Serial entrepreneurs Bill Gianoukos and Carl Nehme sold their social media startup TrumpIt to Wayfair in 2016. As part of the undisclosed deal, they spent almost two years at the home goods e-commerce company—gaining what Gianoukos called "a Ph.D. in e-commerce."
The degree might be fictional, but the expertise the duo acquired is not. So it's not a surprise that the Boston-based stealth startup Gianoukos and Nehme have been working on for the past five months is a (still unnamed) e-commerce marketplace.
With the site selling natural products such as probiotics, proteins, even cannabinoids that may impact the health of customers, the company has a healthcare component as well; that's why Gianoukos and Nehme teamed up with Akl Fahed, a Harvard-trained cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The mission, as is usually the case, is bold. The company, which came out of stealth this week, wants to be 'Earth's largest wellness store.' The vision? "Democratizing wellness by providing customers with more data along their wellness journey," Gianoukos said.
The core idea is that natural products may be widely beneficial to common health conditions. Think of turmeric for joint pain, Aloe Vera for psoriasis, or essential oils for rheumatoid arthritis. The site will provide customers with a selection of products they can buy—together with fact-based research analyzing their benefits.
That's where machine learning, big data and natural language processing come into play. Before seeing product recommendations, customers access a data science-powered guidance page condensing published research into a "heat map" explained "in plain English," Gianoukos said.
The map, which includes links to the original sources, is what the company considers as its competitive advantage on the market, given that other online marketplaces like Amazon don't provide customers with data-driven health suggestions.
The startup will work as a dropshipping business, meaning that it won't need any storage space for the products. Instead, when customers buy products, the company purchases the items from a third party and ship them directly to customers. To start, the site will start with a single condition - pain - and five product recommendations, Gianoukos said.
Two things are still in the works. First, the company's name. Incorporated as an acronym of Gianoukos' and Nehme's names, the startup goes by the placeholder name "Pineapple" in a slide presentation that Gianoukos shared with BostInno. Second, a CMO is expected to join the team soon; the co-founders are looking for someone who can come up with a branding plan for their startup—including a definitive name.
Currently self-funded, the team of three co-founders and four employees will be moving to a permanent office (a subleased office within Kayak in Cambridge) next week. One of the previous investors in TrumpIt, New York-based VC firm Counterview Capital, is already committed to the new venture, according to Gianoukos.
