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Venture Capital News: Kaleidoscope Labs Closes $4M Seed Round

2019-07-08
NEW YORK, NY, Kaleidoscope Labs has raised a $4M seed round led by RRE Ventures.
Rising functional wellness and CBD brand, Kaleidoscope Labs, which launched on July 1, has raised a $4M seed round support their expansion efforts.

New York-based venture capital firm RRE Ventures led the round with participation from Barry Rosenstein, founder of JANA Partners. Kaleidoscope Labs is one of few wellness or CBD-based brands that RRE Ventures has historically invested in.

Filling an observed hole in the current market of CBD products, Kaleidoscope offers a semi-customized CBD based capsule utilizing a microencapsulation technology to increase the bioavailability of the CBD and the other ingredients in each pill. Kaleidoscope's five formulations are meant to be stacked, mixed, and combined. Users complete a questionnaire online and the brand creates a customized recommendation based on user wellness goals and needs. Unlike a tincture or other CBD products that might yield varying doses of CBD, the Kaleidoscope design ensures you're getting a regular, singular amount with each capsule. The 'capsule within a capsule' allows the ingredients nestled inside the inner cap to bypass the first pass of digestion. Through this format, Kaleidoscope aims to uproot CBD from the recreational space and hopes to reframe it as an everyday, functional ingredient for better health, which through microencapsulation can have a higher bioavailability and greater efficacy.

"I built Kaleidoscope because the CBD product I wanted didn't exist. I was a ballerina growing up, which did a lot of damage to my body, and remain an avid skier, which has only exacerbated my pain. CBD emerged as one of the few things that helped me but I couldn't find the right delivery or consumption mechanism that worked best for me. I noticed a hole in the market, a real opportunity to build an innovative product in a crowded space - a product for the hardworking, type-A person who needed to be even more productive. With the incredible support of my investors, we've set out to build the more reliable, bioavailable, and scientifically-rooted CBD capsule missing from the cannabis ecosystem," says Founder and CEO, Ana Rosenstein.

The brand intends to utilize the infusion of funds on the expansion of the brand, furthering product efficacy, and support their nonprofit arm, Kaleidoscope Gives Foundation that provides grants to a variety of causes in the cannabis industry.

"We have seen trends in consumer demand move towards an increased expectation of personalization, subscription offerings, and wellness options, so we were excited about the potential of Kaleidoscope to capitalize on all three. CBD is also a rapidly emerging market without category leaders, predicted to grow to $2B/year by 2022. We are proud to add Kaleidoscope to our portfolio of consumer wellness brands like Care/Of, Maude, Kindbody, Nanit, Spring Health, and BARK," says Stu Ellman of RRE Ventures.

Kaleidoscope offers five formulations which blends 30mg of CBD per serving with other natural ingredients for a maximum combined effect, including: Wake (featuring CBD, ginseng, etc.), Sleep (featuring CBD, melatonin, etc.), Soothe (CBD, curcurmin, etc.), Glow (CBD, Biocell collagen, etc.), and Boost (featuring only CBD). Inspired by both nature and medicine, the brand sources Kentucky-bred, organically-grown plants and extracts their full spectrum.

Stacking products allows each consumer to find their 'perfect pattern' and leverage the compounding effect of CBD, meaning consumers can use multiple formulations throughout the day in a systematic and incremental manner. Kaleidoscope also uses uniquely designed capsules, with CBD inside the microcap and within MCT oil surrounding the innercap, which allow for greater absorption, instant and extended CBD release, and higher bioavailability.

Pricing begins at $75/month. For more information, please visit www.kaleidoscopelabs.com.

About Founder and CEO Ana Rosenstein:
Ana Rosenstein is the founder and CEO of Kaleidoscope Labs. She attended Brown University, graduating with honors in Political Science in 2015, and graduated from Harvard Business School in 2019. After graduating from Brown, Ana worked as an investment associate at betaworks ventures, a venture capital firm in New York focusing on consumer technology companies primarily in the media, audio, social network, and frontier technology (AI, VR) spaces. She then interned at JANA Partners, an activist hedge fund in New York focusing on consumer retail publicly traded equities. In the summer following her first year at Harvard Business School, Ana worked as a summer associate at RRE Ventures during which she developed the idea for Kaleidoscope and began building the company commuting between Boston and New York for an entire year to run the company and finish her second year at HBS simultaneously. Prior to joining betaworks Ana interned at The White House with the National Economic Council, CNBC with Maria Bartiromo's Closing Bell, and Mashable.
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