Ari Tulla is a San Francisco-based entrepreneur, co-founder, and CEO of the smart nutrition service Elo. Elo uses an AI personalization engine to turn food from the cause of disease into your best medicine.
Ari is also an active angel investor and advisor with a portfolio of 50 startups, including Virta Health, Verge Motorcycles, Levels, and Ōura.
Previously, Ari was the CEO of Quest Analytics, the market leader in doctor data and network management. Ari led the company through a pivotal growth stage from $15M to $40M in revenue. Before joining Quest Analytics, Ari was co-founder and CEO of BetterDoctor, a doctor search engine.
BetterDoctor raised $30M from first-tier investors, including NEA and Uncork Capital. In June 2018, BetterDoctor was acquired by private equity firm Vestar Capital. Before BetterDoctor, Ari led Nokia’s game and application studios.
After years of family health struggles, Ari has dedicated his life to building companies that help people live better. His companies, BetterDoctor, Quest Analytics, and Elo, have helped over a hundred million people gain better access to healthcare.
When not working or parenting his two young children with his wife, Ari spends his time on the steep cliffs, powdery slopes, and big cold waves that only Northern California can offer.
What you will learn
- Explore the origins of mobile gaming with a Nokia innovator who helped launch the first popular mobile game
- Trace the meteoric rise of mobile gaming from a small niche to surpassing the music, movie, and book industries
- Ari shares his firsthand experiences as an entrepreneur instrumental in shaping the early mobile and smartphone markets
- Discover how personal health challenges propelled Ari into creating health-focused startups
- Understand the transformative impact of integrating AI and nutrition to revolutionize personal health solutions
- Gain insights into the evolution of health tech, and the future role of AI and wearable devices in enhancing wellness
Transcript
Jeff Bullas
00:00:04 – 00:00:50
Hi, everyone and welcome to the Jeff Bullas Show today with me Ari Tulla. Now, Ari is a San Francisco-based entrepreneur, co-founder, and CEO of the smart nutrition service Elo. Elo uses AI personalization engine to turn food from the cause of disease to your best medicine. Ari is also an active angel investor and advisor with a portfolio of 50 startups, including Virta Health, Verge Motorcycles, Levels, and Ōura.
Previously, Ari was the CEO of Quest Analytics, the market leader in doctor data and network management. Ari led the company through a pivotal growth stage from $15M to $40M in revenue. Before joining Quest Analytics, Ari was co-founder and CEO of BetterDoctor, a doctor search engine.
BetterDoctor raised $30M from first-tier investors, including NEA and Uncork Capital. In June 2018, BetterDoctor was acquired by private equity firm Vestar Capital. Before BetterDoctor, Ari led Nokia’s game and application studios.
After years of family health struggles, Ari has dedicated his life to building companies that help people live better. His companies, BetterDoctor,Quest Analytics, and Elo, have helped over a hundred million people gain better access to healthcare.
When not working or parenting his two young children with his wife, Ari spends his time on the steep cliffs, powdery slopes, and big cold waves that only Northern California can offer.
Jeff Bullas
00:01:44 – 00:01:57
Welcome to the show Ari. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Ari Tulla
00:01:59 – 00:02:01
Hey, thank you, Jeff.
Jeff Bullas
00:02:02 – 00:02:31
So Ari, you um originally were born and grew up in Finland and you uh I noticed at the beginning of your, you know, bio that you were very much involved in uh online gaming. Where did, so obviously you had an interest in text. Where did that interest in technology come from? And then I wanted to ask, how did you get into the entrepreneur game? I’d like to hear a little bit about how that all happened to give us some context.
Ari Tulla
00:02:33 – 00:03:01
Yeah, happy to have to go there. So I was one of those kids that was very lucky to get access to a computer at a very young age. So I think I was probably less than 67 years old when my dad gave his first computer to me to play with. And this is one of the 086 PCs in eighties where you have this, not the small floppy disk, but the big one that you can kind of use as a pizza tray.
Ari Tulla
00:03:01 – 00:03:20
And, um, and that was funky and, you know, you couldn’t do much with them. You could maybe, you know, use some sort of accounting software and maybe you could draw some stuff and they barely were any games even. So I was like, playing with those and, you know, trying to do stuff and then got into, you know, playing the games when they finally came in and, you know, building like very
Ari Tulla
00:03:20 – 00:03:48
simple games with, with really basic, one of the early languages that you can program the, the stuff. And, you know, anyway, that was like my entry and I got very intrigued about the whole world and I was the only kid, you know, you who had a computer. Nobody, I mean, there was no consoles, there was no Commodore 64 no Amiga, anything like that at the time. And then, of course, a lot of my friends, they, they were kind of like wondering like, what is this thing that this guy is playing with? And, um, and then, you know, we are gonna,
Ari Tulla
00:03:48 – 00:04:23
there was this group of people that started to kind of hang out together and, you know, got excited about this new idea that, you know, what can you do with a computer? And then of course, what happened when I went to high school, we had a very progressive a school that was connected to the web, they were linked to one university nearby and we were able to get access to like 94 time frame to the internet. And this was the world, you know, that was no websites, websites were not invented yet. I mean, email was barely coming together, there was no emails yet. So it’s like this, you know,
Ari Tulla
00:04:23 – 00:04:50
downloading with FTP and uh talking to people in IRS C and, and of course, you know, gamers, they, they love new stuff. So there was a group of people who built games and I was, I became one of the first people in the world to play the first online games invented. We had maybe, I don’t know, 50,000, 100,000 people in the world who access these and these were kind of the early hackers and, and it was really cool to be one of the people who, who got there in the like very beginning
Ari Tulla
00:04:51 – 00:05:06
and I got, I got very addicted to the games. And I mean, within the four or five year period, I think I played third of my time on those games and I wasn’t really, I was very tired when I went to school because I had played until like four in the morning, every, every night. That sounds like
Jeff Bullas
00:05:06 – 00:05:10
that sounds like young people today with sounds like young people today. With smartphones. Really?
Ari Tulla
00:05:11 – 00:05:34
Yeah, I mean, I think so a little bit but, you know, the, the difference was that, you know, this is something that nobody really understood. And then I think the funniest thing that happened to me was that I, I got really good at it. I got to be one of the best players in the world, not because of, I was so good, but I, I was hanging out with people who were really, really good. And, um, and it was so funny that, you know, one of my, my best friends in the game long time ago, um
Ari Tulla
00:05:34 – 00:06:01
people always ask me because I’ve been working the video games for a long time. Like, should I let my kids play, are games going to lead anything good? And I always tell people that, you know, my, my buddy who played the games for a long time, he’s now the CTO of Goldman Sachs, for example, that’s a pretty good position to be, you know, one of the biggest companies in the world, you know, maybe the, one of the most impactful people in tech today. And, you know, he, he spent more time than I did on playing the games. And, um, so sometimes, you know, it can pay off. And, uh, but that, for me, it was
Ari Tulla
00:06:01 – 00:06:26
really interesting kind of growing up period because I was the youngest guy, I was more like a high schooler. Other people were in college, maybe craps to it a few years older. And I learned a lot. I learned, you know, how to kind of lead, you know, a group of people, I learned how to, you know, build games in the end. And I, I learned a lot about the tech so that was really found based on time for me. Um, I don’t know if I learned maths in high school, but at least I learned a lot on, on the games.
Jeff Bullas
00:06:27 – 00:07:19
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, gaming got a bad name because it looks like people are addicted and they are, uh, but it can teach. Um, but some fascinating thing about gaming now is that even formula one drivers and they’ve even introduced and brought people in to run, you know, even race, proper race cars and found that those who have done, been really good at gaming as in racing gaming are, uh, having credible skills and it’s taught virtually rather than actually, uh, by crashing a car regularly. So, um, it’s pretty cool. So, the thing I’m curious about with all of my guests is that you then went to university and did a degree in, in Finland. What, why did you choose a topics and subject area that you chose at was like Vassar University?
Ari Tulla
00:07:21 – 00:07:48
Yeah, I went to, um, University in Finland. The one unique thing that might, many people might not know is that you have a mandatory military service. So you go for, about a year. So usually when you graduate high school, often people take, you don’t have to do it then, but most people take it after that and you go uh to run around the forest and suit with different kind of gun for one year and then you go to university. So I already had a, had a
Ari Tulla
00:07:48 – 00:08:21
access to, to the school before I went to army. So you can have like a year And then I extended that time a little bit and I went to, went to work in London. Um I was like 19 and went to work as a barman in, in London. And that was really cool time to be like, you know, first time you go to army alone and then you go to, you know, London to hang out there for, you know, six months or whatever. And that, then you go to study, it’s kind of interesting experience to do that. And I went to, went to study uh business and, and, and computer science. So I wanted to kind of uh ball ball and
Ari Tulla
00:08:21 – 00:08:48
is one of those unique countries, um, like Nordic countries overall that you can get them to study for free. So you don’t pay anything for, for the studying so you can pretty much study. And like I did, I was studying two masters at the same time. So I, I was enrolled in two different, you know, schools and that would be very difficult to do in the US, of course, or many places where you have to pay, you know, 50 $100,000 for that, be expensive and maybe not very smart. You can’t be very good at, you know, two things at the same time.
Ari Tulla
00:08:48 – 00:09:33
And um and that was, uh I wanted to really get deeper into the computer science. I, I never became a really good developer. I always had a really hard time with the, with the c uh like a low level languages. Uh Even the math, we went very deep. I wasn’t very great at it ever. But um I, I felt I was more, I was better at the kind of the business side, like understanding complicated things and understanding, you know, kind of people dynamic and I’m a very people type of person. So I like that better as a, as a, as I studied. But what happened to me in the school is that I, I went to this new town, you know, moved there. Um, in the first few weeks, I, I, you know, stumbled upon this girl who later became my, my wife
Ari Tulla
00:09:33 – 00:09:53
and, uh that was like within the first two weeks. And then I also kind of stumbled upon my, my roommates that, you know, we had this, well, not really like a roommate, but we had a house that we, we shared together, housemates. And um these two guys, they, they started the start up, uh the first weeks of the school. So I, I kind of decided to, you know, join them. They asked me like, the only part of this I’m like,
Ari Tulla
00:09:53 – 00:10:13
of course, and I became the first employee, more or less in there. So you kind of start, you end up in working in a company in a start up and then, you know, you get end up finding, you know, your spouse in the first week. It was pretty busy, you know, first couple of years in school and it was really fun to be able to work in the start up while you were studying two degrees. So, I mean, maybe the busiest time of my life.
Jeff Bullas
00:10:13 – 00:10:47
Right. So, you’re very lucky. And I suppose also the military service would have taught you, maybe they’d introduce you to the sort of adventure sports that you still do today because you do some really cool stuff, don’t you? So, so tell us just a little bit, the hobby side, give side and was the army because you are close to the Arctic circle. In fact, Finland is in the Arctic circle part of it, isn’t it? So, were you was doing the military, like hunger games, adventure games that you’re taught?
Ari Tulla
00:10:48 – 00:11:28
Well, I mean, II, I played hockey since I was, I think, four years old. And, you know, Finland hockey is like a, like a football in America or, you know, rugby in some other countries. So it’s the only sport people really think highly. And then I was, I was pretty good. I mean, I played in over a decade and, you know, started to practice twice a day type of stuff. So I was, I was very, you know, active and, you know, I think I was pretty athletic when I, when I went to army. So, I mean, I was, I was pretty fast, I was pretty strong and, you know, like a lot better than, you know, 99% of the class. So I, I ended up work going to army in, in, in Lapland,
Ari Tulla
00:11:28 – 00:12:06
in, in Finland, like, you know, actually north of the Arctic Circle where you have no sunlight in the, in the winter and when you have 24 7 sunlight in the summer. And I mean, I don’t, I think we spend the maybe a bit less than 100 days in the, in the nature, sleeping outside, you know, like, like surviving there. And, um, and, you know, Fin Finland has a very simple military, you know, we don’t really need to worry about the Swedish people, the Norwegians too much. So, we are really kind of directing on the Russians that are, we have, we have 1000 miles of, you know, border. So it’s like pretty easy to understand why we are there, what we’re trying to do.
Ari Tulla
00:12:06 – 00:12:38
And, um, and, and I was more like, you know, a bit like a guerilla type of forest where, you know, you go to the forest and, you know, you survive and you, you, you kill people and of course you didn’t kill anyone but, you know, that’s the point. So, I mean, yeah, it was, it was kind of interesting to me and I love the nature and, you know, it was interesting to, to be in the middle of winter outside and little, like, minus 30 um, Celsius weather sleeping outside and, you know, snow caves and stuff. So, I mean, I, I loved it. I mean, that’s kind of my kind of stuff. And later I’ve been doing a lot of adventure,
Ari Tulla
00:12:39 – 00:13:05
you know, sports and, and, and things and, and uh climb a lot of rocks around the world for example, and, and mountains. So I think that was a beginning and, but I had already been hiking a lot with my, my, my father, he’s a very active outdoors man. He’s a big fisherman. So that’s the world. And I lived in a small town. I’m from like a 10,000 people villages where we basically have, you know, we have the ocean. We also have, have, you know, a lot of forest. So that was my, my type of living.
Jeff Bullas
00:13:06 – 00:13:40
Yeah, I was reflecting on it because we had a chat before and uh said, yeah, basically you had to do military service. I do. I’ve been to Finland a couple of times. Love the country, love the people. Helsinki. I’ve been to the archipelago. I have been in minus 20 in Scandinavia, but not in Finland. And I know how cold it gets but to sleep outside and be, you know, where it’s dark, basically, 100 days of the year would be, uh, would toughen you up. So a bit like boys’ own adventure. Really? So, it’s, um, and, and at the age when you’re a young guy, that’s the sort of, you know, stuff you really love to do. So fast forward you do uni
Jeff Bullas
00:13:41 – 00:14:11
and uh the gaming thing is still s still around, isn’t it? Tell us a bit about um quick thumbnail sketch of how you got to be in the tech and then how you then got into the health industry because I think it’s interesting, there’s a personal family story there and uh which is uh really inspirational. So tell us a bit about cos you continued to dabble and, and actually be quite significantly in the gaming industry. Tell us how that, that all happened after university.
Ari Tulla
00:14:14 – 00:14:54
Yes, I was, I studied and um, and I worked in this start up and I, I really fell in love with the whole idea of, you know, building the early websites. We did a lot of websites for big companies, public companies first time they had an online presence. So nobody knew anything about it. Then this was early, you know, 99 4001 and then it was all new and, you know, we were kids who do nothing but, you know, nobody else knew anything more and, you know, some of the senior executives, they hired us to do stuff because they knew even less and we, we looked credible because we smelled bad. I know we were very, so that was kind of the world in a way. Yeah,
Ari Tulla
00:14:54 – 00:15:36
I think we were, we were sitting in a dark room and we tried to do stuff and gold and whatever. But, uh, I, I want to go abroad because Finland, um, it’s so different. Uh, we are now living, you know, 2024 and World is a lot smaller than it was 2000 because 2000, we kind of first time got online, we first time connected and we often forget how different the world is today than it was only 25 years ago. And that time, you know, when you were in Finland, I was one of the first people to go study in the university in the US, for example, I did one semester and it was really kind of interesting to go into. I was in Kansas, uh very different, you know, environment. But, you know, it was a good eye opening
Ari Tulla
00:15:36 – 00:16:09
and it was hard to get, we had to kind of negotiate the place ourselves because nobody had these programs. Now you can go to same university I went to, you can get to Berkeley, Stanford. I mean, that’s very different than it was. Before. So I wanted to go abroad. And um I joined, uh before I got the tech, I joined a company called Bat British American Tobacco. Um it is one of the big tobacco companies and, and they had this training program that they, they basically took people under their wing and you could go four countries two years and, and learn the ropes. So I went to
Ari Tulla
00:16:09 – 00:16:45
London, I went to, you know, Lausanne in Switzerland and had, had a chance to work in, in Europe around, around Europe in multiple places for two years. And then I, I stay stationed in, in Helsinki and Stockholm and, and, you know, the northern Europe and I was running one brand lucky strike for them. And, and that was like, I mean, my learning to, to become, uh, you know, business person, like we had, you know, a lot of money and, and we were running complicated things and I got a lot of responsibility right out of school basically and having, you know, tens of millions of bucks that having a lot of people uh to manage, uh that was a good learning pro and,
Ari Tulla
00:16:45 – 00:17:03
you know, we can debate about the or whatever. I mean, not, not very sensible thing to do, but it was a really good learning ground. And, and after that, I, I had built a pretty good, you know, understanding what it means to, to build business to, to build, you know, brands to market things and, and then I was headhunted from there to to Nokia
Ari Tulla
00:17:03 – 00:17:32
to, to work in the in the gaming unit for Nokia. And the team I joined, first was the, the team at Nokia who built the first smartphone. I think the N N95 is the first Nokia device that, you know, was able to do video emits uh web browsing email. And this was, you know, a few years before iphone came out. So really the device that, that kind of paved the way for, for this new era and, and that device, I mean, it ended up selling something like 9 million
Ari Tulla
00:17:33 – 00:17:49
units in the first year. I mean, 9 million doesn’t sound a lot today, but this was the first smartphone that sold a lot and you know, it was selling for 1000 bucks. So, I mean, it’s, it’s 9 billion revenue on a one device never heard before in any almost consumer electronics. So maybe the most popular
Ari Tulla
00:17:49 – 00:18:14
best launch of a new product that, you know, almost had ever happened. And, you know, to be part of that little bit, I mean, it was really exciting and then of course, what we were doing then a few years, six years after that, I was building games, we were building new games for mobile devices. And now of course, you know, we all, we all have phones and we all play games and you know, 5 billion people today play games and phones. That was not the case, you know, we literally have nobody. And
Ari Tulla
00:18:15 – 00:19:02
you know, I was sitting in a, in a nokia head office and I saw this guy who, who built the snake, the snake, the first game that, you know, everybody played a mobile. I mean, this guy did it and he started this thing that because we often forget again, 20 years ago, world was different place and mobile gaming. I was speaking here in San Francisco. There’s a event called game developer conference. I was speaking there something like 18 years ago. First time ever they had a mobile gaming, a part of the conference. This is a big conference. 40,000 people, 50,000 people, we had 200 people in a room. These are the 200 people who actually make made mobile games 20 years ago, 200 people today, mobile games are bigger than music, movies and books combined. Well,
Ari Tulla
00:19:02 – 00:19:35
that’s just how much has happened in a short time frame. Mobile games are double the size of any other gaming. Like console games are small compared to mobile games. So it was really exciting to be able to be part of something that started and to be there in the very first day. And that to me was the epiphany that I mean, I’ve been trying to bottle up ever since. Like I want to be in these rooms of people where something new happens and I’ve been able to now do it a few times and nothing is as exciting to be in a room where I have 100 people who are talking about something new. And then you see a few years later
Ari Tulla
00:19:36 – 00:20:10
that, that same room is actually 10,000 people and then it just balance up there. So that, that, that was a really important moment for me to be able to part of that nokia story. And you know, we failed, we failed to, you know, iphone game, Android game and they ate our lamps. Nokia was when I joined the most valuable company on the planet and when I left Nokia was valued something like 10th of that if even that. So we failed. Uh but you learn a lot when you are there finding fighting in the very beginning and trying to do the right things. And of course, it’s not only because of me, we failed to many other people to play.
Jeff Bullas
00:20:11 – 00:20:41
Yeah, it is very exciting to be involved at uh at the start of a new industry. And uh and I’ve experienced that multiple times as well. Number, you know, firstly, I worked for one of the first IBM PC dealerships and sales and marketing in, in Sydney, Australia. And it was just, it was the wild west of computing. That’s when it all started. And then I got involved in consulting with internet came out in the browser, which I was very excited about as well. And then social media turned up. So,
Jeff Bullas
00:20:42 – 00:21:26
and that, you know, I got involved in 2009 in that. And I remember when Twitter was small and getting online at night and I could watch America wake up on Twitter from Sydney, Australia and have conversations with people that were so excited about social media and what it could do for the world. And for me, that was when the first time I said I’m a citizen of the world now, not just of Australia, it, it really felt like we belong to a tribe of humans that were all trying to change the world for good. Um So enough about that, I think that I’m really intrigued about now, is you had an event, a health event in the family that then took you after the gaming, I think, took you to your next, um
Jeff Bullas
00:21:27 – 00:21:59
I suppose, industry sector and your own business and the business you’ve been involved in since then, tell us about what happened and uh what impact it had on you and how that has turned into what you do today with Ello. And I want to know more about El O as well. I think we’ll leak straight to that after you. Tell us a story because I’m, I’m curious and listeners need to know is that quite often big opportunities come out of problem and pain, uh not out of comfort. And I think, um if you could share that story, that would be, um that’d be great.
Ari Tulla
00:22:00 – 00:22:36
Yeah, it’s quite a long, long story and, and long time span. But, you know, while we were dabbling I was, you know, working different things and, um, and, uh, trying to, you know, learn as much as I can about the tech, the gaming, all these things. We had this other, uh, threat happening with, uh, with my, my wife and she had, um, uh, she was young, you know, 20 something woman. Uh, in year 2000, she had a, had a sudden like health scare. So out of nothing, she found that she has a big tumor on her neck, uh, thyroid. And, um, and that was, uh, you know,
Ari Tulla
00:22:36 – 00:23:16
we, we realize it out of, out of nothing. And then, you know, we get to the hospital, of course, you know, they have to do something fairly quickly and, you know, we could do later the neck is opened up and they take the tumor away, other thyroid is also going away with it. And, um, and, you know, healthcare did what they do. Well, so they took the, you know, tumor away. There’s nothing beyond that. You’re gonna be, you’re healthy. Um, but at the same time, she ended up into these hormonal imbalances, these unknown unknowns we don’t know in healthcare. And, uh, she was medicated, uh probably for life and the medication side effect that, you know, and, and the whole hormonal as that you can, you can never have a family.
Ari Tulla
00:23:16 – 00:23:46
And, uh, that wasn’t like a big, biggest deal, you know, when you are 20 something, you know, of course, it sucked. But, you know, then later we started to really think about it and it became a topic that we wanted to solve. And we spent almost 10 years on going deep into the western medicine, Eastern medicine. And, and we were living in, in, in Europe and then we, we moved to California and we had really good doctors. We, we spent time, we probably talked to 50 different doctors and finally found somebody who was able to guide us into
Ari Tulla
00:23:47 – 00:24:07
in the diet that was like anti inflammatory diet. That’s now used a lot for like a LS and, and Hasimoto different diseases that are these anti inflammatory diseases. And uh it helped, I mean, her body was able to heal itself and, and then of course, you are like, wow, I mean, like now we can get her out of medication, we can
Ari Tulla
00:24:07 – 00:24:31
to have a family and of course that it wasn’t easy. We had some other issues, you know, I think my, my sperm motivity was pretty weak and, you know, with some compatible issues, whatever. So we had to go IVF and then, you know, that, that helped and that worked and, you know, many years passed. I mean, this whole thing took a decade and uh, and we finally got pregnant. We were so excited about it and, and then, uh, we were very lucky unlucky that our, our first son then then died,
Ari Tulla
00:24:32 – 00:24:54
not related at all on this story. So it was really tough. I mean, you can spend a lot of your time and, uh, and thinking, uh into this area and then this happened. So that was a kind of wake up call. I was, you know, thinking about, you know, leaving, leaving nokia. At the same time, I was thinking about building a new company. Uh my wife was thinking about maybe moving on from business. She was in,
Ari Tulla
00:24:54 – 00:25:34
in a, in a corporate side and we decided to kind of really overhaul our life completely. So I decided not to continue and build a new gaming company. You know, many more friends then left and build mobile gaming companies and many of them are now billionaires. So they’re doing great and I decided to go to healthcare and build something different. And we had had these issues like I became a massive believer in the idea that food can be medicine and it was medicine for us. And, and today we have, we have two healthy kids who are thriving and doing great. And, and that’s because of the of the food that, you know, healed my wife in that. And of course, we also had to do IVF again. So we also are very thankful for that, that, you know, opportunity. But that
Ari Tulla
00:25:34 – 00:26:01
the other problem was that we, I was a, I was a European who came to the US. And um I was flabbergasted by the problem and the challenge of finding the right doctor and navigating the health care and, and, you know, we just couldn’t find the right care. And that’s maybe one part why we, why we lost our first son. And um I wanted to build a company to do this better. So I started a company called Better Doctor. Uh that was the first company after my game and stuff. And
Ari Tulla
00:26:02 – 00:26:31
it was very hard, like we had people who built games and you know, this tech people coming together and trying to build a healthcare company, we made every mistake 15 times over and, and luckily, you know, over time, it, it, it did actually work and, you know, it became a very different type of company uh that we expected. But, you know, now it has a big impact and I mean, I’m, I’m really proud about the fact that we, we end up building something that is now helping the goal of the company in the beginning was you always write down a miss statement like we gonna help million people to find a doctor that they love.
Ari Tulla
00:26:32 – 00:27:01
I don’t know if people they love but that we are finding a doctor is a good thing and maybe a bit flamboyant on the, on the last sentence. But then on the last bit. But, you know, today we have helped more than 100 million people, three people. I mean, how cool is that? So my problem, my wife’s problem has not helped a lot of people out there. Nobody really remembers better the name anymore. But you know, we are one of these backbone pieces of the, of the help the system that you know is the right data is coming from us and you know, it’s throughout the system. So anyway, super cool
Ari Tulla
00:27:01 – 00:27:30
experience to build it and, and really proud about that whole thing, a lot of really great, you know, teammates that we had and I worked with many of them today at lo and, and lo is gonna, I, then I went to, I did private equity CEO gig uh to just, you know, run a company to learn, learn that ground. But then I was able to kind of start again doing a new company ground up and, and EO is really my, my focus on how do we make the right nutrition more accessible, how do we help people? Because the bottom line is this
Ari Tulla
00:27:31 – 00:28:18
today in, in the US. Things are pretty bleak. Most people don’t know this, but uh the life expectancy has been declining. Now for the last two years, we have lost two years of life expectancy. And today if I’m a, I’m a man in the US. My expectance today roughly is to live to 75. If I’m a same s man in Japan, I’m looking 85. That’s 10 more years. How much would you pay to have 10 more years in your life? I mean, it’s a lot of, a lot of money and, I mean, who wouldn’t like to live until 85 to 100 even, maybe more than 100. So, I think really, we need to fix this because most people are sick today in the US because of the chronic conditions that are born because of bad diet, lack of activity
Ari Tulla
00:28:18 – 00:28:42
and, and also of course stress and, and lack of sleep, we have to fix that and we can fix it and, and that’s what we try to do at lo focus on that nutrition piece. And the simple statement again, like we had for the doctor finding now we say we are trying to build a company that takes data from your body and turns that data with A I into tasty molecules that keep you healthy or heal you.
Jeff Bullas
00:28:44 – 00:28:52
Yes. And you’ve got a novel approach to doing this because, um, it’s got an approach that, uh is not about medication, but it’s ha having lollies.
Ari Tulla
00:28:54 – 00:29:25
Well, I have nothing against medication. I’m a science driven kind of guy every day. And I think there are wonderful medications, you know, medications help me to have a family, you know, heal my wife, possibly so nothing against that. I’m not like a, like a w kind of guy who says that let’s have, you know, cologne, colognes and, you know, let’s do that and then all have ching and not have cancer treatment that will only end end up you being dead. But I think we have to pair nutrition, bear healthier habits together with the great medicine we have today. Yeah.
Jeff Bullas
00:29:26 – 00:29:50
So tell us about how your approach is. I think um for me when we had a chat before, your approach is very much data driven about gathering data about a person because you create personalized gummies for people to take. Now the US currently a lot of gummies are taken now, not just for lollies, but actually for marijuana.
Ari Tulla
00:29:52 – 00:30:27
Yeah, so one thing we, one thing we decided to do in the beginning was this idea that what can we do? What we like? There’s three principles that we, we, we need to be true in order to build what you want to do. Uh So we, we, we had this very ambitious goal. Let’s build this new concept called smart nutrition. You know, I was there in the beginning when we built the first smartphone. Well, we call it mobile computer, but who cares? Smart devices are personalized to you? Like think about the phone. It’s the most personal device, it has all your photos, all your contacts,
Ari Tulla
00:30:28 – 00:30:59
you buy a new phone, it’s like an empty vessel and then you, you populate that with all your content, your apps, your things, it’s really personal, it’s also very precise, it’s really based on the latest science and, and you know, it’s, it’s the highest piece of tech, you know, in your iphone, you have more stuff than you have in a, in a space. Double way more, it’s way more technical. And lastly these devices that are smart are proactive, they are getting better all the time. Like the more you use them, the better they get, I mean, they get maybe more addictive as well, but, you know, they get better.
Ari Tulla
00:30:59 – 00:31:28
So idea was what, what if you could build the same thing for nutrition? What if your food, your nutrition could be similar, it could be personalized to you. It could be precise, crowded in real science, real data and it could get better all the time, maybe even tastier, you know, better outcomes and to make that happen, you need three facts, you need to have ability to collect data from our bodies. So, you know, we have all this wearable device today like Apple Wars and Aura and you know, whoop and, and many other ones that is really well,
Jeff Bullas
00:31:28 – 00:31:34
I’m wearing a garment that measures, you know, a lot of data. It’s, it’s amazing, you know. Um and, and
Ari Tulla
00:31:34 – 00:32:13
we are like, think, well, we are still in the 1.0 of this. Just look ahead like let’s leap again. 10 years ahead. I talked about a bit like what, what was the life like for 2000? I mean, we might forget but 2000 life was very different. Ok, let’s go to year, you know, 2035 we’re gonna have an Apple watch or whatever we’re gonna call it Carmi or whatever it calls them. That device will be able to look at you and tell you your glucose numbers. It will tell your blood pressure, it will give likely your blood biomarkers like your cholesterols and others in real time every day. So anything you put in your mouth, anything you do,
Ari Tulla
00:32:14 – 00:32:35
you will get immediate feedback group and you’re going to see if that is good for you or bad for you. That is something we can now do for like sleep, we can do it for maybe your heart rate. Maybe we can do it for your glucose if you have a glucose monitor. But that is we are in the beginning of it 1.0 but once we get to the 3.0
Ari Tulla
00:32:35 – 00:33:02
everything will be a risk device cost less than 1000 bucks can do all of the stuff in real time. It can connect to your doctor, it can connect to the A I that will guide you to the right thing. So I’m believing that that will be the case. So we also need to have ability to collect the, the blood B marketers like your DNA and all these things. And that’s becoming more prevalent every day. And the last thing we needed to, to build lo we need to be able to deliver, build the products that are personalized and then deliver them to your home.
Ari Tulla
00:33:03 – 00:33:20
Today. We do supplements. That was the beginning. We started from, we do pills, powders and gummies, but of course, we also do meals and, you know, groceries. Uh, once we, once we go forward, but the idea is like, what if you could have the right things around you?
Ari Tulla
00:33:21 – 00:34:01
So you do do better decisions in your life. What if you make it easier? So you don’t need to really, you know, do these decisions. Like I’m, I don’t need to eat many meat anymore or I don’t, I don’t eat this anymore. It’s very difficult to make that decision because, you know, we, we all love to eat certain certain stuff. What if you could eat the same stuff? But it’s just better for you. I mean, that is the unlock I think we have to do and I, I always talk to everybody. I, when we, when I invest in a company, I, I’m in a, you know, part of a company you need to look at this. Like people often forget that Tesla, for example, it’s, it’s not a, it’s not just a better electric car, it’s a better car.
Ari Tulla
00:34:02 – 00:34:26
It is a really good product. I mean, people are buying it, not because it’s electric because it’s a better car. You know, it can drive itself. That’s kind of cool. But, you know, it’s just a really fun to drive. It’s pretty affordable. Now when the price went down and it’s also just a really good pro product, iphone is unbelievable product. Like, I mean, Android has been trying to do Samsung and others Android devices and you know, you go from iphone to Android,
Ari Tulla
00:34:26 – 00:35:01
you’re like, oh my God. Like, what is this? And many people who go from Android, I mean, there are a lot of people who love Android. No, no, nothing wrong with that. I mean, there’s this dogma people have often, but if you go from Android to iphone and you learn to use it, it’s just better. But now we are getting into an era where somebody will build a new phone within the next three years. That will be a I driven phone. It might be ambient, it knows what you need, you open the phone, it will know what you want to do. I mean, that will be happening and that will be again a way better product than iphone today. So somebody will leave Proc but to me, it’s always like, let’s build products that are so good
Ari Tulla
00:35:02 – 00:35:17
that we feel that they become integral part of our life because it’s people have tried to do this a long time like, you know, we build healthy food, healthy food that tastes like said, I mean, like that’s not gonna work. I mean, it has to taste better than the whole food. That’s how Tesla got going.
Jeff Bullas
00:35:18 – 00:36:09
Yeah, that’s it. It’s really interesting. I remember my partner woke up one morning and she said, oh, I’m so in love and I thought she was talking about me, but in her hand she had her first Apple iphone and I went all right. Ok. I know what’s number one here anyway. It, but the other thing I like and I’ve talked about it recently and it’s something I’m really intrigued by is what I call functional beautiful design. In other words, it not only functions well, but it looks beautiful the way it holds, you know, the way it looks, the way it works. Um Because I love modern contemporary art. I’ve just been to the Mona here in New York where we’re recording this and I walked into the moma um you know, design shop and it’s just full of incredibly beautiful designs that
Jeff Bullas
00:36:10 – 00:36:51
have incredibly fantastic function. And I, I think we’re moving into an area and Steve Jobs was incredibly um obsessed by beautiful design that only looked great but actually performed fantastic as well. So I wanna know just quickly here is a thumb sketch like how you create personalized um additives slash gummy bears for each individual person because that’s what you do. I, the story told me about how you, we went and sourced a person or a company in England to actually build your gummy bears that are personalized for you. Tell us about that process and how the program
Ari Tulla
00:36:51 – 00:36:51
works.
Ari Tulla
00:36:54 – 00:37:20
Yeah, I try to be very um focused like when, if I build something, I think the thing you built, it should be worthy to exist. I mean, there are a lot of beauty in the world and you know, you go to the, to the moma for example, um you know, Eames has built furniture, you know, this is 70 years ago. I still have, you know, half the stuff we have at the home is Eames
Ari Tulla
00:37:20 – 00:37:44
and I mean, they are beautiful but they are also very comfortable. And there was something unique about that era in, in fifties, the the era of, you know, the modern thing that happened. A lot of the great ideas were a lot of the great designs were built there. And of course, now you have, of course Apple is, is maybe epiphany of of today, like the two thousands like building products that are, are beautiful, functional,
Ari Tulla
00:37:44 – 00:38:09
just like part of your life. And every time I, I build something now myself, I want to be very purist in a way like I wanna, I don’t wanna go back in time, I want to go in the future. And I’m thinking like, what could a thing be if we build it today? And I try to like, you know, make them, make them to be real. So I think we really had fun time in the last few years at o to build, I think the flexi product today that we call the smart gummies.
Ari Tulla
00:38:10 – 00:38:33
So the idea started from the point that, you know, we can do a blood test. Uh we can collect data from your wearable devices. We can collect an assessment. So we have a lot of data about you. Then we use a I to understand what is what you need uh from nutrition perspective. And, and then the idea was like, what if we can cover many of the things that you get today in the supplement, pills or powders? What if you can put that in one gummy
Ari Tulla
00:38:34 – 00:39:16
and then delivered to you? That was the idea. And I went around the world to, to search for companies who can make these. And we found one company who was able to create this product and then we work with them for, you know, a year or two now to get it out. And this is the outcome. So basically, this is my uh my gummy that I I have today, seven layers. It has seven pills in one gummy. You can pick your flavor out of the eight different flavors. It tastes great. It looks beautiful. And basically this is the same as I take, you know, normal handful of pills and you know, what is better having, you know, good taste in gummy vitamin. That’s like candy, by the way, sugar free vegan. And I mean, it sounds good
Ari Tulla
00:39:17 – 00:40:00
and, you know, I wanted to build an express that’s like not twice better, but 10 times better than today. But you go to most homes and you open people’s cabinets, they have 10 pill bottles. Now they get one wrapped gummy that has their name on the, on the packing and they can take it to go. You go travel, you can pick five of them to go. I’m gonna go to London tomorrow, I’m gonna pick six to go and I take my gummy as I’m good to go. So it’s just a much better product. And then every month, every quarter, we reformulate that. So this gummy is 3D printed out of 389 million competences. So basically, we can sell this to half the America and nobody will have the same company.
Ari Tulla
00:40:02 – 00:40:25
That’s pretty cool. Right? So it’s like, and, and to me that’s like the, like, how do you build things that are exciting in a way that you, you hear the story, you’re like, I’m gonna have to try it and then you have to build something worthy. And of course, now we’ve been testing this out. We did, you know the first test ever done where we tested people who took the gummy with vitamin D.
Ari Tulla
00:40:25 – 00:40:47
They took a pill with vitamin D. We tested those people at the beginning and then 90 day after, and we saw that the gummy people were able to improve the vitamin D levels in the blood more than the people with the pills because the gummy people were taking it every day and the pill people were taking it maybe every day and missing here and there because the gummy is better product. It’s more a part of your life.
Ari Tulla
00:40:48 – 00:41:16
You can add in your life and you feel good about it and every time you do it, you feel something, it’s like a treat that does something good for you. So that’s what I’m thinking. Like when we, when we try to build a better system for nutrition, for example, it has to be that way. Like, I don’t, I don’t know how the ill or food or the meals will look like. But what if you can pull something together like this? Like you get the meal that is like absolutely great for you. Uh I don’t know how to do it yet, but I’m, I’m thinking about it. Well, maybe,
Jeff Bullas
00:41:16 – 00:41:29
maybe, maybe you could do it. Um I’m true. Number one. The question I have you did mention blood tests, but I don’t think you do it anymore. How do you get the personalized data to actually create the gummy for each individual?
Ari Tulla
00:41:30 – 00:41:57
Yeah. So I have my blood test here. I mean, I, I just need to, I got the I do myself every quarter yellow test. Uh, you don’t have to. So we started in a way that you had to do the test in the beginning and then we paired up here with the coats and then you got the, the pills and, you know, some people love that. But many people are like, oh, I want to get the product sooner. It’s too clunky and, you know, I’m afraid to prick my finger. I haven’t done it before. It’s a lot of confusing when we grow bigger, you know, more and more people are less
Ari Tulla
00:41:57 – 00:42:30
uh adventurous. Like maybe I am so for normal people, they were like, I want, I want to do an assessment. I wanna, I’m happy to answer, you know, 20 questions and I get the right product. So what did we do? We, we were testing people, thousands of people with the blood and then we, they did an assessment. So we were able to kind of look at that data and build a predictive model with A I and now we can predict what you need. I mean, we won’t be 100% perfect. We, we don’t know exactly your cholesterol value. We won’t know your d vitamin value is 15 or 60 but we, we can predict and we can give you 80% right product today.
Ari Tulla
00:42:30 – 00:42:55
Like I said, you’re gonna have a cabinet full of pill bottles that half of them are expired already. That’s not the right way to do it. You know, most of them have no idea what they’re taking. At least we can get very, very close to the optimal. And if you want, you can go to L APP, click one button, you get the kit in two days and then you get the real results. And they impact automatically your next shipment. So, it’s a pretty cool, I think way we have now. Architect this. Yeah, it
Jeff Bullas
00:42:55 – 00:43:08
is. Very cool. Um, the other question I hadn’t asked before is I, I’m from Sydney, Australia. And, uh, so you don’t currently offer it in Australia? I believe, uh, money in the USA. Is that correct?
Ari Tulla
00:43:09 – 00:43:29
Yeah. Only the US because the, the challenge with, uh, with these products is that, uh, uh, every country has their own regular landscape. And, um, it’s not that difficult, maybe for, for nutrition, food and, and supplements, but it’s very difficult for, for testing blood. I mean, you can’t send blood across the borders. That’s very, very difficult to
Jeff Bullas
00:43:29 – 00:43:36
do. So, I’m in New York. Could I, could I get a kit sent to me at my hotel and get it done and send it to you? Yeah, totally.
Jeff Bullas
00:43:39 – 00:43:43
That’d be pretty cool. And how long till I get the gummies? Will the gummies be sent to Australia? That,
Ari Tulla
00:43:44 – 00:43:53
uh, we can always send the U si mean, we, we, again, Australia is very far away. So, I think, I think, you know, our, our autistic partner would be surprised if I’m, if I’m a ship to Sydney,
Jeff Bullas
00:43:54 – 00:44:47
that’s fine. Look, it’s, um, what you’re doing is amazing. Ari, I just, I’m blown away and I think, uh, I love your creativity and innovation and I, I love your future leaning. And the other thing that, um, I rather like is the beauty in the design. Even for a gummy. I think it’s really cool. And uh yeah, it’s, I’m constantly amazed by, you know, gifted entrepreneurs such as yourself, amazing human beings that are changing the world one gummy at a time. And um that is so cool. So, Ari um are there any tips for one of the entrepreneurs, existing entrepreneurs or people want to start a business in this digital and a I leaning world that we are living in today? What would be some of your top tips to other entrepreneurs?
Ari Tulla
00:44:49 – 00:45:11
Um I have this is the sixth time now I’m building something from ground up and um I’ve been very lucky to be able to do it in four or five different fields. So every time I start a new thing, I’m, I’m a beginner and I have a beginner’s mind and of course, once to deep dive into nutrition, for example, you will likely end up uh
Ari Tulla
00:45:11 – 00:45:40
you know, losing that beginner’s mind, but in the beginning, it is very, very valuable. So I think the what I tell a lot of people uh and it’s so cool now to be a founder and, and entrepreneur. I mean, and I mean, it’s fun. I mean, I, I don’t, I don’t, I love this, I mean, I’ve been doing this for a long time uh over 20 years and, you know, being now a CEO founder for last 13, I mean, I didn’t, I don’t know, if I can do anything else and I, I’m getting quite good at it. But many people,
Ari Tulla
00:45:40 – 00:46:07
they look at the kind of glamour and, you know, you can make a lot of money and you can get a lot of fame. But most people, it is a lot of grind and it’s very difficult to succeed. You know, we always talk about the few that made it, but there are many, many, many, many more who didn’t. So I think the number one thing, if you think about uh to build a company, you can build a company. You know, my wife has a company um and she’s not raising any funding for it. She’s running a good business making money.
Ari Tulla
00:46:08 – 00:46:40
That’s fine. Like a lot of people that’s like, you know, being an entrepreneur in that sense is fine. But if you want to go to the BFC game and raise funding and, and all that, you need to have an idea that you are committed for a decade. Like the better doctor for me, it took 6.5 years, plus done it. Then I was working in another company in the same field for two more. So almost 10 years, you need to be committed for 10 years. So look in the mirror and ask yourself like, OK, I have an idea. I want to do another game or app or whatever. Do I want to work on this? 10 more years or 10 years, if not, then don’t do it.
Ari Tulla
00:46:40 – 00:47:06
And then that’s why I think for me, I mean, I try to find meaning in my past life to give me the energy to go through the hard times when they always come. And today we are living in a very difficult time. For example, a lot of people are not getting funding today. I’m in a health care where a lot of, you know, companies are under performing in a public market. So not, not the easiest times and we are kind of pseudo recession, unknown time today. So it’s not easy.
Ari Tulla
00:47:07 – 00:47:31
So that’s one thing that like pick a, pick a topic that, you know, on an area that you really care about enough. And then the second one is that, you know, do you want to do it alone or do you wanna go with somebody else? Um If you’re gonna partner with somebody, you know, you better date with that person a little bit. Don’t pick the random guy and, and start a company because it, it will be a disaster in most cases. And like, I’m, I’m a, I’m a very, very fortunate in a way that I,
Ari Tulla
00:47:31 – 00:47:57
I started uh to work together very closely at, at Nokia with my, my co founder, Tapia. I have two founders in, in uh two co founders uh on this. Um But, you know, I met 17 years ago and since then we’ve been working every day together there is 1/4 company for us together. And, um, that’s pretty unique because, you know, I can, I trust him 100% and, you know, he’s 100% better than I am in all the things he does. I’m probably better what I do and we can DV, up task and
Ari Tulla
00:47:57 – 00:48:16
it’s been so fun to work with somebody that, you know, is there on a, on a hard days for you and vice versa. So that is really making much more fun and, you know, some people start a company alone, a start up and raise them up. That’s hard because they are very lonely. And, and then third point I think on and this is that the,
Ari Tulla
00:48:16 – 00:48:41
um, if you want to do impact, like my goal is to, to have impact. And, uh, yes, I mean, I had maybe some impact on the, on the doctor stuff. I built uh, all 10 years. I mean, I’m proud about it but, you know, still, if I want to do, have an impact I have now friends, I’m 45. I have many friends, you know, who, you know, went to good schools and they, they done a really good, you know, career in big companies and now they’re starting to be, you know, at the sea level.
Ari Tulla
00:48:42 – 00:49:07
And I think they have much more impact than I have. I might, may never have that impact because I can build the start ups. But, you know, even if I make them pretty big, I still have, you know, millions of people and my friends are working in companies like Google and they have an impact on billion people today every day. So, in a sense, if you really want to impact the world, it might be easier almost to do in a bigger company. And people often say, like, why would you go to work in a big company?
Ari Tulla
00:49:08 – 00:49:41
I mean, one reason is that, you know, you could be there if you do the right things and you get, you know, high enough, you know, you can really have a massive impact. And, uh, and that’s something that people often forget. There are not many people that I know and I’ve been playing the start up game now for a long time and I mean, in Silicon Valley, I mean, I know a lot of people here, I’m probably connected to 1000 CEO S out of them. I think five people have made real impact. Many of them made a lot of money. No question about that. But I don’t think it’s about the money. I think it’s about, can you have an impact in the world around you?
Jeff Bullas
00:49:42 – 00:50:16
Yeah, I remember the quote, um, when Steve jobs hired John Scully, he said, do you wanna keep selling sugar drinks or do you wanna change the world? And uh, I remember that quote and uh, so I, I love your takeaways and tips. Number one is uh, have something that’s purpose driven. Uh, number two, pick the right partner to work with and because you’re gonna have to be spending every day with them maybe more time than you’re gonna spend with your wife or your partner. Number three. And also the other part of that too was, you know, play the long game
Jeff Bullas
00:50:17 – 00:50:44
and number three is impact. Um, but, you know, you are making an impact definitely and, and you already have. So I don’t think underestimate yourself. Um I think we’ve done a, I’m, I’m blown away by your creative and innovation as I said before. So, Ari thank you very much for sharing. And one final uh thing I wanna ask is, um and I think I know the answer already is what brings you deep joy and you would do it even if you weren’t getting paid.
Ari Tulla
00:50:45 – 00:51:25
Ok? I, I love building stuff. Um I played Legos, you know, as a kid and when I was playing with computers, I see my son playing Legos and building amazing things today at age nine. And uh I think the building is, is the, is the one thing that, you know, it just keeps me excited and, and you know, seeing and maybe being in a tiny way involved in inventing the future. Uh I mean, we are living in the most exciting time I think ever because we have a few things happening that are unbelievable. A I today I think is a catalyst that uh
Ari Tulla
00:51:25 – 00:52:20
will have an impact beyond our imagination. I mean, I tell a lot of people today that it is fire wheel industry A I internet. All these things are just like stuff. I think A I is the same catalyst as like fire and uh it will be unbelievable because we are many people don’t talk about this. We all use the LL MS, we don’t understand today. What happens when you connect the LL MS today, the las language models into robots that are getting better by the day. That would be like just a few years from now. 2345 years from now you’re gonna be walking in the store and there are gonna be like 10 robots picking up food, bringing them home, cooking the meals, you know, gardening your, your lawn, cultivating food in your backyard, cooking the mi and star food at your home,
Ari Tulla
00:52:20 – 00:52:36
taking care of the elderly people that’s happening in a moment. And I’ve seen some of the robots that are now coming up that are connected to the LL MS and you can go and look online. Um, some videos. It is absolutely unbelievable. They are better than the, the terminators.
Jeff Bullas
00:52:37 – 00:53:08
Yeah, I, I really, I totally agree with you that, uh A I is the new fire. Um, and it fascinates me and I’m intrigued by leaning to the future where the intersection of A I and Humanity where they maybe blend, maybe they become a separate species, we don’t know. And that leads us to things like questions such as if A I and robots can do all the heavy lifting, what will humans do that will still be purpose driven? Will we become just, will we
Jeff Bullas
00:53:09 – 00:54:09
lean more into beauty for its beauty’s sake? And will we lean more into um you know about interesting this and I’m actually this Friday. I’m interviewing Nick Bostrom from uh Oxford University who wrote Super Intelligence and uh released a new book called Deep Utopia. And uh he’s got some fascinating insights. So I’m looking forward to that chat, but I totally agree with you. I think we are uh we, we are at the Wild West and just the start of A I and um but still we gotta work out how, what will we be as humans with A I plugged into us or part of us, invisible and visible. Um I’m intrigued and curious. So, Ari thank you very much for sharing um your journey and experience. It’s been an absolute joy for me to listen to you and hear your stories. Um
Jeff Bullas
00:54:09 – 00:54:30
And I think when I’ll sum up what I think I heard when you talked about what brings you joy and you’d do it even if you weren’t paid. And that is to create things. In other words. I think that as humans is what we truly are, is creators and innovators. And uh you are one of those and we’re all one of those some just do it in different ways. So, thank you very much for sharing. It’s been an absolute blast mate.
Ari Tulla
00:54:31 – 00:54:32
Ok. Thank you.