No Mercy / No Malice: One Ring to Rule Them All

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Scott Galloway (0:05)

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Scott Galloway (0:19)

Always wear your seatbelt.

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Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu now streaming on Disney Plus.

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Scott Galloway (1:32)

I'm Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice. Aura filed to go public last week. The firm has a compelling mix of revenue that includes growing hardware and subscription businesses. Also, it has the greatest share of health interface than any of its big tech rivals.

One ring to rule them all, as read by George Hahn.

Scott Galloway (2:03)

I have worked out four times a week for the past 40 years, prioritize my sleep and mostly eat well. I do these things so I can regularly sleep too little and consume too much alcohol and dessert. Just the same in June, I wrote that at the end of their life, nobody says they wish they'd done a better job optimizing their VO2 max. I'm wary of reducing daily activities to numbers on a dashboard. But as an investor, I'm bullish on companies that are able to tap into the wellness trend and capture a significant share of the health interface or SOHI. SOHI. Case in point, I believe Aura, which has built a moat filled with 42 billion hours and counting of longitudinal first-party user data, will be well received when the firm goes public later this month. Disclosure, I'm not an investor and this isn't investment advice, but I will likely be joining the Fellowship of the Ring and buying shares in the IPO.

The world's most valuable companies appeal to human instincts. Apple, number two, is a luxury brand tapping into our desire to procreate by signaling wealth, status and sex appeal. Google, aka Alphabet, number three, is so good at targeting our curiosity by answering questions such that it becomes synonymous with omniscience, i.e. a higher power. Amazon, number five, exploits our hunter-gatherer instincts by promising unlimited supplies and frictionless consumption. Meta, number ten, capitalizes on our need for social connection and belonging. Each of these companies uses real-time data receptors and artificial intelligence, making their products more valuable the more we use them. Finally, they turn first-party data into moats via vertical integration, controlling the entire customer experience and owning the relationship. Excluding meta, they further lock in customers via recurring revenue bundles, i.e. Rundle's.

Aura offers one of the few ways for a retail investor to play the growing but highly fragmented $7 trillion health and wellness market. But what jumps out are the attributes the company shares with the big four above.

Rings are rich in symbolism, speaking volumes about the wearer and their social status. An Aura ring sends a strong message to potential mates, signaling health and wealth, and taps into fears of mortality by promising its wearer longevity. As Aura investor and enthusiast Gwyneth Paltrow told Inc. in 2022, I think we're getting very smart as a species, and we understand that there are certain things that we have to do in order to have longevity.

One of those things on the Longevity To Do List? Measure everything, everywhere, all at once.

Similar to the Apple watch, the Aura ring tracks 50-plus health and fitness metrics. Unlike the watch, which a wearer often removes at night for charging, the ring goes more than a week on a single charge and is worn nearly continuously. According to the company's S1 filing, the median subscriber wears their ring 23 hours per day. By manufacturing the device, continuously collecting data and adding a thick layer of technology and innovation, Aura may be collecting more real-time, first-party data on wellness than any business in the world. CEO Tom Hale positions the company's product not as a wearable, but as a health intelligence platform.