We all want to talk about stress and protein on Friday mornings.
+ a special report from inside of New York magazine’s union
Today’s letter has no paywall because it’s sponsored by Perelel.
Good morning everyone. RFK Jr. wasn’t using Zyn this week, that was Alp (Tucker Carlson’s competing nicotine brand). What do you think the decision process was behind this weird Brandy Melville tank? Morgan Wallen’s new single immediately shot to #1 on iTunes charts after it dropped last night. Zimmi’s is opening a wine and pastry bar, and I want to go.
Today’s letter includes:
A Guest Lecture with Perelel’s co-founders — and I believe breaking news that they’re launching a protein supplement
A special report from inside of New York magazine’s union
One of last week’s Feed Me rumors has been confirmed! You can say you read it here first.
Guest Lecture: Perelel’s Alex Taylor, Victoria Thain Gioia, and Dr. Bayati
This interview is part of a Feed Me feature called Guest Lecture. In this series, I introduce you all to an expert who I’m curious about, and give readers an opportunity to ask them anything they want.
Today, Perelel’s Alex Taylor, Victoria Thain Gioia (co-founders and co-CEO’s), and Dr. Bayati (medical co-founder) answered your questions about stress’s effects on our health, their fundraising process, and how they view building and running a private company that seeks to solve public health shortcomings.
Launched in 2020, the founders bootstrapped their way to building their business with support from family and friends. Despite a limited marketing budget, Perelel quickly resonated with consumers, achieving product-market fit and establishing itself as a leader in women’s health.
“How do we mainstream the conversation about perimenopause so when symptoms start to present, the concerns are validated and there are pathways to treatments.
It seems there is more open talk about fertility these days but the knowledge and openness drops off a cliff once you edge into peri symptoms. At 38 I had an ob tell me my symptoms were mainly in my head, which was infuriating and don’t want my peers having to go through that.” - Ash
Dr. Bayati: First off, I’m so sorry for your experience. On a personal note, as a woman now nearing the end of perimenopause (at least I hope so), I understand your frustration. From my perspective as an OB/GYN, I honestly think this issue is meshed with our culture’s negative view on aging and our lack of understanding of women’s bodies as a separate and unique entity, especially during the aging process. (In a recent Harvard Medical School analysis of research on biological aging, 99% of studies did not adequately consider peri/menopause—a condition that half of the population navigates for up to 4 to 10 plus years at a time.) So we must first change the culture, and then demand more research.
“I am excited to share that we will be launching a protein supplement next month specifically targeting women at this age.”
Again let me stress, half of the population will navigate perimenopause—yet 65% of women admit feeling unprepared for this transition. The ever changing symptoms of perimenopause along with figuring out how best to manage through diet and nutrition is not easy. You are a moving target and the support needs to be complete and multifactorial. I’m especially proud of our Peri Support Pack. In addition to a healthy diet and lifestyle it provides 360 degree support. Most importantly, it pairs well for those on hormone replacement therapy. I personally start my mornings with it, paired with my green tea and a high-protein breakfast. I am excited to share that we will be launching a protein supplement next month specifically targeting women at this age.
“I know I ‘should’ take a daily vitamin but I would love to know how taking one would actually impact my day to day. What are some things you notice personally or feedback you've gotten from customers about how taking something like your Trio pack changes the way they feel/look/function?” - Gabrielle
Dr. Bayati: I’ll start this answer from my own personal experience. I’ve been interested in nutrition all my life. I started taking a prenatal vitamin in my late 20s, and never stopped. I could tell my hair, skin and nails did much better with improved nutrition and attention to nutrients I was missing, such as vitamin D.
As an OB/GYN, I see a lot of women who ask a version of your question—usually they’re starting to recognize the need for additional support as they get into their late 20s or early 30s. These women are leading busy lives, and prone to stress. They are working and exercising indoors, often deficient in vitamin D. They need additional support especially for organs that are particularly sensitive to nutritional decline, such as hair, skin and nails.
We designed our Women’s Daily Vitamin Trio with exactly this person in mind. It’s a comprehensive product that fills the most common nutritional gaps with ingredients like omegas and L-Theanine and collagen. We also included a blend of vitamins to support emotional balance as well as hair, skin and nail health along with immune support with Vitamins C, D, E and Zinc. We made sure to include chelated formats of key minerals to ensure optimal absorption (including Magnesium and B12). Selenium and Iodine are added to support thyroid function. It was important for us to include appropriate amounts of key nutrients in our beauty blend, without excess, ie.. biotin.
On that note, one last thing I would caution here is that I’ve noticed many women piece together their own vitamin regimens that can result in an overdose of supplements, leading to liver inflammation and damage. Supplementation should be just that, a supplement to a healthy diet and lifestyle.
“I have a lot of friends in their late 20's and early 30's who have been freezing their eggs (or thinking about it). Is that process a stage in one's life when you should be thinking about certain types of supplements?” - Emily
Dr. Bayati: As an OB/GYN caring for women from menarche to menopause, I think nutrition and smart supplementation should be center stage in all stages of life. In preparation for reproductive years or if planning to delay reproduction, it is key to minimize stress. Knowing the ovaries are susceptible to this, we formulated our Egg Freeze Support Pack with reproductive endocrinologists on our medical advisory team. It is a consolidated multivitamin routine typically recommended to patients going through egg retrieval. In addition, it contains CoQ10, a powerful antioxidant, shown to promote egg health and ovarian function.”
“What do you think is the biggest miss that people make when preparing their bodies for optimal fertility health?” - Sarah
Dr. Bayati: Stress, and focusing on just one component of your routine rather than considering the whole! At Perelel, we often talk about the fertility journey starting before you’re even ready to start trying. In fact, we recommend starting to take steps to prepare your body 6 months to a year in advance. I prefer to provide education and have my patients understand the process, which means understanding their cycle and fertility along with sperm production and optimization (more on that below). I focus on improving nutrition and health, sleep, work and life stressors along with maintaining a healthy weight with adequate activity and steps daily.
It’s also a miss to think about fertility health through the lens of women only. Fertility is 50/50. Perelel’s Men’s Multi Support Pack was formulated in partnership with Dr. Brain Levine, MD, MS, FACOG—one of the nation's leading reproductive endocrinologists and the foremost expert on sperm health and infertility.
“Can we talk about what the fundraising process was like as 3 female founders? Given that ONLY 2-5% of funding goes to female teams.” - Nandini
Victoria Thain Gioia: It was hard! However, when we first started, we were also hit with fundraising during the start of Covid so there was very little new investing altogether which made it even more of an uphill battle. We’re so grateful we found all female institutional investors 2.5 years into the business, but we received so many nos. As women and women focused on women’s health specifically, it felt like we had to prove not only our business but ourselves and the market opportunity. We received quite a few “let me ask my wife” responses.
“I’m curious about how they interact with medical practitioners. It seems like a tricky area to stay credible - I want my supplements to be recommended by doctors but I don’t want my doctors to be wellness influencers. What’s their vetting process like for seeking out people to partner with the brand?” - Natalie
Victoria Thain Gioia: We don’t really work with wellness influencers or “doc-fluencer” types to be honest. Since Perelel’s inception, practicing doctors have been an integral part of our story—we’re proud to be the first OB/GYN-founded prenatal vitamin brand, and our panel of world-class practitioners and our doctors are all founding team members, including our Medical co-Founder, Dr. Bayati, who is a practicing OB/GYN. We personally saw these doctors or were connected to them through leaders in the healthcare space when we initially came up with the concept of Perelel. We knew how important credibility was and who we wanted to be formulating these products. From there, we’ve thoughtfully expanded our medical panel by word-of-mouth via our existing doctors—and to build awareness with medical practitioners more broadly.
“Fresh off of CES this year which was brimming with health tech, how do you continue to look for white space to fill when the market is becoming more and more crowded?” - Anabel
Victoria Thain Gioia: Our product roadmap was designed from the beginning to align with a woman's life stages, supporting her through hormonal changes, fertility, pregnancy, and beyond. With some of the market, while we analyze trends and see what others are doing, we try to put on blinders and lean into our doctors and customers for what we should do next. What are our doctors seeing in their patients, what are they being asked about, what new research has come out? Then the flip side of that is what are customers asking about, what do they need and how can we better serve them? For us, continuing to support women with high quality, research-backed and innovative products remains our focus.
“Alex, what’s the most frustrating thing you see about the media/content in this space?” - Austin
Alex Taylor: As a former media executive (I was the President and Executive Editor-In-Chief of Who What Wear, Byrdie and MyDomaine for many years), I’ve seen firsthand how the ad-supported business model that dominates legacy digital publishers compromises the integrity of content. It forces publishers to prioritize clicks and impressions over originality and quality, leading to homogenization across the internet. While subscription models address some of these issues, they create barriers to access, excluding many and making quality content a luxury (I have many more thoughts on this). Digital publishers also have a deep reliance on social and search platforms to drive traffic, which is fundamentally at odds with sustainable, high-quality and original journalism.
All that said, platforms like Substack are encouraging because they foster a direct connection between creators and audiences, but the subscription overload and lack of editorial oversight may dilute their potential over time. (We will see.) Ultimately, what’s most frustrating is how the business model and the key channels upon which content is now published (i.e., TikTok, Instagram etc.) has eroded the value of journalistic integrity and amplified voices without the rigor of credible reporting, leaving consumers to sift through a fragmented media landscape to find reliable information—or worse, accept community-created content at face value.
The issue is especially pronounced in the health space, where misinformation can have serious consequences. Consumers are bombarded with conflicting advice, unchecked claims and wellness trends that often lack a scientific basis aside from hearsay. That’s why it’s so important to prioritize education, fact-checking and clear communication. And honor the tenants of journalistic integrity. At Perelel, we see it as our responsibility to cut through the noise by grounding everything we do in evidence-based research and collaborating with trusted health experts. The stakes are just too high to let misinformation run rampant and we’re committed to being a reliable, medically-backed resource for women navigating their health journeys.
One final thought: It’s clear that we need innovative approaches to meet the evolving needs of modern audiences. Reflecting on the past 15 years, I do believe Substack is in a prime position to meet this need if the platform plays its cards right.
“Who did you brand and specifically your copy? I’m obsessed. Really stands out to me.” - Sarah
“Selfishly want to know about your packaging decisions!” - Emily
Alex Taylor: Thank you! I developed the brand. I first wrote the brand book and then worked in partnership with Lola Gonzalez, my longtime creative collaborator from my editorial days, to bring it to life visually.
I have always been fascinated by the way consumers use brands to communicate who they are to the world. And it's this vein of thinking that led me to believe that the strongest brands are those that give people a sense of identity and place in the world. For example, when you see someone carrying their MacBook with the glowing Apple icon, it says: “I am creative” (or at least, one might aspire to be perceived in this way), or someone wearing Patagonia might be signaling that they believe in environmental stewardship, quality and responsible living.
And so, from the beginning, I knew we didn’t want to create another flash-in-the-pan millennial DTC brand using reductive graphics with an over-reliance on iconography and a pithy “Internet-speak,” emoji-fluent tone. We had to create a genuine “identity brand.” A brand with longevity. A brand that could intimately resonate with women by reflecting their values, meeting the unique realities of their lifestyle and nuanced preferences while also helping them better understand and express themselves.
Fortunately, my co-founders and I had a clear vision for the business, shaping every aspect of the brand—from our product principles and packaging to customer experience, voice and tone, photography and graphic language. Everything flows from the heart of the brand: rooted in medicine yet imbued with the warmth of a deeply human touch that intimately understands our customer. (To answer your question about packaging: Inspired by human-centric design principles and true to our brand, we focused on creating an uncomplicated experience that fits seamlessly into our customer’s busy life. Our hero SKUs, or “packs,” feature pre-dosed, on-the-go sachets that balance functionality, aesthetics and sustainability.)
Now onto the question about copy: As a former writer and editor, crafting our copy came naturally, and the whitespace in the VMS category was obvious: We needed to humanize the brand and appeal emotionally. While our physician-founded credibility strongly appeals to logic, people make decisions first with their limbic system—the part of the brain responsible for emotions, feelings and instincts.
“While our physician-founded credibility strongly appeals to logic, people make decisions first with their limbic system—the part of the brain responsible for emotions, feelings and instincts.”
With that in mind, I thought it would be powerful to weave a highly emotive layer into the brand’s voice and tone, deepening its resonance. The goal was to create a tone reminiscent of spoken word, as studies show that people experience spoken language more emotionally and personally than text. Speech carries “paralinguistic cues,” like tone and emphasis, which establish connection and trust—key elements for fostering a deeper relationship with our audience (I learned this from my grandfather, who was a linguistics professor).
All that said, at the end of the day, we’re in a highly commoditized category that’s unfortunately tainted by a lot of snake oil salesmen, so prioritizing brand as a means to set ourselves apart as a trusted partner in our customer’s health is critical to all that we do. It is not lost on us that we carry an immense responsibility in supporting women through some of the most important health milestones of their lives. And so, ensuring she knows that we’re truly always by her side, parallel to her as she navigates is key.
“How do you reconcile building and running a private company that seeks to solve public health shortcomings? Who is responsible for sound medical guidance and advice? I was lucky enough to have two great pregnancies, but as menopause draws closer it seems there are a lot of ‘you deserve x, y, z’ but that's all coming from private companies and feels a bit self-serving.” - KV
Alex Taylor: It's a fair point you make! When we started Perelel, it was with the deep understanding that systemic shortcomings in women’s health leave so many without access to the expertise they not only crave but deserve. Healthcare practitioners are stretched thin—limited by time and systemic constraints (that’s another can of worms)—and the lack of research into women’s health only deepens those challenges.
That’s why we built Perelel in partnership with a team of the nation's leading physicians and researchers who specialize in women’s health (all highly esteemed in their respective fields). By grounding our products in their expertise and science-backed research, we aim to fill the gaps left by the system and make sound guidance more accessible.
I completely understand the concern about private companies stepping into spaces traditionally owned by public health. For us, it’s about being a bridge—not replacing medical care but complementing it, empowering women with products and education rooted in science and empathy. The trust we’ve built with out medical advisory board (known as our “Perelel Panel”) ensures that every decision is driven by what’s truly best for women’s health, not marketing or self-interest (I mean, it’s a lot easier to market a single pill prenatal vitamin versus a four-pill prenatal, but we’re not here to just sell a prenatal).
As you approach menopause, I hope Perelel can be a resource for you that feels honest, grounded and truly supportive because the health and well-being of women at every stage of life is at the heart of what we do—and why we risked it all to start this business at day one.
Use code EMILYSUNDBERG at checkout (15% off sitewide excluding merch and kits)
Guest Lecture is a Feed Me series that captures the spirit of that (sometimes unhinged) guest lecturer who would sometimes come into your class on a Friday, drop more knowledge than you learned all year, maybe hit on a student, and then leave forever.
Yesterday afternoon, it was announced that 97% of New York magazine’s union members signed a pledge to walk out of work if they don’t get a fair contract from Vox. This is the first time the union has threatened a walkout. The union’s solidarity pledge now includes names like Anna Delvey,
, and Bowen Yang. Feed Me spoke to an anonymous union member from the New York magazine office to paint a better picture of what’s on the line in these negotiations with management:“We know that our New York magazine salaries aren't competitive, and have not kept up with inflation. It's gotten worse since the company cut the most popular, middle-tier health care plan in the fall. (Everyone was forced to choose a health plan that doubled their premiums, or go on a risky high-deductible plan.) People keep leaving for our competitors.”
“Everyone is pissed. A few weeks ago, members of the union shared internal messages on Slack about how much their salaries have gone down in real dollars. People were sharing that they had to keep up side hustles like delivering food, can't afford child care, and can't even dream of affording the apartments we feature in the magazine. It was brutal. People were tagging Jim Bankoff and Pam Wasserstein.
“The day after we posted on Slack about all of this, the company sent an email invitation to all of us to attend a meeting for a "Financial Gym" offered by Cigna…the health care provider that is now providing us more expensive and shittier insurance. The Financial Gym is going to offer us “monthly webinars hosted specifically for Vox Media, with topics ranging from retirement planning to the art of travel hacking.” Our company’s response to the fact that our members don’t make a liveable wage is…travel hacking!?!? People were furious especially given the (minor, in the scheme of things) fact that Vox also recently whittled away our actual gym benefits. Here is some Slack chatter:
“i think our ‘financial wellness journeys’ are not really aided in any way by frigging cigna’
“I saw this but thought it was for, like a gym gym. And that was annoying enough given the huge premium increases. But this is so much worse.”
“wow thanks! travel hacks. maybe then i wont have to sell a kidney”
Although I’m a supporter of financial literacy and companies investing in their employee’s financial planning, I’d also be losing my mind if I was sent a link to this financial gym website while my benefits were being cut.
The union’s strategy for telling their story has been excellent. Last night on Puck, Lauren Sherman outlined the three big issues the union is discussing: salaries, health insurance and AI.
published a newsletter this morning with a dispatch from features writer Madeline Leung Coleman:
There is nothing better than eating ice cream and drinking wine. Folderol in Paris figured this out quickly — two years ago they hired a bouncer to manage lines that were forming from viral TikToks. North London got their own version of the ice cream/wine bar this year, called The Dreamery. I think the closest thing we have to this in New York is King, but I’m open to other suggestions.
David’s team is putting that seed round to good use:
Message from a Feed Me reader. Last week, Feed Me published a rumor that The Corner Store was taking over Frog Club. This morning, Eater confirmed the rumor.
I heard that Davide Baroncini, the Italian prince of Pasadena, is launching Ghiaia denim and sportwear this year. It’s hard to base a whole company around cashmere, and denim is super high-margin. People already trust Davide’s taste in… everything… so I think this will be successful. Happy for him but I really want them to expand that CPG empire!!!
You may remember that a few months ago, restaurants and CPG brands were panicked about decreased sales due to Ozempic usage. Dan Frommer published a deep-dive this morning checking in on GLP-1 users’ spending. This was noteworthy: “GLP-1 users increased spending significantly on wearable health trackers and portable audio equipment, drinkware, and water filters. They also spent more on lip cosmetics, jeans, skincare, hair products, and fragrance — all categories where they already outspent average non-users.”
Gosh these women are so smart and such strong communicators. So nice to hear people talk about a brand in tangible ways, not just marketing yada yada. I enjoyed reading this!
Put me in the NYMag fan club - to me it’s so well done!! I’m so excited to read the “cruel kids” cover story. You know a magazine is good when you wanna “save” it for a time you can really enjoy it. I’m sorry they were offered lame travel hacks.