Transcript
Josh Clemente:
Friday, April 16th, 2021, halfway through the month already. I have no idea how this is physically or psychologically possible to keep up with. Recent achievements, huge week. I just want to shout out a couple of the shipped and progress items on the backend and product. And David will jump into these more deeply, but we push out lessons, the dashboard for the hull study, which is an ongoing research program, retool authorization improvements, qualitative member survey. So a couple names, just going to throw these out. Basically the whole team has shipped something and, or made significant progress this week. So showing you how David, Murillo and Jeremy have all made significant progress, not just on those, but also the sleep show v1, steps v1, reach features, sharing v1, programs, in-app subscription sign up stuff. And then we had some other initiatives, which Ben and Miz also contributed to.
Josh Clemente:
So getting started cohorts, information architecture progress from Alan. So a lot of great stuff happening both in the background and already pushed out. So yeah, appreciate everyone. The cohort stuff I really want to touch on because it’s kind of the first initiatives that are coming out of our community efforts, that will be not necessarily app features, but more so functions or maybe parallel programs that people can take part in that will help them feel a little bit more guided, a little more supported by their team or by others who are starting outside of the team rather. We’re also moving forward with a WHOOP and Levels case study. So as everyone knows, Kristen Holmes, VP of performance over there is one of our advisors and we’re really interested in digging into the correlations between their recovery scores and sleep quality and the Levels sort of nutrition and metabolic fitness metrics.
Josh Clemente:
And so we’re going to kind of do a pilot with this initially with probably the internal team, and then look to do a larger push with members who use both WHOOP and Levels. We’ll also probably get some VIPs in there. So thanks Tom for jumping in and helping with this. On the content side, great progress on multi-channel distribution strategy, and we’ve got some big pieces coming that I’m excited about. I think fructose, for example, is a really interesting one. People are confused by the fact that fructose, although one of the main kind of dietary sugars that we consume, cannot be used the way glucose can. Doesn’t show up on a glucose chart. So a lot of interesting nuance that we can get out in these next big foundational pieces. And then we’ve had some continued community calls this week. I was able to do one yesterday, which was awesome.
Josh Clemente:
Six weeks of community calls set up for Sam, so he’s going to be doing these on a continuous basis and hat obviously to Braden for continuing to push these ahead. Some other cool stuff. We’ve got a great sleep report image right here in the middle. Thanks Alan, for mocking that up, it looks beautiful. Just kind of a taste of what’s to come. Casey did two IG lives this week, one with Drew Manning and one with Nick. And I’m blanking his last name. Gonzalez, I believe. Both of which were extremely popular and in just 24 hours, we’ve got a combine like 50,000 views on those two. So definitely paying dividends on that time invested. BossBabe podcast came out. We’ve been in touch with a few CrossFit VIPs and athletes. The Seattle Seahawks nutritionist, Wall Street Journal released an article that mentions us.
Josh Clemente:
We’ve got the new Dan Frommer, new consumer post that went up or article that went up based on his experience, which was very good. And then want to highlight the survey that David sent out. He may touch on this on his segment, but a really an interesting qualitative survey experiment where we are able to see, and you might be able to see here in the before and after results, the degree of change that people are expressing in their understanding of how to improve their diet, how to make positive changes, a whole host of really interesting questions that were asked that may not show up in the metrics. It may not be a metabolic fitness score going from 50 to 90, but it’s giving people the confidence that metabolic awareness, we’re all kind of into it. So really awesome experiment there and exciting.
Josh Clemente:
Yeah. And then I did a community call with the acquired podcast team yesterday and the LPs, which was awesome. And Trevor Bauer, who was the CY Young award winner wants to get more involved with Levels. He’s one of the biggest names in baseball right now, which is awesome. All right. And with that, I want to welcome Lenny Rachitsky. So Lenny is on the call with us this morning, he has a really awesome background, obviously product manager, Airbnb, founded company that was acquired by Airbnb. And then went and started doing his own thing and has produced Lenny’s Newsletter, which many of you I’m sure are familiar with? It’s really an amazing way to stay up to speed on all things tech and business building. So we have luckily been featured a few times, or at least once in the newsletter.
Lenny Rachitsky:
Many times.
Josh Clemente:
Several times. So I’ve caught at least one of those mentions. And anyway, I just want to thank Lenny for joining us, thank Lenny for being a supporter and for continuing to kind of cover us as we move forward with this experiment that is a business, and would love to hear a few words from you, Lenny.
Lenny Rachitsky:
Totally. Thanks for having me. Hi everyone. I’ve seen so many of these videos that Sam sends out every week and I feel like I’ve broken the fourth wall and I’m somehow inside this video. It’s kind of surreal and I’m excited to be here. And I guess I just wanted to share how special I think it is that Levels isn’t just like the place that you’re working and how unique and special it is. I invest in a lot of companies and a lot of friends asking me for advice on places to go work and things that I help them think through about where they should get work are things like, do they have a mission that you care deeply about versus is it just like another SaaS tool out that’s out there, and you guys have that in spades. I don’t know how much more important a mission can be than helping people live happier lives and longer lives.
Lenny Rachitsky:
So you guys have that checkbox. I ask people to think about just, how big is the market for the place that they’re going to work, and the fact that you guys have this insane wait list of people that are, I don’t know, a hundred thousand deep now tells me a lot about how large this market is, and I think a lot bigger than people thought it would be. I tell people to focus on, are you working with A players, kind of people that you’re almost intimidated to work with, and because they’re so smart and you guys all have that just watching these videos every week and all the things that you all do that are really unique to founders. I don’t know.
Lenny Rachitsky:
When people ask me, how do you hire amazing engineers or how do you get attention for your company? I always point them to things Sam is doing and other things that I see you all do on these videos. And then last thing is I think about just the culture, something at Airbnb, where I spent a lot of time, the culture was one of the big differentiators and advantages for Airbnb, for hiring, keeping people, getting attention, building their brand. And you all have one of the most unique and interesting cultures that I’ve ever seen at a startup, and that’s going` to be so important for you all, as you grow and continue to acquire people and funding and all those things. So it’s a pretty damn special company you all work at. And I know it’s hard to realize that sometimes when you’re on the inside, but as an investor and general startup, I don’t know, helper, I just want to highlight all those things.
Lenny Rachitsky:
Also, the newsletter I write about product and growth and just highlight examples of great companies and what they’re doing right and wrong. And I think Levels has actually been the most frequently referenced startup in my newsletter across content and how to use content to drive growth, how to create buzz and attention, and also around just how to communicate internally and externally. And so you all are doing a great job, keep up with the great work. I’m a super proud investor and I’m here if anyone ever needs any help on anything that I write about.
Josh Clemente:
Love it. I really appreciate that, and I know the whole team does. And Lenny means what he says when he says he’s willing to help. I have to say Lenny’s one of the top I think performers on the investor side in terms of just being a support system.
Lenny Rachitsky:
That’s right.
Josh Clemente:
Always have a response within minutes, has made some awesome connections and just always willing to crank out the work that we need to keep growing this thing. So definitely appreciate that as well. It’s amazing to have investors like yourself who are a mechanism, not just kind of a bystander, so. Thank you. And yeah, great work team, awesome to hear those words. Jumping ahead.
Lenny Rachitsky:
New Levels.
Josh Clemente:
Thanks, Lenny. All right. Cool. So first intro, welcome Justin. Justin is our newest software engineer and actually another Winnipeg resident. So we’re really increasing our Canadian representation here. Justin, I’m going to let you just jump in and say a few words.
Justin Stanley:
All right. Can you hear me?
Josh Clemente:
Yep.
Justin Stanley:
Okay, good. Yeah. So I mean Winnipeg like Ben. Ben’s actually the one who introduced me to Levels maybe back in January, everything that Lenny has said, how you could go plus one, all the stuff that said is basically why I decided to join Levels. It’s such an amazing mission, and just the way the company works, everybody I’ve met just won me over a hundred percent. But yeah, a bit about me from my background, I’ve always been overweight my whole life. Ended up really bad brain fog, bad complexion, bad aches in my joints, and was looking for a solution and found Dr. Davidson’s book, Wheat Belly. Read that started losing weight by going wheat-free and low-carb, and then wanted to kind of get into a bit more exercise as well and found Beachbody’s at home workouts and did P90X and lost 70 pounds.
Justin Stanley:
Which is pretty crazy, but when I think about it, put on a bit of weight since then, last year was a bit tough for me, but yeah. And before Levels, I was at SkipTheDishes, which is like food delivery work. And I worked in Canada, same place that Ben used to work. It’s how I’m connected to Ben. And I’ve been there for about five years since the early startup stages and helped rewrite the three different apps about six times over and just got so much experience and learned so much and have been able to help out the team there with everything I’ve learned and taking that to Levels now. Yeah. Every job I’ve had in the past has been related to food. McDonald’s, Boston Pizza, grocery retailer, Levels, SkipTheDishes. It’s pretty funny when you think about that. And yeah, I like traveling. My nieces and nephews, niece there is helping me work out in the picture.
Justin Stanley:
And that’s my husband, Sean, and my pet’s Roco, and Edward Scissorpaws. And yeah. So I’m really excited about working with this super amazing team, digging into the mobile app, contributing anywhere else that I’m valuable. And since I’ve started Levels about five weeks ago, I’ve lost six pounds just by refocusing on exercise and back to the better ways of eating and it’s been great. And yeah, fun fact is my personal app, which is a app I made for Beachbody coaches to run their MLM businesses, which I was a beach body coach at the time, and that helped me get my job at SkipTheDishes. Yeah. it has quite a few users considering how niche is. Yeah.
Josh Clemente:
It’s really awesome.
Justin Stanley:
Thanks.
Josh Clemente:
Love to hear it. Yeah, team definitely connect with Justin. He’s getting ramped up. It will take a few weeks, but everyone should have a conversation. Several, but at least try and get to know each other via Slack and set up a video call. And Justin welcome, awesome to have you. All right, Alan. So Alan McLean, you’ve all seen his name I’m sure in Slack and all over the communication board already. Alan is our new lead designer and a really great dude and excited to have him as well. Definitely same deal, reach out, connect and get to know each other over the next few weeks. Alan, we’ll love to hear some thoughts.
Alan McLean:
Yeah. All right. Thanks Josh. I can share Lenny’s sentiment there. When I was interviewing, I started getting these videos from Sam and there was this point where I thought to myself, I’m being crazy not to take this job. I was just really inspired by, it was really fresh attitude and transparency and just great people. So yeah, I figured I’d be a complete dummy to pass on this. So I was really excited to join and you’ve all been super welcoming. I come from Google where I was focusing on R and D efforts related to health and wellbeing, and sort of emerging opportunities. I’ve focused on things like sleep and mental health in the past. Prior to Google, I was at Fitbit, and before that I was at Strava. So kind of also been on sort of the health and wellness journey for a while.
Alan McLean:
Started out back in the day, New York times, focusing on things like the elections, data visualization, visual storytelling. So aside from the professional stuff, I’ve been looking at my glucose for a long, long time. I’m Type 1 diabetic, so I love the way that you’re all thinking about using CGMs. I’m actually really excited to look at your data. So I’m tired of looking at diabetic data. I’ve got six year old kids. You can sort of see the full cycle of fitness there. That’s me at the top doing palates, iron man, done a couple of those, been a fan of endurance sports for a long time. Bottom left, that’s the first time both of them slept the full night, took a long time to get to that. So we’re both just overjoyed there, and then now they help me work out. That’s been in the back room, I’m on the trainer and they’re riding along with me during the switch, so. Yeah, I’m looking forward to working with all of you. It’s really exciting. Thank you.
Josh Clemente:
Awesome. Yeah. I love the trainer setups there with the kids on the training wheels. Those are brilliant. Yeah. Awesome. So good to have two people, two firehouses joining at the same time. I mean, I think we’re going to really be accelerating. Well, I don’t think, it’s amazing already. And I do have a culture shout out here set up for Alan. But it’s just been amazing to see the rate of acceleration continuing to climb as the team grows. That’s not common actually, as teams grow, things often tend to slow. So I want to going to quickly shout out Alan who shipped multiple beautiful features and updates in week one, even when he was part-time, and we’ve gotten some great responses on this stuff. I mean, this is so cool to see people hitting the ground running.
Josh Clemente:
I think it also speaks to the onboarding process that we’re building here. I want to shout out Miss and David for just making sure that Alan was set up to be able to do something like contribute to features that are going out the door and into customers hands. So appreciate that. The information architecture progress Alan’s working on is really exciting as well. And then I also want to call out David, the level surveyed v2 was really awesome. It seems like I’m not sure how long you spent on this, but the documentation for it was particularly great. It’s easy you to, to catch up on the why, the hypothesis, and then just quickly grasp the results. And the way that it was formatted and sent to the team was really helpful. So a really nice kind of case study on how to run scrappy experiments was right there with that survey v2. So thanks everybody, and please, yeah, continue working on solving the metabolic health crisis just to drive the mission statement home. All right, David, over to you.
David Flinner:
Awesome. So big update this week we shipped the lessons feature. So it’s long time coming, woohoo on that. Excited to get some feedback on it. But one of the biggest themes that we hear from people is that they’re not quite sure what to do or how to interpret their data. And it’s a problem we’re solving, it’s a multifaceted problem, it’s going to take a lot of elegant designs on how we surface meal logging and meal analysis, but there’s also this core foundational layer on metabolic information 101, Levels app information 101. And then kind of ramping yourself up on that direction too. So the lessons feature is more of a structured packaged organization for our content and letting people kind of pair that information where they’re at in their journey and go through it either at their leisure. If they want to go fast or slow or not, but they can kind of know where to go to get more information now.
David Flinner:
So big congrats to Murillo and Alan for the depth of this, and then Haney and Casey tirelessly working with me to get the content ready. I would say this is 50% loaded up with content right now, and we have placeholders in the app. So our members are going to go in, they might see a lesson they want and they’ll see half of it filled out, and then half of it, placeholder coming soon, which is kind of a good example of going fast. And if you tap that, you can actually hit a would you like? Thumbs up, thumbs down, and hit a Google form where you can actually give more information, what else would you like to see? Yeah, let’s see how it goes. Next slide.
David Flinner:
All right. So last week we talked about the new sleep details page, and that is ready for internal testing still. But this week, what we did was we took a quick look, if you go to the next page too I think, Josh, one more. Yeah. So one of the cool things we did this week was we took a quick look at how we might improve this. So Alan has been introducing some pair design sessions to the company and it’s really cool. He has a really good overview document of it. If you’re not familiar with it, definitely take a look at it. And I’m not going to give it justice right now on all the intentionality behind it, but suffice to say that we were trying to come up with quick wins on this new sleep experience. Looking for opportunities to improve the original spec that I passed off to Gabriel, which was implemented beautifully.
David Flinner:
But how might we also improve upon that? So we were riffing on some things like, could we make this feel more like a special report with a tech space version of the metrics up top? Could we make this more of a meaningful closing the loop moment where we show you not just your sleep, but also your last meal. Because your last meal is one of the big drivers for your sleep. And then also playing around with some interesting new design concepts that Alan wants to be experimenting with as we look forward to redesigning the Levels app. I think this will be going into development soon and yeah, Gabriel gives a thumbs up. We’ll see how that goes.
David Flinner:
Jhon started working on our step count integrations. So this is an expansion of our healthcare and Google fit integrations. And this is part of the track problem rail. So can we help people track what their activity is? And step is a big lever for that. This is kind of a foundational step where once we have the steps, we can then do interesting things with it, such as extending our ability to close the loop on data. So if we can develop algorithm that will detect, Hey, it looks like you had increased step activity here, even though you didn’t log an exercise. Could be surface something and say, Hey, you had increased step count for 45 minutes in your glucose drop by 15% back into the optimal range, great job. Stuff like that can be highly educational.
David Flinner:
So right now, because we already have some reels to show it on graphs, I asked him to put it on the graph but I think we’ll work with Alan to figure out. Just like we did with sleep, what is a better kind of specific journey for that. Next slide. And Murillo, actually, this is ready for internal testing probably later today, once we fix our build process. But we reintroduce the share button, all the different detailed pages. So when you hit the zone show or the new sleep details page, I forget, I think there’s one other one, but maybe not. You can now find the little share button in the upper right corner. Tap that to export what you see and get that over to your communities, so. Sharing is really important, I mean, we see it in Instagram all the time.
David Flinner:
People love telling their stories, the things that surprise them, the things that were meaningful to them. And this is just a very raw step one where we’re going to export the screen. Having a button and an actual system in place to do that is the first step in creating a better canvas for what sort of stories can we help productize, facilitate and share. Next step. Next slide. Let’s see. Yeah. And we pushed out for internal testing, the programs v2 experience. So as you know, our members really want to know what to expect. They’re paying a lot of money for the Levels, and they want to know how to get the most out of it. And kind of where they’re at on their level journey and what to expect next. We had a PDF for the last year that kind of give them an overview, and we’re bringing that in-app into a more immersive experience.
David Flinner:
So on the left frame here, there’s a little section in the middle called my journey, and then it shows you where you’re currently at. Then if you tap that, you can see the arc of the entire journey from week one to the end of week four. So if you wanted to preview ahead, kind of get a taste of things that come, you could jump around or you could jump to exactly where you’re at on this week. And then the next step was, I need to work to actually write the content and fill it up in there. So the third frame is just, if you were to tap on getting started, you wouldn’t see anything right now. But if you take a look, see if that resonates with you and we’ll iterate, hopefully, and push this out next week. Next slide.
David Flinner:
Xinlu launched the improved authentication and retool this week, so woohoo for that. Should be a win for our security, and thank you for doing that. Next slide. Just a quick glance, you’re not going to get to see the details here, but Josh alluded to the survey that we pushed out. It’s certainly not comprehensive, it’s just subjective self reports on whether you felt at a top level, whether you felt you learned anything positive about your food experience. But take a look in Slack at that doc that I dropped if you’re curious. We had 40 responses, and I think I emailed about 120 people. Yeah, positive, but lots of opportunity to get into the details on what specifically people are learning and iterate on this. Next slide. So if you haven’t looked at it yet, Alan has a great preview deck on information architecture and the design channel.
David Flinner:
I’m not going to try to attempt to explain it, because he’ll do it much better and I’ll kind of save the stage for him when he’s ready, but suffice to say that this is going to be the bedrock kind of foundation for the building blocks that are going to help us kind of take the Levels app to a really professional world class experience and set the stage for the right way to group things so that we can move really fast on meaningful problems for our members, so I’m really excited for this one next step. So just a quick recap on where we’re at with the roadmap visualization. So last week we had a whole bunch of concepts. Thank you everyone for reviewing them. It looks like concept three, which is that middle B one here was the most popular, which is kind of pairing the kind of March of time with the errors up top to the user problems, which are kind of the swim lanes on the rows.
David Flinner:
So I was playing around this week, next slide, with some concept. This is an iteration Sam and I were playing on where you get the problem rolls in the left, the arrows up top. But then the arrows are split, because you might not have the same problems you’re focusing on each era so we can stack rank the problems as well. I’m going to send out later today, I’ve got to in progress version that’s way more expansive because there are so many things we’re doing. I’ll drop that out in Slack and on announce, but would love to have a second round of feedback if you think it’s helpful or not. So that’s where that’s going. Next slide. And a quick summary of everything. So a couple of things to call out here that didn’t have a full slide, but were super good. The subscription work, there’s a new signup form experience that Jeremy’s been working on. Jeremy, I don’t know if we have any mocks yet from Alan or you on that, but maybe we can include that next week.
Jeremy:
Yes. Stay tuned. I do have some visual stuff that I can show. After the call, I’ll put it in the feature subscriptions channel on Slack.
David Flinner:
Awesome. Thanks. Yeah. And I think there’s also some small stuff working on with Miz to polish up the core subscription experience, lots of long tail edge case kind of crop up. And then I’ll save this one for Ben, but Ben and Miz have really been leading the charge. I didn’t really do anything here, but running the experiment on the getting started cohorts. I do want to have a stub here in the product section though because community is super important for the Levels product going forward. And we know we want to have something there, and so with this potential pilot on a getting started cohort that Ben’s leading to charge on, hopefully we’ll learn from that experiment and whatever that is will ultimately fold it back into the core Levels experience. And then one other call, the whole team is working on an app bug crash issue that’s ongoing, but fingers crossed, there’ll be some cool new resolutions to this tricky one. I think that’s it. Thanks for bearing with me.
Josh Clemente:
Awesome. Huge week. Yeah. Thank you everyone. Those listed, those not listed for that progress. Quick hiring update, we have closed the ops specialist role. So we’ll have more details on that. I think Miz is going to provide the update there. So we still have software developer, GC and head of research, and we’ve had some great conversations this week. Some ongoing team calls with some of the early candidates, things are moving, workable, it can get a little stagnant because it’s kind of a separate tool. So definitely for those of you working inside the hiring process, please continue to add updates every time you have a call and or an evaluation. Please add those in workable, so we can keep this reporting updated and keep the candidates apprised of the situation. And for those watching this outside Levels, please continue to point people in the direction of these URLs. These are active searches. Mike D.
Mike Didonato:
Thanks Josh. So this week we wrapped up calls with all participants in our nutritionist pilot that we ran except for one. So I wanted to give a quick update here. Overview, many of you know, some consistent feedback that we’ve received over the last few months was revolving around connecting with an expert or a coach. So we decided to run a mini pilot. A little bit of background there, we recruited a small group of people from our wait list to work with two nutritionist individually. The feedback and the perception we got was extremely positive, all but one of the individuals that we spoke with said if given the opportunity to go through the self-guided Levels experience at 3.99 versus this nutritionist guided experience, which we charge at 4.99, excuse me, 4.99, all selected the nutritionist guided experience, except for one.
Mike Didonato:
And then, consistent themes and benefits that we saw, I don’t think they’re going to be too surprising. But it revolved around personalized recommendations and suggestions based on their data, and then again, the ability to just connect with someone to not entirely understand all of their data, but just the desire to understand if what’s happening is normal. The quote there, I think highlights a lot. That is all for the update. I will circulate a summary and findings memo to the team shortly.
Josh Clemente:
Awesome. Yeah. Looking forward to that memo and thank you for pushing that project forward.
Josh Mohrer:
The Coca-Cola is either on its way to you or has arrived, good luck with that. A couple people asked me if they should just get it themselves at the store. The reason I shipped it out to everybody, or actually had someone do that, one, is to make sure we’re all drinking the same Coke. If you live outside the U.S, the Coke is far less toxic, it might not give us the same impact on the experiment. But also like the total cost of this compared to what it would take for 18 people to go to the store was pretty low. So that was the reason it should be coming on east coast now, and west coast in a couple days. Enjoy your Coke, don’t forget to log and tag it appropriately. Thanks. Miz.
Josh Clemente:
Awesome.
Michael Mizrahi:
All right. So yeah, as Josh mentioned, we filled the ops specialist role, really great inbound interests on this. I think over two dozen candidates right off the bat. And so really, really great candidates to see. We ended up extending an offer to Jesse Lavine earlier this week, a few of you have met him. He’ll be starting in just about a week and a half or so. He is a T1D, type one diabetic as well, really passionate about diabetes education, has run some kind of advising and mentoring on his own with a few small businesses that he started to coach diabetics around diet nutrition. Not 2000, did I say? So two dozen, sorry about that, Casey. Yeah. So about 20 something applicants all in. Yeah. That would be a lot of pipelines to manage. So yeah, Jesse will be starting with us. The thought process behind extending the team right now.
Michael Mizrahi:
So he’s going to be joining in a contract part-time capacity, mostly to help give us some support coverage and help with some ops projects on the side. Braden, Mercy, and Lori have been absolutely killing it, but as you know, we offer really fast support, seven days a week for the most part, nights, weekends, all of it. And so we could use some help to add some relief, to give folks a little bit of a break. We really mean what we say when we want people to live some balanced lives, to take time off. And getting someone on board that we can trust that we know is doing a great job, just as well as any one of us would do with some good training, with some documentation and resources is going to be a really big improvement for the team. So excited about that.
Michael Mizrahi:
And I’ll introduce Jesse when he gets started in about a week or so, and he’s pumped to join. We’ve got 800 plus consults coming up through the next four to five weeks or so. So we’re staying steady at just over 30 a day. So pretty healthy pipeline there, and I know we’re turning on some of the partnerships and promos that we postpone. So expecting this to continue and ready to fill all these orders, which is great and ready to go. On that note, some quick updates to the Levels kit that have happened over the last few weeks, but just wrapping them all up into one update here. We’ve added Levels logo transfer sticker, so our L so people can put that on their laptop or wherever they want to stick a sticker. That’ll be in each one of our kits going out subscription or new.
Michael Mizrahi:
So a pretty low lift. This was a recommendation from a member and we were able to turn it around pretty quickly. So thanks Ben for getting that handled. We’re testing a new circular patch without a sensor adhesive. This was a moonshot idea from Sam and we were able to actually pull it off with Skin Grip, our partner there. So Josh really led the charge there. We have 5000 of those in today, we’ll get those out to tests within the team early next week, and then probably start shipping those in kits if everything is as expected. And then a funny mini challenge to share that photo in the top left is not mirrored, that’s our logo as a J. So we were in a little bit of a pinch and we rush screen printed a bunch of patches, which we thought we were being really quick.
Michael Mizrahi:
We’ve done this in the past when we get into tight inventory situations. We’re still dealing with a little bit of Chinese new year that slowed down production in February and March. And so we have this massive order of patches coming in later next week, a 20000 or so, but we needed 5000 to get through a week, and this is what came out the other side. So note to self, always double check the work. We were using a printer we’ve worked with before, they had the template set up. We knew that it was great quality, even better than some of the quality we got on printing from Skin Grip, but we pushed them to turn it around in two days instead of five.
Michael Mizrahi:
They pulled all nighters because each single patch has to be hand put on the machine, and we didn’t proof because we were moving fast. So always double check, it’ll prevent work later. We’re minimizing these being sent out to members obviously, and so as soon as the new inventory comes in, we’re back with the L, but the impact should be minimal. Obviously not our brand, not a slip up that’s okay, but it is what it is for now, and we’ll get this fixed pretty soon. So if you see this, don’t be surprised and we’ll reverse that soon.
Josh Clemente:
Mirror selfies only with this.
Michael Mizrahi:
Yeah, exactly. And then last thing I wanted to call out. Thanks, Xinlu for this new visualization in retool reports. We used to have this data in the table really helpful to see it visualized by week, by day, by month. So we can get a preview of the consults coming up, of what’s been completed of refund rate, really helps a lot when we can see it in addition to just kind of reviewing the numbers. So using this dashboard pretty often. That’s it for ops.
Josh Clemente:
Nice. Thank you, Miz. Ben.
Ben Grynol:
All right, so that’s my car vote for the end. Those covers are great. Financial. So we are almost at our goal, $300,000. We’re at 250 right now for the month, 10.2 in cash in the bank, so we had a hundred thousand dollars allocation to the new swag project. Next slide please. So member insights. We are undertaking a journaling initiative for feedback. So this is video diaries. And the point of them is that we’re trying to pursue a different avenue because you get different types of feedback with different user experience research initiatives. And so the reason we’re doing this as a scrappy experiment with 10 people right now is that it’s asynchronous. So people can do it at any time. It’s a low time investment for members and for our team to participate in. It allows people fluid thoughts, and then it’s highly scalable, right? So if this works with 10 people, we can all of a sudden say, Hey, what does it look like when we get a hundred people doing these five to 10 minute videos and they go through and they answer these three questions, which are the journey map.
Ben Grynol:
What’s a day in the life of using Levels? What’s a magical moment? And then what’s a frustrating experience? So it’ll be interesting to see that come together, which next Friday is the deadline. So very cool. Next slide please. Growth theme is everything is a remix. So you hear this often that there’s no such thing as a new idea, and hat tip to Miz on this. We are thinking about doing this, getting started cohorts experiment, where what does it look like when 40 to 60 people start the experience all on one day and they’re part of this group? A WhatsApp chat or whatever it is. And so rather than designed from the ground up, Miz said, Hey, why don’t we just piggyback on the infrastructure that already exists for the wearable challenge, remove the financial incentive and just have people go through this experience. And so doing so was very scrappy and quick, and so it allowed us to ship this within a day. So hat tip Miz, but yes, everything is a remix and that is it for growth.
Josh Clemente:
All righty. Thank you, Ben. Mercy.
Mercy Clemente:
Okay. So Instagram, we hit 26,000 followers. Casey did two Instagram lives, one with Nick Gonzalez, who’s an actor. Another with Drew Manning. Both are saved on Drew and Nick’s page. So if you haven’t seen them, I would definitely recommend checking one or both of those out. Twitter, we’re at 13,400 followers. A common theme that we saw on both Instagram and Twitter this week was pairing foods. So banana alone versus banana with peanut butter or cashew butter, and then doing the apple cider vinegar before having this one on the far right, Brent. He had a baked potato without the apple cider vinegar, and then a baked potato with the shot of vinegar beforehand. And the numbers are pretty significant. Yeah. So it’s pretty cool seeing what a difference those two small changes can have. That’s it for social.
Josh Clemente:
Great. Thank you. Tommy.
Tom Griffin:
Sweet. All right. A few quick updates for the week. So we’re going to touch on the WHOOP collab more in the next slide. There’s been continued interest from really high level and influential figures across the sports and fitness space. And then a couple big podcast wins this week. So again, BossBabe was released. So just taking a minute to celebrate this one. Casey killed it and this is a huge platform. It’s not necessarily squarely focused on sort of health optimization and nutrition like many of the shows that we’ve been on, but millions of followers on Instagram and a huge blog. And then Doctor’s Farmacy, so this is Mark Hyman’s show. Their team reached out to us and said they would love to have Casey on, likely for release in at least a few months from now given the projected number of conversions that this will drive. But this will likely be the largest show that we’ve been on to date. So this is a huge win, and just again locking in these partnerships and these promotional opportunities are critical for us as we set the stage for growth later on in the year. Next slide.
Tom Griffin:
All right. So Josh touch on most of this, but just taking a minute to zoom in on some of what we’re working on with WHOOP. So really scientifically the question that we’re exploring is what is the relationship between glucose control and recovery? Recovery is a composite metric of WHOOPs that’s really a product of sleep quality and a few other overnight biometrics like resting heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate. And the hypothesis here which is supported by existing literature is that this relationship is bidirectional. For example, if you ate candy all night and had super high glucose and high variability, this would likely impact your recovery score, you’d have worse sleep. And then the other direction would be if for whatever reason you had short duration sleep, let’s say you stayed up working all night likely the next day you would see worse glucose control. So we’re interested in this from a research standpoint, but also marketing collaborations, content marketing, the blog, social media, the podcast, and then long term potential product integration, which is something that’s been requested from a lot of our members. So more to come on this front, that’s it.
Josh Clemente:
Awesome. Look forward to that. Press.
Casey Means:
Hey. So just a quick run through of some of our press from this week, it was an awesome press week. We had a mention in the first paragraph of a wall street journal article. We also had a really detailed profile in the new consumer by Dan Frommer. He was super engaged with his level of experience, and we had multiple of calls throughout this month and he really enjoyed it. And I think did a great summary of the value of the product and also the larger societal problem of metabolic health. We were also in think testing with a review of the product, that was very favorable. And the press pipeline is just rocking as always. We had an interview with the Washington Post, sad news. Submitted to Real Simple, which is a huge women’s magazine. We’ve got stuff in the pipeline for Shape magazine. Business Insider reached out. We have a profile and crunch base coming out next week, and of course we’ve got our New York Times very big journalist joining the program. So very exciting about that.
Casey Means:
Next slide. Couple speaking events this past week or a couple of weeks was on the wellness experience. Virtual summit this week with CEO of Vessel and the deputy data of Shape Magazine. We were part of the diabetes essential program on which was released this week. Dom and Ben and Jason Fong, and many other people, our network spoke at this as well. And then the Welltodo Future of Wellness panel with Google and The Class. And then as was mentioned, a number of Instagram lives this week, which have kind of just been mind-blowing the type of reach these get. And the comments and the engagement about Levels that kind of pop up on these. So I think we’ll really lean into these going forward, but yeah, that’s it for me.
Josh Clemente:
Awesome. Haney.
Mike Haney:
Yeah. On the content side, two fun pieces up this week. There were a little bit of a departure from what we normally do. Kind of getting back to my pop side tech roots. We took a look at some of the cool new sensor tech that’s coming up. I think these kinds of pieces are important for helping to establish us as kind of a forward looking company that it’s not just about taking existing CGMs and putting them on people’s arms, but we’re really interested in the future of biosensors. And then we had a great piece that came in from Christina Birch, who’s a pro cyclist. This is a new format we’re trying for the people stories. We’ve got a couple more in the works where it’s a diary format, so you kind of get to see her day to day.
Mike Haney:
And this one’s interesting because she’s pro-cyclists and particularly track cyclists are a pretty unique beast in terms of the kinds of effort they have to put through. So I think it’s interesting that that people like her sometimes do things you’ll see in the piece that we would not recommend for other people. She’d chucks some pretty sugary drinks to recover from these massive efforts, but then when she’s not doing that, she’s trying to get the same kind of stable glucose that we’re all trying to get. And as mentioned earlier, we’ve got some, some big pieces coming up, some more kind of big foundational pieces, a really cool deep draft on cancer and metabolic health is in the works right now. Stacy and I had two great calls this week. One with a guy named Chris Urban, who we’re going to pilot working on some short summary videos.
Mike Haney:
This is part of this multi-channel content. How do we take a piece of content, an idea concept and spit it out over multiple different formats and multiple different venues, really maximize kind of the reach we get with every idea that we’re trying to talk about? And then we had a fun conversation with the illustrator who does typography illustrations out of food as a way to maybe try to up level some of our art, particularly around some of our food based stories. So next slide. One more thing quick. We did send out what I was calling the qualitative content feedback survey in this week’s newsletter. We’ve got about 40 responses, I think, maybe upper thirties. I’ll send out a more detailed report once we get a few more in. Stacy’s going to share this out on social, so we’re going to get a little bit more response. But really just trying to understand what do people know? What do they want to read about? How do they want to read it?
Mike Haney:
So I thought some of these responses were pretty interesting like exercise was really high on the list. I would’ve predicted food would be higher in terms of what people want to read about. People super interested in short articles and video, which I think is a good input for us. And the one in the upper left, I was happy this might be a little self selecting of the kind of people who take this survey, but more than half the people had read or almost half the people had read more than five articles on the blog, which I think is great. That’s showing hopefully some engagement, at least with some subset, so more to come on this and we have more results. That’s it for me.
Josh Clemente:
Beautiful. Very cool. Thank you. Quick research update. We touched on these already, I don’t have to go deep, but the WHOOP and Levels case study. We’re going to finalize the scope and recruitment plan and then get our data share agreement figured out before we start any of that. So with that, we are on the individual contributions. Yeah, I’ll kick this off. So professionally I’ve just been really excited this week by the acceleration of the team and just watching all of the secondary effects of having someone great join and then kind of unlocking someone else’s bandwidth, who is also great, who can then take on other things and just the force multiplication happening in real time is so cool. And this theme is just fun to watch. So that was the big thing for me. And then personally, I took a nice little trip last week to Montana and was able to camp in the mountains and roast some elk stakes over an open fire and kind of get in touch with the unexpected blizzards that happen out there. So that was nice. Sam.
Sam Corcos:
Yeah. I think the increase in velocity that we’ve seen in the last couple weeks has been really exciting. And on the personal front, I’m excited I got to spend some time in person with Andrew, which we’ve been working together for a year and a half now. I think I’ve seen him in person maybe three, four times, so. It’s the nature of remote work.
Josh Clemente:
Nice. I think Lenny may have had to jump. Lenny, are you still on? Yeah. Lenny had to jump, so Dom.
Dom D’Agostino:
Yeah. Hopefully you can hear me, although my camera’s not working, zoom can’t find it. But things are moving forward on the research here at USF with Florida Medical Clinic. The IRB did ask us to officially hire and make Florida Medical Clinic employees USF employees. So we’ve been doing that paperwork, which involves background checks and things like that. A little bit unexpected, but it’ll be helpful moving forward with the research. And yeah, book solid with interviews, podcasts, and also meeting a number of companies that are developing unique sensor technologies. So I’m excited about those meetings next week.
Josh Clemente:
Very cool. Jhon.
Jhon Cruz:
Yeah. I’m excited to have Justin and Alan on the team. It’s always great to have really smart and amazing people working here. On the other side, I had some pending blog post read and I was written them this week, and I’m true impressed about the quality of them. So they are so easy to read even for me, so happy to the content. And on the personal side, this is also on the level side, but I good at WHOOP, so I’m exploring this. It’s really hard to beat Mike D on the leaderboard, but I’m trying to.
Josh Clemente:
Good luck. Yeah. Glad to continue to see the WHOOP group expand. Yeah. If anyone else, by the way, because of this case study, if you want to join the WHOOP team hit up Tom. And with that, JM.
Josh Mohrer:
We’re all trying to beat Mike D on the WHOOP chart, it’s our lifelong goal. Just to echo everyone, it’s great to have Alan and Justin in the mist, really wonderful to see new folks rolling in and a Testament to how we’re doing the sort of experience that we can attract. On a personal note, it’s my daughter’s fourth birthday today, birthdays here are like religious holidays. So we’ll be up to this weekend and I hope everyone has a good one.
Josh Clemente:
Have fun, Tom.
Tom Griffin:
Just to be clear, I think it’s hard to beat Mike on certain WHOOP leaderboards like strain, but if you look at sleep quality or recovery, there might be another king in the hill there. Professionally, yeah, just plus one. So excited about Justin and Alan being on the team. Had a great call with Justin this week, excited to talk to Alan next week and just the product velocity is so impressive and so exciting. And then personally just planning a number of social events, upcoming locked in New York city weekend with friends coming from all over the world, from Kenya, from Mexico city, from London. So we’re super excited to get the gang back together.
Josh Clemente:
Awesome. Enjoy that. Justin.
Justin Stanley:
I’m just excited to keep meeting new team members next week, keep plugging through the onboarding and dig into the code, hopefully. And personal stuff, I got some nano leaf shape slight panel. So hopefully you can see them, but hoping to put them off on the wall in the office here and get a bit of funky stuff going on.
Josh Clemente:
Nice. Mercy.
Mercy Clemente:
Professionally, I think the Levels WHOOP study thing is going to be super cool. I don’t yet have a WHOOP, but Tom, I will probably be messaging you to get in on that. And then personally, my Peloton is supposed to be delivered between 12 and four today, so I am really excited about that, going to get on the Levels tag as well. So yeah.
Josh Clemente:
All right. We got some real fitness challenges happening here. Ben.
Ben Grynol:
Yeah. Super stoked to have Justin and Allen on board. Super cool to work with Justin again, a lot of history there, so very cool. Car vote is for a thing called everything is a remix. So 10 years ago, this guy can him up with this multi-part series about how all these ideas are just amalgamations of other ideas. So very cool. I’ll post it in Slack and that’s it.
Josh Clemente:
Nice. Miz.
Michael Mizrahi:
I’m happy that Tom called out his group leadership on the sleep side. That’s the one I’m chasing. So yeah, Mike, you can have strain. But fun to see everyone join pellets on the WHOOP group. It makes social activities become more fun. And Strava too, plug for Strava. On the work side, I feel like overnight, the app just gained 10 features. I held out on an update version and then all of a sudden there’s a beautiful dashboard, there’s a whole new homepage, the type has gotten updated a little bit. And I know that we haven’t even started so really, really cool to see all that progress so quickly. I’m excited to see that all come together. So I feel like we’re about to really see some big step changes on features and product, and really thrilled that Alan and Justin are here. And yeah, excited for Justin on the ops side as well. That’s it for now.
Josh Clemente:
Love it, Alan.
Alan McLean:
Well, professionally, I just say you’re all so welcoming. I feel from the video, the onboarding video, to the interviews, to just even the shout outs and props, I’m just really excited to work with you all. It’s just such a great vibe on the team. So vibe check is just amazing. So I’m really excited just to continue to collaborate with all of you. And personally, I think I’ll probably say this every Friday, but around this time of day on a Friday, I start thinking about where I’m going to ride my bike on the weekend and sort of got this per nice weather out here on the east bay, so I’m looking forward to riding my bike.
Josh Clemente:
Nice. Murillo.
Marillo:
Yeah. I will echo what some of you said that I’m just excited to see Alan and Justin join. Looking forward to talking to Alan and Justin, was great. And looking forward to the increased speed. The velocity and just seeing everyone come together, even seeing Justin just start jumping in and giving his feedback has been great. Giving that Alan already having an impact on the product has been amazing. Personally, but not really, I’m excited about my share on, so. Yeah.
Josh Clemente:
Nice. Mike.
Mike Didonato:
Yeah, definitely. Plus one some things. Definitely the velocity, I think pretty soon we’re going to need an entire Friday Forum for product and engine updates. And then, the second thing is the quality people that are attracted to what we do in our culture. Definitely Alan, Justin, our investors. These people tend to be some of the best at what they do in the world, but they’re also just really great people and it helps you keep working hard and it, and it’s really exciting and hat tip to our leadership team for preserving our culture.
Josh Clemente:
Casey.
Casey Means:
Yeah. So plus one again. So happy Alan and David are here. Had a wonderful call with Alan yesterday that left me feeling just so inspired and uplifted. I think my big thing for the week, I’m just feeling so grateful for our team. Big shout out to our advisors. I’ve had interactions with Ben and Sarah Gottfried and emails with Tom and Mike Kamen and Dr. Promo this week. And every single email, it’s just so willing to add value, so willing to help, so willing to loop us into interesting opportunities, and my mind is literally blown every week. So just incredibly, incredibly grateful and ditto to working with Haney. I feel like we’ve just be able to share this vision for what we want Levels to be in terms of a content and media operation. And then Mike, to just amp everything up to the next level, make it, even more formalized, structured, well executed every week, just makes me so happy and inspired. So super grateful.
Josh Clemente:
Awesome. Stacie.
Stacie:
Really excited to see our team grow. Welcome Alan, welcome Justin. And got to spend a lot of the last week traveling around the U.S, photographing our members. Whether it was a guy named J surfing in Pacifica, hiking with Natalie in Seattle, or grabbing lunch with a couple women in Dallas who have all been incredible members and supporters of our work. Just really inspiring to get to spend that one on one time with them. And then from a personal perspective, I get to see my brother for the first time in a year because David and I are going with our family to Napa, and he is an enologist at a winery there. So very excited for that.
Josh Clemente:
Nice. Sounds awesome. Gabriel.
Gabriel:
Hi. Yeah. So it’s not going to be original, but really excited about Alan and Justin joining, and also the fact they’ve gotten up to speed and producing great work already. Super exciting to see. On personal level, the risk of frost in Chicago has mainly passed, even though it’s meant to snow on Tuesdays, I’m going to plant some stuff in the garden this weekend.
Josh Clemente:
Very nice. Hao.
Hao Li:
Yeah. Huge plus one for the team expansion, new people always bring new excitement. And I’m also super excited about the roadmap concept and looking forward for the new updates. And personally, I will finally wash my car after I got it since like January or February. It’s been two months. We finally got some sunny days here.
Josh Clemente:
Awesome. All right. Haney.
Mike Haney:
I think there’s nothing else to say, but to the plus one, to the addition of Justin and Alan, the work that Alan was doing this week is just incredible. And it takes something that you already think is great, and you’re like, oh, there’s so much room to make it even better. I’m so excited to see where he takes that. Personally, I had a big parenting milestone last night, where for the first time ever, my son refused to go to bed because he was so deeply engrossed in YA novel that’s actually aimed about five years older than him, but it just made me so happy to see him want to read so much. It was really cool.
Josh Clemente:
Awesome. Congrats on the milestone. All right team. So we’re a little over on time here. We’re going to push into Murillo’s story of the week. I know if people have to jump, please feel free, but we got to preserve this important time at the end of these calls. So Murillo with that, do you need me to share, or.
Marillo:
Right on. So yeah, I’ll share from here.
Josh Clemente:
All righty.
Marillo:
I’ll try so kind of that I don’t think I should have done, but it doesn’t work without it. So let’s try it. I’ll share here. So can you see my screen?
Josh Clemente:
Yep.
Marillo:
All right. And now I also want to share some sound. So let me know if you can hear this. All right. Great. So it works. So the inspiration for this share is just, I’m Brazilian and I meet a lot of Brazilians outside of Brazil and there’s this often, whenever we’re talking two people who aren’t from Brazil, there’s this sentiment that I’ve seen spoken so many times. And I sort of empathize, but it’s hard, sort of bothers me a little bit too.
Marillo:
And they always want to make sure that everyone knows the Brazil is more than some men soccer, right? And I’ve seen this said so many times, and I understand, Brazil is huge and it’s multicultural and there’s a lot more about it than just some men soccer, so I totally get it. But the part that bothers me a little bit is it makes it kind of sound like those two things are small things and they’re certainly not. So, today, I want to talk [foreign language 00:57:58], just a little bit about Samba. And it’s just one story told four songs by the same artist called Chico Barque. One of my favorite Brazilian artists from his generation. So I’ll start with one that’s called Roda Viva and a little bit of background, right? So this is a song he entered one of the largest festivals in Brazil in 67.
Marillo:
And even today, that festival was sort of seen with this Arab legend, just such an important night because it was built as this big guy album for the future of Brazilian music, right? 67, television was coming on onto the scene. Radio was already big, and Brazilian music has always been, but also this was when the Beatles were going global and there were coming in into Brazil, and their influence was coming into Brazil with something, and influencing Brazilian music. So in this festival, people were really so passionate about this, that one of the participants couldn’t even put out his song just because people would boo him so much. And one of the big controversies here was the use of an electric song, right? So you had these two competing visions for what Brazilian music could be. And these festivals were cast, the producer said they were cast kind of like wrestling matches. So they were cast, all the parts had to be cast. The good guy, the villain and the Chico, the one we’re going about. He was cast as the good guy, right?
Marillo:
And he represented not the new Brazilian music, but the Brazilian music that came from the roots of Samba and popular Brazilian music and the being, and that’s the music that he made. And during this time, it was a tough time for Brazil, so releasing an album, you couldn’t just release a song. Whenever you wrote a song before you even reported it, you had to submit it to the sensors because of the dictatorship. They had to approve it, right? So if there was anything even lightly subversive about the song, they wouldn’t approve it.
Marillo:
And so this brings us to the next song, Apesar, which is in spite you. Sorry, I missed, this not the song. Let me just pull it up here real quick. Yeah there we go. This is in spite of you. And he wrote the song and submitted the lyrics to the sensor. And the sensor read it and asked him, what’s the song about? And he said, oh, this is about, about a relationship that went bad. I had a partner that was really offy, that was really, really, tough on me, and the sensor believed him, because again, you looked the good guy. And so he released it, he released the song. But if you go over to lyrics, you realize it’s not really about romantic love, right? It’s about somebody who’s really authoritative and is really controlling, but it’s not a person because talked about my people said, and you invented sadness. And all of these poetics that sort of suggest that is actually talking.
Marillo:
And nobody caught that, went through, they printed the album, and this exploded. Over a week, went gold, a hundred thousand copies. And it wasn’t until a note was released from the paper about this musical credit saying like, I can’t listen to the song anymore because my kids listen to the song so much, it has become an anthem for them. That somebody caught it and they realize, oh wait, this isn’t a song about romantic love, this is a song about the dictator. So what happened next is what happens in dictatorship. They completely confiscated all the albums. They went into the recording label at Phillips and just burned every copy of this album that existed. But Chico wasn’t done, right? For this and other reasons, he was actually completely banned from releasing any original song.
Marillo:
So what he did was he invented a character, and let me see, there we go. So here, he use a song and this song is really hard find just because of U.S ban, so it’s really hard to find and it’s called Jorge Maravilha and I left the lyrics blank just because it’s a really provocative song, and it’s a really cheesy song, and he tells the story of the song. The story of the song is people get in so much trouble with the law, with the sensors, and he was questioned so often. But something always happened when he was questioned. These big tough guys would come in, take him away. And while they were taking him away, they would ask him for an autograph. Not for themselves, but for their daughters and their sons. So he wrote the song that pretty much says you don’t like me, but your daughter likes me.
Marillo:
And it’s sort of a teasing song to not only the state, but all of those tough guys who would come on, arrest him, and ask him for an autograph. Yeah. So there we are. So because these stories are really, really just an excuse for me to play you guys some samba, and I hope you’re enjoying it. This is my favorite song of his, Val Passar. And I really love it because it’s really poetic and it really speaks to the importance of samba to Brazil. The samba is the history of Brazil and why it is such a big deal in Brazil. And he talks in one passage here about throughout most of Brazil history, the workers that people, the slaves and all those people, they had one day to let it all out. All year, they would work. They got working through the bones, their teeth would be just carrying heavy stones, right? But there was that one day when they were free. And one day where they could just party on the street and eat free. That’s about it for my share and yeah, I’ll just let it right out.
Josh Clemente:
Love it. Awesome. Thank you, Murillo. If you need to me jump, feel free and appreciate. Murillo, you got a link to those songs and the rest of the discography.
Marillo:
Sure do.
Josh Clemente:
All right team. I really appreciate it. Thank you for the sharing and reload. Thank you for all the work team and yeah, rolling into the weekend here with a bigger team and a lot more accomplishments behind us and many more to come. So thanks everybody. Talk soon.