Transforming Metabolic Fitness with Josh Clemente of Levels
Episode introduction
A shocking 88% of U.S. adults in the United States are metabolically unhealthy. Josh Clemente was surprised to find out that he was one of them. An athletic young man with a career at SpaceX, it seemed like Josh had it all. What he was lacking was consistent energy. It turns out his glucose levels were off. Learning this inspired him to start Levels, a way to easily track glucose levels to help people understand how their lifestyle choices are truly affecting their health. On this episode of Venture Story hosted by Erik Torenberg, Josh discussed the health epidemic in the United States, metabolic health and fitness, and how Levels allows you to reclaim control over your metabolic wellness.
Show Notes
Key Takeaways
1:37 – Exploring metabolism, physiology, and blood sugar levels
Josh became interested in metabolism and physiology while working on life support systems at SpaceX and reviewing interesting research about the topics.
“So I started to take interest in this, actually started pricking my finger a lot just to measure my blood sugar to see if there’s anything interesting going on. Some of this was in an attempt to figure out why I was experiencing these fatigue waves throughout the day. I was kind of just brushing them off as burnout and something I needed to push through. But I was having lots of ups and downs and ultimately I got a CGM after being turned down by my physician a few times. And I found out that I was either borderline pre-diabetic or fully pre-diabetic depending on who you ask. And this is despite never having a weight issue, never having any blood tests flagged, being a CrossFit level one trainer at the time, now level two, taking physical fitness very seriously and thinking I was doing everything right.”
3:54 – A health epidemic
A shocking 88% of U.S. adults are metabolically unhealthy. Josh was surprised to find out that he was one of them.
“So it turns out I was actually in a pretty large group of people who are steadily trending towards this really, unfortunate and avoidable situation, which is type two diabetes, without having any idea. And the reason for that is that we don’t pay attention to the markers of metabolic dysfunction until you’ve already broken. One specific example is when I wanted to measure my glucose in real time, using a continuous glucose monitor, my doctor said, ‘You don’t need that. You’re not diabetic.’”
6:15 – Elevated glucose levels
Consistently elevated glucose levels cause insulin resistance, which can lead to type two diabetes and result in many complications.
“Now, the problem is that if glucose is elevated very quickly and to very high levels, insulin also has to correspondingly be released in high levels. And so there’s high concentrations of insulin. If that’s repeated over and over again, they can lead to this numbing situation where essentially the cells stop responding to the signal of insulin. And this is really dangerous when you have high blood sugar. And your body is trying to get that out of your bloodstream and into the tissues, but it can’t because your cells are experiencing that insulin resistance. And it’s that situation where you are insulin resistant with high glucose, where we call that diabetes.”
8:00 – Reclaiming control of health and wellness
The continuous glucose monitor from Levels is part of the wearable trend that’s helping people take control of their health and wellness through data and convenience.
“Essentially, we’ve got this wearable trend and really the decentralization of health and wellness where everything from Fitbit, Peloton, Whoop. Or you’ve kind of seen these movements coming in waves as people essentially want to take their health and fitness into their own hands and they want it to be convenient and they also want it to be sort of effortless and behind the scenes in the sense like these devices are taking measurements all the time and then surfacing and insight.”
9:20 – We are what we eat
Many people lack awareness of the feedback loop for what they eat, meaning they don’t understand how the food they choose to eat truly affects their body and health.
“We are what we eat. Truly. We break down the foods that we eat. We turn them into energy and we build new tissues from them. And it’s critically important that what we’re eating and why can be answered with data. And so especially in this situation, when there’s an epidemic of metabolic dysfunction, we’ve got to take it in our own hands to close the loop between the actions we’re taking and the reactions our bodies are experiencing.”
9:46 – A path to a healthier life
Levels aims to provide people with information and guidance when making lifestyle and nutrition decisions through the data that’s gathered by the continuous glucose monitor.
“So the vision for Levels is that we can reverse these monumental trends in metabolic dysfunction by not solving the problem at a social scale with some sort of policy or a one size fits all diet, but just giving the individual better information at the moment that they need it to guide decisions and then doing that across many, many people. You do that across enough people and you have social scale change where everyone’s making data-driven choices. They have confidence in the nutrition choices they’re making and they can start to guide in a direction rather than having no idea where they are and where they’re heading.”
20:27 – The development phase
Levels is currently working on developing the software and wearable product.
“Right now we’re in a super exciting phase of the company. We’ve been in development for about a year now on the main product. So on the software and ultimately like what the Level’s product is you wear, this continuous glucose monitor. So it’s a wireless little patch that you put on your arm, and that is sensing glucose molecules in your skin. And then that sends the data wirelessly to your phone. And so Levels is building the insights platform on top of that CGM data. So we’re pulling in that raw data, we’re analyzing a huge number of metrics about it, and then we’re spitting out these simple scores that you can use to make better choices.”
21:06 – Keeping score
The Levels CGM collects information and provides scores to help you visualize how the choices you make affect their body. Lifestyle choices and diet have a direct connection that will impact the score you receive.
“And so for example, you’ll eat a meal. You log that in the app by taking a picture, type in a few words, and then we watch how your body responds to that meal over the next two hours effectively. And we look at how your glucose control plays out. And then we give you a score for that meal. And then you could eat that meal again, say the next day, and make a different decision. So perhaps the first time you ate it, you ate the meal and then you sat on the couch and watched TV or did email. You’ll get a score for that. And then the next day you eat the meal again, and maybe you go for a walk for 20 or 30 minutes. So we will look at the two differences or those two responses, and we’ll be able to compare them and show you how different decisions you make compounded together. And so that walk can completely change the way your body is able to metabolize the food you ate. And that shows up very straightforwardly in some of the features of the app.”
Episode Transcript
Erik Torenberg [00:00] Hey, everybody. The deadline to get your application in for the Spring Vintage of Village Global Accelerator is March 1st. Companies that have been through the Accelerator have raised some of the best venture funds in the world. Like A16Z, Luxe, Spark, Bessemer, Founders Fund, and many more. Learn more and apply at villageglobal.vc/accelerator.
Hey everybody. It’s Eric Torbert, co-founder partner of Village Global, a network driven venture firm. And this is Venture Stories, a podcast covering topics relating to tech and business with world leading experts.
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Village Global’s Venture Stories. I’m here today joined by a very special guest, Josh Clemente of Levels. Josh, welcome to the podcast.
Josh Clemente [00:55] Eric, happy to be here.
Erik Torenberg [00:57] Okay. So Josh, by way of introduction, you’re a co-founder of Levels. Wanting to describe what Levels is and what is the story about how you came to, how and why you came to start it.
Josh Clemente [01:06] Yeah. So Levels is the bio wearable that tells you how your nutrition and lifestyle are affecting your health in real time. So we’re bringing real-time molecule sensing, in this case, glucose, which is one of the primary molecules that we get our energy from. And we’re measuring that with wireless sensors that you wear on the body and then interpreting and providing insights based on it in real time in a handset app. And so this all kind of started, almost as like a patient, zero experience for me. I was working at SpaceX on life support systems and became intensely interested in metabolism and physiology during my time there. Just saw some really interesting research, was kind of surprised that I had never really heard much about the sort of deep energy systems that we’re all kind of interfacing with everyday. We’re manipulating them with the way we sleep, the way we eat, the amount of stress we’re dealing with. And yet I had never really thought about how I’m making these choices and what the implications are for me, long-term. So I started to take interest in this, actually started pricking my finger a lot, just to measure my blood sugar, to see if there’s anything interesting going on. Some of this was in an attempt to figure out why I was experiencing these fatigue waves throughout the day. I was kind of just brushing them off as burnout and something I needed to push through. But I was having lots of ups and downs, and ultimately I got a CGM after being turned down by my physician a few times. And I found out that I was either borderline pre-diabetic or fully pre-diabetic depending on who you ask. And this is despite never having a weight issue, never having any blood tests flagged, being a CrossFit level one trainer at that time, now level two, taking physical fitness very seriously and thinking I was doing everything right. And so this was like kind of the third insult, which really kind of changed my life in a sense. And I chose to leave what I was doing at that time, leave mechanical engineering, change industries and essentially start on this path of learning about metabolism, physiology very meaningfully and teaming up with a really amazing group of people who are planning to reverse these trends in metabolic dysfunction with real-time data.
Erik Torenberg [03:16] Yeah. That’s awesome. And talk about the, you mentioned that you were pre-diabetic. Talk about sort of the rise of just diabetes in general. Can you talk more about how that’s evolved over time in terms of why it’s climbed.
Josh Clemente [03:28] Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So part of the process of realization for me was just like pulling the curtain off of these crazy statistics that I had never really heard about, but blew my mind. And one of those is once I found out that I was in that borderline range, I was thinking, “Oh, this must be really rare. It’s crazy how I’d never thought that I would have this sort of like pre-diabetes situation going on. I wonder how many people are like me.” It turns out 88% of US adults are metabolically unhealthy, according to a study from two years ago, the University of North Carolina. 90 million, or about 88 million US adults are pre-diabetic and 84% of them don’t know they are pre-diabetic. So it turns out I was actually in a pretty large group of people who are steadily trending towards this really unfortunate and avoidable situation, which is type two diabetes, without having any idea. And the reason for that is that we don’t pay attention to the markers of metabolic dysfunction until you’ve already broken. One specific example is when I wanted to measure my glucose in real time, using a continuous glucose monitor, my doctor said, “You don’t need that. You’re not diabetic.” Now the problem is that glucose dysfunction builds a compounds over time. So choices are being made, which are causing systems, like the glucose and insulin control loop, which we can get into more if you want. But basically it’s just the way your hormones are able to break down your food. Those things break down slowly, but they break down steadily. And so if things don’t change, if you don’t make better decisions, you will continue to get worse. And if you have no idea that you’re at any risk, unfortunately, we don’t pay attention to it, and until you are in the diagnosed category. And at that point, there’s a lot of downstream complications. And I mean, this is like higher risk of infertility, higher risk of stroke, of cardiovascular disease. Alzheimer’s is actually being called type three diabetes because of how close the relationship is to type two and pre-diabetes. You know, it’s this very wide range of complications that happen. Typically in correlation with what starts as preventable lifestyle choices that we’re all making every day, but we’re just making them blind.
Erik Torenberg [05:38] Yeah. And, you mentioned we can go more into that loop if we want? Can you go more into it?
Josh Clemente [05:45] Yes. So, basically we all get energy from one of two main systems. It’s either from fat or from sugar. Basically we call it, we should call the sugar that we can metabolize glucose. And so when you eat carbohydrates, those breakdown into your bloodstream as glucose, and then a hormone, insulin, is released from the pancreas. And the insulin is kind of the key that allows your cells to open up, let glucose in, and then that glucose, that sugar is turned into energy inside the cell. Now, the problem is that if glucose is elevated very quickly and to very high levels, insulin also has to correspondingly be released in high levels. And so there’s high concentrations of insulin. If that’s repeated over and over again, they can lead to this numbing situation where essentially the cells stop responding to the signal of insulin. And this is really dangerous when you have high blood sugar, and your body is trying to get that out of your bloodstream and into the tissues, but it can’t because your cells are experiencing that insulin resistance. And it’s that situation where you are insulin resistant with high glucose where we call that diabetes. But essentially all of the complications start to show up, where that high glucose, which is very reactive, starts to really damage all of the proteins and tissues in your body. And things like retinopathy, you know, avoidable blindness, unfortunately all the way through to amputations, loss of taste, loss of touch, loss of sight, like all of these terrible complications of type two diabetes, which many of us don’t think about. And frankly, most of us won’t experience, but some degree of metabolic dysfunction touches almost everyone in this country right now. You know, as I mentioned, 88% of US adults are metabolically unhealthy. And this shows up, you know, if anything from high blood pressure, all the way through to those much more complex, much, much worse complications I just touched on. And that’s due to this rampant, and unfortunately hidden breakdown of the glucose insulin feedback loop.
Erik Torenberg [07:49] Totally. Let me talk about how you thought about, just what’s the big vision for Levels, and sort of how you thought about wedging your way up to it.
Josh Clemente [07:59] Yeah. I mean, essentially we’ve got this wearable trend where, and really the decentralization of health and wellness where, you know, everything from Fitbit, Peloton, Whoop, Oura, you’ve kind of seen these movements coming in waves as people essentially want to take their health and fitness into their own hands and they want it to be convenient and they also want it to be sort of effortless and behind the scenes in the sense, like these devices are taking measurements all the time and then surfacing an insight. You know, I wake up in the morning, I turn on my Whoop or I open my Whoop app and I look at my recovery score. And it’s taking a huge amount of complex data. My heart rate variability, my heart rate through the night, how much strain I took on. And it’s just giving me one score and saying, here’s how well you slept. Here’s how well you recovered essentially. And that’s really insightful. It helps me basically stick to patterns of behavior that improve my sleep. Now what’s missing is that we don’t have anything like that for nutrition. So, every single day we’re going to sit down and we’re going to eat something for lunch. And, you know, if I ask someone, ”What are you going to eat for lunch? And why?” Nine times out of 10, I get a blank stare. “I’m going to eat something that tastes good or something that someone recommended to me on the internet, or I don’t know. Something my mom used to cook for me.” There’s just, all of a sudden we get like this empty answer because none of us have feedback loops for what we’re eating. And we are what we eat, truly. We break down the foods that we eat, we turn them into energy and we build new tissues from them. And it’s critically important that what we’re eating and why can be answered with data. And so, especially in this situation when there’s an epidemic of metabolic dysfunction, we’ve got to take it in our own hands to close the loop between the actions we’re taking and the reactions our bodies are experiencing. And so the vision for Levels is that we can reverse these monumental trends in metabolic dysfunction by not solving the problem at a social scale with some sort of policy or a one size fits all diet, but just giving the individual better information at the moment that they need it, to guide decisions. And then doing that across many people. And you know, you do that across enough people and you have social scale change where everyone’s making data-driven choices. They have confidence in the nutrition choices they’re making and they can start to guide in a direction rather than having no idea where they are and where they’re heading.
Erik Torenberg [10:22] Yeah, that’s good. That’s good context. Why don’t we talk about just at a high level- Like my understanding of our knowledge of nutrition over the past few decades has been pretty suspect in that we thought we knew more than we did or that, you know, the food pyramid itself was poorly designed or framed. When you talk about sort of the history of how much do we actually know about what people should be eating, and how that’s evolved over time and where are we right now in terms of how confident are we in just the science of nutrition.
Josh Clemente [10:57] It’s really, really tricky to study nutrition effectively. You know, most of the studies that ended up getting published, they get reduced down to a single headline. It’s like, “Eggs are good now. Eggs are bad again,” you know? It’s, we’re all kind of used to. And what those headlines are contingent on are typically epidemiology studies where people are asked to fill out surveys and the survey just asks you how often you eat a certain food. And that goes on for a long time and they measure outcomes and they just see who has a higher likelihood of certain events based on these survey responses. So there’s, it’s actually not a controlled trial where you are connecting cause and effect. And the problem with that is that these are very easy to become, I think, interest oriented. And so you end up with science that is, it’s kind of trying to prove a point that they’re setting out to with an agenda, I think, in some cases. And it’s unfortunate because you can get data that is published and shows any perspective you want. And what this has led to, and there’ve been consumer studies that show that 60% of people completely ignore nutrition studies because they’re so contradictory. You know, when you can find two papers published within a month of each other that say the exact opposite thing, people just lose hope. They throw their hands up. And so, you know, I think there are some really obvious themes that are arising. And one of them is that processing of foods and added sugar are ultimately at the root of essentially all metabolic dysfunction we have. That, you know, there are certainly bad fats and trans fats and oils and things that have kind of been vilified a bit more, but are also certainly something we should avoid. But in general, I think that the amount of sugar consumption we have in this country, especially, you know, earlier and earlier in life, is really dangerous. And it’s leading to a situation where we’re basically, we’re dealing with energy toxicity. Like we’re constantly eating very, very high energy foods that break down quickly into our bloodstreams. And yet the workforce is moving more and more towards sedentary work where we’re at desks. We’re not moving very often. And so we’re not using that. We’re not burning that fuel. And you end up with a surplus. Your bloodstream is constantly jam packed with that glucose. And you end up creating that mechanism we talked about, of insulin numbness, insulin resistance. And ultimately, I think those are kind of big themes that we’re seeing. Now, there’s a ton of personal variability, like which foods are going to break down, how quickly, in whom? That’s the degree of data that I think we can get to now with individualized measurement. So eventually we’ll be able to say, “You know for me, I may have a really major response to something like oatmeal,” which I do. But for other people, like David on my team, you know, he can eat oatmeal and have a much better metabolic responses. His body can break that down and use it effectively and much more quickly than I can. And so that’s the degree of personalization we can get to where you can really craft like a personally, a specific diet and lifestyle that works for you.
Erik Torenberg [14:02] Totally. So what do you think we still don’t yet understand within the science and need to, like, if we’re having this conversation 10 years from now, how might our scientific understanding be very different? What do you expect to be different?
Josh Clemente [14:16] Well, I think some of the big things are understanding how different phenotypes, so like different types of people like that- You can basically categorize people based on their affinity to gaining weight, for example. And then there are all these other, you know, similar relationships that are showing up. And in, of course this is anecdotal. This is just me kind of saying what we’re seeing, but I think we’re going to learn a lot more about this, is those phenotypes. Like the person who gains weight will often have a very different blood sugar and insulin profile than someone who is very, very lean and almost can’t gain weight. And, you know, we kind of always hear this in society, is like, some people have tried a diet and they just can never lose weight. They’ve tried everything. Other people, you know, just are we’re all envious because they’re just constantly shedding weight. They’re always so skinny. Well, those are very real phenotypes. And so to look at those people and see what’s actually happening behind the scenes, what’s happening in their bodies, that hormone mechanism that is cranking out insulin, the mechanisms that are putting out cortisol, the stress hormones, what are they eating and how are they sort of, what are the long-term outcomes? It’s really important that we get granular data on that and that those people are eating and living lifestyles that are supporting the better outcome. And my point in all this is that there are some early research results that have been published. There’s a really interesting one from 2015 that was called the Weitzman Institute trial, the personalized nutrition trial. And they put continuous glucose monitors on 800 people who did not have diabetes. And they basically showed that two people can eat the exact same two foods. In this case, it was a banana and a cookie made with wheat flour. And they can have equal and opposite blood sugar responses. And that’s the degree of variability that is out there. And so, what I’m interested in, and what I’m really excited to learn is why that is the case and what the long-term implications of that are. Meaning, is it really true that there could be dietary decisions that are ultimately opposite each other that are healthy for two different individuals? And, you know, I think as I mentioned earlier, I don’t think that we’re going to be eating granulated sugar really at all in the future, because we’re going to learn just how energy toxic that food is. But I do think that, specifically like fruits versus grains, and the degree of animal protein and the degree of starch that we eat, all of that can be really broken down and turned into a very, very specific and personal lifestyle choice. And so I think we’re going to get to that point where you kind of know the category of metabolizer you are based on a ton of data that you’ve developed over long periods of time and you’ll be making really optimal choices guided by that data.
Erik Torenberg [17:05] Yeah. That’s helpful. What about, can you talk a bit about the debates? Like if a few nutritionists were on or just science experts, were on this podcast, what are sort of the key arguments that we’re still having within the industry, or just still trying to figure out?
Josh Clemente [17:24] Well, there’s a ton of different perspectives. And I think one of the issues is that a lot of the nutrition conversation is like it’s very polarized and people bring, I think, an emotional perspective to food. So you have almost like different sects that are each, like, you know, you have people who are carnivores and you have people who are keto and people who are, you know, they almost have labels, you know? And I think that’s one of the big things is trying to solve the philosophy for everyone with one shot. And that, I just personally disagree with. And I think at Levels we’ve shown that there really is, does not seem to be a one size fits all approach. So I think that’s a really big issue, is that we have to get rid of these labels and these like large generalizations on how everyone should eat and instead look to the data and try to refine it into the most effective and sort of targeted set of information that can be delivered to the person who just wants to be healthier. Another one is the like, I think very simplified mainstream perspective on calories. So, you know, we kind of always think about calories as the unit of metabolism or like the thing that you have to change if you want to gain or lose weight. And although that’s, like thermodynamically, that is correct, that the food you eat has these energy units of calories, and how your body uses those, like, if you burn more than you consume, you should lose weight. If you eat more than you burn, you should gain weight. You know, that is true. But the thing is that we’re much more complicated. We’re, you know, the human body is like a, it’s a giant wet chemistry set where everything is, you know, chemicals being mixed together and responding to other chemicals. And so if a person’s body is like, if you’ve biased in one direction, meaning you have more of a certain chemical in your body at all times than another, that will change how available your energy is or where it is sort of sent. So some people are pretty clearly biased towards gaining weight. They may have more insulin at all times. And so they should make different decisions about calories than people who do not have that situation. And like, I think it’s really important that we be more specific and tell people that, you know, for those of you that have been struggling for a long time counting calories, it may be that the foods you’re eating are inducing a hormonal response that is fighting against you. And it really does not just come down to a very basic three term equation on a piece of paper. You know, human beings are much more complex than that. And you know, as much as I like the elegance of it, it just doesn’t, it doesn’t work out for many people out there. And, you know, ultimately the implications of what we eat is much more complicated.
Erik Torenberg [20:13] That makes sense. So maybe let’s focus a bit more on Levels specifically. What can we expect? What’s sort of, what’s upcoming? Share more about, pull-behind, take us behind the curtain a bit.
Josh Clemente [20:26] Yeah. So, right now we’re in a super exciting phase of the company. We have been in development for about a year now on the main product. So on the software. And ultimately like what the Levels product is, is you wear this continuous glucose monitor. So it’s a wireless little patch that you put on your arm, and that is sensing glucose molecules in your skin. And then that sends the data wirelessly to your phone. And so Levels is building the insights platform on top of that CGM data. So we’re pulling in that raw data, we’re analyzing a huge number of metrics about it, and then we’re spitting out these simple scores that you can use to make better choices. And so like, for example, you’ll eat a meal, you log that in the app by taking a picture, type in a few words, and then we watch how your body responds to that meal over the next two hours effectively. And we look at how your glucose control plays out. And then we give you a score for that meal. And then you could eat. You could eat that meal again, say the next day, and make a different decision. So perhaps the first time you ate it, you ate the meal and then you sat on the couch and watched TV, or did email. You’ll get a score for that. And then the next day you eat the meal again, and maybe you go for a walk for 20 or 30 minutes. So we will look at the two differences or those two responses, and we’ll be able to compare them and show you how different decisions you make compounded together. And so that walk can completely change the way your body is able to metabolize the food you ate. And that shows up very straightforwardly in some of the features of the app. And so the entire goal is that we are connecting little micro optimizations. You know, we’re kind of giving you the receipts for them. And you can, over time, start to see specifically how, you know, the levers of nutrition, exercise, sleep, and stress management actually affect your body’s metabolic control. And so we’ve been in development for, going on a year, a little over a year now, and invitation only. You know, we haven’t, we have a very limited capacity because we really are optimizing for customer feedback. And so I’m very excited this year, we’re trending towards our full launch when people will be able to get access to this at a wider scale and, you know, growing the team, and taking on our very first research initiatives, which super-stoked for.
Erik Torenberg [22:47] That’s awesome. Well, that’s a good place to close. For people who are, who have been excited by this conversation and want to get deeper into Levels, where can you point them? And any last words of encouragement? And how do you use it well, and get the most out of it?
Josh Clemente [23:01] Yeah, definitely. So you can go to the website levelshealth.com and our blog is on there. And you know, that’s where we are working to explain how metabolism touches all of us. You know, it’s kind of an abstract word. We don’t use it a lot in the mainstream, but it is the way our bodies are functioning every single day. It underlies physical health and mental health. And so, you know, definitely check out the blog. See how these mechanisms are working for you. And then, you know, when it comes to seeing how people are using the Levels program, you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @levels. And there’s a lot of really interesting beta use cases that are showing up there. A lot of people sharing their lessons learned. And so, yeah, definitely follow along there. And I’m looking forward to getting this sort of out there and increasing accessibility as soon as possible.
Erik Torenberg [23:49] Yeah. And I, to prep for this, I was listening to a few other podcasts that you’ve done, and reading the blog. And I just say that to the listeners that if you’re curious about what you heard here, you guys done a phenomenal job on content, more generally educating the public at large about these topics. So I recommend you dig into a lot of the great content you guys have in your blog and in the podcast very more broadly.
Josh Clemente [24:10] Yeah. Awesome. You know, my co-founder Casey, she’s a Stanford trained surgeon and functional medicine doctor and she and I have been doing a lot of podcasts and she does an exceptional job of breaking down the, you know, the deeper mechanisms of biochemistry. And then obviously, you know, we’re just raising awareness of metabolic health and metabolic fitness, which is this concept that we’re bringing, which is that, you know, metabolic health is not binary. You are not either healthy or unhealthy. It’s just like physical fitness. You go to the gym, you work hard, you put in focus, effort and repetition to improve your strength. That’s the same with metabolism. And you can improve these things over time. And so it’s just fun to get that message out there, and give people that power, you know? The understanding that you can take health into your own hands and data helps there.
Erik Torenberg [24:55] Yeah. That’s a great place to close in, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that a couple of the co-founders also met at, during the On-Deck program. And we’re very fortunate to have that as a success story.
Josh Clemente [25:07] Absolutely. Yeah. Sam and Andrew. I love that story.
Erik Torenberg [25:11] Awesome. Josh, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. It’s been great.
Josh Clemente [25:14] Thank you, Eric.
Erik Torenberg [25:24] If you’re an early stage entrepreneur, we’d love to hear from you. Check us out @villageglobal.vc.
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