Tara Viswanathan - Rupa Health

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Honestly, my parents are immigrants, and so it was the coming from nothing to become something great.

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So it was always about this greatness, even though those words weren't used, but it was who I think my parents idolized.

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And so that was the unspoken value system that was passed down to us.

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I remember my mom was, my parents were terrified.

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I said that when I dropped out of Stanford grad school and started at that point, I was like, I just need to do something different.

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Started a chocolate company.

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My parents basically decided that they didn't want to be beholden to anybody for their survival, and so they said, we're going to start a company.

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I don't know what we're going to do, but it was like pure desperation.

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Hi.

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How you doing?

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Oh my God. Finally here.

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After a year of rescheduling.

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It's so funny. Universe synchronicity kind of way.

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So I'm in Hawaii right now at a accelerator cohort.

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I was prepping for our talk today last night, and we have this WhatsApp thread with all of our cohort members.

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And for whatever reason, somebody bubbled up the tweet that I did October 7th with you sitting on stage where I was like, oh my gosh, this is the best talk. And I was like, oh, I'm talking to her tomorrow.

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That's so funny. Someone bubbled up your tweet.

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Totally.

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That's so funny. In what context?

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We're all headed to SF to kind of do a bit of a roadshow, and then we do SF Tech Week and then LA Tech Week, so.

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Amazing.

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I think everybody's got SF Tech Week on the brain, I think.

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Nice. Where in Hawaii are you said Kauai?

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In Hawaii. Yeah, in Honolulu.

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Yeah. Oh my gosh, amazing.

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That's where the accelerator is.

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Yeah.

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Have definitely upgraded.

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Definitely. It was one of those that when I first applied, and then they were like, all right, we're really interested to talk to you.

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I was like, where is it? And so spending eight weeks here was not a bad thing.

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Definitely not a bad thing. Oh my gosh.

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So do they pay for your housing and stuff?

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How's meatloaf?

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He is doing great. He is, I'll show you a photo. He's thriving.

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He's getting into stranger danger, which means I need to be around him a lot more this morning.

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Oh my gosh, it's so good.

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Was it 500 days before landing on August?

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It was like a bajillion, it was insane.

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It was the very last day until we would have to go into court and officially go in person and we were like, Nope, we're going to get it done this way.

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And it wasn't because we just couldn't decide.

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It's just because we had allocated zero time to it.

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Yeah, yeah, right. It was.

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Not the top priority.

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Meatloaf was solid too. I think for.

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I know Meatloaf almost became his real middle name.

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I love it. Amazing. Well, so just for context, it's interesting.

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I had started Zero to right after I had started my company and this idea that I love Peter Thiel's book and the idea of starting something from nothing coming out of school.

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You went to work for a company before you started your first company.

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How long were you at the first company? Right out of school?

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Six months. Less than It's my only real job ever.

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Nice. Okay. So what was it about that?

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Did you get some knowledge and experience and then be like, okay, I can do this myself?

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Yeah, so much of this stuff is the whole, I'm analyzing it in retrospect and maybe cherry picking certain things.

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It's hard to say, but I think that there, so much of this was an inevitability. First off, I think that the people who my parents admired and talked about were business people. It was the Bill Gates of the world.

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It's like those types of the Larry Ellisons, those are the people who they admired and they always talked about with us.

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And so even though we were growing up in this small town in Texas, the ideas that we talked about as a family were about these. It wasn't necessarily tech.

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It was also Warren Buffet investing and even Arnold and working out and just these.

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People saw the world differently and were like, or I'm going to go make it different.

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Honestly, my parents are immigrants.

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And so it was the coming from nothing to become something great or in Bill Gates' case, just growing up in a great family and becoming something great.

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So it was always about this greatness, even though those words weren't used, but it was who I think my parents idolized.

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And so that was the unspoken value system that was passed down to us.

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And at that point, neither of my parents were entrepreneurs.

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They weren't doing that.

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They just admired that.

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And my dad was a doctor, so he ran the pediatric ICU in not only our hometown, but also we're in the panhandle of Texas, which is now getting very famous for all of the data center investment, which is hilarious. But again, it was just like a dirt road town.

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And we ended up there. My parents grew up in India, but we ended up there because my dad was a doctor and they desperately needed doctors.

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And so we were immigrants.

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And so it was whoever pays us the most, we'll go there. Doesn't matter.

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We're not trying to, just trying to be wherever we can survive.

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And so that ended up being Texas.

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And so even though we were in this small town, we had these ideas. And so my dad was a doctor, my mom was a stay-at-home mom.

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And then when I was in third grade, my parents basically decided that they didn't want to be beholden to anybody for their survival. And so they said, we're going to start a company.

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I don't know what we're going to do.

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But it was pure desperation because they love the way the hospital was run.

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It felt like the administration was kind of messing things up.

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Oh my gosh. My dad had the same thing. He actually, he was a doctor and at his hospital very specifically, he remembers the head chief medical officer, chief surgeon coming in one day and saying, all right, everyone, there's this great new drug that's out and we think it's exciting, so we should really start getting this thing out there.

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And it felt like one of the sort of, let's push this thing. And he was like, Nope, that's it. I'm out.

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So he left and bought a building and started his own practice. He was like, I'm doing my own thing.

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Doing his own thing.

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Yeah, I mean, it's funny.

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It's like a lot of people get into building companies in different ways, and I sometimes think this act of desperation or wanting to be in control of your own destiny is probably one of the most powerful forces for that.

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And so yeah, my dad was the one who was making the money, but then his income powered, my mom to go back to school, got another degree in our hometown, Texas Tech University College in what was called Management Information Systems, but it was kind of related to computers.

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And she got really interested in computers.

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And I remember one of her class projects was networking our house.

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So the master students from the school came over and drilled holes in our attic and were running cables through, and that's how we got internet.

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Nice. So.

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Funny. This was probably in the nineties, essentially late nineties. And from there she started, she would do anything.

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She's like, I want to figure out how to build a business.

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And it was purely just who will pay me for stuff?

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And so she rented a spot at the mall and taught PowerPoint classes and Microsoft Word classes.

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That's great.

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That's how she started. And now fast forward 20 years, I think it's 25 years, a month ago is the anniversary of them starting this company.

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And now it's a software company that builds utility billing software and supports our entire family.

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And my dad's quit his medical practice and now runs the company with my mom.

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And it's the whole thing.

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But what's interesting is that that business took off So growing up I didn't see any of that.

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And so it's funny, I think now if you look at it, a lot of people are like, oh, your parents are entrepreneurs.

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That's how you guys got into this.

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And because my brother also has a startup, but that's not how we got into it because if anything, my parents were very risk averse.

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They didn't want us to be risky.

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And so I think it was just the fact that they admired that and that value system traveled down to me when I was in seventh grade.

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I was making duct tape purses and selling them at the mall. I just leave.

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I love it. Making things.

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And I remember thinking, wow, if I can make things and people pay me for that, and that could be my job, that was the coolest thing in the world for me, if I could actually build something that people would pay for.

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Yeah. That's amazing. Well, and even though you were saying that it was in grad school that it really sort of took off and there was to your point about the principles and the values and what they admired, there was still that sort of looking and listening around the hustle of breaking free and making your own way.

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It's so real that, sorry to interrupt you, but it's so real that kids listen. Sorry, people don't listen to what you say. They watch what you do.

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That is such a fundamental principle of life and human behavior.

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And even though my parents were telling me to be a doctor, be a lawyer, be something stable, and what I saw was them admiring these titans of industry. And I think my brother and I, implicitly for better or worse, we're like, oh, if we want mom and dad to be proud of us, maybe we need to do that too.

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Yeah, totally. The kids.

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Mechanism. So that's what we did.

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And I think I remember my mom, my parents were terrified when said that when I dropped out of Stanford grad school for and started at that point I was like, I just need to do something different.

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Started a chocolate company.

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They were embarrassed and didn't want to tell any of their friends what I was doing. Didn't know how to explain what I was doing.

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Totally.

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My brother turned down a job at Facebook, and my mom for many years was like, oh my God, I regret not pushing him and forcing him to do that.

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It all worked out. They couldn't really stop us.

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Totally. And it is funny, you were talking about how kids especially look at what you do versus what you say. So I have two boys, eight and five, and my oldest William has been watching the evolution of stack List as we've been building it.

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And now we were at the pool right before I went to Hawaii and a little girl came up and said, hi, my name's Megan. My oldest goes, hi, my name's William and this is Kyle. He's the CEO of stack list.

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And the little girl was like, but just watching this, and I've seen his evolution even sitting in his car seat, we're driving down the street and his little mind is spinning as he's watching out the window and he turns and he's like, what if I took Legos that I don't like?

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And I put them all in a bag and then I put a number on it and I was like,$5 and I could sell individual bags of Legos.

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And he just went on this whole thing about this and you're like, okay, even if I'm not around tomorrow, we've got this path going.

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You've got the programming, which is amazing.

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So you came out of school and you went to work for somebody else, but that didn't last long.

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Was that one of those, and I know I've seen your reliance on gut and instinct and things like that.

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Was there a moment when you were working for someone else that you were like, oh, I think I could either do this myself or I do it myself?

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No, I was so unhappy and I was about to quit and then I got fired it.

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Oh, nice. Okay. Amazing. Forcing measure.

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Totally. And it was like a 10 person company and they shouldn't have hired me.

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I didn't know what I was doing. I was essentially leading product.

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Basically when I joined, there was another product manager who I had been working with, and it was basically us two doing product with the CEO. She was more senior.

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And then between the time that I was talking to them and then I accepted the offer, she quit.

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And so then it was me as a brand new product person and CEO, and it didn't really make sense for me to be there.

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And I actually credit them with a lot because they put me through a bootcamp to learn product management at, oh my gosh, I'm totally forgetting the agency.

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But there was this agency in San Francisco that basically you could, it was actually really interesting.

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It was they would come on board, they would bring you on board as a client and they would teach you project management and they would also project manage your work. It's like a service.

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In the days of as all of this stuff was starting and product was kind, this was 2015, and so it was earlier days of product.

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And I learned so much through that. I learned what a sprint was.

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I learned all of that stuff.

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And.

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So in six months, I basically got a full education on how to be a PM and amazing. And so when it happened, I was literally about to quit because that's a much longer story.

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I was just like, what am I even doing here? I'm so unhappy. Why am I doing this?

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And they were like, Hey, we need somebody more senior.

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I honestly don't know why we hired you.

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And I was like, yeah, it's fair point.

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I don't know why you hired me either.

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Either.

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And it basically was my sign from the universe said, okay, go actually do the thing you want to do. And so at that point, I didn't know exactly what I knew I wanted to do something in health and wellness. I didn't know what that was.

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I didn't know what the right business was. And so I just started, this sounds crazy in retrospect, but I started by convincing this kombucha company that I liked to let me sell their product on the west coast because I just wanted to drink it, which turned to me a bunch of health food at stores.

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And so I'd walk, I would literally walk into a coffee shop in San Francisco and say, I can restock your entire cabinet full of health and wellness products, and I will get commission on whatever you sell. You don't do anything.

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And some people were like, go away. And other people, other people said, cool, that sounds great.

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And so I spent a year and a half Pedalling health food, which turned into ultimately consulting for some of these companies.

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And on the food side and then doing, I did all kinds of stuff in health and wellness all the way from the pedaling health food to working in BC a little bit and helping fundraise.

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And then all the way to this one company I found called Parsley Health, which was the instigation for what ended up being Rupa.

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So once I found Parsley Health, I was like, this is it.

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I believe in this future. Let me go build infrastructure for this.

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Nice. Well, what's interesting, even that as you were telling that, I'm starting to think, so you ended up coming out, you got product, you got bootcamp in product, then you got boots on the ground, cold selling and working out your pitch and your flow and your story and all that sort of stuff.

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And then you got some vc and then you also saw something that you feel like you could do better.

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And so basically that period was just gathering all the tools in the tool belt.

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And you missed one of the most important ones, which I didn't mention, which is sheer desperation.

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That helps.

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Needing to figure something out because of living in this city, I have rent.

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There's so much going on.

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It's funny, I think people glorify the, I'm starting this company because of the mission, because of this problem I face. Yes, all of that is true.

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And I deeply believed in what we were doing.

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I spent a hundred percent of my time in health and wellness.

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I was obsessed with the industry that I was doing in my free time, even for years prior, probably for a decade prior.

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I have a chip on my shoulder, I want to prove that I can do something.

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There's all of that too. That drives you.

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Yeah. Amazing.

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So you saw Parsley and you started sort of working with or in and around that, and was that the sort of like, okay, I see what they're doing and I think I could do it better? Or what was the few months before, a few weeks before the idea of Rupa?

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Yeah, so it was basically even before Parsley at Stanford in grad school, I was studying meditation.

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So Stanford was, I think I believe the first med school that had all residents go through a meditation course as well or something like that.

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I might be getting the details wrong, but they had multiple meditation courses that you could actually take for credit.

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And so I was doing that.

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I actually dropped out.

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I started a healthy chocolate company. I worked at Lululemon, which was fascinating.

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I was actually doing life coaching and wellness coaching for other grad students. I was ra, I was also a TA for this designing healthcare doctors and patients and changed behaviors and things like that.

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Course there was so many little things I was doing because my fundamental belief coming in was there is a new wave of healthcare and medicine and it's not going to look like the healthcare and medicine we have today. It's going to be inclusive of all these other things.

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And the way I described it was there's wellness, which is SoulCycle and frozen yogurt and all of that.

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And then there's medicine, which is the hospital.

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And I believe that there was this category in the middle where you are as a person, not even a patient, you are taking care of yourself in a way that's not just pure wellness but is actually now it's obvious, but then I didn't have a word for it.

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And so when I saw parsley in 2016, I believe 20 15, 20 16, it was the first time I saw it.

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This is what it's, it's functional medicine integrative, we called it functional medicine, but there was also integrative medicine.

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There was, oh my gosh, wow, I'm losing the term for it, but it'll come lifestyle based medicine.

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There was a term for it.

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And so what Parsley showed me was there was a category and my instinct that this is not just about optimizing your 1%. This is about, it's a new paradigm on real chronic illness and how we actually get healthy at our core.

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It is a actual real tool to handle a lot of these issues that people are having every single day and the medical system doesn't have an answer for. And so with parsley, I saw infertility, autoimmune conditions, early detection of cancer, I mean all kinds of things.

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So parsley was yes, all this stuff that you didn't have you intuited because I had experience in tons of these areas come together in this package and here's what this package is called and I saw the future.

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To me that was the future and I said, this is going to be what everybody wants.

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How do we bring it to everybody?

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Let me go do that. I realized I was like, if there was a company that I wanted to be a part of, it would've been parsley because it was seed stage. I loved everything about it.

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They wanted me to come work for them, but they wanted me to move to New York.

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And in that moment I had a decision, I was like, do I go do that or do I take a leap and do my own thing? And I was like, lemme take a leap and do my own thing.

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I love it. Do you remember the moment or the period in which you I, is it hairs on the back of your neck or is it like that sort of, I can see the matrix in the future?

00:20:03.089 --> 00:20:05.910
Is there something that stuck with you that were like you couldn't get rid of?

00:20:06.630 --> 00:20:12.660
Oh my gosh, yeah. I mean, so as part of the way I even got the parsley gig was it was so random.

00:20:16.289 --> 00:20:18.509
This is a much longer story of how I got here.

00:20:18.779 --> 00:20:22.710
But the short answer of that is I did my undergrad at Wharton.

00:20:22.710 --> 00:20:32.910
I came out to Stanford and what I knew was if I was going to stay in New York and all my friends were doing the Wall Street thing and I actually studied finance. And so that was my world.

00:20:33.359 --> 00:20:48.250
And so I came out here because I knew that I could not be the best version of myself, as cheesy as that sounds, unless I came out to the west coast because I needed to physically distance myself from the super unhealthy characteristics of the East Coast.

00:20:48.759 --> 00:20:49.593
Yes, right.

00:20:50.049 --> 00:21:01.059
No, I get it. And so I came out here, I quit drinking. That was a big, big, big shift for me. And one of the things I wanted to do, again, this was 20 12, 20 13, back when it really wasn't cool to quit drinking.

00:21:01.509 --> 00:21:06.972
I was definitely a weirdo and I quit drinking and I wanted to start a non-ACO alcohol bar.

00:21:07.180 --> 00:21:14.410
And so I had this idea for a non alcohol bar and I was talking about it to people back up.

00:21:14.650 --> 00:21:26.500
I'm in this phase of pedaling health food and looking for interesting companies and interesting trends that I can be a part of to learn for consulting gig.

00:21:23.950 --> 00:21:34.390
That was ideal. I was like, lemme go consult for different companies and then that's how I'm going to find where the market is in this space. Because again, I didn't know what the space was, I just knew that there was something there.

00:21:34.450 --> 00:21:54.789
So I had found this clean beauty was another category clean beauty products and things like that. So I'd found this company, credo Beauty, which is now pretty big, but at the time was just kind of getting started. And I emailed them and said, Hey, I went to their website and went to just the reach out to us text box, contact.

00:21:54.789 --> 00:21:55.623
Us form.

00:21:55.809 --> 00:22:00.549
Exactly. And I just sent them an email. I was like, Hey, I'm really passionate about the space.

00:22:00.549 --> 00:22:02.380
I have a lot of ideas on what we could do.

00:22:03.309 --> 00:22:10.869
And I sent them some ideas and things that I could offer for them, and they got back in an automated message, thank you so much for your interest.

00:22:12.759 --> 00:22:14.259
We don't need anything from you at this time.

00:22:14.259 --> 00:22:19.960
And then I sent them another message. I was like, no, listen, here's what I think you're doing wrong.

00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:19.960
Here's what I think you could do better.

00:22:20.349 --> 00:22:25.569
And then I got a response and was the head of marketing was like, why don't you come meet me in person? This seems super interesting.

00:22:26.259 --> 00:22:30.609
So I ended up meeting her in person.

00:22:26.259 --> 00:22:37.630
I go down in San Francisco on, I think they're in Fillmore District, they're on Fillmore Street, and I meet her in person.

00:22:34.119 --> 00:22:48.910
We talk about clean beauty, and at the end of the conversation I mentioned this non-alcoholic bar just as something that I'm really passionate about. And she says, oh my gosh, I love this idea. I'm so passionate about it. I don't drink. I'm the only one.

00:22:48.910 --> 00:22:51.130
I have friends who doesn't drink. It became this thing.

00:22:52.630 --> 00:22:54.700
Forget about that conversation.

00:22:52.630 --> 00:22:54.700
Nothing really happened from that.

00:22:55.839 --> 00:23:02.109
Few months later, I get a random text message from this woman and she says, I want you to meet my friend.

00:23:05.019 --> 00:23:08.230
I think you should talk to her about this non alcohol bar idea. Cool.

00:23:08.920 --> 00:23:12.369
I go to coffee, meet this friend, talk to her about the non alcohol bar idea.

00:23:12.970 --> 00:23:17.529
The night before I had been in LA and I got a Facebook ad for Parsley Health.

00:23:17.619 --> 00:23:22.059
That's how I found out about Parsley.

00:23:17.619 --> 00:23:26.619
So it had been on my mind and actually the launch party had been that night, but I was couch surfing in my friend's apartment because I didn't have any money

00:23:26.950 --> 00:23:30.309
00 PM at night. The party was almost over.

00:23:30.309 --> 00:23:33.130
I wasn't going to go, but I was like, this is interesting.

00:23:33.400 --> 00:23:50.000
And it only happened because I was targeted because I they were in la. I come back to San Francisco, I meet with this girl for coffee and I casually mention Parsley Health to her because we're talking about this whole category stuff and she says, oh, I know Robin. She's a good friend of mine who's the founder of Ley Health.

00:23:50.390 --> 00:23:51.222
Oh my gosh.

00:23:51.650 --> 00:23:53.269
She puts me in touch with Robin.

00:23:53.299 --> 00:24:24.289
And at that point I'd done enough cold outreach to know that unless I actually offer something upfront, no one's going to take the time to talk to me. So I reach out to Robin and I say, Hey, I actually did a whole, I basically called a bunch of friends, built a survey, had them go look at the website, got their feedback, and then I told Robin, based on this survey, here's what I think you can do better and here's what I think we should do and all of these ideas, this is my first time talking to her. And then she was like, who are you? What do you do?

00:24:24.380 --> 00:24:27.920
And then I made a whole presentation about it and pitched my idea.

00:24:27.920 --> 00:24:32.089
And so I basically ended up, she was like, great, come work for us as a consultant.

00:24:32.690 --> 00:24:46.843
And that ended up being a essentially year long stint where I got deeper and deeper and deeper with the company and my whole experience of parsley, my goal was I need to understand retention. Why are people leaving?

00:24:47.089 --> 00:24:58.579
How do we get people to stay and how do we actually create an experience that would keep people around? So because of that, I called, I probably talked to hundreds of their patients.

00:24:58.579 --> 00:25:03.589
I looked at think we hit a thousand patients when I was there, and I looked at every single one of their charts.

00:25:04.039 --> 00:25:12.140
So I knew these stories inside and out, and I will never forget this whole long story is because you asked me about that moment and that moment.

00:25:12.440 --> 00:25:33.980
One of the moments was sitting on the couch and in LA laying on the couch, couch surfing, getting this ad and seeing the puzzle pieces come together of everything I'd done for the last 10 years. Another moment was when I called this customer, I'm in my apartment in North Beach in San Francisco, in this teeny tiny, we didn't even have a living room.

00:25:31.519 --> 00:25:33.980
It was just three bedrooms.

00:25:34.069 --> 00:25:37.789
If I blow dried my hair or the power would go out, it was apartment.

00:25:38.450 --> 00:25:46.880
And I'm standing in my kitchen talking to this customer who had told me that she was on 37 different medications before coming to Parsley.

00:25:48.200 --> 00:25:53.059
She'd seen 10 different doctors and she was like three months at Parsley.

00:25:53.450 --> 00:25:56.660
I'm telling you, it changed my life. Totally changed my life.

00:25:56.660 --> 00:26:10.430
I am off of every medication and supplement except for one, and I'm weaning off of that one. I have never felt better. And she told me, she's like, I never thought I could have a family. And she's like, I met my person and I'm about to have a family, and the only reason that that is because of Parsley.

00:26:10.819 --> 00:26:11.653
Oh my gosh.

00:26:12.410 --> 00:26:15.410
And that was one story.

00:26:15.410 --> 00:26:19.759
I heard hundreds of these stories. To me it was so obvious.

00:26:19.759 --> 00:26:28.039
It was like you can't deny people having these experiences say what you want about the evidence.

00:26:29.119 --> 00:26:32.029
Evidence-based medicine, this is evidence-based medicine.

00:26:32.900 --> 00:26:42.170
All of those light switches start flicking and then you're just like, and the time travel happens where you see the future and you're like, okay, this is what has to happen.

00:26:42.710 --> 00:26:45.000
Yes, future is here. It's not evenly distributed.

00:26:46.710 --> 00:26:59.609
It's funny, I have a personal story from my oldest ever since he was a little one has, I don't know any other way to put it. He never had good poops.

00:27:00.359 --> 00:27:10.349
He literally was always just sort of like, and we would go to the doctor and they would go, oh, he's just one of those kids has a funny tummy. You know what I mean?

00:27:10.349 --> 00:27:24.150
Just His tummy is just sort of, and growing up, watching my dad from a medical perspective and typically through eighties and nineties and two thousands, so much of that symptomatic, my knee hurts, fix it.

00:27:24.630 --> 00:27:34.529
I think I have arthritis fix it. Just that sort of, I have something wrong if you can just give me the thing or tell me what to do and I'll fix it. Versus the sort of proactive.

00:27:34.859 --> 00:27:40.769
But I always got so frustrated that I'm like, you can't just tell me he has, he's just a sensitive tummy.

00:27:41.250 --> 00:27:49.950
So we got a GI map for him and we sent off the stool, we get the thing back, we go through the whole process.

00:27:51.269 --> 00:27:54.359
We cut pineapple almonds.

00:27:54.869 --> 00:28:08.549
We started cutting these things, dairy, specific gluten. We started cutting about seven or eight things, three weeks go by and all of a sudden he's running out of the bathroom.

00:28:08.549 --> 00:28:10.380
He's like, you guys got to look at this.

00:28:11.839 --> 00:28:12.289
That is.

00:28:12.289 --> 00:28:13.079
Amazing.

00:28:13.079 --> 00:28:32.880
There's just this whole period where literally he would tell us every time to come see it. And after a while I had to be like, buddy, I'm so proud of you, but also I don't have to come see it anymore. We're all, but it was that difference between he's just an upset tummy kid versus like, Nope, yip.

00:28:32.880 --> 00:28:40.710
You cut pineapple and almond and a handful of these things that basically his body is like danger, danger, danger. Then he's all good.

00:28:40.769 --> 00:28:42.869
And ever since then he's been all good.

00:28:42.869 --> 00:28:46.559
And so that I very much resonate with that idea. Yes.

00:28:47.099 --> 00:28:47.932
Totally.

00:28:48.190 --> 00:28:57.779
Of really looking at the underlying and being able to have access to the labs and results on a proactive basis versus just the medicine based.

00:28:57.900 --> 00:29:09.359
Kind thing or just getting curious and asking why. I mean, we had a similar and different story of our one month old son who wasn't pooping.

00:29:10.019 --> 00:29:16.349
He's pooping every five days and we go to the doctor and he's like, oh, my kid only pooped once every one time. She didn't poop for three weeks.

00:29:16.680 --> 00:29:20.849
This is totally normal. Don't worry about it. Is that the science answer?

00:29:21.359 --> 00:29:24.420
My son does that too. Totally.

00:29:24.420 --> 00:29:35.579
And I went and talked to the midwife and one of the midwives I worked with and lactation consultant, and she looked at him and she says, I think he might need to eat more.

00:29:35.700 --> 00:29:47.079
Everything is telling me this is just a volume problem. And she's like, it might be a tongue tie and he might not be getting enough. And sure enough, tongue tie problem wasn't eating enough.

00:29:47.200 --> 00:30:02.410
As soon as we started feeding him daily poops totally fine. And he mean went from unhappy baby to super happy, laughing, smiling all the time. If we just accept normal, this is the thing that gets me right.

00:30:03.309 --> 00:30:07.960
Currently it is normal to be obese. It is normal to have.

00:30:08.799 --> 00:30:20.049
If normal is more common than not, it is normal to have all of these things. Does anyone want to be obese? No, we should not be looking at normal.

00:30:17.109 --> 00:30:20.049
We need to be looking at optimal.

00:30:20.319 --> 00:30:28.960
And even with labs, the thing that's wild is the way they get their reference range is they take a population and you try to control it for somewhat healthy.

00:30:29.410 --> 00:30:37.660
You just take a population, you run the lab and you look at the ranges and then you set a reference range that is not optimal.

00:30:38.559 --> 00:30:39.393
Don't do it on.

00:30:41.859 --> 00:30:56.109
And if you look at it, the reference ranges are changing slightly and that's because our population is getting unhealthier and unhealthier and so the range for normal is getting wider and wider and wider.

00:30:52.420 --> 00:30:56.109
What does normally even mean?

00:30:56.829 --> 00:31:00.670
Yeah, totally. So what was that like? You had that aha moment.

00:31:00.670 --> 00:31:09.430
What was the period in between that and that I'll call naming and buying a domain name?

00:31:05.619 --> 00:31:09.430
What was that period of? Okay.

00:31:09.519 --> 00:31:12.339
Actually I'm starting from a Aruba perspective.

00:31:12.369 --> 00:31:21.640
So I'd been around startups for a while at this point. I ended up working, my junior year summer internship was with Hatch Labs, which is an incubator that ended up starting Tinder.

00:31:21.730 --> 00:31:26.140
I was there pre Tinder days, but we built and launched a bunch of apps and things like that.

00:31:26.140 --> 00:31:39.039
It was a mobile incubator, and so I'd seen enough to know a few core principles about building startups. One of 'em is you can think and think, but unless you actually do and get something out, you're not going to.

00:31:40.299 --> 00:31:42.369
Creating that momentum is the most important thing.

00:31:42.369 --> 00:31:43.809
Second is you're never going to get it right.

00:31:43.809 --> 00:31:50.859
You just need to drop something into the universe and then let customers give you feedback or it is like you need, the only thing that matters is product market fit.

00:31:51.430 --> 00:31:59.319
I had some of these principles and I think that a lot of that stuff really helped me.

00:31:54.519 --> 00:32:08.769
So I came into it knowing I believe that we need to work on this problem and this problem was just the future of medicine is going to look very different. I think everybody, I want to give access to that, to everybody.

00:32:09.099 --> 00:32:16.720
And so what is my pathway to get there? So I mean, probably the first thing I did, I did a couple things that maybe are novel and interesting.

00:32:16.779 --> 00:32:35.740
One is I just wrote a list of 10 ideas I had and then I went down the list and I just got tested them where I called up the ideal customer, whether they were my friends, friends or friends, whomever, and just went down them and tried to figure out what would be the best idea.

00:32:35.859 --> 00:32:52.369
Another thing I did was I had another friend who was starting a company at the same time, and we were both solo founders and so we wanted to, it's easy to get as a solo founder when you're just starting out, it's easy to live in your own bubble and delay and delay and delay. We wanted some accountability and momentum.

00:32:49.099 --> 00:32:52.369
So we started this blog together.

00:32:52.789 --> 00:32:56.269
So we basically would interview people and she was also health and wellness.

00:32:56.450 --> 00:32:58.789
We would interview people in health and wellness and we'd just publish it.

00:32:59.150 --> 00:33:01.609
So we had this cadence where we'd publish one every week.

00:33:02.029 --> 00:33:04.970
And so for a couple months before I started, it didn't go anywhere.

00:33:04.970 --> 00:33:12.559
The purpose of the blog was to hold us accountable and help us feel momentum and give us a reason to wake up in the morning and do something and ship something.

00:33:13.039 --> 00:33:15.349
And so we did that. That was super helpful for me.

00:33:15.710 --> 00:33:19.519
And then you also have this accountability buddy and you're talking about your goals and things like that.

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:23.809
And so I quit parsley October 31st.

00:33:23.809 --> 00:33:33.553
It was Halloween in 2017 I believe, and I threw this big that night Halloween party just on a whim.

00:33:33.650 --> 00:33:43.099
And then the next day people were there till 3:00 AM in my apartment. And then the next day I drove to Carmel.

00:33:44.059 --> 00:33:52.880
Another long ridiculous story on how I had a second family there who I met at this Wim Hof conference and the whole thing. Anyway, there's my happy place.

00:33:52.880 --> 00:33:53.900
So I drove to Carmel.

00:33:54.319 --> 00:34:01.430
I stayed in my friend's guest house and I just wrote for a week straight about what I wanted to do and what I wanted to build, no distractions.

00:34:01.759 --> 00:34:02.593
Wow.

00:34:02.690 --> 00:34:15.679
And so I had November, I told myself November and December was going to be my time to explore and see my family and travel a little bit and just kind of do my thing. Jan one, I'm all in.

00:34:16.400 --> 00:34:24.800
So what I wanted to do was actually do a Vipasana, which is a 10 day silent meditation retreat, but they're actually really competitive. It's hard to get into.

00:34:24.800 --> 00:34:28.579
So I was on the wait list. I didn't get in, so I was kind of bummed about that.

00:34:29.030 --> 00:34:32.719
But I ended up went to Yosemite. I went home to Texas to see my family.

00:34:32.719 --> 00:34:35.989
I went on a holiday trip with my parents or my mom and my brother.

00:34:35.989 --> 00:34:38.420
We went to South Africa, which was super cool.

00:34:39.679 --> 00:34:46.519
And then we came back and on the flight back from South Africa, I told myself I'd done my 10 ideas.

00:34:46.730 --> 00:34:55.159
I told myself and I'd picked my idea and I said, by the time this plane lands, I'm going to draw mocks for the product I want to build. I have to.

00:34:55.250 --> 00:34:55.909
That's my thought.

00:34:55.909 --> 00:34:57.659
I love. That's so good.

00:34:58.489 --> 00:35:10.820
And I was going to land on Jan one because of the time difference coming back, I was going to land on Jan one. We were going to go, I land and I opened my, and I call my acupuncturist. I say, meet me at home. I'm at the airport.

00:35:10.820 --> 00:35:26.360
I want you to review these mocks I made. So she comes over, I check my email and I'd gotten into a vipasana program that was going to be over my birthday in January. So I was just like, I told myself I was going to start the company.

00:35:26.360 --> 00:35:29.780
Do I do that or do I go to this thing? And I was like, you know what?

00:35:29.780 --> 00:35:32.659
I'm just going to go. I'll delay this by another month. I'm just going to go.

00:35:33.440 --> 00:35:46.349
So before I go, I wanted to come up with by the domain name, come up with idea, start creating the of what it was going to be a zocdoc for functional medicine providers.

00:35:46.349 --> 00:35:49.110
Essentially.

00:35:46.349 --> 00:35:49.110
That was the first idea.

00:35:49.829 --> 00:35:57.239
And so I sat in my brother's office because I knew that home, I needed people watching me. I needed to feel the pressure.

00:35:57.750 --> 00:36:04.860
So I sat in my brother's office, he had a startup at the time, and I just went through every domain name I could find.

00:36:04.860 --> 00:36:07.320
I bought a domain name, I registered it.

00:36:07.590 --> 00:36:10.079
I pack up my bags and I go to this.

00:36:10.949 --> 00:36:37.800
And so then in the ana, I hear one of the things that we talk about is Rupa, which is Sanskrit for physical manifestation. It's like the physicality of our body. I was like, Ooh, I like that. So I come back, I look up rupa health.com, it's available, it's $9 and 99 cents, which is the only amount that I was willing to pay for a domain name. I wanted a.com. I wanted it to be something health.

00:36:37.829 --> 00:36:40.469
And so I buy it and muff to the races.

00:36:41.940 --> 00:36:44.130
The next thing that happens was it was the Super Bowl.

00:36:44.880 --> 00:36:46.949
It ended up being super warm in San Francisco.

00:36:46.949 --> 00:36:58.889
I go with a friend and her fiance at the time or boyfriend at the time to Ocean Beach, and I'm like, I want cold P. So we go, it's a Super Bowl. I'm like, I don't need to watch a Super Bowl. I want to go cold pledge.

00:36:59.400 --> 00:37:07.110
So we go into the ocean and then we come out and I'm just at that point I'm asking everybody know, do you know any contract engineers who can help me?

00:37:07.110 --> 00:37:11.159
Do you know any? And he's like, oh, I've a friend from high school who's starting a contract engineering firm.

00:37:11.159 --> 00:37:14.699
Here's his number. I get his number. I end up hiring him.

00:37:14.789 --> 00:37:22.050
They build the first prototype. This is how everything happened. It was just, let me just put it out into the world, see what happens.

00:37:22.050 --> 00:37:23.280
And then one step at a time.

00:37:23.469 --> 00:37:27.989
Feel like I love those moments, and I don't know why domain names are so specific.

00:37:28.050 --> 00:37:30.929
There's something about the second you hit register and it says it's yours.

00:37:30.929 --> 00:37:47.760
You're sort of like, I own this company. It's so physical, but I love that period where it started flowing for you and you just ended up finding yourself in that river and everything sort of flows in the right direction. I love that.

00:37:49.469 --> 00:37:55.530
You proof worst momentum until you have momentum and then you use momentum to keep going.

00:37:55.860 --> 00:37:56.693
Yeah.

00:37:57.510 --> 00:38:05.909
What was the first couple of months when you started to try and more push into the proof of concept and the prototype of the idea?

00:38:05.969 --> 00:38:08.070
Yeah, there's so many ridiculous stories.

00:38:08.489 --> 00:38:14.550
I think at that time I needed a logo and I needed somebody to design.

00:38:14.579 --> 00:38:17.670
I had no skills other than convincing people to help me with stuff.

00:38:19.860 --> 00:38:27.989
I had the idea I needed someone to create prototype design mockups for me, and that I drew 'em out. I needed somebody to make them pretty.

00:38:27.989 --> 00:38:48.932
And so parsley, we had worked with I firm, they basically, because I had done some deck building and fundraising stuff before for other people, so they reached out and they actually wanted help with their fundraise or something like that.

00:38:49.659 --> 00:38:52.360
They were actually spinning out a company from the design firm.

00:38:52.690 --> 00:38:58.353
And so I basically traded help with that for them to build out our mocks.

00:38:58.690 --> 00:38:58.900
And.

00:38:58.900 --> 00:39:01.719
I think it paid them something really small at this point.

00:39:01.719 --> 00:39:03.489
It was all my savings at that point.

00:39:03.760 --> 00:39:12.400
I had $30,000 of savings and every dollar was spent out of that savings.

00:39:08.619 --> 00:39:12.400
And so I was feeling it.

00:39:14.769 --> 00:39:22.449
And so I think I spent$2,500 maybe on everything, the prototype. We did everything in such a small budget.

00:39:23.650 --> 00:39:32.949
And then I ended up going to this Tony Robbins conference in the middle of all of this. And I remember I'm walking out, I'm taking calls as design firm.

00:39:32.949 --> 00:39:37.809
They're making the mocks and we're doing the engineering stuff, and it's fine.

00:39:37.840 --> 00:39:45.670
It's also just me at this point. And I end up spending, I end up buying the full Tony Robbins package while I'm there.

00:39:46.389 --> 00:39:58.480
And it was $10,000 and I only had thousand in my bank account, and was this moment of this was the most expensive thing I'd ever bought in my life by far. And for some reason I was like, this is going to be worth it.

00:39:59.199 --> 00:40:05.440
I just know it's going to be worth it. I look back, it was absolutely worth it.

00:40:01.719 --> 00:40:05.440
That's amazing. Absolutely worth it.

00:40:05.440 --> 00:40:17.822
And I have so many little points on that, but I come back from the Tony Robinson and I basically write an email to every single person I know that's not an exaggeration.

00:40:17.829 --> 00:40:25.750
I went through my inbox and I just got emails of everybody who was even tangentially related to my life, my work, whatever.

00:40:26.139 --> 00:40:36.489
And I send out this email with hundreds of people on it, and it was life update, and it was, I'm starting this company, this thing happened, this other thing happened.

00:40:37.210 --> 00:40:41.800
Here's going on. And I believe, no, no, no, sorry, this was a little bit later.

00:40:42.280 --> 00:40:52.510
What came before this was I just start emailing people, like my old professors, old coworkers, telling them, Hey, I'm starting a company.

00:40:52.869 --> 00:40:55.420
Just thought you'd be interested in knowing just to see what happens.

00:40:56.679 --> 00:41:00.159
My old professor messaged me and said, that's amazing.

00:41:00.159 --> 00:41:03.699
Come talk to our class about it because he thinks it's a real company.

00:41:04.570 --> 00:41:13.719
I ended up driving to Stanford giving a talk about what I wanted to build with Rupa, and that's how I met Rosa, who ended up coming on board as my first employee and then my co-founder.

00:41:14.739 --> 00:41:18.130
My gosh. Oh, I love these dot connections.

00:41:19.780 --> 00:41:24.610
And then afterwards, I sent the email. After she came on board, I sent the email with all to everybody.

00:41:25.420 --> 00:41:25.900
Nice.

00:41:25.900 --> 00:41:30.969
And then stuff came in from there and you just never know.

00:41:30.969 --> 00:41:53.780
And that was also on Instagram doing stories about just behind the scenes of everything that was happening. And people would send me, at first we did just matching of patients who wanted functional medicine care, and it was acupuncture at the beginning, and then acupuncturist and I just message out anybody know anybody who wants care? And that's how we found patients.

00:41:54.949 --> 00:41:57.110
Oh, I love that. That's amazing.

00:41:57.349 --> 00:42:08.630
And so you meet your first sort of what ended up being your first employee and now you've sort of started from, you give the talk and you're thinking, it's not really a company yet.

00:42:06.289 --> 00:42:08.630
It's an idea of a company.

00:42:08.630 --> 00:42:17.329
And then you sort of start putting these building blocks together As you start thinking about building the team.

00:42:13.130 --> 00:42:27.590
I've seen you sort of mentioned before the nicest thing that you could do for someone is to sort of set a high bar of expectations when you start building the team.

00:42:28.940 --> 00:42:36.230
What was your approach and were there sort of lows that came before that sort of principle, or did you start with that?

00:42:36.769 --> 00:42:41.420
Oh no, I think I started with that because that's what comes naturally to me.

00:42:41.929 --> 00:42:46.280
For the first, I don't know, year and a half, we were a seven days a week company.

00:42:46.579 --> 00:42:50.989
We had our product meetings on Sunday mornings and then we would have the week.

00:42:51.440 --> 00:42:53.210
And we were super intense.

00:42:53.659 --> 00:43:00.590
And it wasn't because it was cool to be intense or we just all did it because that's who we were. And we lived and breathed this.

00:43:00.590 --> 00:43:10.849
And I do think that that was a huge part of what made us successful was just our cadence of how fast we shipped, how intense we were, how much we cared, the obsessiveness, all of that.

00:43:11.480 --> 00:43:23.389
And then you get to this really interesting place you successful almost bites you in the butt because you suddenly need to hire more people.

00:43:23.989 --> 00:43:32.929
Those people come on board and don't realize what it took to get here. They just see the charts going up into the right without much effort, right?

00:43:33.380 --> 00:43:35.630
It's like we can do whatever, and the charts keep going up into the right.

00:43:36.110 --> 00:43:46.670
And in Ru's case, we never to the point when we sold, and I think even now have never had a down quarter in the history of rpa.

00:43:47.239 --> 00:44:02.900
And so it was really hard to convince people to be like intensity, ship fast. And I think I got a little bit lazy, to be honest, in the middle, lazy in terms of my, or maybe looser in terms of my holding super high expectations.

00:44:02.900 --> 00:44:17.480
And I think that that is something that I realized I boomeranged back around to, and I would do it differently this time around, and I forgot who said this, but you can't teach or coach drive and intensity.

00:44:17.840 --> 00:44:19.429
It's either there or it's not.

00:44:21.250 --> 00:44:29.599
And you set the expectations and if that's where you're at as a personality in your life journey, if that's what you want to do, then come on board.

00:44:29.599 --> 00:44:32.789
But if it's not, then great.

00:44:29.599 --> 00:44:32.789
Don't match with that person.

00:44:32.789 --> 00:44:38.400
But it's such an interesting journey to go from seven days a week and sort of hustle.

00:44:38.400 --> 00:44:48.030
And then I think the assumption is at some point you should just turn into sort of nine to five and comfortable and weekends and don't email whatever.

00:44:48.030 --> 00:44:52.889
But it's hard to make a dent in the universe if it's super comfortable.

00:44:52.949 --> 00:45:13.409
If you look at any successful company, there are people who, regardless of how big it is, are the people who are pounding the pavement, the people who are pushing the gas, they're the ones who are in some cases, not singlehandedly, but each of them single handedly, many hands pushing the company forward.

00:45:13.889 --> 00:45:15.119
There will always be those people.

00:45:15.119 --> 00:45:19.619
You cannot have a company where everybody is working nine to five and logging out, which doesn't.

00:45:19.619 --> 00:45:34.320
Work. Did you have periods, were your periods where you were growing really fast and going through those sort of growth pains as you mentioned, sort of going from seven days a week to you start adding team members and layers and those sort of things.

00:45:35.010 --> 00:45:38.219
What were the things that you sort of learned in that growth period?

00:45:39.719 --> 00:45:43.590
There wasn't a growth period, there was just a growth in general.

00:45:43.739 --> 00:45:46.920
I don't think it never slowed down.

00:45:43.739 --> 00:46:14.039
It never slowed down. And that to me, that's the most fun part of building a company is the amount of personal growth you go through. Second to not, it's incredible to the point where pre having a baby could never have compared startup life and baby life to who was I to compare that, having a child with zero prep because they basically sold the company, had the kid didn't really have time to do anything. It felt very similar, the rhythm of it, where every day is super chaotic.

00:46:14.130 --> 00:46:17.039
You're dealing with things on an hour by hour basis.

00:46:17.309 --> 00:46:21.900
You have this screaming crying thing that you don't know when it's going to need you, but it's going to need you all the time.

00:46:21.900 --> 00:46:25.769
You're kind of on no playbook change. Yeah, no playbook.

00:46:26.340 --> 00:46:30.840
The amount of chaos and change was very similar, honestly.

00:46:31.079 --> 00:46:47.760
And I think that I might've had a much more rough time with selling Rupa and leaving and suddenly going into calm if I hadn't immediately gone back into chaos. But out of chaos comes incredible growth, and that phase was just nonstop.

00:46:48.929 --> 00:47:13.769
I mean, there's so many moments. There are so many lows, there are so many highs. There are. I think that from a count perspective, there's probably more lows than highs, but from an emotional perspective, for example, my former head of medical just came and visited and stayed with me for the last three days, and it was just, you build these relationships that are second to none. It's incredible.

00:47:14.340 --> 00:47:33.550
Yeah. Did it feel after, and I'm making this up just for the sake of having a point to point to, how did it feel post signature of selling the company, this thing that you, from buying the domain name to saying agree goodbye.

00:47:34.329 --> 00:47:36.309
How did that feel? Right after that kind of.

00:47:36.309 --> 00:47:36.610
Moment?

00:47:36.610 --> 00:47:52.840
I'm either still processing it or I'm never going to process it because I went straight from that to having the baby to, I didn't even have a doctor when the day that the deal closed, I also, I was up till am the deal kind of leaked.

00:47:52.840 --> 00:47:56.320
It was a little messy, but then I slept for two hours,

00:47:56.320 --> 00:48:05.139
00 AM to review and sign. The last doc did that, went to breakfast with my head of finance where we were both just numb.

00:48:05.260 --> 00:48:11.380
We'd been running this thing for five months and then went straight from there to my 20 week ultrasound appointment.

00:48:11.739 --> 00:48:16.030
Found out that there might be an issue with the kidneys, just couldn't process that, had to put that aside.

00:48:16.360 --> 00:48:21.340
Went to the office where things were normal, and I did one-on-ones and just were totally normal.

00:48:21.340 --> 00:48:32.440
One-on conference to prep this launch thing, and then had to email all of our, I mean, it was absolutely insane.

00:48:29.769 --> 00:48:35.679
And I still didn't have a doctor, and I didn't know where I was going to give birth that I had put everything off.

00:48:35.769 --> 00:48:41.500
And so I either haven't processed or I'm yet, or I'm never going to process, I think.

00:48:41.500 --> 00:48:49.929
But I realized I'm such a future oriented person that I don't really, I love going from one thing to the next, next.

00:48:49.929 --> 00:49:01.179
I think in a lot of ways I'm built for this kind of intensity and speed, and I recognize that not everybody is, but I can't, it's not really a choice. It just is.

00:49:01.599 --> 00:49:28.960
And so I think I had one moment where I was like, I guess people don't talk about this, but I went from and a half years of working on this thing and sweating every dollar and not making much money at the end of it, lawyers looked at my comp for the entire thing because you basically have to average it out for this whole thing.

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:28.960
You have to review the executive comp.

00:49:28.960 --> 00:49:30.460
It's the whole thing.

00:49:28.960 --> 00:49:38.829
They're like, Tara, wow, you really didn't pay yourself much at all if you average over how many over years. I didn't take salary, just the whole thing, bare necessities.

00:49:39.519 --> 00:49:43.210
And I did have this moment of like, wow, I feel free.

00:49:43.510 --> 00:49:54.969
And from a financial perspective, which was a crazy feeling to have because I've never experienced that before in my life. Obviously that doesn't last long, right? You're kind of like, okay, cool. Out of the next thing, you.

00:49:54.969 --> 00:49:57.610
Just go like this once, and then you're like, okay.

00:49:58.300 --> 00:50:02.079
That was weird because I never in my life thought about money.

00:50:02.320 --> 00:50:05.949
This part is true. This is not just a Sounds nice to say.

00:50:06.460 --> 00:50:10.420
I did not build RPA to make money. That was not the goal.

00:50:11.050 --> 00:50:14.320
If I would've done that, I probably would've sold way earlier.

00:50:14.679 --> 00:50:18.699
I built it because I deeply cared about what we were building.

00:50:19.030 --> 00:50:25.960
I also knew that this is how I want to spend my time and my days building a company. I also wanted to build a team who I really loved working with.

00:50:25.960 --> 00:50:29.030
I also wanted work to be fun. I also wanted to prove something to myself.

00:50:29.360 --> 00:50:31.969
There's all these reasons for why I built it, but money was never one of them.

00:50:31.969 --> 00:51:00.170
And so at the end, realizing that it was going to be great for a lot of people, myself included, was a very weird feeling that I hadn't ever anticipated or thought about or spent any amount of time on it. So that hit me in a weird way. But after that, it was just kind of like, whoa, what is happening? But three days later, that weekend that we sold after we sold, my husband convinced me to join Hint in his next company that he was starting up. We're back in. By.

00:51:00.170 --> 00:51:01.539
The way, I got this idea.

00:51:01.920 --> 00:51:12.679
And it's funny because you can also see it in your Instagram journey where meatloaf to Augie, by the way, I'm also kind of working on a thing.

00:51:13.880 --> 00:51:21.349
Your sort of flow with how you build and grow and continue on is amazing.

00:51:22.039 --> 00:51:30.230
Totally. And I think that, I talked to a lot of people and they're like, wait, why would you start something again? Don't you want to chill?

00:51:30.679 --> 00:51:35.809
And I can't tell you the number of people who told me, they're like, you need to take time off. You need to chill. You need to.

00:51:36.440 --> 00:51:38.360
And it's funny because I just don't work that way.

00:51:40.579 --> 00:51:45.289
I actually take time off every Saturday.

00:51:46.309 --> 00:51:50.449
While I was building Rupa, I had zero plans. That was my thinking day.

00:51:50.750 --> 00:51:58.070
I didn't see anybody. I went to a coffee shop, I read, that was my pause. And I did it every Saturday.

00:51:58.130 --> 00:52:01.039
And then Sunday through Friday was meetings, work, whatever.

00:52:01.730 --> 00:52:02.869
And that really worked for me.

00:52:02.869 --> 00:52:12.530
And I think one thing that people don't realize is when we ascribe these ideas of how somebody is supposed to live in terms of you need to whatever, it doesn't work. Everyone has to find their own rhythm.

00:52:12.800 --> 00:52:25.909
This was so great, and I love these early stories and hearing all of it, and I know it's going to be so useful for people who are going through this journey of, should it be this way or am I feeling this way?

00:52:25.909 --> 00:52:29.809
Is this okay? And sort of hearing your journey is super helpful.

00:52:29.809 --> 00:52:32.750
So I appreciate it. Thank you so much for the time.

00:52:33.679 --> 00:52:36.139
This was amazing. Brought back so many good memories.

00:52:36.139 --> 00:52:37.699
So you forget all these details.

00:52:38.210 --> 00:52:38.539
Of stuff.

00:52:38.539 --> 00:52:53.503
That happens. I think that one thing is if you look at startups, building startups in life in general as just stories that your character in it becomes super fun and everything is either a great experience or a great story.

00:52:53.659 --> 00:52:57.050
Yeah. Agreed. We'll hang out here.

00:52:53.659 --> 00:52:57.050
We'll catch out just for a second.