From photography to fighting chronic diseases, former EyeEm founders launch aware® with $15 million in seed funding

As the saying goes, “You can’t keep a good man down” (which really should be person, shouldn’t it?) such is the case with just about every successful entrepreneur. So it should come as no surprise that within days of photo-sharing app EyeEm being acquired by Talenthouse, two of its founders, Florian Meissner and Ramzi Rizk just couldn’t say away from the hustle.

Teaming up with Ferdinand Schmidt-Thomé, who serves as Chief of Staff and oversees lab relationships and other partnerships, the trio has officially pulled the curtains back on what they’ve been working on for the past year: aware®, a healthtech service designed for the 21st century, and one that has the ambitious goal of ridding the planet of chronic diseases.

To coin another phrase, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” aware® is starting its journey to reshape the entire healthcare industry by offering individuals access and insights into their own bodily health via regular blood tests. 

This week, the company will launch a private beta programme in which Berliners can easily book an appointment for a blood draw in the aware®  lab, and receive a personalised health report delivered to the aware®  app within 24 hours. Customers then have the option of retesting in 3 to 6 months.

“I have been getting regular blood draws from an early age thanks to a doctor in the family. Whenever there were some outliers, I was told exactly what to do in order to stay healthy,” commented Schmidt-Thomé. “With aware® we want to make this personalised health information available for everyone and encourage our society to proactively utilise preventive medicine.”

With its data-driven approach, the longer-term goal for aware® is to build Europe’s largest health database for personalised medicine which will ultimately contribute to medical research. The plan is that through a complete rethinking/digitising of regular medical checkups and leveraging blood tests and biomarkers, new insights can be gained and new treatment options for millions realised.

aware®’s $15 million seed round was led by Oliver Heimes at Lakestar, Filip Dames at Cherry Ventures, and David Rosskamp at June Fund. A number of angel investors and healthcare experts including Katharina Jünger (Teleclinic), Simon Bolz (Klara), Florian Otto (Cedar), Manuel Grossmann (Amino Collective) participated in the raise, alongside unicorn founders Naren Sham (Omio), Lucas Cranach (Onefootball), and Christian Reber (Pitch).

“aware® represents a change in the healthcare system that is badly needed in order to best support patients with chronic diseases as well as anybody taking proactive care of their health,” commented Heimes. “Personalised healthcare is not possible without longitudinal data: this is where aware® makes a huge difference.”