Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Skincare that knows you better than you do

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Skincare that knows you better than you do · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Welcome to AI for founders or acronym 8th.
0:03
That doesn't work. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:05
Let me ask you this. What happens when you mix AI
0:08
skin care, biohacking and emergency surgery?
0:11
You get L Today's guest is L from same skin care in May dot
0:15
AI and she's on an automation tear, literally building 1 new
0:19
workflow automation every week for a year.
0:22
That's 50 automations if you pull out holidays in one year.
0:26
Come on. But that's just her warm up.
0:29
After a life changing diagnosis, Elle launched a skin care line
0:33
that's not only clean, it's smart.
0:35
Same skin care uses predictive AI to tell you when you're going
0:38
to break out three days in advance.
0:40
That's not skin care, that's time travel.
0:43
We talk endometriosis, hormone data, breaking big ideas into
0:47
small wins, and how to build tech that doesn't terrify
0:50
people. Strap in, this one's a ride.
0:53
But first, some business. This episode is brought to you
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1:39
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2:39
Neon Brian. All right, Elle, thank you so
2:40
much for joining me today. Oh, I'm happy to be here.
2:43
This is going to be fun. This.
2:44
Is going to be fun. Now I want to start with
2:46
something we were talking about a moment ago where you have kind
2:48
of a challenge. It sounds like you said to
2:51
create a weekly automation, so analyzing A workflow and then
2:57
seeing how you can automate that, which then after a year
3:01
you have 52 automations in your business.
3:03
Will you walk us through that process?
3:05
Absolutely, yeah, this is one of my favorite hacks because anyone
3:09
can do it and you can do it for anything in your life.
3:12
I'm going to talk about it from a work perspective, but you can
3:14
do this in your personal life too.
3:16
So the goal is as a team at Mate AI, what we do is we define one
3:22
workflow each week, break it down and set it up to be
3:25
automated in an end to end manner.
3:28
Now it takes probably three to five hours a week to do that,
3:33
which isn't that much time you can get that done.
3:35
But the impact is really huge over a year, because over a
3:38
year, let's assume you take two weeks off for holidays.
3:41
So you don't do 52 weeks, but you do 50 weeks.
3:44
In a year, you're going to have 50 workflow automations built.
3:48
Do you have any idea how powerful that will be in a
3:51
year's time? And like I said, it's not that
3:54
much effort. And it's a great exercise to do
3:57
with teams because it forces you to think #1 that's our most
4:01
inefficient thing #2 how might we use AI or any cool tool that
4:05
we found to actually make our lives better?
4:08
And #3 how can we put it all together and streamline as much
4:12
as possible? Amazing.
4:14
And you know, I think we're a lot of people get hung up.
4:16
They know they should be incorporating AI in their
4:17
business. They know they can do workflow
4:19
automations, which had been with this for a long time.
4:22
But identifying workflows can be challenging.
4:25
So how do you go about like finding a workflow?
4:28
Well, that's a great question. This is really fun because the
4:31
way that we do it is, I ask my team what their biggest
4:34
complaint is. I'm like, what's driving you
4:38
nuts? And then I say, this sounds like
4:40
a perfect job for AI because you don't want to do it.
4:43
And all the sudden, the psychology of that, it flips how
4:46
the team is thinking about it. All the sudden they can see AI
4:49
as the thing that's going to make their life easier because
4:51
it's solving the problem that they want to solve.
4:54
Now that means that we're talking about problems, but as a
4:57
leader, you should be talking about problems.
5:00
And so being able to say, OK, and now we're going to figure
5:02
out how to use AI to leverage solve this problem, even if it's
5:05
only 50% of the way there, even if it's 80% of the problem
5:08
solved, it's still an incremental improvement to
5:11
what's already happening. Amazing.
5:13
Here's a potential workflow. I would love to just get your
5:15
opinion on ways I could automate it.
5:19
All right, let's do it. OK, so right now I've got back
5:22
to schools is hovering, you know what I mean?
5:24
My son is going to be a junior in high school and he's got
5:27
football and he's got school. And then my daughter is going to
5:31
be a freshman in college at Mizzou.
5:33
So she's got sorority stuff and she's got a million things now
5:37
what how this results to me, what drives me crazy is my inbox
5:41
are full of emails of like all these different things.
5:45
What I want is a way to just systematically know tasks by
5:48
task by task, what I have to do in what order to get there.
5:51
So pulling information out of my inbox, organizing in some
5:55
structure, and then giving me kind of marching orders.
5:57
How would you approach something like that?
6:00
Oh this is great. So what I heard you say is there
6:02
are three main problems you actually want to solve right?
6:05
If you think about the workflow automation, the 1st is my inbox
6:08
is full of tasks and then those tasks oh I don't know where
6:12
getting a thumbs down, but those tasks are uncategorized O before
6:16
we even get to steps two and three.
6:18
Task 1 of automation would just be I want to categorize my
6:22
inbox. Now in order to even do that, we
6:24
have to break it down even more, right?
6:26
If I was you, the way that I would look at this, and there
6:28
are a ton of tools that can do this.
6:30
Fixer is one, I'm not sure if you're using them, but you can
6:33
actually tag each of your emails to get categorized or organized.
6:37
Now, because you're dealing with your kids, you could just do
6:40
this by a child, right? So tell Fixer or tell another
6:43
agent like, hey, read all my emails and break them down,
6:46
whether they're for me, for this child, for that child.
6:49
And then you can actually create 4 tabs that just have that.
6:52
So that's step one. That would be week one.
6:54
Just do that, right? Yeah, once you that, then you
6:57
can take it a layer deeper and you can say, OK, now that I have
7:00
4 hierarchies or 4 sort of columns, if you will, of kids.
7:05
Now let's breakdown the tasks even more.
7:06
And then you would go into them and I would just probably do one
7:09
child at a time each week to then breakdown the tasks
7:13
further. Then once you have those tasks
7:15
breaking down further, then you're say, OK, great, I've got
7:18
my emails organized by, by, by who, by person.
7:23
Now I've got the emails organized by who plus by what.
7:26
Now I have those two things. Now I need tasks.
7:29
How and where am I going to organize those tasks?
7:31
You can really do that with a simple ZAP from your categorized
7:34
emails into like a spreadsheet with a date that will then tell
7:38
you what you need to get done by when, by person.
7:41
And you can do all of this in like literally 3 weeks.
7:44
But I would break it down week by week like that because if you
7:47
try to like eat the whole thing, like we sort of talked about the
7:50
beginning, that's going to be more than you're going to want
7:53
to put in in a one week workflow breakdown.
7:56
But over the course of say a month, you'll have this whole
7:58
thing organized. And by the way, then you'll have
8:00
like a system and you can sell it to someone.
8:02
That's brilliant. See now what I do is go straight
8:05
to the system I'd like. I had this idea.
8:07
Then I'm like, I can vibe code this whole thing.
8:09
This is a this is an 8 figure idea.
8:11
In 12 months I need to get a Twitter account going for this
8:13
thing. Like what am I doing?
8:15
Totally, by the way, this is like classic founder.
8:17
I'm in the same boat you are. And part of my, my learning, my
8:20
goal for breaking 1 task one automation per week was to force
8:24
me to think slower and to breakdown what the actual
8:28
problem is and to think more systematically.
8:30
Because as founders, we're big ideas, right?
8:32
I have a big idea. Let's get there.
8:34
And that's like, right, But what's Step 1?
8:37
And so just breaking things down into step one, digestible things
8:41
that can get done today and actually completes will help you
8:46
see how you can, you know, it's really cliche, but like conquer
8:48
the mountain overtime. Yeah, no, it's really smart.
8:51
And you then you get to harvest the winds because you know, you
8:53
set the bar really low and jump over it a few times.
8:55
Get your confidence. In that, yeah.
8:58
And most people don't really think about it that way.
9:01
But, you know, engineers, that's what we're designed to do.
9:03
Just like hey, break it down to its simplest step.
9:06
Of it first principles. Thank you, Elle.
9:09
That was extraordinary. OK, I want to talk about your
9:11
products because and I'm really excited because it mixes a lot
9:14
of things. I love technology, CPG,
9:18
manufacturing, logistics, it's everything.
9:21
So break us down really quick and differentiate your two
9:23
companies. You got it.
9:25
Well, I have what I call my day job and then my side hustle.
9:27
So my day job is that I'm the CEO and Co founder of Made AI.
9:33
We are an AI powered platform that uses actually synergentic
9:36
model for manufacturing. So we help brands and factories
9:41
make their products and we do that make it 10X easier to do
9:44
that whole thing. So we had, we used AAI end to
9:48
end, which I've actually learned is not a selling point to
9:51
everyone as much as you think it is.
9:53
More people in this particular audience really just care about
9:57
like, hey, is my product made? Is it faster?
9:59
Is it cheaper? Is it better?
10:01
People don't actually care how you get the work done.
10:03
They just want to know you got it done.
10:05
So that's my day job and then my side hustle is what I call,
10:09
that's what I call my side hustle is called same skin care.
10:13
And this is very personal. So I'm going to tell you a very
10:15
personal story, but same was born about two years ago.
10:19
I woke up from emergency surgery.
10:22
I had a 5 LB cyst, my right ovary and my right fallopian
10:25
tube removed and I got a diagnosis of stage 4
10:27
endometriosis. I had never heard of
10:30
endometriosis before in my entire life.
10:32
And as I was coming out of, you know, general anesthesia and
10:36
they they were telling me all of this, I realized that I had a
10:39
lot of research to do. So after that emergency surgery,
10:42
I was on bed rest for six weeks, which meant I had loads of time
10:45
to recover, but also to research and learn everything that I
10:47
could about endometriosis. And I learned a ton.
10:50
Here's what I learned. One in 10 women have
10:52
endometriosis. So it's actually pretty common,
10:56
but it's not really very well known or well understood.
10:58
So even though one in 10 women have endometriosis, there are no
11:01
therapeutics and there are no diagnostics.
11:04
Here's what that means specifically.
11:05
If you get a diagnosis like I had, it's only because the
11:08
surgeon cut me open, saw the tissue, took the tissue, sent
11:12
the tissue to A to a lab for testing and confirmed that yes,
11:16
this is endometriosis that is super invasive and not available
11:20
or cost effective for diagnosing more or less 10% of the
11:23
population. Now, once you get a diagnosis
11:26
like I had, and again, I'm a lucky 1 because I actually got a
11:28
diagnosis, there are no therapeutics, which means
11:31
there's nothing you can take. Now, I like to be really careful
11:33
how we talk about this because there are no therapeutics that
11:36
actually help endometriosis. But there are lots of things
11:38
that you can do to work on the symptoms of endometriosis.
11:42
And that's really, so just to recap that because I feel like
11:46
this is an important .10% of the population has endometriosis.
11:49
There are no therapeutics and there are no diagnostics because
11:51
we don't have enough research. That's like the net net of
11:54
everything you need to understand when you zoom in and
11:57
look at just infertility, endometriosis accounts for 58%.
12:01
Well, I'd like to tell people that because a lot of times,
12:04
especially with, you know, men, when they hear endometriosis,
12:07
they think that's not a problem that's going to affect me.
12:09
Well, actually, if we want our species to survive, we need to
12:13
get more research about endometriosis.
12:16
So I was learning all about this and I, I learned, I, I read
12:20
everything I could about Endo, which is what endometriosis is
12:23
called for short. And I learned that there's a
12:25
class of chemicals called EDC's, endocrine disrupting chemicals.
12:28
They are in everything. One day for a 24 hour period of
12:31
time, I wrote down everything in my home, everything at work,
12:34
everything I was eating, everything I was putting on my
12:36
skin, my cleaning supplies, everything.
12:38
And there were EDC's in over 90% of the products.
12:42
And what's scary about that is when you think about, you know
12:45
what we're consuming both with our body and in our in our body,
12:49
all of a sudden we're totally wrecking our endocrine system
12:53
with these products. So I decided to solve these
12:55
problems and the first thing I do is I reached out to Endo
12:58
found they're the nationwide endometriosis endometriosis
13:03
organization. Hard words to say today.
13:06
And what's really remarkable about them is they fund
13:10
breakthrough research. That's all they do.
13:12
And I fundamentally believe that we need more research in order
13:15
to develop therapeutics and diagnostics.
13:17
So I said, hey guys, if I launch a brand, can I donate the
13:22
proceeds directly to Endo found a fund research and they said
13:25
absolutely. So I partnered with them and
13:27
then created a line of skin care that's just EDC free and the
13:32
skin care is called Same because you want the same glowing skin
13:35
all month long. And Same basically acts as a
13:38
platform to educate people about endometriosis and raise money
13:42
for research. So as I was doing that, we
13:45
really found something interesting, which is what I
13:48
call the skin hormone connection.
13:51
We intuit that there is a connection between what's
13:54
happening on our face and what's happening inside, but there's no
13:58
really good way to tie or connect those together.
14:01
So we actually developed a unique algorithm using biometric
14:06
data that shows the skin hormone connection.
14:09
And here's what this means In civil terms.
14:11
We can predict a breakout with 80% and accuracy up to three
14:14
days in advance. And not only can we predict a
14:16
breakout, we can predict where it's going to be on your skin
14:19
because there are all of these biomarkers inside your body that
14:23
are telling us what's going to happen with your skin.
14:28
Incredible you. Have a lot of information there.
14:30
Sorry, I was like. No, it's fantastic.
14:33
First off, thank you so much for sharing that story.
14:36
That's but really cool to to hear and to the the steps you
14:41
took and kind of it's, it's really fun to hear how your
14:44
brain kind of works. It's like, OK, problem solution,
14:47
solution, solution, solution product, keep it moving.
14:51
You know, it's that's so cool. So the, the predictive skin
14:55
care. Now, this is really interesting
14:56
to me because largely this moving into kind of brain
14:59
computer interface stuff where, Yeah, where you're starting to
15:03
use different triggers and predictive AI to show different
15:07
things that perhaps the human eye can't.
15:09
You know, I can look at this plate of French fries and know
15:12
that I'm going to have a breakout about 24 hours, but
15:15
three days is pretty wild. How does this work?
15:19
Well, great question. So we're using biomarkers and
15:23
just pointing them as skin conditions.
15:26
This is actually really understood in the medical
15:29
community. Nobody's just put it together.
15:32
I'll give you a really simple example.
15:34
Do you have an aura like an aura ring?
15:38
I do not I I do have aura. Yeah.
15:41
And Aura, so we're using, we're using Apple Health Kit and Aura
15:46
data and then that's actually powering the predictive
15:51
analytics at the personal level. So each individual's unique
15:55
biomarkers and biorhythm is what we're using to actually
15:59
individualize and customize predictions at scale.
16:02
So if you're a girl, you have two, two major, sort of like
16:09
huge cycles in every 24 to 28 days.
16:12
This is your menstrual cycle, right?
16:15
Right before you ovulate and then again when you when you
16:17
menstruate. So there's two big phases.
16:20
Now what what's really interesting and what we know
16:22
now, because wearables are mainstream, is that your basal
16:26
body temperature, BBT for short increases during those two time
16:30
periods. And it's actually this increase
16:32
in BBT, this heating up of your body from the inside out that
16:36
creates the perfect condition for a breakout.
16:38
Interesting. Yeah.
16:40
And so so that's why. And like, ask, you know, any ask
16:44
any woman, like the two most likely times that they're going
16:47
to have a breakout is right before they ovulate and when
16:49
they're on their period. Well, here's why.
16:51
Because your basal body temperature is increasing.
16:53
Now, your basal body temperature increasing actually comes from
16:55
what your hormones are doing, which is kind of interesting.
16:58
It's very difficult to measure your hormones in real time, but
17:01
we can measure BBT basal body temperature and use that to
17:04
understand what our skin's going to do.
17:06
Now we're using BBT basal body temperature to understand when
17:10
a, to predict when a breakout's going to happen.
17:12
And then we're adding in other unique factors.
17:14
One is stress. So this is a huge 1:00.
17:18
And then of course there's lifestyle factors and sleep.
17:21
So these four things together, if you think about it like a
17:24
basic, like a variable, like variables and an equation, these
17:30
are the the equation, these are the variables that make up the
17:33
equation that help you have clear skin.
17:36
So the opposite of clear skin would be a breakout.
17:38
So once we isolate and identify all of the variables, give them
17:42
to people in a unique UI to help them understand what's
17:44
happening, we can build predictive analytics that will
17:47
tell them when they can expect clear skin versus a breakout.
17:50
And once we understand that, then we can point them at
17:52
products that are really truly preventative in the sense of
17:58
like, hey, you want to prevent these things from happening,
17:59
Here's how you do it, as opposed to what the current beauty
18:03
industry is, which is you have a problem, here is a product to
18:07
fix the problem. We really are trying to shift
18:10
the way people are thinking about it and helping them
18:12
understand that actually your products are probably about 10%
18:16
of what is going to impact your skin.
18:18
There's 90% of it comes from all these other variables.
18:22
What's happening with your hormones?
18:23
What's happening with your stress?
18:25
How's your sleep? What about lifestyle factors?
18:27
How's your water? What are you eating?
18:29
But the skin care industry, which is 352 billion I believe,
18:33
globally, they don't take that into account because they
18:35
haven't figured out how to commercialize it.
18:37
So we're trying to make it so people can understand what's
18:39
happening with their skin. And I'm going to say this in a
18:42
really easy way. We're using your skin as a
18:45
biomarker to understand what's happening with your hormones
18:48
inside because there is this very clear skin hormone
18:51
connection. Amazing.
18:53
So with the aura ring and with like Apple Watch and stuff, you
18:57
have some data points, you have heart rate, you have body
19:01
temperature, you have quality of sleep.
19:04
You probably had, could do blood pressure.
19:07
There might be some others. There's so many additional data
19:11
points we could get and as far as skin care is concerned, what
19:14
would be the a great data point like eye dilation or sweat or
19:21
what would be another? Yeah.
19:23
So it's a really good one. These would I would put all of
19:26
these under the bucket of like lifestyle factors, right?
19:29
So I, I want to make sure I answer your question because I
19:32
didn't quite understand it. Do you want me to?
19:35
Can you just say your question one more time?
19:37
What would be ideal data points, you know, just thinking about as
19:40
we're going to start getting glasses and we'll start getting
19:43
implants and things like that, that will actually be able to
19:45
get a lot more biosignatures, like what would be your your
19:49
dream biosignature? Well, I, I actually think it's,
19:55
it's stress, yeah. So this is another interesting
19:58
thing about stress. So if you're using Apple Health
20:01
Kit, which is what we're using, and Aura, they have a really
20:04
interesting biomarker that's unique to them called HRV, which
20:09
is heart rate variability. Are you familiar?
20:11
With it. Yeah.
20:12
So heart rate variability is kind of an interesting way to
20:15
think about and look at stress. Now, heart rate variability is
20:18
not an absolute metric. It's relative.
20:20
So that one's very difficult absolute versus relative.
20:23
Meaning, look, my heart rate variability is very low.
20:26
It's like 19 to 24. But based off of that, because
20:30
it's not absolute, like there's a perfect, which is 100 is a
20:32
perfect. It's just custom to me, right?
20:35
I think there's a lot that we're going to learn about stress and
20:38
its role and relationship to what's happening in our face.
20:41
I think people, again, people into it this, we understand that
20:44
when you get stressed out your skin, it shows up in your skin.
20:47
What people don't know what to do is OK, how do I prevent that?
20:50
And what now? And like thinking about skin
20:53
care is things like, OK, if your HRV is, is lower than normal
20:58
relative to you, here's a simple low cost hack.
21:01
And these are the things that the app is, is, is offering,
21:03
right? Like this is my favorite one to
21:05
tell people when your HIV is very low in the morning when you
21:08
wake up, the first thing you should do as part of your quote,
21:10
UN quote skin care routine is splash cold water on your face
21:13
10 times. That will, that is proven
21:16
scientifically to improve your HIV.
21:18
If you do that over, I think 3 weeks is the time period.
21:22
So there's a lot of little things you can do like that that
21:24
help your skin by understanding what your biomarkers are telling
21:27
you about what's happening inside you.
21:28
You know, another example of that is like, OK, and at the end
21:32
of the night, if your stress is really high, there's this
21:34
concept of like, put your legs on the wall.
21:37
You put your legs on the wall, the body strains the blood that
21:40
actually calms your nervous system, which helps your HRV,
21:43
which will show up the next morning in your face as glowing
21:45
skin. And like, there's a lot of bits
21:47
and pieces of this that I'm really excited about to put
21:50
together and see work for people that are low cost, no cost
21:53
solutions. Everything, everything doesn't
21:55
have to be here's a problem now here's a product that you have
21:58
to buy to solve it. There's a lot that you can do
22:01
just using low cost, no cost tools.
22:03
So cool, you know, Can I pitch a product at you?
22:07
I love it. Pitch it.
22:07
This is a This is a very highly unpopular product.
22:11
I love unpopular products, they actually do really well.
22:13
This is this is a shout out to a buddy of mine, James Olander,
22:16
and we were kind of working on this idea a few years back.
22:21
I will flash forward to what the AI application is.
22:23
So this is a watch, and you put it on your wrist.
22:26
You wear it, let's say, for 28 days.
22:28
So you get a full representation of a cycle.
22:31
But the longer you wear it, the more it's going to know.
22:33
But what happens at the end of that 28 days is it's going to
22:36
give you a countdown. It's going to say 475 days, 300
22:40
or 30 hours and 21 seconds. And this is when you're going to
22:43
die. It's called the death watch.
22:46
And the idea is it's kind of a stoic wearable where essentially
22:53
it, it judges your lifestyle, your, your behavior and then
22:57
gives you a clock down. Now the, the idea is, is this
23:02
would be a novel thing to wear. You show people like a look at
23:04
this, blah, blah, blah. And then it goes on your dresser
23:07
drawer. You know, you don't want to
23:08
think about it, but it's sitting there and it's looking at you
23:10
every day. And then you put it back on And
23:12
now, oh, it's not in the four hundreds anymore.
23:14
It's in the three hundreds inspiring you to take positive
23:17
action. So.
23:19
Oh, I love this idea. I think this is super
23:21
fascinating. I I love the stoicism as sort of
23:25
the North Star from a brand perspective.
23:28
Are you interested in the longevity world?
23:30
Somewhat you know I'm also in interested in self destruction
23:34
and small bursts as well. Yeah, in the longevity and
23:38
biohacker world, one of the main complaints, well, there's two
23:41
main complaints that I hear. The 1st is, where are the women?
23:43
Yeah, it's very male. And the second is, you know,
23:47
what about the role of fun, right?
23:49
Like there is, there is a role of having fun, enjoying your
23:52
life and to use your words, being self-destructive.
23:54
That's meaningful, right? Like if everyone's kind of
23:57
perfect to live in these boring lives, we're living forever,
24:00
We're living boring lives forever.
24:02
I mean, it's, it's just food for thought.
24:03
I do think there's some value in just like joy.
24:05
And what does that look like in the court of self-destructive?
24:08
But in the, in the biohacking longevity space function
24:11
medicine is 1 tool. Have you seen that I.
24:14
Don't know explain it to me. OK, Function medicine is from
24:19
Doctor Mark Hyman, who's really like the leader in the in in one
24:24
of the leading voices in the space.
24:26
I'm obviously a biohacker by everything that's happened to
24:29
me, I had to become a biohacker. So function Medicine, what they
24:33
do is they, they have an app and they every year you can do more
24:38
if you want. You can do less if you want, but
24:40
every year you get a comprehensive panel of blood
24:42
work. Now when I see comprehensive, I
24:44
mean it's 100 plus biomarkers. You have to go in over like 2
24:48
sessions because they take 20 vials of blood, which is a ton.
24:52
It's create like so much blood. But then they want you to track
24:56
over time so you can see what's really, really happening.
24:59
You're building your own database of what's happening
25:01
inside you, and it gives you really good clues.
25:04
One of the coolest things about function is they take all of
25:07
your bio markers, they look at them and they assign you a
25:09
biological age. And the biological age actually
25:13
says this is how old your biomarkers are according to one
25:16
of the largest database subsets of anonymized biomarker data
25:20
that we have available. And so I think based off of your
25:23
idea, there's this kind of like interesting play there, right?
25:26
Like I'll give you an example. I'm 42, I'll be 43 in October.
25:30
And my, my I just did function probably like 3 months ago.
25:35
And my biological age is like 30, right?
25:39
So the delta, yeah, there's like a 12 year delta.
25:42
That's what I want on my clock, right?
25:43
I want to see my death clock. That's like, OK, here's my
25:46
numerological age, here's my biological age.
25:49
What can I do to make that one go down while that one goes up?
25:51
Yeah, one, especially as it gets more sophisticated and we'll be
25:54
able to know like, oh, you know what?
25:55
Ryan's been splashing himself with cold water, you know, every
25:58
single morning. We're going to give him a couple
26:00
of days. Well, I think that's kind of the
26:02
interesting thing is like there are like, like I said, I'm
26:06
dropping a lot of names in like the longevity space, but Andrew
26:09
Huberman, Huberman lab, that podcast is phenomenal.
26:12
His focus is low cost, no cost tools, which makes all of this
26:16
so much more accessible. And you know, if you're talking
26:19
about any of the any of these tactics, even with AI in the
26:22
background, thinking about how do we do things that are low
26:24
cost, no cost to make them more accessible to more people is
26:27
really, really important. And Huberman talks about a lot
26:30
of the stuff that I'm talking about about to like, none of
26:32
this is new and novel to me. This is out there.
26:34
I'm just aggregating it, organizing it, and productizing
26:37
it. When a part of what the
26:38
technology does is it gives you some instant gratification and
26:41
feedback because biologically we're just wired to want to eat
26:45
that candy bar because right now it's going to be amazing.
26:48
It's really hard to stack positive habits on top of each
26:50
other because you don't really recognize the outcome in the
26:53
same way that you do. Like a shot of tequila, you know
26:57
what I mean? That's right.
26:58
So so like. Back loops, right, Like the when
27:01
you eat the candy, the feedback loop is very long.
27:04
You're you're going to feel good immediately.
27:06
So your brain gets a positive feedback loop.
27:08
But the long term feedback loop is really large.
27:10
Same thing with tequila. I take the tequila, I feel good.
27:13
I dance, I have fun. Tomorrow I won't be happy.
27:16
Yeah. Tomorrow's going to suck, but
27:17
tomorrow never comes. It's always right now.
27:20
That's right. That's right.
27:21
That's right, Elle, why do you think that women aren't more
27:24
involved in the longevity movement?
27:26
Oh, thank you for asking that question.
27:29
Because we don't have enough research about women.
27:32
We don't. We don't.
27:35
And so I think it's very difficult.
27:36
Women are super complex compared to men.
27:38
We're not just little men. The way that I think about this
27:41
in its simplest terms is here's what a man's hormones do in a 24
27:44
hour period. Here's what a woman's hormones
27:47
do and anyone that know any man that knows any woman knows this
27:52
is true all. Right.
27:53
I've been married for 20 years. I have a 18 year old daughter.
27:56
I don't know what you're. Talking about so how women's how
28:00
female bodies at a time like how we work is just different and we
28:05
have we don't have enough science that takes that into
28:07
account. And so I also think everything,
28:11
you know, everything that not everything, many things in the
28:14
longevity and biohacking space are specifically for men.
28:18
I'll give you a really easy simple example.
28:20
You know, very early one of the things that people were doing in
28:25
in the biohacking slash longevity space was like fasted
28:30
fasting. There's for this what's it
28:32
called? Why am I forgetting intermittent
28:35
fasting? This was very popular.
28:37
Well, it turns out intermittent fasting for females is actually
28:41
horrible. We don't get the same results,
28:44
and it completely messes up our hormones.
28:46
And in fact, many women have adverse.
28:49
The opposite happens for women. But we didn't know that until
28:53
very recently. And so a lot of things like
28:56
this, yeah, you know, you get a man doing intermittent fasting
28:59
with his wife, which is what my husband and I did.
29:02
And he, you know, he he loses 20 lbs in a week and I gained 5.
29:05
And I'm like, I'm eating less than you.
29:07
How is this happening? Well, my hormones are different.
29:09
I have different needs. But science doesn't hasn't
29:12
really taken that into account until very recently.
29:16
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Founders. Now back to the show.
30:19
Yeah, it it's interesting. And this is I just want to avoid
30:22
any kind of controversy. You kind of have to make
30:24
sweeping statements sometimes just for ideas.
30:26
And I'd love to get your take, but do you think it's because
30:29
there's just more men in science, so they're doing using
30:32
men as more of a sample case? I I think that's exactly right.
30:35
I think that's exact, yeah. And I don't think that's
30:38
controversial. So I want to go back to what I
30:40
was talking about with Endo, right.
30:42
Like, you know, there's so little research him focused on
30:47
female health and looking at endometriosis, And that's in
30:51
part because of who goes into research, right?
30:54
If it's already men. And as a researcher, you get to
30:58
decide what you work on. You know, men are working on
31:02
things that are known to them and interesting to them.
31:05
And I think, you know, women are, look, the people that I
31:08
find working in research in and around Women's Health are
31:12
because they've personally been affected by it, like me, right?
31:15
I'm interested in this topic because it affected my life
31:17
until then. I spent 39 years not caring at
31:20
all about this. So I think it is a matter of
31:23
like, who's working in the space?
31:24
And what are they intellectually curious about and want to spend
31:26
their days in noble pursuit of fixing, solving, understanding.
31:30
Yeah. There also seems to be a
31:32
component of meeting people where they're at, which is it
31:34
seems like kind of that's like the genius behind your skin gear
31:37
brand. Because you know, if, if there's
31:41
a shortage of women in, in science, there could be like
31:43
some overreaching, like keeping them out.
31:46
I'm sure that exists as some component.
31:48
But also I think women are just interested in naturally drawn to
31:51
other things, you know? So by introducing scientific
31:54
principles with where they already are, they're already
31:57
going to have need like skin care all the time.
31:59
They're always already going to need food every single day.
32:02
Like this allows them to be introduced to some of these
32:05
principles and probably be inspired and change their life.
32:08
Yeah, you actually, you figured it out.
32:10
So when I was thinking about how to get people to care about this
32:14
problem, and this problem being hormone health and the skin
32:16
hormone connection, I was like, the only way to do this is to
32:21
appeal to vanity. That's it.
32:23
Yeah. Because that will get people to
32:26
care. And now, you know, we're
32:27
introducing concepts like hot girl science.
32:30
You know, hot girls care about science.
32:31
And like, there's a lot that we can do within that to get people
32:35
to really care about the cause by still understanding how
32:39
human, how human nature works. Well, you know, and there's a
32:43
historical evidence that this has always existed.
32:46
Medicine has always existed for vanity reasons and for men.
32:50
So one thing I really like to look at is like, kind of like
32:53
the prehistoric, like idols they made when they'd make little
32:56
stone gods and they'd carve them.
32:58
Well, they're always like, around fertility, either too
33:02
much fertility or not enough fertility, erectile dysfunction,
33:05
losing hair or needy or wanting to lose hair, losing weight or
33:10
gaining weight. Like that's what they were
33:12
thinking about back then. Like their medicine was all the
33:14
same thing. That's important to us, truly.
33:17
You know what I mean? And so and they did the same
33:19
thing. They made products that they put
33:20
in their house. And they're like, OK, I'm
33:22
praying to the fertility God and like, hopefully that will work
33:25
out for me. It's interesting.
33:26
Yeah. For sure.
33:28
For sure. Yeah, I, I think you're exactly
33:30
right. Like there's some, there's some
33:31
wisdom there that like everything, nothing's new.
33:34
It's just an iteration of things that we've known for eons.
33:38
Incredible. I want to pivot to maid really
33:40
quick. Well, I was doing research on
33:43
you and I, I saw some really cool quotes.
33:45
I, I can tell talking to you, you're very open and just like a
33:49
natural person. And I mean that in a way that is
33:52
very conversational. But you said we thought we knew
33:56
the problem to solve. Boy, were we wrong.
33:59
Yeah. Tell me a little bit about that.
34:03
My team this morning, right, like, you know, I think as
34:05
you're building any product, whether it's like a digital
34:09
product or a physical product, you go into it with an
34:11
assumption, right? You say, hey, we think this is
34:15
the problem and we think this is the solution.
34:17
We think this is who's going to care about it.
34:19
And then your job as a founder is to go into the market and
34:24
prove that either right or wrong.
34:26
And, you know, when we were first working on May, we thought
34:29
we understood what the problem was.
34:31
And we found out it was totally different.
34:33
And then, you know, even this morning we had another chat with
34:35
the team. We thought we knew what the
34:37
problem it was and it's totally different.
34:39
And I think that's sort of the, the magic of of and, and like,
34:43
you have to want that, right? The magic of what you're doing
34:47
is thinking about, OK, what's the problem?
34:49
Do I really understand it? Do understand how I'm solving it
34:51
and for whom I'm solving it? And what does it look like
34:53
today? And you know, that's, that's the
34:56
job, but being wrong as a, as a big part of it.
34:59
You know, I was telling you earlier, we rebuilt all these AI
35:02
agents for suppliers, right? So these would be suppliers in
35:06
the US who want to work with brands to build their products.
35:10
This is a notoriously like old fashioned industry.
35:13
And you know, we're, we're building AI agents.
35:17
And so there's a sense of we thought that they would just
35:19
love this. They'd be like, oh, amazing,
35:22
here's a tool that's going to do my job for me.
35:24
We were wrong. Because what we realized is, you
35:28
know, that's very threatening. People are very threatened by
35:32
AI. They're very worried about their
35:33
jobs going away. And so there's a sense of like,
35:36
OK, how do we, how do we understand truly what the
35:39
problem is and help them understand that?
35:41
And so we came up with something clever.
35:43
And I was telling you about this before.
35:45
As we were going into the market talking to suppliers about our
35:47
solution, we realized that we didn't need to position it as
35:50
this is a sales agent that's going to replace or reduce the
35:53
workload of your existing sales agent sales team, right?
35:56
Because that's a, that's technology getting rid of real
35:59
jobs and that's very scary for people.
36:01
O Instead we sort of invented a new job that needed to be done,
36:05
but wasn't, you know, on an org chart anywhere inside a factory.
36:09
And that was a role that we called a customer advocate.
36:12
And so now we position the sale, the AI sales agent as a customer
36:16
advocate that just helps the customer get their questions
36:20
answered and not waste, not waste as much time with the
36:24
sales team. And so this helps people see
36:27
like, oh, this isn't replacing my job.
36:29
This is doing a job that needs to be done that maybe we we
36:33
weren't doing before, and all of a sudden people will embrace
36:36
that as opposed to really avoid it.
36:39
Yeah, this is a really interesting point because we're
36:41
at peak hype bubble for AII think.
36:44
And so you're addressing what a lot of it is, is like people are
36:47
a little bit concerned or or weary or and and it doesn't help
36:50
that like anytime some some tech overlord wants to make
36:54
headlines, they say we're firing everybody and replacing him with
36:57
AI. You know what I mean?
36:58
Well, I I think. I think that's scary.
37:02
And like, you know, efficiency for efficiency's sake sometimes
37:08
doesn't get the world where we want it to be.
37:13
And like, as much as we want to, you know, business exists to
37:16
increase efficiency. There's a human side of what
37:19
we're doing. And if you're not building
37:21
technology with the human element involved, you can have a
37:25
really hard time getting people to adopt your technology right,
37:28
because they're naturally going to be afraid of it.
37:32
Yeah. How How have you financed made?
37:36
We bootstrapped, which I'm really proud of.
37:38
We bootstrapped it and then we did a very small friends and
37:40
family round. We went out to the broader VC
37:44
community in San Francisco earlier this year and then opted
37:47
actually not to take a term sheet, which was, which was fun.
37:50
But I think I'm, I'm happy with the choice so far.
37:55
We'll see. You know, you never know, but
37:57
being able to sort of build more intentionally was, was why we
38:03
did what we wanted to do. And also, I'm not sure if you've
38:06
seen, but like the numbers coming, like the the valuation
38:10
numbers coming out of Silicon Valley for these tech companies
38:13
is insane. Look, you know what it can kill
38:16
a start up getting overvalued too soon, right?
38:19
Because then you can't make enough progress fast enough to
38:22
to validate the valuation that you got.
38:25
And then what do you do, right? I think we're going to see a lot
38:29
of that like seeing billion dollar seed rounds.
38:31
What? I know, I know, I know.
38:36
It's, it's crazy. And I'm sure like living there
38:38
in the Bay, like the temptation to take the devil's money has
38:41
got to be really high. And I say that in jest.
38:43
You know, when it's the right time, it's the right time.
38:46
But. Look, the right partners are the
38:47
right partners, and that's probably my best feed.
38:51
Like my best piece of advice is go slow.
38:55
Know who you're getting in bed with because you guys are
38:57
building a company together. And you know, the word that I
39:00
sort of adopted is the as the guiding light for for this, you
39:05
know, for doing made was enduring, right?
39:07
I want to build an enduring company.
39:09
This is a lasts. This is not a flash in the pan.
39:13
This is not something that's going to come and go tomorrow,
39:15
but it's going to endure. And when you start to use words
39:18
like endure, it's like old fashioned.
39:20
And it kind of makes you think, like, long and boring and, you
39:23
know, but it helps you find the right partners.
39:26
Like, I'm not here to make a fuck.
39:27
We're building an enduring company.
39:29
Yeah. It's also stoic, though.
39:31
You know, it's like, hey, we realize that we're going to take
39:33
some on the chin doing it this way, but we think in the long
39:36
play this is the best way for us to do it.
39:38
That's right. That's right.
39:40
Cool. I'd like to enter the lightning
39:44
round. Are you ready for that?
39:46
Let's do it, OK? OK, let's say you sold made for
39:50
a billion dollars. What's your What's your next
39:51
play? I would keep developing products
39:58
and focus on I, I love products. I would just keep developing
40:01
products. I kind of would just keep doing
40:03
what I'm doing and maybe I just wore better shoes.
40:07
Yeah, like a gold chalice. That's my goal, you know, I want
40:10
a gold, chalice, diamond team. Way right?
40:12
Like, give it all away, yeah. Cool, if you had to design a
40:16
product to to send you to $1,000,000 run rate right now,
40:20
what would it be? It would be a It would actually
40:24
be a beverage brand. No kidding.
40:27
Yeah. What kind of beverage?
40:29
Water. No kidding.
40:32
Yeah, Liquid death. Yeah, actually I'm working on
40:36
this product right now. But yes, that's exactly right.
40:39
I think. I think water is going to be a
40:43
super valuable product. When you look outside the US,
40:48
you see water bottles of nowhere.
40:50
It's actually everything in class.
40:52
I think we're learning more and more about the dangers of
40:54
microplastic. And when you look at the water
40:58
in our in the US, it's almost like 80, 5% in water bottles.
41:02
So I think, I think water is going to be a huge category,
41:06
quality of water and what kind of container it's in. 100% If
41:10
you were entering college today knowing what you know now, what
41:13
would you study? Design.
41:16
Nice, yeah. Cool and history honestly like
41:19
that sounds very very dorky, but learn the past so you can make
41:23
the future. Speaking of that, considering
41:26
everything you know now, what's something that you wish you knew
41:29
earlier? What's the thing I wish I knew?
41:39
I think I, I, I don't know how to use CAD, but I think that's a
41:44
big limiting factor for anyone who's interested in products.
41:47
So learn CAD, it's pretty easy. And I think the ability to take
41:50
a concept in your mind to bring it to life through CAD is really
41:53
great. You know, a lot of people use
41:55
desktop publishing tools like Canva, but I think there's still
41:58
value in understanding like physical products through CAD.
42:02
I totally agree, anytime I shout out to James again I watch him
42:05
in CAD and like he's designing to like a fraction of the 8th of
42:09
an inch. I'm like wow.
42:10
Yeah, yeah. So cool.
42:15
If you could put anything on a billboard in Times Square, what
42:17
would it say? What would it say?
42:23
It would say kindness is free. Love that is there ACEO or
42:31
founder you follow closely. Oh yeah, there's lots actually.
42:36
Which one you want? You want to know which one?
42:38
Any one of them off the top of your head.
42:40
Yeah, Well, I have a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of people
42:43
that I sort of like put my hat on, but or like when I make a
42:47
decision, I think, what would this person do?
42:49
Some of them are not very well known, and they're kind of just
42:52
like locally. Locally, one of my favorite
42:55
people is a guy named Leslie Fine.
42:58
She's at a firm called Enjoy the Work, and she has a PhD in game
43:01
theory. She was early at Salesforce.
43:04
And I think everything that she says and how she approaches the
43:07
world is like the most amazing, amazing, amazing in the world.
43:10
You can go to enjoythework.com and check out all their work.
43:13
I love their philosophy. They're kind of a, they're a
43:15
startup studio, so to speak, with tons of amazing, amazing
43:19
people. But their whole philosophy is,
43:21
if you're going to go on this journey, you might as well enjoy
43:23
the work. And I think that's a really
43:25
powerful reframe to remind yourself as you're building a
43:28
startup, enjoy it so that that's one.
43:33
And then, you know, I've, I'm, when it comes to like the AI
43:36
world, I'm Sam Altman Gurley myself.
43:38
I kind of follow what he does. I think he's interesting.
43:42
I'm not an Elon fan and I'm not a Zuckerberg fan.
43:44
There's a lot of people that are, but I'm kind of more
43:48
interested in what Altman's doing.
43:49
Amazing. As far as like enjoying the
43:53
journey, do you think the founders are particularly prone
43:57
to agonize over the losses more than to celebrate the wins 100?
44:00
Percent. Yeah, 100%, Yeah.
44:02
We're wired that way. Find the problem, solve the
44:04
problem. Yeah, cool.
44:06
If you could live in any historic era except for now or
44:10
the future, when would that be? It's a bright.
44:14
Future, you know, it might be really fun to be in the US just
44:18
post World War 2 when like when we had our industrial might.
44:21
That would be actually really great, yeah.
44:23
Especially for the design, I mean, the cars back down, yeah.
44:26
Actually, the things we were making pretty cool.
44:28
Very cool. Ellis has been amazing.
44:31
I feel like we've only scratched the surface.
44:33
I'm very wary of your time and want to be respectful.
44:36
Where can people find you online?
44:40
OK, if you're interested in my day job, which is made, go to
44:42
use Made dot AI. And if you want to learn more
44:45
and join our beta for the skin care app that predicts
44:48
breakouts, go to sameskincare.com.
44:51
Amazing El. This has been awesome, thank you
44:53
so much. Thank you.
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