Adia Nutrition, Inc. (ADIA)

[Jason Coombs]

I appreciate your sense of humor. Truly. Dramatic irony can be humorous, even for those of us on the receiving end.

This entire situation is full of irony.

For example, in the last 24 months I have personally spoken to and met with no fewer than three billionaire investors and we have raised seed capital from one. The response that they, and other sophisticated accredited investors provide is consistent and uniform: nobody is particularly interested in the probiotics business and they do not want to get involved with a startup that has a name like "Adia Nutrition, Inc."

It is ironic that in order to continue to develop the potential of the cyber forensics and cybersecurity business that was our core business before Adia was invented there must first be improbable success with the raising of new capital for Adia Nutrition, Inc.

It is hard to imagine any way that this effort could be made more difficult, but one of the amazing things about business is that the improbable is an everyday occurrence in things that create economic value.

Did you see the successful IndieGogo crowdfunding campaigns for sequencing the personal microbiome?

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/american-gut-what-s-in-your-gut--7

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubiome-sequencing-your-microbiome

There are numerous examples of other crowdfunding successes for new products involving probiotics and the human microbiome.

This is part of the reason, in my opinion, that LiveWire would want to be involved in the probiotics business.

I believe that I understand your viewpoint regarding how you think it appears wrong to you for a corporate insider to talk with the public, particularly when discussing products and new ideas. When I started doing that, it upset you because you consider product development to be something secret. Are you aware of Quirky?

http://www.quirky.com/how-it-works

http://www.quirky.com/blog/post/2012/09/what-raising-money-means-to-me/

Ben Kaufman has managed to raise upwards of $80M for crowd sourced product design and development as a new form of social media. The WSJ blog article, below, reports that the business was valued at only $150M after raising almost 50% of that amount.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/09/06/andreessen-horowitz-leads-68-million-investment-in-startup-quirky/

Do you think a valuation of only two times the capital raised is a good sign or a bad one?

The fact is that public involvement in product design is now the standard of practice in nearly every industry, and not only in the realm of startups. Large well-capitalized companies are also using the Internet to help discover the right products and the right designs before they attempt to bring them to market.

When I asked you, and others, whether you would be interested in a new product that enables you to create your own caffeine-infused snack products, drinks, and so forth, at home, it was interesting to me that you reacted with anger and accusations. It reflected your point-of-view at that time, and I wonder if your views have changed since then... Have you seen Sprayable Energy?

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sprayable-energy

It was because of my extensive experience and awareness of what's happening in the market for new products, and in particular for products like LiveWire's and Adia's, that I chose to solicit input from the people who have a direct equity interest in the company. If you wanted LiveWire and Adia to pioneer new products, you could have said so, and helped with the design effort. Instead you got upset at the question. Hopefully that sort of thing doesn't happen in the future, especially considering the irony that LiveWire did ultimately decide to design and launch a new probiotics product without your new ideas and suggestions.