#124: Sarah Jones Simmer, CEO of Found

Today, I’m joined by Sarah Jones Simmer, CEO of Found, a modern weight care platform.

Found improves overall well-being by making evidence-based weight loss accessible & affordable. As obesity in the US skyrockets, the digital solution emphasizes long-term weight care backed by science, not short-term weight loss tricks.

You’ll hear from Sarah about how advancements in telehealth and prescription medication are transforming weight loss. We also discuss Found’s approach to destigmatizing dieting and obesity by focusing on personalized weight care.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why weight care is more than eating less, exercising, and willpower
  • Found’s precision care advantage in weight management
  • Why personalized treatment provides way more than an out-of-the-box weight loss program
  • Sarah’s marketing strategy to educate customers about Found and its benefits

Links & Resources

Sarah Jones Simmer’s Links

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah:
This is not about, “Lose 10 pounds for bikini season.” This is about finding the joy you’ve been missing if your body has been standing in your way.

If we build that with integrity, if we bring together the best of precision medicine, the best of consumer technology, and we platform all of this and wrap it in the community and brand of inclusion and belonging.

That’s what we’re setting out to do here.

[00:00:34] Joe:
Welcome back to the Fitt Insider podcast. I’m your host Joe Vennare.

Today I’m joined by Sarah Jones Simmer, CEO of Found, a modern weight care platform.

In this episode we talk about the company’s digital weight management solution. Sarah explains how advancements in telehealth and prescription medication are transforming weight loss. We discuss Found’s approach to de-stigmatizing dieting and obesity by focusing on personalized weight care.

Let’s get into it.

Hi, Sarah. Welcome to Fitt Insider. Thanks for joining us.

[00:00:59] Sarah:
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

[00:00:59] Joe:
Yeah, likewise.

I think there’s so much to talk about, and maybe the best starting place is, please introduce yourself and tell us about Found.

[00:01:09] Sarah:
I’m Sarah. I have been at Found since September. Before that I was at Bumble, which you may have heard of. They’ve done some pretty cool and disruptive things in the dating space.

I was there for about four years, from the time that it was 30 people in a two bedroom apartment, and folks taking phone calls in the bathtub, through to their IPO, which was really exciting.

In may of 2020, I was diagnosed with stage three cancer and was really privileged—and I know not everyone has this opportunity—to be able to keep working even while I went on my cancer journey. I’m now cancer-free, had nine surgeries, 37 rounds of radiation, all kinds of chemo.

The point I’m trying to make is, what was interesting coming out of the other side of that cancer journey and Bumble’s IPO, I really realized I wanted to go build again. I was so proud of everything that we built upon. I’ll always bleed yellow, but I miss that early stage, seeing your fingerprints all over a company.

I felt that I had so many incredible lessons from that journey I wanted to put into practice. A lot of those learnings were because of the cancer journey. When I first started thinking about how I wanted to write my next chapter, I knew I wanted to do consumer tech. I love the space.

I was really open to e-commerce, marketplace, social media. The one thing I didn’t want to do was health. I was PTSD’ed from all the cancer. It’s so broken, everything about the ecosystem. It was a scarring experience.

Then I started thinking about what’s worthy of a next chapter after something like cancer, or after something like Bumble, where you’re introducing people to the partnership that’s going to change their life.

You realize the only thing that holds a candle to that is health. I started looking into the health space and realized there’s been all this incredible innovation investment in the downstream impacts; diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer.

And the root cause of so many of these things is weight and obesity. And yet none of the care delivery model innovation was focused there. We’ve arguably lost the ability to talk about weight as a culture. We’re confused. Like how do we thread the needle effectively with body positivity while also driving towards healthier outcomes and everything about that opportunity just really spoke to me.

And I knew I wanted to sink my teeth into it. My weight, as I think for many people is something that I’ve thought about all my life. it’s something that’s on models of my mother or something I saw modeled in my childhood. I, you know, I’m a pretty active person done, like a bunch of marathons and an Ironman. And I. And yet I still really struggled to lose the baby weight. And I think I could really empathize with the problem that we’re trying to solve for people. And as a result of my cancer journey, I had a distinct understanding of the role of biology. And wait, I want to say. That’s everything from your hormones to your genetics, to the signaling between your brain and your stomach, like there are biological and chemical factors at play that influence your weight.

So much of the weight loss industrial complex would have you think that it’s eat less exercise. Right. And if you just have enough willpower, you’ll get the body you love. And it is so much more complicated than that. Weight is very multifactorial. It’s also sleep. It’s stress. It’s how much you’re drinking as your lived experiences.

It’s social determinants of health. And as you look across the industry, no one was taking a platform approach to all of those factors. And when. That’s what set it apart, right. It’s really thinking about how do we look at what’s happening biologically? How do we bring the Dr. to the table? Bring them to the conversation, but also take the best of one-to-one health coaching, the best of consumer technology that drives really sticky experiences.

How do we wrap all of that together in an integrated care delivery model? And so I just got really energized about building and scaling that business and thinking about the brand narrative and threading the needle with body positivity. As I said, I wanted to bring all those pieces together. I wanted to go grow and scale a team again, and I wanted to solve what I would argue is the biggest problem facing public health today.

[00:05:29] Joe:
That’s really incredible everything about that story. and not to derail the conversation entirely, but, you know, congratulations. So glad to hear kind of on the other side of that cancer journey, just personally lost my father to cancer. more recently. Folks follow the podcast or newsletter.

My brother and co-founder was just battling cancer over the last couple of years. So I know it affects so many people. And for you to now turn that corner and think about the impact and what you want to work on. I think you put it, you know, really well and talking about getting to this place and, and thinking about.

The problem at hand, you know, there’s no shortage of, to this point, what has been yo-yo diets and digital health apps and coaching, and, you know, even things you think about like WeightWatchers in this point system. Nobody has quite cracked the code to solving obesity, weight loss. And as you put it, the kind of stigma that then comes along with that as well.

How do you even begin chipping away at a problem like that? Where there’s just so many different approaches and, and kind of, different paths that people even encounter the problem.

[00:06:43] Sarah:
Is it great question. And I’m going to push back a little bit on the, no one has solved it because there are folks that have. For example, 50% of the U S tries to diet every year and only 5% lose weight. So we studied those 5% and they’re going to places like the academic weight management centers, like Columbia university as a weight management center. And what’s brilliant about that model is it does bring together the best of evidence-based care.

The science, the medication, there are five FDA approved medications for long-term chronic weight management. It brings that together with one-to-one coaching. It does pull the pieces together. We actually do know what works, but it can’t scale fundamentally can’t they can see a couple hundred to a couple thousand patients and, you know, for the cost of what we now charge for one month of fountain, which is an average time, $9.

That’s how much you paid apart on the upper east side of Manhattan. Right? So it’s completely inaccessible, but we do know what works, the science and evidence. They are. And so I think what we’re trying to do is take the best of technology and the things that tech creates for us, it creates scalability, creates access.

We can now ride these amazing tailwinds. Obviously the pandemic has brought so much destruction, but one of the pieces that I think is such a silver lining as it relates to health is the advent of tele-health and how much more accessibility is not been created because regulatory policy has shifted.

It’s opened up avenues for people to get care. Much more conveniently, much more easily. And I think what you see is that that’s affecting the parts of the health ecosystem, where a lot of stigma existed before, and the stigma created friction to getting access, look at mental health, right. People are now getting access to the type of mental health support that they may be needed years ago.

And either couldn’t get to, it was too expensive. It was too much of a drive who was going to watch their kids. Now they can do it from the Palm of their hand. They’re getting access to the care that they need. And simultaneously I think the pandemic opened up so many of our eyes to things like mental health that normalize the conversation around it.

And wait is the same. Do you know the average American gained 30 pounds during the. It’s because we’re doing all those multi-factorial things that I was describing. We’re sitting really still we’re super stressed out. We’re not sleeping well, these are the things that do influence our weight. And now that that’s our unified lived experience, I think that opens the door to this much larger conversation around stigma and weight and what we’re all facing.

And we’re seeing. That carrying extra weight can also have implications for things like COVID and your propensity to, to come down with it and to have a really poor experience with COVID. And so I think that’s helping to create this awareness, both at the. cultural site guys level, as well as this innovation and care delivery model and access.

And those are the trends that we’re bringing together to alongside what is happening and what we’ve seen at these academic weight management centers and what does work clinically. And now this is the opportunity to platform that and scale it.

[00:09:53] Joe:
There’s a lot in there. That’s so important. So I want to run through it. And then we’ll, we’ll kind of come back to these one. You talk about the innovations in kind of telehealth and the ability to even scale something like this. thinking about some of the advancements and the drugs, to be able to prescription medication, to treat this, as well as kind of the stigma around it.

And then. Thinking about how we approach that in a way that we can help people and navigate what can be tricky territory. just to level set before we do that. Can you talk about what the user experience is? So somebody discovers, found they come to the site, you engage with them, however they get there.

What do they do? And then what does the treatment look like?

[00:10:38] Sarah:
So found as a platform for modern white care, it brings together the best of precision medicine and the best of consumer technology and lifestyle change because effectively. The medication doesn’t work in isolation. And for many people, neither does lifestyle change, but together that’s the real unlock.

So when you sign up for found, you sign up for a subscription, as I mentioned, it’s on average $99 a month, that gets you access to a clinician who can prescribe medication. If medication is right for you. You also get a one-to-one health coach, you get access to an incredibly supportive online community and a mobile app that helps drive that lifestyle change and engagement.

All of those things come together for the found experience. When you’re onboarding, you’ll go through a medical history and an intake form so that our clinicians can understand where to start with you and what might be the right prescription and an intervention. And the thing I’ll highlight here, cause it’s a deeply held belief about.

So we think it’s important to offer the widest possible toolkit of prescription interventions. There are, as I said, five FDA approved medications for chronic weight management. The components of those can also be prescribed off label and even more precise doses. So. Endeavored offer all of those medications and allow our clinicians to make a decision in the best interest of their patient.

And they can prescribe and they can titrate and they can figure out what dose is going to work for that individual. And they’ve got lots of options to choose from you layer on top of that, this one-to-one coach who’s. Holding your hand and helping to enable that lifestyle change, checking in with you, helping you understand the various factors that contribute to your weight and really drive towards that long-term and lasting and sustainable change.

[00:12:27] Joe:
Yeah, it’s incredible to think about the pieces of this that can weave together where somebody potentially was getting well, none of them, right? Worst case scenario, but previously siloed kind of different aspects of this and trying to figure it out themselves. When you think about putting it together and you said, you know, some people don’t.

The prescription treatment, they get more of the lifestyle, coaching and intervention. what does that kind of journey? Can you speak to maybe anecdotally or some different examples of folks that, you know, how do we know which one of these paths that they need and how does that play out over time that they’re continuously checking in?

What are those relationships like with these different coaches and clinicians?

[00:13:07] Sarah:
It’s a really good question. And I think that the future of medicine and what tele-health enables is truly personalized care. And I think that’s where I would push on some of the while. Of course, I truly admire the legacy of WeightWatchers nuMe, et cetera. I think in some cases, their approaches to. Red yellow, green foods or point systems.

It’s very one size fits all, and weight is not one size fits all. It requires personalized precision care, and that’s where the piece around one-to-one coaching is important. My struggle might be that I’m not drinking enough water or someone else’s maybe the. Sleeping enough. Someone else may not realize how much their mental health is influencing their way is the job of our coaches to respond to that person’s needs and to take this incredible library of content, all of this best practice information we have and tailor the solution to that member.

And I think that. To me is how I really want to focus on growing and scaling. This business is providing integrative care, pulling all the pieces together and providing personalized care, tailoring it to the individual. And we have the capability to do that because of technology. We have the ability to bring all of these pieces together and then fundamentally build this massive data lake that’s going to be.

Better insights and understanding over time, we can see and recognize patterns. We can understand when relapse is happening and we can start to programmatically play in for that. And all of that stuff is like in the works and that’s the direction that we’re going to go in the future. But that’s what really energizes me.

This opportunity to your point, that journey should be individualized. It should be different member to member. The stories that I tell you should be about that individual and how we drove them towards success. Not how we create an a one size fits all plan for.

[00:14:50] Joe:
Yeah. I think even to this point, it’s really incredible. You’re talking about this platform and kind of the results you’ve seen so far if folks who were following along, you know, I think you mentioned joining in September before that. Came out of stealth. and has since raised, you know, upwards of a hundred million dollars in funding, what has been going on behind the scenes to even get to this point, right.

And some of the results that are to, I don’t, obviously, I don’t know the exact numbers, but like very powerful in terms of, the weight loss and people being able to keep it off and the impact that it’s having, what, what has been happening, what has been in the works and, and how has the team kind of gotten to this point?

[00:15:29] Sarah:
A lot is happening. And a lot is in the works. We have an incredible team. That was one of the reasons, if not the most important reason that I. Decided to write my chapter without I’m really inspired by this team. so you’re correct. The business raised a series a and the spring came out of stealth in September, right as I was joining.

And the big reason for operating in stealth was to develop an evidence-based. We have to understand if the program was working, we wouldn’t. 35,000 people in the platform, see what was working for them. Drive predictable outcomes. Then we felt like we could start to step on the gas in terms of marketing, press like really open up the funnel and open up access and awareness of the platform.

And so when I joined in September, we started those efforts. We also, as you said, decided to raise a series. which we closed in December, we raised a hundred million dollars in equity, and I’m very grateful for the investors that have bet on us and really believe in this Tam. They, they believe in the size of the market.

They believe in the product market fit that we’ve demonstrated. And I think they recognize that solving this problem. Has applications for so many other parts of the healthcare delivery ecosystem. And so this, as I said, is the biggest problem facing public health today, but the learnings that we’re generating and what that’s going to mean for overall human wellbeing, as well as the way we think about modernizing care.

I think is really exciting. so we’ve been working on that. I will say our focus continues to be efficacy. We’ve got to prove that the platform works. We lean heavily into science. We just brought on two incredible clinical leaders. Dr. Rakesh Kumar as our chief medical officer. She’s the outgoing medical director of the American board of obesity medicine.

So genuinely the person has been writing the test. That’s certified obesity medicine practitioners. There is no one who knows the space better than her. And then also Dr. Acacia parks, our chief behavioral health officer, who was most recently at Happify health. Before that she was at Penn where she pioneered the field of positive psychology with Dr.

Marty Seligman. So we think about these two leaders. Representing that the two fundamental facets of our platform, right? It’s medicine and behavior change. We have to center the platform around both of those things. And it was up to me to make sure that we brought on the best and brightest leaders who could really create the world-class platform that we could bring to bear.

We’ve also brought on leaders across product and technology engineering. Of course, we need to build something that can scale. And then we have to think about the supply side of our marketplace coaches, right? How do we not only make fun, an amazing place for them to work, but train and equip them to best care for our members.

And so we’re spending a lot of time thinking about building that ecosystem.

[00:18:10] Joe:
Yeah, there’s, there’s so many pieces to this. And one that I kind of come back to over and over again, is this idea of, we see the, the focus and the impact and the funding. That’s going to digital health and building out the technology and the care stack and the delivery systems. And at the same time, there’s the.

Behavioral coaching and kind of wellness. And what is the, nutrition aspect of this? What is the physical fitness aspect of this, frankly? What is the mental health impact to, to go through something like this? How do you marry those two things? This, you know, Phase, right. Health care delivery with This, kind of wellness.

It is a little bit more touchy feely at times. It can be, kind of more, you know, it, when you see it right are those aspects that go into it. how do you think about it? Does that come into play and, and how do you kind of navigate the, the art and science of this?

[00:19:06] Sarah:
And science is exactly the word that I was going to go for as he took it out of my mouth. And I think at the core of this is longitudinal care. Right? And so if we think about something that needs to last over a period of time, it’s always going to be a combination of like medical intervention and therapeutic.

Plus lasting behavior change. And that’s where I think that the merit of healthcare delivery and wellness is so valuable here, right? That our coaches are trying to equip people with the tools and tactics, whether that’s mental health exercises or like centering narratives, having conviction on their way.

A lot of that is necessary for people to have the building blocks and the foundation to then actually be able to get into a movement practice regularly, or to start drinking more water or start sleeping more regularly or reduce their stress levels. So I do think there is a lot that can be pulled out of so many of these practices that are actually.

Working in concert. And I think, again, that comes back to the idea of the care needs to be personalized to the member, as opposed to blunt approach that we, as some exec team think is the right thing to do. How do we get really focused on delivering personalized care for that member? And, you know, I think perhaps this is a little bit naive, but I even see this in my own cancer journey.

I’ve done chemo. I’ve done surgeries. I’ve done radiation. I also have now built a real strength training practice for myself. I’m trying to prevent osteoporosis. I walk all the time, which is a great habit for me, both for my mental health and my creativity. I’m thinking as a business leader. But it’s also a practice that’s essential to try to prevent my cancer from coming back.

And so I think that truly living and operating in the world in our best and healthiest way, oftentimes does require the integration of these things. And that’s where I come back to this idea of longitudinal care. It’s not a point in time solution. It’s never a magic bullet. It’s how do you set yourself up for long-term lasting?

[00:21:00] Joe:
Yeah, I think that’s, that’s really well said and important to think about bringing those two things together. other point kind of I’m going through that checklist that we laid out in my head was the developments in the kind of treatment and the prescription medication around obesity. Unless you follow the space very closely.

Maybe aren’t quite up to speed on that. So maybe as one kind of piece you could fill us in on what’s happening down that path. And the other thing that when I am trying to, you know, educate myself on that and stay up to date, it seems. doctors are reluctant to prescribe some of these medications.

So even if people need them, they aren’t able to get them. and there’s this kind of, and this goes back to the maybe stigma around it like that. There is almost some blaming, right? The patient that they should take these other paths. Whether it’s discipline or nutrition and exercise to curbing this issue as opposed to prescription medication.

So can you just talk about like, kind of what’s happening in that area and how it’s evolving?

A great

[00:22:00] Sarah:
Question. I’m going to take the second half of that first, we’ve heard stories from folks that have come to found that went to their doctor and asked for obesity medication and were told to just lose weight or to eat less and exercise more. And. It’s a shame that that’s the message that they’re receiving. And I think that’s where is inspiring to talk to someone like rake our chief medical officer, who’s doing this work to train and certify obesity medicine practitioners, because the science and the care is advancing. And there is definitely a greater and greater awareness of the value of.

Early intervention type care of trying to prevent things like diabetes by implementing some of these tools. So I think even education within the physician community is an area that’s emerging and that’s exciting to see. And I think there’s also some stigma and some of it is because of like the 1980s diet pills.

You know, take this and watch the fat melt off like that. Functionally. That’s not how medication works and it shouldn’t be perceived as a silver bullet or a magical answer. It works in concert with lifestyle change and the best practice of obesity medicine, whether it’s at an academic weight management center or in a platform like found really does have.

Both of those things for success. and so I think that, you know, we’re, we’re seeing things moving in that direction. I think that’s also where social stigmas is a problem because it coming back to our earlier conversation, it’s so embedded in this idea of willpower and just muscling through an interesting analogy I keep coming back to is someone’s dealing with major depression.

You don’t ask them to meditate their way out of it. You get them an SSRI, you get them therapy sessions, you get them the toolkit that they need. And yet we look at patients who are really struggling with obesity, and we say, just eat less, exercise, more, try harder. But decades of sugar, addiction will break down the signal between your brain and your stomach, and that can not be repaired by willpower alone.

And so I think this is a broader question of like social consciousness around this, recognizing the role of biology and then allowing the interventions to be designed around that. So I think, I think that’s a critical piece as it relates to the second part of your question in terms of. The innovations, there’s a ton of exciting stuff happening in biotech and pharmaceutical industry here and caveat that I am not a doctor as you know.

And so there’s many smarter people that you can speak to about this. there are, as I said, five FDA approved medications for weight loss. Some of them have been around for a little while and many of them are combination therapies. There are other drugs that when they work together, Can drive weight loss.

A lot of those have been in market for some time. Something like phentermine has existed for 60 years. Metformin has shown to be incredibly safe, is now even being prescribed for pregnant women. and it’s used preventatively for diabetes, but it’s also used for weight management. And then there’s a very new class of drugs called GLP ones, glucagon like peptides.

And they’re very recently was approved in a form called Wego B by the FDA. This. So there’s a lot of innovation happening there and that’s really exciting stuff. And I’ll, I’ll just come back to the point that I made before different people are gonna respond to different drugs differently. And it’s our goal to create this wide toolkit of all of the available medications so that doctors can do what doctors do best, which is prescribed and treat their patients and figure out what the right intervention for their specific patient is.

But there is a lot of, I think, energy and momentum. And the pharmaceutical industry around this problem, and it’s not our job to drive drug discovery, but I think it’s our unique opportunity to create more awareness around the innovation that’s happening and create access for people who might not have had it.

Otherwise, who now can, through the phone platform have access to a clinician in the Palm of their hand and maybe get access to these drugs that their PCP on the corner wasn’t willing to give them or didn’t know enough about to prevent.

[00:26:04] Joe:
Yeah, I think that’s super insightful and informative. And you mentioned not a doctor, but certainly a great glimpse and overview of the different treatments and paths and, the innovation that’s happening there. Given, you know, we talked about from the stigma to, increasing access and awareness around this issue and just the, the number of people, right.

Who are struggling with this, how are you thinking about Kind of pivoting back to the, the business aspect of this customer acquisition. How are you generating, you know, if the demand is there, how are you reaching them and educating them that that found exists. And do you have to think about, we’ve seen in the past different types of companies in different categories, kind of getting flack for, you know, you’re running ads on social media, for what amounts to like a health care treatment.

Where’s the line there? How do you think about you know, just the kind of marketing customer acquisition inside of.

[00:26:57] Sarah:
Great question.

You know, I come out of Bumble as you know, and so I cared deeply about brand-building and I do think. Consumer brands, shape culture, and they shape the narrative. And Bumble absolutely did that. It was never just a dating app. It was always about women and equality and creating more kindness and accountability and relationships.

And that’s why it had the opportunity to go. The friend finding and to go into business connection and all of these other interesting extensible streams. And so I think a big part of our opportunity is brand building here. And that’s part of why I’m so focused on consumer first. I think you see a lot of.

Companies start in a consumer, a DTC sales motion, and then ultimately decide that that those B2B dizzy revenues are really sticky and exciting. And look, if we build this right, we will have all kinds of opportunity there, but consumer business has changed culture and creating great. The sticky experiences is ultimately, what’s going to make you a better B2B to C platform because people are gonna want to use your product and that’s going to drive the better outcomes.

So all of that to say, I’m thinking very much about customer acquisition, but I’m doing it with this incredible team that we’re beginning to build in a way that I think. Hunts our brand forward and is really thoughtful about the way that we’re trying to reframe the narrative around weight. For example, we intentionally talk about our platform is weight care, not weight loss.

Ultimately, we want to be able to serve people at any way. And we do firmly believe in health at any size, but we want to serve up a toolkit for folks that maybe have tried everything else and nothing’s working or they’re yo-yoing, or they’re heading roadblocks because maybe biology is the thing that’s standing in their way.

Right. And so how. Build a brand, build a platform, build a community that powers that. And I think when you build brands and communities effectively, that’s what creates that viral network affected growth. You don’t build a world-class business on Facebook ads. You build a world-class business because you invest in a brand that people want to be a part of.

It stands for something there’s a mission behind it. That’s certainly how we thought about building Bumble. And I think you can look at. Way that Bumble changed the dating landscape. I mean, 10 years ago, no one wanted to admit the map on match.com or eight harmony and, and what needs to change all of that first at tender and later at Bumble.

And so I think there’s really interesting work for us to do in this space, but we’ve got to do it in a, in a brand forward way. And so contrary to maybe how a lot of these businesses are growing and scaling. While of course we have a practice around performance marketing and trying to target and focus on the people who would benefit from our products.

We’re really trying to build the platform and the brand for efficacy and by talking to members and figuring out how we drive great outcomes for them, because then, you know what they’ll tell their friends about us and they’ll help us sell the platform. And so I think it really is a much bigger question around how do we elevate the conversation around, wait, how do we connect it more deeply with health?

How do we shift the focus away from the scale and two things. Finding joy in your body and being able to engage in the things that make your life feel full and happy and fulfilled, and fundamentally that’s where the name found comes from, right? It’s not about what you’ve lost or it’s not just about what you’ve lost.

It’s what you find in this journey. And we get stories from folks writing in about. They can fit their wedding band on for the first time in eight years, or they can keep up with their kids on the playground and run up the stairs without getting out of breath, or they’re getting on an airplane again and traveling, which was their favorite hobby, but they stopped because it was embarrassing to ask for a seatbelt expander or to buy two seats.

That’s the joy that I want to drive for people. And I think when investors, when our team, when, when folks understand that that’s what we’re building like, this is not about. Lose 10 pounds for bikini season. This is like find a joy that you’ve been missing. If your body has been standing in your way. And I believe that if we build that with integrity, if we bring together, as I said, the best of precision medicine, the best of consumer technology, we platform all of this and wrap it in that community and brand of inclusion and belonging.

That’s what we’re setting out to do.

[00:31:12] Joe:
Yeah, super inspiring. And I think you hit so many of the points that, you know, maybe questions that I still had. I think you answered them maybe without even knowing it. And when you think about taking the approach and the opportunity to, you know, like you said, what Bumble did to transform the kind of, perspective or, you know, misconceptions around online dating.

To what needs to be done in terms of weight care as you put it, and building that brand, it makes all the sense in the world. And I’m really excited to see how you go about executing that vision.

[00:31:47] Sarah:
Yeah. That’s to got an incredible team. We’ve got a big problem ahead of us, but I think we’ve got the resources to solve.

[00:31:53] Joe:
Yeah. I think with that, as we get toward the end of the conversation, and take that vision and think about how we go about executing it, it’s early in the company, right? It’s early in the new year.

As you think about the next six or 12 months, what do you have on the roadmap? What kind of key initiatives you’re working towards?

What are you excited about, or what things are you putting out there for the team in terms of key priorities, that if you do these things, it will make the year a success? How do you think about executing down that path?

[00:32:32] Sarah:
There’s a lot that I’m still learning about the business. I’ve been in seat for five months, but the most important thing that I can do, and all of our teammates can do, is listen to our members. Understand what’s working, what isn’t working. How do we personalize the program more for them?

How do we drive towards efficacy, and how do we do it consistently and use that as a mechanism for building trust? For building that flywheel of growth? for building the foundation to go sell to businesses someday?

Getting trust, getting efficacy, getting our members’ needs met, that’s it. That’s table stakes. That always has to be the North Star.

That’s where we’re really spending our time. We obviously are in this wonderful position, having raised the series B, where we’re able to invest in the platform. Invest in things like product and engineering to build tooling, et cetera. That’s also investing in our team and hiring more folks, and making sure we can grow the supply side of the business so we can meet the demand that exists.

70% of the US population are overweight or obese. The average American has gained 30 pounds during the pandemic. This is a meaty problem, and we know that the demand exists out there. It’s our job to make sure that we’re building the platform in the most evidence-based, high integrity way first, and then demand will come.

[00:33:52] Joe:
Yeah, it’s an important and powerful mission, and certainly much needed. I think you representing both the company and that vision today really shines through.

I appreciate you making a few minutes to chat with us.

For folks who are interested in learning more, following along, where would you point them?

[00:34:12] Sarah:
Join Found.com, and @JoinFound on social.

[00:34:16] Joe:
Awesome. I definitely encourage folks to check that out, and thank you again for spending some time with us today.

[00:34:21] Sarah:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

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