Functional Wellness Brand Kaleidoscope Labs Raises $4 Million

By Annie Baker ● Jul 11, 2019
  • Functional wellness Kaleidoscope Labs announced it raised $4 million in a seed round of funding

Kaleidoscope Labs — a functional wellness and CBD brand — announced it raised $4 million in seed funding and an exit from stealth mode on July 1st. RRE Ventures led the round with participation from JANA Partners founder Barry Rosenstein.

“I built Kaleidoscope because the CBD product I wanted didn’t exist. I was a ballerina growing up, which did a lot of damage to my body, and remain an avid skier, which has only exacerbated my pain. CBD emerged as one of the few things that helped me but I couldn’t find the right delivery or consumption mechanism that worked best for me. I noticed a hole in the market, a real opportunity to build an innovative product in a crowded space – a product for the hardworking, type-A person who needed to be even more productive. With the incredible support of my investors, we’ve set out to build the more reliable, bioavailable, and scientifically-rooted CBD capsule missing from the cannabis ecosystem,” said Kaleidoscope Labs founder and CEO Ana Rosenstein.

Prior to launching Kaleidoscope Labs, Rosenstein attended Brown University graduating with honors in Political Science in 2015 and graduated from Harvard Business School in 2019. Upon graduation from Brown, Rosenstein worked as an investment associate at betaworks ventures. And then she interned at JANA Partners.

And in the summer following the first year at HBS, Rosenstein worked as a summer associate at RRE Ventures during which she brainstormed the idea for Kaleidoscope and began building the company commuting between Boston and New York for an entire year to run the company and finish her second year at HBS simultaneously. Before joining betaworks, Rosenstein interned at The White House with the National Economic Council, CNBC with Maria Bartiromo’s Closing Bell, and Mashable.

Kaleidoscope is filling an observed hole in the current market of CBD products by offering a semi-customized capsule utilizing a microencapsulation technology to increase the bioavailability of the CBD and the other ingredients in each pill.

Kaleidoscope’s five formulations are meant to be stacked, mixed, and combined. And users complete a questionnaire online and the brand creates a customized recommendation based on user wellness goals and needs. The Kaleidoscope design ensures you’re getting a regular, singular amount with each capsule unlike Unlike a tincture or other CBD products that yield varying doses.

The five formulations that blends 30mg of CBD per serving with other natural ingredients for a maximum combined effect include (featuring CBD/ginseng/ etc.), Sleep (featuring CBD/melatonin/etc.), Soothe (CBD/curcurmin/etc.), Glow (CBD/Biocell collagen/etc.), and Boost (featuring only CBD).

And the ‘capsule within a capsule’ allows the ingredients nestled inside the inner cap to bypass the first pass of digestion. And with this format, Kaleidoscope aims to uproot CBD from the recreational space and hopes to reframe it as an everyday, functional ingredient for better health — which through microencapsulation can have a higher bioavailability and greater efficacy.

“We have seen trends in consumer demand move towards an increased expectation of personalization, subscription offerings, and wellness options, so we were excited about the potential of Kaleidoscope to capitalize on all three. CBD is also a rapidly emerging market without category leaders, predicted to grow to $2B/year by 2022.  We are proud to add Kaleidoscope to our portfolio of consumer wellness brands like Care/Of, Maude, Kindbody, Nanit, Spring Health, and BARK,” added Stuart Ellman of RRE Ventures. 

Kaleidoscope plans to use the funding for expanding the brand, furthering product efficacy, and supporting its nonprofit arm Kaleidoscope Gives Foundation for providing grants to a variety of causes in the cannabis industry.  

The pricing for the subscription begins at $75 per month.

Featured Image: Ana Rosenstein via LinkedIn