Labdoor operates a testing and review service that buys supplements and energy drinks off retail shelves, runs laboratory analyses, and ranks products for consumers. The company currently tests roughly 50 products per month using outsourced, FDA-registered regional labs while operating from a 9,000-square-foot warehouse. Labdoor plans to open its own dedicated lab in Northern California, carve out 2,000 square feet for testing, and expand headcount from 13 to about 30 employees to scale testing to as many as 100 products per month. It has moved beyond affiliate marketing into experiments with direct sales, order fulfillment, and subscription offerings, and plans to expand testing and sales into cosmetics, personal care (sunscreens), and baby food. To date the site has attracted roughly five million visitors and generated about $1 million in revenue this year. The company intends to grow traffic through SEO and original content to drive both reviews and direct commerce. LabDoor has launched a mobile and web application that aggregates original and existing lab research, government reports and peer‑reviewed studies to rate supplements. The app initially covers about 7,000 vitamins, protein powders, energy drinks and other nutritional supplements and assigns letter grades A–F plus scores for ingredient quality, clinical efficacy, regulatory environment and label accuracy using proprietary algorithms. Users can scan product bar codes to view ratings, reviews and similar products, and can submit products to be added to LabDoor’s database. The app is free to consumers; LabDoor monetizes by providing some of the data it generates and curates to retailers for quality‑control purposes. Founder Neil Thanedar, a former operator of an FDA‑registered product safety lab, sold that business, launched LabDoor in Indianapolis and relocated last fall to San Francisco to join Rock Health’s fourth incubator class. Future plans include expanding coverage to over‑the‑counter medicines (the article cites a $17 billion OTC market), building business partnerships and raising a new round of capital.

Total raised

$4M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Nov 2016