Martocci, the co-founder of GroupMe, has big plans for SuppCo, a supplement tracker and optimizer that’s already raised $5.5 million
Steve Martocci is on a mission to fix the supplement industry, which he believes has a ton of potential but suffers from some “deep flaws.” It’s a lofty goal, but you probably don’t want to bet against him.
A serial entrepreneur, Martocci has co-founded and scaled top companies including GroupMe, Splice and Blade. His newest venture, SuppCo, is designed to make it easier for consumers to navigate the complex world of taking supplements, all while pushing supplement companies toward greater transparency and efficacy.
Launched in October following a $5.5 million seed funding round, SuppCo allows users to analyze supplements based on ingredient quality, create personalized product stacks for specific health goals, and receive expert advice from doctors and nutritionists. Additional features are coming soon, including a co-op style membership model and more social connectivity tools.
Martocci sat down with Athletech News to discuss his personal motivation for creating SuppCo, how the platform is playing the long game when it comes to changing the supplement industry and what’s coming next.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Athletech News: You’ve built several highly successful digital startups. What made you decide to create SuppCo as your next project?
Steve Martocci: I got asked that question a lot because building startups is brutal. But it’s like telling a musician not to make another album – creating is just such a core part of who I am. I struggled with my health for many years, probably the first 30 years of my life. As a kid, I was over 300 pounds at one point. Even though I played every sport growing up, I couldn’t even drop weight doing an entire season of non-stop football practice. My mom took me to an endocrinologist, and the doctor was like, “You’re on the low end of normal, we’re not going to do anything.” That was ‘90s medicine.
When we sold GroupMe, I was still almost 270 pounds. Eventually, I found my way to a functional medicine doctor. We started doing lab work, getting on thyroid medicine and running a stack of medication and supplements on top of diet and exercise. And it worked. People would ask me what I was doing, and I shared with them this ugly Google spreadsheet of all my medications and supplements. That was all we had back then.
I wanted to get into this space because I feel like the hardest, most gray area of the health and wellness industry is supplements. 74% of Americans take a supplement at some point, but only 55% are doing so regularly. People give up on them so easily. The space is so misaligned with consumer health and outcomes, I felt that if I could come in and clean it up, we could make sense of a giant industry and help people.

ATN: An app that helps people make sense of supplements seems like a no-brainer. Why do you think a platform like SuppCo hasn’t existed yet?
SM: In a big way, it’s a data problem. It’s a complicated process getting structured data that makes sense and allows you to actually sum up your nutrient totals across products. It’s a tremendous amount of data, and it’s coming from sources that you need to validate and normalize. We now have over 200,000 supplement products indexed by their full ingredients, which is a pretty amazing base. Users are submitting new data to the platform, and we’re validating it, so it’s become a living, breathing ecosystem at this point.
Another reason why this hasn’t existed: I feel like everyone who’s out there is very much profit-driven on just selling you more. The long view of being aligned with customers over decades versus just trying to sell you two bottles and make my customer acquisition costs back doesn’t really exist in this space. There’s an unfortunate, short-term mindset around acquiring more customers and making just enough from them, which leads to high-margin products that are more expensive than they need to be.
ATN: What’s SuppCo’s relationship like with supplement companies?
SM: I’m a little shocked at how amazing it has gone. But it’s only gone amazing with certain brands. There are brands that tell us, “Thank God you exist, we spend so much money and we do so much research, and no one showcases it like you do. Thank you for drawing attention to these issues.”
The next layer is the brands whose (TrustScores) might not be as high as they could be, but they want to be better. We basically tell them, “This is what these other brands are doing to get that score.” They’re then going out and making those changes. Brands have removed bad, inactive ingredients from their products. We got titanium dioxide out of a pretty big-name brand.

ATN: SuppCo recently released an eye-opening test on creatine supplement quality, and you’ve got more tests coming soon. Why was this an important step?
SM: I’m not in the industry to do gotcha-type stuff, even though it’s great marketing. I really just want the industry to be better. That said, we’re doing independent testing, and you’re going to see some real shockers in terms of what’s actually in these things, especially some of the Amazon brands. I don’t know that those brands are going to love us when they start to see that they’re getting exposed. But we need to do that for consumers.
ATN: You’ve hinted about a “co-op” type of membership model coming soon. What are your plans to monetize the SuppCo app?
SM: We’re planning to roll out premium features, although we do think there’ll still be a very robust free offering. It is not going to be a hard paywall, since we want to align ourselves with consumers long term. We’re going to experiment with everything we can that’s consumer-aligned. But fundamentally, whatever we do, trust needs to be paramount. You’re not going to see us profit off just selling more and more.
ATN: What’s your long-term vision for SuppCo, and where are you in that journey today?
SM: Our first push is around (improving) trust and transparency, and getting out the unnecessary things – the fillers, the wrong ingredients. We’re doing that now, and it’s working. But if you know my building history, I have decades of product roadmap in my head on how this looks. We’re not there yet, but I’m being critical because the value we’re delivering to people is so much better than anything that’s ever existed. The amount of user feedback we get is amazing.
I talk a lot about being the companion in helping people navigate the supplement space and being the place you go when you’re making decisions. I want the supplement industry to no longer look like a gray, “Maybe this works, maybe this doesn’t” market. Cleaning that up through a great digital offering, where we’re with you every step of the way, is going to lead to such healthier outcomes for people and so much less confusion and wasted money.