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Fascinating conversations with founders, leaders, and experts about product management, artificial intelligence (AI), user experience design, technology, and how we can create the best product experiences for users and our businesses.
Kyle (00:01.204)
All right, welcome to another episode of Product by Design. I am Kyle, and this week we've got another awesome guest with us, Ari Tula. Ari, welcome to the show.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (00:10.666)
Hey, thank you, Kyle. Great to be here.
Kyle (00:13.088)
Great to have you. Let me introduce you quickly, Ari, and then you can tell us a little bit more about yourself. But Ari is a San Francisco based entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of the Smart Nutrition Service, ELO. So again, welcome to the show, Ari, and why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (00:43.254)
Sorry, I was a little bit frozen there. So yeah, happy to kind of share a few things about myself. So I'm from Finland originally, the small country in Northern Europe and spent my youth in kind of two things. I focused being a gig, building things from Legos to simple games to apps and whatnot. And the other half was consumed by playing sports. I...
Kyle (00:52.108)
Did I freeze for just a second?
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (01:12.402)
I was very into ice hockey as every, you know, Finn should be. Hockey is like the national sport, like football in here in the US. And I was very lucky to be having a first computer at the ripe age of maybe six or so in the early 80s. My dad had a computer.
one of the first 086 PCs that you had monochrome screens. And not the small floppy disk, but the big floppy that was not very easy to use and broke very easily. And you couldn't do really much with them. But I got to play some games and then learn basic programming languages at a young age. And that led me really to become a
know, big enthusiast on games later and also, you know, development. And then later, you know, I was very lucky as well that I got connected to the internet already in like 93 or 94, very early. I was even in high school, I was partially enrolled to university to just get the faster access, the faster modem to, you know, use the telnet at the time. And I was running like a PBS, this early
Messy and then I got to play the first online games ever. Think about the precursor of like World of Warcraft or Ultima Online. And I got really hooked and addicted to them and became one of the top players in the world. And like mid 90s, I was selling virtual armor and money in the games against real money. And I made some, I don't know, like five, 10,000 a year for selling these things. And it was probably one of the first people in the world.
to do it. And it was really cool to kind of see at the young age that you play with these people who were often a bit older. So we, for example, had this team of together and one of the guys, he's now the CTO at Goldman Sachs and the other guy went to found one of the biggest gaming companies and I also became an entrepreneur. So sometimes I tell my kids that gaming can be bad, but gaming can also lead to something good in the end. So I'm not really against games.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (03:33.17)
as such. And then, you know, in the late 90s, I went to college and then the first day there, I stumbled upon with my roommates who started the company in the first week I was there. We started to build websites for big companies, the Web 1.0. And that led me to become an entrepreneur. And then later I got to the US. I was at Nokia, the Finnish cell phone company, and I was running
studios and the gaming side of building new games on mobile, the first mobile games. And that got me to Silicon Valley about 16 years ago. And it's been really, really interesting to be here and see the whole mobile smartphone evolution and now to see the cloud evolution, now see the AI evolution. So it's been wonderful time to witness all of this up close here.
Kyle (04:32.944)
Yeah, that is, it's a fascinating background. And I love how it is spurred by so much of the early gaming and early technology that you mentioned. I remember having a Commodore 64 as one of our first computers as well, which like you said, not the small floppy disks, but the actual big floppy disks that were in fact floppy that you would put in and actually play the games on. So.
fascinating stuff as far as like early computer gaming and what that has led so many of us to some of those early computer games and early pieces of technology that I think are just so fascinating and now are parts of almost history, but we're such a big part of the early technology revolution that spurred so much innovation early on.
I'm excited to talk more not only about your journey, but what you're doing now. But before we get into that, I'd love to ask about what are some of the things that you like to do outside of the office and outside of the work that you're doing right now.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (05:53.074)
I mean, it's pretty consuming to be, you know, founder and having done it now for so long, and even if I have spent time in the big companies, I was always building a new thing. So I was kind of like a founder within or like entrepreneur in a big company. So I've done this now for 25 years and I'm not very good at, you know, having a compartment for the work and a compartment for the life. I mean, I don't really even...
believe the concept. I think if you work on stuff that you really care about and you love, then you can kind of blend them. But of course, having a family, you know, having two kids, a nine and five year old, so I spend a lot of time, you know, as much as I can on their activities. And you know, you know, it's always really fun to go out and, you know, out to the wilderness and, you know, do different sports and just, you know, roam around the world with their eyes and see the world in a new way. It's always a bliss.
And I still try to be an athlete. I believe that, you know, if you want to perform at the highest level on, let's say work or whatever you do, you have to be mentally sharp, you have to be physically agile, so I still do compete. I, I'm, I nowadays mainly spend my time on rock climbing. I've been climbing for 30 years, some of the big walls in your semi-day and, you know, some big mountain as well. Now more mainly indoor, but I still compete at the, you know, the master series pretty actively.
and also do a lot of cycling and surfing. I try to get 10 hours, 15 hours a week still, and try to still kind of be an athlete and still feeling a bit old at times, but it keeps your mind sharp. And I think I talked to a lot of people about it, that you need to think about these things. You want to build something, you want to get somewhere. You can't make it the only focus in your life. You have to have balance.
And always these things, they take long time. Like my last best company, Better Doctor, it took 10 years from the beginning to, you know, exit and becoming pretty big company. But you know, it usually takes long time. And if you started by sprinting in the beginning, you are not going to last long. You have to think about it more as a marathon or long hike, like a Appalachian trail. That's very similar than, you know, building a company from ground up or any project.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (08:14.462)
So, but yeah, I mean, I think a lot about also sleep recovery and, um, and then nutrition and food, and also important part of my life, of course, because I also work on them. Um, but many people I see around who are neglecting them and I'm, I'm a advisor board member in multiple companies and I always try to look at the people in the eye and say, I mean, you're very smart and I think you're building a great thing, but do you have what it takes to spend the next 10 years on this?
Kyle (08:46.42)
Yeah, I think you bring up such a great point about finding that balance and not neglecting some of the important things. And I think that's a great kind of segue into what you're working on right now. So you've kind of told us a little bit about your journey, a lot of the things that you have done as far as founding companies and some of the early stages of your career. Tell us about your current role. You mentioned being focused in...
the nutrition space and it being such an important part of what you're doing now, tell us about your current company, the current role, and kind of why you're focused in that area.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (09:28.29)
Maybe I start from the why because often in life, you know, the what is easy. You can read the bio, you can go to LinkedIn and you can go to the company website and you can understand what people do. But the why is often neglected and not so evident. And I think I try to be a person who is driven by passions that I have or urges I have.
And we always need to find our own motivation. And for me, it's always been what happens in my life that I can draw power from, or I can draw learning from. And in my case, it's been for the last almost 15 years now, it's been about this idea that how do I take the learning I have had in the tech, gaming, the cloud, web, mobile, and how I bring that into healthcare.
And the reason why I work in healthcare, why we also invest in healthcare is that about 20 plus years ago, my wife had a health issue, she had a thyroid tumor on her neck. And out of the blue, you know, healthy, some 20 year old has an issue that, you know, needs immediate medical attention. And it was treated well. I mean, there was no issue after it was taken away.
but it led us into these hormonal imbalances, these complicated things, unknown unknowns that we don't know what to do about. And it basically, the word was that we can never have a family. And that's a big thing to hear when you are, you found a spouse, you found love of your life. And of course, you want to have a family at some point. So that embarked us on almost a 10 year journey to find out what we could do about it.
We went to Eastern medicine, Western medicine, all type of mindfulness, activity exercise stuff. And in the end, we found out that there was a doctor who recommended to use this sort of low inflammatory diet. Think about no sugar, no grains, no meat, very kind of narrow diet. And that type of diet is now being used even for ALS and Lyme disease and many serious autoimmune diseases. And it did work.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (11:51.242)
So that body, her body was able to heal itself after we went into this diet. And I became a massive believer in idea that, you know, food can be medicine. And, um, and then, you know, we found out that we had to go, you know, IVF and, you know, do all these things to get pregnant. And, and we were very unlucky that our first son, uh, didn't make it. Uh, there was a completely related issue that, you know, uh, resulted that, you know, we lost our, our son.
And that was a tough thing because, you know, you spend all this time and you find a solution and then you, the thing that you want is taken away from you. And that was the time when I decided to, you know, leave the tech and, and become a healthcare entrepreneur. And my wife also changed her career path and became in the end a corner Marie consultant, work with Marie Kondo on helping people to get rid of stuff that they have in their life. And
It was a really great decision in a way that now, later we now went through it multiple times and we have now two healthy kids, as I said, and it's all good now, but you can look back at it and think about the learning you had. So the first company I founded after that was Better Doctor. We helped people find doctors and today the company is part of a bigger company and we help about 200 million people a year to find a doctor. So how cool is that you had a problem, maybe you didn't have the best doctor yourself.
And our problem, you know, built this company that, you know, is now helping almost every American. So that feels really cool. And, and now the second chapter in a way is that the food is medicine. Like how do we build nutrition that could actually help people to stay healthy and even heal them, like in the case of my, my wife, and that's kind of the tenant for my new company, Elo Health, uh, we, we are trying to make food, turn food into medicine. Uh, today food of course is the.
is the cause of disease in many cases. We have, you know, most people are overweight. Most people have a chronic condition or even two. And many of those are diet-borne, diet-related. They're lifestyle disease. And we all know that, you know, we shouldn't eat the processed food every day. We shouldn't eat the sugary drinks every day, but it's very tough to avoid it because we are addicted to it. So the idea in ELO...
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (14:11.55)
is simply that we are trying to take the data from my body with, you know, using verbal devices or using, you know, blood biomarker test to other testing and help health assessments, you know, questionnaires and stuff and collect the data and then use AI to turn it into the right nutrients that can actually help you stay healthy. And in the beginning, we started it in a box of, of supplements because it's just easier way to test.
in a world of pills and powders and gummy vitamins. And then we can do a test like we can test your vitamin D or we can test your A1C or your LDL cholesterol, and then we can give you certain nutrients and we can test you again and we can show you the outcomes. So that was the box we built in the very beginning. And of course, later on we want to go also meal delivery and recommendation restaurant food, but those are coming later because you have the first built learning and science.
all this stuff. And this is a very difficult thing. If the last company took about 10 years, this would likely take more. But I think for me today, as a person, this is the most impactful thing I can work on. I think I can use a lot of the learning I have from the gaming, for example. How do we gamify the data we get daily from your bodies? How do we make it more exciting? And how do we show people outcomes? Because once you are seeing a trend going to the right, to the top right, to the right direction.
you will make the changes. And now we have finally three things are coming available or real that make something like ELO possible. So we have the blood testing, the wearable device are becoming ubiquitous. So we are testing more often. We have everybody almost as a wearable device, Fitbit or Apple Watch or O-Ring or whatever you have, Scale at home. And the second thing is that we
We started the company just before COVID. That was a fun story itself. How difficult it was to run a company in a world where nobody saw its other for two years in the company and you hired quite a few people. But we saw that the COVID made food delivery and nutrition delivery normal. Like before COVID, 20% of people had ordered door, dash and Uber Eats. Now it's more like 80%. So now everybody knows how to do it. It works.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (16:33.098)
And then the last point of course that has happened now in the last year or two that we were anticipating already a lot is the AI. I mean, I mean, nobody knew that the AI could become this amazing, that, you know, it becomes a poet, it becomes a, you know, composer. That was very new to people. But the fact that now you can use AI to build these programs, you can use the AI to become a coach. Those are making these type of things possible.
Kyle (17:00.78)
That's super, super fascinating because you have kind of this confluence of all of these technologies coming together to create really the right moment for what you're talking about with Elo being something that probably just wouldn't be possible at another time. And I'm really fascinated about, how are you bringing all of these things together?
to create that experience because you have, you know, the wearable devices that are, like you said, becoming ubiquitous. You know, the application that, you know, is kind of giving you the feedback and the metrics, and then all of these other services that you can start to integrate into the experience. How do you, as a company and as a founder, start to bring all of those into kind of a cohesive experience for somebody who wants to have
this as something that is part of their lives. Like how does all of that start to come together into something that, like you said, changes what people do, how they interact, and ultimately like what they are eating and kind of what they're doing within their lives.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (18:18.778)
It's a great question and it's really about the trial and tripulation in many ways because we are literally doing something that nobody has ever done before. I don't think there's any other company today in the world who has, you know, more than one product. We have three today that are fully personalized based on your biometric data and, and they change every month automatically. I mean, nobody has done this before, so we don't really, we didn't know what to call it. So the first thing where we spent a lot of time thinking is that, okay, let's just put the flag on the ground.
And that's define what this could be. And, uh, I mean, I'm, I'm very, I don't know how, how I put it, but I'm a real, uh, I mean, amazing position in a way, because I, I have a team of founder founding team that is just unbelievable. Like, I mean, my co-founder CTO, he's a, you know, CTO for my last, you know, four companies, we worked together now for almost 20 years every day. And, uh, you know, I think anything and, you know, he can build it. So it's like really fun because we, we collaborate so well.
And then our third co-founder is Miklu Silvanta, who came from Apple. So he was in Sony ISD for almost decade. And he built some of these things I use right now and let the products. And so he is this sort of a ultimate thinker in product. Like he comes from the Apple world where they don't take no for an answer. I mean, they spend 10 years to build something. And I mean, I think he imaged 100,000 people's ears when he did the ear buds, for example.
And that was really difficult. I mean, nobody had ever done an ear part before that it sticks to your ear. So anyway, with these three gentlemen, you know, I, uh, we, we came together in early and we spent about a year thinking about this and we came up with this idea that we call smart nutrition. So you need to have a theme and a name. And for us, smart nutrition is basically kind of like a smart watch or smartphone or smart car or smart home, what it means for nutrition, it means that the products are personalized to you.
They're always made for you, just for you. When you order the product, it's not available. It's made for you after you order it. Uh, these products are also precise. They are grounded in real science. So if there's something that doesn't work or there's no evidence, we're not going to do that. And then lastly, the products are proactively getting better over time. Think about like your Tesla, when you drive it, you know, it gets better over time, your home gets smarter. The temperature gets better. Same with us.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (20:45.394)
you use the products, they get better, more personalized to you over time, the more data we have. So that was the concept we built. And then we kind of found out that in the world of nutrition, there's this, in the world of healthcare and in the world of, I think, you know, if you think about wearable devices, there's this massive gap, gaping gap that we are getting very good at understanding the question, so what?
Okay. So what, you know, you, you have an oring, you sleep poorly. Okay. It tells you, you slept poorly. Okay. Like, you know, maybe you had, you know, went, you went to sleep too late, but there's nobody really answering the question, then what? Like what to do? What did you have to like, we now know something about myself or my, my body or my health, what should I do? Like give me answers. And even like Apple watch the rings, you know, they're great. And, you know,
millions and millions of people use them every day and they make people move. It's a wonderful idea, great impact. But what to do about it? Like what does it mean if I haven't been standing enough? Like, like then what? So the LO is really like taking the smart decision idea and trying to answer the question, then what, what should I do if my vitamin D is low? What should I do if my sleep is poor? What should I do in different cases?
And then we started after that, we started to write a lot. We started to write these use cases and test with people more like a pen and paper type of stuff. And we found like one first use case was that 120 million people today in the US, they take supplement pills every day. 120 million people. I mean, it's almost as common as people who, you know, brush their teeth in the morning, maybe even less people brush their teeth, they forget, but you know, people take supplements every day. And we found out that, you know,
None of them know if they're taking the right ones or the wrong ones, or are they having any impact? We were like, maybe we can help on that. And we built a system where we take a blood test, we give you supplements, we test you again, and we have a coach, a dietitian who works with you, one-on-one. And we saw that 90% of people who came to ELO in the beginning, they had something on red or yellow on their blood biomarkers. And we were able to help them on those. And they were super excited because...
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (23:02.946)
they actually saw the numbers go up and they were like high-fiving us. So there was something there. Then the next we looked at activity, like many of us in the team are quite active and we try to still be semi-athletes. And we realized that many of us take protein powder, for example. And nobody really knew how to do it. So we built a system where we connect my verbal devices, the activity tracking,
into our AI. And then we basically formulate you the custom product every month based on what you have done. And that was cool. I mean, we liked it and we tested it out. And then the team came up with an idea that why don't we also build a system when you do a workout, we notify you automatically how much of protein you need after your workout. Let's say you go for a run or you do Peloton ride or you go to the gym, you track that with some device. We don't know what sort of
and we can give you the right recommendation. So the right blend every month optimized for you. And then you get the right dosing at the right time. And that felt really cool. And that we launched the product, you know, last year and you know, it's been, it's been pretty big. And then the third one, what we now did, we only have done three products because it's so slow to iterate this, but the third one was basically the feedback we got from people who were selling the first supplement product was that, you know, the supplement packet that we did.
It's nice, you know, it comes with my name on, it's correct and it's accurate, much easier than go buy pill bottles. It's always a daily packet you get, pill pack. But then people are like, I don't like, you know, taking a handful, handful of pills. That's a lot of work. Like, I mean, I need to swallow it, I need to water. I don't like swallowing pills. And people didn't take them every day always because they felt kind of that sort of it's work and they ask us like, can you make it better? And then some people talked about, you know, what about like, like gummy vitamins? They're like candy. I like to take them.
So we went on a journey around the world two years ago, and we found one company in UK who was building this new concept of 3D printing gummy vitamins. And we worked with them now for a year and a half, and we finally launched a product that is, I mean, it's actually pretty cool. If you think about product perspective, this is real innovation. So this is a seven layered 3D printed gummy vitamin that has the same seven pills I have here, are actually in my gummy vitamin at the same dosing.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (25:31.106)
And we even did a study last year where we took people with the pill cohort and the gummy cohort. We had 50 people for 90 days, we tested before and after and the same outcomes. So the gummy is equally effective, efficacious as the pills. And that to me is a real innovation that now we have a product that is basically beautiful and it actually tastes great. You can pick your own flavor and we have 390 million combinations today that we can create different type of gummies.
So it's pretty cool. Like, you know, I do a blood test if I want, I don't have to do it anymore. And then you get the 3D print gummy vitamin. That's like a Star Trek to me. And then of course we also have the layer of, you know, the app where you now have access to talk to a dietitian. You get notified every day when to take the product. You can track the progress, you see your data. And soon I think we have an AI also chatbot coming there. I think it's pretty cool. Like those are kind of the ideas. Like if I...
I feel that these are really exciting. Then I think there are other people out there also who, who like the concept, but these are never been done before. Like these are all new concepts we did first time and you just throw them out there in the world and then you get feedback.
Kyle (26:42.444)
You've touched on some amazing points and I'm just super excited about a number of them because as one, as a product person, this idea of the continual feedback that you're getting from users and then improving the product in order to make it more useful for the people who are using it and then for people who are potentially using it. I think that's incredible. And then kind of this area of
these feedback loops where, I mean, you touched on a point that hits for me because I get some of this feedback very, very infrequently. Like I just got some blood work done and it's almost annually where I get some of this feedback. And that's just, it's not very regular. And so like, what kind of changes can I be making? And annual feedback just isn't enough. And you're kind of talking about
much more regular feedback in order to make the right kind of changes, whether that's diet or like you're saying supplements or other types of things that can affect my overall health in a way that I can be much more proactive about it as opposed to kind of this, I guess, more reactive annual type of blood work. And I just, I absolutely love it because your-
you're incorporating all of that into something that I think, like you said, has never been done, but also puts people almost on the front foot, where they're in charge of incorporating all of this data into their lives and then customizing and personalizing the overall experience in a way that is intuitive, but also just
so much better and so much, I don't know, just thoughtful and futuristic. I'm just, I think the whole thing is super exciting on a personal level and a product level. I'm interested, as you've been getting some of this feedback and as you've been doing these feedback loops, has there been anything that has been surprising to you that you went out and you've been getting the feedback and doing some of this research that maybe you didn't expect or...
Kyle (29:06.684)
has kind of surprised you as people have been using the products or has been giving you feedback that you didn't expect or has been really, really useful to kind of change the direction of some of the things that you've been doing.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (29:23.678)
Yeah, I think we look at in a way every time we built the product, um, that is the product we, we make at that time with that information in hand. And then I think we realized that once we get something out, we need to learn. And it might be the guiding light then for the new products that are better. Like we did the sub the gummy is almost like a 2.0 of the supplements. And I think one, there are many, I think, interesting stories that we have gotten, but one, I think that is the most, uh, profound to me.
That is maybe something that many of the listeners can also relate to. Um, when we started, we did the blood testing every quarter, every 90 days. And, you know, we sent you a nice, you know, kit at home and you prick your finger, it's relatively easy, but what we realized is that people in the beginning, they, they did it fairly quickly. And then when we sent the second kit to people's homes and, you know, we have notifications and a lot of, you know, follow up like, please do it and blah, blah.
And you have to do it at time. We put like a gateway, a gate when to do it. And then we saw a lot of people missing the gate and we were like, what's happening? And then we were doing internally, of course, the team. And we had these sessions when we come together as a team and we all talk about it, like, how do we feel about this product? How do we feel our own experience? And we've been doing this together. Like we went to the room together and we all do the finger prick together. And we realized that there are a lot of men in the room, not so many women, but the men.
And these are pretty type A, you know, there are these people who, you know, they maybe went to, you know, Ivy League school and they, they've been accomplished in life and they didn't want to do the test because they felt that they are flunking the test if they haven't lived the pure self. So it's like, you almost have to wait and do like a fast or, or be like, you know, create diet for a week or two. So they were like thinking it more as a test.
And I don't want to do the test if I'm not being perfect. Or I feel like it's sick. I was on a holiday. I don't want to do it now. So people were punting it later because they wanted to get the best results. And I was like, that's a silly, because that's the opposite of what you should do. And now later we saw that, you know, there are hundreds of people who did the same thing and they're usually men in, you know, the thirties or forties. And these are usually pretty like type A people. So that was an interesting thing that, you know, they, they know that it's good to track the data every quarter.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (31:44.706)
But then they don't want to do the test because they don't want to get the bad results. It's like a game in a way. So that was surprising. And I think I talked later with some companies who are doing many, many more tests, we'll talk about millions of tests a year, and they are seeing the same thing happening. That there's certain groups of people who just, if they don't get the A, they don't want to do the test. And that was really interesting finding. And it made our life a bit more difficult. And then based on this feedback and overall, the fact that you started by testing people,
one quarter, two, three, four, you can get to the two or three. And then people are veining off because they, the amount of information they get, if you do the same panel every time, it's limited because you know, certain values are going to plot, they're going to be, they got better, but you're now on green, you don't have to worry about it anymore. So we realized that the testing is a really, really interesting. And I mean, it's super valuable. Everybody should get tested by the way, uh, on a whole plot panel every year, it's super valuable. I mean, you can, you can, you know, catch this early.
It's just a critical thing to do. We don't do it enough, but testing every quarter is maybe too often. So the right cadence may be every six months or every year and do a panel that is the right panel. So we are now building our testing again, where we're going to have a smart panel. So we test the things that you need to be tested because who you are based on your previous test, based on your diet, based on your AIDS, sender, all these things and goals, and that's going to be the right way to do it. Nobody has done it before, but I think we hope to get that out sometime this year.
And that's pretty cool. It's the right way to do it, I think. And the price also then depends on what's being tested. So it's not always the same price. But the point is that we, in the Gummy experience, like I said already, you don't have to do testing anymore. We have many people, thousands of people who did the test, and then they did the questionnaire assessment. And we were using our AI to learn from the testing and assessment correlation.
And now we can predict people based on the assessment and we get almost the same results. So now it's much easier that you don't need to do the test. You can get the product like almost instantly. And that's been a big unlock for our funnel because of course you have to make it easy. If something feels like work, it's not ideal. And we had a really difficult funnel. Think about how many products you buy where you need to bleed blood before you can get the product. Not many, that's not easy. Like when you buy a new microwave.
Kyle (34:06.892)
Yeah.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (34:09.194)
You don't need to bleed blood before you get it from Best Buy. Maybe sometimes you carry it, you can bleed blood, but not normally. So that's kind of one learning that you shouldn't do. And then I think one example that I might bring here, because it's not exactly what we do, but I was very lucky years ago to be able to invest in this company early, the Aura, the ring company. So it's a sleep tracking ring. It's beautiful. I mean, it's titanium, nice looking, very easy to use, a weak pattern of life. And...
I've been talking with them a lot in the last few years and to learn like, why did they make it? Now there are, you know, they're selling million rings a year. They are valued billions of dollars, a great company and they won the ring form factor. And there were many other companies that were trying to do it. And the reasons why they won is that they made a product that is ambient. It has no light. It has no vibration. It has no sensors beyond, you know, what it does to you.
And you don't need to look at the data if you don't want to. But if you do, it's always available. So that ambient nature made it uniquely good product. And the focus they had was only on sleep, not on activity tracking or what else you could do, but they focused on one thing and they became the best in the world at that. And then last point that they had that I don't think people really understand is that if you do a wearable device, you know, Apple Watch, I have the ultra. It can barely do two days. I have the whoop.
It's five days. This ring is seven day battery life. That says everything. You can put it in a charger like I have it now once a week for 20 minutes and that's it. And that was the reason it's so easy to use. You don't have to worry about it all the time because you know, always you worry about battery running out. That's it's just nerve wracking. It's work. But those were some things that, you know, they did right to win a market. And we try to always think at ELO, like what do we need to do right?
to win a market. How can we become more ambient? How can we become easier so it doesn't feel like work? And it doesn't matter even if you build the product that's maybe three times better or four times better than the status quo. If it is not really helping the person feel empowered or saving time or making life somehow better, there has to be magic. And we try to find those magical moments. And if you think about Apple, I mean, they are so good at building those moments. Like these
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (36:37.474)
Nobody believed how good these are. And now if you go to the Apple store today, you can test the new AR glasses and all the headset. And I mean, it's unbelievable. I mean, it is unbelievably good. I don't think there's a use case yet, but it is unbelievably good. And how do we build these products that are so exciting that people are telling everybody about them?
Kyle (37:01.14)
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right about a number of those points. I'm curious too, as you're looking at some of these experiences, especially, you know, how can you build these magical ambient experiences? How do you focus on the areas that you do in fact want to focus on, you know, the products specifically? Because obviously there's a number of different areas that you could focus on, a number of different products and things that you could build.
How do you focus in specifically, kind of like you mentioned with the Aura Ring, they focused very specifically on an area to be the best at. How are you prioritizing the areas that you want to focus on and the products that you want to build, and then saying no to the many other things that you could potentially be doing?
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (37:52.202)
I think you make a, that's really the key point, I think in any, any product and how do you find the nuggets of gold you must do? And then how do you say no to the hundred requests you get every day from your customers? And in our case, I think the challenge has been that we are literally building, you know, we have physical products that are food and we send them to people's homes. Then we have an app.
that is basically an app store on iPhone today. And how do you make that app to be valuable companion for the products? And then we also have, you know, we have AI models and data. We have a backend system that, you know, our clinicians are using. Think about like a electronic health record system in a way that we've built. So we have multiple products. And then we are looking at this in a way that what is the most important thing? And in the end today,
we, you know, if you, if you use, you know, you take the yellow, let's say the yellow protein powder, for example, it's a, you know, you take daily use of it, or you take it after your workout, the gummies, you take them daily. If the, if they don't taste good, you're done. The first thing is that, you know, it has to be a great product on that moment when you are using it. Then I think, you know, what the app
and the notification layer, all these things can do the coaching layer. They can help you to build an habit. Because most people, if they buy products from us, they want to build a habit. They want to take these products. They believe in the fact that, you know, this can help them, do not be healthier or maybe, you know, live longer, whatever the point is. And the app has to be a companion that is not the nagging. It has to be positive enforcer in a way to do the right things, the right time.
But you don't have to use it. Like we have maybe third of people who don't really open the app at all. Then we have a third who use the app daily. And we have to build the experience in a way that both are working because people are different. And some people want to be more, you know, they need more help hand holding in the beginning. And maybe they built a habit after a year. I don't think you really need to use the app, but the app always is there and the app has the data flow happening daily. So behind the scenes, you don't need to do anything. The app has all your data.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (40:17.49)
And it makes the product better automatically, even if you don't open the app ever. So those are the unique powers that, you know, we can create that. I mean, it's impossible to think about this. Normally when you buy, let's say supplements or gummies or powders, whatever, you buy from Amazon. Keep in mind when you go to Amazon, it's amazing, by the way, of course, we love in a prime, you know, quick delivery, easy, you know, good prices. But if you are the person selling that product, for example, let's take a protein product.
That company even doesn't even know who you are. They don't even know your name. They don't even know who bought the product. How could they make it better for you? So you need to have this sort of data feedback loop. And of course I need to be trustworthy for you. If you are opening all the data gateway, the most important data is your health data to my company and me, I need to be trustworthy. I need to use it in a proper way. We never sell the data to anyone. It's all private for you. If you want to delete the data, we're going to delete it every place, you know, including our partners.
So those are things you have to do right if you ask people to trust us like we do. But sometimes it becomes magic. You get these calls from people that, hey, I went to my doctor's office and they did my blood work and my blood work is way better. And I don't claim that we can give you supplements or gummies or powders that can maybe help you to improve your A1C or your cholesterol numbers. I mean, the supplements may help a bit.
But it was because our coaching and our content told people and helped people to change the diet, maybe, you know, start walking after their dinner, many things they have done and, and those helped. And one of the key, you ask about the key learnings, I think, and one surprising factor that we have that is very fundamental, you know, the, the fact that you take, you know, these pills or you take these gummies every morning, for example, it reminds you.
of trying to be healthier. It reminds you of these other things you learned. Like you could do this, maybe you eat a better lunch. And by doing that one thing in the morning, it's almost like you tie a knot in your finger to remember something in the morning. So it makes a better person. Maybe it does something for you and that's positive. We can help you vitamin mineral levels. That's easy. But maybe it does something for you. But the placebo impact of you thinking the day in the right way.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (42:42.358)
will make you healthier in a long term. And those to me are the, are the very powerful factors. And that gives me a lot of hope when we later at LO maybe go into, you know, meals and, and food delivery and, and stuff like that. And then we can really have an impact because if we can give you the right food, we can heal everybody. I mean, it's not that difficult. We have the science. It's just about how do we re wiggle your day and your life to do the right things more often than not.
Kyle (43:11.816)
Yeah, I think that's absolutely a great point that you make about the overall experience and about some of the things that are kind of so important at the individual and personal level that you talk about there. I'm interested kind of zooming out a little bit as you've founded LO as a company and you founded other ones and been involved kind of like you said in
a number of other companies as well. What have you found through the journey of being involved early with so many different companies that kind of leads to the most successful outcomes, whether it's been with your companies or whether it's been with other companies that you've worked with? Maybe some of the factors you've seen individually or with other founders as well.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (44:13.498)
One thing that always works, and it's maybe a surprise after the fact, but at the time when you hear about it, you see it, it doesn't feel like a big thing. But then in the end, you look at it and you realize that many, many times this thing made a company. And that is the decision point. When you start, like, you know, we have this idea at ELO about smart nutrition and...
And we're not getting product out to market. We are learning. We are trying to find the fit. But once you find something that truly works and you triple down on that, that is the, the success that always almost makes the great companies. There's one thing, simple thing, maybe that just works. And then you double down on that. And that becomes the one thing. And that becomes the one thing that, you know, you're going to go all the way.
And it's hard to know in the beginning, what is that thing? You have to, you have to find it. And I think there's a very, I'm part of the, um, the tech star community and mentoring companies there for the last few years and they have a, there's a really good talk from the tech star founders and Brad felt is like a really amazing entrepreneur and great investor and a great thinker, you know, he wrote, I don't know, 10 books about how to build companies and his point.
always when he talks about it, so eloquent about product market fit. He says that when you have it, there's no ambiguity. You know, people are going to come to your home to ask for the product. People are going to call you. You will run out of stuff to sell. Your servers are going to crash. That's the product market fit. And what he's saying lately is super interesting. He says that most companies today,
They have a marketing fit. They have marketing product profit in a way. They are really good at marketing. They can use TikTok or Instagram or some, you know, or podcast marketing. What have they found to write marketing? But they don't have the product market fit and that those companies that, you know, they get to the A and B round. And then we realized that they can never get profitability. They don't have retention. They don't really have anything. And we have seen a lot of those companies in the last few years when values have went really high and some companies, you know, raised hundreds of millions of dollars and then they died out of nothing.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (46:33.706)
because they really had nothing concrete. But that fact that product might fit, you don't need to question it. It's not like, do we have it? If you have it, you know. If you don't know, you don't have it. And 90% of companies don't have it ever. But how do you find one thing that is starting to work? And I think picking that up as a founder, as a product team is the key piece. And then triple down on that.
go all the way and forget everything else. And at ELO, for example, now we have built really cool products. Like I said, these are super innovative, maybe a bit expensive for everybody, but we try to put the price down. But I mean, in our case, we are now finding more and more people asking us about, could we partner with you? And a year ago we were like, I don't know. And then we did start our first partnerships and-
We are becoming now not only a product company, but we also become a platform that can empower health and wellness brands to take nutrition into their customers. And we can build this LO. We can do it white labeled. We can do it co-branded. We can do it LO branded. And that will likely become the biggest momentum creator for the company. And we will likely become more like a B2B company with LO branding products that are the innovation leader.
We can always sell them, I think. But that was an interesting thing that happened and it was not coming from the consumer testing, it more came from, you know, industry, people who used our products, who invest in the company and who are running these big brands today and they were like, we would love to partner and take these amazing things you have into our customers. And, you know, I told them my story and it's so rewarding that, you know, in the coming weeks, we are launching the first partnership.
and that will be in the fertility space. So, you know, you know, IVF gave, you know, us two wonderful children. And now we're going to be able to work with, you know, some of the biggest players in that space to bring good nutrition for, you know, women and men who are trying to conceive and how rewarding is that, you know, you kind of go back to the basics that, you know, made me make the decision in the first place to, to play in this turf of healthcare. So, but there's always this point that, you know,
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (48:57.246)
Sometimes you are going to be dragged into the market. You find a market fit somewhat or something works. And sometimes that can be different than what you want to build. And that is of course a big decision point for the people in the company. Like, do we want to become that company? Like we've been pulled quite a bit at Elo into kind of the support nutrition, launch 70, the biohacker community. And I want to be more of a healthcare company.
So for me, it's been a bit of a torn, like, I mean, do we want to go all the all the way in and become like a biohacker company for longevity play that we don't really know the science. We don't really know if these things work. We will know in like 20 years. It takes a long time to prove longevity impact because we live so long. Um, and now I've been trying to say no to that area a bit and rather work in the field of, uh, of healthcare. And that's where we are now going quite heavily as a company.
Kyle (49:52.372)
Yeah, I think that's absolutely fascinating and love the idea kind of like you mentioned about product market fit and the importance of it and the focus there. And when you have it, you absolutely know and being able to really just double and triple down on that.
and I love that and just how important it is. Well, Ari, this has been an absolutely amazing conversation and I'm so fascinated by what you're doing and kind of the area that you're focused in and so much of the conversation. Where can people find out, I actually have kind of a couple of wrap-up questions, but before we get there, where can people find out more about you, about Elo, about the things that you're working on?
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (50:41.458)
If you want to follow me, I mean, I think the only place I'm today quite active is on LinkedIn. Other social media is becoming so toxic and maybe this year is not the best time to hang out in X or Instagram or Facebook and debate about politics. Maybe better to be off from that for your health. And you can find elo.health at elo.health and you can find us also on Instagram.
and LinkedIn and other social mediums. And if you want to, you know, try the products, suit your note. I mean, I'm living for the feedback. I would love to hear your thoughts. And I highly recommend people trying the gummies. I mean, it is truly pretty big innovation that you can get custom made 3D printed gummy vitamins based on your health data. And then it gets better all the time. It is pretty cool.
Kyle (51:36.872)
Yeah, I'm absolutely fascinated by it. And we'll put the links in the show notes as well, because I think this is an innovation that for me is, like you said, it's new and exciting. And I think, I hope.
will be the direction that we start to go more and more frequently because I think this personalization in medicine is going to be something that is revolutionary for the health of people in general. And I'm super excited about it and what you're doing. So I'm excited to see where this goes more. Well, to kind of wrap things up, we like to ask if there's anything that you've been reading or watching or listening to recently that you'd like to recommend. And it doesn't have to be a product or business or.
related but it certainly can be.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (52:26.53)
Yeah, I try to read. The older I get, the more I want to read fiction. And I go back to the basics that I loved as a kid. I spent 10 years playing these games. And sometimes when I didn't play the games, I read sci-fi and I read almost all the sci-fi. I got my hands on and I spent a moment in US studying in my college years. And I...
only class I took then was science fiction writing. So I was writing myself a bit and I love that. And I think there's a one book series that I don't think people should go there if they don't wanna spend awful a lot of time on a series, but Expeditionary Force is a series of books, a sci-fi, bit like a soap opera type of thing. But there's a really cool character called Skippy.
Skippy is this ancient AI that the team works with. It's 15 books. And we are now entering the AI era and reading those books has been an interesting thought process about what AI will mean to humanity for the world, for the universe. And, and I don't think they got it right, but, you know, it's just a really interesting time when you spend, you know, hundreds of hours thinking about that while you're listening or reading the books. And then I think the other.
podcast that, you know, I'm always been a huge fan from the very beginning. I don't know how I, maybe my, one of my product leaders actually talked me about it maybe a decade ago, but it's called Hardcore History. And Dan Carlin is this person who has been telling stories about history. Now for, I think there are maybe a hundred episodes. These are five hours almost each. So it's like hundreds of hours of history talk.
But he's the best podcaster in the world. I mean, and his podcast is unbelievable. I listened to every one of them. I've been telling them, telling hundreds of people about them and everybody gets hooked when they do one and the rat of gone is maybe the best podcast that has ever been made as a people.
Kyle (54:36.256)
I absolutely agree. Hardcore History is possibly one of the best podcasts ever made. So he is superb. I actually have one of his books, The End is Always Near back here somewhere. Absolutely superb. Yeah, superb what he does. Well, Ari, this has again been a superb conversation. Like I said, appreciate all of your insight, the conversation that we had and the work that you're doing. I'm again, so excited to see more of what is coming out of ELO.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (54:47.723)
Yep, it's a great book.
Kyle (55:05.956)
So again, we'll put all of those links in the show notes to everything that we talked about and appreciate again all of your insight.
Ari Tulla (Elo.Health) (55:15.129)
Thank you so much.
Kyle (55:16.472)
All right, thank you everyone for listening.