Josh Clemente (00:00):
All right. Friday Forum, June 9th, 2023, halfway through the year, basically. First thing, we, as you know, have a Friday Forum, which is our weekly sync time. We’re here to celebrate achievements, chat with members and partners, and generally, culturally align. We’re going to be updating the surfaces that we all connect on very soon as part of the next phase for the company. So watch the space. We’ll get into more what this means very soon, but we’ll have more defined and consistent opportunities to dig deeper into the metrics that drive our business forward. And so there’ll be a lot more, and a lot more rigorous conversation coming soon to a recurring meeting. All right. On the achievements front, so as everybody knows, the new company strategy memo is out. We have a defined plan that we’re going to rally around for the next six to 12 months. It’s been a rapid fire process.
(00:54):
We’ve also been, simultaneously, finalizing the resizing process for our team. We said goodbyes to our departing team and have been really focusing on transitioning and reorganizing the moving forward team. So there’s been just a lot of work that’s gone into this, it’s really been the vast majority of the effort over the last week, and it’s going really well. There’s just a ton of good faith, a lot of hard efforts to get our arms wrapped around where each function is, how everybody can dive in most effectively, and then the next steps are going to be execution. So we’re working on product vision and strategy updates. I know everybody’s really eager to get really rallied around what the next phase looks like for product. That’s coming soon. There’s a ton of great work going on on that, and we will jump into some of that in this meeting.
(01:42):
But suffice to say that that is a confluence of documents and conversations that’s going to be coming together in the next few weeks. On the engineering and product culture side. So there’s a large shift in focus and priorities on the engineering culture, we have a smaller team, a leaner team, we have a smaller product organization. And so there’s been a great focus, and honestly, a really awesome attitude as everybody is absorbing a new orientation around metrics and measurement, a doubling down in the category of paying close attention to the underlying objective data that drives decisions. So Sam had a good AMA on this week. I highly recommend catching up on that, and digging into the memo that’s associated with it. I’ve also got a big growth memo coming. So as you can see, front and center, does this get us 10% month-over-month growth?
(02:39):
Growth is going to be a huge focus for the team over the next few months, honestly well into the future. And so just ruthlessly reprioritizing and focusing the roadmap on that priority is the main goal. So we’ll have a new growth memo on these topics coming soon. We’ve also got a podcast tour, which the plan is coming together, or rather, has been released. So a lot of really great work there. Casey’s going to be back in action and starting to get really back on the podcast tour circuit very soon, which has been a tremendous source of inbound, and thought leadership, and trust building with our audience. So this is going to be awesome.
(03:16):
Part of the product effort is around app surface area reduction. So I’m sure you’re seeing, and hearing, and contributing to a lot of that work. So the app surface area reduction is well underway. This is going to result in what we are calling a lean hybrid experience. So the hybrid experience that we shipped during the late part of our beta allows somebody to get into the app even if you do not have a CGM to activate immediately. So we’re going to continue to lean in there, make it possible to interact with the app, whether or not you have a sensor on in the moment, and start the learning process even immediately after signing up for Levels. So the goal there is to get that leaner experience shipped to the members that are using Levels now this month. And then finally, on the support side, so Otonomee, which is the outside contracting group that we’ve been using for our member support, is now handling about 50%, about half of our overall support volume, with a really good happiness score.
(04:09):
And this is a huge win. It gives us an opportunity to flex and scale our support operations while obviously maintaining a super high bar of satisfaction, and that’s not easy to do. We’re also hitting close to 50,000 lifetime members, with 10,000 active subscriptions right now. The sum total of all of that CGM interaction is we’re now approaching 10 million total logs, and 55 million hours of glucose data. That’s about 6,000 years of glucose data for those who are tracking. So I think when we started Levels, the largest dataset for a wellness category was about 800 days of total glucose data, and we’re now obviously well beyond that. So it’s just a huge mile marker for us to keep track of as we scale the world’s largest dataset for this user group. You’ll see on the screen a lot of the new growth assets that we’re putting together as we start to really rapidly experiment with performance marketing, digital channels, getting more eyeballs on Levels.
(05:13):
And we’ll be iterating very quickly here, so keep your eyes on this. But the goal is to be much more forward and getting people’s attention, and then closing loops with people, so offering them offers, retargeting, making sure we don’t just drop off their radar if they don’t happen to have the time in the moment to complete a purchase. We’re capitalizing on some trends on TikTok and social media around Would You Rather related to food. So we’ll just be doing this fast, social in-the-moment experiments. And we’ve got some great coverage this month from Telegraph with Dr. Chatterjee, and a great article from a general practitioner who was shocked at the effect of wearing a CGM and the insight that it provided them.
(05:56):
And then finally, we had a really great conversation go live on YouTube between our own Rob, and Rick Johnson, about fructose and the relationship with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s growing very fast, 50,000 views in two weeks, one of our faster growing videos. So with that, I’ll jump ahead and welcome our special guest. Kateri Corvetti is a member of Levels. She’s located in Belgrade, Montana. She works in microbial sciences, passionate about science and wellness. She’s got a background in a number of different industries. And Kateri, thank you for joining Levels on Friday morning. Love to hear about your experience with CGM, which we’re excited about in metabolic health. And yeah, take it away.
Kateri Corvetti (06:38):
Yeah, thank you. I’m really, really excited to be here, especially considering I first joined… I put my first CGM on in January of 2020, which has been an exciting ride. That was a welcome onboarding call with Mike, which has seriously changed since then, just seeing the unbelievable growth just in the user experience with the app, the integration, all the information that’s coming out of Levels and the use cases for it. It’s been so amazing to have been involved, not even at the very beginning, but at an early enough point that I can see all the change that’s come about. In terms of my experience, it’s been really incredible because since that first CGM, I’ve gone through two pregnancies, and it was absolutely incredible being able to monitor my levels before pregnancy, during pregnancy, after, and then well beyond to see all those changes occur, and to really understand the changes in my life physically and how I can really adapt my diet and my lifestyle to truly optimize my health, and to understand how I can potentially assist with my children as well.
(07:44):
My final goal, I think, is to understand the nuance enough for myself, that I realized that the term healthy is relative, and for that, that can really be something that’s applied to the diet of my kids, my husband, our entire household, and how we can really change from there. I think some of the most incredible data I’ve seen was… for my delivery, I was super excited to see the impact of stress on my body, physical stress. I had a whole team of doctors and nurses that were really excited. I explained to them what Levels was and what this patch was in my arm, and they were all so excited to see what the results looked like. As soon as I had my first… I had multiple nurses come up and they’re like, “Let me see, let me see. Is it in the app yet?”
(08:30):
And it was unfortunately so disappointing, it was not very stressful for my body, so there was minimal peak. But everyone was so excited, and all my doctors and my nurses were just so excited by the fact that there’s something out there that’s helping people understand that health is personalized, individualized, and it needs to be treated as such. And seeing that data is different for everyone, and trying to develop specific plan of what it means and how to react from it is just such an incredible thing to see excitement from the healthcare industry on. So I think my experience in general has just been that… it’s just amazing what we’re coming towards and what Levels is building and seeing all the data that’s coming out.
(09:12):
I think the biggest change in my life has been that I’ve become a lot more obnoxious in public settings, talking about Levels, and glucose monitoring, and books, and all the stuff Casey puts out, and all this information that I can’t keep my eyes off of. So I’m very excited for the future. I’m happy to have been here for three and a half years already, and thank you for having me on today.
Josh Clemente (09:35):
A lot of great stuff there. And I know you are working in categories that overlap with what we’re doing, but I’d love to hear, after how long you’ve been in the Levels product and orbit, what we should do differently and better, where we’re missing the mark, where we could maybe start from scratch, and what you want us to improve.
Kateri Corvetti (10:04):
I feel like it’s not so much where you’re missing the mark, it’s just I find that a lot of the information is so incredibly informative and truly life-shifting when you really get into it and you start to dig into the impact that could be had by the material and the resources that are coming out of Levels, not just using the CGM, but all of the information that’s contained in all the articles you send out, and your social media accounts, all that is so informative. And I find that it’s great, but I have a lot of people that I know that are parents, and I find that parents to be the biggest piece that’s missing in this puzzle, is that they not only impact their own health but then that of later generations. And so if we can get to the parents first and educate them, it’s a much higher possibility of a larger impact overall. And so I feel like it’s not really missing the mark, but it’s definitely a category or population that I’d love to see more exposure for, because I think that impact is impossible to ignore.
Josh Clemente (11:04):
Yeah, that’s the scaling effect. That’s good reminder. Well, Kateri, we’ve got a packed meeting, thank you for joining us this morning. The team really appreciates hearing this directly. And I’m going to come clean, I don’t have anything to do with the special guests who joined the morning call, but Kateri happens to be my sister as well. So really fun to have her on, and I promise you I didn’t give her a script to read from. So this is all true. Kateri works at Seed Health on microbiome, and I hope, maybe at some day, we can have some overlap with what they’re working, which is also really, really fascinating, a lot of interesting publications. They’re the most data-driven microbiome company I’ve come across, which is very cool. So Kateri, feel free to stick around, and yeah, thanks. All right.
(12:03):
Culture and kudos. So why did my emoji not show up? Well, there’s supposed to be an emoji here, but really, what I want to do just on the slide is just let everybody dwell on these four amazing individuals in front of us, Miz, Nicole, Zac, Riley have absolutely crushed a very difficult process over the last weeks, just providing a really human and very intentional process of resizing our team, offboarding people that we really care about and have worked closely with over the last years, and did so in such an amazing way, and there’s just an absolute mountain to move involved with making that process happen. So just want to appreciate all of you. And obviously, there are many more who were involved in the process, but just in particular, these four really did an incredible job. And so thank you. It is a really awesome experience to be able to go through something difficult and come out on the other side feeling even stronger bonds and even more confident in the group that we have here, and that’s exactly what happened for me.
(13:05):
Cool. So moving forward. I’m going to just kind of slice off some pieces from the company strategy memo that went out yesterday and drill in a little bit. And the goal here is this is going to be a little bit of a different format for Friday Forum, and we’ll get back to our regular programming next week, but the goal is to give some insight into how all the pieces fit together over the next six months and 12 months. So the main priorities are going to be, growth is number one. We are going to relentlessly focus on getting to 10% month-over-month revenue growth. You’ll hear this term daily, I hope. And if you don’t, tell us why, where are we missing? But 10% month-over-month growth is the priority. We’re going to be building a product that we love. In many ways, we’re going to be returning to some original intentions. We’ve experimented, we’ve explored, and we’ve come away with some very strong pieces of evidence that we can use to construct a product that not just we will love, but that because we love it, the market will love it.
(14:11):
And then we’re going to focus on continuing to improve accessibility of the hardware. So we know very deeply that the hardware facilitates a great software experience. And so these three are the main priorities. But to be absolutely clear, 10% month-over-month growth is the top line priority for everyone on the team. So as I just said, number one priority, the objective here is to get into a strong position for raising a Series B. You can see our cash scenario here. Right now, we’re in a very good position from a cash perspective. We’re not going to repeat that line very often because it’s not relevant, what’s relevant is the slope of a line. And as you can see, we are actually burning through our cash and we’re heading towards a point where we don’t have the cash anymore, and that’s the point where the company can no longer function. So our objective is to start to turn the slope of that line and eventually send it in the other direction, obviously, that’s getting to cash flow positive.
(15:07):
And based on the decisions we’ve made, the resizing, or right sizing of the team and the new focus on growth, you can start to see where we project that we can end up over the next year, or really, this projects out further, but you can see how the trends are going to start to shape up if we can hit those goals. I’d love to see us outperform this, but ultimately, what it comes down to is we made an important decision, we reprioritize accordingly as soon as we recognized that that decision was the right one, and we’re now going to relentlessly execute to get ourselves into a position where cash flow positivity is possible, and that is a very strong position to be in for our next fundraise. So that’s why growth is the main thing. We’re going to be shifting a lot of our culture around how we talk about growth, how we talk about sales over the next few months as backing for this.
(15:58):
So we’re going to shift from this soft sell approach that we have been bringing about, which is sort of innuendos about what might happen, you may be interested in this or that, to more of an opinionated approach, direct marketing with brand and thought leadership as our guiding principles. So a lot of what got people very interested in Levels is hearing about other people talk about their experience on podcasts, but then there isn’t much else to help them understand how to get Levels, what they should expect to experience with it. And we can do a ton more with the expertise we’ve built to develop a really high quality branded experience through the entire funnel of going about purchasing Levels. We’re in no way diluting our brand or our principles by going about doubling down on growth, but we are going to be more opinionated because we’re building this company, because we believe it will help people get healthier, and there is no shame in doubling down on doing that.
(16:57):
So if we execute on the strategy effectively, it, like I said, changes the slope of our trajectory, and that opens up doors for us in the 12 to 18 month timeframe. So those doors look like vertical integration of hardware, they look like fundraisers on good valuation terms, they look like being able to double down on R&D, so on and so forth. So right now, let’s stay focused on the 6 to 12 month priority, let’s get into a good position for Series B, let’s scale, let’s get more eyeballs, more attention from our audience, let’s get more members on the door, a bigger dataset, let’s improve the product, and repeat. I want to describe this as shifting from a technology risk moment to an execution risk moment. Talk about that more in a minute, but the objective here is not to come across some product feature that is going to hit an exponential return and growth is going to go bananas through virality, it’s on us to build growth. So we have to execute on our growth objectives, we have to do that intentionally.
(17:55):
And that’s actually a really good place to be in because we don’t have to experiment and hope for a technology hit, an invention to bring us there, this is just execution. Okay. On the culture side. So there’s going to be a really strong shift across the company towards metrics, and not just metrics but the transparent reporting of them, so the company can highly recommend reading this memo, whether you’re in software development or not. But the culture shift is around picking metrics for every project that we have that can prove a project is working, not to reinforce that we should be working on that specific project, but to prove that it is working, it is solving for the problem statement.
(18:46):
We need to make decisions based on those trustworthy metrics. And every project is going to be expected to be driven by measurement and by metrics. One of the ways that we’re going to be reinforcing the reporting is through what’s going to be called the Monday Metrics Meeting. So every function is going to have a set of key metrics that define success for it, and every project that is executed inside of that function will have a direct reporting relationship between the project, the outcome, and how it moved the needle on those metrics. So that will happen in the Monday Metrics Meeting. You can think of it as a bit of a counterweight to the Friday Forum. On the Friday Forum, we don’t really get into the deep business analytics, but on a Monday Meeting, that’s exactly what we’ll be doing.
(19:28):
And the goal there is just to constantly be probing and checking our priors, and ensuring that what we are spending our resources on is providing a proportionate, or ideally, a disproportionate and a positive direction, a return on investment. And then the eng team is going to be taking on metrics ownership for projects. So because we have a leaner product organization now, engineers are going to be stepping into owning metrics, and owning reporting of them for the projects inside of software development, which is really big and important change in our culture. So if you don’t understand where we’re going and why we’re doing this, definitely raise questions, everyone should feel really empowered by this.
(20:06):
The goal of ownership is essentially to own the solution, it’s not to own any one project or even a title of a project. We can get very emotionally invested in a specific implementation or permutation of a project that we love, and that’s fine, it’s part of the human condition, we get attached to things. But fundamentally, what we have to get attached to is solving the problems that need to be solved, and the way we prove that is through metrics. So everyone should really feel this deeply and should ask it of other people.
(20:40):
The other thing we’re shifting towards are going to be much more outspoken about is keeping a lean and talent-dense team. So the objective is to stay agile as we’re continuing… We know what we have to do over the next six to 12 months, but we need to stay in a team size that limits overhead and allows us to make agile moves. Because it’s not that we are ceasing development or stopping the… in fact, it’s quite the opposite, we are going to be following the metrics, and if the metrics are telling us that we’re heading in the wrong direction, we’re going to back up and try something new very quickly. And so that process is going to happen rapidly, and the key is to stay agile and keep teams lean in order to do so. This comes down to a talent bar.
(21:24):
It also comes down to hiring. The best way to keep the team lean is to make sure that we’re hiring only when a role is absolutely needed and being less opportunistic about hiring in the future. So opportunistic hires only help if there is a position that needs to be filled that they would fit into. So let’s hire for roles and not resumes. We can come across exceptional people, and we would always love to have another exceptional person on the team, but as you can see, in the old principles of effective communication memo from 2020 that Sam wrote, communication scales non-linearly. And this is only one of the things that changes exponentially as you add more team, you get from the jet ski to the oil tanker very quickly. And this is Karen’s analogy, but I think it’s a really good one, which is that when we need to make agile moves and we have inertia as an organization because we’re large, it becomes very difficult to do so, it becomes a full-time job to steer that ship for long time periods.
(22:20):
But when you’re agile and a single individual, can quickly correct course based on metrics and measurement, we’re in a much better place. So let’s keep this mentality. It’s a lean mentality that drives a lean organization. So everyone should feel some ownership about keeping us in this lean and talent-dense environment for the foreseeable future. Another core piece of our culture. This shouldn’t be surprising, but I was listening this morning to… we’re at a conference here with Andreessen Horowitz and there was a really good closing statement from Vijay, which was just basically like we’re entering a difficult period in the macroeconomic environment and every team needs to adapt to this principle, which is that, “Trust and transparency are the foundation of everything we do from here.” We have to be able to communicate effectively, we have to have a direct lines of conversation with every person inside our organization and of a high degree of trust, otherwise, we’re going to be in worse shape than we otherwise would be. So as it relates to Levels culture, sharing more and more widely, don’t hold back, share earlier and share more often. So put information out there.
(23:32):
Confidence is earned as a good memo to read on this topic. But putting information out there while being clear about whether action items are needed is the best way to develop a transparency culture. Don’t allow silos to build around the documentation that guides our business. We each have an expectation to act like an adult when it comes to difficult and serious information. So the flip side of everyone sharing more and more widely is that each of us will have more information coming our way that we may not expect, and it may have to do with decisions that are being made that may be surprising or counterintuitive. Feel free to ask questions, make sure that you’re pushing on assumptions. But also, the expectation is to act like leaders when we come across this information. So that will be the flip side of the trust and transparency equation. And then just have direct conversations with people. We need direct feedback. Everyone wants to get better. We have a high trust, lean, talent-dense organization, and these conversations should be natural in that environment. So this is going to be a major part of the coming years.
(24:38):
Okay. On the product front. So I want to touch on a few pieces of learning that we’ve had over the past few months, in particular, really towards the end of May. So we’re going to be shifting back to a very CGM-oriented product. And I say shifting back because we pursued very deliberately over the last six months the experiment to see, can we build a product that can convert and retain people at a much higher rate without them needing to have a CGM on? Ultimately, that will be a part of our strategy in the future. But what we learned is that the thing that people find magical about Levels is the CGM experience, it’s the closed loop feedback. And so as part of the experiment, we started building in a direction that did not engage us, the Levels team, as much as the Levels classic experience. What we ended up seeing is a real drop-off in deterioration in our own use of the product.
(25:40):
So we’re going to be returning to a stage where we’re building what we love. And I’m excited about that because that aligns exactly with what our members want. So if you look at these pieces of information here, there’s a couple on the screen, this is CGM revenue versus date, this comes up until the beginning of this year. You can see that CGM sales. Now, I want to be clear, we don’t make money on the CGM sales, so this isn’t the most exciting thing for Riley to see, but the trend is very much up and to the right. And what’s important about this is that we are not actively trying to grow our CGM sales, this is something that is happening almost in spite of our best efforts over the last six months. So let’s put a pin in that. We have a survey that we sent out to our active members and we got a ton of responses.
(26:22):
And you can see here, this was during the beta process, “Have you used a continuous glucose monitor?” The vast majority said, “No, but I’m interested in using one.” 0% said, “No, and I’m not interested in using one.” A few people had used one or were using one currently. The vast majority of people that came into our beta experience still wanted to use a CGM, that was their intention, it’s why they were coming to the product in the first place. We ran a smoke test, and during that smoke test, we offered people a CGM package, which was over $200, or a $16 software package. 84% of them picked that $200 CGM package. And then finally, during beta, we kept track, and a huge shout-out to Cosmo for the breakdowns, but we kept track of the Levels classic engagement versus the beta engagement. And you can see here that Levels classic was actually outperforming the beta experience for all CGM users in terms of the engagement metrics we had and also the logging. The Levels classic without a CGM was actually on par with the beta experience even without a CGM.
(27:27):
So interestingly, people were opening the app even though they did not have a CGM actively on, and even logging food without being a part of that beta experience that was designed for that purpose. So what this all culminates into is a very strong set of data that shows us people love CGM, they want to see real-time feedback from their bodies, and they want to learn from it. They want it to be more affordable, for sure, and ultimately, they want to be able to use Levels in between CGMs, undoubtedly. But the beauty of what this means for us is that it aligns with the trend of everything, from financial, to user interest, to our own interests. And so we get to build what we love and we get to double down here, and I think it’s going to be the best possible outcome for the business to make a CGM experience that is world-class. Make that our objective again. And so that’s what we’re going to be doing.
(28:19):
So Paul Graham had this great quote, “When young founders build something they don’t want, it turns out, most of the time, they’re building something no one wants.” The challenge for each of you on the call, and for myself, is to get back to thinking about what the best version of the Levels experience is and provide feedback accordingly. We all need to love using the product or no one else will. So that doesn’t mean that we don’t build features that we don’t always use, but it certainly means that we have to use the core features of the experience. If we don’t believe that the foundations are there and we’re not using it as people who are deeply, deeply invested in metabolic health and CGM use, then we’ve built something that is possible no one wants. So the main themes are going to be as part of this Build What We Love initiative, we’re going to nail the basics. So we’re going to pare back the app surface area, get it to that lean hybrid state.
(29:15):
We’re going to improve performance and fix up some bugs, get the core experience back in place, where we feel very confident that the essential elements of CGM use are there. We’re then going to explore options to scale that value. So this will be through the accountability initiative, this will be through factoring in additional ancillary products, and ultimately, through experimenting with some really cool potential features. But the first thing is nail the basics. And I personally love that phrase, I think it’s quite inspiring because we know what those basics are, we’ve been doing this for four years now, and to nail them is actually not that challenging, we can execute on this. Again, this is execution risk, this is not technology risk, we’re not trying to invent as part of that. If we nail the basics, we can scale the basics, and then we can build on top of them. So that’s the challenge that we’re going to be working towards.
(30:12):
And then looking towards the future, how this might scale? So the exceptional CGM experience. We know guidance is part of it, people want to know… they want to know how to onboard, they want to know how to have an intuitive setup experience. We need some basic education around how to understand glucose, how to use a CGM. We then need insights, so we need live glucose interaction. That’s why people use CGMs, is to be able to engage with their data in real-time. Actionable insights. Logging has to be exceptional. We’re going to build in some explorations around essential macros and food products. And then ultimately, accountability. So that closes that loop. Metrics, trends, relational data between sleep and activity, and nutrition, and reports. So that will be the fundamental CGM experience. You can see that flywheel here.
(30:57):
And then we’ll scale that into a larger flywheel through pieces we already have in place. So we won’t be spending a lot of engineering time on labs in the near term, but we will be working on making it a first-class product in the Levels ecosystem via growth and operations. And you can see how we’re thinking about this where you have the CGM flywheel that’s going on in the background, and that can extend… that’s happening on a daily basis. It’s scaling through the week, and then into the month. And then on maybe a quarterly basis, you could try labs which also factor into logs, guidance, and trends. And so you get this larger flywheel that’s happening where CGM is guiding your daily actions, those actions are compounding with logs into an understanding of how your actions are affecting your glucose data. And then labs, which have five additional metrics, are also being benefited by the logs and guidance.
(31:50):
And so those features can replicate into this health flywheel on a monthly and quarterly basis that people can repeat over time. So we’ll get to this place actually sooner than later and validate these assumptions that labs can couple with CGM. We have great pieces in place for this. And then we’ll explore options to maximize value. There’s a lot that we can do here. I’m not going to get into all of it, but honestly, exceptional logging can be many things in the future. We have some opportunities to work with some of the new artificial intelligence, like large language models directly interfacing as a metabolic coach. So a lot of interesting and exciting features,, synthetic glucose and the accountability project. These are the exploration side of things, this is not the nailing the basics.
(32:33):
So first, we nail the basics, build an exceptional CGM experience, turn it into a health flywheel with our labs features, and then explore ways to add and maximize value in the longer term. So a lot more coming here as we nail down product vision and product strategy. But I think this gives you the essential elements of what we’re working on. So I think the big picture is, we’re shifting again from technology risk to execution risk. That’s the name of the game right now. We’re entering this phase where we understand what members want from us, we understand what we want to build. Those two things are in alignment. So we control our destiny, and we have all of the pieces in an exceptional team that knows how to get eyeballs on our product. We know how to make people trust us or help people trust us, and we get to just do that over the next few months.
(33:22):
So I’m really excited about it. I genuinely think that this is going to be all the pieces falling into place moment for levels, and I can’t wait to wring the best out of the next few months. And as Mike D would say, “LFG,” it’s an alliteration, “Let’s fucking go.” So I think if everybody feels this deeply and is expecting the culture elements that we talked about from each other, we’re going to have the highest chances of success in the next phase for the company. So that’s what we got for today. I’m going to jump to individual contributions. Next week, we’ll be back to our regular programming with function updates. But yeah, hopefully, that gives a good picture on where we’re going. All right. I will now welcome everyone to jump in and share anything personal, professional.
(34:19):
I can start. This was basically a personal and professional share for me, what we just went through. I am stoked. I think it’s been a tough couple of weeks or month plus now, maybe it’s been months that have been tough, but I’ll say that the position we’re in right now is the best the company has been in a very long time. We have a really awesome team, we understand our culture, we understand what has to be done, and I’m just feeling like we’re ready to fire on all cylinders, been very excited to get more involved in the main product with Cosmo and with Sam, very excited to execute on some of this stuff. And I’m excited to get excited about the Levels product. Again, we did an important and I think very defensible thing over the last two quarters with what we built.
(35:02):
We gave it a really important shot, we learned a ton, and I think ultimately, what we came away with is an even stronger understanding of what the company needs to be, which is huge. And then personally, I’ve been at this a16z conference for the last two days, and it’s been a nice little escape, haven’t been able to make all the sessions, but ultimately, I think… yeah, I have a really high appreciation for the Andreessen team. We align with them culturally in many ways as well. I’m grateful to have them as partners and it’s been a really cool personal experience to be able to get up here and see Park City and hang out with some people. So yeah, excited to get back to Austin though. Mercy.
Mercy Clemete (35:47):
Sorry, I’m walking. But yeah, this was a nice forum to have, made me really excited for everything that’s happening, that’s going to happen over the next few months, and to see how things are going to change. Yeah, Casey, it’s also nice to see you back on forum, I miss seeing you every week. So welcome back. Kateri, it was also nice to have you on the forum as well. Yeah. And then personally, not much going on. Honestly, hoping to play pickleball this weekend maybe with Josh and Kate. So yeah, not too much happening. Yeah.
Josh Clemente (36:24):
Pickleball, it’s time. All right, no pressure, but I will call on people. Casey.
Casey Means (36:36):
Hi. Yeah, I just have to echo your personal and professional share, Josh. I just feel so amped hearing you go through it. I think that was just such an amazing summary, especially after a couple very big weeks of a lot of changes. That was such an awesome overview. And I’ve been back from book leave for about a week and a half, and two weeks, and catching up with people across the growth team and across the team. And I think the thing that just feels so alive and present to me right now is that there is such a sense of optimism and enthusiasm that we can do this, and we can peel ahead, we can win, we can meet these growth goals, and I think that just feels awesome, and it feels really palpable, and it just feels like it’s going to be a rocking summer, and I feel that so deeply.
(37:34):
And yeah, just super amped. It was also awesome to have Kateri on the call. All the stuff about parents, and children, and metabolic health, that’s felt, just in writing the book, just so much about digging into the stats around childhood metabolic health, it’s just astonishing and it’s so heartbreaking. And hearing you talk, Kateri, really inspired me how there’s this second order benefit of helping adults and parents learn about their metabolic health because it can trickle down to kids. And that was just amazing to hear from you and your experience. And yeah, personally… So just the big high-level overview. Submitted my book in mid-May to my publisher, and that was an amazing experience to dive into that a couple of months. And just incredible to just be fully immersed in the research for a couple of months.
(38:44):
And just feel so inspired, as I mentioned last week, about this problem that we’re working on, I feel like nothing could be more important right now. And then moved to LA. So now, I’m in LA, and I live here now, and I would love for anyone who’s in LA to let me know so we can hang out. But yeah, so far, just really loving this change of pace, Bend was amazing, but it was definitely a really small town, and got a little bit more activity, and culture, and arts, and I’m just really excited to be here. So excited to be back and so amped for all that’s coming this summer with our team.
Josh Clemente (39:24):
Love it. Congrats on all that, Casey. Sam.
Sam Corcos (39:30):
Yeah, I think for me, it’s been exciting to see how quickly people have jumped into a lot of these new projects. I often hear, when people go through a round of layoffs, it takes months to get back on track. And I think with this change in focus on measurement, I’ve just been really impressed with how Kozma, Victor, everyone on the engineering team has immediately taken to this. And we’re focusing on how we can measure things and how we can be rigorous in making sure that we’re building the right thing. For those of you who are joining the Lean Startup book club, which is I think immediately after this, it’s a lot about making sure you’re building the right things, measuring things, build, measure, learn. And we’ve been doing the build part really effectively for a long time, but we’ve skipped the measure and learn steps. And so I think we’ve jumped in headfirst on making sure that we’re rigorous about tracking things, and I’ve been, as Josh mentioned, really excited to see that level of enthusiasm there.
(40:36):
I’ll also say this is not really a personal thing, but I did find it fascinating, on my flight here, the default channel that was on on United was a pickleball tournament. So pickleball is definitely going mainstream.
Josh Clemente (40:56):
You got to get into it, Sam. It’s a lifestyle. Zac.
Zac (41:02):
Hey, everyone. Yeah, so really echoing a lot of what’s already said, I’m feeling really excited, and I’ve been thinking about this, and it’s definitely true that one of the reasons why I do feel so excited about where we are going right now is, this past two quarters, we did really bust our butts, like all of us working really hard on this thing, trying to validate this path. And if we hadn’t worked so hard and so collectively on it, there’s no way that the signals that Josh mentioned in the product slide, where it’s like despite our best efforts, the value of CGMs for people just kept slapping us in the face, that hits so much harder for me knowing how much of our blood, sweat, and tears we put into trying this other path.
(41:47):
And it’s a reminder to me that CGMs have been the hard thing, and we’re here to do the hard stuff, and that’s what is so exciting about startups in general, but about our core project here, which is we know this data is valuable, we know it gives people magic moments, and despite all our best efforts, people keep saying, “Help us get to more of those magic moments.” So I’m pretty energized, and I too really love and am so impressed with how well the team has transitioned into this really come around the corner just seemingly at full speed already.
(42:22):
So that’s really great stuff. I’m very excited there. Personal note, my dog turned six yesterday, very cool. Very sad, dog’s getting older. I also put a mini split in my garage so that I don’t have any more excuses to not exercise. So that’s my cool personal thing. That’s it.
Josh Clemente (42:42):
I love the bench sets in the midst of Friday Forum. It’s a new benchmark, literally. Sunny.
Sunny Negless (42:48):
Hey y’all, I’m coming back from a week of… I hope you can hear me actually, can you hear me okay? All right. I’ve had the most vicious case of strep, I’ve never had strep in my life, 10 out of 10, do not recommend. I’m absolutely miserable. So that’s the personal share, but the professional share is, thank you so much to my colleagues. I guess it’s not really a professional share, it’s a thank y’all for being wonderful, especially Mercy, I want to note. I believe Taylor’s in out of office, she’s moving, Lynette just signed on a house and I think is also moving. Sorry to take your thunder my darling. So out of the four full-time folks on support that we’re on, I was out sick, Mercy was holding down the fort, and not only was she holding down the fort in the queue, but also helping with the Otonomee pilot. We are still… excuse me, got to swallow some razor blades. We’re still onboarding our new team lead, and it’s a very intensive process to really get them so scaled up to take on 50% of the total volume.
(43:52):
Of course, Barbara isn’t taking up that volume herself quite yet, but we do have one new member who just joined and she is in her second weekend of onboarding, and thank you, Mercy, for all of your help in doing that. And then I guess, I’ll add to that professional share as well of the autonomy of onboarding has gone, it was just three weeks rolled into an additional three weeks to get the last person onboarded, but I’m so impressed by their willingness to jump in, their curiosity, their skill. We didn’t hire these folks, but they are such an asset, and they’re very excited to be a part of the organization. And little nuggets of learning about metabolic health here and there, we have one of the folks… he’s a former restaurateur and fitness trainer, and he’s like, “I had no idea about these things.” So educating across the pond, reaching that way as well. So I’m going to get off here, but thank you all for your support. I really appreciate the support team for helping me out this week.
Josh Clemente (44:53):
Feel better, Sunny. Sorry to hear about all that. Justin.
Justin Stanley (44:59):
I feel like I haven’t shared on here in probably a year. I don’t know, it’s felt so long. But yeah, I’m super excited that we’re getting our product, nailing the basics to me, a lot of loose ends and things that we tried that we just abandoned, it didn’t feel like we were really moving towards a product that people really enjoyed using. Yeah, so I’m really happy that we’re getting back to that. Personally, I’ve started playing pickleball here in Winnipeg. I got four people, even my husband is playing with us, which he doesn’t do anything like that. And he had fun. So yeah, we were playing in plus 32 weather a couple of weekends ago. So playing again this weekend. And also, we’re doing some art classes, digital drawing, and I’m starting ballet, adult recreational ballet, in July.
(45:54):
So if anybody knows where I have been in terms of pain, and mobility, and not being able to… feel like I’m basically like I’m 80 years old. I now feel like I’m 30, and it’s all just movement and not being scared of a little bit of pain, and pushing through that pain. That’s been my whole last six months to five years of issues. So I’m happy that that is improving. That’s it. Thanks.
Josh Clemente (46:25):
Awesome. Great to hear. Yeah, I feel you on those. So glad you’re heading in the right direction. Tom.
Tom Griffin (46:35):
Yeah. Well, I’m excited that Casey’s back, so welcome back, Casey, it’s been too long. And yeah, I think I’m excited by just the tremendous level of clarity that we have around what we need to do the next few months, which, as a reminder, is 10% month-over-month growth. It’s been a while since we’ve had that clarity, and certainly, since the growth team has had that imperative. Every week in my async update for Friday Forum, there’s a big section that says that our top priority is preparing at some point in the future to grow specifically around this new product offering, CGM optional. And we’re now at a point where we can just say very clearly that every single person is focused on growing the company and nothing else. And so I’m quite excited by what that level of clarity will bring.
(47:46):
And I also just want to acknowledge that it has been challenging, I think, turning the ship around, or at least making a bit of a turn for the growth team. And it’s not easy for Jackie to be emailing partners every week with a different update, and trying as hard as she can to get people to post about a certain product offering, only to then email them again and say, “Nevermind,” and Haney writing up a big messaging doc on the new product, or Karen building a new signup flow and website. And so I’ve been inspired by the team turning that ship around so quickly, while also realizing that we need to start sprinting yesterday. So yeah, overall, excited for the next couple of months, and we know what we have to do.
Shawn Jones (48:42):
I’ll hop in here next. I’m also really excited about the product direction. I feel honored to be here, and I’m really excited to stay on mission and to execute just everything full steam ahead. LFG, let’s go. So I’m totally pumped on all that. Fun fact, personal, using our CGM and our technology to continuously improve my health. I weighed in for a transformation challenge. We have a local Nutrishop, and so they have one of those scales that scans your body weight and all that stuff. And I don’t believe the numbers, but, dude, was floored at my body fat percentage and all this stuff. Somewhere, I had like 4.6% body fat, and I was like, “That’s not true.” I’m at least 10, for sure. But anyway, the guy was like, my metabolic age was way lower than my actual age, and all this stuff, so it was really cool. And I’m like, “Damn. All right.”
(49:32):
I continuously make adjustments to my diet based on the information that I get using our app. So I thought that was pretty cool, and I was like, “Oh, I got to tell the team about that.” And then one last note, no pickleball from me this weekend, but we’re doing Murph again this weekend because it didn’t hurt bad enough on Memorial Day. So we’re just going to hit it one more time this week to have some fun. I suspect that I might’ve done one extra round two weeks ago, so I’m going to hit it again and see if I can improve my time one more time. We’ll see. Murph is a Memorial Day workout that we do that honors our fallen soldiers. It’s a very brutal workout. It’s a mile run, a hundred pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, a mile run with a 20 pound weighted vest. It’s a good time. Would recommend 10 out of 10.
Josh Clemente (50:16):
You got to beat Zuckerberg, like Ben said, “Make it happen.”
Shawn Jones (50:22):
Beat Zuckerberg? Yeah, okay.
Josh Clemente (50:22):
Beat Zuckerberg. Karin.
Karen Nielsen (50:26):
Yeah. I just want to say big plus one on everything that’s already been said about the new direction and doubling down on the things that we know we actually can do really well and that people love about the product so far. And I’m definitely one of the people who’s fallen out of love with the app in the last few months. So I’m actually really excited about dog fooding the product again myself. I think that’s something that everybody should be doing on the team, and I’m stoked that we’re doubling down on the things that I know I’m going to be wanting to use and value about the app. And I also just want to shout out all the engineers, including Quay, who have just joined the growth product team. There’s a huge amount of context switching and context absorption to do. I feel like everybody’s really embraced… everybody’s been super forthcoming with ideas. And yeah, I’m really excited about what we’re going to build together, and can’t wait for what’s next.
(51:27):
And finally, on a personal note, we have a heatwave here. By the way, when you get to like 26 degrees centigrade in the UK, that means you get public health warnings for stuff like drinking water and making sure you don’t overheat on the tube. So we’ve invested in a paddling pool for the weekend to have lots of fun in the garden with Amelia. So that’s our plan.
Josh Clemente (51:52):
Awesome. Thank you, Karin. Kateri.
Kateri Corvetti (51:57):
Hi. Just wanted to add, just hearing everyone talk about all these shifts and important changes that are internally occurring, from an external perspective, just wanted to reinforce that from a total outside lens and just seeing things from the content you’re posting, the user experience, you have a whole community of members that are really out here cheering all of you on. And I just want to express my appreciation for these important shifts and all of you being able to actually produce on these changes, because from someone that really benefits from what you’re doing, I just strongly appreciate this focus and this desire to really achieve no matter the roadblocks. So just want to close on that.
Josh Clemente (52:46):
Well said. Well, I got to jump in a shuttle right now. I’m heading back to Austin, but if you got through it all, just echo Kateri. And generally, just the vibe of the meeting today, I think we have crystal clarity on what we have to do. We have a one-liner associated with it, multiple of them, but I’m really stoked to hit 10% month-over-month growth and build something we all love. So let’s have a great weekend and then get after it. See you all.