Today, I’m joined by Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer, co-founder & CEO of Signos, a weight management platform using metabolic data for better outcomes.
Signos combines continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) with an AI-driven app to deliver real-time glucose monitoring for optimal health and weight management. Reading an individual’s metabolic signals from meals, the platform delivers timely recommendations for eating, exercise, and better health.
We’ll discuss the metabolic health crisis, obesity epidemic, and how Signos is using glucose monitoring and AI to provide personalized health insights. Plus, Sharam talks about the power of technology and creating sustainable behavior change.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How Signos is using technology to optimize their clients’ weight loss strategies
- How Signos scaled their business to over 200K waitlist customers
- Sharam’s thoughts on future innovations in health & wellness wearables
Links & Resources
- Subscribe to the Fitt Insider newsletter
- Visit the Fitt Insider jobs board
- View current Fitt Insider investment and get in touch
Sharam’s Links
- Signos’ website
- Follow Signos on Twitter
- Signos is on Instagram
- Follow Signos on Facebook
- Check out Signos on YouTube
- Signos’ LinkedIn page
Episode Transcript
This is a machine-generated transcript. Please excuse any errors.
[00:00:00] Sharam:
We essentially translate an individual’s metabolic signals into timely recommendations for eating, for exercise, and for better health.
When members join Signos, they log what they’re going to eat, and that allows the platform to learn each person’s glucose response to specific foods.
Once we calibrate our AI around you, we use that data to provide personalized nutrition insights to bring those glucose levels back within their optimal range.
[00:00:36] Joe:
Welcome back to the Fitt Insider podcast. I’m your host, Joe Vennare.
Today I’m joined by Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer, Co-founder and CEO of Signos, a glucose monitoring and weight management platform.
In this episode we discuss the metabolic health crisis and obesity epidemic, and how Signos is using glucose monitoring and AI to provide personalized health insights. Plus, Sharam talks about the power of technology and creating sustainable behavior change.
Let’s get into it
Hi, Sharam, welcome to Fitt Insider. Thanks for joining us.
[00:01:02] Sharam:
Thanks, Joe, for having me. I appreciate it.
[00:01:04] Joe:
Yeah, I’m very much Looking forward to the conversation.
To kick things off, let’s have you introduce yourself and tell us about Signos.
[00:01:13] Sharam:
Sure, happy to do that. My name is Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer. I grew up in upstate New York. I started a company called Signos. It helps manage your glucose so you can manage your weight and live your healthiest life. We essentially translate an individual’s metabolic signals into timely recommendations for eating, for exercise, and for better health.
When members join Signos, they log what they’re going to eat. That allows the platform to learn each person’s glucose response to specific foods. Once we calibrate our AI around you, we use that data to provide personalized nutrition insights, including which foods are best for each member, when to eat them, when to exercise, and how to exercise, to essentially bring those glucose levels back within their optimal range.
[00:02:01] Joe:
Yeah, it’s definitely a kind of exciting time for the, the broader, metabolic health category. How people are using, you know, kind of an array of health wearables, but certainly the continuous glucose monitor to decode all of these aspects of personalized wellbeing. when you look at that, can you just maybe for a second, talk about the, how the platform works, what the user maybe experiences and, and how that’s these are the same or different than maybe other approaches.
[00:02:29] Sharam:
Yeah, definitely. So right now, the way it, it works is once you, come off the wait list, you can purchase a subscription, three months, six month, etcetera, etcetera. we have you fill out a medical questionnaire connect. to a doctor essentially that provides a prescription assuming, all as well.
And at that point you’re, you’re off to the races. You will receive a box in the mail. that box will, have all the goodies in. It has a. Continuous glucose monitor, that enables you in real time to see your data transfers, that information via Bluetooth. it combines a, a glucose patch that you can put on that CGM has a bunch of goodies sort of around that, to, ensure you’re successful in your journey.
And then once you begin, obviously when we walk you through putting the continuous responder on, but we’re really starting to calibrate our AI around. Your metabolic response so that we can optimize and provide you a very personalized health, personalized medicine kind of approach that hasn’t really exist existed before. at least in the last 50 years of calorie count.
[00:03:33] Joe:
Yeah, I think it may be a, a two part question. one how you came to this and, and kind of started down this path and, and with this particular focus, but also, maybe these things are related.
We’ll find out. why is it. Now that there’s this kind of focus for the glucose monitoring or glucose as the measure to unlock personalized wellbeing and using the, the glucose monitor for somebody who’s maybe not diabetic.
So yeah, just the kind of origin story and both kinda like, how that’s tied to the, the opportunity, right. At this particular moment in.
[00:04:11] Sharam:
Yeah. So I, when I grew up, in upstate New York in Syracuse, and I was an obese kid growing up. I had happened to be lucky enough to lose a little bit of weight. So just became at some point an overweight kid, but my parents threw me in a lot of sports. I got, lucky and that my diet kind of follow along and, lost some weight and, got good enough to hockey, to go to college, to play and ended up having a couple offers to play in the NHL.
And the reason why I tell that whole story is. Even four or five years ago, I was, I was overweight again. And so like many Americans have been up and down and up and down in that, on that weight scale. And don’t get me wrong when I was a kid and got teased and made fun of for being overweight. That was, you know, that sucked.
But you know, when we were in, in college and we arguably had some of the best exercise nutritionist telling us how to optimize our bodies, you know, it wasn’t much better. They’d say, Hey, Sharam, You and Joe you’re at the same height, weight, age, gender, all of this stuff. we’re going to put you on a 2,500 calorie day diet, or whatever the number was and you and I could eat the exact same food.
We’ll have the exact same plyometric exercise or go on the ice or, or do whatever the exercise is going to be. And you could lose weight and I could gain weight that day. And then tomorrow we’d repeat that and the opposite could occur. And it was really frustrating to see. And meanwhile, I’d have 10 of my teammates eating.
Almost 5,000 calories not gaining any weight, hated them for it. And then I had some friends, you know, outside the team that were cutting down to 1500 calories, couldn’t lose weight. and it was just frustrating to see that. And the reality is, is that all of our metabolisms are different. Our bodies are different.
If you and I eat some rice right now, not only will our bodies process that rice differently. but our bodies will process it differently every day. And what I mean by that is if you, if you sleep for eight hours last night and you eat some rice, your body’s going to process that and have a glucose output is different than if you slept for, for no hours or slept for one hour.
Similarly, if I ran a marathon and eat some rights, it’s going to be different. You’ll see a different response than if I haven’t worked out in six months. and so all of that is sort of the key part of saying, Hey look, all of these diets that we’ve, we’ve been putting people on are really focused around everything in the fridge, that you’ve been consuming is bad.
We’re going to throw all of that away and you’re going to go on this new solution here. and the challenge, the reason why 90 to 95% of diets fail over a five year period is they’re just such big lifestyle changes that aren’t sustainable being on a keto diet for the rest of your life. That’s very hard.
And so what we really want to do is figure out what are the right carbs for you that you can eat. if you’re going to have a choice between oatmeal and pasta and this and that, what are the things that are sustainable that you can have? And why don’t we, why don’t we cut out the worst things outta there?
How do we combine exercise with that? How do we create a a series of micro changes that allow you to hit. Optimal goal. And so the long story short of that, that background story is both. I was inspired to create the company after I first connected with a member of the family that, ultimately was wearing a CGM.
And I was thinking about all of the ways that this data could really help non-diabetics. And how we could build, a real Corpus of intelligence around that to personalize every aspect of this in a way that this hadn’t happened. And so my background before this was building companies really focused around AI.
My last company on inclusive, was processing through about 10 terabytes of day to day to measure the impact of PR for the first. And this, endeavor really became the most personalized challenge I’d ever seen. you know, starting Signos. There’s just less understanding of metabolic dysfunction for healthy people, or people who are starting to experience metabolic dysfunction.
And really, I just, I wanted to know how to reverse this trend. and so it was really inspired to take, take action.
[00:08:01] Joe:
Yeah. It’s I think. In some ways we have a similar story in that, you know, being overweight or obese as a kid, is, you know, very difficult. And also I think it’s less likely and actually proven to be less likely, That you, you eventually figure it out. Right? A lot of those habits are cemented very early on in life and kind of fortunately myself as well, got into athletics as a way to, you know, understand what a healthier lifestyle is and figure out what exercise is and nutrition and all those things.
So having that kind of mission driven. Motivation to, to be able to tackle a problem like this. you said you kind of met somebody who was wearing a glucose monitor, at this point, how long has it been since you kind of founded the company and how have things progressed? I guess in that, that span of time?
[00:08:52] Sharam:
Yeah. So started the company in 20. towards the end of 2018, and it’s been a little bit of a whirlwind journey cuz the first, aspect of this was trying any CGM. We can get our hands on and just seeing how to tie into this and then just seeing does the data help if you’re not diabetic.
Because that was the biggest question up front, like, Hey, non non-diabetics, is it really valuable for you because diabetics get value. but really is there going to be any value for a nondiabetic and the overwhelming response that I learned in a number of us when we were testing? It was yes. And so the next version of this was.
Okay. Let’s, let’s build a solution around this and figure out how do we use this data, in combination with other data about your body, to ultimately help, with weight loss. And so I was, I was the first Guinea pig on this thing at the time, like I said, so, it was perfect, perfect use case for me.
So. I always believe in dog fooding our product. and it was just convenient that I really needed to lose weight anyway. so I initially lost 20 to 30 pounds when I did it. and then we were like, okay, well we, as we go to build this product, we’re going to try to automate as much of this as we can.
And so, as we were doing this, there were things that I thought would be fairly obvious and easy and, and the, and the right approach to do and other things. maybe were suggested that I was like, oh, this, this, this seems counterintuitive or doesn’t make sense. And, I don’t think people will do it. And there were some of, both of these that worked really well.
And some of both of these, that didn’t, and what we found was there was no better use case than both trying it yourself. As well as having customer feedback. So we did a combination of that. And one of the things is I’d be trying to convince people to get on this, but also I ended up forcing myself to gain some of the weight back so I can put myself on it again.
And I will tell you, Joe, that I’m never doing that again. Cause forcing weight gain, is not a fun is not in a Michael Phelps. Like, solution is not, is not fun after the first couple days. but after you get on this and, and you start to really see, oh, this thing that I thought would be a perfect solution.
Oh, that’s actually very difficult to do or if not as effective. And here’s a really simple thing that actually helps with behavioral change. I fundamentally believe in testing, testing this out, in a number of different, avenues, but long story short. That’s how we originally, got involved and, started the journey.
And then we raised capital. when this was a little bit beyond the PowerPoint, it was PowerPoint in early prototype. essentially, my co-founder and I sat down at the time.
And, I was in a room for a week and a half scoping out everything I thought we should build, for a while.
And, and he started just building all of that stuff. And so we got a real quick taste of, oh, people love this solution over here. and they never used this thing over here that we thought would make a lot of sense. So as we were doing this, there’s just so much interest in the space. We, we quickly raised, a couple rounds and then as we, scaled out the product, we had this huge waiting list.
That’s about 200,000 people now. And as we kept going, we just started taking people off and, scaled the business and raised a, raised a series a after that. Happy to talk about those details too. But.
[00:12:06] Joe:
Yeah, I think it’s the, the kinda other part of that origin story was, you know, for me, Outside trying to pinpoint this, you know, what happened? Call it in the last three to five years where the interest or kind of availability of. Consumer glucose monitoring, right? Not for somebody who is diagnosed diabetic and has been going through that process their entire life.
But now taking the, the consumer application and figuring out, okay, one, how do we from a telehealth perspective, get the prescription for the device. And two, when you look at the kind of software that goes along with that, What does this intervention look like? And you kind of talked about the different kind of coaching aspects and personalization and figuring out what people respond to.
Was there a kind of broader industry wide inflection point that’s that people kind of honed in on, Hey, the glucose metric and what we’re able to do with a glucose monitor. If we can apply this to. Not only the, you know, millions of people with diabetes, but the, the broader med metabolic health crisis, the obesity crisis, the fact that, I think almost 90% of healthcare spending is, is, is tied to
Diet related, you know, issues, how did that, that, that kind of broader category be one where, you know, not only, Super kind of focused and mission driven entrepreneurs are like, Hey, we’re this is what we’re going to tackle. But, kind of the venture capital industry also was like, Hey, we’re going to pour quite a bit of money into solving this problem.
[00:13:41] Sharam:
Yeah. So it’s interesting because in 2018, when I mentioned a family member had a, a CGM on that family member was diabetic. And so at the time there wasn’t, it, it was, it was far from obvious and I had a number of people. That said this idea made no sense. many, many were VCs, many were doctors, many were just regular people that I wanted to strap a CGM to, to, to give this a test.
But it, the thing that would always get people over the hump is once they put it on. Once they put this on and saw their own data, they would see what would happen when they’d eat at 11:00 PM and go to sleep. They would see what would happen when they eat their meal exceedingly quickly and, and run off to work.
They would see what would happen when they get up. First thing in the morning and fuel or not. just watching that and, and seeing how personalized their response was because it was literally just their body’s, glucose response to, to food and exercise and a host of other things was the thing that got people over the hump.
So as time went on, the more and more, would pitch this idea or get people on it, people would say, oh, this is really interesting. I’ve actually used this now. let me know once you have a product, let me know. Once you have, you know, a waiting list. Let me know once you have customers.
And so that’s what slowly happened.
And then more and more, you start to see a whole industry focus, cuz there’s a bit of a drum beep, which is we’ve been using a calorie for so long. What’s this other thing that’s been around. It’s been scientifically proven for this group over here of diabetics. So it’s not a made up metric by any such of the imagination.
The devices have been FDA approved. the CGMs been FDA approved for the last 20 years. so it’s not that we’re trying to figure out if this thing works at all or not. And so part of that helped with the credibility to say, Hey, can, can this group over here? Which is a much larger group, of course, than the diabetics can this group, have benefit as well.
And I think putting that in the hands of people has been part of this continual trend of personalized medicine and personalized nutrition and taking healthcare into your, your own hands. If you will to say, Hey, I know I want to go to my doctor. a lot of people don’t go to their annual physical once a year or get their labs done or whatnot, but here’s a way where I don’t even have to go in.
I can just see this and I can see it in real time. And see what’s going on. I think that that trend latched on the other one of, oh wow. There’s something new, which people love to test and love to try, especially in the, the health and wellness space, there’s something new and it looks like it really works.
Those two things really took off, I’d say over the last couple years, where as you know, people have been beating drum beat on this really heavily.
[00:16:17] Joe:
Yeah, there is that, that element of, and I I’ve used the glucose monitor, use a, a kind of a variety of different software with it. And there is that kind of initial intrigue and it’s very eye opening. Especially, as you mentioned at the onset, when you see these things, it’s like, you know, I’ve heard all types of people kind of anecdotes of, oh, I thought rice, like you said, or oatmeal or sweet potatoes, or I thought I was making a healthy decision.
And like, as it turns out, that thing that I thought was healthy is like, It’s wreaking havoc on my nutrition. so you have some of those elements, but I think at least in my own personal experience, after I used it for a little bit, and I saw kind of like a few of those things, I kind of got a sense of like, oh, I get it.
Like, shouldn’t do this. Should do that. Obviously I’m not the person that’s. You know, is using it for weight loss, and I need to be on it for like an extended period of time there, although there are other, like kind of performance things that are tied into that. so anyway, long story short, I ended up, I stopped using it after I like, kind of got the hang of like the feedback, right.
I, I, I went through the feedback loop. I got the feedback, I implemented it. How are you seeing that across users are people using it and continuing to engage? Are they, you know, using it for a period of time, kind of going off of it coming back onto it, or maybe even too early to tell?
[00:17:36] Sharam:
Yeah, I would say yes to all three of those, it, it, it’s too early to tell and we see people of sort of all walks of. going through all of those, all of those stages where some people just want it on them all the time, because it serves as a reminder, not to, fall off the wagon. The others, Are like, Hey, I, I feel like I’m in a great spot after X amount of months.
And I’ve lost the weight and, you know, and I’m, I’m kind of done, the thing, the challenge, and because it’s so early, we, we also don’t have, the definitive answer, but the reality is at least. weight loss, what often happens is people sign up for a product. They use it for a while. they’re successful or not, and then come next year.
They, again, sign up for that product. They use it or not, and they’re successful. So every year people attempt to help optimize the volume obvious. With 75% of Americans overweight or obese, there’s a lot of work that we have to do in order to tackle this. And I think the challenge really is especially coming out of the pandemic where almost 50%, I think it was 45% or around there of adults reported an undesired weight gain in the, in that first year of the pandemic getting almost 30 pounds.
I think most people like that, sta I gave about the 75%. That’s a pre. Things have only gotten worse. And so we’re really trying to focus on if you, if you’re here and you, you can complete your health and wellness, journey, your weight, loss journey, whatever the reason is, you’re trying to use a CGM in a month.
Great. If you need six months, great. You know, we can be supportive of either of those.
[00:19:14] Joe:
Yeah, the problem is certainly not one where that’s, you know, worrying about like an addressable market issue. Unfortunately like it’s, the problem is so massive that like, you know how people are using it and the number of. That are in that space. Like great. We need all the help that we can get as it relates to, solving the crisis.
Down that path and kind of thinking about the, the drum beat, right. And the people that, that are coming to the space, there’s this kind of duopoly, as it relates to the hardware, right? With like, Dexcom and Abbott, at least right now, there’s a whole bunch of kind of innovation happening on the hardware side.
We’ll see where that goes. so really there’s this differentiation on the software, the experience, the AI, the coaching, the other things that are being built around that.
I guess from your perspective, how defensible is that piece of it, right? The, or differentiated the software from one company to the next. And, and how do you think about, Hey, this is the particular value proposition that we want to provide as it relates to a company that might be trying to solve the same problem. Right. But with different kind of, features.
[00:20:19] Sharam:
No, I think that’s that’s spot on. I think the big you’ve identified the big. Challenge, which is in my opinion, someone coming for two weeks and saying, okay, cool. I’ve got my insights. I’m good. I think that’s the difference between buying the CGM sort of self-serve I’ll just make that turn up in this space.
Doesn’t really exist, but convincing a doctor to give you prescription then going to a pharmacy and saying, please order the CGM for me. And then using that product. I think that’s the difference between sort of that self-serve approach versus, Hey, if I can give you an AI that tells you what to eat and when, if I can give you the ability to tell you what the exercise looks like, how to do it, what the intensity is, I can give you an ability to map your.
And figure out how, when you’re traveling, this should happen and figuring out how to optimize, not just for weight loss, but other aspects of the journey. That’s in my opinion, the difference between someone using it for a pretty short period of time and it being a critical part of their, their, their body’s infrastructure, if you will.
And, and the success that you’re, you’re driving on this journey. So I think the AI piece is really the piece that will set this, set this apart. I think, you know, if you fast forward the tape already, if you go to Canada or, or, or certain countries in Europe, you don’t even need a pres. For a continuous glucose monitor.
So eventually at some point, if we assume things will, follow in a similar path, that might be the case here. whether the, the, the pharmacy goes away or not, who knows. And so you’re really left with, okay, now there’s a continuous glucose monitor, but what do I do with that data?
And that I think is the hardest part of this, because as we all know, there’s been gobs of data since the end of.
Just because the data is out there doesn’t mean the behavioral change will occur. And that’s where I think the real, win is here is being able to successfully drive the behavioral change. And that’s really what we focused on. So right now, 89% of our customers successfully use our product to lose weight.
And that, took a while for us to really hit the nail on the head in thousands of iterations of our software. All the way from harking back to that first one I told you about when we picked a CGM off, as quickly as we could, and just try to hook it up to where we are today and just really building our product score, around a realtime CGM, like the Dexcom G six, that can send that data wirelessly via Bluetooth has been a, a key part of that infrastructure that we’ve built because otherwise the experience is very, very different.
And I think moving forward, making sure everyone really has access to a real time. CGM, is a critical component of that successful platform.
[00:23:02] Joe:
Yeah. The, even, like you said, if you kind of jump ahead a little bit, the, the problem, and this is true of basically not only all data, but specifically as it relates to, you know, health wearables, it’s like, great. I, I see this, but how do I implement it? And then how does that adapt over time? And then is it, you know, personalized enough to the point where, you know, not only, I think we’re getting better at deciphering that data from like the, the app software perspective and showing people the right information, but there’s still that big leap to, Hey, you have to make the behavior change and you have to make that behavior change over a sustained period of time.
Is. Something that can be solved with like, either a wearable device or, or software without this like added element of accountability or human intervention, really sustaining that behavior change.
[00:23:58] Sharam:
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s all, part of it. I, I. In my opinion, nothing is solved ever. So I think that even if, even things out there that we think are, are working, we’ve figured out a way to do an electric vehicle, I still don’t think EVs are solved. I think there’s just so much innovation that can occur.
And I think in this space, we just have a, we just have a long way to go. that’s why those statistics are what we said at the beginning, the call. And I think if we really focus our more, our efforts on driving an ecosystem around this, we can help everybody be successful. But I think if the focus has been solely on, oh, let’s get hardware on someone we won’t, if the focus is solely on let’s get software on someone, we won’t, I think the, the goal has to be a real holistic approach to look at like what drives.
What drives me? What drives you? And what are the things that make us able to do thing X or step Y? that will be one of the hundred steps on the journey to hit this goal that you said you wanted to attain. I think really breaking that down is critical to making sure people are successful doing it.
[00:25:03] Joe:
Yeah. It’s, as it continues to evolve, it’s like, all the above kind of approach in terms of like, we, we have to get it there and continue to make progress towards it. kind of zooming out a little bit at this point. Do you and recognizing that, you know, early. applies across the board, right?
So early for Signos early for this kind of industry early for how people are, are approaching health, wearables, and that data and behavior change. but as I mentioned there, Is kind of a lot of buzz around noninvasive glucose monitoring. Is it going to be another device? Is it going to be in a smartwatch or in a ring or something else?
Does that impact kinda like how you’re thinking about the, the problem or the opportunity at all? Or just like, Hey, great. If there’s another piece of hardware to integrate with we’ll integrate with it and kind of keep it moving.
[00:25:51] Sharam:
Yeah, no, exactly. I, I think it would be great if that, if that happens, I. I know a number of companies have spent a lot of, a lot of big companies have spent a lot of money on trying to solve this problem. and I know every, I feel like every year it’s, it feels like it’s only a few years away. and, diabetics will say this, cuz they’ve been told this for the last 20 years that it’s just around the corner.
There are a few different, folks that, that write about the space that have really taken deep dives into non-invasive glucose, tech monitoring. one writes a white paper, about, about it that, I think is fascinating, but all of the conclusions so far, Hey, it’s, it’s not here yet, but it’s coming.
And everyone differs on how long a period it is until that arrive. And a lot of the best guesses are, Hey, it’s five years away. Other people think it’s 10 years away. those stats, whether it’s three years, five years or 10 years have, have roughly been the same predictions for the last,
[00:26:49] Joe:
Yeah.
[00:26:51] Sharam:
Those predictions are still accurate.
[00:26:53] Joe:
Yeah,
TBD kind of across the board on that one, but yeah, I think that the broader kind of takeaway is like, yes, innovation seems to only continue and accelerate and eventually some other solutions will emerge. I guess the, the, the other. Side, maybe of that coin is like, as wearables become pretty much ubiquitous.
And you have all these different metrics that you’re able to measure from sleep to heart rate, variability and blood oxygen levels and physical activity, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s great. Right. But even to this point, it’s still somewhat siloed, right? You you’re collecting all this in different kind of devices and subscriptions.
Do you look at it and say, Maybe nutrition in this case, in, in blood glucose is like the number one metric, and then we’ll look at, or integrate with these other kind of data hardware providers. Or do you think that just over time, that that happens naturally? Like, I guess the question is like, do we need to have this full picture of all the metrics to be able to make the actual.
Decision to take action behavior change, or can we focus on one and then like just kind of optimize the other ones enough to make progress.
[00:28:05] Sharam:
I think this problem Is the most difficult multifactorial equation in history because the body I think is more complicated than, than even some of the pre experts give credit for while I feel like we, we know so much about the body, there are so many aspects of it that can compensate for when you try to get it to go left.
For it to stay straight down the line, or write and go straight down the line. And I think the, tough part of this is that you have to take into effect all of those, stats we just mentioned. It’s not just looking at glucose that I think will, be it. You, you could, that could be a really big metric, but I think you need to look.
Exercise. I think you need to look at diet. And if in fact, if you just looked at your glucose and didn’t change any of those too, nothing’s going to happen, obviously. So the key here is when you look at the 50 or so factors, that could ultimately affect How your body, processes food and convert into glucose or how it affects your glucose, stability.
We need to get our hands on, not just the glucose, but as many of these as possible so that we can help fill in the gaps and tell someone, what to do now that, multifactoral equation sounds nearly impossible. the part that makes it even more difficult than that or two aspects.
One is we have to put it in an interface that doesn’t require a PhD in statistics to understand. and so then, but then we have to really, focus on an aspect of it, which is how do I motivate the person to do it. What’s the behavioral change piece, to get this done. So I think that you have this, crazy difficult problem here that, tons of companies are, are working on across all the different spaces of health and wellness and combining them all together gets you a step of the way closer.
Figuring out the ability to put this in an, in an interface and communicate that information to people in a easily or digestible way or a simplistically elegant way, I think is another challenge. And I think the third part is that behavioral change piece that I think is the critical aspect, I think you could have all of these components individually without putting ‘em together. I think it’s going to make a difficult challenge.
[00:30:09] Joe:
So no easy solution, I is the punchline there, certainly a lot to, to kind of decode and then, implement. Yeah, hopefully in a way that, encourages and enables people to, to, to act on that. yeah. So in, in taking that and maybe wrapping up as we get towards the end of the conversation here, when you think about.
What’s next right for Signos. And, and how you go about that. You mentioned, you know, kind of building up the wait list, to some 200,000 people getting them off, getting them implemented, trying to collect as much information as possible about how they’re responding to this. how do you prioritize or maybe what’s on the roadmap, do you think like, Hey, here are the next 2, 3, 4 things we need to do to take that next step forward.
[00:30:55] Sharam:
Yeah. So coming off that large series a that we raised from Google ventures with Dexcom ventures participating as part of that, and some of our great seed funds that came in, like 1984, and court side. And, really taking that and making sure a, that the infrastructure is in place to allow us to scale to the number of users that we want to scale to.
And so that’s sort of a technical piece B or building all of the product pieces that our customers will need in order to help them with the behavioral change in order to help them with the food in order to help them with the. and then see really looking at what drives the behavioral change piece.
I think really taking that information and saying, all right, what are the pieces that are missing that got. Bob over here to get the job done, and Sheila, over here to get the job done, but didn’t get these other two, to complete the task. How do we help and make it inclusive enough where it doesn’t just help this small segment of the population, but really can help all Americans.
To tackle this, obesity epidemic because it’s, so it’s such a big problem. if we don’t come up with a holistic solution, then I think we will not be able to really make a dent in, terms of silo impact that we really want to as a company. So I I’m hopeful that all of these long hours and hard work that we’re putting in all of our great partners that have enabled us to be successful so far.
It’s not just a huge opportunity, but it’s also a, a greater good that we can really, help Americans and, and hopefully, scale, really around to a number of other countries past that.
[00:32:27] Joe:
Yeah, very much needed.
At this point, I think beyond the, if you want to say, “red flag,” or crisis, everything has already reached the point of like, we do need that all of the above, all hands on deck solution.
So, yeah, it’s definitely exciting to see you, the other companies, and the general interest in this space, and the number of potential solutions that have started to emerge.
For folks who are listening and are excited by this, and want to learn more, either from a consumer perspective, or just in general about what Signos is building, where would you point them?
[00:33:04] Sharam:
We’d love for you to come to Signos.com and sign up for the wait list. We will be enrolling more people soon.
[00:33:11] Joe:
Fantastic. I hope people do that. I’m really excited about our conversation here today. I appreciate you making some time.
[00:33:17] Sharam:
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on, Joe.