Pulse Check: Issue No. 08 - Substance is Sticky

Sleek is forgettable. The perfect brand world, the clean aesthetic, the “optimize everything” tone, you swipe past it and it’s gone. But when something has weight, when it hits a real need, lands emotionally, or is built with actual rigor, it stays with you. It leaves residue. It lingers after you close the tab or walk out of the room.

What we’re seeing right now is a pull toward brands that actually hold up. Marketing that feels something. Products built from science, not aesthetics. And even in sport, people aren’t just rooting for performance, they’re rooting for the story. There’s resonance in thoughtfulness. People can feel when something has depth, and when it doesn’t.

Because the things that stick are the things that are real.

November 10 | NYC | Register Here

This edition is focused on the money moves behind wellness, how brands are raising, scaling, acquiring, getting acquired, and timing the market. Not theory. The actual mechanics.

Featured Speakers

• Gail Becker | Founder, CAULIPOWER — fresh off acquisition by Urban Farmer

• Douglas Gremmen | Chief Growth Officer, HYROX — behind one of the fastest-growing fitness competition platforms in the world

• Seth Goldstein | Co-Founder & President, Ancient Crunch — the company building and scaling better-for-you brands like MASA Chips and Vandy.

In the room: leaders from Poppi, Oura, Chomps, Chobani, David, and Aescape.

We’re breaking down how brands are really capitalizing on the future of wellness, where capital is flowing, how category timing plays out, and how culture drives demand.

If you’re in New York and building in this space, we’d love for you to join us.

Eudēmonia Summit is a 3-day health summit, taking place November 13-16th in West Palm Beach, Florida, that blends life-changing talks from more than 150 experts with heart-pounding workouts, restorative treatments, and an expo featuring 120 of the world’s most innovative health and wellness brands.

Get tickets here and use code “WILLPOWER20” for 20% off

HYROX has been steadily turning functional fitness into a global race format people can actually train for, eight 1k runs, eight workout stations, same standard everywhere. And the momentum is real. USAA, the financial services brand widely known for serving the military community, just signed on as the title sponsor for HYROX’s Dallas event. That’s a strong signal that major, heritage-backed institutions are starting to see real staying power (and scale) in this category.

We’ll get to hear more about how HYROX is growing next week, as Douglas Gremmen, Chief Growth Officer, will be joining us at Catalyst Series NYC: Capitalizing on the Future of Wellness to talk about the business behind the movement.

Throne began as a joke between founders, and is now shaping up to be one of the more interesting moves in passive health tracking. The company is led by Scott Hickle (Austin-based, and a friend of Willpower), who is developing a device that attaches to the toilet to analyze hydration and gut health automatically, with no user effort required. The team has brought on John Capodilupo (co-founder and former CTO of WHOOP) as Chief Product Officer. Throne has also raised $4M in seed financing, including notable angel investors like Justin Mares (founder of Kettle & Fire). It’s a signal of where wellness data is headed next: frictionless, integrated, and built into the routines people already have.

Throne is currently available for pre-order, and shipping January 2026.

Eli Health is taking on hormone tracking in a way that actually makes sense for daily life. Instead of one-off labs or guesswork, Eli uses a small saliva-based device to measure cortisol levels in real time, giving you a clearer picture of how your body responds to stress throughout the day. And yes, although cortisol is everywhere in the conversation right now, it’s not just a trend, it’s one of the most important markers for recovery, mood, energy regulation, and overall performance. Having that data easily, frequently, and without a clinic visit is a huge shift toward understanding what’s really driving how we feel.

There’s been a noticeable wave in wellness where brands are leaning hard into scientific legitimacy, not as a marketing angle, but as survival. The landscape is crowded, timelines are fast, and flimsy products get exposed quickly. A great example of this is Ammortal. When co-founder Rob Insinger joined us at World of Sports & Human Performance, you could feel the physiological grounding behind the brand, and now they’ve deepened that foundation even further. Dr. Darshan Shah, founder of Next Health, has stepped in as Ammortal’s first Chief Medical Officer, bringing clinical research and longevity expertise into the core of the product. It’s a signal of where the category is going: the wellness brands that last are the ones backed by real science, credible operators, and R&D that can stand up to scrutiny. Funding and momentum are important, but without that foundation, nothing holds.

Williams Racing just unveiled their updated identity including their name change to “Atlassian Williams F1 Team” and “Forward W” logo ahead of the 2026 season, and what’s interesting here isn’t the subtle changes themselves. It reflects the shift we talked about with Divya Goel at World of Sports & Human Performance: Williams is operating as more than a racing team. They’re thinking in culture, storytelling, and digital presence, actually building a world people want to be part of. If you know Sparkles the Unicorn, you already know what we mean. If you don’t, check it out here, it’s the perfect example of how Williams is using narrative and character to build emotional connection in a space that historically only sold performance. This rebrand is more of a signifier of the next chapter: racing heritage paired with modern identity-building and audience engagement.

And now: the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas has been extended through 2034. If you’ve been in Austin during F1, you know what to expect. The city turns into a full-range collision of founders, athletes, hospitality crews, nightlife operators, legacy motorsport folks, and the influencers who suddenly become very into racing once a year, all in the orbit of the F1 cultural tentpole. The whole city shifts into a different gear. COTA has become more than a racetrack, it’s an anchor for how Austin shows up on the global stage. And with COTALAND Theme Park under construction, that presence is only getting bigger. The takeaway: F1 isn’t “visiting” the U.S. anymore. It’s building infrastructure here. Austin is officially part of the ecosystem.

AG1’s new Rick Rubin campaign builds on the storytelling arc they introduced with Good Morning, Moon, a slow, spacious, cinematic approach to wellness marketing rooted in the nostalgia of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. It doesn’t chase virality. It invites you in. It’s the opposite of the quick-cut “optimize your morning routine” content that floods the feed and makes you feel like you’re already behind.

We saw the early signals of this direction back in February, when Paulie Dery opened our very first Catalyst Series of the year, reminding us that emotional resonance comes from letting the story breathe, not compressing it for the algorithm.

And AG1 is pairing that narrative discipline with real substance. The brand recently launched an NIL program that supports scientists (not athletes), and announced a research partnership with UC Davis focused on nutrition and metabolic wellness.

The takeaway: long-form storytelling backed by credible research hits deeper than quick-hit wellness messaging.

Slow isn’t less effective, Slow is sticky.