Launch HN: RonanRX (YC S26) – Personalized Peptides and GLP-1s (ronanrx.com)
I’m Lloyd, one of two founders of RonanRx. We are building a vertically integrated pharmaceutical company with software for prescribing, telehealth, compounding, manufacturing, and delivery. We are starting with GLP-1s and peptides.
The path to RonanRx is fairly unconventional. During the pandemic, I built one of the largest mask manufacturing factories in the US. We could make a million masks in a day. We converted raw polypropylene pellets into finished pallets of masks.
I had a background in software from my YC W10 company, so we took a software approach to building our factory. We used machine learning and computer vision to optimize production. We also vertically integrated almost everything. It worked. We built an efficient manufacturing operation and grew the business to 50 million dollars in revenue. Then people actually stopped caring about masks. Fair enough.
Around the same time, I decided to try and lose the weight I had gained while building the factory. I ate nothing but chicken for six months. While this diet got some results, I plateaued. My doctor suggested tirzepatide, a GLP-1 medication.
For me, losing weight was only the beginning. "Food noise" was gone. I showed less interest in other compulsive behavior. I stopped scrolling Instagram and quit biting my nails. But that was just the beginning. I was born with a congenital heart defect called aortic stenosis. My whole life doctors told me I'd need open heart surgery in my 40s (I am 45 now). After just 18 months using tirzepatide, my cardiologist’s began to think (and still thinks) my surgery could be pushed back until I am 70 or 80.
This was all happening when I was deciding what to work on next. I wanted to keep working on manufacturing. I didn't want to build another product that could be replicated by a frontier model. Pharmaceutical manufacturing was the best combination of digital, physical, biological, and regulatory infrastructure I could find.
The thing that bothered me was how disconnected all of the pieces were: telehealth, EHR, prescriptions, dispensing software, production, shipping. No one company has it all.
GLP-1s come in a handful of predefined doses. But patients obviously aren't standardized. They respond differently, lose weight at different rates, experience different side effects, and may need very different doses.
Compounding pharmacies can fill customized prescriptions, but they are not built like software companies. Workflows are manual, fragmented, and disconnected from the patient’s data.
It's our goal to connect those pieces with RonanRx.
Patients either come to us directly or are referred by a physician. Once a patient is in our system, we collect medical records, current meds, labs, and data from wearables.
Our software follows the prescription through drug formulation, compounding, quality testing, and drug dispensing and distribution.
The most interesting feature is the feedback loop. As the patient is undergoing treatment, their response becomes data that can be used by their doctor to modify the treatment.
We keep the doctor in the feedback loop.
We make money by selling drugs we manufacture. Because people can buy directly from us, their price is usually 3x-10x more affordable. We can do this because we start at the molecule and own the entire stack from manufacturing through prescribing, dispensing, and delivery, instead of paying a chain of middlemen at every step.
We are beginning with GLP-1s and peptides since this was where I personally experienced the issue; however, we are more interested in the potential of patient-specific pharmaceutical manufacturing.
We would love your feedback, especially if you have built pharmacy, manufacturing, clinical infrastructure, EHRs, or any other regulated software. There are a lot of assumptions in this model that should be tested.
69 comments
[ 0.35 ms ] story [ 39.3 ms ] threadYour website sucks though. We can tell you vibe coded it quickly and didn't put much thought into it.
These messages are very helpful, though, to help motivate me to get our team to fix this, so I do appreciate it.
I've led building an EHR totally from scratch at one company and currently advising another as they build their EHR, both totally integrated approaches in industries where you usually have lots of disconnected care (adolescent serious mental illness and ABA/autism care). The state-by-state regulatory challenges are very real! If you want to chat, my email is in my profile!
BTW: when you say you manufacture the drugs, I assume that means you're buying from an API supplier, but do you actually mean you're synthesizing it yourself?
The legal cutout that we have is on the personalization front, which is very well protected. The trick is that most compounders are not actually personalizing, and we are. Our feedback loop allows us to do real personalization on a week-by-week basis.
At the same time, nothing is stopping you from hiring a fractional medical director and doctors alongside NP. I ran the numbers and 50k is is all you need to get a service agreement with a compounding pharmacy, back office tasks, incorporation, social media marketing policy to essentially drop ship your product as you use off the shelf products for charting and then begin expanding state coverage.
The July Medicare glp1 coverage also makes this most opportune.
Biggest barrier I thought was / is the credit card processing. You need to carry a certification for that.
HIPAA not an issue, BAA with most orgs that offer a saas products.
So damn. The glue isn’t really hard. Really didn’t think this would qualify as an ycombinator mvp. But here I am used To pitch decks promising exponential growth of subscription for cloud services.
As for personalized peptides in general, are you going to be marketing non FDA approved ones?
Or just stick with what’s already popular, generic wegovy, zepbound, etc. the market seems highly thin as a new MSO appears everyday using smartiq alongside med spas that offer more questionable inpatient services.
While manufacturing controls supply chain / logistics, the external pressure from every compounding pharmacist scaling into peptides now makes me wonder the longevity abo it this. You can literally pop on subreddits and see the flavor of the month telemedicine practice offer teaser rates of $99 for 60mg/month tirezepatide.
Oh and not forgetting the elephant in the room, gray market and china manufacturing which allows anyone with a telegram account to directly order whatever chemical name they read with no doctor oversight. It’s what, sub $1/mg now from the major vendors for tirezepatide?
I was Stripe's first customer in 2010, so we solved the credit card processing issue :) it turns out that being in YC is good for more than just money.
You are right about HIPAA, everyone thinks this is much harder than it actually is, but GCP, OpenAI, Linq, everyone has given us a BAA.
We're definitely not trying to go after the market of people that are comfortable buying from Chinese suppliers and risking their health. When I built my mask factory, our masks were absolutely more expensive than Chinese masks, but what people were buying was a guarantee that it would meet certain filtration requirements. Some people are willing to pay for safety, but it's not important to everyone.
The only thing I really disagree with with you on is that this isn't a YC-scale company.
We are growing 56% compounded week -over-week, and I have every expectation we'll do $10 million this year, $100 million next.
We are making something that people are already buying and getting it to them in a safer, more cost-effective way.
Would love to hear more about this, sounds like a fun time.
Are you planning to move from peptides to generics in the future? Also, considering you are looking at full vertical integration, is blood testing going to be a part of the pipeline in the future or will you partner with service providers? (I assume the latter until you grow enough to expand into that?)
While peptides are currently the hot market, I definitely can see the feedback loop being a great growth driver. Having a "hands-off" medication management with doses changing based on periodical labs result would be amazing - I am on a generic med (T4) for an autoimmune, and the process is annoying:
- Get labs done - Schedule an endocrinologist, wait - Reach out to my GP, have them bump my medications - Wait for them to answer/arrange a checkup - Wait for it to clear with the pharmacy
If this could be condensed in a loop that is basically get labs done -> pick up prescription, it would both reduce waiting time and reduce pressure on the med system, plus could be a huge data source on drug interactions.
Oh, and one last thing - considering the peptide market is currently full of grey/black market companies, drop-shippers and affiliate resellers, how do you plan to market it?
Especially judging by the site design, if I saw this link elsewhere I'd think it was AI dropshipping slop - no offense - mostly due to classic Claude design and the AI generated bottle/video.
Hire rootsudo? Email in the profile.
Just being able to buy from a truly trusted vendor and not pay big pharma markup and I'm there. "Personalized" sounds cool, but all of that is fluff around affordable and trustable meds.
Are VCs still in the "smart money" cohort if they are following?
Reminds me of that Portlandia sketch "put a bird on it". Is it tech? Put AI on it. Is it health-adjacent? Put supplements / gray market / ethically-questionable-legislation-side-stepping on it.
Also makes me wonder, if AI is going to eat the world, why YC doesn't have a vibehouse spitting out thousands of these startups a month.
Point taken that RUO people are just yoloing this, I was one of them. Now, I can tell you that having a doctor in the loop with my health is very helpful.
The investment is peanuts to the fund. You’re missing the full-story deck and if they’ve shown traction it seems like a no brainer.
(btw for Lloyd the founder, Jason hired me right here from HN for ownlocal. It was my first professional software job. You guys made my career. Thank you)
I get owning the supply chain and the compounding part.
There is big deal about 503a and 503b compounding pharmacies as well.
That's why the website copy is overdone with "for you" to qualify as and the example on the bottom shows Semaglutide and Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin b12) because that is the current FDA loophole.
They can not just offer the main compounded chemical/medicine but must combine it (alongside blood tests, supposedly but every other MSO skirts this by suggesting higher BMI during intake or a selfie.)
Any 503b compounding pharmacy selling compounded, non-additive Semagluitide is breaking the law.
A 503a is the loophole because the prescriber, "determines" and documents that the product change is neccessary/significant difference for said patient.
The current risk (or perhaps pro depending on how you want to look at it) in this political enviornment is positioning the company in a place to run foul of the FDA. Florida based compounding pharmacies are divesting from GLP-1's (e.g. BPI https://bpi-labs.net/ ) due to legal threat.
But then co-founder is ex-lily.
On the manufacturing side of the world, "did this thing show up when I expected" is a remarkably difficult yet valuable question.
Two, Chevron deference is over. This is linked somewhat to the first - the overreach of federal agencies is now judicially balanced against the economic impact, not merely presumed authorized by Congress. Under this SCOTUS it is relatively uncertain which way FDA's authority will be curtailed - people will try, the fact that FDA wants to regulate the sale of non-invasive diagnostic equipment and mobile apps.. does warrant review and political discussion.
Good luck with your venture!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro_(company)
> Reitano's personal experience with a heart condition, and his desire to recreate his father, a doctor, out of software as a hologram, inspired him to co-found the company.
seriously though you should probably consult a lawyer about whether to change the name, especially given that you've posed this comment in public
I write a GLP1 newsletter and would love to learn more about what you’re building and how you see the landscape.
Reta looks like it will make it out by early next year but I personally think they’ll squeeze in to end of this year — there will likely never be a undersupply of GLP1s again and I wonder if the customization loopholes will hold (Lilly will certainly fight Reta compounders harder than they have others), interested to hear your thoughts and chat.
This is a poor diet, where are the carbs and fats? So you dieted badly, and your conclusion from this is to use GLP drugs?
Did you ever try a moderate deficit over long periods of time?
We run a public benefit app called macrocodex which is completely free, no paywall, no subscription, and it produces guaranteed weight loss or gain within 2 to 4 weeks.
Most people never see a weight loss plateau; you can read the reviews if you are skeptical of the claims.
Problem with GLP-1 agonists is that it's very easy for a person to crash their diet.
In GLP-1s drug use, the primary cause of weight loss by reduction in appetite/desire to eat -> you eat less -> calorie deficit -> weight loss
Deficit doesn't really go away! So it's funny when people say "calorie deficit doesn't work but GLP drugs do", I wonder if they believe GLP-1 have secret fat melting property or something.
And i am not the only one who is saying this, look at this: https://www.reddit.com/r/tirzepatidecompound/comments/1omfgx...
If GLP-1 are effective, then why do people who are using GLP-1 for some time need this guide (macrocodex's guide)?
Macrocodex has 16,000+ users and it's free, there are no ads so there is nothing to sell there.
Here you can see our GLP dosing protocol: https://macrocodex.app/knowledge/rethink/glp-1-agonists-dosi...
Our group has 2000+ people and macrocodex users beat GLP1 drug users by long shot.
You can find even more evidence by searching for "macrocodex" reviews. Very simple and doesn't cost anything
I don't want to assume, but if you've used one, you would understand the benefits are far greater than weight loss.
There are some messages here complaining about the website being claude(ish). I know HN has people that care about this. They should. Mostly they would be right. But i don't see it being relevant here. Complaining about this business's website is like fluid-mechanics engineers at NASA complaining about friction dynamics on office floor-carpeting instead of rockets.
I wouldnt step inside the building, its probably going to fall down every other sprint for the first few years.
retatrutide sequence: YAQGTFTSDYSILLDKKAQAAFIEYLLEGGPSSGAPPPS
modified sequence to reduce GI symptoms: YAQGTFTSDYSILLDKKAHAAFIEYLLEGGPSSGAPPPS
The difference is in spot 18, where it swaps the alanine with a histidine, which may reduce GI effects/nausea.
I imagine the scurvy must have been pretty bad.