\n<\/p>\n
The tale of how smart toilet startup Throne landed its seed round is so full of serendipities, one could almost believe it was orchestrated by the hand of Fortuna, Roman goddess of providence.<\/p>\n
Throne<\/a> is an Austin-based company working on an AI-powered toilet device for consumers. It uses computer vision (cameras pointing in the bowl plus AI software) to monitor gut health conditions. It just raised $4 million in seed financing led by Moxxie Ventures\u2019 founder Katie Jacobs Stanton, with a bunch of other VCs participating and several famous angels like Lance Armstrong, Rupa Health co-founder Tara Viswanathan, and TrueMed founder Justin Mares (maker of brands like Kettle & Fire), the startup says.<\/p>\n Throne isn\u2019t a toilet, but a device that mounts onto the bowl of one. The device, combined with software, analyzes indicators of certain chronic conditions, as well as hydration and urological function \u2014 all in the privacy of the home. The software has added privacy controls such as anonymizing the images sent to researchers.<\/p>\n The device is currently in a pre-production working prototype form, with a planned launch date of January, 2026, co-founder CEO Scott Hickle tells TechCrunch.<\/p>\n In addition to the seed funding, Throne also announced it hired John Capodilupo as its chief product officer. Capodilupo is best known as co-founder and former CTO of the WHOOP smartwatch device.<\/p>\n The wild tale of how Hickle, a mechanical engineer, and Throne CTO Tim Blumberg, a full-stack software engineer, became smart toilet founders began in 2021 when they were playing poker with friends in Austin.<\/p>\n The players started riffing on startup ideas they\u2019d like to do but wouldn\u2019t want to be associated with. \u201cAnd everyone\u2019s pitching vice industry [ideas]; sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Tim said, \u2018smart toilets.\u2019 I was like, \u2018That\u2019s hilarious. Clearly, you would name that company Throne,\u2019\u201d Hickle recalled.<\/p>\n Fast-forward to 2023 when the nurse-hiring software startup Hickle and Blumberg were working on failed.<\/p>\n They had raised some funding for it and were calling their investors telling them they either needed a new idea or were going to return the funds. Out of the blue, one of their investors said, \u201cYou guys thought about smart toilets? We were like: You know, we\u2019ve named that company! That\u2019s Throne.\u201d<\/p>\n They took that as a sign. The pair began researching and turned to Hickle\u2019s mom, a doctor specializing in gerontology. He asked her if there would be any medical benefit in \u201clooking at people\u2019s waste\u201d and she began regaling him with somewhat disgusting stories of the photos of such things that her patients loved to send her.\u00a0<\/p>\n Short answer: yes. Waste can be analyzed for health-related information. They learned this could be helpful to monitor a wide variety of chronic conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), ulcerative colitis, detection of various colon cancers, chronic kidney disease, enlarged prostate, as well as conditions that could be identified or monitored by looking at other waste, such as menstrual blood.<\/p>\n As the son of two doctors (Hickle\u2019s dad also dabbled in inventing medical devices), knowing it might be possible to divert a chronic condition attack, or predict a deadly cancer \u201cwas really motivating to me,\u201d Hickle says.<\/p>\n Not everyone shared that enthusiasm. The co-founders knew they lacked hardware product development experience. One of their existing investors was so opposed to the idea, he wanted his money back. \u201cThat was brutal,\u201d Hickle described, not just for the loss of capital but for the loss of confidence.<\/p>\n Still, after giving that money back, they ran into more people who liked the idea rather than who shunned them for it.<\/p>\n Their Austin contacts led to an introduction to Lance Armstrong\u2019s business manager, who set them up to pitch Armstrong directly. The former bike racer famously had testicular cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n And that led them to a \u201csurreal\u201d moment standing outside the racer\u2019s bathroom door after having installed a prototype, waiting for his verdict, Hickle described. Armstrong wrote a check.<\/p>\nStanding outside Lance Armstrong\u2019s bathroom door<\/h2>\n