Andrew Herr - Fount & The Future of Performance Optimization

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over three years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. If you are obsessed with the health and fitness industry like I am, then you'll love FitInsider. It's a free newsletter packed with industry trends, news, tech, startups, and much more. I've been a subscriber for over four years now. And it's my go-to, trusted source for staying informed and getting the in-depth information that I need. Anthony, Joe, and the team do great work. From wearables to health optimization to the latest updates from companies like Woof and Strava. FitInsider is one of the few newsletters that I actually look forward to seeing in my inbox. Plus, the platform also includes a weekly podcast, jobs board, investment fund, and resources for health tech operators. Check out the latest issue and subscribe at fitinsider.com. That's F-I-D-Tinsider.com. Hey friends, if you follow the show, you may have picked up on my passion for heart rate variability when it comes to recovery, performance, and longevity. I track it religiously and I'm always looking for ways to improve. Over the past few months, I've been taking this new supplement called HRV Plus by mode and method. Over that time, I've experienced significant improvement in sleep quality, faster recovery, and an objective uptick in my average HRV. About two to three points on average. That's a big deal. HRV Plus is the world's first expert-curated, carefully sourced blend of all natural micronutrients to optimize recovery, increase performance, and boost heart rate variability. Formulated by some of the world's leading experts, HRV Plus combines their proprietary hemp extract with omega-3 oil, magnesium, and curcumin extract to target inflammation, improve sleep, and supercharge our endocannabinoid system. I encourage you to give it a shot. Go to modemethod.com and enter discount code Eric15. That's modemodemethod.com and enter code Eric15 for 15% off. Go get it. All right, we are live. Andrew Hurr, welcome to the future of fitness, my friend.

Thanks, Eric. Fantastic to be here. Really looking forward to chatting today.

You are an interesting person doing an interesting thing. So I'm uh I'm excited to you know extract the information and find out a lot about you know what makes you tick, what makes uh your company fount tick, and uh and much more. I mean, there's you know, like we were just discussing, the the approach that you have, you know, from a scientific and systematic back, you know, background into optimizing human health and performance is fascinating. So I've had a little bit of a chance to to experience what you guys do there. Uh very impressed so far. So uh I guess without further ado, let's get into it, man. Your your backstory is critical to what the company is doing. So let's start with that and then we'll uh we'll see where it takes us.

Awesome. So I ran human performance and biotech strategy efforts for the US military for seven years. Uh it was a really amazing experience to be able to work on everything from kind of high-end research and development strategy, thinking about the future, down to getting Navy SEALs ready to deploy, running big clinical trial. Um, and so out of that, I was able to really, I think, build a mental model of how to think about performance, uh especially around how important customization is and sort of the three aspects of customization: your body, your goals, your lifestyle. And I think of that as if it's not customized to your body, it doesn't work that well. It's not customized to your goals, you don't care about it. And if it's not customized to your lifestyle, you won't do it. Um, and so you know, we thought you know a lot about that. And then out of that work, I'd be speaking at conferences, and executives would come to me and be like, hey, I get what the SEALs, but what should I be doing? So I built an executive coaching business, ran training for their companies, and again, saw the same thing. Um, customization dramatically important. But also it carried forward a thought, uh kind of line of thinking I'd been really focused on while in the military, which was look, for a thousand Navy SEALs, like we know how to tune them up. We'll bring in elite coaches, we'll build a facility. For CEOs, we can do the same thing. But how do we do it for everyone else? How do you go from a thousand SEALs to a hundred thousand army grunts? How do you go from the C-suite to the factory floor? And so that's you know, really what drove me to start found was how do we use the approaches we'd developed working with elite performers and people with a lot of resources and enable us to scale it to millions of people across different modalities and tools and different challenges that they face.

How did you get that role working at those levels within the military DOD? How did that come to fruition?

Serendipity drives most interesting things in the world, I find. So I had a bit of an odd academic background. I came out of school with uh with graduate degrees in radiation physics and radiation biology, with um a second master's in microbiology and immunology, and a third one in national security policy. I almost went and worked for the CIA working on nuclear weapons issues, but I didn't, thankfully. And out of that work, uh, I was got a call one day from the career center saying, Hey Andrew, somebody walked in. They need someone who does biology and national security and can write. And I'm like, well, we know this guy, Andrew. So I have this weird background. I go to dinner uh at the restaurant that's also the local college bar there where it was at Georgetown in DC, and had it just in the most interesting conversation I'd ever had around a job. It was to take over a studies program on the future of human performance for the military, Secretary of Defense's private think tank on strategic issues, just really to be able to think what is what is the technology coming down the pipe? What are we going to be able to do? How we use it, how our adversaries use it, and what does this all mean for the next 20 years? Um, so it was just an incredible opportunity. Worked on that for three years, um, and then out of that ended up going and working um with the Air Force on their human performance strategy, um, working with the Navy, various you know, different services, and you know, was just able to kind of have my hands in every different piece of that pie over over seven years.

Yeah. Wow, what an interesting place to find yourself. And that is uh, I don't I've never met anyone with even close to that type of educational background.

You know, I always say that like, you know, in in Monopoly, if you have five houses you can trade for a hotel. So I've I've told them like, can I trade these master's degrees for a PhD, but they don't like that. So I don't know why.

Yeah, right. Nice try though. Uh you mentioned that you ran a clinical trial as well. Can you give us some insights on what that was all about?

Yeah, we took 450 army cadets, um, put them through a double-blind placebo-controlled trial, three groups. One got uh coaching on performance, nutrition, as well as a pretty extensive supplement protocol and snacks. Second group got uh what they thought was just supplements, but actually were all placebos. And the third group got nothing and knew it. Um, you know, I think one of the real weaknesses in a lot of research out there is that we don't know how big the placebo effect is. And so we gathered both nothing and the placebo effect and the real physiological plus the placebo effect. And in eight weeks, we get a 55% improvement in mood scores in the intervention group. Um they dropped 30 seconds off their two-mile runtime, strength gains, um, 25% improvement relative sleep. So able to drive pretty dramatic effects pretty quickly.

How did the uh placebo group do? I mean, placebo is a very powerful thing, right?

They did they did better. They they had meaningful benefits, but not nearly the same effects as the intervention group. So, but yeah, they they did well. They they probably got about a third to a half of the benefits of the intervention.

Yeah, interesting. Uh, you know, so working with the the high performers in the the military scope, um, what were some of the biggest challenges or are some of the biggest challenges that they face when it comes to performance optimization? And then you know my second question is gonna lead into well, what does that mean for the rest of us?

You can't tell somebody who's got to fly in at night, do a mission, come back, like they're not getting eight hours of sleep. So the schedule, just the schedule um and the sleep stuff is a real challenge. The intensity of the training, and you know, if you have to go and you have an 80 or 100 pound pack on your back and you're moving across terrain, jumping out of planes, I mean, the level of stress on your body is quite dramatic. You know, eight-hour dive missions in cold water with in wetsuits, not dry suits. So, you know, it helps, but it's still cold. So, anyways, you just have this exposure to extreme environments, exposure to extreme stresses, psychological and physical, and then just sort of this like suboptimal performance environment, you don't exactly have like a private chef flying into a mission with you. So I think you know, I mentioned we like to you know focus on tailoring to body goals lifestyle. And again, you know, you want to tailor to anyone's body regardless, but goals and lifestyle, if you think about that in the special operations context, is very extreme.

Yeah, it's interesting. So you're saying they don't have like uh their their perfect temperature bed cover, like an eight sleep. Like I look at I look at my life sometimes with you know a lot of the stuff that I get to test out and get to you know talk to companies and and brilliant people like yourself who uh you know, I get to extract information. I'm like, man, I am soft. Like I just, you know, I get my everything's optimized in so many little spaces, but you know, if if shit ever hits the fan, I don't know, am I gonna be okay? Like I'm scared to go camping now because uh everything is is so optimized um within my uh within my sleep routine. Anyway. Um, so tell us a little bit like what is exactly that you guys do over there? How do you service customers? Maybe the best way to do is you can just walk us through like a client experience or a customer experience.

So I already said there's kind of no tests in the world that can figure out exactly what you need. Um actually, I think we were talking about that before the show. So unfortunately, that's the case. But that means is data is still valuable because it can guide where to experiment to see exactly what works for you. So the first thing we do with all our clients is intensive data collection, you know, 100 plus biomarkers and blood work, wearables across, you know, like Aura or Whoop and uh continuous glucose monitoring. And then the real crown jewel of what we built, spend an hour and a half with one of our elite performance advisors. Um this is going to be the person who's gonna be your one-on-one coach throughout the program. And I will tell you that almost none of our clients walk out of that hour and a half focused on their goals, their lifestyle, um, you know, family history, all that stuff without real aha moments about themselves. And so we take those three data sets and then we use that to design your first experiment cycle, one to four experiments to run in that first week, a combination of focus on quick wins and longer-term changes depending on what your goals are, and then we iterate with you. So for that first sort of four experiment cycles, first four weeks after you get all that data collection, we're gonna be focused on really exploring the pathways in your body and making progress. The second phase after that, another four weeks, we're gonna be focused on kind of tailoring those tools. So there's timing, dosage, um, what meditation, what breath work, you know, all these tools. And then in sort of the third phase, there uh we'll really wrap things together into a lifestyle toolkit. And then after the end of that first um that initial program, so that's you know, kind of first few weeks of data collection in those three phases, four months altogether, you know, the majority of our clients then sign up to continue because they want to continue having support and uh making progress. And so, but then it typically goes to more of like a monthly check-in because you've already made so much progress and you already kind of know your body better, you know your performance advisor. And so, really, it's this kind of encompassing four-month program that enables anyone to go from zero to 60, 40 to 80, or kind of 90 to 110 miles an hour, depending on where they are in their journey, what their goals are. Um, we work with men and women from 30s to 70s, and uh thankfully are able to drive incredible results across energy, focus, mood, sleep, gut health, longevity is a big one these days, fertility, stress management, athletic performance, body composition. Sort of you pick it.

Wow, well, it's impressive. So you're taking you know some baseline data. You mentioned blood panels and wearables. Um, blood panels we've discussed on various forms of podc on this podcast. So I think I understand, you know, the insights you can glean from that. But with the wearables, I mean, there's so many different types of wearables. I mean, shit, I'm wearing three. Um, you know, what what uh you know, what what's some of the data you're looking to get from wearables? I mean, that's still I I still I've I've been talking about wearable space for a long time, but it's still kind of young, right? It doesn't have any um, you know, I guess uh uh consistency across the board as far as you know the the data that you're gathering. So how are you guys utilizing that?

Yeah, so we're interested in the delta from your own baseline.

Okay.

What's clear from all the research and some unpublished military research that you know I had access to was the absolute accuracy, meaning like how perfectly it measures your sleep stage is is kind of less valuable than if it's going, you know, if it's improving or or getting worse, that data is pretty accurate. And so we're looking for signals across heart rate and heart rate variability, sleep, um, quality, sleep latency, all these other factors to say, um, hey, when we move your workout from this time to that time, um, that was great for your afternoon energy levels, but it didn't mess with your sleep. Or did it make your sleep better? Um, are we is this supplement helping your sleep? Is uh a warm shower before bed helping your sleep quality? Because it allows your body to experience that rapid temperature drop that is a signal to your brain that's on set of sleep. So again, um sleep, sympathetic activation, kind of you know, activation of your nervous system and that heart rate, heart rate variability, those are the two biggies. And then blood sugar with a continuous glucose monitor, also really interesting in going into diet and identifying what's optimal for your body. Um, we also have some protocols for understanding signs of inflammation, other things that may be signals in that blood sugar data.

Got it. Is there any um particular hardware that you guys prefer, or do you just let the clients do you call them clients? Do you call them customers? What do you call?

They're members or clients. Um, you know, we we like to think of people as you know really um integrated into the company, so customers feel a little too too lowbrow for our clients. Um but you know, but you know, what do we like? Um we're agnostic to whoop and aura. Um, we find both of those can be valuable, but whatever a customer will wear or already has, we're happy with. And then we work with levels on the continuous glucose monitor, and so you're either getting depending uh Dexcom G6 or Freestyle Libre. And again, it's all about you know these relative changes uh with different foods or different interventions, and we do see uh meaningful signals from those.

Awesome.

Dexcom's a little more accurate on average than than Freestyle Libre, but again, as long as you're understanding the directions things are going, that's still really valuable.

Yeah, one of my uh colleagues, um Chris Jones from Levels lives here in WEF. I'm very impressed with their company and what they're doing so far. It's seems like a great partner for you guys. Uh and then you overall, I mean, you've you've alluded to a bunch of them indirectly, but what are the tools that you have in your toolkit to apply to help people? I mean, supplementation, obviously, sleep optimization, a bunch of different things. But um yeah, enlighten us on that a little bit.

Yeah, we look at the full gamut of tools in this sort of non-prescription performance world as nutrition, supplements, meditation, and breath work, sleep tools, um, light, temperature, exercise, and recovery. And so we will build everything from a meal plan and shopping list, depending on what you need. We run our own custom supplement packaging facility. So it's real easy, no bottles. You get like these pre-made packs every, you know, whatever you need. If you need multiple ones a day, we do that for you. FedEx them out the same day, um, all the way to you know, really cool sleep tech and uh you know protocols for sauna and cold plunge, et cetera.

Yeah, yeah, very cool. Uh and out of curiosity, when you look at most of the things, like if you had to put build a pyramid, right, of what you see the most, where you most of your interventions take place, is it I presume like sleep's number one? Or are what what are where is a large majority of the interventions taking place?

You know, it really depends on the client. Um, if you're if any one of those is totally out of whack, then fixing it is so highly valuable that it will immediately become the most important one. You know, I think the absolute cornerstones end up being nutrition, sleep, and cognitive tools, whether that's you know, meditation breathwork or just more traditional stress management stuff. But again, if somebody's already like really great and calm but needs to dial in their nutrition, then we're gonna focus there. We are have incredible expertise at supplements and using those as tools, not only for themselves, but also for kind of really fun tools like what's a supplement that's gonna help you get into the breath work and get more value out of it, or things like that. So there's some really fun protocols around that kind of stuff.

And how do you uh organize the whole member experience? Like, do you guys have an app or a platform, you know, with uh you know ways to communicate? Like how does it all pull together?

Yeah, so you get a uh pet web page that has all your programs on it, and then we do communication with our clients. You know, we could build a separate chat feature, but people like to just text and email. It's their daily workflow. We don't want to pull you out of your workflow. So you're on text, email, and zoom with your performance advisor, and then you have a single repository where all your programs and protocols live. Um we're gonna be launching a sleep coach app that will kind of be there for you every morning and every evening. Uh, that'll come out in the kind of end of Q1 here, um, and that'll then slot into the member experience. We do that kind of manually now, where clients can tell us if they're not sleeping well or they're sleeping well, and then we can already review their data on the back end. Um, but we're gonna have a sleep coach that has some cool AI algorithms we've already built in there. Um and then we they have access to kind of our existing unique tools. So we can now send 95% of people anywhere in the world with no jet lag. Um we've productized that into something we call Flykit. Um basically there's an app, you answer eight questions about your body in your trip and put in your flights, and it will give you a protocol that tells you exactly when to eat, sleep, and use the stuff in the physical fly kit pack. There's four different dietary supplements, there's glasses, there's a drink mix, um, and depending on which one you get, there's compression socks and a neurostimulator that triples blood flow into your legs. And um, that comes out of my work with the Navy SEAL community as well as the fighter pilot and business executive community. And now that um you don't need a coach to do that. So that's a fully productized where by the answers you use, the AI algo in there then customizes for you. Um, and the results we see are pretty incredible because there's some breakthrough science. We we discovered a whole new part of um how flying affects you.

Yeah, I mean, that's like a standalone product that could support a company within itself, you know?

We think it could be a pretty big product for us. Um so it's you know, we launched that, that's now um thankfully available to you know anyone who's not just a fount member, but of course our found members um get direct access to it as part of their program.

Yeah, yeah, interesting. So I you know, one of the questions I I would, if I'm a listener, I'm probably asking myself, well, you know, this there's the coaching industry has been around for a while, right? Um, you know, remote coaching, you know, especially over the last three, four years, has really become pretty commonplace now. So when you look at what Fauna is doing, like how are you guys differentiating from the masses of the coaching industry that's kind of already been around for a little while?

Yeah, I'd say several things. One, the quality of our performance advisors. We run everybody through an internal uh four-month training program on top of their existing experience that you know I am very proud of, and I think is really gives them a breadth of knowledge that just doesn't exist out there. Two, the experimental-based protocols we run, this you know, issuing of a guru, this is the answer for everyone, um, coming in and saying, like, we don't care if keto works for your body, if vegetarian works for your body, if this like doesn't matter what it is, we just care that it works. And that, you know, approaching everything totally agnostic, except to the outcomes, uh, allows us to just make sure we deliver for the clients. And then the one-on-one relationship and care we provide. You know, we have a concierge team, we're making the supplement packs custom for you, you know, your performance advisor. They often have very, very close relationships with our clients. Uh, one of the crazy things that happens is often when a woman finds out she's pregnant, we're the your performance advisor is the second person to find out after their partner because it's like, okay, now we've got changes to make. And also, they've probably been working on fertility, so they're really excited. So Like if we're the second people to know uh when someone's pregnant, that tells you the level of relationship we build with them.

Yeah, that's great. I mean, it's it having someone in your corner like that, uh that you're not really uh you know emotionally connected with, right? A parent or a spouse or you know, someone like that is is so important, especially uh I don't know. I feel like nowadays it's more important ever. We feel so disconnected, right? More connected than ever, but more disconnected in the same in the same way. To have someone like that who's kind of looking after you, I mean, it's gotta be really valuable. Is that I mean, I presume you hear feedback like that, right?

Yeah, I mean, people people rave about our performance advisors and they're fun, they're also fun people. They were former special operators, they trained Cirque du Soleil artists, they were Olympic sports scientists. So, you know, these are cool people to talk to, but they they're also very knowledgeable and used to working with people who are new to health journey, all the way through, obviously, to elite, um, elite performers.

Yeah. Uh I I want to double down on on customization too. I mean, that's I think if there's uh we're recording this in January of 2023, but I think if I had to predict what this year's theme would be, it's there's been a bunch of different themes over last year for fitness and health. Uh, you know, um hybrid was like two years ago, omnichannel, right? And um smart seemed to be last year. Uh this year I think it's personalization, and I think it all leads into that and and customization. So I mean when you look at how you guys are forging a new path as far as customization or what that means maybe for the next decade of all you know of performance uh optimization, you know, tell us tell us how important that is.

You know, I used to think that it was most important because it made things work better. And obviously that's really valuable. I've come to believe more recently, though, that it's just as important that it makes things work faster. We're, you know, our clients are busy business people, entrepreneurs, parents with kids in jobs. I mean, these are busy people. And if things don't start working, they quite reasonably are going to put their attention somewhere else. And so the ability to drive rapid benefits is only possible either if you get lucky, if it's one size fits all, or if you really intensively personalize. And so, you know, we want it to work better also, but faster is this thing I think people overlook sometimes. And I think that's also the reason, you know, our big mission here is through Fount Pro, we gather also these very unique data sets that allow us to build products that make this kind of support accessible to millions of people over time. And I want this technology to solve the entire healthcare crisis because, you know, the metabolic-driven disease, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, all these things are the 80% of uh of the spend. And so if we can solve these things, then we can really solve the healthcare crisis. So, all that being said, you know, not just for elite performers, we're gonna need things to work really quickly and you know keep people focused and not dropping off who are not used to having this level of support when we get out to the kind of mass population. And so, anyways, I think that's why customization matters. Sure, it works better, critical, it works faster, really, really important.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good uh that's a really good perspective. And you know, I I'm uh curious to hear as well that uh when you work with executives, when you work with um, you know, special forces, these are very motivated people, right? Disciplined, coachable, right? All of those things. When you start to kind of get into more of the mainstream populations, it gets, and anyone who's been a coach knows what I'm talking about, it just gets a little bit harder, right? There becomes more uh, you know, I guess excuses. So motivation and accountability becomes really what you're what you're getting paid to do. So how do you guys help people um in that because humans are humans, that hasn't changed in a little while. Uh so motivation is big, but how do you approach that, especially as you look to kind of democratize this and get out to more more of the population?

So in Fount Pro, the ability to have a one-on-one relationship is a huge part of that. Second, the fact that we're watching your data, we're analyzing it for you, so we notice when things change. Uh second, you know, again, that just shows the attention that built that's really part of building that relationship. And so I think those pieces are really the like that's sort of the best way to do it. But of course, elite coaches don't scale to millions of people. And so what we need there is the person needs to feel supported and they need to actually be supported. And so, what does that mean? Well, if you think about a wearable today, despite the incredible amount of data, I think Aura announced not that long ago that billion nights of sleep data. But still, the recommendations are mostly like about going to bed earlier, taking it easy. They're they're quite light on the recommendations to date. If for you to really feel supported, you need somebody to really give you valuable information. You know, I often say people just want to know what to do. They want to know what to eat, take, and do to look, feel, and perform like they want. So, one, we've got to actually give them the actionable recommendations that make their life better. And then we need to leverage some of these same dopamine loops that stick people's noses in social media all day and bring it into their health. And I do think there are some really sophisticated ways to do that. Um, and over time, building community, one of the things about social media is part of that, will be critical as well. So, you know, you see parts of this that have worked. You know, Strava has parts of that that have worked because you can see other people's workouts. You know, the there are tools out there that can make recommendations that help. And so I think whoever can bring together the system that both works really effectively, makes you feel supported, and makes brings a little bit of that community and gamification together, that's sort of the like holy trinity that will drive long-term engagement and allow people to achieve whatever their goals are.

Yeah, yeah. Good answer, Andrew.

Um actually, I'll just jump in. One other thing, yeah. This is like a big takeaway from my work with the military. Nobody cares about their health. If we define health as this like long-term thing with important consequences, I used to work with these 18-year-old army grunts sometimes. Like they literally could not care about their health, but they care about their performance. Everybody cares about four one of four things: how they perform at their job and mission, in relationships, friends, family, dating, um, sports and hobbies, and how they look and feel. Those four things are what people care about. Let's stop telling people to care about their health because, oh, by the way, most things I can do to give you more energy and make you feel better, perform better on the court, look better, these are very aligned with long-term health. So let's stop telling people what they should care about. That's a classic strategy, as anyone who knows, uh who has teenagers knows, that does not work very well.

It is, you're right. It's ambiguous. Like health, what does that even mean? I mean, we can talk about lifespan in the form, you know, in the context of longevity, but even then, it's like, okay, we're just putting years, we're just adding years in some, you know, unknown way. I like, I don't know what's going to happen, man. I mean, knock on wood, I could walk out this door and a car could hit me. And then, you know, my health is right. But if we're talking about, you know, performance or whatever, whatever that may be, like that that seems a lot more uh of an emotional hot button for each and each and every one of us, right?

I mean, recruiting for a clinical trial, I walked into university and told a bunch of kids, like, if I'd said, hey, this is about health and want you to be healthier, I would not have gotten many to sign up. Instead, I came in and said, like, this is gonna you know help your performance here, you're gonna do better there. Um, and hey, bye, we're gonna give you these free pills. And we had hundreds and hundreds of people consent into that clinical trial, like within 40 minutes. It was I mean, kind of amazing.

Yeah, that's a really important insight, too. I think you you summarize that so well in those four areas. Uh, you know, when we talk about the products itself and the cons and the members are joining, what what kind of price point are you guys at now for the consumer?

Yep. So Fount Pro, that four-month experience is $12,000. So $3K a month for four months. And then the majority of people will sign up to continue. They had a great experience, and it's much lower price point. So it's typically like five to six hundred dollars a month after that. Um, and because you know you're meeting with your coach typically like then monthly, and you don't need as much of an intensive blood work all the time experience. Some of our clients want to continue at the same level intensity, and that's fun too. But yeah, so it's 12K plus five to six hundred month uh dollars a month after that initial four-month period.

Got it, got it. And I wanna uh I want to circle back on the fly kit too, because you know, I'm I'm wanting to put this in context. Like um, I'm I as I told you pre-recording, I'm going to Brazil and uh in four days. And so that that is I got I fly, let's see, Calspell to Salt Lake, Salt Lake to Atlanta, Atlanta to Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo to my wife's family's hometown. Five flights. Is that right? Four flights, five, whatever, and a drive at the end. Um it sucks. It's like 25 hours, right? And there's no way around it. So how how does Flykit interject into such and that's probably extreme, you know? Most people are flying, you know, cross country or you know, across the pond. But how does Flagkit interject into a situation like that and help me uh deal better?

Yeah. So the first piece of this is that we have this brand new insight we discovered, which is that the air pressure changes when you fly cause an inflammatory response. So anyone who flies and recognizes that you brain fog and low energy, maybe your legs swell, um, a lot of people get gut things, constipated. That's all being caused by this inflammatory response that we discovered. I was working with Navy SEAL divers and they were dealing with pressure changes that were causing inflammation. And then we realized it was happening in airplanes too. And what we figured out is how to turn off that inflammatory response. And then that allows us to like almost immediately that first night shift your circadian rhythm. And so, you know, what you'll experience is you'll have a customized protocol that will make sure you're getting um each of the four different dietary supplements in your fly kit pack at the exact right times you need them. There's a drink mix to reset your circadian rhythm. There's blue light blocking glasses to shift the light thing, and then also when to eat and sleep. Um and it basically just sort of gives you this fully integrated program. You don't have to think about it. It takes care of all that really complex science for you via our kind of AI-driven algorithm. And you will then sleep much better on the plane if you if you need to sleep on the plane. You'll wake up feeling much better, your brain, your body, um, people's guts are working better, your legs won't be all swollen, like I'm sure many people experience. And you're able to suddenly like have a good first day at your destination and then sleep well your first night. And I get so many messages from clients being like, I can't believe I just slept eight hours my first night in Tokyo or Bangalore, India, or wherever they've gone. Um, it's a really amazing experience.

Yeah, yeah, great, man. I mean, that's that is a big problem. Every every traveler knows, like, it's just especially if you're going for business and you gotta be there and the next day you gotta perform. You know, it can be uh daunting. It's just you're just not yourself, really. That's that's kind of the summary of it.

Um that's actually kind of where the we'd already done some of this work, I said, with the military, but then we really finally productized it because clients were coming to us being like, hey, we're flying from the east coast of the US to Asia. We land in Seoul Korea at 4 p.m. There's a big dinner that night, and they want to negotiate the next morning at 7 a.m. In their words, we're effing getting killed here. What should we do? Um and so we that was the we launched that, we've built that first protocol to test it with them. And I got an email from Seoul Korea being like, I don't know what you did, but I just slept eight hours my first night. Um, and here we are.

Yeah, well done. Uh let's talk about shift gears a little bit, Andrew, just talk about the business. I know you got um some good news to to report here, but um like I always say, you know, share what you can about, you know, uh where you guys are at as far as numbers, um, uh investment, funding, uh, employees, clients, members, all that stuff. We'd love to hear some metrics on you.

Yeah, uh really exciting time for the business. You know, Fout Pro is growing. We have hundreds of clients um in the business. We have a team of 30 people, uh, and uh we haven't really formally announced it, but this is an informal announcement. Um we raised the $12 million Series A to continue building this, led by uh Amity Venture Partners, been a fantastic um collaborator and partner of ours. And so yeah, we're just really uh incredibly excited about moving forward and the ability to keep keep growing, you know, our sort of coaching business that provides this incredible data to build products to help other people. That's the other beautiful thing is you know, it's expensive, but for people who want the best, it's you know a very worthwhile experience, expense if they can afford it. And then they're also helping us scale products that can reach millions of people. So their you know, their found membership is really helping um the world in that way. And so, you know, I don't want to overstate that, but we we do have a much bigger mission here to help people you know reach their goals so they can do more for their family, their community, and ultimately the world. And so every one of our clients really supports that mission.

Yeah. Well, let's put a timestamp on. I mean, like five years from now, so 2028, I guess. What where do you see Fount? What do you think what do you think that's gonna look like?

We want to have a digital coach that gives you the level of support and optimization you can get from the best coach in the world on in our Found Pro program today, but available for 20 bucks a month. We want a truly digital coach, but that can personalize, can support, can customize, can respond. And that will, I think, be what allows us to really make the world-changing uh effects we we want to have.

And when you say digital coach, you mean like an AI-based coach, or is it actually like a, you know, is there is there a human in there somewhere?

So we have we have these amazing performance advisors. One of them his name's Guy, he's uh was a former Navy special operator. His biceps are approximately like 12 times the diameter of mine. He also has just like incredible charisma. I just want to like deep fake him or Kim on our team who's an Olympic sports scientist. Um, and all, you know, like I just want to deep fake all of our coaches now and give them to you on as a video. You know, you can talk directly to them through the AI and they'll be there for you. But yes, an app-based experience, or I don't know, maybe by five years we'll be in VR. You tell me, but um, we want to give you a coach that anyone can afford that allows them to you know really reach their goals, health, and performance, and hits all those pieces we talked about before, customization, support, and then we'll build community into that, of course. And so there will be real people around, and some of those will be your contemporaries and some of those maybe coaches on our side, but um you know, the ability to have that community as part of your journey.

Uh you know, I I want to, you seem like a great person to ask this question. It's a little off topic, but it's relevant to the times. You know, right now there's a lot of news about AI and what it what it's you know happening with like Chat GBT and Microsoft purchasing that. And it's it's pretty incredible. I mean, I keep seeing uh posts on LinkedIn and articles that are written by AI, and it's pretty damn good, right? I mean, this is way farther than I thought it would be already. And uh, you know, I just saw someone posted the I think it passed like the bar exam, the medical exam, right? Yeah. When when you look at that, when one thing, like obviously it's exciting. Like, whoa, this is like a really powerful thing. Um I guess one question, this is you know, um existential in some ways, but are we ready for this?

I think what social media, you know, obviously I'm gonna reflect on this through the human performance lens and psychology. I think what social media has shown us is that we are as influenzable as we ever were. I always say some the two biggest stressors for most humans who aren't starving are uncertainty and social judgment. So we think about the influence of uncertainty of information and social judgment of you know, seeing what other people are posting and or criticizing, you know, there's certainly a huge risk there of humans being as influenceable as ever. And I think we just need to be very aware that the Chat GPT experience for anyone who uses it provides pretty nuanced discussion. I think if you'd given that to somebody 50 years ago, they would tell you it passes the Turing test, meaning people can't tell if it's a human or not. So I think are we ready for it is more of a societal question. Because the individual human hardware hasn't changed much. The software, people will learn, and I think, you know, especially, you know, younger people will learn faster is is the way with technology. So I think there's it's a really a societal question because from a psychology standpoint, this ability to influence people is real and it exists, and it exists for a reason evolutionarily, but it is definitely maybe not matched with the times. So I think, you know, as much as ever, it's gonna be important where you get your news and and information from. And I'm not that's not saying like the traditional sources are the right ones. Um, in fact, it's saying, you know, working to verify and really get the ground truth is gonna be more important than ever when there's more information out there and it's just easier to generate a bunch of stuff. You know, we see this in health and fitness. You can ask Chat GPT a question and it will give you a workout program, but it's pretty one size fits all. And so, you know, I would say, like, again, like then you see a someone who's really in the space who can ask it some more nuanced questions and get it to modify it to be custom, but they had to be an expert to get it to do that. So, again, like careful of sort of one size fits all generic information. And let's just flip it the other way. Super optimistic about what it can allow us to do. You know, we basically believe that the data set we're collecting is going to allow us to train these types of models to be your coach that can customize to you. My COO, Clayton Kim, ran machine learning for Wayfair and other big companies when they went up against Amazon. Like, so we're we're leveraging this technology 100%, and we see huge opportunities for it to help our clients.

Yeah, yeah, that's great insights. And I mean, I look at this stuff too, and I I ask myself questions like, is this kind of the beginning of the end for any knowledge-based uh profession, right? Where it's just like, okay, like I look at, you know, um attorneys, let's use an example, uh, they have to memorize the law, right? Now, that itself is is you know to memorize, they have to be able to understand and nuance it. But the experience, the human experience over the years of how they navigate it, what hits with the jury, what hits with the judge, like that that's the significant change that I don't think AI can do. But man, I mean, there's you know, I I hate to be a teacher right now trying to decipher like what kids are actually writing what. You know, that that's that's pretty amazing to me. And when I remember when I was young, I I everything was memorization. I would memorize something for a test and forget it. And I think that's like the significant change. It's like, well, you know, is memorization and and knowledge capture really as necessary as it used to be, but that also, you know, that leads to human experience and intentionally, you know, experience and knowledge equals wisdom, right? So I don't know, I'm kind of rambling now, but that's that's where my thought has been going on us. And I think about it almost every single day.

And I'll tell you, I was at a table at a conference not too long ago, and I asked, it was kind of in the flow of conversation, somebody brought up another issue. How many people at this table have had a medical error that really seriously affected their life? These were people uh in their 30s primarily. Seven out of eight people raised their hands. Wow. So I will tell you that um, you know, you could read that two ways. One, human doctors aren't perfect, so there's that. But two, the generic response is not the right response in a surprisingly large number of cases. And so, you know, I think we where we need to go is having the data to teach these models to go beyond the generic response. And, you know, that's where you know the kind of data we collect we think is incredibly valuable and why, you know, we can make the commitment to our clients that we'll never sell it, because it's way more valuable for us to use to train models to help people with than to sell. Um, it's also just you know, I think the wrong thing to do. So I think, yes, they can pass the US medical licensing exam, but I don't want Chat GPT as my doctor now because frankly, there's a lot more nuance than the average response. But if my doctor was using it to be like, hmm, I wonder if there's any other interesting ideas here, super excited by that kind of approach.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. So um in the spirit of collaboration, what like what is it that that you need uh as a CEO and founder of Fount right now? Like uh what do you guys as you grow got your funding? Uh I presume you're gonna be growing a team. Um, are partnerships important to you? Yeah, let the audience do what you need right now.

Yeah, partnerships are super valuable. We're you know talking to gyms, to you know, uh concierge medicine practices, especially primary care and others about you know offering Fount Pro you know alongside their offerings. And then if anybody is in the airline industry and travel industry, we're really excited to get FlyKit out there to more people. So would love to hear from you as well. So I'd say, yeah, partnerships are a huge piece of it. And you know, basically we want to help more people. Um, I'm in a very lucky position as a CEO where you know the work we do helps people and helps the business. And I get to work on the thing I'm most interested in that has the greatest potential to impact the world, and um that has a potential for you know, obviously helping me and my family and our employees financially. So it's just sort of awesome to be so aligned. Um, but yes, if there are people out there, partnerships are very high in priority. Please reach out to me through our website or um you can email me directly at andrew at fount.bio.

Right on. And that's uh that was my next question is where people go to reach you.

Uh I'm active, somewhat active on Twitter. Um, my team would like me to be more active on Instagram, and so I'll work on that. Um, but yeah, on Twitter at Andrew HerBio B I O. Um on the web, um our website is fount.bio f o n t dot Bio. And you can find out about Fount Pro and Flykit there um and reach out to us if we can help you.

Very cool. Well, Andrew, I I appreciate you spending uh an hour of your day. This has been uh just really insightful. I've I've enjoyed it and you know, I guess it's really kind of expanded my horizons on on where we could go over the next five to ten years. So that's that's pretty exciting. Uh, you know, I I get up every morning excited about where our industry is going, and uh you're definitely part of that. So really appreciate it, ladies and gentlemen. Andrew Herr.

Thanks so much, Eric. It was a pleasure to be here.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This was your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Futurif Minutes. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it. iTunes, Spotify, Catbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the feature of fitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the Future of Fitness. Have a great day.