He has demonstrated for the application developers that combining a strong basis of knowledge with the right model can enable them to provide users’ services – after relying on costly professionals as therapists or executive assistants – with a portion of the price. The former -VP product company at Whoop Fitness Company, Rami Alhamad, has a food -like intake with its new Alma app.
The iOS app, starting for users in North America today, is a well -designed app with a calorie tracker and a one -layer nutrient guide on top.
Alhamad thinks that fitness applications like myfitnesspal make tracking food tedious, with users who should manually search for dishes and put them for different types of meals. Instead, he thinks that you should talk to (or type of) ALMA’s assistant about what you have eaten, and the app will understand the parts and obtain calories through evaluations. You can adjust these measures after the app also indicates the calorie count.
Otherwise, you can make a photo of your meal, and the algorithm it will identify the dishes for you. Such features are already available in applications such as Kholsa and Snapcalorie -backed Snapcalorie -backed Snapcalorie. However, Alma is banking in its design, variety of input methods and ease of use as the main promoter to grow.
In addition to following calories, you can ask the helper to suggest foods to meet your fiber and protein obtaining goals. Plus, you can upload a photo of the menu and ask the helper to recommend appropriate items according to your purpose.
The app also gives you a result, which is based on what you have eaten on a given day in terms of calories and macros. The app uses that result to give you tips on improving your diet.
Moreover, while talking more with the helper and the one in the app, he learns your preferences and gives you suggestions accordingly. You can see this knowledge in your profiles and edit them as well.
The company expects to make money through a monthly reconciliation of $ 19 or an annual reconciliation of $ 199.
History after Alma and future plans
Alhamad, who built a startup of sports technology called Push and eventually sold it whoop, told Techcrunch that he was thinking of doing something new in the field of health and nutrition after leaving Whoop in 2022. According to him, while There are tracks for exercise and exercise and sleeping, there is no practical solution to follow food.
“For the last 10 years of my life, I have won constantly and lost weight. I have spent a long time in apps like myfitnesspal, pressing things to follow my food consumption. When the chatgt came around, like many other people, I started using it for meal planning and kitchen support. However, she was not personalized. So last year, after leaving Whoop, I began to think about this problem, “Alhamad said.
Alhamad, who became an entrepreneur in the settlement in the Menlo Ventures to build Alma, believes that in the consumer space, there will be specialized companies that use it that focuses only on one topic. The beginning has raised $ 2.9 million from the Ventures and Anthropic Menlo Ventures.
In the technical front, the company is using a mix of models to get results. Alma noted that I was using knowledge of Harvard’s food to get answers. The company said there are some people in staff who focus on nutritional knowledge to expand its data set. Alhamad said the beginning also wants to look beyond the US to bring health knowledge from around the world.
The Alma team would like to build on the detection of food even in the app. Currently, you can look for recipes and receive answers from his assistant, but you cannot store them for reference in the future. The app wants to automatically populate food suggestions based on your goals and preferences. Plus, there will also be a way to cook food easily from those you have in the pantry.
Chatbots like chatgt and claude can already do a lot of those things, but rubbing for the user is that you have to stimulate them correctly with the context every time. Applications like Alma are trying to remove headaches to write long requirements through the application features. Samsung’s food app gained some features such as pantry tracking and recipe suggestions based on your home items last year.
Shawn Carolan, a partner in the VC Menlo, said the ease of getting into your food makes Alma an attractive solution.
“If you eat 20 things in a day, it’s hard to record each of them trying to find them in a list. With Alma, you can simply talk to her and record them all quickly. If something lasted 30 seconds and a new app reduces it in just a few seconds, it becomes a driver of the main use, ”Carolan said.
He added that now, many people are not consulted with a nutritionist, and Alma can give them easy access to that kind of information.
“People are spending thousands of dollars a month to get injections to lose weight. So the question is, if you have had this perfect nutritionist in your pocket which can help you with your goal, you can probably take a drug -free access to achieve your health goals, ”Carolan said.
