Online flower delivery firm UrbanStems may have been aimed at the heart, but now one of its co-founders, Ajay Kori, wants to help people ease their throbbing heads.
That help comes in the form of Kori's new venture, D.C.-based Allay Lamp, a device that emits a very narrow band of green light that Harvard University researchers have found helps to lessen migraines and headaches and to reduce anxiety.
“Forty million people suffer from migraines in the U.S., and when they get one, they can’t do anything for the rest of the day,” Kori said. “It seemed like an incredible opportunity to use what we perfected at UrbanStems — bringing a direct-to-consumer brand to as many people as possible — to change the lives of 40 million people.”
Kori founded the company with fellow UrbanStems co-founder Jeff Sheely and Mark Severs, head of finance at direct-to-consumer brand Hubble Contacts, as well as a top migraine researcher, Dr. Rami Burstein. Allay Lamp is based off of research and technology developed by Burstein, John Hedley-Whyte Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and vice chair at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Beth Israel has an equity stake in the company, Kori said.
The promise of green light is tied to how light affects receptors in the eye — migraine sufferers often turn off all lights to ease the pain. Burstein exposed migraine sufferers to different colors of light, and patients reported feeling worse after experiencing all the colors — except a narrow band of green light. That green light was less irritating, he determined, and kept the brain “calm.”
Kori left day-to-day operations at UrbanStems after the appointment of former HelloFresh executive Seth Goldman to the D.C. flower company's CEO post in 2019. He is still chairman.
Since 2018, when Kori was first exposed to the Allay Lamp idea and technology — his father is a migraine specialist who knew Burstein — the company had quietly raised less than $1 million in funding. It has no plans currently to raise additional funding, though Kori said the team has heard from interested investors.
The lamp costs about $149, significantly pared down from the $50,000 green light devices used by Burstein in his lab. But it's enough for the company to make a profit off of each device, Kori said.
He declined to disclose revenue, but said sales have been good so far, adding that Allay Lamp has gotten more traction in the market than UrbanStems did in its first year. He likened the growing interest in green light to the discovery and research behind blue light, which researchers have said may inhibit the production of melatonin, affecting sleep. The “dark” feature on many phones is an effort to reduce that blue light in the evening, he added.
But there have been challenges for Allay Lamp as well. The company, for example, has had to break into a market rife with products and services that do not work in alleviating migraine pain — and it's had to convince prospective customers that its technology is well-researched and backed, and does not fall into that category.
“They are desperate for a solution because it takes away their entire day. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things out there trying to take advantage of that population,” Kori said about those who suffer from migraines.
The company also faces a challenge in getting the word out to consumers. Advertising on Google and Facebook under “migraines” and other related search terms calls for competing with big pharmaceutical brands, making online marketing an expensive route to drive new individual customers.
Instead, Kori said, the company reached out to “migraine influencers” who have their own social media followings, letting them try the lamps themselves and then discuss it with their circles.
The company paused its larger marketing efforts in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, as other health issues took priority, Kori said. Now, Allay Lamp is renewing its marketing efforts even as Covid remains — and is causing further health problems for migraine sufferers.
"Now people are thinking less about the immediate risks of Covid and more about its impacts on their everyday lives and on instances of migraines," Kori said. "We are starting to really broaden our outreach."
