From $5 in His Pocket to Billion-Dollar Moonshots—Naveen Jain on Purpose, Profit, and Reinventing Healthcare | Ep 259 with Naveen Jain Founder of Viome

0:00Today's episode is sponsored by PipeDrive, the number one CRM tool for small to medium businesses. I'm excited to share more about them later in the episode.

0:15So, Naveen, this is my first question because you didn't want to know, and I love that. But I want to be a billionaire. How can I be a billionaire? And is it just about focusing on money? So first of all, making money is simply a byproduct of doing things that help other people's lives. So if you can build any product, any service that helps a billion people live a better life, you can create a hundred billion dollar company, but you never wake up in the morning and say, what should I do to create a billion dollar company? It is like having an orgasm. If you focus on it, you're never going to get it.

0:54So just enjoy the process. I've never heard that before said that way and I love it so you came to America with five dollars what was the moment that you realized or you said to yourself I will never be poor again you never honestly anyone who tells you that there was a particular moment that changed their life it's really true it's like telling someone that it is the last straw that broke the camel's back it is really the all the straws that came before that is what breaks the camel's back So our life is really these strings of experiences. And every single moment in your life makes you a different person.

1:34Every conversation, every interaction changes who you become. And one day you wake up and someone who has not seen you for 20 years, you say, oh, my God, you're such a different person. And you live with a person like your spouse. And you say, you are still the same moron that I married 20 years ago. So how do you deal with that? Because I've seen that too, right? You go back to see people that you grew up with and you realize you have nothing to say, or even maybe because of your success and fame and notoriety, they just don't want to talk to you anymore. Well, to be honest with you, you can't control what other people think.

2:10You can't control what other people say. You can't control the world around you. But what you can control is how you react to it. So it's your job to make them feel comfortable. It's your job to make them feel that you are still the same person and you still care about the same thing and your friendship still matters. I mean, the fact is, when I came here, the people I knew at that time are still the same people I know today. There's nothing had changed. This idea, Dan, that I have heard time and time again that money makes you an asshole. I can tell you that's completely not true. You have to be an asshole to begin with.

2:50And money simply allows you to become who you were to begin with. And if you were a good human being, money doesn't make you a bad person. If you were a terrible human being, money just simply allows you to be terrible now. Amplifies, right? What do you think that is the biggest misconception around either A, founders who have created billion-dollar companies, unicorns, whatever, or just billionaires in general? And they say money doesn't make people what they are. The misconception that I think it's a common thing everyone knows, there's no such thing as overnight success. And behind every success, there's years, if not decades of hard work that goes into it.

3:34And one day you wake up and say, oh my God, I can't believe that company is so successful without realizing someone has been slogging away day in, day out, right? People think the success is a straight line forward. And more of us who have been a founder realize, as a founder, you live like you're alive. And how do you know you're alive? You have a heartbeat. What does the heartbeat look like? It goes up and down and up and down. When it's smooth, you're dead. So the day you find yourself living a smooth life, you're chosen to live a life of a dead person. These ups and downs tell you that you're still alive.

4:11When you're on top of that beat, you always never become too cocky because you know the winter is coming. And when you are at the bottom of the beat, you never, ever worry because you know the next beat is going to be the up beat. I always think to myself that, you know, it's not that people can't be an entrepreneur. Anyone can. But I think if you're going to be successful, it's a very small because of those ups and downs, it's so hard. So what was for you, obviously, you know, building billion dollar companies and really being at the forefront. I'm sure you've had some dark moments, like you said, those down moments.

4:49Maybe what was a moment for you or maybe you were like, I'm just going to give up. This is too much. You know, to be honest with you, this is one of the things that come from my Eastern philosophy. When things happen, it is when we label them as good or bad is when you start to feel good or bad. When things happen, you simply say that happened. And what am I supposed to do with that now? Right. So think of it as everything you do in life is an experiment and there is no success and there is no failure. An experiment has an outcome A or outcome B. When outcome A happens, you do C and D. When outcome B happens, you do E and F.

5:33And when you do, you know, each one of them allows you to take the next step. And that's what entrepreneurship is all about. You take the next step, it gives you two more possibilities. And you take the next route and gives you two more possibilities. And you keep moving forward. And that is really what the life is all about. There is no up and down. There is no success. There is no failure. And I can give you the stories in every culture. There is a story about, you know, do you think it's good or bad? So in Indian culture, there's a story about a king and his wise men. So they go out on a forest to hunt and the king falls down from his horse and breaks his arm.

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7:27And the wise men say, so that happened. And well, it's probably good. And the king is so angry and says, what do you mean so it is good? And he puts the wise men into the dungeon. He said, now let me show you what that is, what that good means. And he said, so that happened, it's good. And now the king goes off to the forest again and goes hunting. This time he gets caught by the native tribe. And they catch him and they want to sacrifice him. So they get him ready for sacrifice and the priest comes and priest says, let him go. Why? We don't sacrifice a broken man in front of the guard. We only sacrifice a man that's not broken.

8:07Let him go. He's a broken owl. He has a broken owl. He goes home and he goes to the wise man and he says, oh my God, you were so right. That was so good and that you saved my life. The wise man said, no, I'm so glad it was so good that you put me in a dungeon because you saved my life. If I was with you, they would have sacrificed me, right? The point is there is no such thing, good or bad, good or bad you may not know for years to come. So when the moment happens, you believe the universe is your friend and everything that's happening is for your good and you keep moving forward. You know, something I gathered from what you just said was enjoying how you feel in those moments.

8:48Because I think for me, I get trapped in the feeling, right? It's not necessarily what's happening. It's the feeling, anxiety, fear. If you tell yourself, if your mind says, you know what, that fear is actually a nice feeling. It feels good. Then it feels good. It doesn't create anxiety. And I'm sure I've here, we've had some guests on talk about how anxiety and all this stuff can cause like really difficult. You know, our body can just die basically from stress and everything that could. And it creates a loop that allows you to spiral down. Because just by labeling that this is bad thing, just simply labeling it bad, it allows you to spiral down.

9:31If you say, well, universe is my friend. If this happened, it's probably for my good. Suddenly you say, oh, my God, look at all the goodness that's coming out of that experience that I had. The girlfriend that I thought that broke up with me was going to be the end of my life. And I'm thinking, oh, my God, what a nightmare I avoided. That is true. That is true. So since you're talking about, you know, somebody breaking their arm, I'm very fascinated with how AI and emerging technologies are transforming health care. It's one of the most exciting things I'm finding when it comes to technology. And you said illness can be optional.

10:10So what is what does that even mean? Because I imagine that people are shocked when you say that. And is there something that you're finding that is shocking about what we can solve? Absolutely. So first of all, Dan, we all believe being healthy is a choice. You agree, right? If being healthy is a choice, don't you think the reverse of that? That means being sick is also a choice. And that's what I mean. What if the illness was optional? And so that means is, can we provide people with insights and information of why, what is going on in their body, why it is happening, and what can they do about it so that they don't have that particular disease?

10:56Now, it's up to you to follow the guidance and not to follow the guidance. That's what I mean. Illness is optional. You tell people smoking is bad and you take the thing and people say, I'm going to light up the cigarette and smoke. Well, that's your choice. So being sick is a totally a choice you make. So the interesting thing about being a founder is your liabilities generally tend to be your assets. And I'm going to expand on that because this is if this is one concept, if I can teach entrepreneurs that will change their life. Asking you as an entrepreneur, the problems you solve are the questions you ask.

11:32So what questions are you asking that no one else is asking? By simply changing the question, it changes the problem, right? So let me give you two examples. When I started Viome to actually say, look, what if we can actually understand what changes in the human body at the onset and during the progression of these chronic diseases, if we can find out what happens, then we will be able to diagnose them early, prevent them from happening, and God forbid, outright reverse them. But what I noticed was that every single company in the industry, they were experts and they were looking at your DNA and your genes.

12:09And I thought, oh my God, why is it? I am not a scientist. My first question was, does your DNA change when you develop a chronic disease? So for example, you do my DNA test and I gain 200 pounds. Has my DNA changed? No. Now I have diabetes. Has my DNA changed? No. Now I have depression. Has my DNA changed? No. Then I get a heart disease. My DNA does not change. Then I die. and you look at my DNA 100 years after I die, it's identical DNA. So if DNA can't even tell you you're dead or alive, how will it ever tell you you're becoming healthier or sicker? So I realized the things that are changing is your gene expression or your RNA, but not your DNA.

12:48So why not measure RNA? You know what hiring feels like? Like searching for a needle in a haystack. You post a job, get flooded with resumes, but most just don't have the right experience or mindset. that's why i tell every founder i meet use zip recruiter zip recruiter finds amazing candidates fast and right now you can try it for free at zip recruiter.com work here's why i love it their smart tech instantly pinpoints top talent and starts showing me the role and you don't just sit and wait you can personally reach out with their invite to apply message and connect with the best right away. If you're building something great, the team you hire makes all the difference.

13:33So ditch the other hiring sites and let ZipRecruiter find what you're really looking for. The needle in the haystack. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it free at ziprecruiter.com slash work. One more time, ziprecruiter.com slash work. Zip Recruiter, the smartest way to hire. And that was my number one breakthrough. Number one breakthrough was I started to look at what is happening in the human body. And it turns out then that 99 % of all the genes in our body don't come from a mom and dad. They come from these microbes that live in our gut, in our mouth, and all over us, 100 trillion microbes.

14:16And I start Googling Parkinson's and microbiome, heart disease and microbiome, depression and microbiome. It turns out that microbiome is more than all these different diseases. And then it occurred to me that 10 companies doing microbiome testing. And then why is this problem not getting solved? But it turns out every microbiome company until we started and to date, there's no, every microbiome company simply tells you what organisms are in your gut. And we thought, wait a sec, it doesn't matter what organisms are there, what matters is what are they doing? Are they doing good things? Are they doing bad things?

14:50It's like, in my mind, these microbiomes are like a tiny, tiny people. If you put them in a good environment, good behavior, you put them in the bad environment, the bad behavior. So why not focus on what they are doing, not who they are? And that changes everything. And all I had to do was find the technology that can allow me to do that. So not being an expert, my first thing was, why not do the RNA testing. And every expert told me it can't be done. As an entrepreneur, I don't know if can or cannot be done. I'm thinking, if that's what we need to do, we're going to find a way to do that. Turns out at Los Alamos National Lab, they were working on a bioweapon and biodefense project, actually trying to understand what these organisms do and how they interact with the human body to create antidote for biological bomb.

15:35Guess what? I took that technology, exclusive license started wild. Eight years later, brother, we have now analyzed 1 million people and collected over 100 quadrillion data. And when you do a test, I take a split of your saliva, four drops of your fingerprint blood, and a touch of your stool, and I analyze for 100 million biomarkers. Not 100 biomarkers, 100 million biomarkers. I can tell you now everything that's happening in your body. your biological age, your cognitive health, your heart health, your immune health. But more importantly, now I look at the stuff and that's happening in your body and I tell you why it is happening.

16:19So Dan says, look, I've had constipation for a long time. What should I do? And my answer is, I don't know. I analyze your body and I say, the reason you have constipation is you have a high methane gas that's slowing the motility down and this is what you can do. Or do you have a low butyrate? Or do you have a low sulfide? or do you have a high bile acid or do you have a low serotonin? So once we know the underlying root cause, then we can tell you what to do about that. And so what we do is we tell you, don't eat avocado right now, Dan, because your uric acid production is too high, you're going to get up gout.

16:53Or don't eat spinach or almonds because your oxalates are too high. Or don't eat broccoli because your sulfide is too high. But you can eat red meat if you want because choline and carnitine in the red meat is not microbiome, is not making TMA. That's your liver is not conmodal to TMAO, which causes the heart disease. So we can tell you what foods to eat and why and give you a science paper for it. What foods not to eat and why and give you a science paper for it. Then we tell you every nutrition your body is lacking, what vitamins, minerals, herbs, and we custom make it for you. We make you personalized probiotics.

17:30We give you personalized oral lozenges. We make a personalized toothpaste. And when you follow that, we did double-blinded placebo-controlled studies that shows 64 % of the people who had IBS, 15 % of us suffer from it. 64 % of the people in 90 days became healthy compared to 10 % on placebo. People who were pre-diabetic, their A1C came down by 0.42 in 90 days from pre-diabetic, they became healthy. Now imagine depression and anxiety, we were talking about anxiety, down by over 70 % in the people in the intervention group compared to the 28 % on placebo. So now imagine a person who had no knowledge of the science and biology, simply asking a different question as a founder, putting together, assembling a team of experts and challenging them to do the things they thought was not possible.

18:25Eight years later, we have helped a million people live healthier and longer. Now we are just beginning, right? Imagine what you can do. The second thing is my liability was what? I am born in India. I speak with a thick Indian accent. Everyone thought I should learn to speak just like everyone else. And my thinking was no. That is how I control the room I go walk into. If I'm in the room, you can't be multitasking and make any sense of what I'm saying. So you have to give me 100 % of your attention. That is my asset now that when I walk into the room, everyone gives me 100 % of their attention.

19:05So my liabilities become my asset. Hey, I like that. I've tried to do a British accent. I tried to do other accents. It sounds terrible, by the way. So I'm curious, based on this data that you've seen, what would you say is the biggest lie that we've been told about our bodies? And how is science and the things that you're doing proving it wrong? So number one thing we were told that these are the food, the broccoli, the spinach. Remember that Popeye told you the spinach is good for everyone. Everyone should take a spinach, right? What we learned is there's no such thing as universal healthy food.

19:43A food that's good for one person may not be good for another person. What we find is 45 % of the people are harmed by eating spinach because of the oxalate degradation. 42 % of the people are harmed by eating broccoli and cabbage and persilocyst sprout. Think about that. 37 % of the people are harmed for eating avocado. This was something I would have never thought. Basically, we all knew what Hippocrates says 2 ,500 years ago. All diseases begin in the gut. Let food be thy medicine. Let thy medicine be the food. And one man's food is another man's poison. That's it. I mean, that's really what we learned.

20:23There is no such thing as universal healthy food. There is no such thing as universal healthy supplements. So people are saying everyone should take NAD. Guess what? Unless your name is everyone, just don't do it because NAD can be good for some people or NAD can actually cause the progression of cancer, right? So don't take these things because they are medicine. You won't take a medicine just because. So don't think of food and supplements as anything but a medicine. So test, don't guess. Test, don't guess. I feel like I need to throw out everything I've known. Like everything I've known just needs to be thrown into the trash and I need to do this test.

21:03My final question for you, and I love, I'm like blown away. We need like three hours of our time to keep going. But based on what you know about technology, advancements in technology, you've done so many different industries. If you had to start over tomorrow with something totally brand new and you were going to build a totally brand new billion dollar company, what would it be? Look at any problem today you see that is impacting a billion people, 100 billion people. If you can solve that problem, you have a massive company. So you look at energy, you look at food, you look at agriculture. It doesn't matter which industry, health care.

21:46It's a$4 trillion economy just in US alone. Every one of these companies, every one of these things we call social problems are the entrepreneurs waiting for some entrepreneur to solve them. If you want to do a small good in the world, you do a non-profit. If you want to do a large good in the world, you do for-profit company because profit is the engine that allows you to do more good in this world. So do good and do well. That is my philosophy. And I really believe in the next five years that the healthcare will be delivered at home using AI because they will know more about your internals of the body using the test like Viome, right?

22:25And they will use AI to tell you exactly what to do that your doctors will know. So the healthcare will be delivered at home and the pharmacies are going, it's not going to be the pharmacies that deliver the medicine, it's going to be the farms that deliver the medicine. So the medicines of the future are going to come from farm, not a pharmacy. Do good. Sorry, say it one more time. Doing good and doing well. Doing good and doing well. I love that. This has been amazing. The farm is the pharmacy. Don't worry, when I quote this, I'm going to put your name on there. I swear. If people want to get in touch with you, they obviously, I mean, everyone, like you said, a billion people, they need this.

23:06Eight billion people, six billion people. How can they do so? Please go to ym.com, V as in Victor, I-O-M-E.com. the reason I'm spelling is because people from India can't pronounce the word we so I always say we as in Victor I O M E dot com and please go do the test it will help you it will help your family and it will help the billions of people live a better life so please spread the word well the next time we do an interview I'm gonna first talk about what came about from this and I'm gonna I'm gonna do a follow-up every week how's that this is gonna be I'm fascinated because I got a lot stomach problems and I got a lot of I got a lot of problems that maybe that's why I was negative before we talked but now I don't have problems because I'm enjoying the ride and my mind is switched now so thank you for that I needed this conversation today oddly enough but this has been amazing biome biome everyone needs it go and get it but I'm super inspired by what you've done and thank you for joining us today on founder story first of all Dan I want to thank you for two things.

24:09Thank you for doing what you do because stories of every founder, that inspires other people to go out and solve bigger and bigger problems. So what you're doing, I want to, my hat's off to you because you inspire everyone to go out and solve a massive problem. And that means humanity will be better because of every single founder who goes out and solves a problem. You might be the kindest, most humble person I've ever had a chance to speak to. That's amazing. Thank you. You got to come back in a couple months. You're coming back. Promise you that.