The Founders
YuScale – Nutrition Support was founded in 2013 by Kim Kreutz, CEO (Bielefeld, Germany)
Kim Kreutz studied visual communication and worked as graphic designer, typography, director, video editor for several agencies across the north of Germany. He is founder and CEO of the Zumo GmbH and worked since 2000 as creative director for more than 70 happy customers in more than 400 projects. Kim is the designer for visual communication – Conception, Product Design and Development.
Mike Lohmann, CTO (Hamburg, Germany) is Backend Developer – Big Data, Data Mining. Mike Lohmann is a passionate software developer and autodidact. During the last 20 years he becomes a luminary in the fields of big data and data mining. He worked for big corporations, innovative startups and as a free lancer
Ingo Wüllner, HOD (Bielefeld, Germany) is Electronics Engineer – Product Design, Hard- and Software Engineering. Ingo Wüllner was one of the founders of NavMe in 1999, a mobile pre GPS navigation system. He worked on various research projects at the Frauenhofer Institut, Paderborn. In his spare time he solders in the ›garage‹ at countless ideas – our scale is one of the results.
Kim Kreutz, Mike Lohmann, Ingo Wüllner
The product/technology
Zumo, the company behind YuScale, is an agency for design and product development founded in 2000. We are specialized in connected environment and web based technologies. YuScale was started as a project in 2013 and has become our main product.
The YuScale System contains our Scale, the YuScale Device and the Nutrition App.
First we scale the plate with the ready to eat meal – then we take a picture with our Nutrition App – draw an outline around each food component and assign them to a food item out of our library. After eating, we scale the plate again and measure the exact consumption. With this information we are able to determine carbs and nutritions with a precision of 80%. Further development will simplify this task.
YuScale helps diabetics everyday, who are into a guessing challenge with a simple food intro – mobile, easy and safe.
The pricing
The price for the YuScale Device is 80USD (nett). We have not launched the product yet and are looking for partners (national and international) to run a pilot with 1000 scales. We conducted interviews with 100 diabetics and presented the YuScale Solution on a very early development stage. The feedback was absolutely positive. We are curious to give out YuScale to our testimonials and to see it in everyday action.
The Market
Diabetes is a global problem and a burden for public health systems. The YuScale System provides a solution that works almost everywhere. Our Scale and the App as simple as it is.
Our vision: We’ll establish YuScale for diabetes treatments – worldwide – as a benchmark for carbs and bolus calculation and diabetes management. In the near future, we’ll automize the entire process in order to simplify the handling and to push the precision over 95% accuracy. Beside diabetes treatments, the more we’ll simplify the process, the more we we’ll be able to enter everyday life and become a (food) habit.
The Business Model
In the 1st phase of our business we will sell our Scale, provide free online services and collect data from our customers.
In the 2nd phase we will finance the Device and establish paid modules and services. Our YuScale App is free of charge.
We’ll collect a big stack of personal food data, that allows projections to many fields of interest. Creating meaningful services and switching our business model will be one of our future tasks.
Achievements
We managed the very early stages by bootstrapping and archived the proof of concept and prototyping. We’ve been part of the Vertical Accelerator spring batch 2016 in Espoo, Helsinki.
Advice for entrepreneurs
Hang in there! Be prepared for changes and open for criticism and react accordingly. Being an entrepreneur is the toughest job on this planet; you need to love it, otherwise go back to corporate.
Categories: Diabetes, Digital Health, Europe, Featured Startups, Finland, Food, Nutrition, Startups
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