I am Charles Schwartz Show - The Art of Billionaire Parenting the Counter Intuitive Method - Naveen Jain

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

In this mind-expanding episode, Charles sits down with Naveen Jain—visionary entrepreneur, philanthropist, and founder of Viome—to explore how audacious thinking, curiosity, and counterintuitive parenting can transform not just businesses, but entire lives. Naveen shares his journey from building multibillion-dollar companies to tackling humanity’s biggest challenges, from space exploration to revolutionizing healthcare. He reveals how success isn’t measured by wealth, but by the lives you improve—and why making money is only a byproduct of solving meaningful problems. From raising children who think differently and pursue moonshot ideas, to reimagining healthcare through personalized nutrition and RNA analysis, Naveen unpacks the frameworks that fuel innovation on a massive scale. Together, they dive into the mindset behind asking “why” until you uncover the root cause, the power of turning curiosity into breakthroughs, and the principles that help people build not just companies—but legacies. This isn’t just a conversation about entrepreneurship or health. It’s a blueprint for thinking bigger, challenging assumptions, and daring to create a future where billions live better lives. KEY TAKEAWAYS: -Why success isn’t measured by wealth but by the number of lives you improve -How Naveen Jain raised high-achieving children through counterintuitive parenting and curiosity-driven learning -The principle of asking “why” until you uncover root causes that unlock breakthrough solutions -Why work-life “balance” is a myth—and how to create a seamless continuum between family and business Head over to provenpodcast.com to download your exclusive companion guide, designed to guide you step-by-step in implementing the strategies revealed in this episode. KEY POINTS: 01:22 – Redefining success beyond money: Naveen shares why true success is measured by how many lives you improve, not the wealth you accumulate—while Charles reflects on why this mindset redefines entrepreneurship. 03:49 – Counterintuitive parenting that works: Naveen explains how co-creating stories, fueling curiosity, and showing audacity helped him raise ambitious children—while Charles highlights the lessons parents can apply at home. 05:12 – From dot-com billions to mining the moon: Naveen recalls how he built a $40B company and then chased space exploration—while Charles points out how modeling boldness inspires the next generation. 10:50 – The myth of work-life balance: Naveen reveals why balance is impossible and why life and work must exist as a continuum—while Charles underscores the freedom that comes from integration over separation. 17:33 – Why teaching kids “the value of money” backfires: Naveen argues that making children work menial jobs for money limits them—while Charles unpacks the importance of giving kids platforms to reach higher. 31:24 – The power of asking ‘why’: Naveen shows how relentless curiosity leads to root causes and world-changing solutions—while Charles reflects on how childlike questioning unlocks breakthroughs. 36:33 – Reinventing healthcare with Viome: Naveen details how RNA, AI, and personalized nutrition can prevent disease—while Charles emphasizes the radical shift from generic health advice to truly individualized care. Exclusively for Proven Podcast Listeners: PROVEN10 gets your listeners 10% off of the full price of our Full Body Intelligence Test Viome's Full Body Intelligence™️Test our most comprehensive, at-home, 3-in-1 health test that includes: our gut and oral microbiome tests plus our cellular health test deep analysis of your oral + gut microbiomes your biological age score precision insights into your cellular, cognitive health, immunity, and more recommendations (Superfoods, Enjoy, Minimize, Avoid) for 370+ foods over 60 precision health scores recommendations for custom-formulated supplements, personalized gut biotics and oral hygiene formulas (available through subscription)  *This discount is not combinable with any other offer

Welcome back to the proven podcast where it doesn't matter what you think, only what you can prove. On this episode, Navine shares how not only did he become a billionaire, but he made all of his kids billionaires as well. It's counterintuitive, and it's all backed on science. At the end of the episode, he shows us another proven way to heal your health and understanding that health is true wealth. He walks us through step by step in his again counterintuitive method. This one was for one for the books. The show starts now. How are you doing? I'm so excited to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being on.

Well, first of all, I am just absolutely super excited to be here and just absolutely looking forward to it. Thank you. Thank you again for coming on. And for the couple of people out there who don't know who you are, who are you. Who are you? Well, you know, it's really interesting that men define themselves of who they are by their business card. And I really find that to be funny. They always tell you, I am CEO, blah. And even after they retire, I'm a fourth. former CEO of blah, but there's nobody. So I'm going to tell you that I am a, I'm an entrepreneur, I am dedicated my life to solving problems that can help billion people live better life. And I am an unbelievably supportive dad who really want not just to leave a better world

for our children, but to also leave better children for the world. And I have a cheat here because I've actually spoken to one of your children off camera already, so I already know the impact you've had. So you've become very, very successful. You're arguably probably one of the more successful people I've ever spoken to. But that's not what's amazing about you. You've done it for your kids as well. You've made your kids bazillionaires.

You're just talking about your son. Can you tell me a little bit of that about the success that your kids have had? Yeah, I think first of all, we have to redefine what success really means. Success can never be defined by how much money you have in the bank. Success can only be defined by how many lives are you able to improve while you are still alive. And at the same time, I tell our children the same thing, and I hope everyone listening to it will follow that. That is, your self-worth never comes from what you own. Your self-worth comes from what you create.

So if you own a lot because you inherited some wealth and you haven't created anything, you're still a parasite on society. So just don't be a parasite, right? So do something that improve people's life. And I'm going to come back and tell you how to actually create a massive financial wealth for you because making money is simply a byproduct of doing things that improve people's lives. So if you can do something, build any product, any service

that can improve 100 million people, life, you can create a $100 billion company. But you never wake up in the morning and saying, what should I do to create $100 billion company? And that's really what it comes down to is making money is like having an orgasm. If you focus on it, you're never going to get it. You just have to enjoy the process. People who choose it almost become poor.

That is, I've never heard that example before. So you've made multi-million dollar companies. You've crushed it with Viome. I actually talked to your daughter and she's crunch. it because she came at as a different angle. One of the things that she does, and I'm kind of stealing thunder from her show that we will be doing was where you've created amazing things in Viome, she went in and said, hey, the world has not done all of these case studies, all these medical studies on women for medicine

for women. Up to the late 80s, they were doing it on men and then just changing the numbers, which just sounds wild to me. So you've raised kids that are just financially successful, and that is a byproduct of other things you've done. So when you're, when you're going through and you're making these high achiever children and a lot of people are just like, how do I get my kid not to be on my iPad for God's sake, let alone make them billionaires or multi, or deck of millionaires, a sense of millionaires. What is the core that you started with saying, okay, this is what we're going to do.

We're going to change the ball game from the beginning. And how do you deal with that? Yeah. So let me give a couple of things because parenting is extremely counterintrudent. So basically everything that we believe is good for our children, Actually, we do it because it's good for us and we are selfish people and at the cost of our children. And let me give you a bunch of examples of what we do that we think we're doing it for our children. So, for example, let's assume you start a company and God forbid you are extremely successful and you're still young and your children are young and your children are young and your children are young and your children are young and your children are young. That's extremely selfish thing to do, and you absolutely destroy your children. And here's why.

Now, imagine what happens now. Look at it from a children's perspective. You're telling kids, money doesn't matter. And now when the kids are going to school, what do they see? That made a lot of money. He's still sitting on the sofa watching CNBC. I come back from school. What do I see?

My dad is still at home watching CNBC and telling me, go work hard, go to your room, finish your homework, hard work is what it takes. And I'm thinking in my own mind as a child, I want to grow up just like my dad, sit on the sofa and watch CNBC. So it's counterintuitive. Yeah. And instead, you know, obviously, as you know,

I started my first company, InfoSpace, and it's in the dot-com era. That company went on to become a $40 billion company. Right. Now, it didn't matter what the money is, but the point was at that time, my children were all under 10. This is where I am

and I could have easily, so I wanted to now leave. Instead of sitting at home, I started the second company. I started the third company. Then I, Dad goes crazy according to our children. Dad wants to go to the moon and mine the moon for helium three for fusion resources.

Dad, it can never be done. You're successful, man. Why do you want to go do that? And shows how is it possible? We became the first company to get permission to leave Earth orbit. The President Obama signed into the law called Space Resource Act of 2015

where we became the company that changed the law that anything we bring back from the moon, we get to own it. We became one of the six companies to get $2.6 billion NASA contract, right? Now, showing the kids that anything is possible. Now, Dad is now turning almost 60. Dad decides we're going to go to do health care.

Dead. Right into sunset, you've had an amazing career. Healthcare, you're going to get bloody, and you're going to absolutely be, there's no way you can ever change health care. Health care is not going to be changed. And we go out there and say, look, the future of health will be delivered at home

and the medicines of the futures are going to come from a farm, not at a pharmacy. And we fundamentally change how health care is going to be done using data and AI. Now, look at what children are thinking now. Children are thinking as they're growing up, my dad is not even that smart. By the way, for every children, I don't care who you are, how smart you are. In your children's eye, you are the biggest moron out there.

You don't know anything. You don't know anything. Dad, that was fine in your generation. That's not what the life is. And now they're thinking, my dad is not even that smart. And look at what he has done. Now, let me show them how it can be done. And now they're taking on this massive ideas to show what is possible.

Now, let me give you a couple of other examples of in terms of raising children. And I think that really crystallized what really of the counterintuitive parenting is all about. So, for example, when your children are young, we all want to read stories to our children. That's how we spend time with our children in the evening before they go to sleep. I realize what if we can actually change that game and say instead of reading them the stories, what if we co-create a story? So I would go to them and say,

now tell me a story about a monkey and a palm tree and ocean. And now they have to find a way to connect these things that are seemingly disconnected and come up with a coherent story. And now it's dad's turn. All right, dad, now I'm going to come up with a really tough one. tell me a story about this, this, this, and this, in their mind cannot be connected.

Now, dad is trying to connect these things together. Guess what's happening? In their brain, what they're learning is, everything in life can be connected if you find the right abstract way of connecting the dots. And they start to make the new neural connections that has never been possible. So by simply changing the way instead of reading his story,

is to allow them to imagine how to connect these things together. The biggest and the most important thing that I realize was it's not about taking your children to the water and making them drink. It's about making them thirsty.

And how do you make children thirsty by giving them intellectual curiosity? So let me give you an example. You know, if you have a son or a daughter, you know, there's times they would look at something and say, Dad, Dad, look at such beautiful blue sky. and you look up and you want to encourage them and you say, yes, indeed, it's really beautiful.

Now, imagine what you have just done is taken away a beautiful chance to teach them intellectual curiosity. What if you say to them, you know, the sky doesn't really exist. Sky is nothing but a figment of our imagination. There is a blue light that scatters and we see this barrier called sky.

But really there is no sky. When we go from here to Mars, We don't say, you know, mom, I just pass the sky. There is no sky. And by the way, talk about the color blue, you know there is no color out there. It is simply the photons electromagnetic wave that hits our retina and our visual cortex is making up that color in our own mind. There is no color.

What should you have just thought them is that anything, even the thing they are 100% certain about because they're seeing it with their naked eyes. What if it is wrong? And this is what you have now created a child who is constantly willing to challenge the foundation of everything that people have taken it for granted. What if that is wrong?

What if it doesn't have to be that way? And suddenly that intellectual curiosity allows them to constantly learn and constantly change the way people do things. So it starts very early. on is what you're saying. You're going through and you're saying, hey, instead of me reading you a bedtime story, we're going to create that. We're going to co-create this together. Now, you also talked about building empires because you've been radically successful. You've done

things that for most people, one of those is a grand slam. It's a once in a lifetime. You've done it multiple times. How do you find the balance of being at home versus building empires? Because most of us high achievers understand that they're not around as much. How do you do that? So it's not about the quantity of time you spend with your children, it is the quality of time you spend with them. So in a sense, if they know the most valuable thing you have in your life is not money, but it really is your time. And you make that time available to them whenever they need you. And this is one of the rules that I have always followed. It doesn't matter who I am talking to, whether it is Bill Gates or Bill Clinton or the head of the states.

It doesn't matter. If my phone rings and it's one of our children, I will take that call. It will never be a call that I would not take. And in fact, I did that when I was speaking in front of as a public company at a Goldman Sachs investor conference with hundreds of portfolio manager that owned my stock and my phone rang and I said, excuse me,

I made a promise to my son that I always take his call, give me a second. I took his call and I said, Ankur, is everything okay? He said, yes, would you mind if I called you back in 10 minutes? He said, yes, Dad, nothing important.

That 10 second, our stock went up substantially. Absolutely. Because people in the audience says, here is a man who didn't really care. He makes a promise. keeps a promise, that's a person we can invest it. I didn't do that for a reason.

That's who I am as a person that when I make a promise, I kept that promise. And to date, it doesn't matter what I'm doing. If the phone rings, I will answer that call. And that is about being available to your children in the time of their need, not constantly being there. And children feel now, my God, my dad is at home again. I need to entertain him because he wants to play with me. and I got other things to do.

No, it's a game changer. So when you're doing this with your kids, my hallucination is it also, there's got to be a different way you approach your spouse and your partner as well. What are the different rules? Because again, you have to have a solid foundation in order to raise the children.

And the fact that you're successful financial and you're doing all these things, that's great. But if their core ecosystem isn't fully aligned, and there's so many people, I mean, divorce rates in the United States is close to 60%.

What are some of the things you've done there? Well, first of all, I've been married to the same. women for 37 years. So we have been married together for 37 years now. And our children are 35, 31 and 28. So we not only have had an unbelievably great family life, unbelievably great set of children. And again, as you mentioned, this idea that people have, that you have to have a work life balance. This is fundamentally what causes people to go wrong. Work life balance, when you ask for work-life balance, you have already concluded that those two things cannot live together.

You only balance things when their things cannot be together. They are mutually exclusive. What if your life and work is a continuum? There are days, there is more of one and there are days, there is more of other, but there is never a balance. Anyone who claims that they have a balance, they suck at both. Work people think they don't work hard enough and they suck at work and your wife and spouse thinks that you work too hard and enough time. So you suck at both. And the best is to really find the continuum. There are times your family needs you.

And at that time, your family is the most important thing. And you're going to focus on that and the work has to wait. And there are times that work needs you and the work has to take priority and the family just have to wait. Love it. So how do you, what are some of the rules and some of the ways that you've connected that you prioritize your partnership because, again, most people don't make it past five years, let alone 30 with Mazel Tov. Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you. So basically, again, you know, going back and start to look at, you know, more, let me give you a couple of more counterintuitive parenting because I

really think this is so important, especially for the people who come from nothing. And most of us who build financial success, some are inherited, but 99% of us actually go out, work hard, and create some wealth for ourselves. But what happens is, When we become financially successful and we come from nothing, our first thing that comes to our mind is as our children are growing up, is I want to teach them value of money. When in the come summertime, I want them to go out, work at the grocery store or the gas station. I want them to learn how, you know, what it takes to make money.

And I want to teach them value of money. To me, that's one of the most narcissistic and sadistic thing to do. It says, I suffered and God, I'm going to make you suffer now, right? Instead of saying, hey, look, I came from nothing. I was at the floor. I worked hard. I got to be here. I don't want you to go back to the same floor and maybe you're smarter than me.

Instead of coming up to be here, you'll come up to be here. But you know what? I'm going to give you a platform now. And you want from here to show me how you can go to the moon, Mars, and beyond. Because now you have a platform. to jump from. And what that really means is slightly different is it doesn't mean you don't do anything. What means is during summer, every one of our kids, I asked them, what is it that you wanted

to learn, but you never got a time to learn because you were so busy with the school. So my youngest son says, you know, Dad, I really, really want to learn about human brain. Now, it's my job is to make sure they find an internship to learn about human brain. So I would call the Paul Ellen Brain Institute, say, can you please take my son for summer and just let him learn up everything about a human brain, right? Or my daughter says, I really want to learn how babies actually develop cognitive abilities. Great. It got into University of Washington, pediatric sections, so she can learn about how babies' cognitive

things improves, right? So the point was, it doesn't matter every summer. They went out and learned something they would have never learned. So it became all about taking time to learn, not taking time to make money. Because when you get people, children, to start their life and saying, if I want anything in my life, it's all about making money. Rest of their lives, they simply chase money, not learning, not intellectual curiosity, not anything. And when you use money, you know what?

If you want to do this, I'm going to give you an allowance for this. We never have the concept of allowance because to me, What I'm telling kids is, look, money controls you. And if you want financial, if you want freedom, you got to have money. And what they're thinking is, God, all I care about it, how quickly can I get money so I don't have my parents controlling my life anymore, right? We didn't, we say, look, all this thing is all of us together. Go what you think is necessary, but don't do anything that you think is not necessary.

Is this something if your brother or sister did, would you say, come on really what are you buying it you shouldn't be buying that and really that's how we thought them is to become responsible not control them right other thing that i think you will really enjoy about in the parenting is that as they were starting out having a financial success where the dad has been financially successful what i told them is that now you have a safety net what that means doesn't mean you don't do. Now you no longer are going to play for singles. You're going to always go on a batting

and you're going to have your bat high and every ball that comes you're going to swing it so hard if it connects, that ball is going out of the ballpark and if it's okay if it doesn't connect, there's going to be the second inning and the third inning and the 14th inning. You're going to get plenty of shots at it. But you don't play for singles.

You don't touch the ball and run. Those days are gone. And that's the reason every one of our children goes out and takes on the most audacious idea that says if I am successful, it is going to help a billion people live a better life. And even if I fail, the things that I learned from it will allow me to build a company that will help a billion people live a better life, right? And in life, in entrepreneurship, this is my last lesson of entrepreneurship that we can move on. There is no success. There is no failure. Everything that you do is an experiment.

Experiment has an outcome A or outcome B. When outcome A happens, you do C and D. And when outcome B happens, you do E and F. And that's it. There is no failure. There is no success. Everything that outcome allows you to take the next step. And that is what I'm talking about is that even if you don't connect, you learn something to say, okay, now I know exactly. Now I know exactly what I'm going to do next. So I love that you approach everything counterintuitively. It's completely different, you know, because I was brought up with, okay, my parents made it here.

You have to start from the bottom again. I'm like, oh, God, and I've got a struggle to get back up versus here's a platform go after. So it's counterintuitive. I've also learned that children don't listen to what you say. They watch what you do. What is the, some of the counterintuitive things you've shown them in your relationship with your spouse on how you guys have your dynamic?

What are something to have you done? So basically, again, so children, as you said, whether it is work or at home, they don't do what you tell them to do, they do what they watch you do. So if they watch you work hard, they want to work hard. Now, it's really interesting. If you are working in a corporate as a mid-level manager, there's nothing wrong with it. I'm simply saying, and you're saying, wait a set, I want my children to be entrepreneurs. Now, what is it they are seeing is, my dad comes home from work every day, comes home, bitches about his boss, bitches about his work,

and then he goes back to work the next day. What do you think they're learning that your work has to suck, and it's okay if the work sucks? It's okay your boss sucks and you suck it up and you go back to work. Now, if you really taught them, he said, look, I hate this and I'm going to quit tomorrow, and I'm going to go do something else. guess what it can flood. Then shit happens and I don't like something.

I'm going to quit. I'm going to go do something that makes me happy, right? And that is what entrepreneurship is. So I tell people, if you're not willing to quit your goddamn job, a safe job, and become an entrepreneur, don't expect your children to say, why are they working for Amazon or Microsoft? Not that they're a bad company to work for, right? But you're not going to become an entrepreneur because they watch you do that.

Right, absolutely. So raising kids isn't always easy. Sometimes there's challenges. Sometimes they're not perfect. Sometimes you want to tie them up with duct tape and tie them to a chair and leave them there. There are days where it's really tough. I love the counterintuitive for that. How do you counter-tutally deal with children when they're being children?

And you're having those nightmares and those struggles and you're exhausted and you're building your empire. You have this aspiration for them. How do you deal with the resistance and the days that are tough and the days where you're exhausted? Yeah. So even if you're exhausted, remember, it doesn't take a lot. You know, as like people say, it takes a long time to build a trust and it takes one time to destroy the trust, right? So it doesn't matter you're tired or not.

You simply go back to your rules. And this is the number, if only thing you remember, just remember this. We always told them, our love for you is unconditional, but our approval is not. Now, think about the difference between the two. it is never you have to wonder if we love you or not if it doesn't matter what happens will be there for you but I'm not going to say I'm proud of you

that's approval so anytime when they did something we would say does not make us very proud of you when you do that right but we still love you right so if you do something when they're doing something we simply show our disappointment to them never say I'm angry I am you know and no nothing love you and I'll always be there for you.

So you never have to wonder if the home is ever going to be not safe. So home is a safe place you can always come back to. But not necessarily we are proud of you. And what's really interesting is your children may say, whatever, Dad, but guess what? In their mind, they always want to do things that will make you proud of them. And your job is to let them know what makes you proud of them. So you tell them, look, in this case, I wish you didn't do this.

I wish you did that. That would have made us so proud of you. And guess what? Next time, they would do exactly that. So in life, all of us try to be proud of ourselves and we try to do our best job that we can, but we don't want to sit that mark. Sometimes we do things that we're not proud of ourselves.

Sometimes we don't execute very well. And our children see that. Our family members see that. When you have missed the mark yourself, when you may have fallen below your desire of being proud, how do you explain to them, again, counterintuitively, when you show up and you're like, hey, I let myself down or I fail to act in a certain way, how do you connect with them? I actually start taking my children when they turn 10 to my toughest meetings, my board meetings, my analyst meetings, even the meeting with some of the customers or vendors, which I knew were going to be the toughest meetings I'm going to deal with, and watch.

And a child is watching me struggle and getting frustrated because I just can't. can't find a way to get across my point. And that is what allows them to see. Dad is human. He's going to not get every time right. And he's going to, at times, you're going to get frustrated, angry, and even at times that I told one of my band,

I said, I'm so glad you're not next to the glass because at this point, my inclination is to take you out of here and throw you out of the video. And my dad is watching it. Oh, my God, my dad is losing it. And then they're recovers and say, you know, all that means I'm trying to tell you is that, you know, we got to take a deep breath. I'm going to take a deep, three breath. I hope you take a deep breath here and let's restart again.

Yes. So I'm going to go for a walk. I'll be back to five seconds. Give me a second. I want to punch you. And we both in there. We both in there because we get going to great. And that's the point is to have them watch you that, you know, it happens.

You're a human. You're not some abnormal human beings. that doesn't have these situations. What are some of the counterintuitive things you've done in the house? Things that you're like, I'm never bringing that in my home. There's this idea that people hate screen time. Like, oh, I'm not going to let them on social media. They're not going to be on this.

What are the things you've done? So I actually never tried controlling that. We actually went from a diverse. I said, look, anything that you want to do, play a video game, go on a screen time. These are all the privileges you have for doing. things that you are doing, right? So if you are working as hard as you can and really succeeding at school, and doesn't mean you're all getting A plus, but it's about are you putting

the most amount of effort and you're getting the best you possibly can. So if they come back with B plus, it doesn't, it's not about B plus. My only question I ask them is, are you happy with it? Do you think this is the best you could have done? And if this is the best you could have done, I'm really proud of you. If you believe you could have done better, but you just didn't study hard, would you make a commitment the next time you would study harder? All right. So what happens if, because again, it sounds like your kids inherited this ambition. And people are like, oh, he's lucky.

His kids are ambitious. But I think there's a balance between nature and nurture there. How do you instill this into them? Very simple. Anybody who tells you is nature is completely hallucinating. And let me tell you why. 90% of all the people you look at who are successful, their children, all of them turn out to be bummed.

I mean, very rarely. So if it was in nature, every successful people will have successful children if it were in nature. So by definition, if you're looking at the holistically of the society, you have to believe it is a nurture or all of the successful people have successful children. So nurturing is all about, as I was talking about, really thinking about counter-intuitively,

about constantly a difference between encouraging them and teaching them about intellectual curiosity, always allowing them to think differently, asking a different question that what everyone else is asking. That asking different questions, allowing them to ask why and not get frustrated with that. Because even as an adult, what I learned is, If you want to get to the root cause or something,

you want to act like a two-year-old. But why? But why? But why? And that's when you get to the root cause. So I love that you give examples, and I love how much you love your kids. What are some concrete examples you have of those questions?

Like, okay, you brought this in. This is where it didn't work. Here's a question to ask. And you can remember an example with one of your little ones? I can give you multiple examples as an adult. I've learned at it, and then we can go back to the, you know, with the kids also. So, for example, today, every one of us will agree that one of the biggest problem facing humanity, the fellow humans, are dying from dirty water, right?

If you can give them a fresh, clean water, there's so many diseases that we can actually get rid of. And an entrepreneur will come along and see, you know what, I can build a straw with a nanofilter and you can take the dirtiest water, it will filter out everything, you can get a nice, clean nano filter water drinking just from a straw. And you're now saying, rather than asking, we have so much nice fresh water, where does it all go? And suddenly we realize majority of the fresh water goes for agriculture. And you start thinking, oh my God, if agriculture is taking so much fresh water, what if we can change agriculture to grow vertically? Aeroponic agriculture, hydroponic agriculture, maybe use lightly salted water for agriculture. can we take all the fresh water and for humans and then you feel really good

that you're solving the right problem until you ask the next why but where does all these agriculture go? Why do we have so much agriculture? Turns out majority of all agriculture is used to feed the cattle. And now you realize, oh, it is really the cattle that are taking up the agriculture

they take up the fresh water. What if instead of telling people not to eat meat, can we do exactly what? what nature does, take a stem cell from a cow or take a cow egg and take that sperm. And can we actually only grow the muscle tissues? If that's all we want to eat is muscle tissues, left only grow muscle tissues and a fat. But you don't need to eat eyes.

So why grow the animal? You just only grow what you want to eat. And that suddenly not only that solves the problem of environment because these cows produce so much methane gas, suddenly you have a lot of agriculture that you can feed humans and you have so much of fresh water that humans can use. So by simply get into the root cause of the problem, you realize a freshwater problem really is a synthetic biology problem. So you just continue to say, but why?

You continue to be that two-year-old until you get to the point. You're like, okay, I got it. Here's but why. And by the way, you can apply that to almost anything. So for example, you look at the food and you see, if someday there are going to be 20 billion people on planet Earth, how are we going to solve world hunger problem? And every expert will say, oh, that means I have to learn to grow more food in the same

things, to increase the yield of the crop. You have to reduce the wastage of the crop that is wasted in the transportation, and they're going on and on about how to do that. And what if you simply ask the question, why do we eat food? by asking the question why we eat food, it changes everything because you know now the only reason you eat food is energy and nutrition. Energy and nutrition. What are the different ways can you get energy?

And suddenly you wide open the problem to solving it in a way that has never been possible and now you would have never thought of it. And this concept is really so important. So I'm going to now go back and take this framework and apply that to how I apply a frame, but a lot of times people think all these abstract things, I don't understand how would I do it if I'm starting something. So let me take an example of, so basically any time you want to start a company or a project, ask yourself three questions. Why this? Why now? Why me? So why this is about ask yourself, what if I'm actually successful in solving

the problem that I set out to solve, would it help a billion people live a better life? Right? And we talked about it why that matters. So now let me apply this to a recent company that I started called Viome. So it's V-I-O-M-E. Viome set out to solve one problem, which is what if we can actually understand what changes in the human biology at the onset and during the progression of chronic diseases, because our thought is if we knew exactly what biochemical activities are changing in your body, before you develop a diabetes or heart disease or cancer or Alzheimer or Parkinson or depression or anxiety, if we knew that, we'll be able to diagnose them early, prevent them from happening, and God forbid, outright reverse them.

So that was our fundamental thing. So first question was, what if we can actually solve it? And the answer was, would it help a billion people? answer is 8 billion of us. Every one of us, every one of us is going to suffer through that. So that's a problem. Why this checkmark?

Next question is why now? Why now has two parts. You look at the stuff and saying, never ask yourself how you're going to do something. Ask yourself, what are the problems that need to be solved, but not how.

The minute you ask how, and this is why most people who start a company and their expert in their industry, they say, I don't know how to do it, and they say, don't worry about how, what are the problems that have to be solved? So in this case, I say, look,

to solve this problem, that three things have to be done. You have to be able to digitize the human body, process the massive amount of data that comes out of it, and then use AI to be able to actually make sense out of it. And then you say, okay, the second part of the problem is, you look and say what changed in the last three years,

but more importantly, what you expect to change in the next three to five years, that will allow you to solve the problem at a scale in three to five years, and this problem could not have been solved half a decade ago or a decade ago. That means you're not using yesterday's technology to solve tomorrow's problem.

You're actually intercepting tomorrow's technology to solve tomorrow's problem. And that otherwise what happens, So you come along, by the time you're ready to scale, someone comes behind you and you disrupts you because you're using old technology. So now you're completely focused on what are the things. So now, coming back to Wyoming example, we say, look, the cost of digitizing is essentially taking analog sample,

which is saliva, stool, blood, taking analog sample and converting them into digit ACGT or ACGU, so your DNA or RNA. Now, cost of that used to be tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars. Now, when we started the company, the cost was about $1,000. And we realized that it has come down, but it's still way too high. But we were absolutely convinced the way that things were plummeting that in the next three to five years, it should come down to about $100. Today, we sit here and the cost is about under $5.

So even though we were 10 times optimistic, it turns out we were 20 times pessimistic, and that's the power of exponential technology that it always moves exponential curve whereas human mind is always thinking linearly. I'm going to just continue. So processing side, we realized the cost of processing was very high on cloud competing. $42, we assume it's going to be 10.

We now came back to buck 50. Now, same thing happened to AI. We knew AI was going to be powerful enough and there was no doubt. So we started the company. Now, the biggest change was the last question, why me? And this is the trucks of everything. We talked about why me?

Instead of asking how to grow more food, you ask why do we eat food. In our case, we start and say, look, what is the question that everyone is asking in the industry? And it turns out everyone was said, look, to solve this problem, you have to know about people's genes, your DNA. And now I'm thinking, wait a set, I am no expert here, but I do know that your DNA never. changes. So in a sense, if you do my DNA test today and I gain 200 pounds, it's still the same DNA. I become diabetic. You do my DNA test. It's still the same DNA. Now I have depression and now I have a heart disease, same DNA. And then I die. 100 years after I die, you look at my DNA is still the same. So DNA can't even tell you you're dead or alive. Let alone, are you

healthier or sicker. So we realize the things that are changing are your RNA. And if you can measure RNA, it will solve the problem. I didn't know it can be done or I didn't know how to do it, but we realized that will be the crux of the problem. Second thing was, 99% of all the genes on our body don't come from a mom and dad. They come from these 100 trillion microbes in our gut, in our mouth, and all over us. And every disease, if you were to Google, Parkinson's and microbiome, cancer and microbiome, depression in microbiome, obesity and microbiome is connected to microbiome. And there were hundreds of companies doing microbiome testing. And my problem, why is this problem not being solved

if there are so many people doing microbiome testing? It turns out they were all asking the same wrong question. Every company to date, every company tells you what organisms are in Charles's gut. You have acrimencia, you have C-Diff, you have this, you have E. coli, you have these organisms. And in my mind was, it doesn't matter what organisms you have, What matters is what they are producing. Are they producing good stuff? Are they producing bad stuff?

Because any organism can produce something good in one environment and produce something toxic in another environment. So when people take these willy-nilly and say, I'm going to take acermensia as a probiotic, it can help you or it can kill you. So if you Google Accurmancia and MS, it is the number one reason it causes multiple cirrhosis, right? So same organism can be good or bad depending on the environment.

So what did we say? Let's focus on what they are producing. Let's focus on the interaction with the immune system and we can solve the problem. And now, Charles, this is the point. Now, having done that, we didn't know how to solve it. I went to Stanford, MIT, NASA, finally found the technology at Los Alamos National Lab

where they were working on a biodefense technology to solve a problem around how to detect bio-weapons. They couldn't care if there was a terror in our country, what organisms were there in the bomb. They care about what they express and how does it interact to the human body so they can create antidote for it. Guess what? Now, we took the same technology, got exclusive perpetual license to now analyze your body. So here is how it happens.

You give us spirit of your saliva, you give us a finger-prick blood, and you give us a touch of your stool. We analyze 100 million biomarkers, not 100, 200 million biomarkers. We tell you your biological age. your cognitive health, your oral health, your heart health, your immune health, your gut health, all the nerdy stuff you want to know. And then we can say, here, Charles, don't eat avocado even though you think it's healthy, but your uric acid is too high is going to turn into a gout. Here is a science paper that shows that.

Don't eat spinach despite Popeye telling you that it's really healthy. Popeye was not a scientist. Your oxalates are not being degraded. Spinach is very high in oxalates. you're going to end up getting a kidney stone. Or don't eat broccoli or Brussels sprout because very high in sulfate and your sulfide production is very high

is going to cause inflammation. So we can tell you which food to eat, why, and give you a science paper. What foods not to eat? Why in science paper? And then we can tell you what other things that are lacking. So what other nutrient your body is missing? So we tell you, you need 22 milligram of elder body,

79 milligram of amylase, 33 milligram of lycopin. So we walk you through every vitamin, mineral herb digestive enzyme and we custom make that for each individual every month there's no pre-made stuff. It's custom made for you. Providence

So when someone does this because you're asking different questions and you're getting very different answers because one of the things I've learned how talking to because it's just like you have to talk to you most people will get this answer and then some people will get this answer you'll keep going and going and going

until you get to source because you're not looking for answer you're looking for source which is a completely different conversation. When someone goes through them and they go with Viom and they go through it and I've done it a long time ago and now I need to do it again. So I'm going to reach out and we're going to do it again. If you go and you do this, follow long and or is each person uniquely different that they see some sort of radical change because you're not guessing anymore. You're using it for each and every individually. How long does it take normally see a change? So let me give you some example. So we did a blinded placebo control studies and we gave people placebo or we gave

than the personalized nutrition. In 90 days, we showed the people who had IBS, right, which is bloating constipation, 64% of the people in 90 days became healthy compared to 10% on placebo, compared to 10% on placebo. Same thing on depression and anxiety. How about pre-diabetes or gluglose resistance? We just published a study on pre-diabetic. people in 90 days, the A1C came down by 0.42

and they became healthy in 90 days. By 0.42, you said? Yeah, 0.42 in 90 days. And by the way, all we do is look at this. We custom make the supplement. So these are my, it says not in the engine, notice that it said manufactured on. It was made for me 10 days ago, right? And then you have these personalized probiotics and prebiotics for my gut.

Then we have these personal. these personalized oral lozenges, you can see my name on it, made for me for my oral microbiome, and then we have these personalized tooth paste. Think about it. Morning and evening, that, by the way, removes the plaque and gum inflammation and completely adjust your oral microbiome. Because when you adjust your oral microbiome, guess what happens? It is direct contribution to diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer, and many types of cancer. And sexual health, by the way. So there's so many people, because, again, my father was senior vice president of Valley Stobel Fitness.

Your family was senior vice president of GNC. And they would just push out supplements, but none of it had this customized down to your RNA where we're checking your poop. I can tell you no one at GNC checked your poop. And then not just the poop. We actually take your top of the digestive tube. Remember your digestion doesn't happen in the stomach. You digesting starts in the mouth. So, your mom used to say, slow down, chew your food.

You know why? Because the oral microbiome reprocesses the food so you can absorb the nutrition. Plus it sends the signal to your body what is coming. So when you drink a diet coke, what's happening is your oral microbiome is telling pancreas, release the insulin. And now there is no glucose to bind to. Now you become insulin resistance by drinking diet coke. So you're better of drinking a real coke because body knows how to digest glucose. Right.

So what's happening is, so we measure your saliva. So you give us a spit of your saliva, top of the tube. We look at the poop with the bottom of the tube. And then we look everything around the tube, which is your blood. So your mitochondria, all of your immune system, that means every single interleukens. That means, you know, IL1, IL8. So every single immune marker. And then we are looking at all of them together to see.

what is going on. So we can say, look, Charles, we are not telling you to be vegan. You can eat red meat all day you want because Colleen and carnation in the red meat for you specifically right now, not forever, is not being converted to TMA. And your liver does not produce enough FMO3. So TMA is not oxidized to TMAO,

which causes the arthroats cholerosis, which is heart disease. You can eat red meat. But so what we learned, Charles, was very interesting. There is no such thing as universal healthy food. There is no food that's good for everyone.

However, there are universal unhealthy food, but there is nothing healthy. Spinach can be good for you. And by the way, 37% of the people are harmed by spinach. 42% of the people are harmed by

broccoli. 32% of the people are harmed by avocado. And here is my thing. I'm a vegan, so I can't imagine. But red meat is good for 45% of the people. Okay. All right, I need to do my biome again. If someone wants to come in and they take it once, how frequently should they retest?

So we actually just published a paper that shows that your microbiome changes in six months. So if you are really looking at the thing, your auto microbiome, your gut microbiome, and it's changing every six months. So you should retest because the foods that were bad for you may actually be good for you. And the things that are good for you may actually become bad because body is completely. changing and adapting. So your stress changes your microbiome. Your sleep changes your microbiome. Your exercise changes your microbiome, right? And the food is the number one thing that changes your microbiome. It's so, it started with the kids. You know, it's so counterintuitive and I want to be respectful of your time. But it's the counterintuitive questions that you ask your kids, you get your kids to start thinking differently, operating differently, and now we treat our health. Yes. To your point, our health is our wealth. Because I've talked about this for years.

There are people who had polio who were paralyzed for the neck down. They had lots of time but no health. They wanted health above all that. And as a man who is exceptionally wealthy, not only financially, but also your experiences. And I met one of your children. I haven't met them all yet. But they're wealthy there. And congratulations in your marriage.

You're focusing on health on such a high level. Where does someone blatantly steal this from? Where they borrow all of this knowledge? Where can they go and start getting these tests right now? Well, first of all, you can just go. You can just go to wyom.com, V as in Victor, I-O-M-E.com. And the reason I have to spell Charles, so you wonder, is Indians cannot pronounce the word V, but I still start, name the company Viome, because I just fell in love with the word, what it meant.

V means life, and Omix is science, the science of life. And I said, who cares? I can pronounce it. Charles, he's going to actually say it in the right way. It's Viome with a V, Victor, Viome. So, all right, so if I go to Viome.com, they sign up, and then how quickly from the test to the result where they start getting the changes? Because I know everyone's going to start that 90-day tick. So it's the thing.

The minute you go to wine.com, you get the test, the day we receive your test samples, within nine days, you get the answer on your app. And it tells you every single food, what you should eat, why in a science paper for it? Food you should not eat Y in a science paper. Everything that's happening in your body, from cognitive health to immune health,

to gut health, to oral health. And then each thing, we can tell you how to improve it and a science paper for it. Everything is connected to a science paper. There is no, oh, we told you to do so. There is nothing generic. Everything is made based on your gene expression, right? So everything that you see there is based for you, and that's the reason why it is so effective that suddenly people feel better.

It's proven. It's based off scientific fact. It's nothing else. I can't tell you how excited I am to have you on. Thank you. We could continue to talk for hours. I know you've got to go. But thank you so much for being on.

I really appreciate it. Well, first of all, Chas, what an honor and a pleasure to speak with you. And I really hope everyone out there go out and do something so crazy that when you tell someone you're going to be doing that, they think you're absolutely crazy. Because if people don't tell you thinking crazy, you're not thinking big enough.

So go think so big that people think you're crazy. And just remember, there is no such thing as failure. The only time you fail in life is when you give up. Everything else is simply an experiment. So go out and experiment as many times as you want and never give up. And I cannot wait to see every one of the audience in here succeeding and going out and taking on audacious challenges. So our children and grandchildren are going to live a better life.

I appreciate you so much. Thank you. Thank you, brother. And I really, really appreciate you. Everyone talks about building companies, but Naveen proved that true disruption starts with building moonshot ideas. is that challenge the status quo. Stop chasing incremental wins, start focusing on bold visions that transform industries, elevate humanity, and leave a legacy far beyond profit.