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

19:01And one day it says, hey, by the way, there's a yellow flag here. You should be aware of this. And 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. One in 10 people will be diagnosed with a cancer of the lower GI or urinary tract at some point in their lives. Like, one in 10.

19:20Hala Taha:Like, a lot of our friends. That's really sad. 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, even more taboo. Even more so, right? There's so many stories about particularly like, put to your point, women, men, it's universal, but like people are - It's just like embarrassing, right?

19:53Hala Taha:Exactly. It'd be embarrassing to say that something's wrong with you down there and, and yeah, it's scary, but hopefully you are kind of de-tabooing everything that's going on with our poop health. A hundred percent. 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 like embarrassing thing. It's human and universal and it's like, everyone does it. Why would you be ashamed? Let's talk about the actual business behind creating a healthcare hardware device.

20:27Hala Taha:What would you say is the most difficult part about the type of business that you're creating right now? 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. 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.

21:10Man, 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 SurveyMonkey. And those surveys kept coming back and people were interested. But we were like, no.

21:31Hala Taha:Like, are they sure they're okay with a camera in the toilet? It was just like pixels on a screen. I didn't know those people, right? And so we were like, we got to 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'd, you know, ask people, do you wear wearables? Like, 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.

22:00And 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.

22:05Hala Taha:Yeah. 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 do what you got to do. 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? 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.

22:35Hala Taha: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 quite a cute story and you also pivoted from an original business. So 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. Yeah. So Mike was there. Oh, really? Yeah, of course. He was there. I was wondering, like, is that a poker night, like the same poker boys that I know about?

23:13Hala Taha:Okay. 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. Yeah. 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.

23:45Hala Taha:You came up with the name Throne on the spot. It's the perfect name. Yeah, it really is. And so, fast forward, Tim and I ended up working together. We joined a company that was selling crypto or music royalties on the blockchain. So it was like a crypto company and very 2021 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.

24:20And 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. Yeah. But like treats the nurses really, really good. Cause 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. 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.

24:50So like Tim actually like, you know.

24:52Hala Taha:Hand coded. 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 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. And that was just like six weeks into you creating this business, right? It was just six weeks. Well, we had one facility. So we got like 90 nurses to sign up in like two months. Yeah, just under two months.

25:26Hala Taha:Okay. 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. Yeah. 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.

25:55Hala Taha:You raised money. You were telling everybody about this idea. It takes a lot of, like, I guess, confidence, 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, 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. 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. You would have been stuck in that business.

26:31It would have killed my soul.

26:33Hala Taha:Yeah, you would have been. And you probably would have stayed in it for like years, like chasing the initial rush. 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 I stumbled backwards into it just by pure luck. Yeah. 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.

27:04Hala Taha:And it just happened organically. Tell us that story. I had to go back to all my investors and say, hey, this nurse staffing thing is 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. We were looking for more serious ideas, right? Were you telling your investors like these are the ideas that we have to pivot?

27:35No, 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.

27:44Hala Taha:Got it. Okay. But like, and everybody was, 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. They probably 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. 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 back 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.

28:20And 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, I hate hardware. But if you think this is the right thing, I got your back. And he's invested more since then. And he and his wife are just like some of our biggest supporters. They 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.

28:53And it turns out like another nurse staffing platform, you know, there's a dime a dozen of those. But like 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.

29:13Hala Taha: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. We're 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. Totally. And like, I have reoriented around this mission. Like it's something I hold so sacred. And if it works, inevitably, this will make money.

29:50But 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.

30:10Hala Taha:Yeah, bam, seven days. That's all it took me to go from idea to a$500 million storefront. No tech team, no coding, just my LinkedIn knowledge, a business idea, and Shopify. Here's what most people don't realize about starting a business. The idea is never the hard part. The setup is where people stall and procrastinate. They overthink the design, the checkout flow, and then months pass along with nothing to show for it, but your good idea. Shopify removes all that friction. Their templates and AI tools get you a beautiful, functional site set up fast. And when someone's ready to buy, Shopify checkout is so smooth that more customers actually follow through.

30:49Hala Taha:Returning buyers can check out in a single click with ShopPay, for example. And if you hit a wall at any point with your build, they've got a built-in AI assistant sidekick that's there to help. Not an FAQ page, an actual assistant that helps you build, troubleshoot, and keep going. And the proof is right there, Yap Fam. on the How We Profit series, the founders I've been talking to who are doing millions of dollars in their e-commerce business, they sell on Shopify. So if a business idea has been sitting in the back of your head collecting dust, stop waiting. Take action. Just do it. All you need is the idea because Shopify handles the rest.

31:24Hala Taha:Start your free trial at shopify.com slash profiting. Again, that's shopify.com slash profiting. Go to shopify.com slash profiting to start building your dream business today. So you pivoted. Yeah. What's your advice to all the young and profiter's 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? 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 going to work.

32:04There 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.

32:19Hala Taha: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 I 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.

32:55100%. When you find that thing that actually suits you like a glove, it's the most motivated. 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 going to be swimming up a freaking waterfall.

33:12Hala Taha:Yeah. It's like, you don't have to, you've got choice. Yeah. You've got choice. Even when you raise money on a specific idea, like you proved, you've got choice where you can just go back to your investors and explain it and see if they want to ride with you or not. 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 were all the assumptions we had. Here is what we've learned since. Here's what this means. I don't think this is a good idea.

33:44Yeah. We're going to go find a better idea. And nobody was offended by that.

33:50Hala Taha:Yeah. So you raised$4 million or a little bit over$4 million in your first round for Throne. That was our seed round. That was your seed round. I'm not a VC, but it's a company. It's okay. I don't know what round is what, but you tell us. So we raised a$1.2 million pre-seed. Okay. That was Pineway, the nurse staffing. That was the nurse staffing. And then we pivoted the throne immediately. Okay. And then we raised like$500 ,000 and$250 ,000. We're raising on safes, right? Okay. Which are these like convertible notes. Basically, it's a very quick and easy way for investors to invest in the company.

34:25Okay. Without you having to involve too many lawyers. And it's, you know, instead of it taking.

34:29Hala Taha:What is that called? It's called a safe. A safe. 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. Okay. 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 went 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. I'm very proud of how attractive this is.

35:06It looks pretty nice.

35:07Hala Taha:It's very sleek. Yeah, what we had before this, the prototype was like this big, and the camera in the toilet was massive, and it wasn't waterproof, so in one instance a bad hand was all over. It wasn't waterproof. That's hilarious. But it was enough to show that we could build hardware, and the app worked, and we had the whole experience. We could kind of paint the vision of where this was. And that was when you were raising the$4 million. Exactly. Okay. But like seeing is believing, right? Like showing up with like the actual thing built was so important. And so we raised that money. But let's pause there.

35:40Hala Taha:Okay. You got rejected by a hundred investors. Oh yeah, it's gut-wrenching. 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. 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. Okay. Much less like the convergence of those three categories. Got it. So why? Are they just like hard? They're hard categories?

36:17Consumer is a 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. Yeah, it's expensive. The quick money is in like B2B SaaS or like, you know, the big money now is in like these foundational AI labs.

36:33Hala Taha:Yeah, the AI companies. Exactly. And so this is much riskier. And a lot of investors like kind of 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.

37:07Hala Taha:But they're like, can your thing actually do that? 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?

37:41Yeah.

37:41Hala Taha: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 culled outreach to versus people you were introduced to? How is that different in terms of fundraising? So Marc 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 going to break through all of the walls that it takes to build a company into something successful?

38:18So I ran a very disciplined process. I had a spreadsheet. I've had my wish list of like, here are all the investors that I want to get introduced to. Here's the firm they're at. Here's the specific investor I want to invest in. Here's the other similar companies like Whoop Aura, Eight Sleep Levels that they've invested in. You know, so I know why I want to get in touch with them. Here's the list of all the people that I have mutual contacts to who might be able to introduce me to that person.

38:41Hala Taha:That's really smart. I got coached on this by Eric Bond, who's an investor at Hustle Fund. 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 of them. And so, you know, like, let's say you holla, give me five names. He's like, great.

39:08Keep track of all that. And then this is important, the sequencing of it, because you want to build momentum in a fundraise. You want the, you know, the valley to be talking about you other 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 and then you say on the same day like make it a thursday like 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.

39:42Please send this to these eight people.

39:44Hala Taha:So it's like a blitz. 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 going to pass. Like a lot of people just passed, right? Like it was like not a fit. I'm 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 up front, 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.

40:17Because, like, 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? Yeah. The questions, and, you know, you can—

40:28Hala Taha:You get your story right after you practice. You figure out, like, what story you're telling, what data points, what questions people ask. 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 and then pitch how we get there. 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 God 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 the step-by-step process for how to get there.

41:06Gen 1 is not a medical device. This is a health and wellness device. People are like, well, why don't you go straight for that?

41:12Hala Taha:Yeah. 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? Instantly more compelling. 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? 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.

41:48People, you know, worry about the ick factor. Like, there's so many reasons someone says no. 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.

42:08Hala Taha:Just like any sales job, right? Exactly. And, like, the only thing I can compare to if you've never worked in sales or, like, done a fundraiser is, 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 yeah 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 But now you've got an amazing leadership team.

42:44Hala Taha:You've got somebody from Whoop on your executive team. How did that change the perception of everything that you're doing? My co-founder and chief product officer is the former co-founder and chief technology officer from Whoop. Oh, wow. I didn't realize he was the co-founder of Whoop. Yeah. So John Capitallupo 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 pancolitis, which is the worst form you can have of ulcerative colitis, a form of inflammatory bowel disease.

43:20And so he's very passionate about gut health and continuous health tracking.

43:24Hala Taha:Perfect. Couldn't be a better fit. I literally don't think there's a more perfect person on the face of the planet from what we're doing than John. That's amazing. 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. Yeah. I was like, John, are you going to 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. 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.

43:55Hala Taha:Let's talk about the marketing. So you guys are officially launched. You launched in March. Yes, March 10th. You took it to the Consumer Electronics Show. Yeah, so CES was in January. We were there with some preview devices. We didn't actually have devices rolling off the assembly line until the 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. There's a lot of amazing innovation happening in the world of consumer electronics. Did that make it feel real for you, that moment? Because I remember seeing images and stuff, and I was just like, oh, wow, this is really a thing.

44:31Hala Taha:Did it feel like a real like turning point for you? 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, well, what's 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, your gut health. people think about it and they go, oh, wow, like either I need that or I know someone who needs that.

45:06Hala Taha:How did you generate interest for Throne? Like what are your marketing strategies right now? What has not worked and what is working? Great question. So definitely by far the best thing that works for us is referrals. Like word of mouth. 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 Dow Mao, 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. So you build habits. Exactly. It's very habit forming because it's frictionless, right?

45:43And people use the product on average four or five times a day and they check the app every time they go because you want to see my hydration score. And you wake up dehydrated, you get better hydration scores at 11 a.m. and you love to see your scores move up and to the right. Who doesn't love up and to the right? progress, right?

45:58Hala Taha:Gamifying it. 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. Like paid ads. 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 yeah 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 by the time they get to our website.

46:54And so what we're doing now, 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. Oh, those like circle.

47:12Hala Taha:Exactly. I've seen them everywhere. Yes. So Levels was the first company to put those on non-diabetics and like half the Levels team is here in Austin. And so I'm good friends with their, former head of growth, who now is our VP of growth. Oh, cool. Look at you building that rock star team. Again, like it's this big mission that attracts great people. 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 about what that company is, what the product is, what they're about, than if they'd come to them through a paid ad.

47:56Hala Taha: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. Exactly. This is not an impulse buy. 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? 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.

48:31Like, 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 educational and entertaining at the same time is like a gift.

49:02Hala Taha: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? Oh, yeah. So that's something that we know we're 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, we are doing more efficient capture on the back end of it. But yes, whitelist is high on my to-do list. So basically, this is like something that I've noticed is becoming way more popular because I'm in the influencer marketing space, right?

49:37Hala Taha: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. 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 is there any other branding, marketing tactic that you've been leaning into? The other big one for us is just long-form editorial, like, written content. And the two reasons for that is, A, traditional SEO.

50:14But the other big one is AI search. and we've had a surprising number of customers come to us because they found out about us through

50:21Hala Taha:chat gpt wow that's so interesting because they're probably being like what's wrong with my 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 onto you whereas like if you're going to chat gpt or claude or google and asking like what's wrong with me, that's pull marketing. And like when we can find people in those pull moments, it's way more intentional. They're already like down the funnel because they're looking for the solution. You're not having to educate them.

50:56Hala Taha:They have like a real burning need of figuring out the solution. So really interesting stuff. Okay. So I want to 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. Scott, what was your worst product decision? That's a tough question because the reality is with hardware, like there's the hardware side of the product and then there's a software side of the product.

51:36In the software side of the product, the cost of making a mistake is very low because you can go and fix it the next thing, 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. Yeah.

51:56Hala Taha:So you've got to be really careful before you say, go produce all these things. Yeah. Exactly. It's just very expensive. And so we were, so when you're building hardware, You go through a three-step process, design validation testing, electronics validation testing, and product validation testing. You can't skip. It'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.

52:33I'll say actually for the beta product, the not waterproof was terrible because we knew that if a guy peed on it, that would kill the product. What we didn't realize was that the humidity of just sitting above the toilet would also kill the product. And so the average lifetime of one of those beta devices is like six months before it would short out.

52:51Hala Taha:Got it. And that's why you do betas before you move into mass production. Also, we realized the cost of getting this wrong could kill the company because we have to recall these. Yeah, so you took it. The lesson in that is like, take your time. Find a professional manufacturing partner. Learn processes. Have a coach. Like, don't waste your money. Move fast. Break things. Only works when the cost of breaking things is like near zero. What would you say your biggest marketing flop was so far? Instagram. We spent way too much money on Instagram to learn the lesson that Instagram is a horrible fit for our stage of awareness.

53:28Because 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 this size yeah uh 400 like We were, you know, similar audience. We're like, let's just go do what they do.

54:03And what we realized, you know, after like two months and, you know, losing$100 ,000 is that, wait a second, laser hair removal has been around for two decades.

54:15Hala Taha:It's not a new category. Exactly. And like, all you need to see is a before and after. And you're like, oh, I get what this is about. 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. Exactly. And so 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 they're 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?

54:47Like 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.

54:55Hala Taha:Yeah. 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. Yeah. Totally different marketing challenge than ours. And that was an expensive mistake. What is the most unexpected thing that happened so far in your journey creating Throne? 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?

55:35Like 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 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.

56:13And like, there's something deeply special about that.

56:16Hala Taha:Yeah. Ironic as it sounds, like people, you know, because 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.

56:48And 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.

56:54Hala Taha:Yeah, that's incredible. You know, like. Yeah. 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. Okay. What was the most unexpected financial thing that you encountered? probably every founder you talk 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 and like they say hire slow fire fast yeah and that is just actually great advice it is and we have been very careful to be very lean 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 two years or so 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 now how big is the team nine people yeah so You've been really conservative about hiring.

58:04Incredibly. And it's because, and actually another surprising financial reality is that when you find experts, they are cheaper and work faster.

58:14Hala Taha:Yeah. They're worth like three or four people. 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 market to you and they like their 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 so they got they like it's like a bait and switch exactly and that happened to us twice and we're 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.

59:03And 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.

59:12Hala Taha:So basically you went to hire them directly rather than working through an agency. 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 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 of 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.

59:49And we just take a cut on whoever you end up working with.

59:53Hala Taha:Cool. That's a great model. It's a great model. And like, I wish I knew that existed a year before. Yeah. What would you say was the slowest decision that you made or a decision you made too slowly? 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 going to watch how this warms up. And then And like, it never does. It just never does. And it always feels better once they're gone, right? It's like the impact is immediate. And you feel so dumb.

1:00:27It's offensive how much better it feels. And like, that's definitely the biggest mistake. 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. Yeah. Because you either let them go or you are a liar.

1:01:01Hala Taha:That's such a good lesson. Okay, so let's play something I call SWAT sprint, okay? We're going to 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? 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.

1:01:35It was like, but like overpowered. And we just had under-invested marketing because we hadn't, you know, launched yet.

1:01:42Hala Taha: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 going to 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. I appreciate that. And that's exactly what I mean by brand is like it's a tightrope 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. I mean, it's so easy.

1:02:11Hala Taha: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. 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 reverence. Yeah. You don't want to be like insensitive. Exactly. But that's something that I think our team does really well, in part because so many people on our team are personally affected or know we're all just people.

1:02:48Hala Taha:So next is weakness. What do you feel like are your biggest weaknesses right now? If you'd asked me six weeks ago, I would have told you maybe eight weeks ago, I would have told you marketing. That was definitely the biggest thing we didn't have. Now we have the right people. And so it's going to take probably two, three months to ramp up the full marketing engine and get everyone working in symphony together. And we have one person who's going to be shooting the content, another person setting the content, another person's posting and distributing the content. Like, that doesn't happen overnight.

1:03:14Hala Taha:Yeah. And so right now, I would say that's still our weakness is marketing. But we have momentum. Yeah. And it's so exciting to feel it coming together. I mean, you're building out a podcast studio. Yeah. I can't wait to find out more about that. Opportunities. What are your biggest opportunities? Our biggest opportunity is all the stuff that we're already talking about with marketing, right? Yeah, you've got such a big market to kind of tackle. Exactly. How big is the market? Let's talk about this product, right? Tracking the basics of gut health. The most motivated people are people with IBS and inflammatory bowel disease.

1:03:47IBS 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 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 Oura 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.

1:04:24Hala Taha:Yeah. 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. You're like, it's pretty much everyone. Do you know how many toilets are in America?

1:04:59Hala Taha:Like, did you do research like at that level? Like what were the things that you researched? That's a great question. It was more understanding like who has a motivation. We think about it more for - Like GLP-1s too, right? Exactly. That's a huge one. Like so many, 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. Yeah. And so, like, I think that's a huge market for us. So, like, medication, what is that called?

1:05:37Hala Taha:Like, medication effects, like. Yeah, side effects. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Side effects. Yeah, and so 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 is 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 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.

1:06:13Hala Taha:Okay, let's move on to threats. Talk to us about the competition. What is threatening to you? So there are several startup competitors. This is like a very interesting space that's like weirdly heated. Were you like the first one and then people followed? So we came up with this idea all on our own. but once we got into it, we found that there have been several attempts at this, different attempts. Some people have tried to do whole toilets. Some people have 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 going to ever catch on because people aren't going to take pictures of their poop with their phone because the user experience is bad.

1:06:51You have to like go and then like take a picture before you wipe and that's like awkward.

1:06:55Hala Taha:Yeah. 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. Yeah, this is one of the most popular toilet brands in the world. 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 headquarter is Kohler, Wisconsin. And they released a product very similar to ours, like a few months before we did. And totally caught us off guard.

1:07:27Damn. 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.

1:07:54Hala Taha:Yeah, that's a lot of maintenance. Yours is once every 30 days, right? That's what we advertise. Guys, in practice, we find the average battery life is 56 days. Oh, cool. Which is like six charges a year. That's awesome. Yeah. There's, you know, it limits your session to five minutes. So there's just like... You have a better product. I'm very proud of the product. And better branding. I think that's the key. I think your way of going against the big dogs is going to be community. Yes. And branding and personality and mission and your team. That's what I think is going to help you really create.

1:08:23And we have a lot of personality. Yeah. 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. And like, you know, we saw them pre-order devices from us. And we're like, skip. Honestly, I think the biggest threat is not a competitor. It's that we fail to educate this market. like the only way this really fails is not a competitor comes in and kills because 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 you've got apple watch it's like there's so many watches exactly like yeah there's garmin and coros there's so many brands that so you're not afraid of having

1:09:16Hala Taha:a competing brand it's like no almost like proof that it's worth it to keep 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. Oh, that's such a great point. Yeah. If you're listening, please do that. I can help you spend that money. 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 health like this? Like what were your biggest cost centers? People, right? Headcount.

1:09:51Headcount, 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.

1:10:04Hala Taha:Okay. 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. They're like, wow, this feels like something Apple or Microsoft would have made. That is the highest praise possible. But they're surprised because our marketing is not yet at the level of Apple or Microsoft.

1:10:36And 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, 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 it.

1:11:00Hala Taha:Marketing makes everything easier. It just elevates you in such a real way. And like for something. Especially at your price point, right? Not that it's so expensive, but it's not cheap so it needs to seem like premium yes and like i say this all the time like the consumer is used to buying apple yeah you know like if you're buying if you're spending four hundred dollars it better feel like it's worth four hundred dollars yeah it's got to have some weight to it yeah so would would you tell us how much it costs to make yeah it costs us about 130 to make and then you're selling it for about 400 yeah so it's about a 70 gross margin on the hardware itself and then we charge a$6 a month membership.

1:11:38Hala Taha:And you're doing annual memberships too? Yes, I think that's$70 a year or$6 a month. Okay. What do you think is going to make more money in the long term? Like the hardware device or the subscriptions? That is a great, ultimately, it's going to be the hardware device for us, right? Yeah, because people will buy multiple hardware devices in their house. Exactly, 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. Yeah, that's so true.

1:12:08Hala Taha: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. 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. 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.

1:12:36Hala Taha: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? 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 to make is make a prototype. Our first prototype was a Raspberry Pi, which is like a cheap$40 hobbyist computer in a Tupperware jar, like a little bucket that we would tape on top of people's toilets.

1:13:10It 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.

1:13:22Hala Taha:Who made it? Us. You and your co-founder. Me and my co-founder, Tim. That had to have influence from your dad, who was like a medical device inventor. Like, I feel like that's not normal to like want to actually create the prototype yourself. I mean, so I knew the process from my dad. I've watched him, you know, be a medical device inventor since I was like, you know, that tall. Yeah. 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 an 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.

1:14:00And Tim pulled me aside afterwards. He was like, what do you mean it's going to be hands-free?

1:14:03Hala Taha: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 and you can do Bluetooth. He was like, no. And of course, it's hands-free now. So build a prototype. Build a prototype. 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 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?

1:14:32So 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. It would be a very different experience now. 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 signs up for email, send them an email that says, hey, I'm blah, blah, blah.

1:15:12And here's the product we're building. Why did you sign up for this? Like open-ended question. What are you hoping to get out of this?

1:15:21Hala Taha:Get that customer feedback, yeah. Exactly. and then engage in those conversations. And we have like hundreds of those. And that was, I called it our wall of love because 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. Yeah. Is your ultimate goal to sell this company? No, 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.

1:15:55And 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 100 ,000 lives a year when you include other cancers of the lower GI and 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 mark this as a life-saving device, then we go global.

1:16:24Hala Taha:Yeah. 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 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... Then you're good. Yeah. I love that. What advice do you have for founders out there? or wannabe founders who have a big idea, they might be creating a category, but they're gearing up to actually start their journey. What is your best advice for them?

1:17:01So 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.

1:17:43And like when you're in a hole for two and a half years, 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.

1:18:14Hala Taha:I love it. Scott, before we go, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? 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 Hickel. It's pickle, but with an H. So H-I-C-K-L-E, everywhere that you would find people on social media. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us on Young Improffiting Podcast. Oh, thank you. Well, yeah, fam, that's how Scott Hickel and Throne profit. And I just love this series because it opens up so many real life lessons hidden inside every business story.

1:18:48Hala Taha: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 a 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.

1:19:20Hala Taha:I'm Hala Taha, and I'll see you next time.