From Pitch Deck to Platform

About ASPN Labs

ASPN Labs is a US-based concierge wellness platform designed for high-performers — executives, professional athletes, and elite biohackers who want measurable results, not generic health advice.

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The platform combines at-home diagnostics, personalized peptide and hormone therapy (TRT/HRT), neural optimization, inflammation tracking, and wearable integration into a single membership-based ecosystem. Members receive clinician-reviewed protocols tailored to their biomarkers, not population averages.

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Founded in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2025 by Jake Allen — an 8-season Division I and MLB athlete — ASPN competes directly with platforms like Hone Health, Lifeforce, and Function Health, while differentiating through full-system optimization: brain, hormones, metabolism, and inflammation tracked simultaneously.

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Round One: Building the Foundation

Jake first came to Masterly with an early-stage vision for a performance health platform. The product was pre-launch, the market was competitive, and he needed more than a logo — he needed a brand that could open doors with investors.

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We built the complete first version:

• Brand identity — visual system, color palette, typography, iconography
• Website — full marketing site communicating the product vision
• Pitch deck — investor-ready presentation aligned with the brand

The result spoke for itself.

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A New Vision Requires a New Identity

After the first funding round, the product direction shifted significantly. Jake returned to Masterly — this time with a stronger advisory team including veterans from MLB, the NBA, and Harvard Business School — and a fundamentally different vision for the company.

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The original product was positioned as a performance fitness app. The new vision was something more ambitious: a concierge wellness platform targeting executives and elite biohackers, competing not with fitness apps but with premium clinical health services.

Different audience. Different price point. Different trust requirements.

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That meant everything needed to be rebuilt — brand, architecture, and product.

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Repositioning Through Design

The first brand was energetic and orange — right for a fitness app, wrong for a concierge medical platform.

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The new brand needed to communicate clinical precision and luxury simultaneously. Not cold like a hospital. Not soft like a wellness spa. Something that felt like a premium private health clinic — one that actually delivers results.

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What we built:

• Color system — deep warm darks with gold accents. Serious without being sterile.
• Typography — editorial, confident, with selective italic emphasis for human warmth
• Tone of voice — direct, data-driven, zero fluff. "We optimize outcomes, not numbers."
• Iconography — minimal, functional, medical-adjacent without clinical coldness
• Photography direction — real athletes and professionals, not stock wellness imagery

The result is a brand that reads as premium from the first scroll — and credible enough to sit next to a medical team's credentials.

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Making a Complex Product Feel Simple

ASPN's product catalog is genuinely complex: TRT, HRT, peptide therapy, neural optimization, inflammation tracking, diagnostic testing, supplement stacks, and three membership tiers — all requiring different user journeys depending on the visitor's goals and health situation.

The core UX challenge was navigating this complexity without overwhelming users or requiring them to understand medical terminology upfront.

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Our solution: problem-first navigation.

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Instead of organizing by product category, we built the experience around the user's symptom or goal:

• NeuroPath™ — for brain fog, anxiety, poor sleep, mental fatigue
• BioSync™ — for fat loss, hormone balance, energy crashes, inflammation
• ASPN Apex™ — for executives and elite biohackers who want everything

Each path leads the user through a diagnostic journey toward the right protocol and membership tier — reducing cognitive load and increasing qualified conversions.

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Key design decisions:

• Horizontal path selector as the primary navigation device — swipeable, comparative, decision-facilitating
• Competitive comparison table naming Hone, Lifeforce, Hims, and PeterMD directly — clear proof of differentiation for an educated buyer
• Membership tier design with quarterly/annual toggle — SaaS-style clarity applied to a health product
• Team section designed around credentials — advisors from the New York Mets, Jacksonville Jaguars, NBA, and Harvard Business School as trust signals
• Wellness Wallet™ rewards system — gamified retention visualized without clutter

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Building on Shopify — Including the Parts Nobody Talks About

We developed the full ASPN storefront on Shopify: membership pages, product pages, and service detail pages across 9 optimization paths.

The build came with challenges that most Shopify developers never encounter.

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Challenge 1: Payment processing for regulated products

Shopify Payments flagged and banned the account due to ASPN's peptide products, which fall into a high-risk merchant category. Standard payment solutions don't work here.

We sourced and integrated PayCreate — a payment processor built for regulated health and wellness products — replacing Shopify Payments without disrupting the purchase flow.

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Challenge 2: Identity verification for medical products

Certain therapies on the platform require age and identity verification before purchase. We integrated an ID Authentication plugin directly into the product flow — adding a compliant verification layer without creating unnecessary friction for qualified buyers.

These weren't complications. They were regulatory requirements that required real expertise to solve — the kind of edge cases that separate a Shopify developer from a team that actually understands healthtech.

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Two Engagements. Two Funding Rounds.

Both times Masterly delivered, ASPN Labs raised capital.

• First engagement → $140,000 angel investment secured
• Second engagement → $120,000 follow-on round (January 2026, per SignalBase)
• Full platform — brand, UX, and Shopify store — built from scratch in under 12 months
• Advisory team assembled including veterans of MLB, NBA, New York Mets, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Harvard Business School
• Competing in a market where Function Health recently raised $298M at a $2.5B valuation

ASPN Labs went from an idea to an investment-ready, clinically-backed concierge wellness platform — with Masterly as the design and development partner across both chapters.