Announcing our Investment in MDalgorithms
Democratizing Dermatology with AI.
Last March, we were introduced to MDalgorithms by one of our angel portfolio founders, Ali Imani (founder of Center Health). MDalgorithms is on a mission to provide the best-in-class dermatology treatment to patients with skin and hair problems. The company uses computer vision and AI to provide real-time analysis via a mobile application and then deliver personalized treatment directly to the customers' doorstep.
We met Oded Harth, MDalgorithms’ CEO and were impressed by a) the technology the team had developed and b) the rapid growth (usage and revenue) to date. What we loved even more was the founding team: a father-son duo! Oded’s father and co-founder, Dr Yoram Harth, is a world renowned dermatologist with over 30 years of experience. Together they bring decades of scientific research and business acumen in dermatology in both their native Israel and the United States where they first launched the company.
Today, we’re extremely excited to announce our investment in MDalgorithms’ seed round.
Our Investment in Context
During our due diligence process, our team goes through a thorough framework where we ask ourselves a series of questions including the following: Is this problem perennial? Is the solution world-positive? Will we be proud to talk about this company with our investors, our friends, or our families at the dinner table? Can we help this team achieve their goals? Can they build an iconic, massive company? MDalgorithms hit all of these points.
Market Opportunity: Today, there are 3 billion people in the world that suffer from skin and hair problems. Approximately 90% of them won’t see a dermatologist due to expensive treatment costs and lack of access to healthcare.
Solution: MDalgorithms takes on this massive opportunity with a unique AI-based solution combined with a portfolio of skin and hair care products delivered directly to the consumer.
Product
MDalgorithms uses AI to analyze the images received and provide an accurate analysis of the skin or hair, within seconds, before delivering a customized medical-grade treatment. Here are the current products:
MDacne provides personalized acne treatment. The analysis is made possible thanks to MDalgorithms’ proprietary acne dataset which is also the world’s largest containing millions of images.
MDhair provides personalized hair loss treatment. The product selection includes four treatment products:
A customized scalp treatment treatment solution specifically formulated to support scalp health and stimulate hair follicles to switch from resting to active growth phase.
A personalized shampoo to support healthy, natural hair growth, improve hair quality, and provide fuller-looking hair.
A conditioner to reduce and prevent split ends and breakage in people with thinning hair.
A set of personalized oral supplements to replenish the nutrients needed for healthy hair regrowth.
A combination of marine collagen, viatmin C and hyalrurinc acide, that is specailly formulated to help build a stronger healthier hair.
Iynna, from our team, has been a proud MDhair customer for 10 weeks now, and has already started to notice less shedding. Results start to be apparent after 3-4 months of use.
The team has made considerable progress. Since launching MDhair less than a year ago, they've already collected tens of thousands of images of people with hair loss and are currently developing models to target treatments based on input images of users’ scalp and hair. This new system will be able to analyze scalp pictures and provide customers an immediate quantitative assessment of their hair loss severity with a visual heatmap of the hair loss area on the scalp.
Market
There has always been a market for skincare and hair growth products. However, until now, dermatologist-approved products are in the premium category, and only available to a small and privileged demographic. Thankfully, technological advances have helped level the playing field and now we are seeing more affordable and approachable options. We admired MDalgorithms’ approach because the products’ formula is the result of clinical work led by Dr. Harth himself. By having Dr. Harth as the developer of the formulations, the products start off life with a clinical credibility.
Team
Team is critical for seed stage investing. We spend a lot of time on questions like: “Why are they dedicated to this mission”, “What unique insights do they have in this space, on this problem” and “What have they learned?”
Oded and Dr. Harth bring decades of technical and scientific expertise to this problem and have found a sustainable way to increase their audience month-over-month, reduce churn, and ensure they have enough inventory to address the growing demand. Here is a bit more about their backgrounds:
Dr. Yoram Harth, the Co-Founder of MDalgorithms, is a world-renowned dermatologist and inventor. He co-invented the blue light acne vulgaris phototherapy to treat severe acne conditions as well as the radio frequency device for home treatment of wrinkle reduction. He also has entrepreneurial experience as the founder of CureLight that produced high-intensity light resulting in the photo destruction of acne bacteria. He also co-founded Endymed Medical, a medical aesthetics company developing energy-based aesthetic treatment systems for the professional and home use markets. He is a published author on topics including dermatology and aesthetics medicine in some of the world’s leading scientific journals.
Oded Harth is the CEO and co-founder of MDalgorithms and a trained full-stack engineer with a decade of experience. He served for the Israeli Defense Forces and worked for various angels and VC backed startups before launching MDalgorithms. He is an alumni of YCombinator, and one of the recent Forbes 30 under 30 winners.
With that, if MDalgorithms can help you with your own skin/hair care routine, head over to their website to learn more about. Or if the mission resonates with you and you feel inclined to support, the team is currently building a Marketing team and hiring a Head of Growth Marketing, and a Growth Marketer.