A man working at a desk by a large window
“No one could tell me what was in the air my family was breathing. When we'd torn the house apart and fixed it, no one could tell me it was gone.”
— David Vivero, Co-Founder

That unanswered question started it all.

We started Lution because we believe something that sounds obvious, but has never been acted on:

You deserve to know what you're breathing.

Not just confusing data points or a snapshot from one moment in time. You deserve real-time clarity about the air in your home — the largest thing you take into your body — as simple as a sleep score.

This level of understanding has been lacking — not for lack of science, but because no one had built a system to turn the data into one daily score you can act on. Not for experts: for parents, for anyone who already tracks what they eat and how they sleep, and for anyone curious whether their home is part of the problem or part of the solution.

We created Lution because we believe this gap is a significant blind spot in modern health and wellness, and we can close it.

The Founders

“We live and breathe Lution — not just because we want to but because we have to.”
Portrait of David

David

David Vivero is Lution’s Co-Founder | Technology. He leads the consumer experience and digital architecture: the app, the data, and the systems behind the Lution Level. A serial entrepreneur across home and health, David builds products that turn complexity into tools millions of people use without thinking about them. He was founder and CEO of RentJuice, scaled to millions of properties and acquired by Zillow, and of Amino Health, which made opaque healthcare data navigable for consumers and was acquired by Capital Rx in 2024. He was named to Fortune’s 40 Under 40 in 2022. Harvard College, BA · Harvard Business School, MBA. His own house had mold, and no one could tell him what was in the air. He co-founded Lution to answer that question.

David Vivero's house had mold. For years his family battled a cascade of unexplained health issues without finding a common thread. Their home had been professionally inspected. It came back clean.

But it wasn't.

When toxic mold was finally discovered, it had spread throughout the structure, silently shaping the family's health for years while every test said things were fine. The remediation required a complete gut renovation: uninsured, nearly two years, multiples of what he'd already invested. Ultimately, what stuck with David wasn't the renovation. It was the years of searching for answers that were literally in the walls around them.

Portrait of Michael

Michael

Michael Marino is Lution’s Co-Founder | Methods. He decides what Lution measures: the sensors, the laboratory tests, and the scoring behind the Lution Level, and he leads the company’s work to make what you breathe as easy to manage as what you eat. Michael was previously a Managing Partner at Aurora Capital, where he led the firm’s testing and industrials practice and helped build the largest laboratory networks in the US across environmental, life-science, aerospace, energy, and space testing. He has served on numerous public and private company boards, including Amino Health, where he and David deepened a long collaboration. Boston College, BA · Harvard Business School, MBA. He has lived through two major air crises, in lower Manhattan after 9/11 and in Ojai after the Thomas Fire. He tracks what he eats and how he sleeps; air was the one thing he couldn’t, until now.

Michael Marino came to the same problem from a different direction. As an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in lower Manhattan, he watched neighbors and first responders in the months after September 11 develop health conditions that took years to connect to the air they had breathed. The exposure was everywhere. Clear information was nowhere.

Years later, in Ojai, the 2017 Thomas Fire brought the same realization home: his community lived under wildfire smoke with no way to know what it was actually breathing. Meticulous about what he eats and how he sleeps, he bought an air quality monitor to close the last gap. It gave him eight confusing numbers. PM2.5 was one. VOCs were another. He had no idea what to do with any of it.

That was the part that stuck. Michael had spent twenty years building and scaling the laboratories that test air and water for industry. The methods were extraordinary, and none of them had ever reached a home. He tracked what he ate and how he slept. Air was the one thing he couldn’t.

David's experience revealed one side of the problem. Michael's revealed the other. When they compared notes, the gap in the whole field came into focus.

What We Found

The system wasn't broken. It just had never been whole.

A petri dish sampled at a single moment in one location — results that miss much of what's there

01

The testing problem

Standard mold testing captures a snapshot—a single moment in one location. It often cultures organisms on growth media, identifying only species that can grow in lab conditions. Much of what's actually present never appears.

The scoring systems that doctors and inspectors use have a structural flaw: they measure mold species against total dust. In homes with heavy dust from pets, foot traffic, or daily life, the species that matter most get diluted in the denominator. A dustier home can receive a better score — not because its air is better, but because of the math.

Read more about our science
Weight does not equal what counts: ten micrograms of skin cells rates Excellent while ten micrograms of water-damage mold rates Very Poor

02

The monitoring problem

Air quality monitors measure particles by weight: how many micrograms per cubic meter. But weight alone tells you almost nothing about impact. Ten micrograms of sea salt and ten micrograms of a water-damage mold register identically. The monitor can't tell the difference. And whole categories (bacteria from damp buildings, vapors off-gassing from materials) don't register at all.

Read more about our science
Bacteria — an entire kingdom of contaminants that standard testing ignores

03

The missing kingdom

Perhaps most remarkably, almost no one was testing for bacteria. Research on water-damaged buildings points to bacteria as well as mold. Yet the standard approach to indoor air testing essentially ignores an entire kingdom of contaminants.

Read more about our science
What is it, how much, and for how long combine into your exposure

04

The structural gap

No system measured the three things you actually need to know: what specific contaminants are in your air, how much of each you're being exposed to, and how long the exposure has been accumulating. Existing tools answered fragments. The system wasn't broken. It just had never been whole.

Read more about our science

What we believe

Every home should be a place of protection, not exposure.

Most families trust the air in their home. That trust should be earned by evidence, not assumed.

Knowing matters more than guessing.

The status quo asks families to make consequential decisions based on incomplete information, outdated methods, and single-moment snapshots. Those decisions should be grounded in continuous, comprehensive, specific data.

The people selling solutions should be able to prove they work.

The people selling solutions should be able to show they work. Remediation firms, purifier makers and HVAC pros do good work without a dependable way to show it. Measurement lets them prove it — and lets you see what filtration, ventilation and a dry house do for your own air.

When it comes to air, everyone's in.

Children, seniors, and the people most sensitive to air aren't exceptions. They're the ones air quality touches most, and the ones existing tools serve least.

We're based in Ojai, California.

Lution is based in Ojai, California, a valley north of Los Angeles that has long drawn healers, health pioneers, and people seeking a more intentional way of living. It's a place that doesn't take good air quality for granted, and a place that has experienced the air quality crisis firsthand; the Thomas Fire of 2017 changed how this community thinks about the air it breathes.

Lution launched from a converted breathwork studio. A space where the work, quite literally, begins with breath.

We are a Delaware public benefit corporation.

Aerial view of the Ojai valley in California
Live Lution LevelsUpdated: 3mins agoOjai, California
lutionlevel
8
Ojai's outdoor air is carrying 8.4× the load of pristine air.
Fair
0 2 5 25 100 500+

Overview

Most days, a westerly ocean wind keeps Ojai's air light — little mass, little biology.

Santa Ana days reverse it. The wind shifts direction — and the particles shift with it.

Average: Last 30 Days

6.8

Average: Last 365 Days

8.5

LutionLution, as in: the solution for pollution is higher resolution.

The name carries the mission. Lution exists at the intersection of solution, revolution, and resolution — a new standard for understanding the air inside your home.

We chose it because the problem we're solving isn't incremental. The tools the world has relied on for decades were never designed to answer the question that actually matters: what is in this air, how much, and for how long? Answering that question required something fundamentally new. Not an improvement. A re–solution.