Ariana Thacker's MoldCo raises $8M to tackle mold-related illness with testing and virtual care

he's ever made. And he was like, "Yeah, I I was just like this guy is like went to Harvard, dropped out of Harvard, looked like Mark. " We have uh Ariana in the reream waiting room. Let's bring her in. Let's bring her in to TVP the Ultra Dome. How you doing? What's happening? Hi, Jordy. Hi, John. Great to be here.

Great to meet you. Okay, I will start this off by saying I hate got I hate mold. I'm a I'm one of the number one haters. I I had a a rental once that had a mold problem. I got terribly sick.

Uh and it ended up being this crazy saga where I was like fighting with my landlord because they were saying like there's no mold problem. I was showing them test results that showed there was a mold problem. They were kind of pushing back. I think it's a huge problem. I went down this rabbit hole.

I think a bunch of people are kind of like waking up to um how prevalent the issue is, especially in like specific regions and even specific like like uh local communities. So excited that you're building this and uh excited to hear about it. Thank you. Yeah, there's definitely a cultural awakening happening.

Um you might have even seen HBO shows and Netflix and throughout the Reddit forums, Facebook communities. uh influencers or on Instagram etc. Like it feels like there's this ground swell of education and awareness happening beyond even our company. Yeah. Uh how did you how why why did you start the company?

Personal story. Yeah. Uh super similar to yours. Went through that journey with my landlord as well and prior to starting Mold Co.

didn't have health issues, then experienced debilitating symptoms and actually developed something called chronic inflammatory response syndrome, which is the more formal name for mold toxicity or mold related illness just in a 6 and 1/2 month time frame of being in my Miami unit, which was quite moldy. Crazy.

Uh what uh what is the uh I have an easy to tell what the company does at a high level, but like how are you how are you kind of like tackling the problem? What does the business look like? Yeah, we're tackling this in a few different ways.

So, the vision is to drive the standard of care for mold uh treatment and mold labs. And what we do is offer labs both for health and the environment. So, that includes um four different tests available on our website today. Um specifically a three panel and a 16 panel for the Lab Corp Lab draw.

And that's based on our 30 years of research in the field. So we have on our founding team the world experts the folks that not only pioneered the space but also define chronic inflammatory response syndrome came up with the biomarkers came up with the treatment all in their lifetime which is an extraordinary effort.

So we have that we also have something called HLA hletype testing to see if you have a genetic susceptibility to mold related illness and that impacts one and four here in the US and we also have a test which I frankly love over even a home inspector at times.

It's just a quick litmus test, low cost, use a Swiffer pad to wipe down your surfaces. So, we have that on the lab side. And then on the care side, we have our own in-house providers and we built a platform to uh treat patients at scale. And that includes concierge care and our patient portal.

And that includes a distillation of something called the shoemaker protocol, which is the only published peer-reviewed um uh treatment approach in the space. There's hundreds of publications making the mold health connection.

is really just a small body of work that demonstrates treatment and what's effective for patients. So that's what we've done. We've translated that into a virtual care clinic and we've done a lot of creative things to make that scalable for patients so we can keep the cost low and affordable.

What uh if if somebody I guess like what is your recommendation you meet somebody like randomly they hear about your business like what is the first step because I think a lot of people you you talked about people having like genetic susceptibility this this is I think important because it means that like a few people could be living in a house and like some people aren't having necessarily any issues or symptoms and like one person could be having a super adverse reaction and that I feel like uh can make can make people like just like not really be aware of the problem cuz if you have if somebody's in college and they have some roommates that are doing fine and they're struggling they can it can end up being confusing.

But what do you recommend to people? Uh where do you recommend people start if they're kind of concerned that they might be dealing with an issue? Yeah, absolutely. So we have testing options to meet patients where they are. So it really just depends on where they are in that journey.

Um and you touched upon a really important topic and that's the canary effect. There could be others in your household that start experiencing symptoms before you even experience symptoms. But um it really just depends on where the patient is. Have they already made the mold health connection?

Have they conducted a battery of lab test to validate that? Um if so, those patients are often great to start care.

If the patient hasn't even made the mold health connection, but they're sure that there's mold in their home, they can probably skip the dust test and even a visual inspection or having that musty, earthy odor is sufficient.

So for that type of patient, we may recommend even the starter panel um which is one of our three um lab panels and that has the highest uh signal biomarkers based on the research that we have to date which I'm sure will evolve. We actually have an R&D arm with the largest data set in the world for what we're doing too.

So we're looking to advance that and really drive the standard of care or if a patient doesn't know if they have mold in their home but they're having the indicative symptoms which includes brain fog, fatigue, um gastrointestinal issues, etc.

It's normally a multi-system multi symptom issue um non-specific but affecting multiple systems then we would recommend uh a lab panel such as a starter panel or a complete panel the h you guys help uh would you guys help uh c uh like clients customers with uh with like legal because I ended up having to hire a lawyer when I was going through my issue because my landlord was just like completely just like uh basically like gaslighting me not not uh is that something that that you guys would ever help people with or is that outside of kind of the wheelhouse?

It's currently outside our scope. Um in terms of the next evolution of the company, the parent company is actually called the immune co and our vision is to spin out Limeco and Long Co. Next.

Our thesis is that the data set we've collected uh which is looking at these microbial insults, mold and biotoxins that lead to innate immune system dysregulation leading to chronic inflammation can actually have the underlying research to help solve some of these other biotoxin related issues.

So we're more so going that direction versus expanding too horizontally within uh the mold economy. But I think there's definitely opportunity there for founders. The mold economy, we're here. Um, how are you uh how are you guys acquiring uh customers at this point?

Is it is this this feels like the kind of thing that that um one there's a lot of influencers that that have dealt with this and that'll talk about it, but uh also feels like you could have an organic uh Tik Tok or real strategy or something along those lines. Yeah, we're doing a lot of different things.

We actually just launched something called a content farm. We had 7 million views in the last week or week and a half or so just off of that. Um, so we are tapping into Tik Tok and Instagram and doing some fun things there. We had a Reddit AMA with Dr.

Shoemaker, the Messiah of Mold, our founding physician, and that went viral in Reddit. Messiah of mold. You got some you got some good good coinages here. The mold economy, the messiah of mold. Thanks. I don't have bots on my cap table, though, so maybe next. Um, but yeah, so we've done that.

We've done uh we've had shout outs from patients. um at least 15% of our patient base is based on referrals and we haven't even optimized for that yet. I've been on at least 30 podcasts at this point. So we're tapping into a lot of different ways to reach patients and increase education and awareness.

But there already is a large portion of the US that has made the molt health connections. So um it's been pretty streamlined targeting those patients and onboarding them into our care. Would you do anything last question I have, I'm curious.

Would you do anything around helping people make decisions on uh like specifically the moment in time where somebody's either buying a home or considering renting a property?

Because the thing that's like tragic about like kind of the mold crisis, if that's what you want to call it, is there's a lot of homes that are brand new and they will literally have like a like a significant mold toxicity problem on day one. on day one because of the way they were built.

Or you think about it, it's like houses can take a long time to build. They could have leaks, they could have a bunch of weather, all these different things, and then you move into a house that you think is brand new and it already is going to like make you sick, which is just tragic.

Um, thank you for touching on that misconception that new builds don't have mold issues. They definitely do. The building materials are left outside in the rain. uh the energy efficiency standards often have a trade-off for having more microbial growth in the home.

So um I think there's a lot of u dramatic irony there for home buyers and renters. It's not something we're targeting at a deep level right now. I often say that the environmental side is of more intractable than the healthcare side just because the healthcare side already has the solution available.

Um and every home is unique, every uh rental is unique. So, we offer free educational guidance, but I think that's also another opportunity for a builder in the space if they want to help um uh essentially renters and owners better navigate um which homes have mold and to avoid that.

And there's also novel materials coming out like sirewall too to prevent mold in the first place. Awesome. Well, congratulations. Fundraising news. What's the fundraising news? You announced it yesterday, right? Yeah.

Um yeah, so we raised earlier this year a bit of a delayed announcement with uh Kantos and Collab Fund as our lead and um yeah, there we go. How much did you raise? Uh 8 million total. There you go. Congratulations. Congratulations. Great names. Great names. Love to see it. Thanks so much for having me on the stream.

Thanks for jumping on. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers, guys. Bye. If you want to get away from your moldy old home, head over to wander. com. Book a wander with inspiring views, hotel great amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning, and 247