This SpaceX alum co-founded Levels, a health startup that measures your metabolism in real time – The Hustle

Rob Litterst a Hustle contributor who writes the pricing strategy newsletter Good, Better, Best conducted this interview.

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Diabetes is a huge problem in America, with 100m+ adults either diabetic or pre-diabetic according to the CDC.

To tackle this issue, Josh Clemente co-founded Levels.

The health startup which recently raised $12m, led by Andreessen Horowitz provides users with a constant glucose monitor (CGM) patch that attaches painlessly to the arm and can do real-time metabolism tracking via an app.

Clemente a hardware engineer who spent 6 years at SpaceX spoke with The Hustle about the startups mission:

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It actually started from doing my own research on myself I had always had a calorie-in, calorie-out philosophy with my diet where I felt as long as I was working out regularly, it wouldnt really matter what I put in my body.

Then I started to have these episodes where my energy levels would slump to the point that I thought there was something seriously wrong. When doctors couldnt tell me what was going on, I started doing research myself.

That led me down a rabbit hole where I eventually found the profound role that diet plays in holistic health.

I would go out to CVS and buy finger-prick blood sugar tests and record the results in an Excel sheet. After a few weeks of doing 60 tests a day, I realized my energy was highly correlated with glucose levels that were directly tied to my diet.

These single point measurements couldnt really help me make better choices though, so when I discovered a continuous glucose monitor which measures blood sugar 24/7, everything changed. I was able to connect specific actions I was taking with negative reactions in my body in real time.

Honestly, working solo, I wasnt sure how to get started. I knew there was an accessibility problem for this type of data, but it didnt come together immediately.

I was thinking about designing a Continuous Glucose Monitor and bringing that to market, but it took about a year of digging deep into the research and understanding that this problem is just way larger than I ever imagined.

There are 100m+ American adults with pre-diabetes and 84% of them dont know it. The CDC thinks 70% of those people will transition to Type 2 diabetes in the next 5-10 years if they dont make some changes. How are they going to make changes if theyre not measuring anything?

Exactly. It became clear that the people who need this most dont know they need it most, so the solution has to be one thats mainstream, desirable, and effective. In order to get there, I found the hardware wasnt the issue.

What we needed was a better software solution, a better user experience, and behavior-change engine. Being a hardware engineer, I was ill-equipped to do that, so I pitched the business plan to Sam (Corcos), my co-founder, whos a software engineer, multi-time founder, and generally brilliant guy.

It took him about 24 hours to get on board. From there, we incorporated Levels and set out to build a rockstar team.

We really wanted exceptional co-founders in each of the business verticals. So we convinced David Flinter and Andrew Connor from Google to join and run product and engineering.

And then we brought in Casey Means, whos a Stanford-trained surgeon and functional medicine doctor, as our chief medical officer. That covered most of the spectrum of challenges we face.

I would say the first thing that SpaceX really drills is thinking from first principles, and what that means [is] just drilling down to the basic, underlying foundations of a problem. People dont want to be unhealthy nobody wants Type 2 diabetes.

The reason they end up there is because theyre flying blind, and the compounding effects of their choices are heading in a negative direction. And they dont know that until they cross this invisible boundary where suddenly, theyre sick.

At that point, it could be decades too late. So the first principle solution is give people better information in real-time about the effect of each decision theyre making.

The next thing is Closed Loops. A Closed Loop system is where each decision is influenced by the decisions prior, which leads to constant improvement. Were trying to build a behavior-change model that is closed-loop. You sit down for lunch, measure the response, then use that information to determine which action to take next or which to take in the future.

The last one is more of an Elon Musk-ism, which is how were creating a new category. Tesla positioned itself as a luxury good to destigmatize electric vehicles, and were trying to do the same thing for blood-marker monitoring.

By building an aspirational company with premium positioning, we can reframe the entire conversation. We can step out of the post-diagnosis approach to measuring bio-markers and instead say up-front, you are empowered by this technology.

One of the secondary effects Im most excited about is that food companies will have a much harder time getting away with misleading marketing when the consumer is empowered with their own data. When that happens, consumers will demand healthier alternatives, supply will improve, and pricing will come down for those healthier products.

Levels rewrote my nutrition approach from the ground up. After one week, Levels completely kicked a lifelong addiction to sweets. College friends remind me that I used to literally eat candy for dinner.

Id just eat peanut butter M&Ms or Sour Patch Kids until I was full. After seeing that trigger a near-Diabetic episode, I swore off it, and its been 3 years since Ive had any candy besides dark chocolate.

I wear three devices 24/7: Levels, my Garmin 245 watch, and my WHOOP strap. I also just got an Eight Sleep pod pro, which I am so excited about.

This ones easy. Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink.

This is my dads tagline, which I believe he got from Mark Twain, but he always said, The most important elements for success are ignorance and confidence.

It comes off wrong because of the ignorance piece, but when it comes to solving hard problems, I believe ignorance is actually an advantage because youre untainted by previous biases.

Combining that with confidence, and believing theres a possibility despite negative signals, thats been huge for Levels. My dads been saying that since I was a kid and its so cool that its clicked.

This ones easy, its Elon. I worked closely with him a few times over my 6 years at SpaceX, and the way that he can manifest the future he wants years in advance is truly incredible. Hell continually make choices that seem detached from reality at the time and then reap the benefits years later.

He doesnt do any angel investing or hedging, he puts all of his net worth into the companies he spends all day on, and when the stakes are highest, thats when he personally doubles down and goes all in.

Ive been reading this book The Decadent Society, and one thing thats really concerning is every corner of the world has a declining birth rate.

Were below our replacement rate, which has me thinking: Is there a way to incentivize building a large family? Its not really a cogent startup idea, but I think theres something there.

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This SpaceX alum co-founded Levels, a health startup that measures your metabolism in real time - The Hustle