VC-backed telehealth brands platform Eucalyptus has put its $3000 wellbeing optimisation program for men on ice until 2025 as its creators look to address issues from its initial trials and scale the concept.
Compound launched earlier this year in beta mode, with a focus on “high-achieving, time-poor men who want more from their health”.
The 3-month program involves a range of tests including blood analysis, to measure everything from lung capacity and fitness to body fat, testosterone levels, and other benchmarks normally checked by a GP, such as blood sugar and cholesterol levels, as well as kidney, liver and thyroid function. A body scan measures fat, muscle and bone mass and accurately determines important biomarkers such as body fat percentage and visceral fa, the internal fat around your heart and abdominal organs.
The data is turned into a “Health and High-Performance Report”, which then feeds into a program of strength & conditioning routines, nutrition, recovery, and mindset practices with coaching support costing $3000 over 12 weeks.
“We appreciate that our members are time-poor and need a high-ROI program that suits their busy lifestyle,” the Compound pitch goes, recommending that those taking part spend 3-to-5 hours a week training between 3-5 times.< The goal for Compound was to then have ongoing subscriptions. During the trial phase, 80 participants took part across 8 cohorts. In July as the program got underway, Capital Brief was told there were 4000 people on the wait list. In a statement to Startup Daily this week, the wait list was 2,800.
Either way it’s a moot point as the brand and its parent company try to address the issue of scaling a program currently run in fortnightly groups of 10, with a pledge of “high-touch coaching support”and a “performance toolkit” of wearables, supplements and exercise gear.
On Friday program lead Dan Cable emailed subscribers to say they’re “pausing” the program to “allow us to double down on addressing all the learnings and key gaps that we’ve identified” before relaunching in about 9 months.
“There’s a tension between launching early and delivering a high bar with a very manual experience while also rebuilding the underlying op-model so we’ve decided to pause operations by the end of the year so that we can set-up for relaunch in H2 2025,” he wrote.
“It’s been challenging to launch such a complex, comprehensive offering while managing resourcing trade-offs along the way – we may not have always got it right but we’ve worked hard to course correct along the way and I really appreciate your understanding and support.”
Eucalyptus cofounder Charlie Gearside, in response to criticisms from some who took part in the Compound program, told Capital Brief that “feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, there have been some teething issues to resolve”.
EO Tim Doyle told Startup Daily that he’s “confident Compound will be the leading preventative health clinic in the world and will continue to invest accordingly”.
Doyle tried the program and reportedly lost 8.2kg in 6 weeks – a rapid drop, when experts recommend slow weight loss of 500g to 1kg weekly as more beneficial over the longer term. The CEO also features as a part of Compound’s homepage marketing, having cut his 14km run time from 88 minutes to 59 minutes
“Compound was initially launched as a beta model with the intention of gaining feedback based on a high touch, manual experience,” he said.
“We are now shifting from this manual process to building the technology platform that will underpin it going forward ahead of a global launch next year. This will see us develop a platform that is fit for scale whilst delivering the same high-touch experience.”
It’s not the only challenge Eucalyptus is facing, with Australian government-mandated changes to weight loss drug access kicking in next month and impacting its other men’s health brand, Pilot.
While the Pilot website says that: “Due to Australian therapeutic goods regulations, we are unable to list this class of treatments by name… We can say that they’re widely used and can be effective for regulating your metabolism and hunger hormones”, Eucalyptus has been using a compounded semaglutide – the antidiabetic medication that mimics Ozempic – with thousands of patients.
But in May federal health minister Mark Butler announced a ban chemists replicating Ozempic and Mounjaro, a process known a compounding, from October 1, following media reports of safety concerns. Eucalyptus was one of several startups selling the cheaper and higher-margin alternatives to the branded weight loss drugs.
The online healthcare startup was founded in 2019 by Doyle, Gearside, Benny Kleist and Alexey Mitko. In April last year, the startup raised $50 million on a $520 million valuation from existing investors, including Blackbird, Woolworths VC fund W23, and US investor Mary Meeker’s BOND Capital.
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