Paul Jacobson, CEO of Thorne HealthTech

Big Moves From Non MD Practitioners to DTC

Thorne HealthTech is the only supplement manufacturer that collaborates with Mayo Clinic on health and wellness research content; their customer base of over 4 million includes 45,000+ healthcare professionals, professional athletes and sports teams.

The company started targeting functional medicine practitioners in their initial days to sell their supplements. A base of non-MD’s who were functional medicine doctors, to expansion that included the medical doctor community, was by itself a challenging move for the company. Sensing preventive health was the segue to future market dominance, Thorne moved into more of “the science and the data behind” what they were selling.

A partnership with Mayo, was very “ideal” as Paul puts it, given that “the Mayo Clinic would be the toughest and most skeptical, and therefore a good place to start”. Having grown the medical doctor business aggressively, Paul “made the decision to move into the direct to consumer side of things. That came at a great risk, because there were a number of physicians who did not want us to do it. But we made the decision that was going to be critical to our growth.”

“It turned out to be one of the best moves we’ve ever made.Our consumer business is now about half of our total business.It has actually made us better at technology, which now the doctors are very thankful for, so they don’t have to maintain inventory.They can rely on our technology to grow their business as well. Doctors are great for our overall business as 60% of our customers said in a survey that they heard about us through their physician. They are a great customer acquisition, cost lowering machine for us.”

AI for Scientific Wellness & Preventive Health

Being smart about long term goals, Thorne as a company realized the need to do much more than just offer supplements. To become a leader in preventive health called for more data and so team Paul went ahead building an AI and machine learning team, comprising very famous scientists and other scientists.” We started a company called Longevity, designed to do blood and microbiome testing, analytics and personalized solutions for people. We were successful in building it and saw that we could commercialize it. Thorne then acquired Longevity.”

“We take the customer on a journey, which starts with a test – a blood test, microbiome test etc. We tend to focus on testing that’s complicated so we can’t be copied easily. We focus on the consumer UX, so we offer a complicated test, we deliver the information, we educate the customer and offer supplement, diet, and exercise solution if needed. If it’s not needed, we don’t offer the product. And then we use that platform and what we learn to make better and better products along the way.”

Acquisitions  as a bridge to Customer UX Difficulties

Most blood draws are done today through a venipuncture draw or through a finger stick. Judging this to be a downside and with an intent of making customer UX better, Thorne acquired Drawbridge Health. Painless blood draw using a cartridge mechanism, redefining microbiome testing from a fecal sample to one that uses a microbiome wipe, are all noteworthy advancements on the UX side as a med tech company- either from external acquisitions or picking the best brains in house!! Entering into strategic partnerships with Team Liquid to target the multibillion dollar eSports market, and a multi-year agreement with The Citadel to be the official nutrition supplement partner.

A strong foothold in a challenging DTC market in med- tech is a phenomenal accomplishment for this innovative solutions provider. As far as growth, Paul alludes to “trying to figure out how to achieve bigger and bigger scale in a way that doesn’t copy what everyone else is doing.”

“I really believe that COVID was a tipping point for preventive health. And we’re not going back anytime soon, we are seeing a lot of new things coming our way because of it.”

“We look at the target audience in terms of the truly addressable market for what we think we do well.So we want to grow our physician channel, we think there’s a lot of upside there; especially if I’m right about COVID being the tipping point. We see partnerships as a huge opportunity- travel, athletics, devices, recovery market, all these are areas where we are either thinking about or having conversations with companies we want to work with.”

Manufacturing tailored to personalized needs is what the next huge step is for Thorne Healthtech. “We think two dimensional printing is going to be our ticket to real personalization down the road.” It’s amazing how this arm of technology is morphing into med-tech. Personalized supplements, personalized microbiome testing yielding prebiotics and probiotics, are all exciting trends to look forward to in the future. Watching this company evolve further in the next decade or two is exciting for a long view, and as far as Paul’s personal reboot experience, “humbling myself and trying to learn something new, with natural science” certainly has paid huge dividends.

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