Today, I’m joined by Joel Lieginger, founder and CEO of Paceline, a fitness rewards platform and creator of the first health & wellness credit card.
Paceline’s holistic approach incentivizes physical, mental, and financial health in a continuous virtuous cycle through best-in-class digital products and financial services. Using connected wearables and AI, Paceline seeks to create a better, healthier society by paying people for positive lifestyle changes.
During our discussion, we talk about paying people to work out, Paceline’s wellness credit card, and Joel’s vision to transform the sick care and life insurance industries.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How Paceline connects brands with consumers
- Paceline’s innovative way to get people to prioritize their health
- How Paceline gets brand partners a 10x conversion rate
- A clever solution for unused gym memberships
Links & Resources
- Subscribe to the Fitt Insider newsletter
- Visit the Fitt Insider jobs board
- View current Fitt Insider investment and get in touch
Joel Lieginger’s Links
Transcript
[00:00:00] Joel:
Your physical health is the most valuable thing to society, and we can actually monetize that for you. We’re going to give you more value, and in some cases almost turn your physical health into an asset and currency.
[00:00:25] Joe:
Welcome back to the Fitt Insider podcast. I’m your host, Joe Vennare.
Today I’m joined by Joel Lieginger, founder and CEO of Paceline. A health and wellness platform that incentivizes people to live a healthier lifestyle.
In this episode we talk about paying people to workout, Paceline’s wellness credit card, and Joel’s vision to transform the sick care and life insurance industries.
Let’s get into it.
Hi, Joel, welcome to Fitt Insider. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:47] Joel:
Thanks for having me, Joe. It’s great to be here.
[00:00:49] Joe:
Let’s get into it, chat a little bit about Paceline. It feels like every time I talk to you or we catch up, exchange emails, it’s like another funding round, another product announcement. For folks who aren’t familiar, can you give us a little bit of the background and tell us about what you’re working on?
[00:01:05] Joel:
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it. It’s a great time to be building in health and wellness, and in FinTech. Ultimately what Paceline is doing is creating a new direct-to-consumer health and wellness platform. Healthcare isn’t healthcare, it’s sick care. We can and should, as a society, invest in people’s health.
What Paceline does is bring best-in-class digital products, plus financial services, together through a credit card offering and insurance to pay people to live a healthy lifestyle.
[00:01:33] Joe:
There’s so many aspects of that that are super interesting. There’s the rewards aspect, that isn’t necessarily new, then there’s the wellness credit card offering. Beyond that, this idea of how do we re-imagine FinTech and financial technology altogether?
Walk us through what you have been building and how that’s evolving as you think about where Paceline is going.
[00:02:00] Joel:
The two things you’re asking about are overlapping. One is, how do you build a company from scratch in a brand new category that doesn’t exist, leveraging technology that’s out there today that didn’t exist two years ago, and the phasing that is required to achieve that. Versus, how does this actually look to the end consumer? That it’s something that is both understandable and tangible, despite the fact that it’s new.
If you rewind a little bit to where we started, when we launched Paceline as a fitness rewards app two years ago, what we really wanted to establish—both to an end consumer, but also from an internal company building standpoint—is people can and should get paid to live a healthy lifestyle. It’s something that they would understand as a concept when you link it to the financial services world.
So, health and wellness, and being rewarded for health and wellness isn’t necessarily that new, but it’s traditionally only seen in the employer world, not in the consumer world.
And when people joined Paceline and they linked their wearable to do 150 minutes of elevated heart rate activity each week, but then also have to link a credit card. And we did that through plaid, which is a great Syntech company. That’s been around for a few years. That is in essence, actually bridging these two worlds together for the first time being.
Health And wellness and financial services, because the whole point is is that if you can actually bring those two things together, you can build new financial services products in and through health and wellness that ultimately bring the power of the P&L of financial services to actually pay people to live a healthy lifestyle, because right now, healthcare and sort of health and wellness generally fitness Is a business model that is expensive and is not for everyone. Meaning Peloton is expensive, right? Lululemon is expensive actually increasing access and inclusion into those things for everyone, because you can bring membership constructs to it like American express, or you can bring actually lower priced points of access, but also then more importantly, actually pay people to do them to begin with because of rewards.
Mechanisms much, again, like American express has that really can change the nature of how people engage in health and wellness. we’re bringing all of those two things together at once. And I think, you know, again, back when we launched the app two years ago, it was a brand new concept and we’ve been leveraging people’s engagement, leveraging people’s data, leveraging sort of their real excitement and understanding of being recognized and celebrated for living a healthy lifestyle.
To gain their trust so that we can now build these things that we’re building, including having just launched the first health and wellness rewards credit card.
[00:04:44] Joe:
Yeah, this is maybe is overly simplified, but I’d be curious to hear how you think about it. Do you think about the company Paceline as a health and fitness or wellness company, or do you think of it as a FinTech company that just happens to be applying this technology to the health and wellness sector?
[00:05:03] Joel:
One million percent The first we are a health and wellness lifestyle company that might happen to be powered by financial services, technology, and revenue. But ultimately this is not, we’re not a FinTech company. We don’t want to be a bank. We don’t want to be a credit card. We don’t want to be an insurance company.
We want to be a platform that people come to to further their own health and wellness journey, no matter where they are on that, on that path.
[00:05:28] Joe:
Yeah, I think that’s something interesting. Cause we, you touched on this and I kind of alluded to it. It’s not a new concept overall, right? This idea of rewarding people to live a healthier lifestyle. If you look at the various approaches, some have come from corporate wellness, some have come from, you know, A a credit-card-esque approach.
But none of them have really stuck with there’s just like a carrot and stick model. Why do you think maybe those other approaches haven’t worked and, and how are you trying to do things differently so that it will work?
[00:06:01] Joel:
Yeah. also, you know, two great questions. I think. In the, particularly in the employer world, the reason why health and wellness platforms or wellness platforms in general, are sort of less than stellar is, is twofold. One is they’re built for the employer market, which means they’re built for HR to buy them, not for actually employees to use them.
Right. So then that’s just fundamental. That the business building concept, if you actually want end user adoption, because it’s not the end user that’s buying it. It’s HR. The other one is when, when brought just direct to consumer historically, there’s no business model to support it. Sweatcoin phenomenal sort of early predecessor to Paceline That was one of the fastest download app downloaded apps ever. it was all about steps and offered affiliate marketing rewards to brands. Great concept. But ultimately the depth of the business model behind that, because they didn’t move further into what is actually valuable about you and your data and your health and wellness.
It’s your health, it’s your actual physical health. That’s best for you, best for your family and best for society. And if you don’t understand ultimately how to make a business out of that, which is through actually insurance. And ultimately we can sort of talk about where we go with life insurance and how.
They can’t answer. It would be the ultimate payer of preventive health and society, but you need the business model to support it. employers, there is a business model there in health insurance and the reduced premiums that a company will pay if people are more well, but it has low adoption because it’s not built for the actual consumer.
In the direct to consumer world, you can have great products like Sweatcoin but that aren’t bolted onto the fundamental way that it can make money What we do is. We bring those two things together in a completely new and novel way that really we are building. I think in some ways the first true healthcare company ever invented, because we actually do pay you to live a healthy lifestyle, healthcare isn’t healthcare, it’s sick care.
And if you actually look at the world health organization’s definition of. It’s not just the absence of disease, right. And infirmity, it’s actually the presence of physical, mental, and social health. And you can’t have just the absence of one without the presence of the other. And for our business model, we believe most in actually paying people to help achieve those outcomes.
[00:08:20] Joe:
Yeah, there’s a huge kind of piece of the puzzle that you’re talking about, which is this preventative nature and aspect of health and health care, which just doesn’t exist right now. I think we’ve kind of seen that during the pandemic a little bit that the conversation around, Hey, what can we do proactively to take care of ourselves, to put ourselves in a better position so that if we were to get sick, like we could endure.
And hopefully recover from this illness. I think that goes across any most, illnesses, diseases and so forth. So when you think about that, is it, you know, if someone like myself, right. I exercise daily, try to be physically active and I’m already doing these behaviors. So for me to do that, it’s kind of logical, right?
I’d get Paceline. I’d sync up my device. What about for somebody who. Not living that healthier lifestyle that there probably needs it, frankly, more than somebody who is already active. maybe on, if we look at one side of this rewards marketplace, how are you getting customers and a varied customer base?
[00:09:24] Joel:
Yeah, the, I guess the real again, company building aspect of that, but then I think the mission and vision about that are our two things. One is clearly. Build something in health and wellness to begin with, right? That’s slightly fitness oriented. The early adopters are going to be those who are already more fit.
And I think, you know, creating behavior change from a more simple rewards experience, true behavior change, you know, to a more sedentary population, you know, is difficult, but what we’ve seen and what a lot of academics have been saying for decades now is that actually the relative material, financial incentives.
That is required to actually get people to be active, meaning just simple behavior, behavioral economics, right. Actually isn’t that much money, right. There was an article in the New York times. It was like 9 cents of squat. Right. And what we’ve seen is that in essence, for as little as a dollar a week in an Amazon gift card, which is what we started doing on Paceline two years ago, that that is actually material enough to get people to do 150 minutes of elevated heart rate activity each week and less than 18% of Americans.
Right. And if you’re the country is spending 20% of GDP on healthcare, which again, isn’t health, healthcare it’s secure and is dramatically actually economic waste. If you can actually get more people to be more physically active, particularly because we incentivize cardiovascular health, not steps. So there’s fundamentally better science to our health and wellness program.
You know, if you want to call it that. That 150 minutes of elevated heart rate is really, really powerful. And actually having a seamless platform and technology. That really just is something you need to turn on and put in your pocket and then just go for a walk or go for a run or play with your grandkids or walk the dog.
You know, the, the funny thing about Paceline is I’m much like you I’m extremely fit and very active, but I’ve never been as active before. And I am now I’m literally on an 80 week. 80 weeks in a row of consistent long-term health behavior. And I guarantee you, I knew I would take probably six or eight weeks off of doing nothing before.
Right. It was much a new sort of more ebb and flow. Whereas now there’s just a much greater consistency to it. And another one that’s really powerful is, you know, we get these user, sort of comments all the time. One of the women with the longest streak on Paceline, is it like 110 weeks? And she’s 70 years.
And she found Paceline because her daughter recommended it to her just after she’d had double knee replacement surgery and she’s used Paceline to get 150 minutes of elevated heart rate activity each week, literally for over a hundred weeks. And the only thing she’s ever claimed is a $5 Starbucks gift card once a month.
And if you think about the power of that, right. Can any business, whether it’s a healthcare business, whether it’s an insurance business, whether it’s an employer, whether it’s, you know, a brand, can they afford $5 a month in a gift card to incentivize someone’s health and wellness for life? Absolutely.
Right. We can and should invest in people’s preventive health. And it is now possible because of the power of things like apple watches, Fitbits, and garments and healthcare, and the financial transaction e-commerce payments world that can be brought together in one brand new use case, like a Paceline to invest in people’s true preventive health.
[00:12:51] Joe:
Yeah, I think it’s super inspiring and that’s a really cool part of building a health and fitness company, right. Is when you hear that feedback and the anecdotes like that, that you can point to, that the team gets fired up about. And I’m sure you get excited about to, to continue building this product when you think about that rewards platform.
Right. I think it’s, it’s pretty logical for folks. You know, I’m incentivized and I’m claiming different, you know, products and rewards. We can talk about the partners that you have, as well, but as you think about expanding that pipeline and really these different offerings down the financial path, how do we get from this rewards platform to a credit card?
And then maybe we can even look ahead a little bit because you’ve alluded to, you know, healthcare and some other things. So what does that evolution look like? Just even in the near term?
[00:13:40] Joel:
You know, the The simple vision started with, if you’re gonna start a company from scratch, it’s hard to sign up massive partners, you know, in, in, in mega industries, you know, from nothing. And so where you can start is health and wellness brands in particular, right. You know, the fitness world.
Really wants a new way to engage through connected fitness with everyone and, you know, Peloton tempo, tonal, all of these connected fitness players have really shown the power of what that user experience and that community can create, but, you know, Lululemon didn’t have it. And so they went and bought Mirror Right. Nike didn’t have it. So they went and built apps, not every health and wellness brand has the wherewithal or the technology or the money to build into this level of tech to actually engage with you, Joe, right? When you are actually working out wherever you might be, right? Even Strava is trying to do it across a number of different domains.
But generically really only is a good product for people who are doing outdoor based GPS enabled. Right. What our platform has shown is that health and wellness brands love engaging with their own consumers and with ours through Paceline because of the fact that they are literally rewarding their users for living a healthier Lifestyle and their products help them do that. Right? Paceline is the intermediary that connects these things, but ultimately the most aspirational brand that you know, you, Joe might aspire to in the health and wellness world, we don’t actually want it to be. Paceline We want it to be Paceline that facilitates you, finding something that’s better for you, whether it’s a nutrition product, whether it’s more access to whole foods, which you know, is, is a phenomenal place to get better nutrition, but happens to be more expensive, whether it’s, you know, that next pair of Lululemon leggings or whether it’s that next pair of Nike running shoes or whether it’s a new product that could be, you know, every, anything from sunglasses to CBD to something that helps you feel better and move more, right.
Move physically. more Towards a healthier lifestyle. We want to be the platform that helps not just the consumer, but the brand actually engage in more meaningful ways.
[00:15:49] Joe:
Yeah, I think it makes a ton of sense. Is there, as you’re talking about it, a beyond the discovery aspect, are you leveraging or, incentivizing these brands to be a part of the platform? Are they getting access to this technology and these individuals in a way, or do you kind of control all that data being the central hub?
[00:16:10] Joel:
No, we control it all, to a degree, but only because our end user gives us the permission. Right. So we’re, we’re very specific that we only use your data to add value to you. So the The brands. they don’t Pay us for access to the platform. And we certainly don’t pay them what we require brands do on Paceline because we really are turning your physical activity into a currency is you have to have an exclusive offer.
So, you know, w w any brand that’s on Paceline right now, the best offer they have in the market is exclusive with us that creates true value to our community and for you, but also it’s better for the brand because actually marketing is essentially economic waste, right. you can chase lots of new customers, all you want, but ultimately a lot of them churn and it’s less efficient.
But actually what we do quite well is not only do we incentivize higher conversion in new customers, because of if, again, just the affinity of health and wellness, but then we convert Not just new ones, but actually greater average order value and LTV of existing customers as well. So the The stats are speak for themselves, but our conversions to any brand is 10 times higher on Paceline than their best performing channel elsewhere.
And generally speaking, we see three to five times higher order value, better LTV, better existing customer engagement. So that’s, it’s a real sort of virtuous model. that’s better for everybody.
[00:17:34] Joe:
And then as you move down that path, getting into the credit card, how does that differ from the customer experience? So if I’m already using the app, well, I guess a couple of questions, maybe you can explain it more succinctly than I can even ask it, but in terms of, what a user experiences do I have to kind of be a user of the rewards platform to have the credit card.
And then how does the credit card differ from like the pure, kind of rewards? Yeah.
[00:18:01] Joel:
Yeah, no, I appreciate, the nuance there. So in essence, if you think about the fact that where we started, right, which was you’re building an app, you don’t have any customers, you don’t have any brands. You can’t go do a major insurance partnership because again, you don’t have any users, right? So you start with this affiliate marketing model because that’s what is shown to work and actually has worked in some ways beyond our wildest dreams.
But actually, if you think about that, right, that is facilitating. Commerce, like literally in the payments flow of people actually engaging. So this is a payments product and an e-commerce thing. And actually, if you then introduce a credit card into that mix, right? Think about what credit cards do. Lots of merchants, except, you know, American express and they pay American express at 4% merchant processing charge.
But ultimately that charge goes towards funding, American express, own loyalty and rewards. Not. the merchants in essence, this is kind of like an open source co-brand card because we’re going to use the credit card to drive again, greater and deeper value, both to the consumer and to the brand in health and wellness.
Not just because it’s a health and wellness rewards card that rewards the end user with greater access to health and wellness, but actually it is deliberately placed and positioned to drive greater loyalty and engagement to those brands as well. Because think about it that’s the whole point the platform.
So if you think about, you know, the ultimate sort of types of rewards we want to offer over time, they’re basically things like in-kind goods and services, which could be an offer or literally a free pair of shoes. to other things like devices, right? So, you know, we’ve got a great partnership with apple and if, when you’re on the Paceline credit card, you can get a free apple watch that you earn each week, right.
By hitting your streak. And then obviously through the credit card also doing. cash back we will do elevated cash back on the credit card. When you hit your streak, all three of those types of rewards, again, in-kind goods and services, cash back merchant-funded offers are all driven by first and foremost, you working out.
And what we know to be true is that your physical health is the most valuable thing to society. society we can actually monetize that for. you Right. we’re going to give you more value and in some cases, almost turn your physical health into true asset and currency. It’s like Bitcoin, but for people, right?
Because we bring these two worlds together and that’s where the credit card really is quite critical to. Unlocking the power of that transaction and that currency to truly turn your health into something that we can value and almost settle on every day by giving you more money. But first and foremost, it starts with you doing 150 minutes of elevated heart rate activity each week.
[00:20:40] Joe:
Yeah, really powerful. And I feel like just go back and clip that Bitcoin, but for people, as you think about incentivizing people in their health,
[00:20:48] Joel:
It’s good for the environment.
[00:20:50] Joe:
Yeah, all, all the above. Right. And so you’re doing that. You’ve kind of said it, right. That it’s worked at least to this point beyond your wildest expectations.
I’ve seen all sorts of different numbers in terms of the amount of rewards that you’ve paid out thus far, the number of workouts that people have logged. can you just give us a sense of what are some of those milestones that you point to that you’re really excited about?
[00:21:14] Joel:
Yeah, I think, you know, sort of the best one that is hard to really still even recognize that we’ve achieved. I guess there’s two, one is, you know, we hit number one in the App Store in health and fitness category multiple times last year, which, you know, if you rewind it two years ago and told me that that was going to be true, I wouldn’t have believed you.
The other one that that really actually is quite powerful, that a lot of people don’t know about, but there’s a company called the amplitude, which is sort of the digital platform for all apps. Right. And we use it behind the scenes that helps us, you know, basically better build a better product. And they actually came out after their, IPO and named us the fourth hottest products in the country.
And one of the top 20. For over the last 12 months. And that’s pretty insane because what they look at is actual engagement, not just. And, it’s to continue to sort of hit those accolades has been immense. And I think the, the other thing that’s true is that working with this level of data, you know, this is heart rate data.
Second by second and financial transaction data, which is in the hundreds of millions of transactions, literally per user, because we download these things also retroactively, right? The fact that you can build modern day technology with this level of data integrator. And have it be seamless to the end user really has been something that you didn’t know could be possible until you do.
When we have 4.9 stars on the App Store from nearly 14,000 reviews and we’re dealing with that level of data really speaks to the power of the technology that we’ve built and the milestones. So, you know, in many ways we just keep stacking them up, but then we built and launched a credit card from scratch as one of the first, truly native embedded credit cards in a non-bank.
It’s like if Strava launched a credit card in their app, right. We did it in the last nine months. And so as we continue to be on this certain very, very mission driven journey of we exist. To materially, incentivize people to work out and we’re going to stack up every single thing we can that continues to reinforce that value to you so that it’s not just attractive to you, Joe, and the fitness to the broader fitness community.
That’s listening to this podcast, but to even the more chronically ill or the more sedentary, because at some point there is a number that is material enough for them and for. To get them moving. And if we get America moving again, we can not only change the nature of preventive health and society writ large, but we can actually change the nature of the economy overall because we won’t have to spend 20% of GDP on healthcare.
And we know perhaps we wouldn’t have had such a drastic impact of COVID, you know, on a sort of large population with underlying health concerns.
[00:24:03] Joe:
Yeah, so much to kind of strive towards as you’re going through some of those accolades. I’m my mind immediately goes to, and I wanted to touch on this, the marketing aspect of this with the way that fitness is trending. Well, if you just look at gym memberships, people tend to buy them and not use them.
It’s kind of built on the breakage model. so they’re signing up people. If you look at digital fitness, obviously everybody is now kind of thinking about customer acquisition. Are we acquiring people through Facebook ads? How are we competing now? As the landscape continues to evolve? How are you acquiring people what’s working at this point?
Is it just a matter of the kind of stickiness of this streak building, you know, continuing to, to link your health data, that, people are sticking with it, but how are they even initially finding out about it? Because it doesn’t strike me as at least I haven’t seen it. You know, Paceline spending tens of millions of dollars to acquire users what’s happening
[00:25:01] Joel:
No We don’t You know, again, to a degree, marketing is is economic waste and the more efficient you can market, that means that the lower the cost your marketing budget is which means you can reinvest it elsewhere. And most importantly, in our mission and vision, right, we want to reinvest that back in your health and put it in your.
Pocket if you think about just how efficient that can be, that means if I’m going to pay you money to go work out, who are you going to go tell about it, all your friends, right. And obviously given the fact that now for the most part, everyone’s their own little social media influencer. You can have extremely viral dynamics and product-led growth that really captures that.
So, you know, we’ve had substantial success in really, I think first and foremost, just, you know, in the in the startup space, they call it product market fit. you know, I think that’s just a short phrase of saying do people actually understand what you’re doing and value it? the reality is, does, does, does getting paid to work out sell itself?
Yes.
[00:26:00] Joe:
Yeah, I think that’s, you know, when you think about product market fit or best case scenario, and a lot of people are searching for that and never find it, so exciting to see how that momentum is continuing to build. I think two, maybe two more topics. Before we get you out of here. One being you’ve alluded to, you know, as you think about paying people to work out and incentivizing them, all of the really powerful things that come out of that, this trending towards, you know, reinventing healthcare or the sick care model.
What does that to the extent that you can, you know, talk about it now. and maybe in part, we’ll just have to continue to fall along, but. How do we make that jump from the wellness credit card, incentivizing people to work out, paying them right to, Hey, we’re now starting to transform healthcare or thinking about new models of insurance.
[00:26:51] Joel:
Yeah. that, that is why we’re here. Right. You know, I think the, to an extent that Silicon valley has really enabled true innovation, you know, we want to harness the power of. that To truly try to do something that’s never been done before. That is phenomenally powerful for you, for your family and for society.
And ultimately you a fitness rewards app. You know, it could be a great little business in and of itself, but that’s not enough. Right. And building a credit card could be a great actually medium-sized business in and of itself. But that’s also not enough the point is, is can you leverage the best. in digital product and engagement, you know, like an Uber, like an Airbnb, like a Strava, right?
To truly bring and engage people in something that is good for them. You know, again, this is all about getting you to live real world experiences that truly impact your health and wellness. First, like the gating entry point to Paceline is you have to go be more physically active and again, 150 minutes is the lowest common denominator for everyone.
This isn’t triathletes and Olympic athletes. This is literally accessible. to Everyone, but if you can then bring it into the credit card world where you can then more seamlessly reward, right. And redeem value, meaning true like exchange and creation of value back in your pocket book. Right. Then if you can actually bolt that onto, you know, the healthcare world or the insurance world, which is ultimately the industries that have the franchise right.
To understand what’s your health is worth. This is where I come from. I’ve spent my entire career in life insurance and life insurance companies. Kandi and should be the payer of preventive health and society. Very simply put because if you live longer, pay premiums less, right. And claim lifts or pay premiums more and claim less.
They’re actually going to make three to five times as much money, but they struggle and they have this fundamental problem of engaging with the next generation of. But not just engaging with them because of the technology and the distribution, but more importantly engaging them because of the product itself.
But actually it’s quite simple, right? If you could, in essence, truly embed finance in you, which this big topic out here in Silicon valley is all about embedded finance, truly embedding finances. You is understanding who you are as a person and the nature of the risk that you defined, but let’s not do it statically.
One point in time, let’s do it dynamically. And fundamentally, if an insurance company is going to make five times as much money on you, if you live a healthier lifestyle and live longer, why wouldn’t they invest in that outcome? They would And we’re building the platform that will allow them to do it. there just so happens to be $4.5 trillion of reserves and capital on the balance sheet of the entire insurance sector in this country that is sitting there predominantly because insurance life insurance risk was mispriced over the last 50 years, because there was a lack of true data, understanding your risk the technology that now allows us to unlock that massive amount of.
Money Can and should be invested, not in the bottom line of those insurance companies directly, but actually in your physical health, which will make the bottom line of those insurance companies richer. And actually that means that you can change the way that healthcare works for everyone.
[00:30:13] Joe:
Yeah, I think when you start to think of it that way, and you know, starting at this idea of, oh, we’re going to transform healthcare or life insurance or some of these things like, well, how do we get there? I think almost in like a bottoms up approach as Paceline continues to evolve and grow the user base and grow the momentum.
Thinking about how we. Rework and rewire that system makes a ton of sense. The, the, the next thing, and maybe this is a little bit of a leap and just given kind of your expertise and how you’re thinking about not only the physical activity, but the financial sector also insurance. One thing, that’s a.
Buzzy trending topic right now is when you think about web three in health and fitness there’s you mentioned, you know, kind of Bitcoin for people, obviously blockchain and, all the other NFTs that come along with this. Are you thinking about that world? or do you have aspirations to get into those waters or is this, you know, a much more kind of direct path to the kind of healthcare insurance sector?
[00:31:18] Joel:
Yeah, that is a truly visionary type question, I think. Yes. We obviously think about it a lot from an infrastructure perspective of how the bits and bytes of web three or crypto or blockchain or distributed ledger technology can actually impact the real-time nature of payments transactions, and ultimately sort of, you know, real time.
Contract settlement or counterparty risk, right? Like you think about the fact that a credit card needs to sit on visa. What does visa actually do? Visa actually does that right now. It does it in an old school technology way, not a new school technology way. So, you know, web three will change the way that all of that works over time.
And I think that, you know, the early adopters in that space are clearly doing some very interesting things, you know, in, in crypto, in coins, et cetera. But what is fundamentally true at the bottom of. Is ultimately, how do you create and exchange value, right? Create it first exchange. And second that’s what that is sort of the definition of an economy.
Right. And what we believe is most important is that topic of the creation and exchange of value, isn’t just applied to. The sort of less important things that are just sort of, you know, incurrencey themselves, right. Or in a sort of transaction value, but actually are representative in your health.
Because if you think about it in the most abstract sense, your health is the most valuable thing, not just again to you, but to your family and to society. So if we can increase the health of everyone and we can actually create that value, right. But then turn it into an exchangeable current. I mean, that is S again, that is what sort of web three is.
So in many ways we’re doing like the most real-world application of web three, but to a degree using modern day, that technology that’s existing now to actually exchange that value, to put the money in. Right. And does that lend itself to crypto or to Bitcoin or to other things over time? Absolutely. But only to the degree that those things are more widely adopted by everybody.
And I can tell you that, you know, the old world financial services companies are in many ways, the, the furthest from that, which means that they’re also the, it’s the furthest away from actually being able to put real money back in everyday users pockets, because there’s, it’s a, it’s a long time before.
The social determinants of health, which really do mean that the lower socioeconomic classes have less access to health. It’s more important that we solve that problem now. Right. And they’re further away from actually adopting web three than anyone. Right. And we can’t wait for web three and just be this thing that exists for this sort of, you know, technology technology sort of literate.
Right. You know, we need to give it to everybody sooner.
[00:33:56] Joe:
Yeah, I think it’s, it comes down to, even, as you were explaining it, like, if you can prove this out and provide the value and articulate how you can have an impact, like the application, if it is a different technology, if it is a different integration, like great, we can do that, but not if we’re not providing the, the fundamental utility upfront.
So that makes it all the more
[00:34:15] Joel:
Yeah,
The most important thing is if we can connect these industries that have been disparate before and never connected, right. You know, there’s this great concept that has never been possible before, but you know, the most incentivized company to cure. Actual truly, you know, sort of high risk mortality illness, and you have, isn’t your health care company.
It isn’t your health insurance company, right. And they’re only gonna make, you know, nine or 10% margin on curing you, right. It’s actually your life insurance company. If you have 2, 3, 4, $5 million policy or a $500,000 policy with your life insurance company and you die, they’re going to pay out that.
And the reality is, is they gladly split that in half to invest in curing your illness, but they’ve never had access to that data. Right. And they’ve never had access to a platform that enables them to take that funding power and put it to work, to cure you. We’re building it.
[00:35:16] Joe:
We’re wrapping up here, so I appreciate the time, and walking through the nuances of this with us.
You have the momentum at your back. You’ve raised upwards of $35 million. As we now are getting into a new year, what does the near-term roadmap look like?
What are you excited about? What should we be on the lookout for?
[00:35:42] Joel:
The raising the money part is a necessary evil of being able to achieve what we want to achieve. Fortunately we found some phenomenal investors and stakeholders that really do believe this mission and vision is important, but it’s possible.
What we will continue to do is stack greater value. From brands, to credit cards, to cash back, to insurance, et cetera that allow us to invest more in material incentives to get people to be more physically active.
I’d love to continue the conversation, and we can see how those things actually develop in terms of much more specificity. All of these things can and do exist so we can pay people in more meaningful, real-time, and more relevant ways to pay more attention, and live a longer, healthier, and better life.
[00:36:42] Joe:
Yeah, I’m super excited to follow along, and think about the impact of this. It’s something that, as you mentioned, the ability, the form, the applications, I think we’re really scratching the surface. So excited to see, as you continue to build.
For folks who are listening and interested in learning more following along, where would you point them?
[00:37:04] Joel:
Check us out at our website, www Paceline.fit. Check us out on the App Store. Stay tuned, because we have some big announcements coming in the next couple of weeks as we continue to put our money where our mouth is. There can and should be a wellness platform in society that pays people to live a preventative, health-focused lifestyle.
[00:37:26] Joe:
Awesome. Joel, thanks so much for spending some time with us today. Excited to share this conversation, and for folks to definitely follow along.
[00:37:32] Joel:
Great to be with you, Joe happy new year. Best to you guys for 2022.