This Week in Startups - $UBER & $PINS Q2 earnings + customer-centric primary care with The Lanby's Chloe Harrouche | E1524
Episode Date: August 3, 2022J+M break down Uber and Pinterest's Q2 earnings (2:42), and Jason makes a Jay Trade live on air (18:51). Then, The Lanby CEO Chloe Harrouche joins to break down approaching primary care from a custome...r-centric perspective. (49:40) (0:00) Jason and Molly tee up today's show! Big news day + a great early-stage founder interview (2:42) $UBER Q2 earnings: doubled revenue y/y, FCF positive, rides business is back to pre-pandemic levels (13:12) Vanta - Get $1,000 off automating your SOC 2 at https://vanta.com/twist (14:24) Does Airbnb have similar pricing controls as Uber? (18:51) Jason does a LIVE Jay Trade and explains his investment thesis! ***NOT investment advice (27:28) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://Squarespace.com/TWIST (28:45) $PINS Q2, Should public CEOs be able to retain super-voting shares? (38:01) Embroker - Use code TWIST to get an extra 10% off insurance at https://Embroker.com/twist (39:08) Jason proposes a perfect merger target for Pinterest (45:44) Jason and Molly tee up the interview with The Lanby CEO Chloe Harrouche (49:40) Chloe breaks down approaching healthcare from a customer-centric POV, pricing model, unit economics, and more (1:06:09) Onboarding doctors, scaling the business, opaque pricing in healthcare
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey, everybody. It is Tuesday. Welcome back to this week in startups. It's a fun one.
A big day for your boy, J-Cal. Uber reported Q2 earnings, and it was a monster.
Double the revenue and cash flow positive. Yum, yum. I know. So we're just in a great mood here at this weekend startups.
Also in a great mood, Pinterest C-suite. We're talking about the Pinterest Q2 report, which wasn't like amazing on the surface, but the stock is
up big. There's new leadership, new activist investors, and JCal comes up with a great merger idea
for this company. I got the M&A of the century for that. But while we were talking, I made a J-Trade.
I'm very excited about a certain hedge fund manager who owned this particular name, and I just decided
to whip out my Robin Hood and place a 50K J-Trade in the middle of the show.
no lie guys that happened live really did and then it's not investment advice no absolutely not it's literally just an impulse buy for this guy up in here yeah i mean if you would like to follow a maniac who buys a stock based on another person buying the stock and they like a cnbc has a show for you yes it's called jay trading with jason calicanus oh my god i should have a cnbc show okay keep going i mean you really should actually uh and then we wrap with a cnbc show for you yes it's called jay trating with jason calicanus oh my god i mean you really should actually uh and then we wrap with
a great interview with the CEO of the Lambie, a healthcare concierge service that's totally
focused on the idea of healthcare as a customer service experience. What a freaking concept.
So great, we love it. Absolutely. So it's going to be a great show. Stick with us.
This week in startups is brought to you by Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker
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today at imbroker.com slash twist. And while you're there, get an extra 10% off using offer
code twist. All right, everybody, it's a great day for Uber and me. I knew this day was coming.
I've talked about it for many years. I said, brov balloons. You know what? I feel rude.
I should really...
That's a big day for me
because I have been saying
for years, years.
And in fact, yesterday we talked about
managing growth
versus profitability.
And I said, listen,
much like Google can turn a dial
and they can pick how many ads they show you
and they can pick the minimum
cost per click.
The cost per click I think originally
was like a penny on Google
and then they made the minimum five cents.
Over time,
They went from, I think, two to five cents.
Uber can turn a dial and pick how much they charge for a ride, right?
It's pretty straightforward.
And I've said for years, if you just take the number of rides and you divide it by the losses,
it was averaging, at the time I had done a couple years ago, I think, 55 cents.
Total rides, total loss, 55 cents, right?
So when they lost a billion dollars, they had two billion rides, 50 cents a ride.
You get the idea, Molly.
Yeah, back of the envelope math like we like to do here.
Long story short, DK.
my guy at Uber, my second guy, has turned the dial.
And today was the day when Uber just took the dial and they dialed it up.
And then they just took wheel barrels of cash and dumped them off the back of the conference.
And just wheel barrels of cash dumped into the conference rooms at Uber.
Piles of cash in the conference rooms.
We were generated $382 million in free cash flow while doubling revenue year over year.
Okay, this is both dials.
Earnings and revenue.
Yum, yum.
Let's go.
Yom!
I told everybody this would happen.
Literally and specifically what Dara said he was going to do not one quarter ago.
And then lo and behold, he did.
And now the magic has been achieved.
achieved free cash flow. Three little words. The most powerful three words in the English language, free.
S-C-F. Everybody loves it. Everybody loves it. Yeah. Yeah, should we get into the nitty-gritty? The stock is
soaring. It's up over 17% this morning. Gross bookings. I just got it. I mean, honestly,
I bought a little bit on the open market and even I am stoked. Yum, yum. Here we got about that.
Yes. Gross bookings, $29.1 billion. That was up 33% year over year. So we're seeing a couple things
happen, one, the dial, and also the fact that people are back out in the world. So, yay for that.
Revenue up 105% year over year to $8.1 billion. That was a beat on estimates. Uber is on pace
for $30 billion in revenue in 2022. Net loss, $2.6 billion, but this included this $1.7 billion headwind
of mostly unrealized losses from investments and $470 million in stock-based comp. So the free cash flow
ended up up $780 million year over year to the total of 382.
Because they lost.
Because they lost.
In that same quarter, right?
Right, right, right.
Yeah, they take out the capital expenditure.
So there's still a little fun with numbers going on in fairness here.
And you always take out Uber is a very unique situation.
When they couldn't get the gold medal in China or another location, Russia, whatever it was, they would get, I don't know, 10 to.
30% of the incumbent joined forces with them. And that was Travis's brilliant plan. That Bill
Gurley, I believe, collaborated him on. Like, if we get the silver medal or the bronze medal,
let's collaborate with the winner. Because all of this does, of course, all of these wins
compound to the number one player. That's how network affects work. And they've got tons of cash and
tons of assets. Stock is up. It's great. I think the lesson here for everybody is
something I'm trying to do here live on the program, Molly, and it's been great to have you here
because you worked at Marketplace. And I really want to just really become an expert on public
market companies in addition to private market companies. Now, I never thought I was like
clueless about public market companies, but I want to be an expert. You know, I want to be in the
top 10% of investors there because I'm already in the top 1% of investors on the private side.
And I think what you have to understand is when you're evaluating a company and you look at
pricing power.
and you look at their cost basis,
or their costs,
not cost basis,
but their expenses.
If you can trim expenses
and raise costs,
that's a very powerful business.
And you couldn't do that
when you had seven competitors
to Uber or DoorDash.
But when you're down to the final two players
in a space,
three players,
you know,
which is really,
there's only two players
in,
maybe two,
three players in the food business,
arguably two,
make up the majority,
and then really,
there's really two players in rides and internationally.
There's many other smaller players.
So the point is, you got to look at this stuff and say,
if they did raise prices, what would happen?
Would they lose more users than they gained in the revenue coming in?
And if they cut costs, what would earnings look like?
And this is what we're seeing across the board in big tech,
hiring freezes, salary freezes, stock compensation being rethought,
and then even layoffs or forcing people to come to the office as a de facto layoff,
knowing that 10% won't come back.
So that's what we're going to see.
And the stock market, this is the way out, right?
We wonder how does the stock market reset, right?
And the way it resets is people look at businesses and go, hey, that's a business.
I could see myself owning.
And I look at Disney and I saw the Andor trailer.
Did you see the indoor trailer?
Yeah, we should definitely.
Definitely, that maybe should be our show with Lon, huh?
Yeah, we should definitely.
Somebody suggested that to us on Twitter.
And I was like, oh, yeah, good call.
I mean, it looks so good.
It looks beautiful and amazing and awesome.
Awesome.
So I'm like, okay.
And then I saw their Disney plans with Professor X and the X men and Secret Wars.
I'm like, maybe I need more Disney shares because their strategic plan is pretty great.
And so this is how the stock market resets.
You lower all the expenses.
You reevaluate every business.
You go from first principles.
You know, is this a really good product or service that people want?
Are they willing to pay money for it?
And are we spending the right amount of money?
And I think for Airbnb, Lyft, DoorDash, everybody, they weren't charging the right price.
And they were spending too much money.
And all of those things got dialed in in the last three years.
And here we are.
Airbnb and Uber and DoorDash, I think, are going to be companies 10 years from now.
This is not investment advice.
that will be worth for me, I think they're going to be worth five, ten times what they're worth now.
That's my estimate for those companies.
Airbnb does report earnings this week tomorrow, maybe?
I think Airbnb also reports.
Yeah, Uber's, a lot of things are coming together in exactly the right way for Uber right now.
And it does include the fact that airport bookings are back to pre-pandemic levels,
which meant that this quarter mobility, you know, most of Uber's revenue in the pandemic
has been coming from delivery.
So,
Bravo to Uber for having the foresight to see
that delivery was going to be a big business
no matter what.
It kept this company alive
during the pandemic without a doubt.
And so then now mobility is
a 126% year over year
and up 41% quarter over quarter,
mostly airport bookings,
which is,
it was airport alone was 15%
of total gross bookings.
I mean, people are on the move.
They want to enjoy their vacation.
Maybe you go out.
You have a couple cocktails.
You don't want to get dinged with a DUI or murder somebody.
Like, this is the promise of Uber is that you get more flexibility.
And it's expensive to rent cars.
It's expensive to drive.
And so, you know, in some cases, it's cheaper.
In other cases, it's more convenient.
And so great job to the team over there.
The other thing to look at is, you know, the trips, the number of trips and the customers,
they were up in a nice way, 24% year over year and 21%.
24% for trips and 21%.
So how do you double revenue?
Well, that's where the take rate comes in.
Take rate is a fancy word for the percentage you get.
Mobility, it was always supposed to be 25%,
but they did variable things with spiffs,
little promotions for the drivers, et cetera,
and discounting to get people on the road
on both sides of the marketplace.
But the take rate for mobility,
26.6%.
In other words, if you spend $100 on Uber,
Uber gets $26.60.
That's up 8% year over year.
and the delivery take rate,
which again,
they were in a massive discounting
where you remember,
that's up to 19.4%.
So if you bought $100 worth of dinner
for, you know,
you're six people or something,
yeah, $19.40 is what Uber eventually made on that,
right? And that's up 4.2% year over year.
Again, back to efficiency,
turning these dials.
When you have a really great business,
there are some dials you can change.
And the dials for Uber
are becoming predictable.
the dials for Amazon, for Google, for Apple.
They're very predictable.
Apple can pick how much they want to charge for a phone
so they know their earnings.
And they can actually sandbag them or blow them out.
Yeah.
Yes.
What? So Airbnb.
That requires though, Molly, extreme product market fit.
Sorry, that was my final thought that I forgot to say.
You know, if you have these dials, but it's on a,
not a great business. In other words, a business doesn't have huge product market fit,
then you can't play with the dials because you're just trying to keep the plane in the air.
But if you have absurd product market fit, you can just do-do-do-do-do-do.
Move your dials around and pick how much money you want to make.
This is chef's kiss for businesses like Uber and I think Airbnb I would put in this category.
Now they are becoming similar to Amazon and Google.
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that's what i was going to ask actually so Airbnb i looked it up reports today so does
PayPal AMD EA um but what are the dials for Airbnb so dials for Airbnb like how do you
on the same number it seems to me that there's their future
revenue improvements are going to rely on growth.
Okay.
They could change at any point in time what they charge to hosts and what they charge to customers.
So that percentage they could change.
Now, I don't think they've often changed it, but they could.
Because it's a delicate relationship.
Like, you do not want to piss off your hosts.
Because they can potentially go elsewhere.
I think the hosts, what are the hosts?
Like, they give 5%.
Let's just say the number is 5%.
They take from both sides.
So they get 10% total.
I believe that's what it was last time I checked.
So if you're a host and you're renting your place for 500 bucks a night,
average booking is four nights, let's say.
It's $2,000.
I'm just making our numbers here.
$2,000 and you're paying 5% to $100.
So let's say you made it 7%.
Now you're paying $140.
Are you going to cancel?
I don't think so.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I'll be curious to see what those earnings look like over time.
It seems less obvious to me what Airbnb can do to increase revenue without increasing users.
And that means having hosts and that means having inventory.
Yeah, but where are you going to go?
If you're a host and you take yourself off Airbnb, you literally lose 90% of your bookings.
Or you rent your house out because rents are at an all-time high.
You could lose the inventory.
So this is the delicate balance.
And so one might argue they have less pricing power.
That's what I'm saying is I think they have a little less.
They have fewer dials, right?
Revenue, like, Uber can raise prices, and I'm still going to do it.
Airbnb, it might be a little trickier, and I'm, you know, if I'm evaluating these two things as a 10-year stock, I'm not sure that they have so many obvious paths to increase revenue.
Most guests pay 14.2% of the booking subtotal, nightly rate, cleaning fee, additional guest fee, if applicable, excluding Airbnb fees and taxes.
And for a split fee, which I think is both sides pay, the host is charged 3%.
So I kind of feel like, I guess it's a debate going on with the producers.
Is Airbnb essential?
Do you feel it's essential or not, Molly?
Because you're an Airbnb user.
I am an Airbnb user.
I'm about to stay in one in Mexico City, but I don't think it's essential.
You're going to Mexico City.
I'm so jolly.
I know.
You should come down.
I know.
I really want to go to Mexico City.
I've never been.
Kind of a hipster locale right now.
I didn't realize.
Everything's amazing.
Yeah.
Come on down.
We're going to be.
party in Mexico City.
But I don't.
I'll take to this
biggest startup's jet.
Perfect.
There you go.
But I'll come solo.
I'll just come for the night.
No,
just come for the day.
Just like fly down in the morning.
Fly back in the afternoons.
Great.
Private chat, boom.
I think it's essential.
I do not think it's essential.
I do think that you can always default to a hotel.
There will always be there's other platforms for renting houses.
And frankly, a hotel will cook and clean for you.
Okay, I take it back.
It's not essential.
It's not essential.
I always think it's essential.
because with a family,
I like to have the kitchen and everything.
But now that I'm thinking it through,
a last couple of times I did travel,
we got two hotel rooms with the joining rooms,
and we went to the restaurant order of room servers
and the girls like that more.
Yeah.
And the pool.
Like, it's great for what it is,
but it's not essential.
And I think you, like, you just see on Twitter,
and I'm not trying to bash Airbnb.
It's like, no, no, no, no, no.
Right?
Like, this is a, this is all,
I'm just sort of as I think about which stock would I want to own
or what are the,
like Airbnb has made attempts to diversify
and I will tell you the other thing we did
in Mexico City is book several of their experiences
because those are great. Oh, you did?
Yeah. You used Airbnb experiences? I have never used them.
Really? And like sometimes you'll look up a tour on a website
and find the same one on Airbnb for like cheaper and easier to book.
All right. Anyway, I just want to say congratulations. The team at Uber
past, present, future, everybody. Great job.
And that's why I'm still holding a very large position in Uber.
and I'm not J-trading.
I have too much of it.
I was thinking of putting a J-trade on a couple of weeks ago
because I was like,
it feels like after he went to New York
and talked to all those hedge funds,
it would be a good J-trade to put on.
But I didn't want to put a J-trade on
because I already have a huge position.
But I am thinking about Warner Brothers as well
for a J-trade.
Really?
Well, it turns out Warner Brothers Discovery
has been spun out.
It's its own holding company.
Mm-hmm.
And there's this guy, Michael Burry,
do you know this guy who is the guy from the big short
all right he deletes all his tweets
I'm not up on any of this Warner brother
he deletes each tweet I think it's Burry
okay and he's a really smart cat
and he's got a hedge fund and his positions are public
and so I used Zapier
to create a Twitter room
on our Slack so Zapier to Slack
with a Twitter room
where Michael J. Burry's tweets
you know he does
deletes each tweet.
Mm-hmm.
In real time.
So his tweet goes...
I'm learning along with the notes.
Michael J. Burry.
Can we just pull it up for everybody to say?
Fascinating.
There's a whole story about it
and seeking alpha.
So he deletes his tweets in real time.
I have his tweets come into a Slack room with Zapier.
Because it makes me happier.
Because he deletes his tweets.
I can't keep up with it.
Zapry.com.
Svist for, for trial.
I just putting your show.
But I like his tweets,
and he says, like, really provocative things,
but he deletes them within like,
I don't know if it's six hours or 12 hours.
So, like, he tweeted at 9.04 a.m. today. And it's Michael J. B, U.R.R. Y. So you click on that tweet. It's now at the taping of this 1046. It's gone. And so you have to, like, be on alerts with him or something to see his tweets. I don't know. I think he got in trouble with the SEC. But his portfolio is available online. And as I become a J trader, so there you see what I did, right?
Everybody can see, I created that thing.
So if you were to do a search on Twitter,
I'm sorry, if you do a search on Google,
you can find his portfolio online.
So I guess Sion asset management is his hedge fund
or his investment company.
They have $165 million in portfolio of value.
This is for Q1, 2022.
And it looks like WBD, Warner Brothers Discovery,
is his, at the time, was his third largest holding.
Yeah.
And it's gotten crushed.
It's, but this is who owns HBO Max and Discovery.
And Zazlov, who I talked to when I was doing a reality TV show back in the day, is running it.
And he's really smart.
And he's a CEO of the Merch Gabby.
This guy is a hardcore guy.
I saw him at like a special conference you're not supposed to talk about, give a talk, and he is baller.
So anyway, I am now really looking at WBD.
This is going to be possibly my next J trade.
And this is not, Molly, investment advice.
No.
We're just talking here.
Just a couple of friends hanging out in Mexico City having a chat about stocks.
That's it.
And I'm not saying I'm going to put a trade on right now.
But.
But if you were watching on video, you might have seen the telltale head drop that says, I'm looking at my phone now.
I would never do it.
I would never just pop into my...
I like Uber Bonanza Day.
It's got fun energy.
It's a fun energy day.
Daddy's feeling good today.
Let me tell you that.
It's a fun day.
Now, hold on.
Warner Brothers.
Yeah, so Seeking Alpha, while Jason looks at his phone for no reason at all,
I'll note that on July 25th, Seeking Alpha wrote about this Burry holding and said the
combination of Warner Media and Discovery created a true media giant arguably at par with Disney and
Netflix. The stock has been off, but that could be good news if you felt like you like a big
sale at the stock store. Well, usually these mergers are a red flag, right? Like you saw like the
Turner one fall apart. So it's kind of interesting that this is one of the few that at least
according to this article are saying, you know, the combination of the assets creates this huge content
library, 200,000 hours of video content that assets are complementary because Discovery has a lot
of nonfiction. Yes, and WarnerMedia has a lot of fiction. And then, of course, continuing the
quote, The Deal will support a focus streaming platform that may compete with Amazon Prime,
Netflix, and Disney Plus. And this is one where like, it's really hard to compete. Are we
done? Are we ready? Are we done? Can I stop tap dancing? Yes, thank you. The J-trade is on.
Oh, what do you know?
Not investment advice, but when you see the grandpa glasses go on,
I don't, listen, I'm not saying, Vlad, that you're using a font size that only a 30-year-old can read.
But, like, I've got my font size ratcheted up on my iPhone 13 max grandpa settings.
Over at Fidelity, where the grandpa's trade, I think you can make that font as big as you want.
Oh, there it is.
WBD order in.
I've just bought 3,000 shares at $16.26, $0.46, $48,000 on WB.
I've been waiting to make this trade.
This is not an investment advice,
but I just made a big J trade.
And we got to put this in Prometheus, by the way.
We are going to have three sponsors for J-trades.
They're not going to be like ads in the show,
but I'm going to like have like maybe a charting company,
a trading company, a community.
And when I do the J-trades, we'll mention those folks.
So we'll be able to monetize the J-trades, if we will.
But I really believe Warner Brothers has,
I was thinking of who's going to be number one
and who's going to be number two.
I believe these are the,
the number one and the number two in streaming.
I believe streaming is beat up right now.
These being Disney and Warner Brothers.
Disney and Warner Bros.
Is that what you mean?
One and two?
Yes.
Because here.
Disney, Hulu, ESPN.
That's a pretty good trifect, is it not?
Then I go Warner Brothers, DC Comics,
Discovery Channel, and HBO Max.
Yeah.
Come on.
Who is going to get to a billion subs?
if you added then in Amazon and Netflix.
And that's your foursome.
I think I know who's coming in first and second.
And I believe there will be a $1 billion subscription service very soon.
In our lifetimes, it was what I mean by very soon.
And if it is, what would that even look like?
Just think about the amount of money that would print.
If it was but $4 or $5 a month because you have international as much cheaper off,
obviously. Let's just say it was a $5
average globally.
$60 billion a year?
Yeah, that's crazy.
In revenue?
Subscription?
What could you do with that?
Like, the entire NBA,
all the teams in the NBA are worth
$60 billion.
You know, like it's an NBA
ownership of the NBA every year,
probably. You could afford
to buy anything or build anything.
Yeah.
It's bonkers.
It's bonkers.
And D.C., by the way,
it's completely mismanaged.
And so Zazlov's going to get in there.
I've seen this guy up close.
I've been in a business meeting with Zazlov.
He's no joke.
And I've seen him speak.
This guy's like a hardcore guy.
He's like a sleutman of the entertainment industry.
So interesting, yeah.
Yeah, he's like in general.
Like, this is the guy you would want.
Like, if there's a zombie apocalypse.
Yeah.
You know, like, yeah, like, this is the guy you'd want to be in his town, right?
He'd run it fair, but he'd have a strong hand.
Like, you know, you'd be safe from the zombies.
and the other tribes.
So I like it for that reason.
I think he's going to come in
and the DC team is all fired.
You guys, this is going to come in
and he's going to give the speech, Molly.
What made Marvel so successful?
And they're going to go around the table.
And everybody's going to talk about
the five things Marvel did right.
And he's going to go, well, why are we not doing that?
And it's going to be crickets.
And then he's going to say, all five of you,
thank you for your service.
Your desks have been cleaned.
There are cars waiting for you downstairs with your boxes in the back.
You're fired.
I don't want to ever see you.
You're a disgrace.
And your services are no longer needed by Warner Brothers Discovery.
Everybody's fired.
Amas.
Start over.
That's what he's going to do.
When he does, oh, my Lord.
Okay, sorry.
I'm getting a little excited.
No, I know.
I'm into wartime CEOs, watching what happened with Uber.
Yeah.
I'm just, I'm into the wartime.
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All right.
Let's talk about Pinterest.
Let's.
This is such an interesting story.
Pinterest also up almost 20% in after hours trading after it did not tank.
Like I mean, we're not going to sit here and say these were.
you know, booming earnings.
It was not like a giant banger of a report, but it didn't tank.
And that was good enough for everybody.
Also, what I think is super interesting about these earnings is that, you know, first of all,
it was like barely a miss.
Revenue was up 9% to $666,66 million, which we'll assume is not some sort of a curse.
But it was revealed in a release separate from Pinterest's earning report.
Because you remember like a month ago, and we sort of noted it in past,
if at all, Pinterest founder Ben Silberman left as CEO and became executive chairman,
which was sort of a, huh, kind of moment. And then in this report, this release that was put out
separate from the earnings report, Elliott Management confirmed Elliott Management, of course,
the activist investor group that most recently tried to push out Jack Dorsey at Twitter,
confirmed that it is now Pinterest's largest investor and said it has, quote,
conviction in the company and its new CEO who recently was Google's former president of commerce
payment and next billion users, Bill Reddy.
So he knows a little something about making money.
And listen, like there's no evidence that Ben left because of value management, but one assumes
that some conversations were had.
This is the great part about the public equity market.
And this is why I want to really learn how it works.
I think the reason Bill Gurley became the goat
was because he was a public market investor
that went private.
I think it's better to be a private market investor.
I think it's more fun.
So I don't want to not be that.
But I think he understood it when he was a public market analyst.
I think famously he covered,
I think he worked with Mary Meeker and all those folks,
and he covered Amazon in the early days,
which is why Bezos was like,
yeah, it's one of the smartest cats I know.
And I think,
people like Elliott Management, I know they have a bad name, and people are like, ah, you know,
they're sharks, whatever. But when you go public, you now have this, you know, backstop of
if the company is being truly mismanaged and it doesn't have like a super voting structure like New York
Times and Facebook does, these folks can come in and they can activate activism and, you know,
be a little sand in the oyster that perhaps could make a pearl.
I don't think that always happens, but one of the things in the private markets that we've gotten wrong is making people god kings.
I would say god queens as well, but there's no example of a god queen female CEO being given what the New York Times, Facebook.
I think there's one other company that has a superstructure.
I guess Google has it too still.
Shopify has it now.
Shopify does have it, yeah.
So anyway, there's like a half dozen God kings who have given themselves this power.
It's dysfunctional.
It's brilliant if the founder is truly extraordinary.
But it is quickly dysfunctional if they're not.
And I think it's something that I hate to say this because I'm a free market monster.
But now that I'm studying the public markets, I'm joking.
I'm not a free market monster.
I don't know if these things should exist.
Yeah.
I'm wondering.
Now, you do have the option to buy the company or not.
right, you don't have to own Facebook.
But I'm also wondering, like, maybe we shouldn't allow this forever.
Maybe there should be some greater controls of public entities.
So if you want to take the public's money, should you be able to say, I have 100 votes to your one?
I don't know.
I don't want to flip-flop here because in the past I've said, you know, you have the option to not buy that.
While that's true, these companies also do seem to get awfully power.
And I think governance is important.
Exactly.
They're included in indices.
They're included in pension packages.
They're included in 401Ks.
Like, there is broad public exposure to these companies.
And so governance really does matter.
Like, that is in theory what the SEC is supposed to exist for is to protect investors.
And if you're giving a CEO ultimate power at a publicly traded company, there is going to always
eventually emerge some tension there.
Yeah.
I guess those, I like your argument as well,
that all these like pensions own it as well.
Now, they have the option of not owning it,
but the indexes are the indexes.
And sometimes they index the top 100 by market cap,
revenue, whatever.
So they kind of get dumped in there.
I don't know.
I have to think this one through.
Now that I'm becoming a public market investor,
I really have to think of so because I have always been
for founder control,
especially in private companies or founders having,
you know, strong controls in place, because I do think the previous model, you know,
where Tony Perkins and other folks would replace the CEO as the general course of,
it was the accepted best practice in Silicon Valley, you know, up until the 90s when it started
to change.
And that was actually the founding story of Founders Fund and the whole Sean Parker versus Michael
Moritz story.
You do want to have control so the founders don't lose their companies early because that
That would generally be bad.
But for public companies had a certain size, I'm starting to wonder.
I like this learning mindset.
I like this lifelong learner mindset here.
Because I don't have a hard and fast opinion on it either, but it does feel like it doesn't.
I mean, there's just something that fundamentally doesn't feel right about it.
It's like somebody will, what did Nick just put in the chat?
Warren Buffett said, by companies that are so great an idiot can run them because one day an idiot will.
It's so true, right?
And so I am wondering, maybe there's like, you can have it for the first 10 years as a public company,
or maybe it decays 10% a year.
So you can have the super voting shares for the founder for 10 years when they go public or, you know, whatever, plus 20 years,
but it goes down 5% a year.
So eventually the company becomes, you know, more vested in the public.
I might like something like that.
Yeah.
Because I understand, like, if I took my company public, I'd be like, listen, I want you to be able to buy shares in it.
and I want it to freely trade,
but I want to make the decisions here.
I don't want to have, you know,
activists come in here and, you know, steal it from me.
But then maybe you should just stay private.
So maybe there's a third way as what I'm getting at.
Maybe there's a third way.
I wonder if this is what that Eric,
what Eric Reese was trying for with the long-term stock exchange.
Like if that,
because that was sort of founder-friendly,
founder-control-oriented,
but maybe in a slightly different.
It was more for, as he explained it to me,
holding your shares
for a certain period of time.
So if I agree, I'm going to buy Pinterest or Uber at whatever share trade spent,
I promise I'm going to keep it for a year or two or five.
And if I buy it, the company will sell me those shares at a 20% discount if I agree to hold it for five years.
Right.
So it's, again, a third way.
So interesting innovation.
But, you know, Pinterest is now making 666.
Was there exact revenue?
I mean, you should have stopped.
I stopped at 665.
That's not a good sign, dude.
No, dude, that's punk rock.
That's like biting a head off a bat and your earnings record.
That's rock star.
Yeah, that's sick.
Ah.
It's sick.
All right.
So, Pinterest has the sign of the devil for their earnings.
Ronnie James Dio.
Here we go.
Iron Maiden.
So, rock on.
Ben Silverman just destroyed a hotel room last night.
Yeah, he literally just...
Guitar through the window.
Definitely.
Well, in fairness, they did sacrifice a lamb on the top of the Pinterest building on Bryan Street.
Which is how they, you know, they hit 666.
They all got pentagram tattoos.
Yeah, there's a pentagram spray painted on the Pinterest headquarters right now.
I really think that we are like one nanosecant away from creating a new conspiracy theory that Pinterest is actually like satanic.
And that's where all the like the Q&N people are going to get a hold of this and be like, I knew it.
I told you my daughter asked me if the Illuminati was real.
And if I was in it.
Because she was talking to her friends.
And I looked at her and it was like, I gave her the totally totally totally surprising.
The Illuminati is an urban legend.
And it's an insult to entrepreneurs and people who have worked very hard their whole lives to help make this country better.
Or it's right.
And I don't want to talk about it again.
The Illuminati is not real.
It's a stereotype and it's insulting to entrepreneurs.
It's just looking what I told her.
And she was like, no, really.
Are you in the Notti?
I was talking to my friends.
And you were all.
Kind of.
When I was like,
I find Illuminati.
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you're going to get an extra 10% off by using my code. Twist. Anyway, $666 million,
up 9% year every year. It's slow growth. Yeah. They're losing a little bit of money,
$43 million. It's not a big deal. But look at that.
the monthly active users. That's impressive.
Mm-hmm.
433 million, bigger than Twitter.
It was down 5 million year-over-year, but it did beat estimates.
I got to know how many of their multi-active users are search-driven.
That would be very interesting to know.
Like, how many of them come from Google?
Because you do end up with a lot of search results that send you to Pinterest.
That happens to me all the time.
And then I get super irritated because if you click on it in a just regular old browser,
then it's like, do you want to open the app or do you want to log in or whatever?
I know.
So lame.
You want to view the result.
It's super irritating.
They're trying to do.
I am a Pinterest user.
LinkedIn and Pinterest do the same thing, which is they think if we get you into the app,
we can reduce our dependency on Google search and we get more people to download the app.
And we take your data.
And we get your data.
Well, it's more about just owning the user like Amazon does, like getting people to come
directly.
And so it does work.
I would do the same thing.
And if I'm being honest.
But it is annoying at times when you just want to look at the profile in your
your browser window and it launches the app.
So what I do is I write the way to get around this, I believe is right mouse click,
open in a new tab.
Or I have my middle mouse, which is a scroll wheel that you can press.
I set up my scroll reel to do that.
So try that next time on an image for Pinterest and see if it opens it up without launching
an app.
Mostly I just move on now.
Although I do use Pinterest.
I actually got like a super good crafting idea from Pinterest over the weekend.
I got it.
I crafted.
Pinterest.
Are you?
Craftic's kind of cool.
I'm a woman of varied interest.
Oh, my God.
I inherited my grandmother's collection of tiny travel spoons,
which I was like,
oh, God, I'm going to put these on eBay.
Oh, I like those, actually.
I think those are dope.
But then I made them into these beautiful modern shadow boxes,
and I like spray painting in one of her holders.
I like a good shadow box.
Boho chic.
I'm really freaking proud of my...
Look at this Rachel's obsessed with this picture.
I think you and Rachel should do like this week in crafting.
We'll do like...
Rachel are like mother and daughter.
We're like into all the same stuff,
which means I'm too old.
I think you're like Rachel's, you're like Rachel's
wacky aunt from Berkeley.
I think that's actually what you are.
I want to be a like, you're auntie, auntie mo.
Wacky ant, wacky ant.
It's like, you know what?
I got in trouble at Coachella.
I can't talk to my mom.
Aunt Molly.
You can tell me.
I got invited to Coachella,
but that's awesome.
All right.
But they got $2.6 billion in cash.
This is a kind of a big number.
Yes, this is a big number.
So they're in good shape.
It's an advertising-based business, right?
There's nothing but advertising business.
They have not come up with a subscription business.
There is no such thing as Pinterest Pro, right?
I do not believe that is the case, correct.
And I think they make e-commerce revenue as a big part of it, too.
So that was the big thing when I remember the early days of Pinterest that was being pitched to me was
Pinterest is going to be the next
Google shopping or Amazon.
That actually has not happened.
Yeah, no, not at all.
Yes.
Which is why this new guy is in here.
Bill Reddy is here because he's ready
to create an Amazon competitor.
Hey-oh, because yeah, they just have sort of
under-emphasized the shopping part,
and now I have definitely noticed that when you go to
Pinterest, there's like, shop or explore,
and you default to shop.
But when you shop,
Are they delivering it or are they just,
and do you put it in a, like a shopping cart?
Or are they just getting paid for Click to dump you to a Shopify site or an Amazon site?
I think they're just getting paid to dump you.
Basically, just a bunch of ads.
Like Google Shopping ads.
Like, I think it's like a Shopify situation.
Yeah, see, they need to buy Etsy.
What's Etsy's market cap?
They should use this cash to buy Etsy or they should just compete with Etsy.
Because I love Etsy.
I shop there all the time.
Pinterest needs to buy.
I'm sorry, Etsy.
Now, they're similar-sized companies, so that you be a merger.
Mm-hmm.
This would be the greatest merger ever.
This is so smart.
You don't have to change anything about it.
Ever.
Ever.
Ever.
Ever.
But, Nick.
Ever.
Etsy just stays the same.
But when your Etsy merchandise is on Pinterest, you can add to shopping cart.
And you get free delivery if you come from Pinterest or something.
And then they should use Pinterest when somebody posts something on Pinterest,
say, did you make this?
And would you like it to be on Etsy?
It would be the easiest thing in the world to link up.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
In the back channel, I'm seeing pictures of these goddamn spoons.
Look how we can get out.
That is so amazing.
Wait, are those all yours?
Oh, this is like a.
third of her collection.
I used a glue gun.
I glued these like spoons on.
I bought white backing for the shadow boxes.
I spray painted one of her old ugly wooden holders and like put new hooks on it.
Can we show the one with the blue shield?
Love this one.
Like the Captain American Shield one?
Yeah, like Captain America Shield.
This one is great.
Isn't that so crazy?
Did you make that?
I distressed it.
I spray painted it and then I used a sander and some mat and I distressed it.
Like, who am I even?
I love it.
I'm a crafter.
Listen, this is what I like about, this one is, are the spoons now removable so you can take one down?
Oh, yeah, I can swap them out.
And pass it around.
Look at what Molly's doing here.
I think.
Now, each of those spoons is worth what, like five, ten bucks or three bucks?
Yeah, something like that.
I mean, I probably could have eBayed the whole collection for a couple hundred dollars.
Okay.
But it's like a lifetime of my grandmother's travels, you know, like I couldn't bring myself to do it.
My mom bought these things from the World's Fair, and she has a collection of it from the
World's Fair, and she's been buying them off of eBay for years.
I think she probably lost money net net on buying them, but I want to do something similar
for my mom with her collection.
This would be amazing.
What I like about the boxes, you know, it frames them, but I like your hanging one
much better because you could actually touch them and take them down and start your coffee
with them and put it back.
Well, I kept a whole bunch of, there's just some little ones that I'm like,
I need to develop a caviar habit because they're just cute little spoons, you know.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Should we talk about our health?
I am obsessed with health care now and not enough to be like all in on it.
I'm saying I'm like super curious in the way I was curious about like com.com.
And I, you know, or in this collaboration with you, Molly and the climate syndicate, the syndicate.
The syndica.com slash climate.
I'm like climate.
There's like, it's like a moment.
We're seeing.
I'm curious.
Yes.
I'm curious.
I'm climate curious.
I was mindfulness curious and I am now healthcare curious.
Yeah.
Which is to say, I am, you know, investigating what's going on here because something is changing.
And I know quantified self was a piece of that model.
You know, it was very, and watching what people did with calm.
And then I got FitBod and watching how well that's gone.
And then I used the tonal and the peloton.
There's something happening.
happening here where people are taking control of their health.
Yeah.
Because they have to, right?
When you have a, anything, time you have a system that's so broken, you can sense that
disruption is coming.
And we're like right at that hump, I think.
I like that as a playbook, actually, to look for companies possibly is like people are
frustrated and they're not going to take it anymore.
Right.
And they want to roll their own solution.
Like, what do you hate?
Right.
It's always been a great one.
What's broken?
Like, which company do you hate the most?
Oh, I hate taxis.
Oh, I hate hotels.
I hate cell phone service. Anthony Levindowski, who we got a follow up back up with, is working on a like fixed cell phone service. I'm like, hallelujah.
Yeah. Here we go. Perfect.
So Tandis Urban spoke at the All In Summit, and I became friendly with her a couple of years ago.
She was telling me about this thing she was building.
Well, they actually launched something called the Land Be in New York.
It's a private club, essentially, where you pay $3,000 a year, which I think is half of what it should cost.
I'll put that aside. And we talked to the CEO, Chloe, about this.
And then you get a doctor, a wellness kind of person coordinator and a concierge.
And you get this, like, a little pod that works.
You've got 230 people have done this, and people will not shut up about how great it is.
And there's a large number of people who could afford $3,000 a year for their health.
Because if you have a gym membership in New York, that's like $200 a month.
Yeah.
So this does not seem outrageous in terms of pricing, and I think it could change everything.
So we did a little interview with the CEO of the Lambie.
Chloe Harouche, here she comes.
Hey, Molly, I've been obsessed with concierge doctors and,
this one medical acquisition by Amazon that we talked about,
it does seem like people want a better health care experience.
And a friend of mine, Tandas Urban,
who presented at the All In Summit,
is the co-founder of a company called The Land Bee.
And I found out about this company.
It's quite taken by it.
Kind of like a private club slash health care provider.
And they offer a concierge service to members
for an annual fee that I think is probably half of what it should be if I'm being on is $3,000 a year,
which is a lot of money for some people and maybe too little for others.
They're incorporated in August of 2019, but they actually have built this now,
and they build this really interesting concept, Molly, where you have a team,
physician, wellness advisor, and basically a concierge who manages your benefits.
And they'll help you navigate your insurance.
They'll do referrals to specialists.
You can chat with them.
They have community events.
It's kind of like Soho House meets a doctor's office, if I were to describe it.
And I thought I would have the CEO on the program.
Her name is Chloe Harouche.
And she is the CEO and co-founder of the Landby.
Welcome, Chloe.
Thank you.
Super excited to be here.
Awesome.
Hey, Chloe.
Chloe.
Meet Molly Wood.
Molly, meet Chloe.
Great to meet you.
I was obsessed with every second of Tandis's talk at All In.
And I love the kind of fundamental concept you have at the Lambie,
which is like that you're approaching this as a customer service issue,
which I think is such a powerful insight that I would love for you to break down a little more.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that it's sort of the root cause of what we're trying to get to,
which is how do we actually solve the problem of prevention?
and the only way to really do that is by creating buy-in from the consumer.
And today, the consumer is not really the patient.
And so how do we ultimately change that in order for the consumer to be more focused on
their health, to be more engaged and more motivated?
And so the way that we do that is we shift the perception in people's minds of how do we
actually interact with the healthcare system from, I need to go to the doctor because
I feel sick because I have to go to, I want to go to the doctor because this is a time for me to be
intellectually curious, for me to take ownership and control over my health and actually do something
a little bit differently, but really enjoy the process along the way. And so ultimately, by putting
that control back into the hands of the consumer, we can be more effective at solving prevention.
Where are you at today? I know that you've fired up this space in Manhattan. You got 230 members,
some number of them pay
two to three thousand dollars a year
for the service. Again, I think it's super low.
I don't know how you came up with that number
given the service you're providing
and how this can be profitable
but how long have you had this
I guess pod of, you know,
the concierge and the wellness and the doctor
and so how many months have you been doing it
and what are your members saying about it?
So we launched in September of 2021
we launched with about
180 founding members. Those members are paying $2,000 a year. And actually, a lot of them ended up
investing in the company because they were so excited and passionate about what we were building.
And really, what that meant for us is that we were the first ones to build a practice for patients
by patients. And so so much of what we do is really redefining and redesigning the experience of
going to the doctor from the perspective of the patient. And so that ultimately is our differentiator.
it's really thinking through what does a patient need in order to get from point A to point B.
And that's what we've done. And so every sort of aspect of the experience is very much thought through
that lens. And that's ultimately why when you think about how are our members responding to this,
it's sort of this aha moment, this relief in their minds of like, wow, this is the first time that
someone really gets it, really gets what I need. And isn't just creating fluff around the experience,
but actually focusing their attention on what I need in order for me to actually actually,
solve this issue or just be more proactive.
What does that look like?
Can you give us some specifics?
Like, walk me through.
I just signed up.
I'm going to.
What happens next?
Is there an app?
Do I make an appointment?
What does my team seem like?
Like, give us a sense of how that actually translates into the experience.
Yeah.
So the app is coming.
But essentially, the way that it works today is when you join, you get access to our patient
portal, which allows you to schedule your first visit.
Once that visit is scheduled, we send you our comprehensive intake form.
And that usually takes members about 25 to 30 minutes to complete.
And it's a very extensive rundown of your previous medical history, where you currently
stand, what your lifestyle looks like, what you've tried in the past, what you hope to achieve
in the future, et cetera.
So very, very comprehensive.
And ultimately, our care team, which is the first step to sort of doing something differently,
we actually review that intake form.
We spend time as a team sitting through that, doing research, asking questions.
questions, collaborating on what types of questions we want to then ask the patient when they come in.
So then the patient comes in. It's an hour-long visit. It's broken up into three parts. The first 20
minutes is a meeting with your entire care team. So as Jason mentioned, it's your doctor,
it's your wellness advisor and your concierge manager, all sitting around the table with you,
talking about what we learned from your intake form and what questions we have. Then we sort of help,
you know, frame the conversation of where we want to focus our attention. Obviously, this is an
annual membership. So we hope to achieve all of these things over the course of the year,
not just in one visit. But we really want to focus on what is sort of the most urgent need
to ultimately what is the long-term goal. At that point, we also ask the patients to share a little bit
more around why they join the Lambie. What do they hope to get out of this? What's sort of
plaguing them more than anything. The second third of the visit is just with the physician,
and that's to go through your vitals, do a comprehensive physical exam, and do an initial set of baseline labs.
So we do more than your typical doctor's office.
For example, we test vitamin D.
We do a robust hormone thyroid check.
So we look at things that most doctors don't look at.
But we do also create this sort of standardized approach to your baseline labs because it's sort of the first look.
It allows us to get a better glimpse of what should we sort of focus on in the next round.
The third piece of it is a wellness assessment.
So after you meet with the doctor, you transition over into the wellness consult room.
And that's a meeting with just the wellness advisor.
And again, that's to sort of dive deeper into what have you tried in the past?
What's working?
What's not working?
Have you tried different diets?
Have you tried different exercise regimen?
What does your sleep hygiene look like?
What are the challenges that are stopping you from actually improving your health on a day to day?
how can we work on your habits to really improve your overall health outcomes?
And so from all of that information that we gather over that one hour meeting,
we're able to create a personalized care plan for you.
And again, that crosses every function across health and wellness.
So we'll talk about specialists that we want you to see,
supplements that we recommend that you take,
future blood works that we want you to dive into,
and then obviously wellness goals.
And all of that has their own set of timelines,
their own milestones that we want you to hit.
And that's sort of the roadmap that we want to follow throughout the course of the year.
After that, again, it's an unlimited model, but we check in with you proactively at least once
a quarter to see how things are progressing.
And that's sort of the first also iteration where a lot of our members want to feel like
there's someone behind the scenes checking in on them, that they don't have to be the ones
worried about their health.
There's someone that's sort of making sure that they're following the right steps, that they're
doing the right things, that something that they should have done.
done is actually happening. But then obviously there's the opportunity for that patient to also
reach out to us if they have a new symptom, if they are interested in a new wellness modality and
want to learn more about it. And then on top of that, we have this sort of thriving community that
we've been growing. And that's sort of with the idea of creating more opportunities for our members
to feel empowered and motivated, to learn about the latest research, the latest trends in health and
wellness and actually speak directly with those thought leaders so that they can feel that they
have a real seat at the table. And that's completely unique in healthcare, where, again, as you
pointed out, consumers today are not the patient, but how can we actually take that control and
put it into the hands of the patient by giving them that information directly and then giving them
the opportunity to discuss it with their care team as equals? I did notice on the Instagram,
which is the Landby, you can just search for it, or it's the dot landby.
I don't know you could do dots in Instagram,
that you're sharing information and having events.
And then I noticed you guys were having, like, live events
and bringing people together for talks.
And that's what you do at a private club.
I was only ever a member of the battery.
But when I lived in L.A., the Soho House had me come out and speak to the membership.
And, you know, it's like very intimate.
You know, you get 50 people show up out of the whatever thousands of members.
So that stuff, like, you know, really just proactively sounds like worth the price of admission.
I always like to do a little math on businesses.
$3,000, $230 people.
It's about $700,000, $690,000 to be exact.
And then I just divided the number $6,000,
because you have three people,
$2,000 hours a year each,
you get about 26 hours.
So it seems like everybody's getting 26 hours
with their doctor a year on average,
which would be a lot if you're texting and stuff like that.
That only takes 15 minutes and you can multitask there.
So tell me about the economics of the business.
Is it, as I was sort of thinking,
priced too low to start?
because my understanding when we had talked
or maybe I was talking to Tandis,
that you sold out immediately
and you have almost no churn.
And it's early, obviously.
Right.
People can move or whatever.
Here hasn't come up yet.
But did you price this way too cheap?
And then how does that affect both sides of the equation
in this, you know, a deal?
Because, you know, can you get great doctors
and great folks on a 700K budget
or does it really need to be five or six then?
Yeah, no, totally fair point.
So obviously our mission
in building the Lambie was to ultimately democratize this level of comprehensive, high touch,
access that people really crave a need in order to get better, right? So we didn't want to just
create another concierge practice where people have, you know, 50 patients under their care,
and they charge about $50,000 a year, and they give them their cell phone number, and you can
talk to them whenever. That's not what we wanted to create. We really wanted to build a solution
that would allow us to scale this level of, you know, high touch comprehensive care.
And so that's why we very much rethought how to be as efficient as possible from an operational
perspective, from a tech perspective, from a care team structure so that ultimately the masses
can benefit from this type of solution. And so part of that is, you know, sort of the emphasis
on, you know, shifting towards asynchronous chat, right? So we do offer unlimited visits, but 90% of the
engagement that we see with our members today is done asynchronously, so via text or email.
And so what that means for us is obviously we're addressing a lot of the questions that our patients
have very quickly and effectively, but also it means that we're able to then handle much more
patients at any given time. And so that allows us to, you know, bring down the price point because
so much of what we're doing is being managed and triaged by the concierge manager, which obviously
is not the same level as a physician.
And so we're reserving the physician's time
for those more complex questions.
And really just, again, being smart about
how we sort of structure that physician's day,
ultimately how we bring in the wellness advisor
to focus on a lot of the preventive measures
that we want our members to be paying attention to.
And ultimately, as we bring in tech,
which again, we've just started to do,
but we hope to really accelerate over the next year,
is we're really going to lean into that ongoing
asynchronous, proactive outreach, where our members feel that support from their care team
without the care team really lifting a finger.
And so there's this ability for us to really sort of scale that personalization and really
bring to life this care plan that we're already, as I mentioned, building for all of our
existing members into a much more interactive experience.
So sort of think about gamifying preventive medicine.
And so to your point, yes, we could charge way more because we're doing so much.
But the reason that we're charging less is because our mission was never to sort of create a service that would alienate the masses.
Like our goal is to be just a bit smarter than the average doctor's office, which is typically built by a doctor who is not savvy in business and also doesn't have sort of any sort of systems engineering mindset, tackling the issues that are plaguing the healthcare system.
It's very much an infrastructure problem.
And so, yeah.
Right.
So it sounds like you're saying there's a couple of high touch expensive portions here, like that initial meeting, like of course, onboarding positions. And then when you have encounters with a doctor in person, that's a very high touch experience. But the rest of it is sort of like an automated calendar that's like, hey, remember when we talked about how you need to get your skin checked because of the sun situation, like now is the time to come in. And that's like a free text. That's a SaaS margin type interaction. Exactly. Exactly. And that's ultimately the goal. And that's why.
you know, prevention is so cost effective for everyone involved.
And that's why it makes so much sense.
Just even thinking about the broader healthcare system,
the way that we save healthcare is not by creating more one medicals,
which again is sort of feeding into the same system of reactionary medicine,
but rather creating a system around prevention,
which ultimately minimizes our dependency on the broader health care system on insurance,
which is very backwards, very outdated, very red tapey,
and ultimately just create this sort of comprehensive approach
that gets at what patients really want today.
So what does it really need to cost per year?
Because I get pitched on these.
I have had some.
No, I mean, that's why people listen to the show
is because I force people to answer the question.
No, I got pitched by one medical.
I'm not one medical.
Private medical.
A lot of my friends have it.
It's like 100 grand a year for a family.
That's a little too crazy expensive for me.
I could afford it, but I thought it was probably not optimal because we already pay,
whatever it is, $50,000 a year for health insurance.
You put $150,000 together.
I was thinking, like, from $1.5 million over 10 years, you could just put that money into a pool
and get rid of your insurance that you'd probably be covered with catastrophic.
So between $3,000 and what would arguably be like $30,000,000, a person, there's a 10x difference.
What do you need to make this business?
profitable and really work because this obviously can't work for everybody. It's a noble mission to do that,
but this is kind of like an Uber black type of service if we were to put it somewhere. It's a
four-star hotel. It can't really be a two-star hotel experience. It just wouldn't work economically,
correct? So what should it cost? Like, what do you think your proper price will be after this,
you know, first cohort, this test? Yeah. So what's amazing about this first cohort is that these are
motivated individuals. And the reason is because these are people who have a chronic condition or they
describe themselves as optimizers. And obviously there's overlap between those two people because
clearly when you've been faced with a health crisis, you're that much more inclined to, you know,
dig into your health, understand your data, try to do whatever you can to be proactive. So,
like quantified self people, would you say? Like, correct. Would it be like that, you know, whether you call
them a biohacker, an optimizer, yes. They might work or ring or use.
Because they like to know where they're at.
They're getting their blood work done every year.
And they understand that stuff.
Yeah.
Every quarter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you should.
People get their blood done quarterly?
You should.
Yeah, you should.
Really?
If you're actually making significant changes to your health, like taking a supplement,
for example, you don't want to just wait a year before you recheck that.
You want to be checking it on a quarterly basis to see to what extent you're actually
absorbing what you're taking if it's effective.
And also if you're,
changing other lifestyle factors. Anyway, okay, so beyond the blood work piece.
So anyway, these are the types of patients who are motivated and they're willing to pay a higher
price point in order to really see that that comprehensive approach, that high touch care.
So these are the people that ultimately are our beta users. There are founding members and they are
the ones that are helping us learn on the go.
God, that's why you discounted them. So what should it be?
Right. No, no, no. So actually, these are the people that are paying.
the $3,000 a year. So ultimately, as we continue to develop the programs and the resources and the
infrastructure and the tech to support what these most demanding patients need, we then will be able
to cater to the masses of people who don't necessarily...
No, no, I understand that. You'll get easier to do over time. You think so actually,
the answer to your question becomes it's actually could be much lower than what we're charging today.
Really?
Yes.
What do doctors make these days and why would a doctor choose to work at the land be or one of these services versus or one medical versus working in a hospital?
Like a doctor in a major city like San Francisco, L.A. or New York.
So in a hospital, what's really tough for physicians is one of two things.
One is that their compensation is driven by volume.
So the more patients they see, the more procedures that they conduct, the greater their bonus. And so whether it's by the hospital itself and the way that the hospital gets reimbursed by the payer, et cetera, they ultimately are motivated to increase the number of patients that they see every day. And so that's part of the reason why they're incredibly burnt out because they know that the more patients they see, the more they churned them as quickly as possible, which is why the national average today is eight minutes per visit.
is because that's sort of the way that the fee-for-service model has, you know, played itself out.
The other side of it is that within a hospital setting and even within many private practices,
doctors are doing a lot of the admin work. Insurance reimbursements require doctors to do a lot of inputting.
Today, I think about 40% of their time is spent just on admin. And obviously, you can imagine how
these doctors must be 15 years of schooling and,
residency and internships where they're making like under 50 grand a year. And then they have to spend
40% of their time doing grant work. Like that's just not what they signed up. These doctors are
pissed. They're looking for an alternative solution. And in primary care, they're making about
$200,000 a year. Sometimes when they go sort of the private route, they can make a lot more.
Private medical obviously pays their doctors really, really well. But not everyone can afford private
medical. So that's just sort of a bit of context there. So you pay the doctor salaries directly. How does
insurance play in here if at all? Yeah. So right now, insurance is not playing a role. And that's partly
because we're new. We don't have much data to support our hypothesis. And so payers are not that
interested in what we have to say. But the reality is that payers are moving into value-based care
models. There's already been significant data to show that value-based care models improve health
outcomes over time, which means that payers save money. And that's what they want. Sorry, and then just
to clarify, so then as a result, if somebody has a procedure through you, that's also revenue for you?
Like the $3,000 a year is not the only revenue that comes in? No, so we don't do procedures. Primary care is
not very procedure-based. So when procedures need to be had, we either refer to a specialist or to a
or to an imaging center, depending on what that procedure actually is. So the $3,000 a year covers
all the visits at the Lambie, all the chat at the Lambie, the blood draws that we do,
we actually bill through insurance because we draw them on site, but we send them out to a lab
for processing, all the specialist referral coordination and that access to the network that
we've built, all the community events that we've done, all the member perks, all that stuff.
And once you leave sort of the four walls, virtual four walls, of the Landby, that's when
you start to leverage your insurance. And that's where in many ways, we actually do support members
in navigating insurance, which is a beast in and of itself. Yeah, for real. Okay. Got it.
But sort of the long-term play is, you know, how do we sort of stay aligned with payers? Because
ultimately, payers do want to partner with a solution like ours where we're actually keeping their
costs low because we're keeping patients outside of the hospital, which is when so much of the money
ends up draining their resources.
So they do have a, there is sort of a partnership down the road.
It's just a matter of when, not if.
See, I'm really long on your business because I was, you know, as somebody who had like
regular insurance, then went to the concierge doctor and was, I don't know, I was paying
$30,000 a year or something for this, like extra level of service.
And it was great.
You know, you could text your doctor.
You know, you don't have to wait for an appointment.
They do a really nice job, beautiful space.
And then I looked at one medical is $199.
a year? And I'm like, well, that seems like too cheap. And then $100,000 a year seems too expensive.
It feels like there needs to be like this sort of middle ground. And $3,000 a person, if you had a family
of five, would be 15. So you have the quantified self people. Tell me about families and how you
think about families at the land be. So we definitely want to incentivize families to join together
because when a household is equally bought in to change, that's when change really happens, right?
Like if your mom is cooking you a meal that's super healthy and you don't care about being healthy,
you're going to just throw the broccoli out.
But if you have this sort of shared appreciation for improving your health and being focused on prevention,
then you're much more likely to actually do it.
So we have a spousal rate and that ends up being about $2,800 a year for the second person who joins.
But we're willing to give that to any sort of family member that joins as long as they're
considered an adult, so over 16, because we don't do pediatrics. And that can extend to,
you know, a sister if sisters are joining together, because again, there's that accountability,
that camaraderie that really does accelerate change. What about scaling? What does that look like
and how do you maintain that, like, bring on enough physicians and maintain that kind of very personal
touch up front? Mm-hmm. So our, you know, there's, there's two sides to it, right? So we want to be able to
widen our funnel of primary care physicians who fit our model because it's an integrative
approach. It's collaborative. A doctor is working side by side with a wellness advisor, which is never
something that they've done before. And then at the same time, you know, we want to make sure that
we're standardizing all of the resources and programs that we're building so that it becomes much more
plug and play. And it's easier for physicians to deliver this type of medicine without reinventing
the wheel. And so that's why we're in the process of developing, ultimately, our own sort of boot camp
for integrative medicine, which will be sort of an abbreviated version of a traditional
integrative training program, which typically takes about two years, which is time most physicians
don't have, which is why they don't do it. And so that will allow us to attract more primary
care physicians who are eager to implement this type of care into their practice, but don't have
the time, the bandwidth, or the money to invest in it on their own.
own. And at the same time, standardize our approach to care so that it becomes easier. We're
ultimately empowering these physicians to deliver this type of care, standardize it from the
perspective of scaling the quality and the consistency of our product, while still creating enough
autonomy for physicians to get creative and be able to sort of implement their own unique approach
and style when it comes to care delivery. Because that is something that I think a lot of
physicians appreciate when it comes to medicine.
So it seems to me that the price of certain procedures varies wildly here in the United States.
This is why people go for dental work and cosmetic surgery in Korea or, you know, Mexico or other
places.
Latin America, yeah.
Latin America.
And it seems like you have a unique position where if I'm paying you and you're my
advocate, you could be telling me, hey, listen, here is the matrix of, you know,
how good the care is, and then what it costs.
Because none of this stuff is on the websites.
This is what makes me crazy.
You talked before about, like, who's the customer?
It doesn't feel like I'm a customer when I go to places,
and I don't see the menu and what the prices are.
When we go to a restaurant, if we see a steak,
and it's a New York strip steak,
and we're like, this is $300 for a New York strip steak
at this guy who, salt bay, who throws salt on it,
and then I'm like, well, I buy a New York strip,
and it's the same one for $40.
at Whole Foods or, you know, from even a specialty, good eggs.
And when I go out to a nice restaurant, it's 70.
So why is it 300 there?
So this guy can run salt on his arm?
Gross.
Anyway, putting that aside, do you help people navigate this issue,
which is mind-boggling in America that the same procedure,
when I got my meniscus done on my right knee,
somebody fell on it at the Chelsea Pierce playing basketball?
It was like one place was $20,000, another place is $100,000.
Why is there such a spread in the cost?
Do you help people navigate that or is that the insurance company's job?
I'm just always wondering about that.
It's really an unregulated market and it's what the government has been trying to tackle for some time.
But it really stems down to what are physicians incentivized by.
And so let's put cost aside because we're ultimately not able to know what the prices are going to be until the hospital decides to charge you with that price.
But taking a step back is how.
do you trust the recommendation of that physician in the hospital, right? So these physicians,
and obviously some do this more than others, but, you know, because they're motivated to recommend
a procedure that will ultimately generate more revenue for them in the hospital, how do you
trust whether this recommendation or this prescription or this treatment protocol is the best one for
you? So we do facilitate and help patients navigate getting second opinions so that they have as
many perspectives around the table as possible, and then help decipher between all of those different
recommendations to choose what is the best approach for you. And that's, I think, where, you know,
primary care should really stand when it comes to quarterbacking your health, because today,
when it comes to a diagnosis, you know, patients are very much left on their own to determine what
they should do next, right? So they're getting input from one doctor who's telling them to do this
treatment approach, and then they're getting an input from another doctor that's completely
conflicting what they just heard from another doctor. So who do they trust and how do they make the
decision? And patient... But that doesn't take into account price. Like I... It doesn't take into account
price. Why is it every time I talk to a healthcare person, they never take into account price.
Like, when we buy everything else, you'd say like, well, should I buy that steak? Is it worth the price?
Should I stay at that hotel? Is it worth the price? Should I buy a Prius or a Tesla or a Jeep? Like,
is it worth the price? The value. Right. There's, it's always like, well, I'm not paying for it. Therefore, I should
go with the best. Is that a major problem with what's wrong in health care in the United States?
Is that we don't actually think about the cost and value first and we just, or, you know, equally?
Well, I think the problem is that we know that the payer is being the insurer is paying for that,
you know, procedure. And so that's why so many of these hospitals are willing or able to charge
ridiculous amounts of money for procedures that really should be much less. And that's also part of the
reason where when you say I'm actually paying out of pocket as an individual patient as
opposed to my insurance is paying, the cost changes dramatically. I don't know if you've ever
had that happen to you. But typically, your bill decreases significantly when you're paying
as patient. So it's a very tricky thing to navigate, but we are able to help people just be a
little bit smarter about it, decide when you should be, you know, saying that you're paying out
of pocket versus not. And this even happens with blood work where if you're paying,
out of pocket, you can get a 60, 70% coupon. So you save on that versus if you have a very high
deductible. So technically, you do have insurance. So then your bill ends up being much higher.
So there are different nuances like that where we can definitely help you navigate those things.
But when it comes to hospitals, it's sort of a big black box where every hospital can charge
their own prices and no one can say anything about it. So it's really like, okay, you know the price.
Is it really worth it for you to do this? And it's not really like,
oh, you have cancer, should you have the surgery to take the cancer out? No, it's more like,
you know, you have a bad meniscus tear. Do you do surgery? Do you try physical therapy? Like,
what are sort of the options at your disposal? And then how do you, you know, factor price into that?
Final question for me. And I think Molly might have one too. My final question is, do you see this
trend of people self-insuring where, or company self-insuring where they're like, you know what,
insurance doesn't make any sense, especially for people who are younger and healthy, instead of paying
for this whatever, 25,000, 50,000 a year, or whatever for a family, I'll just get catastrophic or
whatever, but I'll put that money towards a plan for myself. Are rich people doing that? Because I know
companies do that, right? And is that going to become a trend since this is so bizarre our health care
in the United States? Yeah, no, I definitely think that that's already a trend. So,
many of our members are on high deductible health plans where they're spending significantly
less on premiums, meaning on a monthly basis they spend less, but their deductible is higher,
but they recognize that for the most part, the doctors that they go see are out of network,
or the prescriptions that they get are, you know, can go towards their deductible, but still
they're spending less overall. And so where a Land Bee membership really comes into play is
that we're sort of complementary to a high deductible health plan where so much of your
health, actually 80% of your health needs can be addressed with primary care alone.
So ultimately, you don't need to rely on insurance so much because the only time that you're
going through insurance is if you have a major issue.
And so, you know, we not only see the trend, but we're very, very supportive of the trend.
Molly, anything more from you?
No, I love it.
Chloe Harouche is CEO of the Land Bee and possibly the future of medicine.
Thanks so much for the time.
I'm really excited about your business.
When are you coming to the Bay Area,
Bay Area in L.A.
Like, what's the story?
Yeah.
Yeah, soon.
Bay Area in L.A., you come in?
Well, we're licensed in California.
We do have members in California,
but typically what we do is just require
that they come in person for the baseline visit
and then everything else can be virtual.
Really?
Yeah.
Oh, so I could be a member.
So we get us fly to where?
New York?
Yeah, come to New York just for your first visit.
And then we'll do everything else
virtual. Love it. Okay.
Field trip. See you soon.
All right. Good luck with us.
All right. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot.
Take care.
Okay, everybody. Thanks for listening. I am doing
episode four of the blueprint tomorrow.
And I am loving doing the blueprint, Molly.
It's like the VC segment we do together, VC Sunday schools.
The blueprint is like a new version of that.
And my topic tomorrow is having a bias for action.
I cannot wait. I literally am like stocking
the blueprint episodes.
I'm like a fan girl.
Myance fraction.
Cannot wait to hear it.
Plus,
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Oh, it's so great.
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Thanks everybody for subscribing.
and we'll see you all tomorrow, Wednesday.
Stick with us.
Bye-bye.
Going to be a great week.
