Latest / Healthier: Building Health & Fitness Businesses / How AI will change healthcare: where founders should build | Ari Tulla, Elo Health | Healthier Ep 13

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How AI will change healthcare: where founders should build | Ari Tulla, Elo Health | Healthier Ep 13 · Healthier: Building Health & Fitness Businesses

• ari final audio: They are saying that we must sow people, all of us. Why is AI good for the humanity? Why is it good for the society? And today they have been saying mainly, we're gonna lose our jobs. We may have a super intelligence taking over humanity, even you know, killing all of us. That that's not a very good sales pit. This episode with Ari Tulla is probably my favorite conversation that we've recorded on Healthier. Ari is exactly the type person that we admire. He's a builder. An investor. He makes a huge things happen in the healthcare space in particular. But really across his career, he's been a real innovator and an entrepreneur that a lot of us can learn from. Ari has a thesis that healthcare is the most impactful place for AI to play over the next five years, and he's building there. With LO Health, he's taken an idea that he's been obsessed with for over 20 years that food is medicine, and he's built a business that is now profitable and growing. We talk about why and how to be stubborn on the vision. flexible on the details. I don't believe in work life balance in a way that you need to have like separated areas. You can't do that if you're the founder, if you're the CEO. You have to be on when you're on and then if you don't like it then you need to leave. We talk about angel investing over 15 years. Ari has invested in some really important companies including Aura. If I invest in a company and you know it doesn't matter if they fail. I'm not gonna be angry if they lose my money. And it doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. But I'm only for this to to learn, meet interesting people and to become better at running my own company. And we talk about what it's all about, what living a full life means, how to make it happen, his personal operating system that means he can be high performance at work whilst living a big family life. Sometimes you can't avoid that, you know, the work will take a lot. If you want to succeed, sometimes you have to go hardcore. This is an awesome episode. I think you'll really love it. Stick with it. It's Ari on Healthier. Hello and welcome back to the Healthier podcast. I am thrilled today to be joined by Ari Tula. Ari is an incredible builder in the health space who has been there at some amazing moments in the last couple of decades and is now in the supplement space as well as a prolific ancient investor and advisor to lots of amazing companies. So welcome, Ari. I'm I'm so excited to to have you here. Do you want to give a quick introduction to yourself and then we can dig into the meat of what people can learn from your story? Yeah, thank you, Will. great to be here. Thanks for for inviting and So yeah, I've been I'm from Finland originally, that's why I speak a bit funny. And spent five weeks there in the rainy weather, but you know, it was it was great to meet people again. I I started in in tech very early, so I don't think I'm like a healthcare guy still. I've been working healthcare now for over fifteen years, but I still by heart I'm I'm I'm a techie a nerd who loves to build things. And I'm so amored that you know my my kids are turning the same way and you know they they are building up their everyday stuff and and it's just the really the best. but yeah I I I focused first a long time in in gaming. So I I was like many people in the nineties, you got really addicted on games and I I spent you know ten years playing games like almost professionally, ten hours a day, and then I was lucky enough to be able to work on games business for Another ten years, super fun at the time, and you know, what could be a better dream job for young geek when you know building mobile games, the first games? I mean, that was like amazing. And but then I moved the US two thousand and eight to Silicon Valley and just think about the timing we had here at the moment, at that time, you know, iPhone was coming out, Google and cloud and mobile, all these things happened and all this Blaith Rora startups we know now. you know, the Airbnbs, the Ubers and others, they were kind of founded. And I got totally addicted that, you know, this is cool. so I want to start building companies myself. And 2010 I I started to build healthcare companies and and it was a very personal reason to do it because we had family health issues and I wanted to do something different. And but I think like the maybe the pivotal moment for me why I do what I do is that I I went to college late late nineties and first week I met my my roommates and and they were starting a company, a startup. We didn't know to call them startups. There was no funding or anything, but you know, they were building a a company to build websites for bigger companies. The first websites ever for them. And I I saw them in the beginning and and that was really kind of the beginning. You see when you are like 19 or whatever, you were able to kind of do stuff that nobody else knew about. And that was a great moment for me. That's amazing. And at this point, how would you describe where you are in your career, where your focus is? I I'm I'm a builder. I have been a CEO for for a long time. like us a founder CEO. so I'm I'm looking now I think more like where can I have the most impact and and I really like to impact things that are in the health realm. I'm also looking outside quite a bit nowadays, but you know, health has been kind of the area that I really care a lot about. so I'm a builder, I'm I'm a I'm a father. I'm I'm also husband and and I try to be an athlete on a on a good days without time. Amazing. you're all about impact that you can have and you've spent a lot of time in the health space. You're also very up to date with kind of what's possible and what will be possible in the near future. If you were a super bright person, with maybe some technical skills and with some real ambition, where do you think that you could spend your time to have the most impact on people's health? now and into the the next few years? Well I'm I'm thinking about it myself right now because I'm a little bit in this moment when, you know, my my current company is is doing okay, you know, we are we're profitable and and it's gonna go in the right direction. And of course I'm as everybody is looking at the the AI and how the AI will impact every field and what is gonna be my role, what can I do there? And I think if you and I don't think you need to be technical in a perspective, you need you don't need to have a technical degree. You don't need to be able to code C plus plus like back in the days. Don't worry about that. But you should be able to be fearless and fearless in using these new tools. And I tell everybody when young people ask me about that, I'm like, just go full like spend ten, fifteen hours a day doing stuff with the new tools. And you're gonna become better than anyone else. And that was the thing we we had at when I was nineteen and we were building websites. Like nobody else knew how to do them. We didn't know how to do them. But you know, we spent 15 hours a day and we learned. so it's just about that like go go full on. Don't do anything like, you know, half hearted, like learn a bit, but like put all the tips on table, go full in and you know, pick Claude, you know, pick whatever tool you want or you know cursor and just start building stuff and you're gonna learn it's not that difficult. And then in healthcare I think the the the opportunity in my opinion I may I may be wrong but I'm thinking that the the and if you if you look what you know Sam Altman, what Dario and other people are saying today, they are saying that we must show people, all of us, why is AI good for the humanity? Why is it good for the society? And today They have been saying mainly, we're gonna lose our jobs. We may have a super intelligence taking over humanity, even you know, killing all of us. That that that's not a very good sales bits. So now they all understand that we may we're maybe a bit too doom, doomy type of people. And now they're saying we need to show something good, and I think they all understood in the last year that healthcare will be the area where we all can benefit of this. Not not just few, but everybody. So I believe that, you know, AI connected to healthcare behavior change, just betterment of, you know, treatments, that is an area that will be maybe the most impactful, no maybe not the biggest business immediately, but the most impactful arena of AI in the next five years. Amazing. And a particular subsets of that area that have your attention for further investigation or y you kind of equally as excited about things like behaviour change or delivery or prevention or no no very specific like I'm I mean what what what is the LLMs and and AI is a broad concept and we are not talking a lot about robots and stuff like that today in the media but they are coming. But today the LLMs are really good at taking a complicated set of data, let's say a lot of numbers and a lot of, you know, unstructured things and they can make that into a structure. They can find meaning into it. Not always correct, but they can find meaning. So what I what I why I say that is that if you think about healthcare today, what happens when you go to doctor's office? The doctor will they will measure you, your height, weight, they will ask you if you smoke, they will give you a couple, you know, other questions. And then they take, you know, blood pressure. Maybe they do a blood panel. That's what they do. What is that about? It's collecting data. Collecting data. And and they don't They never really look at the long longitudinal view. They don't have that. They they're like one snapshot and then something's bad, then they may do something. But if you think about now what we can do with AI is that we can take all that basic healthcare knowledge that is about, you know, the weight, height, biomarkers, whatever it is, maybe medical record, what was done before, what are your issues. Now we can take that data, we can combine it with DNA, epigenetics, wearable biomarkers. And that is something that I'm I'm pretty smart. I'm I've been looking at this stuff for a long time. You give me that data, I have no idea what to do, what to make out of it. It's very difficult. But I throw it to you know the latest models today and they will tell me a lot that nobody knew. So that is the kind of the unlock. any any healthcare interaction or any healthcare problem that you know is data related, once you can collect the data. And once you can get the population level, like let's say a million people together, I think you can find amazing things. So that is the current opportunity that a lot of people are working on. And that's why you see companies spending huge amount of money on acquisition, like you know, function health doing plot tests or aura collecting peop giving people, you know, or giving selling people rings. Many of co companies are making loss so they can collect the data and they believe that in once I have millions of people's data, I can create an AI model and I can do something way better. So that is a kind of the bet that a lot of investors are making today. And but yeah, healthcare. Healthcare's broad, but think about the the one aspect of, you know, data, where can you turn that into meaning? And then can you turn that that meaning into a coaching layer and helping people to get better? Amazing. I've I've my my own journey with that has been that I have a chronic unknown thing going on with my respiratory system. And I've spent years trying to track down what it is. And the last couple of anthropic models have have and plus giving them a lot of data and I'm quite comfortable kind of doing that in the right ways and asking them what more data they want. And I've I've got to a situation where I had Claude kind of say, right, I want an air monitor, this specific air monitor in this room, and then it's like, okay, and this is what's beneath that room. So I I want you to go and get this other air monitor, a different one, and pop that in that room. And then I'm going to cross-reference that with the weather and the outdoor pressure and the outdoor humidity. And then we're going to do a symptom log. and then over the course of a couple of weeks, it's managed to give me, I mean, we've been doing I've been doing this for months, but specifically this kind of breakthrough where that data has then been combined with the aura, has then been combined with the the eight sleep, has then been combined with kind of everything, plus my felt like my my kind of feelings of of symptoms and things. It's got all of that access to the it's and it's and it's suggesting things that very expensive private specialists have have not got to because with the best wood in the world, they've not been able to get access to all of the different things and then kind of bring them all together. So yeah, that, but on a much more general basis is is is an exciting thing as a consumer and as a builder, I think. But what do you say there is I think a really key point because I was talking about more on on the macro level, but think What what what you described is I think maybe more difficult to build as if you built a new system or new tool or new company to do what you did. But that that's the whole thing here. Like in the end I think we will have basically a medical team end of one for you only. And many of us I think we have followed, you know, the Bryant Johnson's don't die movement and exploration and I mean a lot of people are laughing at what he's doing but I'm applauding the idea that somebody's putting themselves out there and they are inspiring you and me and millions of people, I think, to do these NO One experiments. Of course, they can be messy. I mean you you can do it because you know you are pretty you know, you've you you you put the time and you maybe you have the talent to do it, but it's not that easy yet to do NO one and you can do NO one and you can get to a silly place where you can take these peptides and then you cause cancer on your body later. So you can do silly stuff, but I think that is a really key. Like think about in the future, we will have these platforms that you can kinda have the inner one experience and then you have like a team of people coaching you who are AIs and agents and that will be completely game changer. Because we are not that unique, but we have these unique things that, you know, are very difficult to understand and the healthcare system today, there's no way they could do what you did ever. Yeah. Out of interest, if you look five or ten years, I don't know how long you think it will take us to get to that point where we have that, that available to us as consumers. Would you bet that the person the the organization providing that to us is one of the big model players, an existing health player or a startup that we don't know of? yeah, that's I think the the the one of the maybe fundamental questions that I'd be asking myself and a lot of people and, you know, when you when you invest, I mean of course you it's cool to invest in companies that, you know, turn into something, but you know, it would be even cooler to invest in companies that turn into be the you know the next big Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then th and and now we have seen that, you know, AI has now and will be minting, you know, like I don't know, dozens of billionaires like where I live here in San Francisco, anthropic open AI and and just the impact that those people will have in the future when they're gonna deploy that money. They're not gonna buy houses. Now you can't buy billion like ten billion dollars worth of houses. You're gonna invest the money to other people. So they will become these supernotes that are gonna then build a lot of companies. But I I don't think the the it will be the existing kind of the government NHS in UK or the the big help plans like United Healthcare in the US, I don't think they will be the ones. I don't think they will be the hospitals. they could well be and I think you know Google and Apple and those companies, Amazon are in the best position today to become the health leaders. But also a a lot of people are are saying what you said that you know it could also be the model companies because like when you When these people are not gonna go they're gonna go public, they're gonna become the wealthiest people in on earth. And they are pretty young. And I think they are all gonna look in a mirror. They all have, you know, kids, they all are young kids, they're gonna think about longevity, they're gonna think about what is my contribution to the world. Of course, great that we are building these tools, but you know, they often gravitate to healthcare. And you know, Cook at Apple, he said many times that you know, he's legacy at Apple should be the healthcare. I don't think that happened, but you know, that was any what he said many times. And I I think, you know, it's very difficult to be an incumbent now and try to compete because it's just I don't think it's possible even. So I maybe it will be the model companies that are gonna provide healthcare. And what it will look like, I mean, I don't know. Different and it will happen in ten years. I mean, yeah, no question. I mean, the world will be so different. Like I I often and I was in in Finland, you know, talking to my my parents and I really loved the the discussion with my dad because you know he was born in a very, very small town, you know, few people, or not even a town, but Hamlet maybe, and and he had no electric power for the first few years of his life. I mean he doesn't remember it, it's small, but you know, think about they had like oil lamps in the home. He didn't see a car or TV before he was maybe like, you know, six, seven, ten years old. And I mean just thinking about that. And then, you know, he became you know, a very technically savvy person, built very cool things, you know, he's blogging actively now, one of the top blocks in his field in Finland at 75. But you know, he he started from the place with no power. And electric power is such a fundamental thing. And now I I talked to him about it. we went to Sona, I had a long discussion about this. And like, what happens to you know, my kids? And we both agree that, you know, the change that they will have will be more fundamental in the next forty, fifty years. And think about how how you go back into a gabby and you go hiking somewhere in a in the woods and you have no power, you're like, how do I even how do I even behave? How do I even live? And but that that that's the kind of the standard that we need to think about because the and the and the pace of change now is so much more rapid than it has ever been before. And I think we need to just like hold on to the rails and and ends of the ride and and be open minded about it. Or get build get get building a part of the roller coaster. Exactly, yeah. so there's a few threads that I wanted to put on. so you you build companies, you invest, I've I've obviously seen you from the outside. You seem to live a a full and varied life whilst doing those two things. So the three threads that I would love to put on as we talk about building and kind of building a great life and and building great companies is number one, building companies. Number two, your your kind of personal operating system, how you go about managing and and and building such a kind of what I would call maybe like a big life. and then pattern spotting. So you've made various bets in your career. I'm sure there's been some that haven't paid off, but the the C V of ones that have paid off i it is pretty pretty impressive. So number one, Let's start off with with Allo, your your supplement company at the moment, which started in as I understand it, in a different place to to where it is now. And you mentioned now it's it's profitable, it's growing, it's doing great stuff, but along the way you've kind of pivoted. Would you would you be able to kind of tell a little bit around that story and how you made decisions along the way and if there were any kind of big pivot points and anything that might be useful for people to learn from that? It's often much more interesting to talk about the the why than the the the what. Because in the what you can read on on on the on LinkedIn or wherever and people often put like a good good you know word around and like make it look rosy. but the why is often more important and I talk about the why a lot when I meet you know entrepreneurs or people who want to be entrepreneurs or people who want to work for me for example. Like why wouldn't why why wouldn't there's million options. Why would you do something here or why would you like to do this or whatever. So for LO for me I had had this idea for twenty years in my head that, you know, food is medicine. And that, you know, healthcare system is basically revolving around this idea that, like I already kinda said a bit, that, you know, when you test something and something is in the red, then we're gonna put you in a medication, we're gonna do a treatment. And healthcare system is really good if you end up in a car crash, they can patch you together, you fall in a cliffs and they're gonna put you together. They're really good at that. you amazing. Or if you have like some real issue like you know cancer, we are getting quite good at, you know, giving you at least more life after the tr the the first, you know, discovery. So for me, it was more about this that okay, like that's that's done. But why don't we focus on keeping people out of the hospital, out of the doctor office by helping them before they get sick? Could we analyze your body and say that you have three things on on yellow They will be read in 10 years. But you can do A, D, and C to not let that happen. You can turn them back on free. And then you don't need to go to the doctor. Nobody wants to go to the doctor, get the treatments in there. But the doctors don't have any way of today helping you on those topics because you know they make money by doing another procedure or prescribing another drug. That's how the whole system works. The incentives are completely misaligned. And I didn't want to build like a health drug. company. I wanted to build a a company that could focus on one thing that I understood quite well, which is which is food and nutrition. And we all know that, you know, if you eat the good food, you're gonna be a lot healthier. if you eat the bad food, you're gonna, you know, gain weight. Not only the food of course, you know, stress, lack of movement, all those things impact as well. but that was the kind of the thesis behind Eloh. And and I was like, what if we built a system that, you know, could turn food into medicine? And it's the that's the Hippocratic, you know, I know whoever said it that, you know, food as is Thai medicine, that was like, you know, three thousand year old sentence. Not not the tweet because we don't know if it's real, but you know, maybe over time it changed. But the idea makes sense. So how do we build then something that, you know, could work? And this was like, you know, six years ago when we started to incubate it. We had a really pretty interesting team when we started this. And we looked at a lot of different things and the first idea we had was, okay, we need to collect some data from our body. So we decided we need to do blood work to understand what's going on. We can connect to the Apple Health. That was really interesting, you know, at the time. Like you could, you know, upload your health or download your health record there. And then you could also connect your wearable device, like, you the Aura Ring to Apple Watson or whatever. And then we think of like, hey, could we take that data and analyze it and then find meaning and find things we can then do to people? so that was the beginning. And then the treatment was supposed to be in the beginning, kind of guiding you to eat the right food. Think about like opening a DoorDash app and then downloading your you know, or or buying the right food for you, sewing all of the menu items that are good for you, you know, going to restaurant, having like a gated experience where the the app will give you the right meal items at the restaurant. And and that was the kind of beginning. And then over time, you know, we were trying to kind of you know do this and it was a lot more difficult than we expected. And we kind of failed, you know, multiple things that we were trying to do. And we we didn't really get the traction from people. People didn't want to do the finger pricking of the of the fingers. People have hard time doing these things. So there's a lot of these kind of challenges that you know we did not anticipate. And over time, as often happens in companies when you build it, you start from this big vision and then you narrow it down. And now we narrow it down like really narrow. And and then something worked. But that's it. That's how it always goes. That you know, if you have time and you have dedicated people building stuff, you're gonna always find something that works. Because the world is a big, there's a big market out there. but it was a really complicated story. And I've been building it you a few times before. And LOP has been probably the most difficult one so far. Because I think you know we talked about before, but you know, the the consumer marketing consumer adoption is super super difficult. There's nothing easy about it. Like getting the CAC LTV right is maybe the most difficult thing today. And there's no easy distribution hack that you can turn on like there may have been, you know. Ten years ago, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago. And we we couldn't ride any wave. And and of course, you know, like it's interesting to talk about this because now I I looked at, you know, a lot of companies who are doing it today. Like you have the function health, you have the NECO, you have many of these companies who who are who are doing it differently, and they really are getting a huge traction. So we maybe started just, you know, a couple of years too early with Eloh and it wasn't a thing, and now it's becoming a thing. And that's a part of my my life as a s I mean, I have a stack of surfers over there and I love surfing. And you know, if you go out, like today if you go out, there's a you know, half of it swell, not gonna be a good good, you know, luck to get any waves. But if there's an eight foot swell, you're gonna get a wave. So I was kinda building it. We were going to market when there was no it was flat. There was no swell. There was no wave to ride. And now the waves have been kind of accumulating. but that's and that's something you can't you can you c nothing you can do about. I can't fabricate a a trend or a new swell. I can't do that. It happens. And then it's just about luck. Are you feeling the right time? Of course you also analyze, but I analyzed and I I thought the way will come and it didn't come in the right time for us. Hey, we'll hear from the future. If you've enjoyed this episode or you're enjoying it so far, then you will love our note. The note is a weekly email that we send out, which includes our learnings and playbooks from the people we're speaking to. Includes any invites to future events as we're building healthier, the place for founders in health, fitness and well-being. And it includes any new episodes. So go to healthierco.com and sign up and we'll see you there. Absolutely. Do you with the current iteration of Elo, do you feel like you are riding a wave and was that intentional? Or yeah. We we kinda ended up doing supplements because we the food was too difficult. Like remember back in COVID the food price went f off the roof and inflation like was rampart and and food delivery overall got to kinda out of hand that you know you have to pay like twenty to tw twenty five dollars for a meal in the US to deliver your people's homes. And that's just too expensive for for most people. You know, s one percent can do it, but the rest they're not gonna do it all the time, every day. So the food part was just too hard to do and we couldn't go there. And that was a big, you know, issue because I that was a company I wanted to build, and then we're like, what else can we do? So we looked at, you know, different things and supplements were an area where you can do products that last in the in the self for about a year. they are easy to send to people and and they do have a high margin overall. So we ended up doing supplements and we we had this idea that, you know, you can take a blood work, let's say your vitamin D is low, we give you vitamin D, we measure again it goes up. Easy, right? And and that was really powerful for people, but but then it wasn't enough as a game. And you I built games for a long time. So when you build a game, there has to be an excitement, there has to be thrill. But it wasn't a very exciting game when you have one move every quarter or one move every six months. Too slow and people get bored. And we took then away the blood testing and we said, what if we just we got really quite good at building supplement products? We're like, why don't we build this in in different verticals? And we tested few. And the the second one we tested was in fertility. And I knew a lot about it because you know, our kids are made with IVF and we we spent decades of trying to have a baby. It was really, really hard. And when you are in that position, you will do anything. And you don't know. So we wanted to build like a better system for that specific market. And I have done, you know, business development, I done big deals in healthcare for a long time. So I was able to go to talk to people, the right people, and fairly quickly we had a really interesting deal together. with our partners in the in the clinic side. And then you pair up, you know, our expertise on the nutrition side, on tech side, and then you pair up with the doctors. And that is something that, you know, we almost like world it to the market. Because you know, if the doctors believe in something, they design the products and then the doctors are recommending. They're not prescribing. But when they recommend to people, of course you're gonna listen. And in this market where you know people want to get pregnant, they want to go IVF, it it really worked well. So but that was more like a it's almost like first principles like What is the most likely market that would work? And we picked the one that is the most that's the top of the pyramid. There are maybe a couple other ones that are as good, but there's not like ten markets that are as as good as this one. and of course very difficult to do because you had to get the the buy-in from the healthcare systems and the doctors. So that's always very, very difficult to do. And we are one of the few people who have, I think, ever done that in this way anywhere, in in nutrition. Is there a secret to that? Is it is it pure like quality of product? Is it is it efficacy? Is it something about your trustworthiness? Is it how you communicate? Is it yeah? Any deal making is is about being in the right place at the right time and you need a lot of luck because if if I'm selling something let's say like I can sell a product to you, that's not that hard. But I can't go to a big enterprise and tell them that, hey, now you need to do something like this. We have a good solution for you. I can do that and they will that's cool. They're gonna note down, they're gonna talk about it. But they have to have an idea. Like you know this, like if if you are talking to your, you know, spouse about, you know, going to holiday, you know, we don't want to go climbing in in Alaska. Maybe not my wife's favorite thing. So I need to make that to be like her idea, not my idea. Otherwise we're not gonna go to Alaska. So same thing when you do PD and you sell this BD and enterprise deals, it has to be their idea. And in this case, the timing happened to be perfect. They were looking for a better solution. And we had a good mousetrap in our pocket. So it was a timing, timing thing. But I don't think like often people say, like the best salespeople, they always they're very humble about it. And they say that it is just about, you know, talking to more people than others or being consultative, listening to people more than you talk yourself. And the young salespeople they they talk all the time and then you're like, like, can I can I sat down to that? Can I put the d phone down already. So that is I think a very interesting point that you know people often don't understand. but that is such a key piece of of a startup because I know as a CEO, as a founder, my job is to tell people what we want to do, find right people to work with to build make it happen. And then find customers and you know so my job is almost completely selling. I'm selling to myself, telling my team Selling what we should do, selling to new employees, selling to investors, selling to the customers. Such a good point. Totally. If you don't believe if I don't believe in something, I can't sell to anyone. I mean, I have to first make me believe. And I spent twelve years running a enterprise tech company and that point on luck is a good one, right? So so you can cre you can you can increase your surface area of luck. You can speak to more people. You can think thoughtfully about the types of people that are likely to have this pre existing problem that you can bump into. But I always like the framing of Salesforce. I don't know, they probably don't still do it, but they used to say their first call was like the A WAF call, the Are We a fit and it's it's it's Just asking questions and trying to understand, do you have the pain that I'm super confident I totally believe that I can solve? And we when we were selling into enterprises in the UK, we were we're we're lucky here in that you can just read people's annual reports. And so we would we would read annual reports and we would be looking for and they would state these are our top three priorities for the year. And we'd want to be bumping into one of those three or have a hunch that one of something new has happened since they published that or something kind of that they're less interested in talking about publicly is important to them. Because if you go into if you've got a thing that's gonna really help with let's say really help with revenue to a company and their top three things that they're dealing with are massively rising costs, reputational damage and something to do with safety, it's just not interesting. You have to bump into the things that that they already care about. I think you we talk about AI briefly about and healthcare. but there's a massive, massive opportunity of using AI and and data sets that you can now acquire to produce your luck. And like you said well, like increasing the surface area, that is a thing you can do. And if you take the the Y combinator, Y C now and you look at the at the success of the many of the companies now in the last two years, there's been unbelievable growth of revenue that is unprecedented early on. And you're like, why? Like why why it happened? And a lot of people don't talk about it. But there was a one reason, for example, that the B2B companies that are using the same playbook that was developed by a couple of the previous YC companies. Basically you can build a a list so they give you the access to a lot of people. They built the right list for you and then you use AI to outreach and do exactly what you said. Not outreach like cold calling to people and saying like How are doing? But cold calling people after you have read all these different details, what they need, and make a very, very poignant first message. And then, you know, not every one of them will respond. But if you get three times more people to respond, then you increase your surface level by three times and then you are growing three times faster. That's what people are doing. And and that's like the secret thing that you know, YC did that they don't really talk about I think there's some public stuff, but you know It's been a like a playbook that really made a huge difference and we are doing that now as well in everything we can because if you can talk to more customers, you can talk get more feedback and you can use AI to send the first message that is very tailored to you will be a big, big, big difference. If you can keep that quality high, it's hugely beneficial. The challenge comes when people listen to what you've just said and forget and don't pay enough attention to the piece on it being super tailored and and high quality. I wanna I want to switch over to some of the investing that you've done and times when you've put not been in totally entrepreneurial positions. So you've been brought in a CEO, for example, you've brought been brought into large corporations to lead to lead whole areas and departments. So there's there'll have been a lot of occasions, fifty ancient fifty or so ancient investments, these types of jobs, when you've had to make a call on whether you believe in the opportunity that someone is pitching you. So when the shoe's on the other foot and the CEO is pitching you this amazing opportunity for your career or for your capital. I'd love to talk a little bit on how you spot or how you increase your chances of spotting a winner. Any themes that you've noticed, any decision frameworks that you use. Is this all gut and hunch? Is it is it something else? Yeah, I I think there's two things here like two different tracks. One is that, you know, kind of you know, deploying money and why do you do that? Why do you invest, you know, if you're not a fund? Why do you spend the time? Let's talk about that second. First, talk about like how do you drive your own carrier and and your own life because you know work is such a big part. I don't believe in like, you know, work life balance in a way that you need to have like the two different separated areas. You c you can't do that if you're the founder, if you're the CEO. You you have to be on when you're on and then If you don't like it, then you need to leave. So for me it's all about is this something that, you know, I would be willing to spend the next ten years? That's the first question I always do because I have done this now enough that you know I know it will take freaking long. You know, I spent almost decade on one company, which is a long time. and longer than longer than the pitch as well. Longer than longer than you're being pitched it'll take. Totally. And you know, you're you're living like ninety years old, hundred if you get lucky, you know, that's ten percent of your life be spent on one thing. Don't make that decision hastily. So anyway, I think I would always go back into the beginning and and and ask myself like am I thoughtful? And and it's so interesting because if you think about a life decision that everybody has that are impactful, how many are there? I mean the most important of course is maybe where do you where did you born? You can't really control that. That's out of your reach. Who are your parents? That's pretty important. who are your friends as kid? That's very important. None of those are really in your control too much because they are like a where did you luck? Like you roll the dice and you are in Mozambique or you are in in Kenya or you are in Helsinki or San Francisco, whatever. That's a crapsuit. But then you have to think about your own decisions. Where do you go study? That is something that you can have an influence. Very impactful. where? Where do you go study? Where do move first? And then who do you mate with? Who who's gonna be your spouse? Like those are the three decisions that are the most important ones. And I did those in in like in six months, not thinking at all. I mean, that that's funny, like you know, when you go back and you look at your life and and those are the most impactful things that you know you ever decided, and they basically built the trajectory for the rest of your life. And you didn't think about them. And you know, I don't think, you know, eighteen, nineteen, twenty year old when you make those decisions you're gonna really have that capability or the foresight. You go with a luck more. And that's how we kinda behave. We are we are often opportunistic, taking the chance. And I have said yes to a lot of things. And now I say no to most of things today because I I I just don't have the bandwidth anymore and I maybe understand my limitations. I need to guard my own life as well. But by saying yes for maybe fifteen, twenty years and everything, I had really amazing opportunities. But I didn't have like a plan what to do. And of course, you know, today I have a I have a I have a kind of plan. but it really boils down today mainly to people. Like are these people that I wanna work with for the next ten years? Because those become kinda close people you have and and and I I you know that I have a very unique relationship with my my co founder. So Tapio Tolmanen and I we we met at Nokia two thousand tens earlier even and then we started to build companies and we now build three companies together back to back to back. know, it's been seventeen years together every day. And and I mean we are kinda like, you know, married almost as much as our spouses. And and you know, how cool is that that you have somebody you can trust, you can talk all the, you know, creeps that you have. We are hundred percent open. We have we haven't fought once in seventeen years. I have fought with my wife many, many more times. But you know, that has been the most kind of valuable thing for me. Like great to build these things, but to build it with somebody that you know you really care about and you you come along well and you are friends with. So that's been a really valuable. So I think the the the work you do is important, but you know, I think the people you do it with is probably more important than anything else. Was there was it a gut decision with your co founder? Or were looking back, were there things that made you more confident that they would be the right person to go on this journey with? I we talked to you know there's a few other people than we we discussed, you and and But it was more like, you know, we had work together, not directly together, but every week we kinda spent some time together at at Nokia. And and we come along well. We have a very complementary skill set. I'm more the kind of the the the productizer sales type and outgoing type and he's really a great builder, one of the world class builders and and he loves to build things more than almost anyone I know. so that's been a good match. Later we actually did like an assessment. We we listed like a hundred questions together and we did that like Like on the second company or third company. And that was fun because we we then you know were able to talk about it aligned a bit better. but then I think you know when when you you think about this, it's very difficult to be like this balance between opportunism and then like planning. I mean, it's very difficult to do because you know the best things often happen by luck. Like the the example is this like you go to conference. or you go to like there's a like a you know, event. You go to place where there's hundred twenty people in a room and you go there, you don't know anyone. Wha what are you gonna do? Like are you gonna go there? Do you have like a you're gonna go look for who are there? you're gonna plan to meet a person. You're gonna often fail if you do that. Maybe you pick like a one person you're gonna say hi and spend like a minute together or maybe like exchange thoughts or whatever. But often when you go there, you say, I'm gonna go there like early, maybe a 7 p.m. they start. I'm gonna spend the two hours. I'm gonna connect with six people and talk with them, let's say ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, and then I'm gonna go. And even if I didn't get any value beyond that, I'm gonna be happy about that and I achieved what I wanted to do. And then you actually go there and you don't have like this repressor to do something. And you go talk with people and then randomly you you meet somebody that you know is very interesting and then it leads some somewhere else. So that to me is like the the serendipity. And life is so much more fun when it is surprising. Life like a planned life can be very, very boring. so I I I I'm I always err now more on d still to the to the serendipity than on the plan. A hundred percent. Funny story, that's how I met my wife. I was at a conference in Paris and was ready to go home and I like, No, let's give it another let's give it another half hour, another hour at these at these kind of after after the main bit of drinks and and See there's another interesting great sound here can can can can happen. Let's talk a little bit around those th those angel investments. Is there any anything you feel like you've got right, that you've got wrong, that you've I you've you've angel invested in some incredible companies. yeah, is it d do you feel like you have any particular learnings in in that space that you might be able to know? Yeah, so first is is why you do it. And I I mean we didn't have a lot of money when we when we started to doing the first ones, like fifteen, fourteen years ago. we we decided to kinda, you know, sell some stuff and you know, we had million bucks that you know was money that we didn't need to put somewhere immediately. And we did this like, you know, ten, twenty, twenty five gate checks to some companies and the the reason why they do it was that I was pretty I was a CEO founder of a company and I wanted to really learn more about other areas that I did not focus at that time. So I want to understand more broadly about healthcare, for example. And for me, investing in a company early, like very really early, is meaning that you're gonna meet the founder or the founding team. you get to know them. And and then you are not it's not meaningful that you give them, you know, ten, twenty K. It doesn't matter if they need to raise like five million. so money doesn't really matter. But the fact that, you know, you can maybe be helpful, maybe you can be like a person that they can then call if they have a problem. Because I I mean, if I invest in a company and, you know, It doesn't matter if they fail. I I'm not gonna be angry if they lose my money. I mean it doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. But I'm only for this to to learn, meet interesting people and and to become better at running my own companies. Because there's case when you know these companies then, you know, they it's very hard in the beginning often. Like and they have a board, they have big investors who they are kinda fearful. So they call me and I'm like a peer and we can talk about it. And I've done this, I don't know, with twenty, thirty companies that, you know, we had like this fundamental things that we're gonna die tomorrow. Like what the fuck do we do? And I've been there and and they didn't even tell the board or the inve the big investors because they if they talk to them, then they're like, they're gonna fire me as a CEO. They're gonna let us go. They're gonna take over the company. And and that has been the most fun aspect of this. And I I had no idea that you know you could make money by doing this. Because that the cycle is so long that you invest in a company 10 years ago, it may not go public or it may not be sold in 15 years. So kind of hard to invest in a company where you can never get the money out. You have to put the money in. but I would say every every, you know, entrepreneur, I would recommend them to set out like thirty thousand dollars of money and invest five thousand in in like a few companies, maybe ten companies, five companies, and just do it and see, you know, what the benefit is because then you are building a muscle that you don't have. And you also start to think about more financing, you understand more like the cap table better when you're an investor. It's just and if you put money into anything, like this whole idea that I'm gonna tell all my friends that, you know, I'm gonna I try to lose ten pounds, or I'm gonna put money into a there's a website you can put money like if I smoke again, the money will go. Like if you put money on anything or you bet in a game, like you know, the the World Cup final, you bet on Argentina, you put hundred thousand bucks. I bet you're gonna like the game more maybe not the outcome, but you're gonna be more excited to watch the game if you put some money into it. So those are kind of the the ideas that you know I I really believe in. Just like we started to invest, we put money in people that we knew. you know, a lot of you know friends and you know people that we knew. And and we realized then maybe five years later, after doing twenty thing, twenty, thirty tickets, that we actually invested many companies, many people who have starting the second or third company. And we looked at the data. with my wife and like a lot of those companies did really well. And and then there was a book that came out called Super Founders. And we had accidentally deployed the Super Founder playbook, which is that so Super Founder is a book that analyzed the whole cohort of companies in ten years. I don't know, a hundred thousand companies. And they realized that it didn't matter if you are from Harvard or Stanford or you are in Silicon Valley or wherever you are. But what mattered is that you built something before and then you build it second or third time, you are more likely to succeed. That makes sense because you have some pattern recognition And you also are willing to do it again. Most people are not. And very few people like myself, like few people are doing it fourth time. Not that's not very smart. It's crazy. You are masochist in a way. Or you love it as a game. so investing people who already have done it before. And now we kinda look at it in a way we have a one area er any given year, we're gonna invest few few tickets, and then we're gonna try to look for companies there and we get leads from funds we are investors or friends we are you know talking to. so we don't have like a public presence. I don't get thousand decks. I'm just following when other people are telling me something interesting. Then I meet the people maybe once and I invest some same day. I don't ask if they have ever got the money before. I'm often the first money in ever for the company. Amazing. And your the way you've just talked about angel investing is really like I am where you were there. So I'm a I'm very tiny angel in hello, as you know. And that's been my experience. Like and I I feel like I am hungry to be ten times as helpful as people that put ten times as much money in. and so hopefully it's a symbiotic relationship. So hopefully you're right. Like my small check is not going to make a difference to the to the future of your your organization. But like is there a way for me to then be helpful and and the learning that you get for them building your own stuff is is just yeah absolutely awesome. This has been so helpful. I'd love to cover one more part here. And I think as anyone who's listened to the the last thirty, forty minutes we'll have seen. You're you're a very thoughtful person who's managing to achieve whilst living a this this rounded full life, in my opinion. is there anything that you do have you been thoughtful in how you go about living your life? Have you been thoughtful in maybe the way in which you've constructed it, the way in which you've thought about family, integrating with integrating with work, integrating with hobbies, I that you do some pretty amazing athletic feats. Is there is there anything to share there? It sometimes you can't avoid that, you know, the work will take a lot. If you want to succeed, sometimes you have to go hardcore and and then because if if you are leading people or you're leading anything, you have to be the example. If you are not doing the work, why would anyone else do it? That's the principle that I I believe. But then at the same time you have other factions of life. And for me, of course, you know, family is very, very important, you know, when you have kids, you know, that changes your priorities a lot. And and you know, these are like they are your responsibility. You need to lead this flock that you have now and you have to make the best out of it. And you know, of course, you know, that's very, very important for us as as you know humans. The second one, a third one, feel like an athlete. I'm I'm almost fifty, but you know, I love to still do stuff and and try to, you know, live a long good life. And it's important to be able to do that by being active and have the muscle and you know all this stuff. so that's one element. Then you have this sort of a investing and and and kind of money part and then that's like the the fun stuff that out is outside. And then of course you have like you your friends and all. So what I've done often is that in the last few years I've been taking my calendar and I kinda like I I live off from my calendar. I don't love it but you know it kinda is a must-do thing almost if to manage the time. So I color different things and then every quarter, every month I look at my calendar And I see how are those different colors of these different things I said colliding. am I feeling happy? Am I feeling good? Did I spend too much time in the work? Did I did I spend too much time on something else? And then I try to balance it always. And it's been this sort of you throw it to the AI, it will calculate the time you spent, different things, and then show you like how was this different than last month or last quarter? And then what did you say last month, last quarter? Did you feel how how good you felt about your life? And that's been a interesting way to understand that, you know, I had a one time when I was off like six months doing no work at all and I felt crappy. I wasn't feeling like I have a no direction. So I need that, you know, thing that I'm kinda running and directing. It's important for me. Maybe I could outgrow it in two years, but I I was kinda addicted to it. So I was like, let let me keep it there. I otherwise I feel kinda I'm I'm losing control. I'm like a log in a river. And and one of the big things I did when I was doing this first time this is already ten years ago. I I I learned that, you know, I I need like a a a moment for myself to think. And and then I also really wanted to do some like long distance, you know, entrance athlete athletic stuff. And I wanted to serve more. So I decided that what if I take Wednesday and make it a a meeting free day and make it basically my own day. And that was the best decision I have made almost ever and and you know it's now ten years later and Wednesday is kinda like guarded day that nobody can buck me. There's never meetings. people know it. Like even people I barely know they know about it. So it's like they don't call me on Wednesdays. And most Wednesdays I've been I've been like the first years I took my son. We went you know hiking together when before he went to school. Then he went to school I took my daughter who was then tiny. We went to hiking and we done like every trail in the in the bay and now since in school so it became my time a few years two years three years ago. And now it's like, you know, surfing and and and, you know, bike riding and and doing really fun stuff. And it's been amazing because I know that, you know, Wednesday is kinda like the weekend is with family and all the stuff, but the Wednesday is my time and nobody can can take that. Beautiful. I wanted to close on a story that I've heard you speak about on another podcast, but I'm going to hope and assume that the people listening to this are not just Ari fans and we've got a an audience here that are fresh to your story. the story about the letter that you that you wrote to and about yourself when when you were sixteen, eighteen? I'd love I'd love to kind of close on that and because I think it's a beautiful story. Yeah, so it is a funny thing. I mean last year I was spending time in in Finland with my parents and this came up and I I kinda had totally forgotten the whole thing. But so my high school, first year in high school they made everybody write a letter to yourself and and kind of describe what would be great life for you and what would you achieve in your life? And it was, you know, something that, you know, you then open up when you you graduate a few years later. And you then kinda look at it and think about if that was correct. And what happened to me is that I I basically I I left the army right after the after high school and I think I totally forgot the letter. I never opened it. And then I my my mom found it maybe twenty five years later and I then opened it the letter And I I read it and it was really cool that, you know, I had no recollection at all writing that. Not not nothing. And it it was all about like what I wanna accomplish, what I wanna do, I wanna live abroad, I wanna build some things, I wanna work in certain things. And I basically looked at it and I had done all of it and more. And it felt really warm in a way that, you know, the the the teen of me would have looked at that that person, wow, I mean that's amazing. And I think, you know, that's the the thing about life that sometimes feels like, you know, you are slug in a you are in a mud at the at the time. Nothing is moving, nothing's changing, it's boring, whatever. But over time, life is long and you can if you just take one step forward every day and you try to evolve and improve yourself, you can get to amazing places. But but that was one of the most like unique moments I ever had because, you know, it was me talking to myself from the from the past. And there's no recollection at all. So it's a really, really cool moment. It's beautiful. Ari, this has been fantastic. I think we've we've covered so much, so much wisdom when it comes to business, when it comes but also when it comes to living a great life. So thank you so much for being a a guest and look forward to catching you again soon. If there's is there anything you want to leave people with, apart from let's go and buy some some LO vitamins if or some luminary vitamins if if you are In that target audience. Is there anything else you want leave people with? Talking with my my team earlier today and we we work in in healthcare and I think we are in a in a really difficult spot today when we have a hard time believing anything. Like the experts are no longer believed, they seem to be lying to us. influencers are selling their own wares, basically lying to us. And the truth really has like lost meaning. And that to me is a really huge problem. And I really a bit fearful about the whole thing about when kids are starting to use these new tools that, you know, we have in our pockets, AI and social media. It's pretty detrimental for for the whole thing that, you know, we are we are having today. So that is I think the one thing that I don't know like how will the kids really, you know, come along when, you know, the world is getting more and more complicated and you don't know what to believe in. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Things have got a lot weightier in the last couple of years since I have my beautiful daughter. And I and and and with all this this change it makes things you do start to worry, don't you? thank you so much, Harry. This has been a a fantastic conversation. I've really enjoyed it and I'm hopeful that that people will too.