Medication might be easier than exercise or eating right, but TrueMed wants to change your thinking on that.
Calley Means and Justin Mares started the payment integration company last year to make it easy for consumers to pay for healthy food, exercise and supplements using their tax-free health savings accounts or flexible spending account dollars. And with regulatory compliance.
Typically, medical expense purchases like that are approved with a letter of medical necessity from your doctor upon collection of certain data. TrueMed’s secret sauce is that, thanks to telehealth laws that resulted from the global pandemic, it can collect that information and produce those notes seamlessly and asynchronously without the doctor’s visit.
“Our long-term goal is to attack the notion that 95% of dollars are spent on interventions after people get sick,” Means told TechCrunch. “We’re going to go bankrupt from healthcare costs, and we’re becoming a non-competitive country because we’re getting so sick. We have to ask how you can actually use your healthcare dollars to incentivize metabolic habits: Food, exercise, the food movement, sleep and supplements, to stay healthy.”
TrueMed launches today with $3 billion of gross merchandise volume already amassed from businesses, including CrossFit, Magic Mind and Kos.
Origin story
If both Means’ and Mares’ names look familiar it’s because they are both serial entrepreneurs. Means previously co-founded wedding dress company Anomalie with his wife, Leslie Voorhees, which sold to David’s Bridal last year. Meanwhile, Mares previously founded health food brands Kettle & Fire and Perfect Keto.
Together they have raised $100 million for previous ventures. With TrueMed, they have raised $3.5 million in SAFEs (simple agreement for future equity) from investors, including functional medicine pioneer Mark Hyman and founders from Thrive Market, Eight Sleep and Levels.
Before starting the company, Means said he and Mares met with representatives from the White House and Capitol Hill to validate the compliance.
For Means, TrueMed is also a way to pay homage to his mother, who recently died of a preventable disease tied to food, and to his physician sister, Casey Means, co-founder of Levels, who specializes in metabolic health.
“This is widening HSA/FSA to items it doesn’t usually cover, and we’ve done a huge amount of engagement,” Means said. “Our insight is opening it up to a wider range of health and wellness products through the telehealth integration.”
Unlocking the dollars
Means calls these types of savings accounts “a really powerful instrument” and estimates there is about $140 billion sitting in these accounts, mostly going unused. Earlier this year, the IRS increased the amount you can contribute to health savings accounts to $4,150 for an individual and $8,300 for a family.
So how do you unlock that? TrueMed’s business model is to partner with health and wellness brands. It is the only approved Shopify payment integration, according to Means. Once approved, TrueMed integrates with the merchant’s checkout systems.
Consumers who choose to pay by that method will be asked a couple of health questions after inputting the HSA/FSA information. TrueMed then goes to a provider asynchronously who issues a letter of medical necessity, if appropriate.
“You’re basically doing a healthcare intake, similar to a credit intake, and are able to pay right into payment flow with your HSA/FSA funds,” Means said. “That’s the key that we’re doing. We’re adding a telehealth component into the payment flow for leading health and wellness brands and widening HSA/FSA to items it doesn’t usually cover.”
Up next, the company will continue adding merchants to its customer base as it works to steer money toward consumers adopting healthier habits. As the fourth quarter approaches, Means said some 80% of Americans qualify for a HSA or FSA and will be choosing their contributions.
He will be among them, telling TechCrunch that for the first time, his family maxed out their HSA and will be using it to purchase things to keep himself, Voorhees and their child healthy.
“We want people to start seeing their HSA and FSA accounts as tools to direct them to items for staying healthy,” Means said. “Our message is that food and exercise is medicine and can be prescribed.”
A space probe is heading toward Earth for a gravity assist. NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will make its closest approach to our planet at 9:45 am IST on December 13 from a distance of just 360 kilometres. It will pass over the United States which will be in darkness.
“This close flyby will result in a “gravity assist,” putting the spacecraft on a new trajectory that travels through the main asteroid belt and out to the never-before-explored Jupiter Trojan asteroids, small bodies that orbit the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter,” NASA said in a statement.
The #LucyMission will perform its 2nd Earth-gravity assist on Dec. 12, putting it on a new course toward its first Trojan asteroid encounter in 2027. On the way, Lucy will pass through the main asteroid belt, flying past asteroid “Donaldjohanson” in 2025. pic.twitter.com/hyYazOsGJW
— NASA Goddard (@NASAGoddard) December 10, 2024
This will be the second gravity assist Lucy will need in its 12-year voyage to Jupiter’s trojan asteroids. The first successful flyby which put it on a two-year orbit, occurred on October 16, 2022. After the first flyby, it flew past the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite Selam.
NASA says the next flyby will put Lucy on a six-year orbit sending it through the main asteroid belt where it will fly past the asteroid Donaldjohanson. Lucy will then fly into the Trojan asteroid swarm that leads Jupiter in its orbit. It’s first trojan asteroid encounter is set for 2027. The purpose of the Lucy mission is to understand the formation of planets and ultimately the solar system.
You can watch Lucy’s flyby during a livestream hosted by the Virtual Telescope Project. It has scheduled a webcast at 10 am IST on YouTube which you can access below.
NASA says that Lucy will approach Earth from the direction of the Sun, meaning it will be lost in the solar glare. However, observes in the Hawaiian islands may be able to catch a glimpse before it passes into Earth’s shadow. It may also be visible to telescopes in west Africa and eastern regions of South America when Lucy emerges from Earth’s shadow 20 minutes after the closest approach.
Lucy will be travelling at speeds over 53,000 km per hour at the time of flyby, NASA said.
Scientists in India recently observed the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer called corona using the Aditya-L1 observatory and made significant discoveries. ISRO says that the observation was carried out after a coronal mass ejection (CME) event that occurred on July 16.
The Sun’s corona is very mysterious and scientists don’t know much about what makes it hotter than the solar surface. The corona is about a million degrees Celsius whereas the surface is just about 5,600 degrees Celsius. It is also believed to hold secrets about the Sun’s activity and how it affects the space weather.
The Aditya-L1 observatory. Image: ISRO
From the corona, emerges coronal mass ejections (CMES) which is the expulsion of plasma or highly charged particles. These particles, when interact with Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere create auroras but can also disrupt satellite communications, GPS systems, and power grids.
The researchers detailed in ‘The Astrophysical Journal Letter’ the findings that were made using the Aditya-L1’s Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC).
According to experts, they observed a phenomenon called ‘coronal dimming’ which is the reduction in the brightness of the corona after the July 16 CME. “The brightness in that area dropped by about 50%, a decrease caused by the ejection of solar material. This reduction in brightness lasted for about 6 hours,” ISRO said in a statement.
Coronal structures (left) disappeared in the image after the CME (right). Image: ISRO
Aditya-L1 also discovered that the temperature around the region of CME is enhanced by about 30 percent and this region becomes more turbulent during the event. Besides, the Sun’s dynamic magnetic field also gets more active during such eruptions and is the cause for more turbulence. ISRO says that the velocity of plasma was recorded at nearly 25 km per second during the CME.
Lastly, the experts also discovered that the plasma moves away from the observer during the CME event, a result of its deflection due to the solar magnetic field.
“This finding shows that solar magnetic forces can influence the direction of propagation of the ejected plasma as it moves in the inter-planetary space,” ISRO stated.
It added that the understanding of such deflections of the ejected plasma is important for the prediction of how CME evolves upon leaving the Sun and travelling through the solar system.
Small and medium businesses are getting more love from fintechs these days, and one example of that is the fast growth of a startup out of Sweden. Mynt, which has built an AI-based platform for corporate cards and spend management catering to SMEs, has closed a round of €22 million ($23 million) after seeing its customer base grow to 12,000 SMEs from just 3,000 a year ago.
Existing investor Vor Capital is leading the round, which also saw other previous backers CNI and Incore participating. Mynt has now raised around €50 million in total, and from what we understand, this funding puts its valuation in the region of €200 million ($210 million).
Mynt got its start when two of its co-founders, Baltsar Sahlin (CEO; pictured below) and Johan Obermayer (CPO) were colleagues at Swedish telco Ericsson, where expenses were a complete pain to manage.
They worked for one of the biggest companies in Europe, yet they knew that the situation was even worse for smaller businesses, who are often overlooked when it comes to IT services, from past experience of working in and with smaller businesses.
“I experienced this myself, how difficult it is to issue cards and do expense management. The pain points were really the driving force for Mynt,” said Sahlin in an interview.
When Mynt first started in 2018, there were very few options for SMEs in particular, he said. “For us, it was more about being between the banks and accounting systems, providing a solution that solves that problem for SMEs.”
They paired up with Magnus Wideberg, a systems engineer who has worked for a variety of financial businesses, to start Mynt to address that gap. The company started first with businesses in the Nordics, and now — with this round — is foraying into the U.K. and other European markets.
Mynt today provides company cards with Visa as its primary partner (Sahlin said it considers American Express “a competitor”).
It also provides spend management tools and automated integrations with major accounting apps. SME customers get a few ways to set up and automatically manage out-of-pocket expenses; automatic receipt matching; virtual cards; individual spend limits to better match spending to budgets; a mobile app to manage expenses on the go; and analytics tools to help customers better understand how budget is being used, Sahlin said.
Interestingly, it also has an embedded finance play: Mynt has built an API that lets it integrate with third parties, powering card-issuing services for enterprise resource planning businesses, banks, and fleet and fuel providers.
The other important point, said Sahlin, is that Mynt focused its efforts on its region alone initially because the Nordic ecosystem is different “when it comes to accounting and payment rails.” The company’s products are designed for companies with two to 500 employees, and its average customer size is currently at 50 users.
Mynt is facing some large competitors both in its own region and beyond.
Pleo, based in Denmark, has made a mark in expense management, also targeting SMEs. It was last valued at $4.7 billion when it raised $200 million in 2021. It’s not clear how that valuation has changed since then, as the last money the company took in was $42 million in debt, earlier this year, for its credit products.
Fortnox also builds expense management and other financial tools for SMEs, and is publicly traded. It also has a valuation in the range of $4 billion, but it’s actually a partner: Mynt powers the company’s corporate card services.
In the U.S., there are many companies chasing the SME opportunity, including Finally (raised $200 million in debt and equity in September 2024), Emburse, potentially IPO-bound Brex and Ramp (raised $150 million in April 2024). Big numbers do not always mean hockey sticks, however: Brex earlier this year went through significant management changes and layoffs/restructuring after a period of growing too fast.
Mynt might be facing a number of competitors, but there may be room for more than a few companies in this space.
Expense management remains one of the big pain points in the world of work: Accounts departments spend a lot of time trying to make sure spending is itemized correctly and is authorized, but employees are not accountants and will sometimes get these things wrong.
The SME sector has added challenges: Accounting departments are smaller, and in some cases, might even be non-existent. That creates an opening for solutions that automate time-consuming work like expense administration.
There are just over 26 million SMBs in the European Union alone, making up about 99% of all businesses, meaning the 12,000 SMBs that Mynt currently has make for a very small portion of the market. A report last year published by Pymnts spelled it out: Only around one-quarter of SMBs use corporate cards in the U.S., one of the more advanced markets, meaning this is a largely untapped market.
