The Fantastic Four actress Jessica Alba‘s holistic and organic baby products company, The Honest Company is set for its IPO (initial public offering) soon, speculators say. A husband and wife-founded pregnancy and parenting apps company will be integral to Honest’s IPO launch and future growth.
Here’s the backstory.
Back in 2009, a then pregnant Jennifer Wong and her husband Casey Sackett realized there was a void in available apps for expectant mothers. The duo created BabyBump, a pregnancy and social network app for expectant mothers. The couple eventually expanded the portfolio to include PinkPad, a menstrual and fertility tracker. and Kidfolo, a parenting social network. BabyBump reached 8 million downloads in 2013. The combined apps are run under the couple’s StartUp called alt12 and today boast 4.5 million downloads across the entire portfolio of apps. After growing such tremendous database of users, Aydin Senkut‘s Felicis Ventures got participation from InterWest Partners and Ron Gutman, an investor form HealthTap to help alt12 raise $1.26 million in seed funding.
Last year, Alba’s Honest company quietly acquired alt12. After the acquisition, PinkPad which used to cost $1.99-$2.99 and a paid $3.99 version of BabyBump all became FREE. The married couple now run mobile at Honest Co and as of January 2015, Wong is Head of Mobile Apps there and Sackett is Head of Mobile Apps Engineering.
As the sleuths at MobileHealthNews.com hypothesize, Honest co will be looking to exploit what alt12 brought to the table: its Sliprose technology platform. That technology marries social networking with social commerce, tracking and analytics: “Native mobile storefront with personalized recommendations based on deep life stage and peer-to-peer engagement.”
So in other words, similar to how UnderArmour purchased MyFitnessTracker and Endomondo to sell their apparel to the download users, Honest Co too will be looking to push its products to the BabyBump, PinkPad and Kidfolo users.
Genius!!! Can’t wait to see all this come into fruition as there are valuable lessons to be learned from this all for appreneaurs and other startup founders in the Health app market.
photo: mic