors Mirae Asset and Unilever Ventures.
Rael described the new round—which takes its total funding to date to $59 million—as “the largest amount raised in the U.S. feminine care category to date.” The company said it plans to use the capital to grow its product offerings, retail partnerships and global marketing reach.
Having already branched into skincare products meant to combat hormonal acne, co-founder and CEO Yanghee Paik said Rael plans on further expanding beyond basic feminine care products. “We aspire to be a clean, holistic personal care brand for women, so we’re graduating from just being another organic feminine care company,” Paik told dot.LA.
Paik and her two co-founders, who are all Korean-American women, launched Rael in 2017 and started out by selling organic pads on Amazon. Paik said she was inspired by the products she would bring back home after trips to South Korea, where the organic category represents more than 30% of the feminine care market (compared to less than 10% of the U.S. market, according to Rael). The startup has since expanded into retail stores like Target and Walmart, and part of its new funding will be dedicated to further growing its retail presence.
These days, Rael is part of an increasing number of companies focused on organic feminine care, with brands like LOLA, The Honey Pot and The Flex Co. all offering organic menstrual products.
“The feminine care industry is not like beauty, which attracted a lot of investors initially,” Paik said. “People are noticing that it’s one of the markets that has not been noticed by investors as much, but has a lot of growth potential because it’s been dominated by big brands. Now there are female-founded smaller brands that are trying to make a difference there.”
As part of Rael’s growth efforts, the company has also brought in Lauren Consiglio, a former marketing executive at Unilever and L’Oreal, as its president.
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Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.