Josh Clemente (00:00):
Welcome to Friday Forum, July 15, 2022. Big week this week, as usual. Couple highlights on the support side. Replacements are at an all-time low of 3.7% versus a typical of 10%. So this is obviously a huge benefit for logistics volumes, support handling requests, and cost. Happiness is at 95, which is an 11-week, 90-plus streak. And this is huge, because with liftoff over the past two weeks, there’s been some major changes in the volume as well as the nature of the support tasks that the team is having to deal with.
(00:35):
So liftoff was a huge wrench and to continue to see an amazing happiness response, even though our SLAs might be slipping, because people on the support team are just dealing with an overwhelming volume and genuinely struggling through new learnings that we haven’t come across before. This is just a huge win. And I want to give a big shout-out to the teams for really doing an amazing job holding member happiness despite these changes. So thank you to all of you.
(01:02):
On the content side, we’re seeing a content leverage uplift. So this is the amount of self-help content that’s being accessed prior to triggering support requests. So this is a big one. We’re at 10.1 versus a target of eight. So again, just amazing work on the support team continuing to scale process so that they can keep up with our volumes as we grow. And, of course, the support team will be growing as well, as we have some new support members joining us in the next few days.
(01:29):
On the expansion front, Levels Health UK Limited is officially incorporated, so this is big news. We officially have an international entity. We’re currently evaluating lab partners for our UK metabolic panel, and the search for UK advisors and affiliates is underway. So just continuing to scale towards our UK liftoff.
(01:48):
On the community side, so we’ve got the Apple Cider Vinegar Community experiment, which is recruiting right now, internally and externally. We also have just generally started off the community experiments program once again. We did the Coke challenge. We’ve done a couple of experiments internally, and so this is the next step towards a number of these that we have planned. So definitely looking forward to participating and seeing how this plays out.
(02:12):
We also had the Getting Started cohort B, which is 42 members interested in weight loss, all starting together, and so we’re going to definitely learn from that this as well, which is going to be quite fun. Cissy led that live onboarding a few days ago.
(02:27):
On checkout. So we had a checkout optimization round. So after liftoff, we got our first real data on conversion rates and how the funnel is working for us. And after a round of optimizations on copy, just having learned how the flow is being experienced and where the drop-offs are, we released an update and just had a really tremendous improvement. And most of this was very low-hanging fruit, just copy updates and a few images changed. One major one that I don’t want to pass over is the removal of the video that I recorded for this.
(02:59):
So I attribute most of the uplift and conversions to just getting my face off the screen. But we went from 3.8% to 7.2% in the first 24 hours, which is 63% more purchases over that timeframe. Just crazy uplift and really want to shout out to the team for continuing to learn from this stuff. And this is just round one, so we’ll continue to get better here. You can see a chart of the drop-off by step that the potential member experiences as they go through. So the orange bars are the new rates.
(03:26):
Dr. Casey’s Kitchen live shoot is underway. You can see some of the behind-the-scenes photos here with Tony on-site, Sonya on site, Casey on-site. Stacy’s out there. So they’re just doing a really cool live recording and looking forward to the outcomes there. And I believe, yeah, we’ve got ton of documentation on this if you’re interested in learning what we’re experimenting with and what we’re hoping to learn from the experience. Definitely check that out.
(03:50):
Casey’s episode with the Model Health Show went live as well. And we also are trending towards Huberman Lab podcast ads, prepping for an 8/1 launch. And this, quite excited about this. I think we have plenty of Huberman Lab fans on the team and expect this might perform on par with David Sinclair’s Lifespan podcast.
(04:10):
Member survey released, so we’ve got updates that went out with the Now v2 core navigation, and so David released a survey to collect feedback on that new dashboard experience. It’s not the entire experience that you see in this image, which is currently in alpha testing internally, and will be released for internal team testing shortly, but it’s a portion of it. So it’s some core navigation changes. And so, this has been experienced by plenty of people. By now, we’ve got a survey out to 500 early users and we’re going to be learning a huge amount. We’ve got some primary themes already surfacing around what people are struggling with.
(04:44):
One of them was a glucose synchronization issue, which actually we traced down to a UI bug as opposed to a change to the dashboard, and people were struggling to find the manual sync button. So things like that are really good to know, because we were already tracking them, we were already resolving them. So more to come on this, but doing a lot of learning on the background.
(05:05):
Monthly burn decreased to 0.86 million, 860,000, and runway is currently at 51 months. Just a quick update there. And then, on the research side, we’re going to be launching a new Voice of Research program, so videos and recurring themes as we scale this. Honestly, a landmark distributed research program with our IRB. There’s a ton of learning that’s happening in terms of how we’re handling support requests, how we’re handling improvements and iterations to the protocol as we proceed. So this will be really helpful to understand what the research team’s experiencing live and ensuring alignment on lessons learned.
(05:41):
Couple other things, we had a ton of great content generated this week. So we had an episode between Casey and Dr. Sara Gottfried on women’s health, which is really important. Dr. Gottfried published a meta review, which I highly recommend, on women’s cardiometabolic health. We had Sam and Sander Daniels from Thumbtack discuss scaling startups. We got Austin talking about, are eggs good or bad? SeriousKeto is doing a giveaway for Levels. FlavCity with Bobby Parrish, who’s been waiting in the wings for us to be generally available, did his, an IG live.
(06:11):
And let’s see, some other great Whole New Level, good content that we launched. One in particular, seaweed, with the seaweed’s valid hero image, which I was quite excited for. And then this really great article, which I’m only partially through, that Haney released. It’s an Everyone on Content piece about essentially making the case for why Levels is investing in editorial content as opposed to clickbait marketing, and making the case for why other companies should do the same. We got some love on Twitter from people who really appreciate the culture and the product. And I believe that is it.
(06:45):
Okay, jumping right ahead. I want to welcome Cyrus. Cyrus and I have a lot in common. I’m from Virginia, I worked in aerospace for a while. We both love Levels it seems like, and we’ve got some shared side project interests. So Cyrus, I really appreciate you being a member of Levels. I appreciate you setting aside your Friday morning to hang out with the team. Would love to hear some thoughts about your experience so far with Levels, what you’re interested in and excited about in metabolic health. Take it away.
Cyrus Jilla (07:11):
I will. Thank you so much. Hello, everyone. Thank you for the invitation to be here. Have to admit I was super excited when I got the email last week from Jackie. I’ve been following you guys for a couple years now and I love your company. I love your vision, I love your mission. It was actually perfect timing. We had just arrived in San Diego. That’s where that photo is that you see there. She said she needed a headshot, so I just took a selfie on Torrey Pines hike.
(07:33):
Just arrived in San Diego. Just got back on Wednesday. Usually I would be at work and it would be hard for me to join you guys in a forum like this from the office, but I took yesterday and today off just to recover from the jet lag, so I’m able to be with you here today.
(07:47):
Jackie asked me to talk about three things. She said five minutes. My background, with a emphasis on what’s pertinent to being a Levels member, how I discovered and got into Levels, and also my experience as a Levels member. I did take a few notes, which I have here in front of me, to make sure I only take five minutes and I’m respectful of your time and your meeting.
(08:04):
So a little bit of background, Josh mentioned we do have a fair bit in common. I have to admit, when I was putting together this, I remembered a podcast I heard a few years ago with Sam when he mentioned, I don’t know if he’s online with us today, but he mentioned that in early days you guys called every single beta customer to develop a user profile of your customer base. So I think you’ll see some things perhaps in common.
(08:25):
So quick background, just things that are relevant to being a Levels member. Child of immigrant parents. My family’s originally from India. On my father’s side of the family, several people do have diabetes, so that’s important data point number one. I’ve always been mindful of diabetes and blood sugar, and the potential long-term health impacts. That being said, I was born and raised here in Virginia. I grew up in southwest Virginia in a small town called Roanoke, in the Blue Ridge mountains.
(08:49):
Looking at the night sky, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut, which led me to aerospace engineering. Went to UVA for undergrad, did aerospace engineering. At the end of my time in Charlottesville, decided I wasn’t yet ready to join the real world, so I went straight to graduate school. Spent the next five years in Boston at MIT, where I majored in AeroAstro, but with a minor in operations research science. So that’s important data point number two.
(09:11):
My PhD dissertation was very OR heavy. So I love data, I love metrics, I love trying to optimize things. So I think you’ll see where this is going. So that’s a little bit of my background. How did I discover and get into Levels? So it actually started with a podcast. I don’t even remember which one I heard. Josh was on. This was the summer of 2020, so about two years ago on the dot. And Josh’s story really resonated with me. Engineer by training, into health and fitness, and wanted to be able to use quantitative data to try and optimize his health.
(09:41):
So after I heard that podcast, I got hooked. I started listening to every podcast I could find with Josh, Casey, or Sam. If you’ve ever done the Gallup StrengthsFinder assessment, learner is in my top five. So I love learning new things, probably why I went to graduate school. So I just started learning everything I could. And there’s something Sam said in one of his podcasts that really struck me. He talked about how his habit of listening to a lot of audiobooks.
(10:06):
I forget the exact question, I’m paraphrasing, but the interviewer said, “Why audiobooks as opposed to listening to podcasts or reading magazine articles?” And what Sam said is when you listen to a podcast or read a magazine article, you’re consuming something that someone spent several hours or maybe a few days pulling together and synthesizing. But when you read a book or listen to an audiobook, you’re benefiting from someone who did years and years of research to synthesize that information. So that really struck me. So I got into audiobooks.
(10:33):
I listened to a bunch of books on metabolic health and got on your waitlist in the fall of 2020, and then December, 2020 had my first experience with a continuous glucose monitor, and I just thought it was amazing. This was the first time in my life that I felt like I was seeing in real time what was happening inside my body as a result of the decisions I was making, nutrition, food, sleep, exercise. I think that’s very, very powerful, very empowering, and that’s something that all of you have made possible and made available to the masses. So thank you for that.
(11:00):
Final thing, just impact on my life. And I’d like to also include a couple gratitudes why I’m so excited for your guys’ future. I divided the impacts into two categories, first-order impacts, which are health, but also second-order impacts, mindset, which I think is an important part of your brand. I think you guys really cultivated that well through your branding, the social media, the news articles, the podcasts. And I think that extends beyond just physical health.
(11:25):
So first-order impacts, I have lowered my A1C. So again, very mindful of that family history. So that’s something that’s important to me. I phased out oatmeal. I know in a million podcasts, you said everyone learns oatmeal’s no good for you. I was hoping I’d be the exception, but I wasn’t. So I phased out oatmeal. I eat a lot less rice. Rice is a staple of South Asian diets, so I’ve made a conscious effort to eat a lot less rice. I think that’s helped. Those are some the first-order, biggest takeaways for me.
(11:52):
In terms of the second-order impacts, in terms of mindset, I am now closer to age 50 than I am to age 40. So I think it’s natural, as we all get older and we reevaluate our lives and think about perhaps reinventing ourselves. So going through the Levels experience, learning more about health, nutrition, fitness. The beginning of this year, I decided to enroll a program at George Mason University, which is literally two miles down the street from us here in Fairfax, to become certified as an executive leadership coach.
(12:19):
So I just completed that program. And the reason I chose George Mason is their focus is on well-being. So individual well-being and organization well-being. So just completed that certification. And my goal in becoming an executive leadership coach is so I can help others maximize their performance, not only in business but also in their health and well-being. So that’s that second-order mindset impact you guys have in me. So that’s a quick summary of my Levels journey.
(12:41):
Again, I wanted to end with a few gratitudes. So first, Josh, just thank you for the original idea. Thank you for bringing that engineering mindset to health and fitness, and thank you for the courage to start something new. I don’t think I would have that courage, so thank you for that. Sam, I don’t think he’s on, but thank you for all, the business savvy and that learner’s mindset, and audiobooks that really got me into it. And then, I don’t know if Casey’s on, but I just wanted to say thank you for all of her nutrition advice.
(13:07):
I do have an alternative to oatmeal now thanks to her, and that’s that chia seed, hemp seed, flax, virtual oatmeal is one of my go-to breakfasts now. And finally, just to all of you at Levels. It’s weird, I expected a lot more people, but I guess that shows how you guys really are a tight startup community. But thank you for all the work you’re doing to make Levels success. I believe in you guys, I believe in your vision, I believe in your mission.
(13:31):
That’s why I’m not only a Levels member, but when you did that Series A or whatever it was called earlier this year, I did make a contribution, because I want you to succeed and I want to support your success, and I want to help in enable your success. So thank you. It’s an honor to be with you here today, and I really appreciate the invitation. The nerdy engineer in me has a million questions for you guys, but I don’t think that’s appropriate for this forum, but if there’s ever an opportunity to follow-up with someone one-on-one offline, I would treasure the opportunity. Thank you.
Josh Clemente (13:56):
Cyrus, that was fantastic. And I just want to thank you for, ideas are one thing, but having people who are willing to take a flyer and try something new that’s, frankly, has a spectrum of jankiness embedded in it as we try and grow and learn and improve. And I just really appreciate you supporting us along the way, in two ways, as a member and also as a member investor. It’s just a huge vote of confidence.
(14:19):
This is something that I can speak for the whole team. We get the most value out of testimonials like this and hearing directly from you how Levels has impacted your life. We’ll study this and improve because of it. So thank you again. And we definitely need to get you on a conversation, a follow-up call just to capture more of this. You’ve got a ton of really concise insights and I really appreciate that.
(14:43):
Lastly, we’re going to have to rename chia virtual oatmeal. I think that’s going to stick. So, Cyrus, one last thing. I would love to hear from your analytical perspective, if there was one thing that we could improve about the Levels experience, from your perspective, what would that be, just in closing?
Cyrus Jilla (15:00):
Man, I didn’t prepare for that one, Josh. So that’s a hard one. Off the top of my head. So I’m just thinking out loud now, brainstorming, brain writing. So I love how you can compare meals historically. So I think that’s a big one. You got workouts in there, you got sleep in there. Sleep with, mine’s a little wonky. I think it depends on what sleep app you use and how that connects to Apple Health. So sometimes it’ll show multiple wake-up times. The only thing off the top of my head is any more data analytics you could do and long-term trending. But again, I’d have to think more about that to make that concrete.
(15:36):
But I think as you’ve been around for a few years now, you’ve got a loyal customer base. Your goal is to bring it to the masses, so you’re going to get more and more data. I think you’re taking advantage of that with some of the research studies. I just got an email the other day about one, I think it’s the Dexcom 6 research study you’re doing, but you’re going to get more and more data. The time span of that data is going to increase. So in the long run, maybe there’s some cool data analytics you can do, showing long-term trends, not just weekly and monthly and daily trends. Just an idea.
Josh Clemente (16:04):
Absolutely. Love that. And I think many on the data science team will be appreciative of hearing that as well, as focus. Well, Cyrus, I really appreciate the amount of effort and intentionality you put into preparing for this. Above and beyond what we would expect. And I really, yeah, genuinely want to thank you for taking the time to hang out with us. Feel free to stick around for the rest of the meeting. We’ve got some more themes and functions to cover, and then we do a little personal share at the end. I know you’re busy. Feel free to jump, if not. Thanks again.
Cyrus Jilla (16:32):
I’ll definitely stick around. Thank you.
Josh Clemente (16:33):
All right, awesome. Okay, jumping ahead. I want to welcome new team member, Viktor Engborg, lead visual designer, comes to us from Zero. Really very excited to have Viktor on the team and to join us in unlocking the next stages of our brand and of our product as we move forward. Viktor, super stoked to have you here. Love to hear from you.
Viktor Engborg (16:56):
Thanks for the intro, Josh. It’s great to be here. Sorry about my voice. I’m still getting over COVID, which was a fun intro surprise I got on Sunday before starting, but it’s great to be here. So, compared to Cyrus, this is going to be probably a pretty bleak intro. But I read about myself so much this week, so I’ll try to keep this very short. It’s been a long time here since I’ve been in a Zoom call with so many faces I don’t know. Maybe besides any nerves showing here, it’s really great to finally see you all and celebrate my first week here.
(17:33):
We’re actually going out to celebrate my wife’s birthday tonight, so I’ll probably have to sneak in a side drink to just celebrate my own first onboarding week. About onboarding, I’ve been thinking a lot about onboarding this week, probably dreaming about it at this point, both internally and how it relates more to product. And I think there’s a lot of similarities between how this onboarding is run and actually designing good software. It’s just a lot about setting up the system to be set up for success, right? So I’m just happy to be a student here and observe and absorb as much as I can at this point. I have a feeling it’s going to pay dividends very quickly. I’m very happy I’ve joined this week.
Josh Clemente (18:16):
Amazing. Well, happy birthday to your wife and thanks for picking Levels and joining the team to help us move into our next phase. Everyone else on the team, definitely make yourselves available to Viktor as he’s moving through onboarding and just getting started on his projects. I’m sure he’ll be contributing tremendously over the coming months and I’m very stoked to see it happen. Looking forward to working with you Viktor.
(18:39):
All right, culture and kudos. So I want to first highlight Hao and Chris. Chris hit one year and Hao is at two years now, so congratulations team. Chris is celebrating in the background. Really awesome to see the tenure continuing to develop with so many great people. Charu and Hao met in Vancouver. So we had some cool meetups this week. Mercy and Jesse, they decided not to play pickleball, because I wasn’t there, so they grabbed lunch in Austin. I’m excited to get on the courts with them when I get back.
(19:08):
And then some highlights of the week on the culture side. So first off, Cosima has jumped in feet first on the onboarding process and improvement. Had some really amazing feedback, caught a couple bugs in the process that were quite deeply embedded, and generally just had some really nice recommendations for how to improve. So just want to highlight that. Definitely appreciate very early on making meaningful contributions and always making sure that we challenge each other to improve process. It’s huge.
(19:36):
And then Tom, so Tom has been writing some great memos. And I think specifically the shout-out just highlights the approach to making the case for and against. So not necessarily taking a dogmatic stand on a theme, but instead steel-manning the opposite side of the argument to make sure that that things are really fully fleshed out.
(19:55):
And so that, if someone is reading this memo, what are the questions that are going to surface in their mind that might take the opposite position, and just addressing those upfront and being able to close the conversation. It’s really helpful practice and really nicely demonstrated in a few memos that Tom’s written recently. We can all improve just by reading and absorbing these sorts of themes. Thank you, team. All right, I think we’ve got Miz with an async. Let me share my sound real quick.
Miz (20:26):
Hey, everyone, a few updates to share this morning. I’ll start with through the bigger ones. The first on the job titles at Levels memo. This is a proposal that was sent out earlier in the week that explores how we want to use titles within the company, what role we want them to play, how we want the culture to feel and look as a result, and this should be somewhat freeing and liberating. It opens up the opportunity for people to take on more responsibility within their function, in other functions, and grow organically, which is the goal here.
(20:56):
But this affects everyone and people have a lot of background and thoughts on this. And so, looking to collect those thoughts to have the conversation, to understand the feedback, and decide where we go from here. So if you haven’t checked it out yet, please do. Please add your thoughts in the discussion section and, if appropriate, we’ll schedule a fireside to go a little bit deeper.
(21:14):
The second one to point out is this transition from beta that we’ve been in for two and a half, three years, into this liftoff and growth mode. We’ve been saying for quite some time we’re not in growth mode, reminding everyone of that. And this is a reminder that that mode is changing. And so to push this analogy all the way on liftoff, the altitude in the cabin’s going to be a little bit different and that means that we have to focus and work a little bit differently. There’s different rules up here. And so, I’m going to leave the business-side update specifically to JM and Ben.
(21:43):
They’ve been doing a really good job on a weekly basis of focusing, of picking up our landing gear, of understanding what we need to do to get to the right altitude, to hit the goals, to hit our conversion rates, to have the orders tracked in the way they need to, and generally increase visibility around this. So they’ve been working on that and they’re going to share more with the company more widely, but all their meetings are posted. So if you’re interested in going into those details and following along with them, you can do that in that thread.
(22:11):
But what this means inside the cabin, inside the culture, for us, is that we need to start focusing and prioritizing a little bit differently. The things that we were able to focus on in the past, start to look different within the culture, and so the time that we had for projects and experimentation and exploration was wider. We still want to encourage the right pieces, but you’ll see a lot of projects refocusing in on how they help us hit our goals and whether or not it’s the most important thing that we can do for the company today. And so, we’re in a pretty critical period and want to make sure that we maintain that focus.
(22:46):
This looks different for different people in different roles, but it is something that we should all start being mindful of and be aware that there might be more restrictions than we’re used to from the past. And so, it’s not a brace for impact, but it’s a prepare for change. The breathing room’s a little bit different, and so I just want to bring that top of mind. Everyone has their own past company experiences through launches and liftoffs and failures, and this is one that we get to go through and experience together, and so looking forward to that ride. And here we go, I guess.
(23:18):
Quick smaller pointers and reminders. One that I’ve heard from a few different folks, reminder to take ownership for out-of-office calendar events. If you’re going to be away for a week, for a day, if you’re not going to make a calendar meeting, go ahead and cancel it proactively. Don’t rely on the other person seeing your message and then showing up for the meeting. It ruins their whole day when you don’t show up. It throws a wrench in the whole schedule. People plan their lives and their days around this, and so take ownership there and just be mindful.
(23:46):
On the thread side, a few updates. Reminder to turn notifications on for all new threads for general, for the people forum, and for your function and team. Those are the ones that, important reminders and updates and memos go to, and so those are threads that you should be seeing. So notifications on there.
(24:03):
And then, reminder to use mentions and request response correctly. Those do different things, and we want to use the tool correctly so that it works for the whole ecosystem. So I’ll send out some reminders of videos that we’ve recorded in the past on this. And final update, reminder to fill out the culture survey by Sunday night. This is useful, a lot of value comes from it, and we make a lot of changes as a result. So appreciate the participation. That’s it.
Josh Clemente (24:30):
Awesome. Ton of great stuff there. Thank you, Miz, for comprehensively summarizing. Really appreciate the attention here. And jumping ahead. Okay, company objectives. So main thing Levels shows you how food affects your health, no changes here. We’re now able to move more quickly towards this goal, now that we are in growth mode, as Miz just stated. And the top objectives that correlate here are, our priorities are member retention, member health improvement, new member acquisition.
(24:58):
So this is, the acquisition part of that is the growth mechanism. The retention part of that is making sure that we’re providing value. And that if we are, people will want to stay, and it will be producing the ultimate value to them. That is embedded in our mission statement, reversing the metabolic health crisis. So these are all interdependent, and I’m going to start with Braden.
Braden (25:21):
Hey, team. I wanted to share a recap on an experiment that I ran last month to address one of the most common support questions that we hear, which is how to sign up for a subscription and order more sensors after the first month. We typically receive around 200 questions on this each month, and normally coming from members around 10 to 15 days into using Levels. One of the most common questions that we hear from these members is, “Where in the app can I order more sensors and see my subscription status?”
(25:45):
So the experiment was to reach out to members who were 10 days into using Levels and hadn’t yet signed up for a subscription. Instructions on how to sign up directly in the app. So over the course of the month, sent these instructions to 50% of members meeting this criteria and measured the impact between the subscription sign-up rate and support conduct rate between these two groups.
(26:07):
So the results of the experiment were that the group that was sent the instructions actually had a lower subscription sign-up rate than the group that was not sent the instructions, and the support conduct rate was level between the two groups with around 5% of members in each group reaching out to support specifically on how to sign up for a subscription.
(26:25):
So the main takeaway here was that this clearly wasn’t effective. And I think one of the reasons for this was that this was a one-time notification and didn’t persist in the app, and a persistent place in the app where members could go to sign up for a subscription and see their status would likely be more effective. This continues to be a topic that drives lot support questions, and I think there’s still a lack of awareness that’s probably cutting into the subscription sign-up rate.
(26:53):
Also ran an experiment a couple months ago, using email as the method to create awareness around the subscription sign-up options and how do you sign up. And this was much more effective and did have a positive effect on the subscription sign-up rate and the support contact rate. So for next steps, be to look into you setting up a recurring email campaign to members who haven’t signed up for a subscription, with instructions on how to sign up and also let them know about the new subscription option that we have, which is to order ad-hoc CGM kits as opposed to committing to recurring shipments, which members in this group might not be interested in. So that’s it. Thank you.
Josh Clemente (27:29):
Really interesting results there and counterintuitive. Thank you, Braden.
David Finner (27:33):
Happy Friday, everyone. This week I’ll be walking you through how we’re progressing on laying the rails for our core metabolic health program that’s going to be focused on behavior change, and we’ll talk through the Now v2 progress and what we’re seeing in the data, now that we’ve launched that piece of the puzzle, as well as the stability ring and Scoring V2 effort, and then also how we progressed on the event-based insights and how they all play together.
(27:54):
To start off, we’re going to dive into Now v2. As you know, last week we pushed out the changes that incorporated basically the main UI updates, which were the pinned insights and activities above the fold, with the insights icon and the UI that gave a bit more agency and less confusion around how to navigate on the dashboard. And this week, I’m going to dive into some of the data. And TL;DR, there is some positive numbers in the quantitative side of things, and then there are also some opportunities that we’re hearing in the qualitative feedback to have some fast follows.
(28:27):
We’ve seen a increase in the percentage of members who open an insights story modal each day, which is pretty awesome. Going in, we wanted to preserve the comprehension that we had in the old Now screens, where you had to see the insight. It was on the screen. We knew that this was having high awareness versus the original home model, but we weren’t sure if these sorts of insights, in a list, pinned above the fold, would also land. And we’re seeing that not only did we maintain that, but we’re seeing a higher open rate for those insights.
(28:52):
And we’re seeing the average insights viewed per member, per day, is also going up. So we’ll have to pay attention for the next few weeks to see if this was a one-time bump with the launch of the UI. But for the last seven days, we have sustained a higher level than we were beforehand.
(29:05):
And finally, just because we track food logs as a proxy for our general app engagement, food logs per user, per day, has stayed stable. So we haven’t seen any dips in the main app engagement, which is great. On the qualitative side, I sent an email survey to about 500 of our active members who experienced the new app. And so far, we’ve received 30 responses. And one of the top, here, I just wanted to highlight some of the top pieces of feedback that we’re hearing. The numbers here represent the number of responses that contained this feedback.
(29:28):
And there were many other pieces of feedback that I didn’t include here, that were one-offs from one person only. But the top feedback we heard was now, the manual scan button is too difficult to access. In the old world, we had at the top of the app, there was a quick way to access the sensor control module, and you could tap that and then click manual scan. And right now, in the new world, we moved that to, that sensor module out and we put it, buried inside of the profile page. So we’re going to do a fast follow and work on a pull to refresh so that members have a very fast way to access this.
(29:55):
Unfortunately, this piece of feedback was amplified. By the first launch, we also had a UI bug that didn’t display recently synced glucose, so it made people think that there was a greater difficulty with syncing that glucose. But that’s since been resolved, and because it’s not going to be throwaway work, they have a pull to refresh. Now that we’re moving towards more realtime APIs, it’s going to be something that will be value additive, especially now, and also maintained for the future.
(30:16):
We had quite a few pieces of feedback that people prefer the simplified dashboard. They were thankful that they now had a way to see, to choose which data they wanted to see without having to navigate down different paths and try to hunt for what they were looking for. We did also have a handful of people miss the explore tab, and we took the explore tab out of the bottom bar. We left the content in the app, but left it to be surfaced by event-based insights.
(30:35):
A handful of people did reach out saying that they missed that and they would prefer to view that content in the app as opposed to finding it on the blog. So we’ll be continuing to think about this and how we might fit this into the app. Open question as to how we want to fit that back in, in a way that’s very intelligent and useful for our members. We had a couple people that preferred the old dashboard. They thought the new dashboard is too plain.
(30:53):
And frankly, they’re not wrong. The new dashboard is partly an incomplete experience. It is internally consistent, but it’s missing the hero up here. It’s missing the stability score, the stability ring, which really pulls together and shows you the system in the game for what you’re going for throughout that day. With the current UI, it’s just the chart, just your activities. And while that’s helpful to see the bird’s-eye view, we really want to wait and see, once we launch, the stability ring, how this is going to pull it all together.
(31:18):
And then we also heard a few items around logging confusion. The good news is that we’re currently working on a spec that improves this. Brett’s been working hard on coming up with a simplified UI, one that makes a bunch more sense for the tagging suggestions, and I think we’re going to have a better update on this next week, but it’s looking very promising. And that is a good summary of what we heard on Now v2. So positive trending, and we’re going to do some fast follows to report on for next week on what we’re iterating on with feedback.
(31:43):
Next, talking about the Scoring v2 part. So, as you know, the Scoring v2 effort is the stability ring here, the glucose state that helps you understand how your current glucose is trending, and then annotating spikes on the chart, so you know which areas are informing your unstable portions of the day. And I wanted to share a screenshot from the live development version of the app and this is looking really good. On the left, we have our Figma mock. On the right, we have what’s actually in the app.
(32:05):
And you can see how we’re really working together across research, data analytics, backend and front-end eng, and it’s all coming together in the app. And you can see we’re annotating detected spikes using the data team’s algorithm here. Murillo is serving up the actual spike information. Justin’s been painting on the graph. There are some tweaks that we’re working on. It’s still in development, but it’s starting to look really good and it’s coming together.
(32:28):
At the same time, the data team, Jason has been working really hard to iterate on the algorithms for spike detection. So Jason, Moz, and I have been trying one thing out, looking at the data, going back and seeing if we can dial in on a better way to capture these spikes. We’re converging on something that we feel is good enough for internal testing. So Murillo is going to start incorporating that into the app. It’ll be ready for testing next week, when we’ll do our official internal beta testing.
(32:48):
So the plan for this is, right now, we’re ready for development testing. That screenshot that I showed you is about what we have. Next week, we’ll be expanding out our testing to the rest of you here internally at Levels, with an internal dog food of an experience that we hope is good enough to ship to our members. During that phase, we really ask you to try out the product and submit any bugs that you find.
(33:06):
The following week, assuming everything goes well there, we’ll be rolling this out to our members in a phase approach, assuming that everything went well in the week before. If things go really well next week, we can make a call at the time whether we think it’s okay to roll out to a few of our trusted testers, like that list of 30 to 50 people that have opted in to early testing, but we’ll make that call next week.
(33:23):
And finally, I wanted to welcome Mike DiDonato as the DRI for event-based insights. Mike, as you know, has been one of our closest points of contact to customers from the very first days, and he has a wealth of information about how to pair metabolic insights in a relevant way, based on members’ goals and where they’re at, and do so in a really simple and winsome way. And as our DRI for event-based insights, Mike is going to be in charge of thinking through what are the insights that we want to be delivering to our members and how do we get them set up in such a way that it really hooks in to their motivation, helps them understand why what we’re suggesting is important for them, and then tease up something that they’re able to do that’s within the reach to change.
(33:59):
So, for example, the first focus is going to be on food swaps in the mornings, for breakfast, as part of our food swaps effort. And Mike will be working to come up with the best set of swaps for this. For example, if you ate oatmeal, we’ll suggest a chia, a chia pudding meal, things like that. Now, at the same time, Galit has been working on the implementation for the first set of 10 event-based insights, and those are just about ready to start testing as well. So more on that next week and very excited to start this with you all. That’s it for me.
Josh Clemente (34:29):
Awesome update. Thank you again, David. Tons of work going on in the background there obviously. And let’s see why can’t I-
David Finner (34:37):
Happy Friday, everyone.
Josh Clemente (34:37):
… not reset this. There we go. Okay. Yeah, tons of stuff to be excited about, lots of experimentation and learning, happening on the scoring, spike detection and event based insights. And thanks Mike for taking DRI there. All right, hiring update. So new team members joining. So we’ve got Rebecca and Lynette joining the support team this upcoming Monday, which is, well, that got here quickly. And then we’ve got Taylor joining in October.
(35:03):
And then on the hiring front, on the careers page, we’ve recently added, we still got the software engineer up there, we’ve recently added an R&D engineer position, which is essentially helping us to better understand the future of biosensor technology as it’s developing and figure out how we can provide the best options to our members as we grow. So, if you or someone is interested in this or a general careers opportunities at Levels, please check out our link, levels.link/careers.
(35:28):
Okay, we got here to the end, I’m going to stop the share, switch over to my participants list, and we’ll do our individual contribution section. This week, we are moving from the bottom up, just to make sure we have enough time for everyone and we switch these off. So Zac, putting you on the spot.
Zac Henderson (35:46):
Yeah. Hey, y’all. Let’s see, professionally, just continue to be just excited about, I mean there’s a lot just to just being truly in the middle of liftoff, seeing lots of our different agreements come in, the new people joining. It’s been wonderful. On the personal front, excited to get through a record week of super hot, hot heat in Austin. Nate’s still doing good, he now crawls, so that’s been pretty cool. That’s it.
Josh Clemente (36:15):
Nice work, Nate. That’s awesome. Victor.
Viktor Engborg (36:26):
I’m excited for tonight. We’ve gone out to Korean barbecue in LA. Only been once before, so it’s going to be pretty amazing. The question is what I’m excited about?
Josh Clemente (36:40):
Yeah, just personal, professional. That’s a good one.
Viktor Engborg (36:43):
Yeah. Professional, I had a great call with Moz yesterday. We were going to talk for 30 minutes, we ended up talking for 70 minutes, all about products, all about users, what to do here. So that was actually super inspiring. Trying to figure out whether actually makes sense for me to hit a late plane to New York next week to hit up the team. So I’m trying to figure out whether that makes sense, but that could be very inspiring and fun to do as well.
Josh Clemente (37:11):
Well, if you make it out there, I will see you there.
Viktor Engborg (37:13):
Oh, cool.
Josh Clemente (37:15):
And once again, welcome to the team.
Viktor Engborg (37:16):
Thank you.
Josh Clemente (37:18):
Let’s see, Stoddy.
Stoddy (37:21):
Professionally? Really excited to start the voice of research and give everyone a little bit more insight to what’s going on, on the research front, and what we’re seeing in support related to research. And then personally, I’m currently here on Mount Desert Island in Maine, visiting my grandparents. Excited to get out into the park this weekend and put some miles on my legs.
Josh Clemente (37:44):
Very cool. Enjoy. Riley.
Ryley Walker (37:51):
I just want to shout out to Karin for just an awesome week. So I really enjoyed working with her on the UK incorporation and getting that ready. And I know it’s still early days, but it’s exciting to see liftoff happening in the US and seeing something come right in the pipeline behind it internationally. Really pumped for that.
Josh Clemente (38:13):
… know. Haney.
Mike Haney (38:19):
Professionally, I’m going to call out, I guess, Ben and Tony for the Whole New Level podcast. I listened to Dave’s episode with Casey this weekend. It was a while back on unschooling. And the episode that Tom and I did with Ryley just came out. And it just struck me how really unique it is that a company this size has a podcast dedicated to itself and highlighting the interesting people, and airing these often, maybe uncomfortable questions that we might have internally. And instead of dealing with them in maybe a typical HR way, we’re like, “Hey, let’s record a podcast about it.” And it’s just such a unique benefit of this place and I think we should step back and appreciate how odd it is. So, I guess I’ll make that my personal as well, because that’s listening to as I’ve been doing personal things.
Josh Clemente (39:05):
Love it. Mike D.
Mike DiDonato (39:09):
Damn, because the participant list shows me at the top. I guess there’s a lot of things. One thing that Haney just said about the podcast, the audience is so vast and it just really interesting to see the different topics come together and hear different people’s perspectives. I think I was listening to the bike shedding podcast with Sam and Ben and just hearing them talk about what that is. And in my mind I was thinking of the times that maybe I was guilty of it. Just really helpful to have that perspective. And then personally, I am home for a few days, so it’s nice.
Josh Clemente (40:02):
Nice, yeah. Hopefully everyone’s participants list reflects what I see, but if not, sorry about that. Karin.
Karin Nielsen (40:11):
I can confirm it doesn’t. So professionally, I’m super excited that we have our UK entity now. That unlocks so many other things that we’ve been queuing behind this initiative. And shout-out to Ryley and Zac, and Miz and everyone who’s been working to make this happen. And I also met Dana this week. Haney introduced us over email, because she’s in London right now. So we met up, which was awesome. We talked about content and a bunch of other things for the UK. And personally we have, it’s obviously very hot here, like everywhere in Europe right now, and we have date night tonight, so I think we’re going to head to a rooftop cocktail bar to drink margaritas.
Josh Clemente (40:56):
Very nice. Enjoy. Jenn.
Jenn Palandro (41:00):
Levels wise, so many things going on. Wow, it’s mind-blowing all the stuff that’s happening. Personally, for Levels, I’m so excited about Huberman. I’m so excited. And also New York next week. Very excited about that. And then this weekend, we have a couple of really fun activities for the boys lined up. Pumped about that.
Josh Clemente (41:24):
Yeah, ditto on Huberman as well. Hui.
Hui Lu (41:29):
Yeah, same. I feel work-wise, there’s so many things happening. Went to Welcome Coffee this week. Yeah, really excited Vik joined. Even though I’m new here, I already feel how their staffing bottleneck is with design, so really excited for that. Yeah, and really insight to see David’s report on members’ feedback on Now v2 and really looking forward to launch Scoring v2 to compliment the whole holistic experience. Yeah, personal-wise, I’m starting to plan for the summer vacation we’re going to have for the last week of August. Yeah, so if you have any good ideas, let me know. Yep.
Josh Clemente (42:20):
Nice. Yeah, we should have vacation ideas thread. Let’s see, it’s Dom.
Dominic D’Agostino (42:30):
Hey. Hey, Josh. Yeah, I’m driving, so I’ll keep it short. But personally, we are planning also some summer vacation and look to go to some interesting spots we haven’t been before. My wife has been to many places, so it’s hard to find a place she hasn’t been to. And we got a lot of blood data back, the final batch from the Allison Hall Levels study, and I’m looking forward to going over that data with our statistician and pretty excited about that, and finally putting that manuscript together.
Josh Clemente (43:05):
That’s great stuff. Love it. Thanks, Dom. Dan.
Dan Summers (43:09):
Professionally, exciting to see the output and shipments increase and the continued experimentation with the checkout flow. I think all that is just awesome to see. And then personally, I’m going golfing tomorrow, so that’ll be fun. Looking forward to that.
Josh Clemente (43:26):
Nice. Have fun. Cyrus.
Cyrus Jilla (43:29):
I did not expect to be called on again. Personally, I would say we just had a great family vacation to San Diego, visiting family. My wife and I both have family out in San Diego. Beautiful place, great weather. They’re totally spoiled out there. Professionally, back in the office on Monday. In addition to all my regular duties, I look forward to joining our organization’s coaching cadre and to start imparting that mindset we talked about earlier throughout the organization. Thank you.
Josh Clemente (43:59):
Amazing. Best of luck with the new mindset and professional pursuits. Britney.
Britney McLeod (44:10):
Sorry. It took me a minute to find the mute button there. On the professional side, I mean lots of things, but definitely this week, more than ever, just super inspired by how quickly the Levels team is able to iterate and make improvements, quick improvements, based on whether it’s member feedback, team feedback. It’s just inspiring to watch that and is motivating if we do provide feedback, that people are open to the discussion and new ideas.
(44:44):
And again, for the sync button or our subscription options. There’s multiple things. So anyway, super inspired by that. And also just adding on, really excited about the Huberman Lab, because I’m such a big fan of him. And on the personal side, spending this weekend preparing for the backpacking trip with Cissy and Steph, because it’s my last free weekend. And I need to get my stuff together and figure out what the heck I’m missing and how to be prepared for that. We got some professional backpackers on that group. Excited. Thanks.
Josh Clemente (45:28):
That’s awesome. Chris.
Chris Jones (45:33):
Well, first off, I’m very excited to hit my one-year mark. It’s been an incredible journey and ride, and I’ve loved every day of it and can’t wait for year two, three, four, and five. So I just wanted to thank all of you for a great first year, for everything you do every day. Related to that, more specifically, I want to, I’m super excited about just watching the support team react to liftoff. Even though our overall volume isn’t up a ton, the types of questions that we handle are things that we’ve usually never seen before or don’t have the reps in to do it very quickly.
(46:11):
So the level of hours put in by the queue is up 50%. So just watching the team rally, shift work, shift projects, setting expectations, and just their desire to want to get to inbox zero, which we haven’t hit for two weeks, watching them just rally the troops and support each other as opposed to, “Oh, my god, I can’t get in front of this thing.”
(46:32):
It’s a tough time for support right now, but I’m super proud of what the team does every day to show up. And then, personally, it is music festival time in Whitefish. My favorite music festival, Under the Big Sky, starts today. It’s a couple miles from my house, 20,000 of my closest friends. So I’m going to be getting out my cowboy boots, my cowboy hat, my wife’s belt buckle, because I actually don’t have one myself, that’s going to say Rodeo Princess on it, and get my shindig on. So I’m pretty excited about that.
Josh Clemente (47:08):
… Honestly, the part of that I believe the most is only 20,000 of your closest friends. I’m sure you got many more than that. Congrats again on one year. Azure.
Azure Grant (47:20):
Congrats Chris, you should get a belt buckle. I’m really into the stability ring. I’ve just got onto alpha and I think it looks really good. I really like the way that that spikes are faded out. I think this design is super cool and encouraging people to pay attention to something really important. I’m also really excited about the text messages I’m getting of people doing the vinegar experiment, and then just getting to talk back and forth on the phone about what everybody is saying. It’s variable in a very cool way that goes beyond the published papers on the topic. And I think that’s exactly what these experiments are for. And personally, one of my closest friends since age 11 is coming to visit all this weekend, so I’m super excited to see her.
Josh Clemente (48:00):
Love it. Have fun. That brings it to me, I guess. So yeah, I want to echo some of the things people have said here. First of all, it’s pretty surreal to see Levels with an international entity as quickly as that happened. So big shout-out to Karin and JM and others who have worked on that. And then I think the way the team has rallied around the inflection point of liftoff, just recognizing that things are going to be uncomfortable and they’re going to change. And it’s particularly support just stepping up and doing an amazing job.
(48:31):
Not necessarily, I think being expected to even be able to keep up with the unknown and unknowable volumes and changes in the support topics. It’s just huge and awesome to see the professionalism and continue to see great happiness scores from people, despite SLA slipping sometimes. And just want to shout out again, keep the morale high. It’s a tough job but everyone’s learning at a high rate. And the fact that nobody’s pointing fingers or getting, I think, to a breaking point is a real testament to the team and culture, and I love it.
(49:05):
Yeah, thanks to all of you. And then also, just being in this mode and being able to recognize that, for the first time, we’re able to learn lessons about our conversion rates and do optimizations on the funnel and really trust the numbers we’re getting. This is such a valuable moment in our company history and I think we’re capitalizing on it. So it’s awesome to see. It’s felt like we’ve had a boat anchor around our necks for two years, as we haven’t really been able to open the gate and see what happens and see what we can do when we flex our muscles. So I’m excited for it. And that’s all I got.
(49:34):
Personally, still on the East Coast. I’ve been out here for much longer than expected. Going to head up and see some Levels peeps next week in New York, and I’m going to go to my niece’s first birthday on Saturday, so I’m excited for that. All right, with that, thanks, everyone, for an incredible week and continue to crush it. Welcome Viktor. Thank you Cyrus for joining us. Have a good one.