Personalizing Healthcare with Base Founder, Lola Priego
Today, at-home lab testing and smart app combo Base announces their $3.4M Seed round with investors including Female Founders Fund, Venture City, Lakehouse VC, Rosecliff, AmplifyHer Ventures, and individuals like Anne Wojcicki of 23&Me, among others.
We are thrilled to back founder Lola Priego’s vision with Base — the belief that easier access to personal health data can help predict and prevents health problems before they appear.
In a recent interview with Lola, we spoke to her about her background at Facebook/Instagram, what inspired her to start Base, why she believes blood testing is the next frontier, where she sees the future of at-home testing going, and more. Read the full interview below.
Lola, your background is impressive — can you share a bit about your experience prior to founding Base, and how it has prepared you for this journey?
I actually wanted to be a surgeon growing up which led me to start Med School in Spain, where I am originally from. 1 year into Med School I realized that I had a passion for engineering as well, which I was never aware of because that’s something “that boys do”. From there, I quit Med School to pursue a career as an engineer which led me to come to the U.S. in 2013 to finish a Masters in CS (specialized in AI). Shortly after that, I landed a job at Amazon and that’s how my big tech cos career started (adding Facebook/Instagram) to the list.
Of course, another big career change was about to come when I realized that I wanted to go back to work in the medical/science sector but this time bringing all of this tech knowledge with me. I transitioned to be the Head of Engineering at a MedTech startup to eventually found Base. Long story short, my background is a blend of science, technology, and an obsession with serving customers in an engaging way something that you’d notice while you are using Base.
One of the biggest learnings I took with me from leading engineering at the big tech companies is to be absolutely customer-obsessed. Everything we’re doing is for our members. We’re always making sure to create tools that are reliable, easy to use, and that support our members. I’m also always making sure we are leveraging the latest tools in data science and analytics.
Why did you decide to start Base? What is the problem you’re looking to solve?
Back in 2017, I was experiencing chronic brain fog and I was tired all of the time. I heard about this diet that would help me achieve my goals at work, eliminate brain fog, upgrade my workouts, and lose some weight: the Keto diet. Just like everyone else, I bought into the pitch. After a few months into Keto, it was clear that something felt off. I wasn’t sick — but I wasn’t quite feeling my best either.
At this point, I went to the doctor to get some labs done, I filled out endless questionnaires, and I waited 20 days to see my results. Bonus, my results had to be collected in person during the middle of my work week! What I found out is that my low-energy was rooted in a vitamin deficiency issue and by doing Keto, not only I was not solving the problem but I also added a hormonal imbalance problem and high cholesterol into the mix. In general, long-term keto is not good for women.
It took me many days, copays, hidden bills, doctor’s opinions, and many hours of research on Google to learn what was wrong and come up with a new diet that would fix my current issues. I knew there had to be an easier, and faster way for me to understand what was going on in my body. At Base, we are helping consumers find the best diet and lifestyle to fit their bodies by using traditional lab tests. We find answers to everyday issues like fatigue, stomach sensitivities, irritability, sleep quality, brain fog, weight loss, and more to help consumers live a healthier, happier life.
What is Base?
Base is an at-home lab testing and smart app combo empowering everyone to improve their sleep, stress, diet, and more with insights into their body’s data through key indicators: their blood and saliva.
Members can either monitor the seasonal changes to their health or get to the root cause and fix symptoms with science-backed recommendations for your supplements, diet, and daily habits.
Where do you see the opportunity to disrupt healthcare?
Right now, healthcare is mostly focused on disease diagnosis and treatment, which some people have started to call “sickcare”. This makes a lot of sense because saving lives should be the #1 priority of a doctor.
However, given the latest technology and resources, we have an opportunity to proactively maintain people’s health, and predict and prevent health problems before they appear. By motivating consumers to be proactive about their health by creating engaging apps, making testing accessible, and affordable, I see a new market opening up that will be focused only on this.
COVID has been a factor that is making this market surge faster than what I would have expected, making at-home testing something that consumers are comfortable with and demonstrating the importance of a data-driven approach to health.
Base has a few different “tracks” that users can select from. What are the tracks you offer, and how people can go about choosing the best fit for them?
We offer diet, stress, sleep, sex drive, and energy. We try to make them as descriptive as possible on our website by listing related symptoms, but we also offer a quiz to help assess people’s priorities and health goals.
23&Me started the trend of giving the average Jane/Joe access to their DNA via saliva samples. Why do you think blood testing is the next frontier?
Consumers are demanding a personalized and proactive healthcare service and lab testing and new technologies are evolving.
- Regulations evolving towards a world where users have better access to blood testing.
- Lab technology makes it easier to collect and analyze blood samples
- More data-science tools available to interpret lab work to make this data actionable for consumers as a feedback loop on how to better eat, sleep, and more based on results.
Your website says you’re Science-first, but doctor backed. What does that mean?
It means that our recommendations are rooted in science, we do the leg work of matching your results with clinical trials and doctors review how our technology work. This means that we provide the proper data tools to doctors to help them recommend the most effective routine and nutritional changes based on your profile — all managed in-app. No need to schedule visits or telemedicine appointments.
Base’s at-home testing model is ideal for a post-COVID world. Can you walk us through the customer process, from testing to results?
To get started:
- Select your goals: from improving your digestive issues to monitoring your sleep hormones
- Select at-home testing or walk-in to a QuestDiagnostics center. After you receive your first results, you’ll have a 15 minutes phone consultation to walk you through your plan.
- Directly to your app quantified into a score with insights explaining what that score means in the context of your symptoms.
You have some pretty impressive participants in this $2.5M Seed Round, including Female Founders Fund, Anne Wojcicki, Venture City, Lakehouse VC, Rosecliff, AmplifyHer Ventures, and others. What was your fundraising process like? Any learnings you can share for healthcare founders going out for their first Seed round?
I was really lucky as I was not really out seeking funding when Anu suggested that I should start thinking about raising capital during one of our casual catch up conversations. After that convo, FFF who had been tracking Base for over 9 months kicked off a quick due diligence process and extended a term sheet. FFF did a great job coordinating the round and connecting us to VIP angels like Anne from 23andme.
What is your plan for this round of funding? What will it be used to build out?
We are investing heavily in three areas:
- Making the product even more personalized, with more frequent check-ins to keep users engaged and motivated to improve and fix their diet, sleep, sex drive and more using insights from their lab results.
- Invest in community & education for our users.
- Refine, kick off and scale our go-to-market efforts.
Where do you see the future of at-home testing? What is your 5 year plan for Base?
I think that at-home testing will become a commodity where it will become the norm for consumers to regularly monitor their biomarkers from home to adjust their routines and prevent health issues.
In five years, we’re excited to see Base becoming the support system that takes in all of this lab data to make it digestible and actionable for consumers.
