803 Mike Glick: CEO of NIMA Partners

0:00I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out.

0:14Kara Goldin:So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Running a small business is tough, and when it's time to get a loan, it can feel almost impossible to find a lender you actually trust. Big banks say no, and the internet, it's full of sketchy offers, sky-high rates, and fine print you can barely read. Whether you're covering payroll, managing cash flow, or investing in growth, you deserve better options.

1:08Kara Goldin:That's why I recommend Fundera, powered by NerdWallet. Fundera is a free, easy-to-use, small business marketplace that lets you compare real financing offers from trusted lenders all in one place. What I love is that you don't need perfect credit to get started. No spam, no bait and switch, just personalized options that actually fit your business needs. I've used it, I love it, and I trust it. And here's the best part. For a limited time, when you visit nerdwallet.com slash Kara Golden and fill out the no obligation form. You'll get VIP treatment and talk with a real person who knows all the ins and outs of small business lending.

1:57Kara Goldin:Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com slash Kara Golden to find the funding you deserve. Fundera Inc. NMLS ID number 1240038. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kira Golden Show. Today, I'm excited to have a returning guest, an incredible CEO, Mike Glick, who is the CEO of an incredible company that you are going to want to know about, all about innovation in a really important space. The company is called NEMA Partners and known also as NEMA or NEMA device. It's a company leading the way in food transparency with its next generation portable gluten sensor designed to deliver real-time testing with 99 % accuracy across major gluten sources.

3:01Kara Goldin:And even if you do not have a gluten issue or celiac or anything like that, once in a while, you want to know what's in your food, right? And you want to really look at exactly what it is that maybe you test and see whether or not it makes a difference in your life. And that's exactly what NEMA is doing. So Mike has joined the company as CEO, helping to relaunch the product. It's been around a few years, but the potential to transform how people, especially with celiac disease and gluten sensitivity with this device is awesome. So from a career spanning nutrition startups, Mike had actually joined us before with a company called good health and joined NEMA partners after that, but also had been in nutrition startups, had spent years with incredible companies, including Abbott, and consistently focused on a mission of helping consumers make safer and more informed decisions.

4:15Kara Goldin:So absolutely love the NEMA product and cannot wait to hear a lot more about it directly from the guy himself. So thank you, Mike, for joining us. Really excited you're here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to share more about NEMA and what we're doing and just talking about our mission of just making sure more and more people can have safe meals. That's the most important thing. And so excited to share more about the technology and what we're doing and appreciate you having me on the show. Running a small business is tough, and when it's time to get a loan, it can feel almost impossible to find a lender you actually trust.

4:57Kara Goldin:Big banks say no, and the internet, it's full of sketchy offers, sky-high rates, and fine print you can barely read. Whether you're covering payroll, managing cash flow, or investing in growth, you deserve better options. That's why I recommend Fundera, powered by NerdWallet. Fundera is a free, easy-to-use, small business marketplace that lets you compare real financing offers from trusted lenders, all in one place. What I love is that you don't need perfect credit to get started, no spam, no bait and switch, just personalized options that actually fit your business needs. I've used it, I love it, and I trust it.

5:45Kara Goldin:And here's the best part. For a limited time, when you visit nerdwallet.com slash Kara Golden and fill out the no obligation form, you'll get VIP treatment and talk with a real person who knows all the ins and outs of small business lending. Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com slash Kara Golden to find the funding you deserve. Fundera, Inc., NMLS ID number 1240038. Absolutely. So for listeners who may be discovering NEMA or hearing about NEMA for the first time, Can you explain the product, the technology behind it, and what problem does it solve at the consumer level?

6:42Of course. So right now, there are 1 % of people who have celiac disease and another 10 % that have significant gluten sensitivity. So you add that up, right, 11 % of the country. It's a lot of people, 30-plus million people. and especially those with celiac, the only thing they can do is avoid gluten, but gluten is in a lot more than you imagine. It's in a lot of different products and ingredients. It's even sometimes in paper plates that people are eating off of. And so what the NEMA does is in this simple little device, there are these disposable capsules and it allows you to take a sample of your food, put it in the capsule and test it quickly and easily to find out if there's gluten in there.

7:31So before you eat that meal, you could make sure if it's been cross-contaminated or maybe there was some gluten in the ingredients themselves. So you could avoid what celiacs call getting glutened.

7:45Kara Goldin:Exactly. And so what is the most, I guess, surprising gluten-filled product out there, and I say not necessarily food company, but you mentioned paper plates and things without making you crazy. What product really surprises people when they hear that it has gluten in it? If you truly have a sensitivity and have been diagnosed, you are pretty active about looking at ingredients. And gluten really comes from wheat, barley, and rye. And so you're doing everything you can to avoid those three things. But there are a lot of, you know, kind of derivatives and stabilizers and things like that. So there definitely are things that are packaged goods where, you know, it might include some of those, but not necessarily be called out on the ingredient label.

8:44Actually, right now, the FDA is actively asking for feedback from the public about gluten labeling because it is difficult to really know whether something has gluten in it. And just one example would be even just on medications. You know, there's a lot of medications out there that have the active ingredient that your body needs, but it's surrounded in a capsule made of gluten. And so even things like that, there's just a lot of watch outs. And in addition, I would say manufacturers change things all the time, you know, and so they'll, whatever it is, your favorite cereal brand or favorite product for six months, it'll be fine.

9:29And then all of a sudden there's a change. They've, they've changed something in the ingredients. They've made something else on the same manufacturing line. And if you're extremely sensitive, you will notice it. so it's one of those things it's difficult to kind of pinpoint and say it's this it's it's in

9:44Kara Goldin:so many things so interesting my father-in-law is he's retired now but he's a gastroenterologist and deal has dealt with celiac disease patients his whole life and he said something to me once which really you know stuck with me which was that you know it people say that well it's just a little bit, it's not going to be such a big deal. But what it does is start to, you know, inflame different areas of your system and break down things. And so then the rest of your immune system starts to get affected as well. So it's not necessarily that maybe you're going to get a reaction like, you know, going to shock or something like that immediately, but it could also have that slow tail, right, that actually starts to affect your health too.

10:42Kara Goldin:So I think it's so interesting for sure. Yeah, just to add on that real quick is the, that was one of the most surprising things for me. I've worked in food allergy a bit. This is different. This is actually, you know, celiac is an autoimmune disease. Your body's attacking itself. and there are 200 symptoms. It's not just GI symptoms. You end up getting migraines, you get lethargic, you get energy issues. And one of the biggest things is just malabsorption. Basically, the little villi in your intestine that absorb nutrients aren't working properly. And so some people don't even know their celiac until they find out that they're anemic because their body's not getting iron and they do the test, they figure out their celiac or they have bone mineral density issues because their body can't absorb calcium because they have celiac.

11:35So that's one of the most interesting things is that a lot of people don't have GI issues. They find out they have it because of other symptoms. So to your point, it could be hurting your body even at a very, very small dose of gluten, even if you're not kind of showing those symptoms.

11:55Kara Goldin:So interesting. And is it hereditary as well? It's genetic, right? As far as we know. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's definitely, I don't know the numbers offhand, but if someone in your family has it, you're, you know, 10 times more likely to have it, that type of thing. So usually it is something where you see parents and kids and others in the family kind of have it. And so So it is genetic. You know, when you look at autoimmune diseases, they're all kind of difficult, right? Type 1 diabetes. And I mean, there's a variety of them out there, Hashimoto's. This is the only one, though, that they actually know what triggers the problems, which is interesting.

12:38Out of all the autoimmune diseases, they have no clue what actually is driving the specific symptoms and issues, except for with celiac. We know exactly what it is. So you just got to avoid it.

12:52Kara Goldin:It's so, so interesting. So you spent a career in allergy-related ingredients, I guess, but also startups. Nutrition ingredients. And nutrition. And now you are running a diagnostics company. How different is this versus what you've done in the past? It seems kind of full circle to me, but really, really fascinating. I'd love to hear your experience and what you're learning. Yeah, that is a wonderful question because I've been a nutrition person, nutrition guy for so long, you know, 20 years about. And it is different when you go from, you know, really focusing on things like taste, right? You know what that means, right?

13:45Having hint. It's like taste is such a critical thing. You're not going to have anyone come back if they didn't like the taste, no matter how healthy the product is, you know. And so that is such an important piece of it. And here I am now on the other side where it has nothing to do with taste. It's all about keeping yourself safe and measuring things. And so the product that we're actually selling, you know, ultimately the KPI that I talk about all the time is meal safely eaten. You know, we want to measure meal safely eaten. Now, the device in our app is one great way to measure it. But there could be other things that you could imagine down the road.

14:26But in the end, that's kind of what we're selling, right, is meal safely eaten. And how can we make sure that everything you're doing, whether it's at home, traveling, out to a business lunch or taking care of your kids, that people are eating safely? And so it's very different, right, than saying, hey, we're going to sell this many bags of food or bars or whatever and really focusing in on things like, you know, taste and flavor and price point and ingredients.

14:57Kara Goldin:So you came in as CEO and you and I were chatting right before we hit record and there's been a couple of different people running this company. But now you're really focused on getting the word out and for an incredible product that should be out to more people. What do you think is the biggest challenge that you need to combat in order to make NEMA a household name? Yeah, the way I like to look at that is there's a need for this product. It was actually created in 2013 by two students at MIT. Very smart. Very, one of them had celiac, one had food allergy, and they developed this device. And six years later, they sold it to Medline, large, you know, medical device company.

15:54The problem was then COVID hit. And when Medline had to focus their supply chain on their higher, I would say, volume items, this product got shelved, unfortunately. And so since then, for the last several years, it's kind of been on and off. Sometimes there's inventory available until RA Capital came in and basically bought it all up and said, we are going to relaunch this. So the hard part has been the brand name itself. It's a wonderful brand name, but for people in the community, in the celiac community, they've had a lot of negative experiences with NEMA. And so we're really working to, I would say, correct that and say, hey, this is different, right?

16:44We've done something different. We've spent the last year completely rebuilding the supply chain, making sure that quality was better than it's ever been before. We've also gotten third-party lab results to confirm that we can measure with 99 % accuracy down to 10 parts per million of gluten. So that's below the FDA threshold, which when you see gluten-free on items, they could have up to 20 parts per million. And so we have less than half of that. So that's where we're at today. I think the biggest thing is really overcoming, for anyone who does know NEMA, overcoming some of the historical issues with supply chain that they've had.

17:24For people that don't know NEMA, it's really making sure that people know that there's an option that you could actually test your food. Only 3 % of people who have celiac are even testing food before they eat it. And so most people don't even know that there's an option. And there are more options than just NEMA, right? So there are a couple other options out there. But that to me is the key, right? You have all these people with celiac and only 3 % testing. There should be more people testing, whether they're using our product or another one, you know, there should be the opportunity for them to eat their meal safely without the anxiety, without the social isolation.

18:07Kara Goldin:Yeah, definitely. So for someone using NEMA in real life today at a restaurant or a friend's house or while traveling, what is the experience or can you share what the experience actually looks like. So when they open up their device, what exactly is going to happen? Well, fortunately, one of the things we did, we actually call this a lab in your pocket, is there are other options out there where it is a bit more of a science experiment. You actually have to use a dropper and mix your food up in such a way where, you know, and then you have to measure it. We tried to make this as simple as possible.

18:51And so you simply take your NEMA out, put it on a table, turn it on, open up your capsule, and you basically can put in your food. You could also dab the top of your capsule to make sure you cover anything on your plate that might have been cross-contaminated. And then you close it up tightly, pop it in, and within three minutes, you will get an answer. And that answer is either going to be a smiley face, meaning good to go gluten free, or it is going to be a gluten found. Be careful. And on our app, you know, that your device is connected to, there'll be a little bit more information, you could see previous tests, you could also take notes.

19:28So you could put in a note of specifically what was that food or what was that restaurant you were at. So now you have a record of it. And so that's that's kind of the experience. We want it to be simple, quick, allow someone to quickly test to be able to put it away. You know, nobody with celiac or who is dealing with this wants to be the center of attention. They don't want people noticing what they're doing, right? They want to kind of keep it quiet and simple and get it out of the way. And that is the way that we've designed it is try to be sleek and discreet and quick and allow them to test and know that they can eat.

20:05Kara Goldin:How did you figure out the pricing strategy for what this device would sell for? and can you share a little bit more about that? You know, we actually did a conjoint analysis, you know, which I can't even explain exactly what it is, but I know it has a lot of different analyses put together from a lot of different people to ultimately kind of triangulate what that optimal price point should be. And so, right, as a startup, we had to do it inexpensively. We were able to subscribe to a platform that allowed us to do this. And so we tested a variety of price points and combinations in terms of the device itself, the capsules, packages of capsules.

20:51Is it a six pack? Is it a 12 pack? And so we looked at a lot of different options. Ultimately, it's interesting. We we made a decision and we expected a certain response. Right. A certain percentage of the founding former members would come back and then we'd pick up some new members. and it has been significantly larger than we expected. So, you know, we relaunched with capsules in November and then with sensors just a few weeks ago, January 12th, actually, on National Gluten-Free Day. And what we have seen is about five times the revenue that we expected. So there's a lot of interest and excitement in this product and it didn't necessarily tie to that conjoint analysis that we did.

21:38So I used to have a, we had someone at Abbott who said, I'd rather spend two days in the field, you know, with sales reps rather than reading two inches of research reports. And I couldn't agree anymore. You know, the research reports are nice, but really, sometimes you just got to get in there and just see how it works and how people react. Definitely.

22:01Kara Goldin:Is there something when you think about innovation of the product, and obviously it's pretty great right now, but everybody has ideas about, you know, this product can be, any product can be better. When you think about it, what is kind of the thing that it's not quite there yet because the technology can't quite be there yet, but I'm hoping that it will be soon that consumers really want? the technology itself was was good to your point it was good you know when they originally launched 10 years ago i would say we've gotten more accurate with a better visual id system and better led lights inside of the device and some of those things to me what will take it to the next level is cost reduction so right now right the price point is 220 for the device capsules a six pack is$72.

23:07It's pricey. It's not cheap. Part of that is because it is currently manually assembled, the whole thing. And so everything's manually done, manually assembled. So if we could shift more to automation, we could significantly reduce the cost. In addition, while shifting to automation, you could also, you know, tweak some parts of it and basically remove some redundancies, improve some of the materials. So overall, I think one of the biggest things is reduction of cost. But while we're doing that, we would try to speed it up, right? Three minutes while everyone else is eating can feel like a lifetime when you're sitting there waiting for your result.

23:51You know, if we could make it 30 seconds or 60 seconds, how much better would that be? So I think speed can help. And ultimately, what is being measured are the proteins inside of the gluten, the gluten proteins. Okay. Just like you measure proteins from COVID test or a pregnancy device or any other food, we could measure other proteins as well. And so that is, you know, even longer term, but you You could imagine this can work on peanuts, shellfish, sesame, soy, milk, eggs, other potential allergens where it would allow you to quickly make sure that food is safe. You know, today it's gluten and it's, you know, we're focused on those with celiac disease, but you could imagine it can go into other areas as well.

24:43Kara Goldin:I always say that it doesn't matter your gender or how much money you have, your demographics. If you don't have your health, you have nothing, right? It's something that is so critical, especially when you don't have it. And today, it's challenging, right? For so many, healthcare prices are going up. Where do you see a product like NEMA, you know, kind of helping people? And does insurance cover it in some cases as well? Is that something that is, like, I almost feel like NEMA partners too could be having to advocate for that in many ways, because it's really helping people, hopefully, to stay out of the hospital and not have a tax.

25:36Kara Goldin:in many ways. But where do you see that in the future? We need help on this. This is one where when you think about diabetes, you know, diabetes has continuous glucose monitors, both type 1, type 2. You could wear a continuous glucose monitor, which is covered by insurance. That measures your glucose, keeps you safe, makes sure you know what you need to do. This should be no different. This is an autoimmune disease where you cannot eat gluten. This measures the gluten before you eat it, keeping you safe, reducing emergency room visits, reducing work, you know, missing work. And so as you start to actually look at the cost of celiac disease and the impact it can have, it's kind of a no-brainer that this should be covered.

26:26Today, it's not because it is not a medical device. This doesn't fall into any of the categories that the FDA currently sees. And so this is going to have to take a slightly different route to get coverage. What we are doing is two things. We are working to make sure that even today you could use your HSA and FSA cards. So you could at least use some of those, you know, pre-tax dollars on something like a NEMA. The second thing is we are actively reaching out to employers because if you're a large employer, then 1 to 11 percent of your employee population is going to need a device like this. And by having this device, it will keep them working happier, healthier, you know, for years to come.

27:16And so it's worth the cost.

27:18Kara Goldin:Yeah, definitely. So that would be a very, very interesting piece if you guys could figure out how to get that incorporated into that because, and I know you well. So it's, yeah, it's one step at a time. And the employee one, you know, we hear a lot about, you know, these sad stories of, I was in D.C. and I was talking to this lady and she works in an office of maybe 40 people. and she said they decided, hey, every Friday, let's bring in lunch, you know? And they would do that. Well, she's celiac. She's not gonna eat a lunch with all these other people where, you know, and so she would go in the bathroom and sit in the stall and eat her food like away from everybody and trying to, you know, keep herself safe.

28:07You know, and so that's just one example from a work standpoint where, you know, and think about work dinners, client meetings, travel. All of that is risky for somebody with celiac. And so, you know, I really feel strongly that employers need to do a better job of taking care of their employees, keeping them both physically, but also even socially healthy, you know, to be able to be with everyone else in the organization and build those relationships.