Focused on health in the home, Novi lands $1.5M to help CPG companies source clean, safe ingredients –
Summary
Interestingly, as the young startup was announcing $4 million in seed funding last summer from Cowboy Ventures, among others, Shenk — who remains on the board of NakedPoppy — was splitting off to launch a second company. Specifically, Novi is developing a platform that it hopes will eventually become a go-to service for beauty brands, as well as a lot of other businesses that sell to the growing number of consumers concerned about what, exactly, is in their homes. It’s not an easy thing to pull together, concedes Shenk, a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and MIT who spent several years as the head of Eventbrite’s data science operation. Still, Novi thinks it can persuade them to be more forthcoming by touting an AI-driven platform that it says can ingest and manage manufacturers’ proprietary data at scale — and make it easier, in turn, for consumer companies that are focused on using vetted ingredients and chemicals to find them. In addition to Shenk, it’s run by Bisharat, who remains CEO of NakedPoppy but is also a co-founder of Novi and a board member; an engineer; and a chemist who previously worked for another “clean” beauty company, called Beautycounter.