👉 Background: Weight Watchers was founded in New York back in 1963. Over the past 60 years, Weight Watchers has gone through many iterations. Think: diet programs, support groups, magazines with recipes, camps for overweight kids….as well as scales and travel kits.

👉 What happened: Since 2009, WW has faced pretty stiff competition from free smartphone and fitness apps. To keep up, WW made a whole of heap of tech acquisitions. Now, Weight Watchers has announced its acquisition of a subscription telehealth platform called Sequence for $132m USD.

👉 What else: The idea is that Sequence can connect WW patients with doctors who can prescribe weight-loss drugs, like Ozempic. That’s supposedly the new ‘hot’ drug in the weight-loss industry, which was originally made for…diabetics.

What's the key learning?

💡Often, a drug developed for one purpose is even more effective for another purpose - both medically and commercially.

💡In the 1990s, Pfizer was developing a drug to treat angina. The drug was supposed to dilate blood vessels …but failed. Instead of shelving the drug, they found a different side effect. That drug became Viagra, which made Pfizer $1.8 billion a year.

💡 Other accidental medical discoveries include penicillin and valium. So having access to doctors means that WeightWatchers can now prescribe these weight-loss drugs... and work them into a weight-loss plan alongside healthy eating.

‍