September 10, 2021

Friday Forum is an All Hands meeting for the Levels team, where they discuss their progress and traction each week.

Josh Clemente: All right. Let’s dive in now. Welcome to the second meeting of September. All right. So a big milestone that is arbitrary but still a milestone because it sounds really awesome, is we just hit 100 million health data points with 40 million glucose data points. The specifics on this are hard to know specifically, but I think this is orders of magnitude, larger than any other glucose data set out there for non-diabetics. So just the glucose portion, and then obviously we’re building a tremendous dataset that is linked to that with health logs, nutrition information, heart rate information, et cetera, which is all going to turn into better insights for our members. So this is exciting. Josh Clemente: We closed our growth generalist role this week, so shout out to Tom and Ben for running a tight process there. More announcements, I think, coming next week on who will be joining us. And then we’re also likely opening a role for a multimedia producer to do video podcast production, many of the alternative non-written content assets that we’re building, we’re spending resources on, which have all been really highly valuable, but it’s time to maybe spread the load a little bit. Josh Clemente: Some updates on the systems and in-app. Retool no longer has write access to the production database. Retool is a great product, but this is a step in the right direction for making sure that our database is kept tight. Rolling out opt-out app analytics, so this allows people to jump out of any sharing any information about how they use the app, but it allows us to, by default, get information that people are willing to share with us about how they’re using new features, and this specifically goes to the exploration. So as we try new things, it’s really important that we know how that’s resonating, whether or not it does what we think it does, if people are interacting with it in a way that is counterintuitive, et cetera. And then big shout out to Jhon for in-app video analytics improvements, so getting those Vimeo stats on the embedded app, or I’m sorry, the embedded videos in the app is really important for us as well. Josh Clemente: We are starting to spend more time on prep for the Series A raise. So we’ve had a couple calls with mentors and our network, including the a16z team. So more to come here, but we’re going to start to slowly ramp into this process. We’ve gotten approved scope for phase one business model transition to annual paid membership. This is a JM project, which I believe he has an asynchronous update for us today. Phase two, another JM project of ancillary testing, is scoped so we’re going to start proceeding with logistics for a rollout. It might be geofenced, meaning it might be in a smaller area than all 50 states, but TBD, we’ve got a call today on that. We are moving ahead though. And then Mike’s got an update on a study that we launched this week, which is McKinsey executives in Australia who are doing an executive coaching sort of performance study with University of Queensland and Whoop. And so Levels is participating there. Josh Clemente: Let’s see some other stuff here. Big ones on the slide, Mat Fraser, who’s like arguably the biggest name in CrossFit, we’ve got in touch with him. He’ll be ideally entering the program very soon. That’s a really big pickup. We’ve got a couple other VIPs coming in, including Devon Lévesque with Arena. We had a great call, or Casey had a great call with David Sinclair, who I highly recommend reading Lifespan. He’s a cutting-edge longevity researcher and a really big network pickup. Dr. Rick Johnson’s going to join us on A Whole New Level. Casey’s booked for the Bulletproof podcast. I think we’ve got the mindbodygreen podcast booked this week, a part two with Doctor’s Farmacy, so a ton of great stuff coming on the podcast front. Josh Clemente: We are due to be joining the Good Morning America, or we’ll have a segment on Good Morning America, I think this coming week. So that’s ramping up quick. Some great action Twitter this week with people continuing to show really significant FOMO about wanting to get into the program. Obviously we want to expand this, we want to get all these people in, but it’s always good to see that Levels is the number one need for people in their lives. Casey will be joining the Metabesity Conference in, I actually don’t know the specific date there, sorry about that. We also joined Health Magazine, we were in print in Health Magazine and The Financial Times this week. And then we had some really big just accounts across Instagram and YouTube who are starting to get ramped up on Levels. Josh Clemente: I think that’s the main stuff here, so I feel like I’m missing something. All right, jumping forward. I want to welcome David Rosenthal. So David is one of the co-hosts of the Acquired podcast, which I think many of us are quite familiar with. Founder of Kindergarten Ventures, he’s previously done quite a bit in VC, but I think most importantly, his work with Acquired is some of the most impressive in the world of telling stories of technology. And I had the personal honor being able to join David and Ben on the Acquired podcast a few months ago, and I’m just super stoked to have him joining us today. David Rosenthal: Oh, well, thanks. Man, look at this slide. This is awesome, that intro, I think I’m glad we’re recording this. We’ll just use this as our new intro for Acquired. That was- Josh Clemente: Perfect. David Rosenthal: … that was awesome, Josh. Oh, man. Stoked to be here. Thank you for having me. Well, thank you Josh for coming on the pod a little while ago and it’s just so cool. A, I love Levels, using it right now. B, there are, I was actually trying to think about this, there are very few, if any, other episode topics we’ve done or podcast guests are just members of the community that people have rallied around more than Levels. So there are in the Acquired Slack community, which now has like close to 10,000 people in it which is awesome, we have had four companies, products, projects that have had their own channels in there. David Rosenthal: One is NordVPN, Nord Security, which is one of our sponsors. They, amazing story, totally bootstrap. They do hundreds of millions of cashflow annually, awesome company. Two is Modern Treasury, which is great, great, great company. They’ve got some big news coming soon, huge. Three is Solana, which is Solana, and four is Levels. So it’s just, it’s so cool, what y’all are doing. And even my mom emailed me last night, my mom emails me every night, she’s emailed me every night since I went to college, and they listened to the Levels episode, they were on for the LP call, Josh, that you joined, and she emailed me literally just last night and she was like, “I made a cheesecake on recommendation from Josh at Levels.” My dad is diabetic and yeah, it’s just so cool, the impact you’re having on people’s lives. Josh Clemente: Well, first of all, it’s great to be one of the quartile that have been able to make it onto the show. It’s a huge platform. I think the week that our episode dropped, Acquired hit number one in technology podcast. David Rosenthal: That’s great. That’s great. Josh Clemente: Which is [crosstalk 00:07:33] Which I was actually surprised because I expected it was already there. But yeah, it was an amazing, and you guys are… love having you in the program, love having you as supporters and really appreciate you sharing your platform with us. It’s huge to get the message out. And I know that we had an amazing response from that episode and maybe we can do it again sometime. David Rosenthal: Yeah. Definitely up to do that. Josh Clemente: Amazing. Well, David, please feel free to stick on the call. We’ve got quite a bit more and we’d love to hear your individual contributions at the end, but I understand you’re a busy man, so no worries if you can’t. David Rosenthal: Of course, thanks. Josh Clemente: Thanks so much for joining and I know the team really appreciates it. All right, jumping to quick company priorities. So as everyone knows, we are starting to track the primary priorities. And of course, this is not an all inclusive list, this is just the big rocks that stand between us and the next milestone for the organization. So membership model migration, shifting over to default subscriptions, and providing additional product opportunities, that is underway. The Guided Journey, this is of a squishy concept, but product and experience improvements that will give the core program what it needs for people to be able to enter, understand where they’re going, and make those changes, and then social experiments. So if you have any questions about these priorities, we’ve got the spreadsheet, but we also have a Notion page explaining them in more detail. And of course, if something should be on there that is not, please raise that. Josh Clemente: All right. Quick culture and kudos slide. So first off, shout out to Miz, happy one year coming up on September 14th, which feels like it’s been much longer than that, to be honest with you. But always glad and thankful to have Miz on the team. And then I want to highlight Zac as well. So Zac has been absolutely crushing it in his first month here live with the team. There’s so much, we had like built up this this pent up need for inside council, and unfortunately, all hit him at once I’m sure, but what’s been awesome is seeing how quickly he’s been able to like catch up and just prioritize ruthlessly and get things done to help us understand everything from marketing and product implications of the things we’re saying through to the regulatory implications of future products. Josh Clemente: And it just been really gratifying to see the team grow and grow in a way that is 10 X better than maybe anticipated. So thank you, Zac, and thanks team for always recognizing each other. I really appreciate these sorts of shout outs that happen on Threads. And of course, the prayer. So Levels helps you see how food affects your health. It’s really important that we all embrace these quick one-liners that explain, I think, quite elegantly what we do and why. Miz. Michael Mizrahi: Yeah, I’ll take this one quickly. Just a reminder that next Friday is our virtual assemblage. So one-day event this quarter with the goal of building interpersonal relationships, having fun with one another, interacting, through a bunch of different events, we’ve got fitness, trivia, Elena’s going to lead us in a cocktail making class, and then we have a special edition of the fireside where we’ll talk about kind of state of the company, what’s coming next, and have some interesting discussion around that. So very much looking forward, excited for all the folks who haven’t yet had the chance to do an assemblage last quarter who joined and recently. And finally, in that assemblage doc is the memo about in-person meetups, given that we’re a completely remote team, we want to open up the opportunity for in-person meetups by team or by project, and it’s up for grabs for the first team that wants to run with it and give it a go and kind of maybe document some of the process. So feel free to check that out and see all next week. Josh Clemente: Awesome. Looking forward to it, and thanks for everyone that’s contributing. Yeah, I love the sort of grassroots team events that happen. These are actually typically my highlight. All right, jumping into- Josh Mohrer: Membership. The phase one scope was approved. Jeremy will begin work on that, hopefully sometime next week. Alan put together a really nice mock or a first draft mock of the signup flow. Let me move my face here so you can see it. It’s super nice. I’m sure that’ll be shown later in the meeting as well. Really good stuff coming here and excited to get that process going next week. On blood work, you’ll notice that I moved the date back from September to October, since it’s just unlikely to happen this month, but I’m in a meeting this afternoon to bang out some more details with our phlebotomist provider, and that should be rolling soon. Hopefully engineering can start probably sometime in early October, and another set of beautiful mocks from Alan on the right side of what a results screen is likely to look like. This will be a subscriber test where we ask our current subscribers who live in geos that are covered if they want to try this, but there will be an order flow for that as well as a results page in-app. That’s all for me. Have a great weekend. Josh Clemente: Thanks very much, JM. [inaudible 00:12:53] All right, Murillo. Murillo Nicacio de Maraes: All right. So additive scoring. So we’ve finished up the round of experiments we were running. Took away some opportunities from that, mostly on trying to achieve all those goals we want from the metabolic score. So things like updating the metabolic score screen, all of this will be in the doc that I’ll put out later today, but things like updating the metabolic score screen to be more interactive and to actually show the users the areas where they can improve. Auxiliary metrics that we can track so that if users focus on those, they will see an improvement on their metabolic score. And then a finally somewhat obvious one, but updating how we calculate the metabolic score. Right now, we have a model that’s somewhat binary and tends to split results into good metabolic score and bad metabolic score. We might want to try and get that into a more crescent curve. So people will have a better idea of where they fall. The goal here is to try and get this into user’s hands as soon as possible, so we’re aiming to have something in app by the end of next week. Josh Clemente: Awesome. Thank you. Murillo. Kunal. Kunal Shah: So we’ve got a short but exciting update for social features, we’re going to start rolling out the community views to our members. We have a list of 37 of our members that are really excited, that have opted in and are really excited to use these features. So thanks to Mike and Braden for helping out on that front. And we’re really leaning into figuring out how people are going to be using these features. The big thesis here is we want to promote exposure to thoughtfulness in what people are eating, which they’re, of course, already doing on the app, but this is another way to explore, just the articles and the lessons are one way to explore and get exposure to new types of foods and ideas, the same way we think the social feed could be another way of really connecting and engaging in the same front and learning in that way as well. So our plan here is to roll it out to the members and see what they like and what they don’t, and to iterate from there. So big updates coming on that front. That’s all for social. Josh Clemente: Love it. Looking forward to it. Thanks, Kunal. Justin Stanley: Okay. Table Stakes Design. Alan and I kind of scoped out a bit more details on this, on the task that we’re going to do for phase one, and also kind organize this so that Alan could easily know what he needs to do versus what we’re ready to work on for engineering. Steph did some changes to the home and stats tabs so that we’ve got proper scroll indicators showing and that they’re the correct color and in the right position, and worked on some margin fixes and did the same thing on the logging screen there on the right. And also just fixed some UI elements where we were hiding elements when the auto-complete was on, that kind of made things a bit confusing so now it’s really on top. Justin Stanley: Next slide. For My Data, just one thing I’ve got done this week is making this chart area scrollable, existing chart, nowhere in the app were they actually scrollable, so now it’s scrolling and we can… Right now, it’s just showing four times the data, but I’ll work on actually dynamically adding data as you keep scrolling to the left and updating the average and the window there on the top. That’s it. Josh Clemente: Awesome. Thank you. David Flinner: I think just a couple extra ones here to call out. Josh mentioned it before, but it’s a big win that Xinlu made Retool no longer have production DB access. It’s a big step forward in having data boundaries with our system. So now Retool is going to be using only Levels APIs and those APIs, we can more tightly control and we’re not having a… It’s just better separation of systems. So it’s going to really free us up for better data quality, better data control, and hopefully set the stage for also ongoing improvements in security. So a great job on that, Xinlu. David Flinner: Next slide. And Murillo took the… So several weeks ago, Xinlu laid the stage for our in-app analytics with our post [inaudible 00:17:41] integration, and Murillo took kind of the final step on integrating this into the UI, where we give members a way to opt out of sharing their app analytics with Levels. In the future, when we’re live on the App Store too, there’s going to be a prompt when users start the app as well that’ll automatically say, “Hey, Levels would like to have app information, crash information, app usage information,” they can opt out there as well. So huge thanks, Murillo, for getting this out the door and for Xinlu on the earlier work. I’m excited about all the opportunities that this is going to give us to get more data-driven quantitative metrics on how people are using the app. So big win on that. David Flinner: And yeah, actually, just to call really quickly here, this also dovetails into the new privacy policy work that Miz is working on. So thanks for optimizing our copy there and for writing a really good support article to help people understand what this is, what it means. We’re trying to take a very industry-leading stance on privacy. Miz has more thoughts on that. He’s overhauling our privacy policy, and this is one of the steps we’re taking towards that end. Next slide. Scott Klein: So quick update on Guided Journey, nothing substantial, and I think that’s by design. So I wanted to kind of give a meta update. I think, as we get these projects kicked off, especially around things like Guided Journey, it’s very important that we get as close to our customers as possible. So there’s a bevy of information that we can go through around NPS survey, there’s a bunch of people that hooked me up with friends and family that have struggled with Levels, and so I’ve got a bunch of calls lined up for next week. But really making sure that we’re getting into talking to them directly. I think it is unfair for us to expect them to know what features and things that they need, but what they can do is communicate their emotion around how they use Levels, where it showed up for them or they didn’t. Scott Klein: And so I would say the three sort of big things that I’ve been working on, were just the customer discussions, like I said, also data benchmarking, we’ve been sort of asking some innocuous questions, like what percentage of our customer base even get to the second sensor? It’s not 100%, I hope it’s high, but I don’t know yet. And that’s the point. So I’ve been meeting with [Alena 00:19:50] to sort of late down, hey, let’s assume that we execute really well on this project and our users, or sorry, our members respond super well to it, what metrics should we see inflecting and in what direction? Scott Klein: And I think the third thing is just concept formation. So I think as we try to draw a boundary around this project, most of our conversations have actually landed a lot around food logging, but that’s not what this project is for. And so just making sure that we’re really clear in how we articulate what we’re doing. I’ll just give you a preview that the two concepts that we’ve really been working through are around personalization, so some people might come in, they’re a CrossFit level two instructor, they’ve got real good basis for using Levels. We should probably dump them in the deep end right away because they know how to sort of digest all that information. They’re aware of the concepts. Scott Klein: A lot of people come in and have never tracked macros, they don’t understand that carbohydrates affect their blood sugar differently than fat and protein. And so right now, we sort of have this experience where we could just sort of dump you in and say, “Hey, go explore,” and then we’re sort of whacking you with this day score that’s a red color. And so just making sure that we can meet people where they’re at. Scott Klein: Go to the next slide. So I’ve actually been thinking about, I think, that words are important, and so I wanted to just come up with a concept that could help us emotionally level set a little bit better. And I kind of want to change the project name. So this is kind of what I think where the app is at right now, where it’s like, you’ve got this thing to go explore, we do a little bit of stuff, but it’s like, hey, here’s some thing and here’s kind of a placard that you can read about it. But what I want to get to, next slide, is a much more intimate two-way conversation about what’s going on. People are bringing their health journeys to us, and we need to be able to build that trust. Scott Klein: So if you’ve seen this movie, this is a fantastic movie where you’ve got these complicated characters, but they go through this dance of each other, with each other, building trust, even Robin Williams’ character is not super perfect, even as a therapist, but they get to a lot of deep places together. And so that’s what I’m hoping that we can get to with our customers. And in the cause, that’s definitely what they’re expecting of us. And so a lot of them are saying qualitatively, “Hey, I like the insights, it doesn’t seem like it is maybe relevant to me exactly.” And so this is where I’m going to be setting the focus for this project. Scott Klein: So if we go to the next slide, what I really want to do is sort of, we’re not building a Guided Journey. We’re really building a journey with a guide. And I want to level set around that being a thing, having a very two-way intimate relationship. It’s very clear when you have a guide with you that it is a very dynamic emotional or yeah, emotional exercise, where you’ve got both lines of communication open. So these are just some basic preliminary thinking. I’ll have a more substantial update in the weeks to come with some more data to bring to the table, but this is just where my head’s at right now. Josh Clemente: Love it. David Flinner: It’s pretty good. Alan, take it on. Alan McLean: I’m still reeling from that presentation. I’m just right here. Really, I mean, I’m excited about that reframe on the work. So this is a quick status update on what design’s up to. So it’s just going to show three quick slides on what’s top of mind for me this week. Onboarding and checkout, test results and Guided Journey, or a journey with a guide. Alan McLean: Next slide please. So we need to make a good first impression with our users, and so we’re starting to look at what the checkout flow is for membership. And this is a great opportunity you to sort of dovetail into onboarding in the app. So ideally, there’s going to be a feature point where you download the app from the store, you can use it right away, you can sign up for Levels, and so that’s what some of these screens are starting to touch on. This is also somewhat adjacent to the design coherence project. We’re starting to align on colors and inputs and sort of getting some of these basic core components styled out. So also just kudos to Stacy, some amazing images to work with that kind of makes my job look incredibly easy. So thank you there for that. Alan McLean: Next slide. Test results, this is an exciting one. There’s a Loom out for review, but basically finding ways to integrate biometrics into the profile. So we know there’s going to be these longterm health metrics that change over time, things like potentially get a insulin resistance test of some kind, which we’re showing here, or you can start looking at maybe just average glucose from UCGM, or glucose variability, maybe it’s estimated A1C, things like that. So this is going to be potentially a home for that, and this will be an opportunity also to sort of up-level some of our experts and convey our perspective on what we think reference ranges are for these sorts of tests. Alan McLean: Next slide. And then on Guided Journey, looking at ways to on the left, we’ve got an example of maybe the score, the metabolic score, isn’t the greatest thing to show somebody on the first day or the first week. Maybe there’s alternatives and we can use some kind of qualitative label, that kind of speaks to and uses the line language of the metabolic score of maybe a 55, but we talk about it in a qualitative way and we said, maybe it was spiky, and here’s why. Middle slide is something that I’ve shown before, it’s just suggestion for the day to focus on breakfast. But I think we also want to try to find ways to reduce the latency between when we notice that there’s something that’s going to spike your glucose, and when we can sort of acknowledge that and give you an opportunity to do something a little bit different. Alan McLean: So on the right, I’ve got what I’m calling sort of magic moments, which is sort of acknowledging that they added chi into their breakfast or something with high fiber, and giving them a bit of a thumbs up. So I think if we can do more of that sort of positive reinforcement when people do things great, we can more closely connect ourselves to the meal. And that is done. Josh Clemente: Awesome. Thank you, Alan. Exciting stuff in there. I’m going to do half the hiring update and then David will do other half, but big thing on the left side of the screen, we filled the growth generalist role. We’ll have, as I said, some more details on that coming soon. And then we’ll have an upcoming position in the product org. So David, you want to add any color on that? David Flinner: Yeah, definitely. So we’re starting to look at opening a new role on the product team to help us operate in and navigate the expanding complexity that we’re seeing as we take on more product ideas, coordinating challenges, the team’s really growing in size. So it’s something that we’re currently putting together a lot of thought in a job description and kind of ironing out what the needs are for this, and seeking feedback from the team and our advisors. So I’ll probably be reaching out to a lot of you on the team to get some of your thoughts on where we could kind of shape this role. And then regardless, I’ll be sharing the job description draft probably early next week. But yeah, exciting times. And let me know if you have any questions. Josh Clemente: All righty. So we’re down to just the one open specific position with the software engineer role, but as always, for those watching this, please refer excellent people to our career site. We have a general application available and we’re always looking for great folks. All right, handing it over to Chris. Chris Jones: A couple quick updates from member experience. Progress on the text analytics pilot, I’ve shown some examples of kind of what that product can do on our NPS comments. There’s about a half dozen vendors I’m talking to and looking to narrow that down for a recommendation and feedback to the team next week to kind of close that up and start that slate moving forward. On the sports standpoint, a couple good metrics around reduction in contact rates, refund and churn. So it’s always great to see these continuously going in the right direction. Then on the flip side, some struggles with our Truepill SLA, a lot of it was due to the long weekend and a lot of call-outs and staffing issues at their firms, but we’re working to address that. Chris Jones: And then on the main call-out for this week is we talk a lot about member happiness a lot, so just the example above is at the bottom of all of our conversations we have with our members is a quick, “How are we doing? Great, okay, good and not good?” And that’s what powers our scores. So it’s in every communication making it super easy. And we are very proud of our numbers, but we’re not perfect. So we also want to make sure that we’re not just talking about high-level grasp, but bringing individual members to the table. So with that, I asked Jesse to talk about a recent conversation that he had with one of our members and kind of that journey. So with that, Jesse, I’m going to turn it over to you to talk about the experience you had. Jesse Lavine: Yeah. So as Chris mentioned, we take a lot of pride in the high CSAT score and maintaining that. And this is a interaction from one of the not good categories. So a quick overview, this week a member was having troubles and still using a solution that had worked in the past, and while that worked to successfully enable the connection, it also had an unintended consequence of deleting all of their previous pre-Levels data, which was quite a bit. And when the member let us know, it was just a pretty gut-wrenching realization and they were very clearly frustrated and unhappy with the experience so far. So I reached out to Miz and Chris seeking some guidance on how to best resolve this, is it an email or a call? Jesse Lavine: So I ended up giving the member a call that evening, and they were really appreciative of the personal touchpoint, and just personally owned up to the mistake and apologized and offered them to comp their first month. And learned that they are super excited to be a part of Levels and to have gotten in early. And they also learned about Levels from their doctor who had recommended they get on the platform, and they plan on being a subscriber from here and out. So unfortunately, mistakes do happen and they don’t feel good, but we can and have learned from this. So positive changes that came from this are a subscriber, an insight into the changing tide in doctor’s offices, and practically for support, some updated save replies with a note that priorly linked will not survive reinstall. Chris Jones: Thanks, thank you, Jesse. And again, a lot of it is we’re going to make mistakes and it’s how we learn from it and how we try to turn the situation around and really trying to help our members through it, even sometimes when we make mistakes. So I just want to thank Jesse for sharing that story. And that’s all for member experience. Josh Clemente: Awesome. Jesse, thank you, and Chris. That sort of insight is why we do what we do the way we do it. It’s not always an intention, but when things do break, figuring out how to make the best of it and how to improve the process so we don’t make that mistake twice is actually the most valuable thing. So appreciate that and thanks everybody that helped out on that, Miz and Chris, et cetera. All right, Ben. Ben Grynol: All right. Growth for the week. $99,000 of recognized revenue. For the month, we’re at 181, well on our way to our goal of 300. 7.7 in the bank, no changes to debt, and 42 months of runway. Next slide please. So growth theme of the week, Ground Control to Major Tom. This is David Bowie, I’m sure many of us are familiar with Bowie and Space Oddity, a song that many people reference. Ben Grynol: Next slide, please. What does that have to do with these? Well, these are mission patches and these aren’t any mission patches, these actually belong to Josh Clemente, and these were all earned through different projects that he was a part of at SpaceX. And so when he talks about it, he said that there are people at SpaceX who sometimes just end up staying for the mission patches. The way that they’re awarded is for being part of certain projects. It’s an insight and a takeaway that I think Sam and Josh had started riffing on and said, “What does it look like when we give some little recognition, whether it’s tangible or whether it’s digital, for different things that people are a part of, whether they’re members or whether they are internal team members?” Ben Grynol: So next slide please. And so that ties into mission patches. So I’m sure people have seen these full loading around Notion and now Threads, but what they are is we’re starting to think about having a collection of mission patches. The first one, which was a trial, was the Coke Challenge one where we actually created the embroidered patch. Eventually, the goal would be to integrate these digitally into product and Alan and David have been riffing on that, which is pretty cool. Ben Grynol: But the idea is that there’s actually no one in the world that can collect every single one, which makes them, everyone’s going to have their own meaning for them, but makes them different. So we’ve got ones for Levels team members, where depending on the year that you start, you would get a mission patch. So moving forward, we haven’t done a ’21 because we would do it near the end of the year, there’s ones for people who are part of our cap table, and then there’s ones that we’ll continue to do for different challenges in the community. So it’s a pretty cool project to think about and something that we’ll riff on and iterate on, but that is growth for the week. So over and out on that. Josh Clemente: Love it. Thank you, Ben. Yeah, excited to earn some of these as well. Tom. Tom Griffin: All right, way too much going on this week to fit it all on one highlight slide, but just calling a couple things out. Most of this has already been covered, I believe by Josh, but in terms of the podcast tour, we’ve got many tier one shows coming up. New ones we were focused on this week include Bulletproof round two, this time with Casey, and then Mark Hyman round two, but also as mentioned recently, mindbodygreen, Max Lugavere. So the pipeline is just incredibly strong. We had about a dozen really amazing new connections this week. In the middle panel, just a sampling of them, Josh mentioned the best CrossFitter of all time, and then many others who have been on our radar with millions of followers. And then lastly, Sam put out one of his famous Investor Asks about YouTube content creators, which led to very literally hundreds of emails and new connections and phone calls. So very excited about that and also excited to have the growth generalists come on board to help out with some of this stuff. Tom Griffin: Next slide. And then theme of the week is just around tapping our network which has been incredibly valuable for us and it’s really just increasingly clear to me that this is our unfair advantage. So this was a fun story from this week. I’ve had a couple of friends reach out to me personally about a woman on Instagram named Amanda Rocchio, goes by meowmeix, however you say that, and she’s got over a million followers, super engaged, and it’s all about making nutritional science accessible. And she kept coming up in my personal network with friends, as you can see there on the top left. And so I put a note out in Threads to our team asking particularly Casey, if she knew this person, Casey did not. So then I asked Kelly LeVeque if she knew this person, and Kelly within two hours added Amanda directly into the Thread all within 24 hours. So this was truly a magic moment for me. I felt like I was just controlling the universe and manifesting it in realtime. So pretty cool, and just kind of goes to show how quickly we can move on some of this network stuff. Josh Clemente: I have experienced something similar and it’s a little bit supernatural. Awesome to see. Haney. Mike Haney: Yeah. So on the content side, a couple nice pieces up this week. The first one I put it note in Threads about this, but want to call attention to it because it’s going to be the first of us series, one of our members, Glen Murphy, who some of you guys might remember from last assemblage, is a science writer and he and I were brainstorming what he could do for us. And he said, “I keep finding myself in conversations with friends, trying to tell them about Levels, and I keep getting sort of push back or questions where they say, ‘Well, I’m a vegan or I’m paleo, or I eat low calorie, how will this work for me?'” So this is the first of a series of columns that’s designed to answer those questions. This is going to be speaking to people who follow a particular dietary philosophy and explaining to them how eating in a metabolically healthy way can also help them, and with all our columns relying on research and studies. So excited to get that going. Glen will be doing more of those. Mike Haney: And the second one here is returning to our eat this instead food swaps pieces, this mostly out of Casey’s brain and experience. This is also the first piece that we’ve executed with an agency we’re working with now called This is Revel. You’ve probably heard me mention them before, but they’re going to be executing a bunch of content for us, so excited to get this one up. And a couple of good medium pieces this week. The Casey’s content piece, 7 Things I Learned About Launching an Editorial Operation actually went up last week, but I wanted to call attention to it again here. And then we grabbed those awesome culture videos that were made and we put those up on medium as well so that medium site just, again, becomes a great portal for people to look at for some insight and enthusiasm around what’s happening at the company. Mike Haney: Some good things in the works. We’ve got a really fun piece actually suggested by Tom a couple months ago who sent an email saying, “Why are the dietary guidelines so off? Why do the dietary guidelines still recommend things that we kind of know are not healthy?” And so I had a really good writer dig into this, obviously, a lot of it reading Dr. Lustig’s books and others, and doing some more reporting and just writing a nice piece, kind of explaining what are dietary guidelines? How are they used? How are they determined? How did we get here? We’re going to do a nice piece out of that labs document that Casey’s put together that I think will be hugely popular, how to read your labs. And then a couple of nice pieces coming up about why glucose is in everything, and then a sort of part two of, but here’s why we should measure it anyway and it’s going to be a bit of rebuttal to some of those criticisms of should general populations be wearing CGM? So I think those are going to be really core pieces. Mike Haney: And some great movement on the Everyone on Content side. There’s an excellent piece with Mercy that came out of our new process of doing an interview with Erin, our writer. And Erin sort of gleaned, all the insights that mercy had to share, and it’s a really nice piece of that sort of five things that she employs, that Mercy employs, to make support work and to do that so well, as we all know, support does. Tom’s got an excellent piece about the podcast strategy and Mike D. has done his interview as well. So really exciting to see that machine churning. Mike Haney: Finally quickly, stat of the week. I thought we haven’t checked in in a while on our sort of total page views. So I thought it would be fund just to look up those stats. We’re at almost one and a half million for blog traffic, and about three and a half million for the site total. And then you see the homepage there, is about 788,000. So it’s exciting that I think that content continues to be a window through which folks are coming to the site and then hopefully heading off to the homepage or vice versa. But just fun to watch these stats grow. That’s all for me. Josh Clemente: Well, these content updates are just such a broad domain of topics being covered simultaneously, and millions of eyeballs looking at them. It’s huge. All right, Mike D.. Mike DiDonato: So as Josh mentioned, we are part of a research study being run by the University of Queensland in Australia. The project’s called The Physiology of Wise Leadership and Its Impact on Performance. So I’m going to give a quick summary from their team about why and what. So the problem solving capabilities of leaders, particularly their ability to generate in multiple possible solutions to ambiguous and complex problems are some of their greatest assets. Failures in this domain can be catastrophic for the individual team, and even organizational success. Unfortunately, stress undermines this variability. So the Queensland team decided to collaborate with Whoop, Levels and the McKinsey Executive Leadership program to explore how leaders make effective decisions, even in the presence of high levels of stress. Mike DiDonato: So the participants, as part of the broader study will be using Levels for two weeks. They’ll be sent a daily survey with questions about their glucose data, followed by questions with how they’re feeling, they’ll be asked, are they stressed, tense, happy, sad, calm, et cetera. And one of the things they’re trying to assess is, does metabolic health as measured by CGM with Levels, impact decision-making intentional control leadership and goal attainment? More to come on this, but shown on the bottom this past Monday night, Nadia Fox, Dr. Jim [McKing 00:41:11] from the Queensland team, Kristen Holmes from Whoop, and myself participated in a webinar with the total participant’s eyes is 44, 22 people were able to join, we recorded the call. I just want to give a quick shout out to Kristen who’s been super helpful and got us into this study. And that is it for now. Josh Clemente: Awesome. Yeah. To Tom’s question, can we talk about being involved? We should definitely reach out to the Whoop team and talk about with Kristen, how we can distribute the info. It’s very preliminary, we’re kind of doing this as mostly in observational. Whoop has plenty of information as to what to expect, Levels I think is going to be used more as a correlative of measure on this one, this go around. But yeah, we should certainly see what we can do to raise awareness of this, and it’s a great opportunity. Kristin made it really easy for us to be involved. We obviously are not fulfilling hardware to Australia, they’re bringing their own hardware and they’re using the Levels software. So it was an easy one for us to be able to knock out and interesting to see where it goes. Josh Clemente: Okay. So real quick, we do have the Metabolical Book Club right after this meeting. And of course, we want to be on time. There’s a lot to unpack there. So we may shorten the individual contribution section for those of you that finish up, feel free to jump over to the Book Club, if you’re going to. And with that, Hao, would you like to lead off? Hao Li: Right. Super excited about the Book Club and personally just enjoy the last bit of summer. Josh Clemente: Yes. I can’t believe it’s over. Rob. Robert Lustig: Sorry, there we go. I got two phone calls this week from two complete randoms, which turns out not to be so random. The University of Alabama, Birmingham wants to collaborate on developing a curriculum for K through 12 on metabolic health and nutrition. And then I get another phone call from public health collaboration in the UK wanting to develop a curriculum for K through 12 on metabolic health. And I’m going like, “Whoa, everyone’s sort of woken up all at the same time, and they all want to use Metabolical as sort of the Bible for this.” So I am extraordinarily heartened, and you will hear about this yet again. Josh Clemente: Fantastic news. Love that. Man. Zac. Zac Henderson: Yeah. Professionally, I think, I’m just feeling excited this week. This is kind of the first week I feel like I had my feet really underneath me. And that’s been a great feeling, just gratified to just every day, get to work on something interesting. Personal life, just excited for a restful weekend, obviously. No big plans and sometimes no plans is just right. Josh Clemente: Agreed. We’ll jump to Chris. Chris Jones: On the Levels front, super excited about a lot of the design work coming from Alan around bringing other pieces of data in, inin addition to the glucose. So looking super sharp, so that’s really cool. On the personal side, today is me and my wife’s 16th wedding anniversary, so if I kind of look through the haze and the smoke, I can see the mountain peak that we got married on just outside where we live. So it’s always cool to be coming back where it all started. Josh Clemente: That’s amazing. Congratulations. Chris Jones: Thanks. Josh Clemente: Laurie. Laurie: Congratulations, Chris. That’s exciting. I’m looking forward to the assemblage and it’s interesting to me, the team is growing and yet we don’t feel any different. I mean, we’re still this group and I don’t know, there hasn’t been a lag, there hasn’t been a situation where someone doesn’t seem to fit in. It’s really beautiful to see, and I love to be part of it. And I’m enjoying the weather change. It’s slight right now, but I love the cool evenings here in California. So enjoy the weekend. Josh Clemente: Couldn’t say it better myself. Thanks, Laurie. JM. Josh Mohrer: I am very excited that my kids go back to school on Monday. It’s been a long and wonderful summer, but they both need it and we need it, everybody needs it. So they’re going back, which is great. On the work side, I’m really grateful and really appreciating the async remote life because I can take the kids to school and pick them up sometimes, and all those things are really nice, and still get my run in and still be great at work. And that’s just, it’s really great to kind of be able to do it all. So have a good weekend. Josh Clemente: Awesome. Gabriel. Gabriel: Yeah, for Levels, I’ve really been enjoying following the Table Stakes Design projects and seeing the app kind of all come together. Personally, we couldn’t go camping last weekend because Kate was sick, but we’re going to go this weekend. So I’m excited about that. Josh Clemente: Love it. David Rosenthal. David Rosenthal: Oh. Let’s see, two quick things. On the Acquired front, I’m excited about the next episode we’re recording on Sunday is on Standard Oil and John Rockefeller. So spending a lot of time there. And on the personal front, Jenny and I are expecting our first baby in three or four weeks, so things are getting real. Terrified, excited, all of the above. Josh Clemente: Love it. That’s awesome. Congratulations in advance. For me, I am very excited by the team, I’m super excited by the sort of project owner’s project inside of a project, which has been really cool to see, and just the pace of velocity and people picking it up. I had great conversations this week with several people who were working on projects and was able to contribute and just see how the wheels are turning. And it’s really awesome. Personally, I am looking forward to catching up on the Acquired episodes I’m behind on, in particular TSMC, which I’m very excited about, and this Metabolical Book Club. So lots of great stuff going on. Alan. Alan McLean: Yeah. I know I’ve said this before, but I’m really excited about the Guided Journey work. I feel like it’s got a really good trajectory and the right sort of thinking behind it. So thanks for David and Scott for working with me on that. So yeah, lots of exciting things to come there and every day I just kind of wake up and think about it, so that’s a really positive sign. And then personally, going for a birthday bike ride this weekend. It’s not my birthday yet, but going to use it as an opportunity to go for a long ride. I haven’t been on one in a long time, so looking forward to that. Josh Clemente: Happy early birthday. Casey. Casey Means: Yeah, I have to plus one on what Alan was saying. One of the highlights of my week was chatting with Scott about the Guided Journey stuff and just really appreciating the approach he’s taking to really trying to get feedback from so many different people about how to improve the journey and being super proactive and organized about that. That was really awesome. And the other highlight was chatting with David Sinclair. It’s always interesting to hear someone’s voice who you’ve heard, who’s read an audio book to you on Audible and hear the voice in real life. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. And just hearing the work he’s doing and his enthusiasm for Levels, and had already kind of heard about Levels from people in our network. And that’s just really exciting to hear sort of the telephone of enthusiasm that stems from Levels. Personally, highlight of the week was I had two CrossFit classes and they were really fun and I haven’t been this sore in about since college sports and stuff like that. So I’m going to keep going and it was great. Josh Clemente: Love to hear it. Yeah, I don’t know how I forgot to mention the David Sinclair and Mat Fraser connections this week. Those are huge, blew my mind. Mike D.. Mike DiDonato: Yeah. It’s hard to go at the end because you have to plus one everything, but definitely the Guided Journey work, just how important it is. Said this before, but content, like that cholesterol piece and then I just went out to the blog and just like seeing all of this information was pretty nuts and pretty awesome. And our members continuously continue to say this to us quite often. So those two, for sure. And then personally, I think I said this last week, but it didn’t happen, I’m excited to not go anywhere for a weekend, much needed. Josh Clemente: Good luck. I don’t think Dom’s with us. Steph. Stephanie Coates: Sweet. I’m really also excited about the Guided Journey work and the social stuff that Kunal is working on. The piece that Miz had posted in the water cooler Thread, it really struck a chord with me around just the support and accountability when going through health challenges, both for mental health and for physical health. And so, yeah, I’m really thrilled to see kind of us putting more effort into the behavioral and the emotional side of habit change when it comes to health. And yeah, and also this is the final week where I actually have met every single person on the team. And so thank you for everyone that’s taken time to hang out with me, which has been great. And personally, I, kind of like Mike D. I am looking forward to just not doing anything this weekend and just chilling and spending time with loved ones. That’s it. Josh Clemente: Nice. Awesome. Mercy. Mercy Clemente: Professionally, the social stuff is super exciting and we had a lot of members who received the email about the social experiment who seemed really excited for that. So I’m looking forward to that. And then personally, I’m going to go see some friends from college tomorrow, so I’m excited for that. Josh Clemente: Nice. Justin. Justin Stanley: Levels wise, I’m really, I guess, pleased that our content that we keep putting out isn’t just fluff and just filler stuff and it actually has meaning and helps people and isn’t just filler words, which is great. And personal side, I’m getting my dog, Charlie to the vet to get his third set of shots and now he can go to puppy classes or daycare and dog parks and stuff. So excited. Josh Clemente: Nice. Haney. Mike Haney: Levels wise, I’m really grateful for a couple of calls I had this week. I got to chat with Jesse and then Josh and I had a call this week, and it’s just fun for me to kind of get out of my content bubble and always get great insight, having those personal conversations with other team members. Personally, we’re indulging my kids’ luxury car obsession, so we rented a BMW convertible for tomorrow and we’re going to take him up to LA for the day. Josh Clemente: That is great. Kunal. Kunal Shah: Yeah. Plus one on all the projects going forward, like the Guided Journey stuff is really exciting. On top of that, it’s really been cool to see like all the stuff going on with content. I mean, I’ve just been a huge fan of the Levels blog for a long time, so being able to see how the machine moves forward on the inside has been really thrilling. And besides that, I’m really excited I get some more features, like the social stuff out to our members, and looking forward to a relaxing weekend. Josh Clemente: Awesome. Ben. Ben Grynol: Professionally, stoked on the growth candidate coming on board, all the talent conversations have been awesome. Biggest highlight was reading the notes from the David Sinclair call that Casey had. I was like, what is happening here? This is insane. So that was just a huge… it was just a great moment, as well as the podcast that Casey and Sarah had recorded that’s coming out in a couple weeks. Personally, kids are back in school, which is great, but the highlight of my week was listening to the TSMC Acquired episode. It was one of those where I was like, this is amazing right now. So please everyone, check it out. It’s great. Josh Clemente: Yeah. Ben posted a bunch of spoilers in the Threads, Thread and I wanted to catch up on the episode, but I read all the juicy bits too early. Scott. Scott Klein: Professionally, I’m having a lot of fun talking to customers. And I think even the ones that have tried it and didn’t quite get it, they still have a lot of energy and goodwill for us. You can tell they’re wanting to keep coming back as we make updates, which is really nice. And I think too, just realizing how much potential Levels has to be part of the health stack. I feel like people are also trying Aura and Whoop and they’re sort of ferreting out of those systems at various points. But I feel like we have, because we have these sensors on their body, they’re not going away, we’ve got this kind of unfair advantage. So anyway, I’m excited about that on the work side. Social, my little girl started preschool yesterday, so having a little bit of a dad moment, just kind of reflecting on her growing up into being this little contained human. It’s pretty cool. Josh Clemente: That’s awesome. Murillo. Murillo Nicacio de Maraes: Yeah, professionally super excited to see how our users use our app, just having analytics out there and being able to have the visibility is awesome. But also quasi professionally exposed, I just got my first set of Levels batches, super excited about those, just supporting them everywhere. It’s been fun. Josh Clemente: Awesome. Finally- Michael Mizrahi: Finally. Josh Clemente: … Miz. Michael Mizrahi: Yeah. On the work side, really enjoyed getting to the details on the opt-in default privacy app analytics settings. It’s nice swimming with the current instead of against it, so it’s great that we’re all on the same page there with the same kind of fundamentals and principles in place. On the personal side, I’m in New York through the end of the weekend, then headed back to San Francisco. So just enjoying the rest of the trip. Josh Clemente: Awesome. Tom. Tom Griffin: Very excited about the team, both current and future, highlighted by spending some time with Miz and JM this week in New York, which was awesome. And weird that neither of them mentioned it. Josh Clemente: Yeah, that’s suspicious. Josh Mohrer: It was really, it was great. Josh Clemente: Jesse. Jesse Lavine: All right. [inaudible 00:55:43] out to the Book Club. I’m excited for the reframe of Journey with the Guide. I think that is really on point. Thank you Xinlu for making the beta replacement spreadsheet obsolete. That’s really awesome. And this weekend, excited to hang out in support and play some guitar. Josh Clemente: Well, I didn’t even know about the beta replacement spreadsheet being obsoleted. That’s a relic from the past. That’s huge. I would’ve noted that on slide number one. All right, team, awesome work, awesome week. Thank you everybody, have an awesome weekend. And David Rosenthal, appreciate you joining us. You’re welcome anytime. Please come back. David Rosenthal: Well, thanks for having me. This was great. Josh Clemente: All right. Talk to you all later.