Jawbone also quietly acquired Nutrivise

By Jonah Comstock
02:16 pm
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NutriviseEarlier this year, Jawbone bought another company, Palo Alto-based nutrition app maker Nutrivise for an unknown sum, without making any official announcement. MobiHealthNews learned of the acquisition from StartX Health, an accelerator in which Nutrivise participated.

Nutrivise was founded in 2011. In 2012 the company created an app, called Here&Now, which it described as "a nutritionist in your pocket" for Bay area residents. Here&Now had several features beyond a standard calorie counter app. The user can input biometric data, health goals, and location, and the app will recommend local and chain restaurants. It can also tell the user how healthy a dish is, both in general and for the user, personally. The app appears to have been pulled from the app store.

At least two Nutrivise team members were kept on by Jawbone after the acquisition, according to LinkedIn. Nutrivise CEO Laura Borel is now Jawbone's Product Manager for Nutrition, while co-founder and VP of Product Tito Balsamo is now a User Experience Strategist at Jawbone.

Nutrivise had at least one funding raise, a $750,000 seed round in May 2012 which included an investment from EchoVC, as well as Angels Pejman Nozad, Zak Holdsworth, and Michael Paulus.

Jawbone's acquisition of Nutrivise, a data-driven nutrition app, is in line with the company's other acquisitions this year. In February, Jawbone acquired Massive Health, another bay area startup with a nutrition app. Massive's app, The Eatery, was more social-focused, allowing users to take pictures of their food and crowdsource its relative nutritional value.

Jawbone has also shown a strong focus on data analytics, acquiring biometric tracker BodyMedia in a high-profile deal in April and hiring prominent LinkedIn data scientist Monica Rogati just last month.

It seems clear, both from its acquisitions and Jawbone's pattern of keeping major team members on board, that the company is developing a major data-driven food tracking engine for its UP bracelet. That could be a smart way to stand out in the crowded activity tracker field, since none of the major players are putting as much focus on "calories in" tracking as they are in tracking activity and calorie expenditure. As Weight Watchers recently admitted, food tracking seems to be a popular category for health app users.

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