This Startup Plans to Save a Million Lives Using Your Toilet | Entrepreneurship | How We Profit | E7

Scott Hickle built Throne Science around a startup idea most investors thought was too unconventional: a device that transforms your toilet into a health tracker, monitoring your health as effortlessly as a smartwatch. After nearly 100 investor rejections, he and his team kept refining the product, driven by a mission to detect early signs of diseases like colorectal cancer before symptoms appear. That persistence helped them raise $4 million in seed funding. In this episode, Scott shares how entrepreneurs can validate unconventional products, raise capital despite rejection, and build demand in a market consumers don't yet understand. In this episode, Hala and Scott will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:27) How Throne’s Smart Toilet Device Works (07:56) Throne’s Mission to Detect Cancer Early (17:22) Launching Throne in a New Product Category (23:55) Pivoting Away From a Failed Nurse-Staffing Startup (32:27) How Scott Raised Millions After Pivoting (42:35) Marketing a Product Customers Don’t Understand Yet (49:46) Lessons From Scott’s Costliest Business Mistakes (1:00:03) Throne Science’s SWOT Analysis (1:08:37) Smart Toilet Costs, Pricing, and Margins (1:13:14) Building a Mission-Driven Hardware Startup Scott Hickle is the co-founder and CEO of Throne Science, a health technology company building a device that attaches to a toilet and tracks gut health, hydration, bathroom habits, and prostate health. Before Throne, Scott and his co-founder, Tim, built a nurse-staffing marketplace called Pineway before pivoting into consumer health hardware. Throne’s long-term mission is to develop technology that can help detect early signs of colon cancer, bladder cancer, and other cancers of the lower gastrointestinal and urinary tracts. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Mindstone - Master practical AI skills without the complexity with Mindstone’s AI Competency Programme. Head to experience.mindstone.com/yap and get 10% off. AT&T - Stay connected with reliable, secure internet built for entrepreneurs. Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com. Quince - Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to Quince.com/profiting for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Resources Mentioned: Scott’s Company, Throne Science: thronescience.com Scott’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/scotthickle Scott’s Instagram: instagram.com/scotthickle/ Scott’s Twitter: x.com/ScottHickle Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Passive Income, Online Business, Solopreneur, Networking

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by HeyGen, Shopify, Life at the Speed of Play, and Indeed. HeyGen helps you create AI avatar videos without constantly being behind the camera. Get your first three videos free at heygen.com/profitting. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com/profitting. Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus helps entrepreneurs quickly test ideas and find the ones worth pursuing. Get two books for the price of one at GetMark'sBook.com/yap. Indeed helps you attract, interview, and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/podcast.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at YoungAndProfiting.com/deals.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Last year, 42,000 Americans died in car crashes, 50,000 Americans died of colorectal cancer.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Like all traffic accidents combined.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Geez.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  For our generation, it is the deadliest cancer in Americans under 50. We are putting cameras in toilets to improve people's health and one day save lives. And that is a new concept and people need to get comfortable with that.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  Scott Hickel is the co-founder and CEO of Throne Science, a company that uses AI-powered toilet technology to track gut health, hydration, bathroom habits, and urinary function. And what makes this story so interesting is that Scott is building a real business around something most people would rather not talk about.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  This is a crazy fact, there is a 10% risk. One in 10 people will be diagnosed with a cancer of the lower GI or urinary tract at some point in their lives. One in 10, like

• 1:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  A lot of our friends.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  You got rejected by 100 investors. Why couldn't they see the vision? Because for me, when I got introduced to Throne, I was like, maybe can I invest? Because everybody should have this on their toilet. I don't understand how investors wouldn't have thought that too.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  It's a great question, and I think at the end of the day, we are consumer health hardware and

• 2:01Speaker 00

  What was your worst product decision?

• 2:04Speaker 01

  The cost of like getting this wrong could kill the company because if we have to recall these, it's over. So when you're building hardware, you go through a like three-step process and that is

• 2:15Speaker 00

  Scott, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Holla, thanks for having me.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  It is so exciting to have you here. You're actually one of my friends, you're my boyfriend's best friend. And it's so cool to live in Austin and be around all these amazing entrepreneurs. And I always tell Mike, like, hey, can I invest in Scott's business? Like, I feel like it's gonna blow up. So congratulations on everything you've been building with Throne. You're kind of like a legend in Austin for what you've been building. And just really excited to break it down with everyone for the How We Profit series.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  That is the warmest intro. Thank you so much. I love Mike, love you, love being in Austin, love what I do. I'm excited to have this chat.

• 2:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, so Throne Science is the name of your company. And you essentially have a smart toilet, but it goes like so much more beyond just like a smart toilet device. So in your own words, how would you describe Throne?

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Throne is a wearable for your toilet that tracks your gut health, hydration, bathroom habits, and for men, your prostate health, hands-free, automatically, every time you go to the bathroom. It's like Aura for your flora or Whoop for your poop, we joke. But the whole idea is that there is a untapped world of health information in what's happening in your gut that you just flush away. And we track that so you don't have to think about it and help you tie the dots between what's happening in your diet and your lifestyle, what's showing up in your gut health. And ultimately, our vision is to build not just a wellness device for understanding gut health, but will ultimately be the first continuous cancer screener looking for early signs of colon cancer and bladder cancer every time you go to the bathroom.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  That is amazing. And so when I first heard about this product, I was thinking you were gonna make money off the hardware sales. But then actually, my boyfriend Mike has a Throne device and he's talking about how he's like looking at his app and he's like monitoring his progress. And it's actually like a subscription model too, right? That's that's part of the plan.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  It's the Aura model. So we charge for both the hardware and the subscription. One of the unique things about our product compared to other wearables is like your Aura or your Apple Watch, you're gonna be the only person wearing that device, right? It's a one-to-one relationship, whereas with a Throne, it's a one-to-many relationship and a many-to-one relationship. Because you can have up to six members in a home using the same Throne.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Or you can use multiple Thrones, all to one account, and it syncs up seamlessly.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  So everybody has like three, four bathrooms when they have a house.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Exactly. So like we have three bathrooms at the office and I have two at home and they all have Thrones and it all goes to my account, whichever one I'm using.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  And so how does Throne work exactly? From my understanding, it's a camera and a microphone?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so can I take it out?

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Walk through it? Okay. So basically, it's a little device that clips onto the side of your toilet. So you know, the water's down here. And this is a proximity sensor that determines when someone is standing or sitting in the toilet. And then it uses your phone's Bluetooth to know this is Scott versus Holla. And then once it identifies who's there, it turns on. And so this camera and microphone is pointing down into the toilet bowl. So it records everything happening inside the toilet. You leave, it turns itself off. And then you walk away and you get a push notification a few minutes later with basically a report card that tells you, here's how hydrated you were, here's what your gut health looked like. And most importantly, it allows you to see the trends over time because your gut is super responsive to changes in like diet and lifestyle. For me, it's stress.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  And it's like frictionless. You just go to the bathroom with your phone already, right?

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, most of us.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Most of us, most of the time. And so the whole idea is that that is how we identify you, so it stays off for guests. If you have members of your home that don't want it on, it just stays off for them. So it's like really an elegant solution to tracking gut health for people who want to understand their digestive health better or their hydration better for any number of reasons.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I know a lot of these like microbiome tests are really popular now. You go and you send in your stool or you send in your saliva and you get all this information. But this actually allows you to track a really important part of your health on a daily basis, right?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. It's the whole idea is it's hands-free, automatic, every time you go, instead of point-in-time tests. So like, I like to think of Throne as we are to a microbiome test. What like your wearable device is to like a blood draw or like from Function or, you know, any of the other big blood draw companies. In the sense that like with your Whoop or your Aura or your Apple Watch, you're getting, you know, 15 to 20 biomarkers every single day. Same with Throne. And then when you wanna dive deeper, you can go get a microbiome test or a blood test that'll get you 120 biomarkers. But like, that's a one-time, point-in-time test and you have to pay for the next one a year later.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, so what can Throne measure today? And what do you hope it measures like in the near future?

• 6:43Speaker 01

  That's a great question. So four categories today. Gut health, so like when you think about it, take a step back. What does gut health mean? It's patterns, right? If you're having regular, healthy bowel movements, that's good gut health.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Anything outside of that, you know, too loose, too firm, is not good, you know, constipated or diuretic. And those are defined by patterns. Like, you don't know how your gut health is just by looking at one sample. And that's, you know, microbiome tests can tell you what's living in your stomach, but it doesn't tell you how your gut health is over time and how that's changing. So we look at stool frequencies, stool consistency or form on the Bristol Stool Scale. We look at color, volume, buoyancy, which can tell you about fat content. And then the next big category is we look at your hydration.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  So every time you go to the bathroom, we can measure your pee and look at the color and volume and the clarity of your pee. And that tells you about hydration or what's called estimated urine osmolality. And yeah.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  You become a real poop expert and a pee expert.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  I did not think that I would grow up to be this, but like seven-year-old me is stoked right now.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  And so then we look at what we call bathroom habits, so your timelines on the toilet. So the two most relevant there are the time to first evacuation, is the technical term again. That is a proxy for constipation or urgency. And then the other big one is your total time you spend on the toilet is highly correlated to hemorrhoid risk. And so we can send you a push notification and say, hey, stop doom scrolling. And then the last big category is for men, and you were asking about the microphone earlier. When you pee standing up as a man, because it has to go straight into the middle of the water, we can turn the acoustics of that pee stream into what's called a urinary flow rate curve. And that flow rate curve is the most important marker for prostate health. And that is a men's health metric, only men have prostates.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  So it kind of works out that the science and the physics of it all meshes together. But, you know, something like 50% of men by age 50 and 80% of men by age 70 have enlarged prostates that make it harder to pee. And this is a great way of measuring that.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Wow, that's so interesting. So it can already do so much. And I know colorectal cancer is something that you feel really passionate about and cancer in general. So how do you imagine something like Throne helping with cancer detection?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  And so that's our ultimate mission as a company, is to build the smoke detector for colon cancer, bladder cancer, basically any cancer of the lower GI or urinary tract whose earliest manifestation is microscopic blood in your waist. So let me take a step back and just share some of the numbers because it's like actually mind-blowing. So last year, 42,000 Americans died in car crashes, 50,000 Americans died of colorectal cancer.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Like all traffic accidents combined.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  Geez.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  And still like 20% more.

• 9:26Speaker 00

  And that's just in America.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  And that's just in the United States. Around 900,000 people globally died of colon cancer last year. And it is the only cancer in the United States whose incidence is rising. The only one. Every other cancer is on decline except for colorectal cancer. It is now, it used to be for like our parents' generation, they thought of it as like an old person's disease, right? For our generation, it is the deadliest cancer in Americans under 50. And the crazy, pernicious shape of this disease is that, on average, it takes seven to 10 years before it was called a precancerous polyp, like a little wart on the inside of your colon.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  It takes seven to 10 years before that becomes a malignant tumor that's actually a cancer.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  So it's like very preventative.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Exactly. And like if you got a colonoscopy every year and they looked for those warts on the inside of your colon, you would never get colorectal cancer. The only reason people die of cancer, and by the way, one in three people diagnosed with colon cancer dies from it because we wait too long.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's too late of a stage.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like the earliest way that people can identify colorectal cancer is by looking for, it's called fecal occult blood. So that's microscopic blood, that's the occult part, that's invisible to the naked eye, in your stool. And we are building a future version of this device. And our mission is to build a version of this device that is looking for that fecal occult blood and able to identify the patterns of bleeding in your stool. Because there's so many things that can cause blood in your stool, right? Like

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Hemorrhoids?

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, hemorrhoids, fissures, fistulas, ulcers, viral infections, like, you know, got food poisoning or like drank too much alcohol. There's so many things, but like the important thing is looking at the pattern over the course of months. If you can look at a pattern over three, six months and see that it's increasing, you know, day over day, week over week.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  That is totally different than something that's like, you know, comes and it goes. And that is definitely worth throwing up a yellow flag. And so that's ultimately where this is headed, is like, I believe that product belongs in every toilet in the world.

• 11:19Speaker 00

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• 14:12Speaker 00

  go to Shopify.com/profitting to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/profitting. Go to Shopify.com/profitting today to hear your first... Yeah, I think about all these wearable devices and how popular they are. And I feel like it could be like something that's mandatory in everyone's home because it's such like a huge, like your poop is a really big health indicator.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  It's universal in human. Like people don't talk about, but like that's also just like such a uniquely Western attitude, right?

• 14:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  I gave a TED Talk about this last year, but like, the idea that poop is taboo is like a relatively new thing in human history, right?

• 14:51Speaker 00

  And we're flushing away all this amazing health data.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. And the advent of the toilet was actually like a great sanitation innovation that saved hundreds of millions of lives. Like the deadliest diseases in the 18th and 19th centuries were diarrhea diseases, dysentery, and cholera. And so, looking at poop was like one of the most important diagnostic tools we had for most of human history, especially recent history. And then, the introduction of the toilet pushed that out of sight and out of mind. And that all converged with the Victorian era, when like, you know, we had prim and proper attitudes and modesty and you're talking about privates was like not allowed. And so now we're at a point where like, you know, Dr. Curran, our Chief of Science, has this beautiful phrase where he says, "People are dying of embarrassment."

• 15:32Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh, it's so true, especially certain cultures and women. That actually just reminded me of a really crazy story. I know somebody, their parents were very conservative. Their mother was very conservative. And her breast was literally, like she had breast cancer and her breast was oozing and she was too embarrassed to go to a doctor and even show them her breast. And she passed away very shortly because they caught it so late because she was so embarrassed to have to go to the doctor and talk to him about that. But how great is it to have like a device in your home that can flag to you? So even if you are a little bit embarrassed about talking, but at least you can go to the doctor knowing something is flagged.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I think the, there's a statistic on this that I think is really important, which is, so Aetna, the big health insurance company, sends out a million prophylactics, like preventative, what's called FIT test, fecal immunochemical, which is testing for that fecal called blood. But you have to collect a sample and send it off to the mail. And people hate doing that, as you might imagine, right? It is not a user-friendly experience.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  That's a horrible thing to have to do.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  The return rate on those FIT tests is like 3% to 6%. Like microscopic, right?

• 16:41Speaker 00

  Oh, like so people don't end up actually doing it?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  They get like 3% or 6% back.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yes. The other side of this, though, is Cologuard, which makes a more advanced test that also looks at, not just for microscopic blood, but is also looking for like DNA mutations in your stool associated with colon cancer. Same thing, that you have to collect a sample and send it off to a mail. They get a return rate of like 66% because that's prescribed by your doctor and they're like barking down your neck, telling you like, "Take this thing, it could save your life." And I think there's a really like, you know, negative interpretation of that, right? Which is like, still 1 in 3 people won't take this thing that their doctor says this could save your life. On the other hand, when your doctor says this could save your life, it increases compliance by an order of magnitude. 10 times more people send these back when their doctors are saying, "Hey, please do this."

• 17:30Speaker 01

  And it's, to me, that just says there's so much power behind probable cause, right? When you show someone, and to your point, having this in your toilet every day that's telling you useful things about hydration and like how your diet's impacting your gut health. And then one day it says, "Hey, by the way, like there's a yellow flag here, like you should be aware of this." And like, don't be embarrassed. Like it's not embarrassing, it's human, it's natural. And like, this is a crazy fact. There is a 10% risk. 1 in 10 people will be diagnosed with a cancer of the lower GI or urinary tract at some point in their lives. Like, 1 in 10.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  A lot of our friends.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  That's really sad.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  It's sad, but it's also like, it's universal and it's human and it's random. And we shouldn't be embarrassed about it. And we should talk about it because to your point, like when you wait too long, I can't, especially with colon cancer, which is like, you know, breast cancer is like, I can understand how that is private and, you know, taboo culturally, but like, colon cancer is even like...

• 18:27Speaker 00

  Even more taboo.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  There's so many stories about, particularly like, to your point, women, men, it's universal, but like people are...

• 18:34Speaker 00

  It's just like embarrassing, right? It'd be embarrassing to say that something is wrong with you down there. And yeah, it's scary. But hopefully, you are kind of de-tabooing everything that's going on with our poop health.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  100%. And that's the, what's one of our secondary missions is like, A, we want to build this product and get it out in the world. But B, we want to make it okay for people to talk about it because it's totally not a like embarrassing thing. It's human and universal and it's like, everyone does it. Why would you be ashamed?

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Let's talk about the actual business behind creating a healthcare hardware device. What would you say is the most difficult part about the type of business that you're creating right now?

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Creating a new category, by far. Like, this does not exist. We are putting cameras in toilets to improve people's health and one day save lives. And that is a new concept. And people need to get comfortable with that.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I know that when you first had this idea, you and your co-founder went to Trader Joe's and he started asking people at the grocery store how they felt about a camera in their toilet. What was some of the concerns of privacy that people have? And what made you realize, okay, like, I think we could make this happen and people could be okay with this?

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Man, that is a deep cut. That's an amazing recall on your part. So yeah, that's exactly what, like, we thought this was a crazy idea at first. And then we had to go out and convince ourselves that like, no, this actually has legs and people will do this. And a huge part of that, we ran some surveys on like Facebook and Survey Monkey and those surveys kept coming back and people were interested, but we were like... No.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Are they sure they're okay with the camera in the toilet?

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Those are just like pixels on a screen. I didn't know those people, right? And so we were like, we gotta go look in some people's eyes and like actually confirm that like, we're not losing our minds here. So we went outside of Trader Joe's and of course we, you know, asked people, do you wear wearables? Like, what, how do you track your health? And then we'd ask them, okay, like, would you be interested in tracking your gut health, your hydration? And like, almost universally, people were like, yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, a shocking amount of people have gut health issues that they would like more insights into. And then we'd always ask them at the end, okay, but now let's say we're doing this with a camera in your toilet and the lens is facing down.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  How do you feel about that? And not a single person was offended by that. They're like, oh, the lens is facing down. Who cares? And

• 20:54Speaker 00

  They're like, do what you gotta do.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like, I don't, you know, there's nothing special about that. And what we found is that people assume other people will have an issue with it. But then you ask like, how do you feel about it? And they're like, oh, I don't care. And like, that's a really interesting psychological thing where everyone assumes that other people will be more worried about it than they are. But then they themselves are not worried about it. But that's true of almost everyone.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  So you were able to convince yourself that this was a good idea. I want to talk about fundraising and I know you got rejected by a hundred investors. So we definitely want to talk about your fundraising. But first, let's talk about the origin story because it's, it's quite a cute story. And you also pivoted from an original business. So from, from my understanding, you actually were making a joke, boys' night poker game. And you guys were talking about, what are the worst ideas you ever had in terms of a startup? Tell us about that.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Mike was there.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. He was there.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  I was wondering, like, is that a poker night, like the same poker boys that, that I know about? Okay.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  The same poker group that's been around for like six years. And so the question wasn't the worst. It was, what is a startup idea you would love to start, but wouldn't want your name associated with? Which is even more fun. And everyone else is pitching like sex, drugs, rock and roll, vice industry type stuff, right? A lot of OnlyFans adjacent stuff in the world.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  And my co-founder Tim was like, no, no, no. Like, the actual, like legitimate answer to this question is smart toilets. I was like, oh, that's so good. Like clearly you named that company Throne and put a leaderboard on it and there's your go to market.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  You came up with the name Throne on the, on the spot?

• 22:30Speaker 01

  It's the perfect name.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it really is.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  And so fast forward, Tim and I ended up working together. We joined a company that was selling crypto or music royalties on blockchain. So it was like a crypto company. And very 2021

• 22:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  era of, you know, technology, very fun. But we wanted to leave and go do something a little bit more grounded in reality. And so we both come from healthcare families. My dad's a medical device inventor. My mom is a geriatrician. It's like a primary care physician for, you know, aging adults. And Tim has a mom and three sisters that are all nurses. And so, you know, this was like peak COVID, right? 2022. And nurse staffing was a, that was the problem in healthcare. Like, and so we're like, let's go build a healthcare staffing marketplace, like Uber for nurses, basically.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  But like, treats the nurses really, really good because that seemed to be one of the big problems is that all the nurses felt like they were treated like cattle and not people or like just numbers on a page, but not, you know, there's no humanity behind it. And we're like, let's go do that. And so we went and built a whole two sided marketplace. This is before you could vibe code stuff. So like Tim actually like, you know,

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Hand coded.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Exactly. All like hand rolled this whole thing. Fast forward, we went and raised our first million dollars from previous investors in my last company and friends who'd told me they wanted to invest when we started a company. That was quick. And then we tried to launch that company. And like, this was, you know, now early 2023 and COVID was ending. And the nurse staffing crisis was ending with it.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  And that was just like six weeks into you creating this business, right?

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  It was six weeks.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Well, we had one facility. So we got like 90 nurses to sign up in like two months. Like, yeah, just under two months.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  And that was amazing. Our nurse recruiter was a killer. And then the actual like sales of getting facilities to sign up for the platform. They'd been burned by so many temp staffing agencies over the past three years. It was a very cutthroat business.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  And most importantly, as COVID was ending, the like burning need for like all hands on deck was kind of going away and people were moving back into like full-time roles. And so one of these facilities that we had under contract was like, oh my God, we just made our first full-time hire for the first time in two and a half years. And I was like,

• 24:37Speaker 00

  You raised money. You were telling everybody about this idea. It takes a lot of like, I guess, confidence, um, courage to be like, I was wrong. Here's your money back. Like, we're not doing this anymore. Did you feel like embarrassment or, or, I mean, it's actually really smart that you pivoted. But some people wait way too long. So like, how did you know? Like, okay, I'm pulling the plug. I'm moving forward. I'm doing something different.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  I think about this a lot. If we had started the nurse staffing business six months beforehand and gotten just like a little bit of traction.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  You would have been stuck in that business.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  It would have killed my soul.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, you would have been, and you probably would have stayed in it for like years, like chasing the initial rush.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  So it's just like the fact, in hindsight, the fact that it wasn't meant to be and the timing of it all is just like the biggest blessing. And like, this is so clearly what I was put on this planet to do. This is my passion. And it, I stumbled backwards into it just by pure luck, right?

• 25:34Speaker 00

  So you guys had this joke at the poker night and then two years later, it came full circle when you went and tried to go get, basically you were telling your investors, like, we're not doing this nursing idea anymore. And it just happened organically. It tells that story.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  I had to go back to all my investors and say, hey, this nurse staffing thing's not going to make. We're going to spend the next couple of months, we let go of the whole team. We're spending two months figuring out what comes next. And if we can't figure something out by the end of summer, we're just going to give you your money back. And we had like a whole list of 30 ideas. Throne wasn't even on that list. We spent a lot of time, like, we were looking for more serious ideas, right?

• 26:14Speaker 00

  Were you telling your investors, like, these are the ideas that we have to pivot?

• 26:17Speaker 01

  No, we just told them like, we know this is not the right idea. We have a list of, you know, a bunch of ideas. We're going to spend some time exploring all these. And if we can find the right one, great, we're going to go do it. And if not, we'll give you your money back.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  Got it. Okay.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  But like, and everybody was, we, we had one investor ask for their money back and that was like painful, but okay, fair enough. We had, everybody else was like, let us know what you're chasing next.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Trusted you more because we're like, these guys are not afraid of, you know, going back on their word, learning something new. They probably liked you more.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  So two good stories came out of this. One is one investor offered to host us at his ranch in California. He was like, come out to California, let's spend some time brainstorming. So we booked our flights. By the time we got out there, like a week and a half later, we'd kind of just like, decided Throne might be the thing. And we hadn't committed to it yet. We hadn't gone to Trader Joe's, but we had this idea of like, wait, the smart toilet thing might actually be good. And he like sits us down. He's like,

• 27:12Speaker 01

  I hate hardware, but if you think this is the right thing, I got your back. And he's invested more since then. And his, he and his wife are just like some of our biggest supporters. They've were early beta users, which has been just amazing. And then another investor came back and he was like, I have been waiting to invest in smart toilet companies for my whole career. I just haven't found the right one, but like, please go build that thing. And it turns out like another nurse staffing platform, you know, there's a dime a dozen of those, but like,

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  a legitimate smart toilet platform that can promise to improve health and save the lives of millions of people is like a much bigger mission. And like, my biggest learning in all of this is the size of the mission is directly proportional to the quality of the people you're able to attract to the team.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  It's so true because I get to meet like really successful billionaires pretty much every week at this point. And they all really care about improving humanity, like, and they're all super mission driven. Where like they have this huge ambitious goal. And very rarely do I meet somebody who's very successful that doesn't actually want to help people. And like their goal is like to make money. It's like money is the, like the after effect of everything that they're doing.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Totally. And like, but I have reoriented around this mission. Like it's something I hold so sacred. And if it works, inevitably this will make money. But like, we are here in service of a larger mission. That is, there are, you know, tens of millions of people with chronic digestive diseases and tens of millions of people with chronic urinary tract conditions. And like a life-saving mission for cancer prevention. Like, that is the type of thing that people can rally around.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  What's up, Yap gang? I recently had Gary Vee on the podcast and he told me something that really stuck with me. If you've got sales DNA, you've got to be paying attention to live selling because it's one of the biggest opportunities right now online. And that really got me curious. So I checked out an app that he told me about called Whatnot. I jumped into a live show and I instantly got it. The seller was showing products in real time, answering questions in the chat and building a real relationship with the buyers. It didn't feel like boring shopping. It felt like a community. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country. And for entrepreneurs, the results are really hard to ignore. Sellers on Whatnot can sell up to 10 times more than traditional marketplaces. And the number of sellers making over a million dollars a year on the platform has doubled.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  So if you've got products to sell and you're looking for a new way to reach customers, search Whatnot, W H A T N O T in the App Store. Download it and you can start selling right away. That's Whatnot in the App Store.

• 29:51Speaker 00

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• 30:33Speaker 00

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• 30:50Speaker 00

  What's up, Yap fam? You guys know we love reading on this show, so I'm always excited when I find a book I genuinely think is worth sharing. "Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love" by Mark Pincus is one of those books. Mark is a legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor, and this fast-paced 170-page book is his playbook for testing ideas quickly, navigating uncertainty, and figuring out what's actually worth pursuing. One of my favorite concepts is what he calls "the abyss", those moments when you feel stuck or unsure of what's next. Instead of fearing uncertainty, he shows you how to use it as a tool for discovery. Right now, Mark is doing a buy-one-get-one offer for Yap listeners.

• 31:35Speaker 00

  Go to GetMark'sBook.com/Yap, buy one copy for $32 and get a second copy free, so you can keep one for yourself and give the second to a friend, future co-founder, or someone who needs a little push. So you pivoted.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  What's your advice to all the young and profiteers tuning in who may have raised money, or they bootstrapped a company and it's been, you know, a year or so and they haven't gotten traction? What is your advice about pivoting, whether to pivot or stick through it?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  For us, we pivoted. I think in general, my advice is, life is too short to spin your wheels. If it's not working, go find something that's gonna work. There is zero shame. Like, the whole beauty of America is that we get second chances and third chances and fourth chances and fifth chances. I have started so many businesses, and this is finally the one that stuck? Go do that.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  I agree. It's like, once you find something that actually has traction, like for me, I have Yap Media. It's been easy since day one. I had failed. Like, I had a blog site that I couldn't monetize, and I had an event business that like, I barely made money and had too many employees. And now I have Yap Media, and it's like, everything is so much more like effortless, because it's like, the right market, where it's like, scalable, right? And it's got all this, that's just like, working for me organically and naturally. And I feel like that's what people really need to find, is something that like, works more effortlessly than not.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  100%. When you find that thing that actually suits you like a glove, it's the most motivating. You wake up every morning like, so excited to go do what has to be done. Whereas like, when you are swimming upstream, it's exhausting. And that's how it was with the nurse staffing, is like, we saw that we were gonna be swimming up a freaking waterfall.

• 33:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's like, you don't have to, you've got choice.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  You've got choice. Even when you raise money on a specific idea, like you proved, you've got choice, or you can just go back to your investors and explain it and see if they wanna ride with you or not.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  And as long as you have these conversations with integrity and candor and say, "Hey, we gave it a college try." And what it is, I wrote a post-mortem memo. So I just said, "Here is everything that we came into this, here are all the assumptions we had. Here is what we've learned since. Here is what this means. I don't think this is a good idea."

• 33:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  "We're gonna go find a better idea." And nobody was offended by that.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. So you raised $4 million, or a little bit over $4 million in your first round for Throne.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  That was our seed round.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  That was your seed round? I don't, I'm not a VC-backed company, so like, I don't know like, what round is what, but you tell us.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  So we raised a $1.2 million pre-seed. That was Pine Way, the nurse staffing. And then we pivoted to Throne immediately.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  And then we raised, uh, like, $500,000 and $250,000. We were raising on safes, right? Which are these like, convertible notes. Basically, it's a very quick and easy way for investors to invest in the company, without you having to involve too many lawyers. And it's, you know, instead of it taking-

• 34:40Speaker 00

  What is that called?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  It's called a safe.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  A safe?

• 34:43Speaker 01

  It's a simple agreement for future equity. And there's a standard template on Y Combinator's website that everybody in technology uses. And so, you can go to an investor and they say, "Yes, I will put in, you know, $250,000 on a $10 million cap." And it's quick and easy, and you get the money the next week, or the next day. So we raised like, $750,000 on safes, and then we ran out to raise our proper seed round. And we raised $4 million in that round. And by that point, we had like, a prototype. So it wasn't this. It was like, I'm very proud of how attractive this is.

• 35:17Speaker 00

  It looks really nice. It's very sleek.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, what we had before this, the prototype was like, this big, and like, the camera in the toilet was like, massive. And it wasn't waterproof, so like, you know, one instance of bad end was all over.

• 35:29Speaker 00

  It wasn't waterproof, that's hilarious.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  But it was enough to show that like, we could build hardware, and the app worked. And like, we had the whole experience, like, we could kind of, you know, paint the vision of where this was headed.

• 35:40Speaker 00

  And that was when you were raising the 4 million?

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 35:42Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  But like, seeing is believing, right? Like, showing up with like, the actual thing built was so important. And so we raised that money.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  But let's pause there.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  You got rejected by 100 investors.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, it's gut-wrenching.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  Why couldn't they see the vision? Because for me, when I got introduced to Throne, I was like, can I invest? Because everybody should have this on their toilet. I don't understand how investors wouldn't have thought that too.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  It's a great question. And I think, at the end of the day, we are consumer health hardware. And any venture capital investor, most of them are allergic to like, one of those three categories.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Much less like, the convergence of those three categories, right?

• 36:24Speaker 00

  So that, why? Why are they just like, hard? They're hard categories?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Consumers are notoriously hard category. Healthcare is a notoriously hard category. And like, VCs specialize in consumer or healthcare, but like, very few do consumer healthcare. Then hardware is also a notoriously hard category.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's expensive.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  The quick money is in like, B2B SaaS. Or like, you know, the big money now is in like, these foundational AI labs.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, the AI companies.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so, this is much riskier. And a lot of investors like, kinda saw the vision. At that point, also, we had no progress on blood detection. We just had like, a, you know, a notion that like, "We think we should be able to identify microscopic blood using these advanced imaging techniques, and, you know, here's some papers we can point you to." But we hadn't built anything like that ourselves yet. And so we had like, proven out like, the basic technology, but like, the advanced stuff that's like, you know, ultimate. Because I think everyone agrees with the premise that like, life-saving-

• 37:19Speaker 00

  But they're like, can your thing actually do that?

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. And like, at that time, it couldn't. And we just got very lucky. Again, like, going back to the size of the mission, one of our, not one of, our lead investor in that round, when she offered to invest, I was like, "Why?" You know, like, "I can feel your excitement and your passion for what we're building. Where does that come from?" And she shared, you know, "My husband died of cancer in his early 50s, and all I can think about is like, what could we have done to catch it sooner?" And again, just like, thank God, she was put in my life, you know?

• 37:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, so people who aligned with the mission, even if you weren't there yet, invested. And then what was the difference between people that you cold outreach to versus people you were introduced to? How is that different in terms of fundraising?

• 38:06Speaker 01

  So Mark Andreessen has a very famous perspective on this, which is that if you are a serious founder, it is your job to find a way to get in touch with me. Because if you can't go through the hoops of getting in touch with me, and it's not that hard, then how are you gonna break through all of the walls that it takes to build a company into something successful? So I ran a very disciplined process. I had a spreadsheet. I had my wish list of like, here are all the investors that I wanna get introduced to. Here's the firm they're at. Here's the specific investor I wanna invest in. Here's the other similar companies like Whoop, Aura, 8Sleep, Levels that they've invested in, you know, so I know why I wanna get in touch with them. Here's the list of all the people that I have mutual contacts to

• 38:51Speaker 01

  who might be able to introduce me to that person.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  That's really smart.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  I got coached on this by Eric Bond, who's an investor at Hustle Fund. And he, when he caught wind that I was about to go fundraise, he called me, he was like, "Do not fundraise yet until I coach you through how to do it." And he walked me through this masterclass. And then he was like, "And then you have your list of all of the other founder friends you have, and you get on a call with every single one of them and say, 'Hey, who are the investors you can introduce me to?'" And you keep a list of all them. And so, you know, like, let's say you holla, "Give me five names." He's like, "Great, keep track of all that." And then, this is important, the sequencing of it, because you wanna build momentum in a fundraise. You want, you know, the valley to be talking about you. Because investors chirp. And he was like, very specific about, "You get this whole list compiled, but you don't let people make introductions for you yet?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  And then you say, on the same day, like, make it a Thursday." Go to all 500 people or it's more like 50 people, but like go to all 50 people and say, "Hey, here's the five people you told me you could introduce me to, and here's the eight people you told me you could introduce me to. Like, here's my blurb. Please send this to these eight people."

• 39:56Speaker 00

  So it's like a blitz.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's a blitz. And then you get a bunch of these double opt-ins coming back in saying, "I'd love to meet Scott." Or like, "Oh, no, I'm gonna pass." Like, a lot of people just passed, right?

• 40:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Like, "Not a fit." Like, "By the way, that's like my second favorite investor. My first favorite investors are the ones who give me money. My second favorite investors are the ones who say upfront, 'Not a fit.' My third and distant least favorite investors are the one who waste a bunch of time and then say no." So you blitz everyone, and then you get all these returns coming in, and you schedule them so that you have like, you know, your tier two investors are the first calls you take, so you can like warm up your pitch.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Because like, when you're, if you do this right, you're pitching, you know, five, six, eight times a day, and you're responding to what their faces are showing, right?

• 40:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  The questions and, you know, you can like-

• 40:40Speaker 00

  You get your story right after you practice.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 40:42Speaker 00

  You figure out like what story you're telling, what data points, what questions people ask.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you, a huge learning for me about the story is so many people gave me the well-intended advice to start with the big vision first-

• 40:56Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  And then pitch how we get there.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  And so, the original pitch was, "We're building the smoke detector for colon cancer, and the way we get there is step one, we build this device that tracks gut health and hydration." And what I found after pitching that 80 times is that when you pitch, "Here's the $10 billion thing, and here is, you know, the step-by-step process for how I get there." Gen one is not a medical device. This is a health and wellness device. People are like, "Well, why don't you go straight for that?"

• 41:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  It's like, you're setting yourself back. But when you say, "Hey, we're building this device that tracks gut health and hydration, and by the way, eventually, the mission is to become the smoke detector for colon cancer, and we think we know how to get there," and that's the note that you end on?

• 41:38Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Infinitely more compelling.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  So you went out to these investors and you were pitching, but you did have a lot of setbacks. So talk to us about the 100 no's that you got. What were they concerned about?

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Privacy. People didn't believe that there was a market for this device. People didn't think it was technically feasible to do a smoke detector for colon cancer that could look for fecal occult blood or microhematuria. People, you know, worry about the ick factor. Like, there's so many reasons someone says no.

• 42:07Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  And at the end of the day, like, it doesn't really matter to you as a founder, like, why they said no, just take the no and move on. I will say, the hard part about fundraising is like, it is emotionally gutting.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Just like any sales job, right?

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. And like, the only thing I can compare to, if you've never worked in sales or like done fundraises, like dating. But the difference is like, you know, if you're dating really actively, it's like one, maybe two dates a week, and you get rejected from those, like, this is like eight a day. And like, you're so emotionally invested in this because it's your baby.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  And like, to your point, someone says, "No, thanks," and then you have to jump on the next call, like, "All right, let me tell you why this is the greatest thing ever." It is such a emotional roller coaster. It's really hard to describe.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  But now you've got an amazing leadership team. You've got somebody from Whoop on your executive team. How did that change the perception of everything that you're doing?

• 43:02Speaker 01

  My co-founder and chief product officer is the former co-founder and chief technology officer from Whoop.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. I didn't realize he was a co-founder of Whoop.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so John Capital Lupo dropped out of Harvard his sophomore year to go found Whoop. He built that from 2012 to 2022. He left after a decade, and he is now my co-founder and chief product officer. He, along the way of building Whoop, was diagnosed with pancreatitis, which is the worst form you can have of ulcerative colitis, a form of inflammatory bowel disease.

• 43:31Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  And so he's very passionate about gut health-

• 43:34Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  And continuous health tracking.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  Perfect.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  It was like, yeah, there's-

• 43:38Speaker 00

  Couldn't be a better fit.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  I literally don't think there's a more perfect person on the face of the planet for what we're doing-

• 43:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Than John.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  That's amazing.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  And so he joined us originally as an angel investor, and then we made him an advisor. And then he added him to our Slack group, and he was like, in every conversation, like, could not help himself.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  I was like, "John, you gonna come join us full time?" And he was like, "I think I'm good." And then a few months later, he was like, "Yeah, I think I should come join you guys full time."

• 44:00Speaker 00

  That's amazing. I'm so happy for you. It's so great when you have like a leadership team that you just feel like so locked in with. Let's talk about the marketing. So you guys are officially launched. You launched in March.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Yes, March 10th.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  Um, you took it to the Consumer Electronics Show?

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so CES was in January. We were there with some preview devices. We didn't actually have like devices rolling off the assembly line until the end, beginning of March, and that's when we were able to ship them. CES was an amazing experience. 500 people a day coming by the booth, talking to you. Like, there's a lot of amazing innovation happening in the world of consumer electronics.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  Did that make it feel real for you that moment? Because I remember seeing images and stuff, and I was just like, "Oh, wow. Like, this is really a thing." Did it feel like a real like turning point for you?

• 44:46Speaker 01

  When you talk to like, literally probably, me personally, 130, 150 people a day, and you see the switch flip in their minds, where they come in skeptical about like, "What is this thing on the toilet with the flowers in it?" Because we put the flowers in it because people come and talk to you and they're like, "What is the flowers in the toilet?" But then you say, "Hey, like, no, this is actually to help you connect the dots between your diet, your lifestyle, what's happening in your gut health." People think about it, and they go, "Oh, wow. Like, either I need that, or I know someone who needs that."

• 45:18Speaker 00

  How did you generate interest for Throne? Like, what are your marketing strategies right now? What has not worked, and what is working?

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Great question. So definitely by far the best thing that works for us is referrals.

• 45:31Speaker 00

  Like- Word of mouth.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Word of mouth is the number one thing. People use the device, like, it's a very sticky product. People like, there's this ratio called a DAO-MOW, which is like, of your people who use the product in the last month, how many have used it in the last day? And on average, we're like 0.6, which is phenomenal.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  So you're like, you build habits.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's very habit-forming because it's frictionless, right?

• 45:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  And like, people use the product on average four or five times a day, and they check the app every time they go. Because like, you want to see what's my hydration score.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  And like, you know, you wake up dehydrated, you get better hydration score at 11:00 a.m., and you love to see your scores move up into the right. Who doesn't love up into the right progress, right?

• 46:10Speaker 00

  Gamifying it.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Referrals is a big, big mover for us. The other big one is, we've gotten a lot of press, and we've had some viral moments on like TikTok and Instagram. Those have been great for us. What hasn't worked for us is like paid meta-marketing.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  Hmm, like paid ads.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Paid ads, exactly. So paying for TikTok and Instagram reels doesn't work nearly as well, because if a influencer who you gave a free device to posts about it, or a journalist who you already trust posts about it, like, that's a totally different thing than a brand that you maybe have never heard of, putting an ad on your feed, and you're like, "This is interesting. What's the thing on the toilet?" But, you know, you're just, we can show you the statistics. Most people watch like six seconds of a 30-second reel.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  And so they just really have only the faintest glimpse of what we're actually doing, and there's so many legitimate questions people have that aren't answered when they, by the time they get to our website. And so what we're doing now, you know, going back to like what our marketing is, what's working, is we're building a long-form content engine because we know that's how you build a category. And this is a brand-new category. One of the best examples of this is a company called Levels that was the first to put continuous glucose monitors, those like sticky patches on the-

• 47:23Speaker 00

  Oh, those like circle little-

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  I see them everywhere.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Yes. So Levels was the first company to put those on non-diabetics, and like half the Levels team is here in Austin.

• 47:31Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  And so I'm good friends with their former head of growth, who now is our VP of growth.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  Oh, cool. Look at you building that rock star team.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Again, like, it's this big mission that attracts great people.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  And Levels grew their YouTube to like 330,000 subscribers in an average watch time of 15 minutes. And you think about like, that's a ton of great attention and great traffic that when someone goes from that YouTube page to Levels, they know infinitely more-

• 48:01Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  About what that company is, what the product is, what they're about, than if they'd come to them through a paid ad.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  So you're really just witnessing that your consumers need to be educated. They need to have like a real reason, because it's not cheap, right? It's like 400 bucks.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. This is not an impulse buy.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  So it's like, it's not an impulse buy. You've got to really help them understand like why they need this and educate them. And you've been feeling like the long-form content is what's pushing the needle. How about influencers that they already trust? Has that been working?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So our chief of science is Dr. Curran, who has like the biggest following of any GI doctor on the internet. And when he posts, we see huge spikes in our traffic. Like, I don't know if you've watched his content, he's just a gifted speaker about health issues. Health is one of those things that anybody can talk about. It's universal. But also like, when you start getting into like real medicine, and like human anatomy and physiology, and like how these systems work under the hood, it is so complex. And to talk about those subjects that are deeply interesting, but make it also-

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Educational and entertaining at the same time is like a gift.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  Influencers can, when they're really trusted, they reduce the time to buy, right? Or like the thought or the risk associated with spending $400 on something because you trust that influencer so much. A good idea for you would be whitelisted ads. So do you know about this?

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. So that's something that we know we are going to experiment with. We're redoing the website right now and doing all our lifecycle marketing so that when we start spending on ads again, it's, we are doing more efficient capture on the backend of it. But yes, whitelist is high on my to do list.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  So basically, this is like something that I've noticed is becoming way more popular because I'm in the influencer marketing space, right? I have a podcast network. I grow and monetize like 45 shows. And more and more brands want to actually put their own money behind our creators posts. So it's like the creator puts up a post, um, you know, they might have talking points or whatever it is. It grows organically, but then the brand actually puts paid ads money behind it. And that's what a whitelisted ad is for those who don't know. So that's really cool. So, uh, is there any other branding, marketing tactic that you've been leaning into?

• 50:19Speaker 01

  The other big one for us is just long form editorial, like written content.

• 50:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  And the two reasons for that is A, traditional SEO, but the other big one is AI search.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  And we've had a surprising number of customers come to us because they found out about us through chat GPT.

• 50:34Speaker 00

  Wow, that's so interesting because they're probably being like, what's wrong with my?

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. Like there's a very big difference in the intentionality from like push marketing, which is like, you know, meta, you know, Instagram, TikTok, that's push marketing. We are pushing this on you, whereas like if you're going to chat GPT or Claude or Google and asking like, what's wrong with me? That's poll marketing.

• 50:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  And like, when we can find people in those poll moments, it's way more intentional.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  They're already like down the funnel because they're looking for the solution. You're not having to educate them. They have like a real burning need of figuring out the solution. So really interesting stuff. Okay, so I want to, um, do a segment with you called Founder Failure. It's a new thing that I'm trying out for this series where basically I ask you like what your biggest marketing mistake was, your biggest manufacturing mistake, whatever it is. And you tell me some of your failures because we all learn so much from failure, especially as founders, right? This is why these founder peer groups work so well.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 51:37Speaker 00

  Scott, what was your worst product decision?

• 51:40Speaker 01

  That's a tough question because the reality is with hardware, like there's the, there's the hardware side of the product. And then there's a software side of the product. In the software side of the product, the cost of making a mistake is very low.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Cause you can go and fix it the next day, right? Like it's just go update the code. With hardware, the cost of making a mistake is very high because like best case scenario, you recut the molds that the plastic is molded in.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  So you've got to be really careful before you say go produce all these things. Yeah.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's just very expensive. And so we were, so when you're building hardware, you go through a like three step process, design validation, testing, electronics, validation, testing and product validation, testing. You can't skip, that's actually electronics, then design, then P. And you can't skip any steps and it takes like a year to go through manufacturing because they don't want you having any mistakes because catching them after the fact is so expensive. So we were very lucky to have a very professional manufacturing group that we're partnered with. I'll, I'll say actually for the beta product, the not waterproof.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Was terrible because like, we, we knew that like, if a guy peed on it, that would kill the product. But we didn't realize was that the humidity of just sitting above the toilet would also kill the product.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  And so like the average lifetime of one of those beta devices, like six months before it would short out.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  And that's why you do betas before we move into mass production. Like it also just, you know, we realized like the cost of like getting this wrong could kill the company because we have to recall these.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. So you took it, the lesson in that is like, take your time, find a professional manufacturing partner and learn processes. Have a coach, like, don't waste your money.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Move fast, break things only works when the cost of breaking things is like near zero.

• 53:29Speaker 00

  What would you say your biggest marketing flop was so far?

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Instagram. We spent way too much money on Instagram to learn the lesson that Instagram is a horrible fit for our stage of awareness. Because I'll, I'll give you a really specific example here. There's a company, are you familiar with Nude, the, uh, like laser hair removal product? And it costs like basically the same as our product, $400. It's direct to consumer and it's laser hair removal and it really works. And the founder of Nude is a good friend and he was like, oh, well, here's how we market. And you know, we were like, oh, let's just go copy and paste that playbook. Because, you know, on paper, we look very similar. It's a white device, roughly the size.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Uh, $400, like we're, you know, similar audience. We're like, let's just go do what they do. And what we realized, you know, after like two months and, you know, losing a hundred thousand dollars is that, wait a second, laser hair removal has been around for two decades.

• 54:27Speaker 00

  Hmm. It's not a new category.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Exactly. And like, well, you, all you need to see is a before and after, and you're like, oh, I get what this is about.

• 54:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. And women spend a lot on beauty. Like they're happy to shell out 400 bucks because going to a medical place to do it is 400 bucks a session.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so the, the whole idea is like, there's this pre-existing awareness, like there's this framework called stage of awareness where people are unaware and then they're problem aware, and then they're solution aware, and then they're product aware or the brand aware. And they know about you. And then all they need at that last stage, when they're most aware is just a nudge, right? Like what's the deal? What's the hook that's going to get me in? And for laser hair removal, anybody in the market for laser hair removal, like, hey, everyone's aware of that market.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  And then if you're in the market, you're probably aware of the leading brands. You probably know there's at home laser hair removal. And now you're just waiting for like that sale. You're like, you know, to your point, I'm going to spend $400 on this anyway. Next time there's a $50 coupon, like I'm in.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Totally different marketing challenge than ours. And that was an expensive mistake.

• 55:29Speaker 00

  What is the most unexpected thing that happened so far in your journey creating Throne?

• 55:34Speaker 01

  I have been amazed at the deeply intimate conversations that I've gotten to be a part of too. Because of the health implications of what we're building, right? Like there's so many people with inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's and ulcerative colitis or IBS. And when they find out I'm building a gut health tracker, they start talking to me like I am their doctor.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  And they'll share their most intimate, and they'll tell me things like that. I don't talk to anyone about this, but because you're so in this area, I'll tell you. And it's like, there's an NPR podcast episode on invisibilia called Poop Friends. And the whole podcast just talks about how like your most innermost circle of friends are the people you can talk about your poop with. And what I found, I didn't plan for this, but like I get to be strangers poop friend. And like, there's something deeply special about that.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Ironic as it sounds, like people, you know, cause like think about someone who has IBD. Like one woman stopped me at a conference and she was like, I wish I'd had this product when I was going through my gut health journey. Because there were days my doctor told me to keep a stool log, which is humiliating. And I would like go 40, 50 times a day. And I knew exactly how many tiles were on my bathroom floor because that's how much time I was spending in the bathroom. And to have something that would track all that for me so I didn't have to, would have been like spared me so much humiliation.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  And like, for her to open up to me and she was like, she was like, can I give you a hug? Like, I'm so excited this exists. And like.

• 57:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's incredible.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  You know, like.

• 57:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  It's just like been such a beautiful window into humanity and like some of the most intimate parts of humanity. I don't know. It's very special.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  Okay. What was the most unexpected financial thing that you encountered?

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Probably every founder you talked to will share this and you even kind of alluded to it earlier, having a team that was too big. But like, the number one thing that eats away at your balance sheet is headcount.

• 57:35Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  And like they say, hire slow, fire fast.

• 57:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  And that is just actually great advice.

• 57:44Speaker 00

  It is.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  And we have been very careful to be very lean.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  And that has saved us. Like, we would not have survived, you know, think about like, we pivoted in 2023 and launched our product in 2026.

• 58:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, two years or so.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, two and a half years of being like heads down in the trenches without a product. And like, for most of that time, the team was four people. And

• 58:10Speaker 00

  Now, how big is the team?

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Nine people.

• 58:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, so you've been really conservative about hiring.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Incredibly, and it's because, and actually, another surprising financial reality is that when you find experts, they are cheaper and work faster.

• 58:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're worth like three or four people.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  For example, for us, for like, the specific types of engineering we needed for this, like optical engineering, we got burned by two product development firms that like, I hate them. They, they market to you and they like, they're biz dev guys, sell you on like, oh, like, we've got this crack team of like A players and then they end up staffing with like C players who are literally learning how to code on the job.

• 58:51Speaker 00

  So they got, they like, it's like a bait and switch.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that happened to us twice. And we were like, okay, like, no more of that. We need to go like, actually find the engineers themselves who have this explicit, specific set of expertise. And we found those people. They worked faster. They got the work done in a week instead of a month. And their rate was lower because you're not paying for like a project manager on top of this whole thing. And like, they're not learning on the job. It was mind blowing to me that you could work with someone who was 10 times more talented and pay half as much.

• 59:24Speaker 00

  So basically, you went to hire them directly rather than working through an agency?

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Funny enough, we found an agency whose model is more aligned with that. So there are some agencies, because like, the typical, like, agency model is they have people on staff and they need to staff all of those hands, right? They can't have idle hands. And so they, that's why they sell you on the A team. And then the A team ends up supervising work, but it's done by the B or the C team, the junior people. And we found an agency whose whole model is, we don't have any employees. We have a network of freelancers and we will match you with as many freelancers as you want to interview with. And we just take a cut on whoever you end up working with.

• 1:00:04Speaker 00

  Cool. That's a great model.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  It's a great model. And like, I wish I knew that existed a year before.

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. What would you say was the slowest decision that you made or a decision you made too slowly?

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Just hired the wrong people, let them sit in the role for too long, drag my feet on it. Like, you know, within, really, you know, within a week, if someone is going to work out. Like, you tell yourself, like, all right, I'm gonna watch how this warms up. And then like, it never does. It just never does.

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  And it always feels better, once they're gone, right? It's like, the impact is immediate. And you feel so dumb for

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Offensive how much better it feels. And like, that, that's definitely the biggest mistakes. Like, we had just the wrong people in the wrong chairs. My dad's an entrepreneur and he told me this years ago. He was like, look, like, when you set out to build a company, you tell yourself, and you tell your investors, and you tell your team, like, I am building a world-class team. And when you find yourself in the position of having someone on the team who's not world-class, you have to let them go.

• 1:01:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Because you either let them go, or you are a liar.

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  That's such a good lesson. Okay, so let's play something I call SWAT sprint. Okay? We're gonna go over all your strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats, which I'm pretty interested in learning about. So what would you say are your biggest strengths right now at Throne?

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  We have an amazing team. We have a strong brand. We have a product that works. It's super sticky. People love it. Those are the biggest ones, definitely. It's like, the product works. The team is outstanding. We're building a world-class marketing team to match our world-class product team. Because like, you know, we've had a very small team for this last two and a half years, but it was all product and engineering. It was like, but like, overpowered. And we just had under-invested marketing because we hadn't, you know, launched yet.

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  I think one of your biggest strengths is like, your silly marketing. Like, the fact that you called it Throne and like, you're such a personable guy. And like, I feel like it's just gonna be a really funny brand. And I feel like you're making something really serious, really lighthearted. And I feel like that's a big strength.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  I appreciate that. And that's exactly what I mean by brand is like, it's a tight rope walk. Because on the one hand, yes, this is poop and it's funny and it's, you know, lighthearted and levity and like, you can't not have like, puns in every conversation.

• 1:02:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's so easy. I was, I like, introduced you to Naveen Jain because I was like, that would be such a great contact for you. And even in the email, I found myself like, being like, this is a match made in bathroom heaven. Like, it's so easy.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  You can't help yourself. And then on the other hand, to your point, it's serious and like, you know, people who have conditions that like, really impact their gut health, like, their worst days are really bad. And so like, navigating that with appropriate, like, reference?

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, you don't want to be like insensitive.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. And like, but that's something that I think our team does really well, in part because like, so many people on our team are personally affected or know, like, we're all just people.

• 1:03:00Speaker 00

  So next is weakness. What do you feel like are your biggest weaknesses right now?

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  If you'd asked me six weeks ago, I would have told you, maybe eight weeks ago, I would have told you, marketing. Like, that was definitely the biggest thing, like, we didn't have. Now, we have the right people. And so, it's gonna take probably two, three months to ramp up the full marketing engine and get everyone working, you know, in symphony together. And, you know, we have one person who's gonna be shooting the content, another person editing the content, and then a person's posting and distributing the content. Like, that doesn't happen overnight.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  But, and so right now, or I would say that's still our weakness, is marketing. But, we have momentum. It is so exciting to feel it coming together.

• 1:03:34Speaker 00

  I mean, you're building out a podcast studio. I can't wait to find out more about that. Opportunities. What are your biggest opportunities?

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Our biggest opportunity is all the stuff that we're already talking about with marketing, right?

• 1:03:44Speaker 00

  You've got such a big market to kind of tackle.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  And we, exactly. We, we just, like,

• 1:03:48Speaker 00

  How big is the market?

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Let's talk about, like, this product, right? Like, tracking the basics of gut health. The most motivated people are people with IBS and inflammatory bowel disease. IBS is like 35 to 50 million Americans, depending on who you ask, probably 45 million Americans caps out. IBD is another 3 million Americans. So let's call that like, you know, 45 to 50 million Americans. And then people with urinary tract conditions is another roughly 50 million Americans. And then like, everybody should track hydration. And like, anybody who wears an Ora ring or a whoop would benefit from tracking their hydration and their gut health and seeing it. Like, I just ran an analysis yesterday, like, of the last, like, 420 days of my gut health and hydration against my whoop metrics. And I was able to show, like, my gut health is hugely impacted by my stress.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  And you can see that, like, the days I have stress, I have bad gut health. Same thing, like, my hydration and my recovery, I expected my hydration to drive my recovery more. But on the days that I am dehydrated, it really hammers my recovery even more. It's less of an effect on good days, but a huge detriment on bad days. And there's just so many interesting physiological lessons at the intersection of like, sleep and hydration and gut health and stress and gut health and diet. Like, the market's really everybody?

• 1:05:06Speaker 00

  Yes, you're like, it's, it's pretty much everyone. Do you know how many toilets are in America? Like, did you do research like, at that level? Like, what were the things that you researched?

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  That's a great question. It was, it was more understanding, like, who has a motivation? Like, we think about it more for

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  Like GLP-1s too, right?

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's a, that's a huge one. Like, so many, candidly, a lot of our investors have told us, like, oh, I've tried GLP-1s and like, I am getting wrecked by the digestive side effects. And it's interesting, GLP-1s, like, will change people's digestive in both constipation and diarrhea. It can like, tip you in either direction.

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  And so, like, I think that's a huge market for us.

• 1:05:45Speaker 00

  So like, medication, what is that called? Like, medication effects, like, you can track, yeah, the side effects.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so that, that's a huge opportunity for us. So there's like, everybody has episodes of bad gut health in their life. And at the end of the day, I don't think you should drive, you should like, drive your life based on what your wearables are telling you, right? Like, that's a common critique of wearables, as people say, like, oh, you shouldn't live your life based on what your recovery score is or your sleep score was. And I agree, right? Like, but it is nice to have check engine lights

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  on your car that tell you, like, hey, this might be worth looking into and just raising things to your awareness that like, you wouldn't think about because you couldn't feel it.

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  Okay, let's move on to threats. Talk to us about the competition. What is, what is threatening to you?

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  So there are several startup competitors. This is like a very interesting space that's like, weirdly heated and

• 1:06:36Speaker 00

  Were you like, the first one and then people followed?

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  So we came up with this idea all on our own. But, once we got into it, we found that there had been several attempts at this, different attempts. Some people have tried to do whole toilets. Some people have had, had tried to do just iPhone apps. And there's a whole universe of like, poop-tracking phone apps. And the reality is, like, that's not gonna ever catch on. Because people are gonna take pictures of their poop with their phone because the user experience is bad. You have to like, go and then like, take a picture before you wipe. And that's like, awkward.

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  And so having, like, that's what motivated the hardware, is like, making this truly frictionless and effortless. And so there are a few companies that are trying to do this. Our biggest competitor is Kohler. They're, you know, massive privately

• 1:07:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's one of the most popular toilet brands in the world.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  They do, like, a billion year, or a billion dollars a year in revenue. They're privately held. They have their own town in Wisconsin named after them. That's our headquarters, is Kohler, Wisconsin. And they released a product very similar to ours.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Like a few months before we did and totally caught us off guard.

• 1:07:39Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  We knew they'd been working on something like this. They acquired a company out of Israel like years ago, but you know, went zero dark 30, didn't hear anything from them. Whereas we've been very public since basically day one about like, here's what we're doing. Here's who we are. Here's what we're building. Here's the mission. They took a very different approach and their product is beautiful, but it's not hands free. It's not effortless. It has like a one week battery life, which means you have to charge it every week. That's a lot of maintenance for your toilet.

• 1:08:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a lot of maintenance. Yours is once every 30 days, right?

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  That's what we advertise. In practice, we find the average battery life is 56 days.

• 1:08:11Speaker 00

  Oh, cool.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  Which is like six charges a year. That's awesome.

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  There's, you know, it limits your session to five minutes. So there's just like.

• 1:08:19Speaker 00

  You have a better product.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  I'm very proud of the product.

• 1:08:21Speaker 00

  And better branding. I think that's the key. Like I think your, your way of going against the big dogs is going to be community.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:08:29Speaker 00

  And branding and personality and mission and your team. Like that's what I think is going to help be really.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  And we have a lot of personality and that's.

• 1:08:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  And then there's a bunch of little startups that are trying to do things and like, I don't know how real those are, you know, like we've seen a bunch of them at the conferences, but you know, I know for fact, one of them copied our design of our beta device because it looks identical. We're just like, all right, good luck. But they made it black. And we're like, okay, well, you know, and like, you know, we saw them preorder devices from us and we're like, uh, skip. Honestly, I think the biggest threat is not a competitor. It's that we fail to educate this market.

• 1:09:07Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  Like the only way this really fails is not a competitor comes in and kills. Cause like right now, we're all trying to create this market, right? And I think this is a market that's big enough. The same with like health trackers, right?

• 1:09:17Speaker 00

  That's so smart. It's like there's so many watches and.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  There, there's Garmin and Coros. There's so many brands that.

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  So you're not afraid of having a competing brand. It's like.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:09:29Speaker 00

  Almost like proof that it's worth it to keep doing.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. My biggest hope was that Kohler would come out and spend hundreds of millions of dollars educating the market and we would get to ride their coattails.

• 1:09:40Speaker 00

  Oh, that's such a great point.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you're listening, please do that. I, I can help you spend that money.

• 1:09:48Speaker 00

  I love it. Let's go back to money. So this is called how we profit. I want to understand what are your biggest costs associated with creating a hardware device for, for health like this? Like what were your biggest cost centers?

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  People, right?

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  Headcount?

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Headcount, number one. And for the first two and a half years of the company, it was just developing the product. And that's still by far our biggest cost center. As we continue to ramp up our marketing engine, it's going to move into marketing.

• 1:10:15Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  And a big part of that is going to be, you know, we're hiring headcount for marketing, but we're also going to be spending more on marketing projects, right? You know, like you mentioned the podcast studio earlier. We're building out our own podcast studio that's going to look not quite as fancy as this, but we're very excited about it. And the whole idea there is like, one of our biggest challenges as a company is people see this product when they receive the product and they're like, wow, this feels like something Apple or Microsoft would have made. And like, that is the highest praise possible, but they're surprised because our marketing is not yet at the level of Apple or Microsoft. And the whole level, the whole point of marketing is to set people's expectations. And if your expectation is like, whoa, this is better than I expected, that means our marketing failed. And so we have to level up and spend more on marketing. So we're redoing the website,

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  redoing all of our email flows. Like literally the last thing I saw in my car before I came out here, I got a text. It was screenshots of our new emails. And it's like, oh, that's why you spend money on marketing, you know, just.

• 1:11:12Speaker 00

  Marketing makes everything easier.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  It just elevates you in such a real way. And like for something.

• 1:11:17Speaker 00

  Especially at your price point, right? Not that it's so expensive, but it's not cheap. So it needs to seem like premium.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Yes. And like, I say this all the time, like the consumer is used to buying Apple.

• 1:11:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  You know, like if you're buying, if you're spending $400, it better feel like it's worth $400.

• 1:11:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  It's got to have some weight to it.

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. So would, would you tell us how much it costs to make?

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. It costs us about $130 to make.

• 1:11:42Speaker 00

  And then you're selling it for about 400.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's about a 70% gross margin on the hardware itself. And then we charge a $6 a month membership.

• 1:11:49Speaker 00

  And you're doing annual memberships too?

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Yes. I think that's $70 a year or $6 a month.

• 1:11:54Speaker 00

  Okay. What do you think is going to make more money in the long term? Like the hardware device or the subscriptions?

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  Hmm. That is a great, it's going to be the hardware device for us, right?

• 1:12:04Speaker 00

  Because people will buy multiple hardware devices in their house.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  We'll upgrade, in the future we'll do upgrades. Like so many people, like I have an Oura ring on and so many Oura customers get the next Oura ring just because they love Oura ring and they want the latest and greatest.

• 1:12:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's so true. So it's like, you're going to, it's going to be like the iPhone. You're going to get a new one every three years or something.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. And we're going to add new sensors to this. We'll eventually do like things like, you know, we've talked about adding gas detection. We're going to do the, you know, one day we'll have multispectral imaging that'll be able to do, you know, blood detection. Like, you know, those are going to be real innovations. And like, I'm so excited about those.

• 1:12:40Speaker 00

  I love this. I feel like we've had such a great conversation. I'd love to talk about how somebody else, of course, I don't want anybody competing with Throne. And I think there's enough competition in the space, but somebody else who has a mission-based company that is like a hardware-based device, how could they copy you? Like, what are the first steps that they should take?

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  The first thing you should do is just reach out to me. I'm Scott at ThroneScience.com and I'm happy to hear about your idea and help you however I can. I think the first step you should take is make a prototype. Our first prototype was a Raspberry Pi, which is like a cheap $40 hobbyist computer.

• 1:13:16Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  In a Tupperware jar, like a little bucket that we would tape on top of people's toilets. It had one button on it and it was record and you would have to push it again to turn it off. And there's a little light that blinked when it was on. And we put that, we plugged a little webcam like with a 3D printed enclosure. So we could like.

• 1:13:34Speaker 00

  Who made it?

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  Us.

• 1:13:36Speaker 00

  You and your co-founder.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  Me and my co-founder, Tim.

• 1:13:38Speaker 00

  That had, had to have influence from your dad, who was like a medical device inventor. Like do you, like, I feel like that's not normal to like, want to create, actually create the prototype yourself.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  I mean, so I knew the process for my dad. I've watched him, you know, be a medical device inventor since I was like, you know, that tall.

• 1:13:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  But we just had this deep intuitive sense of like, we have to see this work. We have to actually understand like how people interact with this product, even if it's a inferior version of the product. Like, you know, fun fact, the first time I pitched that this would be hands-free was on an investor call. And Tim pulled me aside afterwards. He was like, what do you mean it's going to be hands-free? Like, we've never talked about that before. And I was like, oh, well, I'm pretty sure we can make it hands-free with like these types of sensors or you can do Bluetooth. He was like, no. And of course it's hands-free now.

• 1:14:25Speaker 00

  So build a prototype.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  Build a prototype.

• 1:14:27Speaker 00

  And in the healthcare space, like what kind of things should they validate first? Like, how can they determine whether it's like something to actually go after? Like you, you decided that this was a new category you're going to invent. If somebody has some other healthcare device, like what were some of the considerations that you had before you actually went full steam ahead?

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  So we did three things that were really helpful. Number one is we ran meta ads at like a landing page just to understand, like, could people sign up for an email list around this concept? And this was back in 2023, when like landing pages you would make on Wix or Squarespace. It wasn't like you couldn't vibe code a beautiful landing page. Like it would be a very different experience now. So you could do this in like two hours now. So go throw up a landing page, point some meta ads at it and just see if people will sign up for like less than $5 an email. The next thing you do is every single time somebody email or signs up for email, send them an email that says, hey, I'm blah, blah, blah.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  And here's, you know, the product we're building. Why did you sign up for this? Like open-ended question. What, what are you hoping to get out of this?

• 1:15:32Speaker 00

  Feedback. Yeah.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then how engage in those conversations. And we have like hundreds of those. And that was, I called it our wall of love. Cause like, we heard from so many people, all these different use cases that I was like, oh wow. Like this is actually something the world wants. And that was a huge piece of it. And then the last piece is build the prototype and put it in people's hands and see how they interact with it.

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. Is your ultimate goal to sell this company?

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  No, my, I want to run this company for the next 20 years of my life. Like I want, my mission is to save a million lives personally. And the math on that is basically saving 50,000 lives a year over the course of 20 years adds up to a million lives. And I think if we scale this to the scale that it belongs like globally, like you can't do that in the United States alone, right? Like 50,000 lives a year would be every single one with colon cancer and like roughly a hundred thousand years, lives a year when you include other cancers, allergy on urinary tract. But like, let's say we start saving lives in like five years, right? We get through FDA, we're like in a place where we can actually market this as a life-saving device. Then we go global.

• 1:16:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  And like 900,000 deaths a year globally. And like, you know, that'll probably be closer to a million by the time we're at that point. And let's say we can save, you know, 10% of those. Like that adds up fast. And so I, I think if I do my job right, I will get to be doing this for the next 15, 20, 30 years of my life. I hit that number and like.

• 1:16:57Speaker 00

  Then you're good.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Speaker 00

  I love that. What advice do you have to, for founders out there or wannabe founders who have a big idea? They might be creating a category, but you know, they're gearing up to actually start their journey. What is your best advice for them?

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  So the best advice I have for other founders came from a different founder and he told me entrepreneurship is a exercise in spiritual growth, masquerading as a money-making opportunity. And I think about that at least every week, most days, just because there are really hard days and there are like strings of really hard days. And companies don't die because of competition. They don't die because of co-founder disputes. They die because you gave up on the company. Like you can run out of money and find ways to make the company work again. And the only reason you give up on the company is because you're spiritually, you're not there anymore. And like, when you're in a hole for two and a half years

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  building a product, like it's really easy to have a bad day or two. And I learned somewhere in that time that the most important thing for the health of the company was for me to maintain my own health, both mentally, physically. Because if I'm not healthy, then I will not show up and bring my A-game to company building and being a leader. And when I show up and I'm healthy, happy, have good energy, positive, stoked about what we're doing, everything else follows.

• 1:18:26Speaker 00

  I love it. Scott, before we go, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  So we are at ThroneScience.com. We're at Throne Science on Instagram, Twitter, every social media channel. And then I'm personally at Scott Hickle. It's Pickle, but with an H. So H I C K L E. Ever that you would find people on social media.

• 1:18:44Speaker 00

  Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:18:49Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, fam, that's how Scott Hickle and Throne profit. And I just love this series because it opens up so many real life lessons hidden inside every business story. I learn so much every episode. And today Scott showed us that some of the biggest opportunities come from problems most people overlook, avoid, or feel too uncomfortable to talk about. What started as a joke between friends on a poker night became a mission-driven company helping people better understand their health through behavior we all share every day. Throne is quite literally saving lives with every flush. Thanks for listening to How We Profit Wednesdays, the Young and Profiting series where real entrepreneurs share real numbers, real margins, and the real story of how their businesses actually work. I'm Hala Taha and I'll see you next time.