Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Patrick, thanks so much for joining us.
Patrick Wetherille, Lose It!
Thanks for having me. Very happy to be here.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
I'm excited to talk to you because we're going to talk about Lose It!, which is a consumer application that has achieved great success. It's at a massive scale, which we're going to talk about. But for anyone that's not familiar with the company, what does Lose It! do?
Patrick Wetherille, Lose It!
Absolutely. So you can pretty much sum up Lose It! in one sentence, our mission is to help the world achieve a healthy weight. And we do that through a digital product. It's a weight loss app, based on calorie tracking, food logging. And so this is a pretty simple premise. It's been around for decades, but Lose It! was one of the first apps to actually make it very easy, very accessible to people. It was one of the first apps on the iPhone back in 2009. And it was one of the most popular apps for many, many years. Certainly in the health and fitness space, we've been a leader to date, we've had over 15 million downloads, millions of successful users. And you know it, we've really helped people achieve a lot. Just a couple of years ago, we crossed the 100 million pound threshold. So collectively, our users have lost 100 million pounds, which for us, just shows us the impact we're making on the world. But that's really it in a nutshell, that's what we're here to do.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
And that's such a meaningful mission, I mean, to help people live a healthier lifestyle, and to be able to use a product like Lose It! to maintain and hopefully achieve their own goals as far as weight loss and obviously live a better lifestyle. So it's a very meaningful mission.
Patrick Wetherille, Lose It!
Yeah and actually for me, personally, I, before I worked at the company, I was a user, and I lost over 40 pounds that I put on in grad school. So when I had the opportunity to join this company, I jumped at it.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
And that's, that's a perfect scenario of a user joining the company, understanding the benefits, but then can have an impact as far as joining the company. So now you are the CEO of Lose It!. So talk about the company in terms of, you know, how it actually works, like, how does the company operate in terms of the business model?
Patrick Wetherille, Lose It!
Yeah, so the business model, um, it's what you'd call a freemium business. So we have a free product, the Lose It! app, anyone can download it in the App Store on their iPhone or in Google Play on Android, it's free to use the core features, which are food tracking, weight tracking, that that's accessible to everyone. And even that, that version, it's not ad-supported, so people can use it. It's just a great, great product that has the fundamentals to lose weight. We do have a premium version. It's a subscription, that's $40 a year. And it comes with more features. It allows you to integrate other devices, things like Fitbit so that you can get sort of seamless activity tracking. We also have custom goals. So people want to track like the nutrition, they care about their carb intake or fiber, there's just a lot more you can do with the premium version. It also provides a lot of great insights that help guide your journey to be successful. So for us, that's how we've monetized we, the vast, vast majority of our users are free. And so we love that we're able to make this huge impact. But we do have this premium version, which is really something a lot of people value. And that's enough for us to support our business. And we've been a growing business for the past 10 years. Growth every year, we've been cash flow positive for over five years now. And as far as our business model goes it's working exactly as we'd hoped.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So that's a great point. So it's a great foundation where you get a large user base. And there's actually you know, a business model where it's working, you're cashflow positive, and you have been for years. So it's not like you're a startup that's bleeding cash and trying to figure out how are we going to survive next month. So I think that's important for people to recognize now from a consumer point of view, like how does it work? Like like so when you download the app, you just start like, you know, tracking your diet, like how does it work from a consumer point of view.
Patrick Wetherille, Lose It!
So it's very simple, very easy, you just go to the App Store, download Lose It! when you open the app we will ask you a series of questions about what you're trying to achieve what your goals are, a little bit information about yourself. And that helps us create the right experience for you. So once you get through, the first thing we're going to want you to do is to start logging your food. So for most people, that means they're going to come in and log in for breakfast for the day. They searched for the food to put the quantity and they log in, they can see how many calories they consumed. Now they can be able to compare that to their target for the day. And so their daily calorie budget is what helps them see well you know what's the amount the most I can eat in the day and still be on track to lose the way at the rate I want to lose weight for some people might be half pound a week. Sometimes it's one pound a week. But that's what guides that daily calorie budget. And so as people go through their day, they Have more food. And by the end of the day, they can see hey, are they on track for that calorie target? Or not? And to be honest, I think most people actually the first time around, we'll see that they're over budget for the day. It's very normal, very typical. And that's when you have the opportunity to look through your budget and see, well, what pushed me over the calorie limit for the day? You know, a lot of times it's a specific food. For me, I actually saw early on and in my experience that it was there were things that were unexpected. Sometimes it's things that seem healthy, that aren't actually healthy. So I used to love getting chicken Caesar wraps, I thought, Hey, this is like a salad. But it's all wrapped up as fresh ingredients. But the wrap alone was like 700 calories. And so I mean that just like you know, blew up my budget for the day. So it's that kind of insights and aha moments that really get people to understand, well, what am I doing that I need to change, so that can start changing and changing, you know what I'm eating, and really start to move the needle on weight so that they can help so we can help them achieve their weight loss goal.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So what's the size of the company in terms of employees? And what are the plans ahead? As far as hiring?
Patrick Wetherille, Lose It!
Yeah, so we, we've got about 42 full-time employees at the moment, a handful part time employees, but we're growing. And we're hiring and in most departments, so we're looking for people in marketing, product engineering, you know, you name it, we're looking for people. So if anyone's interested, you know, we really are looking, for talent across the board right now.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
And what's it like working at Lose It!? Like, what's the day-to-day culture like?
Patrick Wetherille, Lose It!
I love it, it's a great culture. And I think for us, we were pretty open, open environment, in terms of how we think about the work we do, you know, I can just kind of walk you through some of our corporate values, which really bubbled up, we went through a process last year to try to just write them down. And we just involved everyone in the company, we're like, Hey, we think we work a certain way, like, what what are they really the most important bullets, you know, the first one is just purpose-driven. It's all back to that mission, waking them up, making the world helping them to achieve a healthy weight. So very focused on the user. And we really probably obsessed with our end-user. And I think that's really been something that served us very well over the past 10 years. Another important value for us is, is that we're humble. So humility was one that really came across. We do a lot of experimentation, we try lots of new things. And it's just essential to be humble when it comes to what we know and what we don't know. So that's the thing that that's really important to us. We're inclusive. So for us, I think one of the things that really captures that is we have employees that have been here for 12 years, and we've had people who've been here for, you know, two weeks. And so it's really important for us to be really welcoming, really inclusive, really in a proactive way. And that allows us to really help new folks understand what we've been up to for the past 10 plus years. But also for us to really capture the value of those new perspectives. I think that's one of the things we're really looking for is getting people with outside experience, new ideas, fresh out fresh thoughts, that's what's going to get us to that next level of growth. Another really, really important one, in my mind, is ownership. We're a small company, just over 40 employees, and there's just so much to do, we wouldn't be able to do it if we didn't have people who came every day and just treated their work like it's their own treated the company like it's their own, put in the extra mile. We do give people a lot of latitudes and a lot of independence and how they do their work. And it's that ownership value that really allows us to thrive. Another one is transparency, we are very, very open, we're as open as we possibly can be. So internally, we share everything we share financials. Every project, every work item that we work through gets shared to the whole company, it's usually just a minute or two, but just everyone has the opportunity to share what they've been working on, show what they've done. And we really value that that openness. And then the last thing is that we're really, really results-oriented. So we just relentlessly, relentlessly focus on the goals that we have in mind. So whether that's financial, whether that's a weight loss target, every year, we do have a weight loss goal that the company strives to achieve for our users. But even those experiments that we run everything we do, it's all about, hey, what's the tangible net result here we're looking to achieve? And we just drive towards that. And that's really fueled that that 10 plus years of growth for us.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So the job market is very active. There are lots of opportunities available out there, which is a good thing. We want an active market like it is right now. So why is now the ideal time to join Lose It!?
Patrick Wetherille, Lose It!
So I think there's a number of reasons. I think I think first and foremost, it's a company that has a really meaningful mission. So it's not just like you're showing up and putting in some time and you know, you're pushing just any sort of product or service forward. This is literally a product that changes people's lives. You know, we've had people who have had, you know, chronic conditions and have been, you know, morbidly obese and had their life expectancy was really, really short and Lose It! helps them transform their lives and get years back, gets years back on their life changes the quality of their life, they're able to be more active, they're able to, you know, do things like play with their kids, it's just, it's a really life-changing product. And so that's the thing that I think, you know, it's really meaningful that not a lot of companies can offer it, the other big benefit is, you know, we are a small company, which means that we really, you know, get a lot of leverage through our team. So the opportunities here are really boundless, you know, you come in, and we really encourage people to just put in as much as they want to, and help us identify opportunities, a lot of times people come in, and they'll point something out to us and say, Hey, I think we should be working on this, have you guys thought of it, and we haven't and we're like, that's a great idea. Take it and run with it. And so it's really, you know, it is what you make of it here. And we'll give you the tools and resources to be successful. I think the last thing if people are looking for really kind of startup experience, we still have very much that that culture, that energy. But it's also it's a company that has been de-risked a lot, right? We've been successful, and we've been growing. And so we've got a great track record. So you don't have to worry about joining a company that is going to like potentially not make payroll in a month or two. You know, we've really built something special here. But we've really preserved that you know, startup culture that energy. And so I think it's really kind of the best of both worlds.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Well, if you are interested in exploring opportunities at Lose It! as Patrick mentioned, there's a ton of hiring across the board across all functional areas. And if you want to join a company that has a really compelling mission behind it in terms of helping people lose weight and live healthier lives, I mean, that's just such an extraordinary thing to work on. You need to go to their company page on VentureFizz, which is venturefizz.com/lose-it and you're going to see all their job listings there. Patrick, thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through all the great things happening at the company.
Patrick Wetherille, Lose It!
All right, thank you so much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
