The Journey of Veri: How Anttoni Aniebonam’s Vision for Metabolic Health Led to an Acquisition by Oura
A conversation with Veri CEO and co-founder, Anttoni Aniebonam.
In a conversation with Kyriakos, the founder of Terra, Anttoni Aniebonam shares his journey of finding success through co-founding Veri, a metabolic health program powered by a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). He continues to further his vision through its latest acquisition with Oura.
Anttoni’s interest in metabolic health grew from a personal struggle through post-surgery complications following a sports injury. Ever since he could walk, he wholeheartedly grew up in the game of soccer. But a sudden end to the decade-long devotion due to an injury followed by post-surgery complications, left him devastated to no longer be able to continue playing at that level and affected his mental health.
Realizing the abundance of free time he now had, he began the uphill journey to find healing for his body as well as his mind. In the process, he started his first steps into his entrepreneurial potential, creating an online business that connected people with the same problems he did to experts who would provide the information they needed to better their health and well-being.
Anttoni pursued further studies in life sciences and bioinformatics at a local university. He then took a job at Meru Health and moved to the Bay Area, where he worked on bio-wearables that gathered data on the effect of breathing patterns on a user’s mental health. Together with his friend and co-founder Verne, who was working on the UX layer of Oura products at the time, the two made a huge personal discovery of the potential of CGMs.
Encouraged to create a dedicated Facebook group for users who shared the same interest in CGMs and improving their metabolic health, the co-founders quickly identified the glaring lack of good software that provided context for guided health and nutrition plans based on the collected CGM data.
The 48-hour Launch
“We set a goal with Verne saying, ‘in the next 48 hours, we're going to build like a metabolic glucose intervention program, and that is going to end sale.’ And I remember when we got our first order, orders kept on coming and coming and we were like, ‘What the hell is going on’? At the end of three weeks or four weeks, we were at a place where our calendars were full of meetings with these customers.”
Fast forward to 4 years into the business, they’ve reached 50,000 users, 2.5 million meals logged, and 22 million glucose hours tracked. Earlier this year, they achieved their target of raising €1M within 2 hours of live community rounds on Seedrs. Then on September 12, 2024, Veri officially announced on its website that it would join forces with Oura through an acquisition.
How did the Oura conversation begin?
The partnership between Oura and Veri began when a significant percentage of users requested to have the data from their Oura rings integrated into the app. Anttoni and his team continued to faithfully deliver top-notch results and service by maintaining a close feedback loop with its users. Anttoni weighed in, “I think that's a big reason why this acquisition was done was because Oura truly fell in love with the user experience that we had built.” He gives an exclusive to the Terra podcast providing details about his decision-making process in the acquisition with a few key strategies that other company founders should consider before taking the leap.
From a Vision Point of View
Touching into the deeper reason for the acquisition, Anttoni draws passion for his vision from his own personal experience. “From my point of view, what I can say is. I look at like this space that we're in from the lens that I basically went through myself. And when I was sick, when I didn't have the help around me, I was lost with not having a solution for a problem. And today, we are at a point where there are so many companies out there trying to solve different corners of the same problem. Even though I'm a very competitive person, with a competitive sports background, I can get into terms with it because it's going to basically push the innovation and the solutions forward faster.”
He finds peace and confidence in the acquisition with Oura through their shared purpose. “Cause if you think about what Oura is trying to achieve and accomplish, as what Veri is trying to accomplish as well, like all of these companies are basically trying to help people live longer, And live healthier for longer, right?” Every member hired by Veri shares the same passion as Anttoni in providing a holistic approach to improving one’s metabolic health. They proudly join forces with the fellow Nordic trailblazer by forming a specialized team that will build the go-to-market and metabolic-like features that will soon be a part of Oura's value proposition.
Although Veri has announced the app will sunset at the end of 2024, it’s their mission to build and provide something similar within the Oura ecosystem for their customers to continue with on this side of the market. Following this acquisition, Oura launched its new feature “Meals” in the fall of 2024 to help members track when they eat and map back to their chronotype to understand the impact of how, when, and what we eat, integrating metabolic health as a “sixth sense” of the Oura experience.