The story of how smart toilet startup Sloan landed the seed round was packed with coincidence and could be believed to have been organized by the hands of Fortuna, the Roman goddess of Providence.
Throne is an Austin-based company that works on AI-powered toilet devices for consumers. Monitor your gut health using computer vision (a camera pointing to bowls and AI software). It raised $4 million in seed finance, led by Moxxie Ventures founder Katie Jacobs Stanton.
The throne is not a toilet, but a device that can be attached to the bowl of a bowl. The device, combined with software, analyzes specific chronic disease indicators, as well as hydration and urological functions all in the privacy of your home. The software added privacy controls, such as anonymizing images sent to researchers.
The device is currently in the pre-production work prototype format, as it is planned for the January 2026 start date.
In addition to the seed funding, Throne announced that it had hired John Capodilpo as its top product manager. Capodilupo is best known as co-founder and former CTO of Whoop Smartwatch devices.
The wild story of how mechanical engineer Hickle and full-stack software engineer Throne CTO Tim Blumberg became the founder of Smart Toilets in 2021 while playing poker with friends in Austin.
Players have started riffing on the idea of the startup they want to do, but they don’t want to associate it with them. “And everyone’s pitching vice industry [ideas];Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Tim said “smart toilet.” I’m ‘it’s hilarious. Obviously, you’ll name the company’s throne,” recalls Hickle.
Fast forward to 2023 when nurse employment software startups Hickle and Blumberg failed.
They raised some funds for it and told investors either they needed a new idea or they would return the funds. One investor said, “Did you think of a smart toilet? We were. You know, we’ve given the company a name! It’s the throne.”
They took it as a sign. The pair began their research and turned their attention to Hickle’s mother, a doctor specializing in gerontology. He asks her if there is a medical benefit to “see people’s waste” and she begins to respect him with the somewhat nasty story of such things that patients liked to send her.
Simple answer: Yes. Waste can be analyzed for health-related information. They learned this helps to monitor a variety of chronic diseases, including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), ulcerative colitis, detection of various colon cancers, chronic kidney disease, enlarged prostate, and other conditions that can be seen or monitored by other waste such as menstrual blood.
As the son of two doctors (hickle’s dad also dad dad inventing medical devices), he knew that he could either bypass chronic disease attacks or predict fatal cancer.
Not everyone shares that enthusiasm. The co-founders knew they had no experience in hardware product development. One of their existing investors was very opposed to the idea, so he wanted to get the money back. “It was cruel,” Hickle explained not only about the loss of capital, but also about the loss of confidence.
Still, after giving back the money, they came across people who liked the idea, not who shunned it.
Standing outside the door of Lance Armstrong’s bathroom
Their Austin contacts were introduced to Lance Armstrong’s business manager and set up Armstrong to pitch directly. The former bike racer had a famous prostate cancer.
And it led them to a “surreal” moment after setting up the prototype and then standing outside the racer’s bathroom door, waiting for his verdict, Hickle explained. Armstrong wrote the check.
Not all introductions led to checks, but they led to more introductions, including Capodilpo, who many wrote Angel Checks. Capodilupo was in public about his suffering from ulcerative colitis and was on the board of trustees of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation. Capodilupo has experience in manufacturing the necessary devices. It took the founders several months to not only invest in Capodilupo, but to convince them to join as founders.
It was also a coincidence that famous seed investor Jacobs Stanton was introduced. Hickle has been friends with Viswanathan from Lupa Health since high school, and she coordinated the referral.
With more sync, partnerships with researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Chicago have been working to verify that the software in the product works according to advertising. These partnerships are key to their success potential. When Hickle’s friend randomly sat down next to a urologist researcher on the plane to talk about the throne, the throne landed the University of Washington and then contacted him, he said.
They got the University of Chicago when Hickle’s friends introduced him to his gastroenterologist uncle. My uncle happened to be one of the world’s leading gastroenterologist researchers, and sat on the board of the Crones & Colitis Foundation to know about Kaposilpo.
In a series of coincidences, the jokes between founders were, “It’s better to be lucky than good, we’re just lucky. It’s always ridiculous,” Hickle said. But he also believes the tailwind is getting so strong, and he feels that “the world wants us to do this.”
Other investors in the seed round include Accomplices, Long Journey Venture, V1.VC, Night Capital, Retron VC, and Myelin Venture.
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