Supersapiens Announces It’s Shutting Down

Continuous glucose monitoring platform sports tech startup Supersapiens, has announced it’s shutting down. The company had been using Abbott Labs continuous glucose monitoring patches, in conjunction with their own app/platform, for the last few years in Europe. The general idea was that you can more accurately train and race, specifically for longer endurance events, by monitoring glucose levels. These are the exact same patches used for monitoring diabetes in various countries. The only difference was that Supersapiens had a software layer above it.

Supersapiens was never able to get approvals to operate with customers in the US or Canada, and thus was limited to a set of European countries, significantly reducing their potential market area. A compounding factor was that the UCI also banned their use in competitions (as the UCI often does when they don’t understand tech), limiting the visibility of their product for pro cycling teams.

Here’s their announcement, in full, sent out to active members:

Dear Customer,

As a valued member of the Supersapiens community, we owe it to you to be transparent and direct about significant changes that impact our service and your experience.

It is with a heavy heart that we must announce that Supersapiens is going through a strategic restructuring and this will affect our services and your experience with us. This decision comes after considerable efforts to navigate an increasingly challenging business environment, and it is not one we have taken lightly.

As a result of this closure:

Shipping of Sensors: We have ceased the shipment of all sensors immediately.

Memberships: All memberships have been terminated.

App Functionality: The Supersapiens app will continue functioning for the foreseeable future, allowing you to access historical data for another 45-60 days. However, we will no longer provide updates, feature enhancements, or customer support.

Dashboard and Integrations: Your access to the Supersapiens dashboard will remain available until March 31, 2024. We encourage you to download and save any data you wish to retain. All third-party integrations will be discontinued. We recommend reviewing any connected services to adjust your settings accordingly.

To check for updates, please reach out to support@supersapiens.com.

Your trust and support have been the foundation of Supersapiens over the years. Together, we’ve pioneered a market and fostered a community that recognizes the transformative power of glucose. Your contributions have been invaluable to our growth and evolution. We are all Supersapiens.

While we navigate this period of strategic restructuring, we remain committed to our mission and optimistic about the future. The legacy of innovation and community we’ve built together will continue to influence the evolution of metabolic health insights and analytics.

Thank you for your understanding, support, and trust in Supersapiens. Serving you and being part of this vibrant community has been our privilege.

With heartfelt thanks,

The Supersapiens Team

While the company doesn’t explicitly state they are shutting down (the title of the e-mail was “Important Customer Service Announcement”, I’m not sure how else you could interpret the above.

My Experience Using It:

In most ways, this does not surprise me. I actually wore a Supersapiens patch for quite a long time, across numerous seasons and numerous training types – from swim to bike to run, indoors and outdoors. I was always hesitant to dive into a full review, because as you’ll see, my body seemed to respond differently to virtually everyone else that used the product.

Starting off quite a quick overview, the Abbott labs patches were worn continuously for 14 days (exactly 14 days), which includes all the time in between. The patches had a very tiny filament (basically a needle) that was injected into your arm. Generally speaking, the sound of the injector was far more scary than the actual poke. For those monitoring diabetes, this is nothing new. However, from an athletic standpoint, the practical aspects of the product could sometimes be challenging.

The higher amount of time a triathlete spends in the pool (or open water) would degrade the lifespan of the sensor glue quite a bit in my testing. As did simply the increased number of showers you’d take to accommodate multiple workouts per day (especially if spread out morning vs afternoon/evening).

But ultimately, the biggest challenge I had in the tech that I could never reconcile is the actual numbers it would give me. As a brief background, the rough idea of CGMs is that you can monitor your levels in real-time, and then fuel appropriately. In a nutshell, this is all about fueling to avoid a bonk. You would see this number in real time either on the phone app, a Garmin Connect IQ app, their custom band (kinda looked like a Fitbit), and a few other partnerships as well.

Note that for some of these integrations (including Garmin), you had to have your phone with you, due to connectivity restrictions imposed by Abbott Labs. You could work around this if you bought their extra band accessory, but that was cumbersome and literally just ran Android atop it. Thus, it was a battery blowtorch. Wahoo ELEMNT units also had a direct option too.

In the case of Supersapiens, they were really targeting workouts 90 minutes and longer – and more specifically, steady-state efforts (not intervals). Under 90 minutes, and you were unlikely to see enough data to draw any conclusions, and with intervals, it was too variable.

The way the data would work is that theoretically for most people, your mg/dl value would increase, ideally to the upper 100s (e.g. 160-180), and then you’d manage fueling to keep it there. There would be a slight lag in the numbers (~10-15 mins) as you consumed nutrition, but it would be enough to avoid a hard bonk that endurance athletes see.

But that was only if the numbers did as the limited body of science assumed they would: Go up as you increase intensity.

In my case, I was one of the special group of people where the numbers actually go down. Literally, I’d go out for a run, ride, or anything – for many hours – and my numbers would simply drop down and stay in the 50-80 range. During the rest of the day, I’d be in the 80-100 range. Eating foods and such would briefly spike the numbers, but otherwise I’d stay low during workouts. You can see this in my screenshots above – including a 3hr ride, that basically just flatlined low.

I discussed this at length with Supersapiens (including in-person meetings), but there wasn’t a real answer here, because I fell in that group of special people. The body of science that understands how this works simply didn’t account for me. And when you were paying many hundreds of euros per month for this solution, that’s a tough gap to account for. And that’s aside from cases where the sensors just outright failed to register data well at all.

While their analytics platform was actually pretty good and easy to use, including plenty of direct integrations with Garmin, Apple, and more – when the underlying data was questionable, then the platform as a whole became tough to justify.

Going Forward:

Ultimately though, the core reason Supersapiens likely failed (in this case, their investors probably pulled the plug), was that the path forward to getting traction in the US from an approvals standpoint wasn’t viable. And undoubtedly, they were looking at European numbers, and not seeing significant growth. Additionally, their complete dependence on Abbott Labs was rather problematic for a tech company that wanted to move fast – it led to things like requiring a phone for all communications with a Garmin watch or bike computer, certainly not something ideal for a triathlete in a race.

The company recently tried to start pivoting the US business towards diabetes management, and as part of that opened up another round of fund-raising. Except, this time, they actually listed all their numbers publicly, and considering they’d been around a few years – the revenue metrics weren’t good. Net revenue for 2023 was looking at around 1.3M euros. You can see all the stats here.

It’s possible in another timeframe, if the science around using continuous glucose monitoring in endurance sports can catch up, then maybe there’s room for a product like this in the future. Hopefully though, all those employees can land on their feet. Supersapiens might have been ahead of their time, but unfortunately, only time can tell.

Thanks for reading!

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