This week, Jawbone announced that it has acquired BodyMedia. Two industry leaders in the mobile health and body monitoring space have joined forces. 

Jawbone, best known for its Jambox speakers and Icon headsets, recently set its sights on the lifestyle tracking arena with its Up wristband. Consumers’ thirst for insights about their bodies continues to grow unabated, and by taking Jawbone’s success with Up and coupling it with BodyMedia’s healthcare heritage, one plus one clearly equals three. It was just 11 months ago that we invested in a very talented Pittsburgh team led by Chris Robins and Ivo Stivoric.  In that short timeframe, we have seen BodyMedia announce Core2, their next flagship product due out later this year, enabling heart rate tracking on a smaller, more elegant multi-sensor, on-body armband.  We’ve also been reminded of the power of this class of products in fostering and supporting true behavioral change in a weight loss setting.  Witness the transformations of the contestants on The Biggest Loser earlier this year with a little help from their BodyMedia devices, of course. 

Today’s accelerometer-based devices accompanied with simple mobile apps are akin to single-cell organisms. Tomorrow, we will evolve to a world that only has multiple sensors, multiple form factors, multiple body locations, and multiple apps. One needs tons of consumer empirical data and years of mapping it to real daily activities to cross the last mile in this category. Only the history, the scale and the science of Jawbone and BodyMedia can effectively make this journey. It’s been an honor and privilege to support the BodyMedia team. Now, we look forward to collaborating with them and the entire Jawbone team as they push body monitoring and wearable health to new heights. As we look forward to the dawn of a new revolution, it’s now clear that Jawbone is the one to beat.