$100M founder predicts 6 trends that will be big in 2030
Pet Health, Home Health, Personalized Wellness - March 31, 2025 (26 days ago) • 55:01
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MFM | So this is actually a company that I've I've wanted to invest in for so long if you're doing this like please just email me | |
MFM | alright so I wanted to have you on because you are one of my healthiest buddies last time you were on I think you've been on three times already you didn't get into a lot of the ideas because we were just like peppering you with so many questions and I wanted to be more focused I think I asked you what are five or six like interesting health companies or health trends that you're interested in investing in and you hit hit me back with a very detailed list in a very short amount of time so clearly you are like already thinking and acting on a lot of these things can we go through each of them and you just tell me what they are because I'm crazy fascinated because like for the listener you told me in february '15 that you were quitting tech like you had a software company and you were gonna launch a bone broth company and I was like oh man like you're like you're decided to throw your life away that sucks like you were you were gonna be one of the greats and then it just came out in forbes I think or what was that was it forbes yeah you had this amazing feature about your company kettle and fire and how you surpassed a hundred million in annual revenue and it was amazing and I'm like you definitely won and I read the article by the way and I texted like five friends and I'm like justin does everything the right way by the way did I get that right you guys you're at a hundred million run rate or revenue | |
MFM | yeah north north of that yeah | |
MFM | and you said something amazing I think you said we're gonna what did you say we're gonna be the best operating ecommerce company in america is that right | |
MFM | yeah I mean basically like there are most of the big public big food companies were started pre 1900 and so a lot of these companies are very very bloated they're large you know they've been around frankly I think many of them are poisoning people and then paying lobbyists and other sort of opposition research groups to make sure that like soda doesn't get removed from food stamps and all these sorts of things and so I think these are just generally bad actors and I think that there's a huge opportunity to both out innovate these big cpg companies and also just run a better business like I guarantee no one in you know battle creek michigan working at kellogg's is looking at like how do we use ai to automate a lot of our workflows and process and things like that whereas like that's something we have live work streams going in kettle and fire to figure out like how do we apply the craziest technology you know like leap forward of you know certainly my lifetime to just running the best possible company that we can and I think it's working so far we have like 34 people for you know for our size of business which is quite good scale | |
MFM | you have only 34 employees yeah wow is it wildly profitable or is it working its way to be wildly profitable | |
MFM | no we're we're profitable I mean one of the things that I'm very proud of is like we've raised only $10,000,000 in primary capital since starting the company and so it's been pretty capital efficient and you know we've been focused on building the trend but also building a good business since we started it like nine years ago | |
MFM | damn that's awesome that you have proven me and I'm sure many other people wrong and you've you've been early on a bunch of stuff alright so let's dive deep what's the first one you wanna talk about | |
MFM | yeah so first one I wanna talk about is I think that you know there are there's this huge huge macro trend where all people are talking about maha they're talking about seed oils they're talking about all these things from a | |
MFM | health standpoint make america healthy | |
MFM | make america healthy again okay we're talking about all these things about fixing the chronic disease crisis in the us and I think that health trends specifically for dogs and other pets like tend to lag a couple years behind humans like basically a couple years ago you know you saw blue apron hellofresh a bunch of these companies launch and then a couple years beyond that farmer's dog a like fresh dog food delivery kind of company launches and I think they're well over a hundred or 200,000,000 in revenue at this. It's crazy and I basically think that you can look at the us chronic disease crisis obesity rates inflammation cancer autoimmune all these things the same thing is happening in dogs like something like one in four dogs are gonna get cancer at this. This is like unique it's new cancer rates among dogs are rising and again this is because dogs like humans exist in an environment that is actively poisoning them like kibble is total trash and it is literally making dogs sick and so I think that there are a lot of these health trends that like people are getting into that you're going to see become popular now and in two to three four years are going to be popular for for pets especially because now it's something like I think that millennials or gen z like literally have more dogs than babies or something like that the the market is growing incredibly quickly although I don't have a dog but I I think there's like a lot a lot of gold in that sort of like take human health thing and apply it to a dog like health product | |
MFM | is this true you say here that in some cities there's more dogs than babies | |
MFM | yeah yeah yeah and it's certainly true like the younger the younger you go | |
MFM | the kibble thing is interesting I I had a dog for fifteen years he was my best friend and his last five years of life it hit me where I was giving him so when I first got him I was poor so I would like buy the cheapest dog food and then I got you know I could afford like whatever they tell you you know like the shtick they tell you is like only buy something where it says like chicken on the first ingredient who knows if that's true or not but and that's the more expensive thing and then I was like eating kibble like dry dog food that'd be it would be sort of like feeding me potato chips every day yes do you know what I mean like and like people's dogs are you know what do you do when you have a dog and you eat dinner they all come and obsess over you and you like yell at them and I'm like if you gave me refried beans for every single meal of course I'm going to want like be desperate for any new food it's kind of insane right that we would feed them the same thing and it's like a processed dried thing that doesn't expire | |
MFM | totally it's insane right it's totally insane and you look at the ingredient it's like full of trash full of artificial ingredient you know like all of the stuff that people are trying to remove from their diets we basically put in kibble and feed the dogs for every single meal | |
MFM | for every meal I remember like my my in laws have a dog and he comes over and they're like oh don't give him table food I don't want him to be unhealthy I'm like I don't know man I feel like this this asparagus and chicken might be alright | |
MFM | % | |
MFM | and we had kevin rose on the podcast and he had funded a company called dogagingproject.org and I believe what they are doing the whole premise is that for some reason I believe it was because a lot of times you don't wanna see your you're willing to suffer or you're willing to let your family suffer oftentimes more than you're willing to let your dog suffer but at the same time you're willing to experiment more and so the premise was that they had their what's the drug that is a longevity drug that starts with an r rapamycin yes I believe they were doing they were selling this to dog owners and what they found was like I guess there's a huge correlation between what we can do with dogs and what we'll eventually do with humans like you're suggesting and they have noticed that they have gotten dogs to live longer and their premise is we are gonna start here and then eventually go there to humans and so yeah the people agree with you | |
MFM | yeah yeah well I I think that they're looking at it as like you know drug and then we'll expand dog longevity and then we'll move into humans I think what I think that like the business opportunities exist looking backwards like everyone is talking about water cleanliness and water filtration and stuff like this and yet when they go to feed their dog they like put their bowl under the sink and the dog gets a load of like whatever toxins alcohol or not alcohols chlorine like you know all of these sorts of things and like that's its daily water source and I think that there's all these things where like why is there not a reasonably sized company just doing like aurora like a really you know rorra like a really high end water filter but geared towards dogs or something like that I don't know I think like dog saunas and dog dog cold plunges is probably a little too far but certainly I think that there's like a bunch of peptides supplements you know water filtration things like that that even like doing dog kennels and things like this with more natural materials that probably would do quite well for people who already think and view the world through the health lens and have not yet begun the process of applying that lens to their health or to their pets | |
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MFM | can you tell me what light labs is that's amazing I looked at the website it seems like this might this is your brother's thing it might be bigger than everything you guys have done | |
MFM | yeah yeah yeah I I hope so I mean so my brother and I we started kettle on fire together and we grew it and after some. Of of time he stepped back from the business and so his new business which he started last year is called light labs and what they're doing is basically there are so many toxins and other sorts of like crap in our food supply chain and at kettle and fire we spend almost half a million dollars a year testing all of the batches that we're making of bone broth to make sure that like there's no glyphosate there's no pfas there's no phthalates like all these sorts of things and so we as a company spend a lot of money and a lot of energy making sure that our supply chain is clean but we're making sure that it's clean of stuff that you can't see as a consumer yet you probably care about and so what light labs is doing is they're basically building a lab testing toxin testing company like a modern one for consumer brands like kettle and fire where they do two things like they will test for nutrition nutrition fact panel run the normal like heavy metals testing things like that but they also do a longer tail of rarer tests like phthalates pfas glyphosates pesticides things like that and then once they run these tests they actually expose it and push the most recent versions of a brand's lab test to both their website or if you're sold mostly in retail the goal is to get like a qr code that a consumer can scan and see like what does kettle and fire's most recent lab tests show around like pfas and other sorts of exposures so I think this is like one of the most interesting things happening in the health world right now is this broad push towards transparency and like getting a bunch of these things microplastics phthalates whatever that people know are bad but don't have visibility into like bringing transparities transparency to that food system which then creates the incentive and energy to make change so that's kinda what he's doing | |
MFM | I've I've a ton of questions on this okay so you and I lived in austin together and then before that we lived in san francisco together both very much like bubble cities where austin's like you know very health conscious and particularly our friend group is very health conscious and then san francisco was like you know the the on the forefront of a lot of tech do people where I'm from in missouri where you're from in pa do they care about any of this stuff | |
MFM | not right now but but I think that that's not like not a % of people have to care for this to make sense like what is undoubtedly true is people are spending more time and energy focusing on sourcing toxin reduction they're spending more money at you know companies like whole foods on brands like kettle and fire on their health in general and I think that this is one of the things that people are going to start caring about when they shop and like the minute that yes it may not be like people you know where my family's from or your family's from they may not be asking about phthalate load in you know their hot dogs that they're eating or something like that but some percentage of people will and you only need a small increase in order for there to be demand from the brand and consumer side to you know to to basically have supply chains and agricultural resources ranching like all these practices that incorporate and think about toxin exposure pesticide load and and the like and so I think light labs is the type of company that I'm super bullish on bringing transparency to the food system because I think it's just going to like once you bring transparency then there's energy to try and clean up and improve the food system behind that | |
MFM | and so so this company from I I don't know anything about the space it's basically like putting an organic label on your food so a food a food company would pay them and they would say light labs is a reputable brand we have proof that they've tested everything we paid them money to do it and we have a dashboard as well where we can like see where we are in the process of the testing is that right | |
MFM | yeah exactly so consumer brands like we kettle and fire we already have to spend money on you know on on these different sorts of tests and things like that | |
MFM | why do you have to | |
MFM | because you're legally required to by the usda or fda to do nutrition facts panels you have to do like heavy metals testing you just there's just a slew of tests that you have to | |
MFM | by law | |
MFM | run yeah by law before you can actually just sell a product and so that that's like a thing that you already have to do then what light labs is doing is they are bringing a bunch more transparency to to the supply chain and making it so that you can look at you know momentous supplements or like any number of these things and basically see okay beyond just metals testing and things like this what are the other things that they've tested for oh wow I can see you know like no detectable phthalates I can see no detectable glyphosate no test detectable atrazine like some of these other pesticides that people care about and so I think it's bringing that what has been like hidden in the depths of these like horrible lab tests run by companies that are like 60 years old to the forefront and making it influence consumers' buying behavior that that makes me so bullish | |
MFM | how big is the biggest lab business now or the couple biggest ones and when your brother was raising money or when he was just brainstorming with you on describing how big this could be or like what his dreams were in twenty years what was he | |
MFM | saying yeah so the biggest one is called eurofins I think it's like an 11 or $12,000,000,000 company | |
MFM | like in revenue | |
MFM | no market cap so but I mean it pretty closely maps to revenue because it's like a service business yeah you know it's it's like not a great doesn't trade very well so what he was saying is basically step one I think that we can build a competitor and be better than eurofins like you submit to a eurofins lab you submit an email inquiry and you get you get a response maybe in like three or four days and then when they run your test they don't communicate anything and they dump like 30 pdfs on you that you have to hire someone that understands food scientists to like you know translate this stuff it's really like insane | |
MFM | and you go to their website eurofins.com it looks like you're like making a vaccine or yeah you're doing like you're doing like like like some type of embryo work | |
MFM | like it's like a | |
MFM | very intimidating website | |
MFM | exactly and so they're not the type of company that is gonna build an incredible product for consumer brands and they're not the type of company that's gonna build a consumer facing product and so what he was like my brother was thinking is he was like wow this is going to be incredibly interesting we can build a eurofins competitor we we can do a better job servicing cpg brands we already know how to do that from his experience at kettle and fire and then we have the opportunity to build out this entire other business where we can build like consumer awareness of these different toxic compounds and turn you know kettle and fire's five hundred thousand a year of lab testing expense into an actual revenue generating function and almost like a marketing line item | |
MFM | dude this is so awesome does he have any revenue now your brother | |
MFM | yeah they they've launched a couple months ago and they've started to get revenue | |
MFM | yeah did he raise funding or did he bootstrap it | |
MFM | he did no no no this is definitely the type of company you have to raise money | |
MFM | it looks expensive to start | |
MFM | yes definitely it's it's honestly it's the type of company that I think is it's it's the perfect like act two company like nick has experience domain expertise can raise money and when your first thing is like hey we have to raise you know millions of dollars and we're gonna write a check for like you know multiple millions to like buy a laboratory and buy lab equipment all this stuff it's tough to make that bet on like a 22 year old but on a 29 year old with some experience like it makes more sense | |
MFM | is this in texas | |
MFM | yeah in austin | |
MFM | wow this is amazing alright wow first of all this is crazy how much does oh and the the labels so like if you go to mcdonald's or fast food they put the nutritional there which is like way more challenging I think than like an m and m or a candy bar which is more controlled but I'm pretty sure I've always like believed that nutritional labels are bullshit like in my head I've always been like it's give or take maybe even 30% of what is presented the | |
MFM | calories right | |
MFM | the is it like I that would just because I weigh my food I I've I've tracked I've tracked almost everything that I've eaten for like four years now in myfitnesspal wow and like you and you weigh it and I weigh it and now I I eyeball it sometimes but like first of all I've noticed a few things one when people eyeball their food to track they almost always overestimate or sorry underestimate by around 30% and then if you go and buy like let's just say a big mac the degree in which they are different is huge and there's no way that news those nutritional labels are accurate with just the calories let alone like whatever else like the macros + whatever else is supposed to be in it | |
MFM | yeah exactly I mean the fda first depending on the the compound or the nutrient like they'll have a limit that is often it's 10 + + or - 10% for sure oftentimes it's upwards of like thirty forty even 50% depending on the compound because as you can imagine some of these things are are fairly sensitive like potassium or iodine or things like this that are present in minuscule amounts like it's really hard to say exactly for every single cookie or piece of bread that you're getting or whatever that there is x amount of iodine in it and so the fda allows for you know reasonably high tolerance on on some of these errors which makes a lot of this nutrition stuff even harder to figure out | |
MFM | who who owns the like is the certified organic is that a company | |
MFM | it is a I believe it's a nonprofit I think it's oregon tilth is one of them but yeah it's like a certifying body | |
MFM | and I've always contested that that's bullshit because like I just think that when you I've like I've seen farms where they have like an organic section and a nonorganic section and like it just seems like when you put medicine on one of them it inevitably will get in the other one | |
MFM | that is certainly true the thing that is good for like I think organic is better than nothing but it's certainly not perfect and I think that there is a lot of you know there's a fair bit of research that organic vegetables for example have far fewer pesticides than their conventional kind of counterparts but they still have some right it's not because they're directly being sprayed it's because of like you know wind water like all these sorts of things moving these compounds everywhere | |
MFM | what's another good one you wanna do function health or skin gut health I'm fascinated by all these | |
MFM | yeah let's do let's do function so you know function health superpower like | |
MFM | explain what those are | |
MFM | yeah so function health and superpower they're basically companies where you can go to their website sign up pay an annual membership fee and they'll facilitate a telemedicine thing where they'll be like hey you can go get your blood drawn at you know a lab or have someone come to you and you can test your own blood for like I think it's over a 90 markers so you can get things like pfos exposure heavy metals testosterone you know insulin markers all these sorts of things that to just know are you healthy or do you have things that you need to work on and so I think that like I believe that function is one of the fastest growing companies in the entire andreessen portfolio like they're growing super super fast and yeah | |
MFM | I think they announced another fundraising but I think they announced that it got to like 9 figures in revenue in like two or three years like something insane | |
MFM | it's crazy so it's crazy and like there's so much demand for people wanting to understand their biomarkers their lipids like all these sorts of things I think that rolling four or five years are we gonna know more or less about the health of our bodies and what's like going on in our systems it's definitely more and what I think function superpower and the like are doing is they're lowering the friction for people like you and I to understand what's going on in our bodies and our blood and all that and that information creates a ton of potential for action | |
MFM | but why why are why is function growing so fast because I've used inside insight or insidetracker insidetracker insidetracker for years and then before that there was I don't know like there there's these have always been a thing why yeah like and now I'm hearing so many people talk about function health and I'm like I these have been cool and awesome for a decade now why is this one particularly awesome | |
MFM | I I think that their marketing is great I think that the value prop is great it's like one price one annual membership get this slew of tests like if you had if you went to your doctor and asked for the same test that function would give you I it would be like | |
MFM | dude they don't let you | |
MFM | well well so if you went to right they either don't let you or it would be like 7 or $8,000 and so oh | |
MFM | my god | |
MFM | function is like $500 a year | |
MFM | I had a my friend tried to go get this testosterone checked and he went to the doctor and the doctor was like you're 32 you don't you're fine exactly like you don't need to do that | |
MFM | it's insane the medical system is so patronizing it's like they're also there's people talking about how you shouldn't get an mri or shouldn't get your blood work done because like | |
MFM | it'll scare you | |
MFM | you'll cause all these questions or scare you and you're like fuck off like that stuff is such an insanely patronizing thing | |
MFM | yeah it's crazy like I I you know I've I've done this before where I'm like I want this tested and they're like but you seem perfectly healthy and exactly dude just like write it on the paper it means nothing to you and it's important to me just do what I tell you to do please like exactly like this this literally requires nothing from you and I'm just gonna learn | |
MFM | that it it's exactly right I think that like the medical profession writ large there's certainly people that do good but I think that many of them have this like the patient's an idiot I know everything kind of vibe and that is if you look at the trajectory of american health certainly I think that we need to change what we're doing and I think taking like health matters into their own hands is a huge huge thing and so why this is an interesting trend to me functioning super power and the like is for the first time I think you are gonna see millions and millions of people being onboarded and understanding like what is going on in their blood what's going on in their bodies and then taking steps to optimize or improve that thing and so right now if you take supplements it's like you know sam you probably take creatine or something like that you probably take it and you're like maybe I'm a little more shredded maybe I'm like you know feel better or whatever but you probably don't you're not seeing any of your lab markers change same is true of like thyroid or cholesterol markers or lipids or other things I think as people get this information and start to retest over a you know six to twelve month. | |
MFM | That we are going to see way way way more products and services that sprout up where people where like there is demand for people who want to optimize their biomarkers so sort of like today we have personal trainers who help you get shredded because like that's kind of the only thing people can see I think in the future we'll have like apps trainers services things like this that are specific to sam wants to lower his apob score or sam wants to improve his you know ldl or or something like that sam wants to improve his thyroid like I think all of these things are newly going to be marketing angles and things that people talk about because they have this insight into their body | |
MFM | this company also took off by the way I quit taking creatine it it turned me into a gorilla I got so big like I couldn't I cannot like fit into clothing like have you have you taken it | |
MFM | I I have and I stopped I stopped because a friend freaked me out he was like everyone who goes on creatine starts losing their hair which I like didn't experience didn't know about but I was like I'll cycle off it for six months and see what happens | |
MFM | I went on it | |
MFM | didn't happen to you obviously | |
MFM | no not yet but like I like like I ballooned like I just like got so it just felt like I had so much like it was like 15 pounds in like three weeks | |
MFM | wow | |
MFM | I got huge like I went from like two zero two to like two fifteen or something and and then I was like alright I gotta go off it for like eight days and it just like all went away because yeah I don't know what happened but in this function health thing these guys took off because I mean what they did was smart they I don't know if mark hyman started it or if he's like considered is he like the the kim kardashian of skims where like I I don't know if he had the idea or like someone else had the idea and he was the face but like partnering up with that dude who's got 2,000,000 or something followers like my father-in-law is like whatever mark says I do and and so like partnering up with a guy like this is so much better than whatever else health influencers sell like coaching pdfs or you know what I mean totally | |
MFM | yeah like I I generally think also as a side comment this is how creators are gonna monetize more in the future is like owning chunks of very good businesses that rely on distribution rather than just like I'm mark hyman and I get an affiliate fee every time I referred someone to check out function health or something you know | |
MFM | yeah yeah yeah for sure what's this other one about functional medicine doctor for your home that is amazing sounding explain that | |
MFM | yeah so there's increasing awareness around how your home can basically be a source of disease like lighting can be bad emfs you know are controversial but like I think definitely have some health impact | |
MFM | wait what's that | |
MFM | ems electromagnetic frequencies basically like your cell phone your wi fi router like all of these sort of things that that are that we're surrounded by all the time you know water toxicity like off gassing things called volatile organic compounds basically like the the you know when you walk into a a building that's newly painted or something like that you can smell it | |
MFM | dude do you have so much anxiety all day | |
MFM | no I'm pretty chill I I really believe in the like eighty twenty thing on this stuff | |
MFM | because like everything you're describing in my house is like you know like a chainsaw and they're just gonna just you know like a chainsaw and they're just gonna just rip me up like I saw a video that this guy named carnivoremd and he had a video on youtube explaining like his house and carnivoremd is like the most extreme of the most extreme when it comes to like these type of granola health influencers and like he had like a mattress that had only natural fibers which I don't I don't know what a grounding thing is but there was like this like it's grounding for electricity he had like a pole that went into the ground of his home and all the electricity had to like touch that grounding pole do you is that a thing you know what I'm talking about | |
MFM | that's amazing yeah | |
MFM | like it was like and then he had like no led light bulbs he had no wi fi so there was no wi fi at his home and you had to plug in if you had to if you wanted to use the internet on this one particular area of his home like it was crazy and I was reading it or watching this video and I'm like that's cool and also this fucking exhausting | |
MFM | yeah definitely it's very cool | |
MFM | like when you just named all of these things I'm like I don't know man like I kinda would just fucking kill me early like you know what I mean like maybe I'll just take that as a consequence | |
MFM | yes so I agree it's exhausting it's a multifactorial problem it's like a thing that people are aware of wanna fix but don't know where to get started this is actually why I think that a like functional medicine or like trainer that makes your you know your house healthy is a very interesting idea I actually invested in a company called light work it's dolightwork.com but they're they're basically doing this where they can send someone to your house and do a test around you know what are the things that what are the things that are potentially causing disease or stress or other sorts of things in your home and it's it's like shocking what they have found like they tested a you know a a billionaire's home recently and across like all sorts of things like air quality water quality vocs emf exposure all of this you know it rated very very badly like people are not looking at the home through the lens of of health and chronic disease and when you start to there's like a ton of changes that you wanna make many of those are are which are you know confusing or you know people don't really understand so I think that there is a huge opportunity for people to start thinking about you know home health or housing through the the lens of health and I think that a company like lightwork or others that brings this sort of home health test assessment almost like function you know function health for your house is like a really really big opportunity | |
MFM | so they have a list on their website so water quality I assume that includes putting some type of filter they have lighting which I imagine that means like no led lights or a certain type of bulbs they have emf which I guess that is the grounding thing we talked about like basically | |
MFM | somewhat yeah it's it's more like it's more like are you sleeping over a wi fi router like are you spending a lot of times in air you know a lot of time in areas that have a very high power you know electromagnetic frequency | |
MFM | dude they're gonna get so pissed at me when they found out that I sleep with family guy playing in my ear for my cell phone when I sleep on my phone | |
MFM | oh god | |
MFM | I wanna fail this test they have air quality so that means like do you have plants inside your house or what or | |
MFM | more more like our is what is the quality of your air mostly that's contributed like things that are bad are some of the paints that are doing off gassing some furnishers off gas quite a lot you know microplastic fibers kind of like floating around in the air from your like carpet or something like that so a lot of these things | |
MFM | do these guys make money | |
MFM | they just started so the answer is sort of so far | |
MFM | how much does it cost | |
MFM | it depends on the house size but anywhere it's definitely a premium product | |
MFM | like 5,000 or | |
MFM | or $10 yeah $10 yeah and and it's I would say that it is one of these companies that starting out is expensive concierge like all that kind of stuff over time I think there's a huge amount of potential especially using ai and whatnot to have people kind of do a version of this assessment almost themselves where you walk around your house with a camera and all these sorts of things and this company just tells you like change this do this this is probably bad this is not like there's a there's a really cool potential technology solve here I think | |
MFM | and the guy who started this does he have a background in this stuff | |
MFM | yeah he so he got incredibly sick he and his wife actually moved into a house that house was on top of a power line that house had like a bunch of mold issues that they didn't realize about when when they moved in and over the course of a year their health unlike every marker energy everything just like collapsed and so they went you know they went they're healthy they're 31 they went to normal doctors they went to all these people and only after a crazy amount of experimentation and talking to doctors did they realize wow it's our health that it like our home is actually making us sick and that's what kinda got them down this rabbit hole of trying to understand the problem which is that many people are getting sick feeling low energy feeling all these things because they're being slowly poisoned by the house they live in | |
MFM | dude I feel whenever I hear this story I think I'm broken because like you know I describe my family like my where I'm from in missouri we're basically we're we're just mules like we like you know you eat donuts in the morning you eat cheeseburgers and fries in the afternoon and you eat steak and pizza and french fries at night with tons of beer and you just do that every single day and you just don't complain and like if you were to tell like you're telling me that these people like if if my house was full of mold I would just think I have allergies it just whatever like this is just how I feel | |
MFM | yeah | |
MFM | do you know what I mean and so like I wouldn't I wouldn't know you know to like do I've just thought I would just think this is just life and I and I wouldn't ever complain about it either I would just be like fuck it like rub some | |
MFM | dirt on it it's fine you're not alone I mean this is like how most people respond to this right I just think that people are becoming more aware of these things were you not raised that way my mom was one of the early like into organic people | |
MFM | she was granola yeah | |
MFM | she would buy milk in a glass jug that was like unpasteurized so it held these nasty clumps and you'd like pour it into your cereal in the morning and a clump would hit it and the whole like rose would explode all over you it was so gross | |
MFM | your mom's a freak I know | |
MFM | at one. I think I was like in fourth or fifth grade the health food store where she was buying all this stuff literally burned down and all the kids like threw a party we were just like yay no more no more crappy milk | |
MFM | that's insane and you know it is funny as my wife you know as we've had kids started having kids it's so funny once the baby comes out of you you automatically become granola yeah there there's a there's a subreddit have you seen the subreddit it's called like granola mom is it moderately granola moms yeah moderately granola moms a place for almost hippies and honestly it's like one of my favorite places to get information because it's people who are hippie hip hippie hippie dippy but they're self aware which is like why I like you so like I want like someone who's like you know loves the extreme stuff but can also dumb it down to me who's more like you know I don't really wanna learn everything I wish you would just tell me what to do and tell me like what's like experimental versus what's like actually proven and like you know you like kinda can help me as a more normal consumer figure it out and I've noticed that my wife the second you know we were we had a kid it was like no more teflon plastic bottles are a no go like things like that and frankly I love it I love it yeah we we hung out with joe gebbia recently did you know did you ever go to airbnb's office | |
MFM | yeah yeah | |
MFM | so I don't know if you remember this but they were wild so this was back in february I think they did this actually from the beginning but they had 2,000 people working out of that office something like that maybe a thousand and they made 100% of their own food and to to an extreme so for example they had air bowl which was some type of like airbnb red bull they had so the the condiments the ketchup the mayonnaise was literally made on-site by the staff and so and their meats were all from butchers every single thing they had so they had trail mix where it was like nuts with like chocolate that they had made it was crazy and I distinctly remember that and I thought it was crazy and then I started thinking about it I'm like that's kind of amazing and we hung out with joe gebbia and I asked him about that I go what why did you guys do this he goes man that's how I was raised like my I think he I think he grew up in vermont or somewhere some somewhere rural new england and he was like my mom was basically into this stuff and I was raised doing all this and I just thought it was good for the planet and it was good for our bodies and so we insisted at airbnb that we did this and so back then you know I don't know how maybe joe is 40 so he was raised in the late eighties early nineties back then if you did that like your mom you were a freak now all the young cool guys that like we follow on instagram who we're friends with all do this stuff and I think it's like pretty amazing | |
MFM | that is so cool | |
MFM | you don't remember that about airbnb | |
MFM | I went there I I didn't yeah I went there to like meet up with friends and then see a talk so I only went two or three times and didn't actually get that that level of detail that's so cool | |
MFM | it was wild I don't know if they still have an office I don't know if they still do that but during the pandemic they had to lay people off and unfortunately the the culinary staff was probably the first to go | |
MFM | yeah that that feels like the first thing that a public company like activist investor kinda yells at you | |
MFM | for a week you know I understand that it could be tough to justify when there's like no need for an office but that was the it it it honestly was amazing I tell the story all the time and I when I saw that I was kind of on board with airbnb even further because I'm like if they sweat the details with this they probably sweat the details with other stuff so I think that's awesome alright let's do two or three more you had one on about skin gut health what is that and whenever someone says gut health it freaks me out because the what's it called leaky gut is the world's greatest branding | |
MFM | yeah so this is actually a cosmetics company that I've I've wanted to invest in for so long I haven't seen anyone do it if you're doing this like please just email me my email is very easy to find or ping me on twitter but the thing that I think should happen is like there's I don't know how many hundreds of billions a year are spent on the skincare kind of space and if you look at research almost there are certain things that work like certainly there's classes of peptides and things like that that I think maybe work decently well from a skincare standpoint but for most people if you're buying any sort of skincare to look younger or whatever it's just like a waste of money or it's like marginally effective | |
MFM | that way so say that again so your your stance here is that skincare is mostly a waste | |
MFM | skincare is mostly a scam yeah yeah - like a couple things like certain peptides sunscreen moisturizer sure if you want your skin to be like more moist but a lot of the anti aging stuff anti wrinkle cream all these sorts of things | |
MFM | is that is there one in touch with an r | |
MFM | well retinol a is one of the few things that's actually that's actually relatively effective it's like oh but this is the thing it's like basically only peptides are the things that work | |
MFM | anything else that's a peptide | |
MFM | yeah so it's a peptide things like like one skin uses a peptide there's something called like copper it's copper gku I think which is another peptide these things seem to actually work as well as some compounds like methylene blue and whatnot but other compound like any sort of random $50 thing that you're going to buy on amazon that is like anti aging and uses you know jojoba oil or like any of these things like just frac like just do not work or if they do they are so marginal it's basically not worth doing in my opinion what does work is and | |
MFM | you don't wear sunscreen either right no | |
MFM | do you | |
MFM | that what are your like bold stances which is that sunscreen is yeah | |
MFM | I mean I basically think like most sunscreen is carcinogenic again this is another thing in the us we allow things like oxybenzones that are not allowed in the eu it's in almost every sunscreen in the us is definitively carcinogenic and so like why we encourage kids to put on put this on and like use it eight hours a day I've no idea | |
MFM | so do you use zinc | |
MFM | so I use a a non nano zinc oxide sunscreen just for my face if I'm gonna be in the sun for like a very long. Of time yeah | |
MFM | dude just con so controversial for a white guy to just I know | |
MFM | I don't know it's like I I feel like I've I've I'm happy with my skin so so yeah so the thing that I want to invest in is there is a lot of research that shows the relationship and the link between gut health and skin health and so like if you have a healthy gut or if you work on probiotics or you work on like you know drinking bone broth doing things like this that are going to improve your gut health generally there's research that shows that that is reflective in skin there's something called I think it's called like bioluminescence basically but there's a way that you can measure how much light someone's like skin cells are emitting and that improves as your gut health improves which is kind of a wild fact | |
MFM | how how long is the is the change so like for example I don't have like the graded I I have dry flaky skin I just thought it was just because I'm just like a super white dude and like in the wintertime my skin gets destroyed in the summertime I'm great but like you know I always thought that it was just like the lack of sun because like do you like my scalp get my scalp will get like so dry during the during the wintertime and I like need to get under the sun yeah yeah so I | |
MFM | those like red light chicken lamps | |
MFM | does that do stuff | |
MFM | yeah it's helpful | |
MFM | dude it like during wintertime I feel miserable like I I like I'm like I need like the sun to like burn off everything on my head and on my face so if I started drinking what's the routine if I started doing that how long would my skin it take for my skin to get better I I | |
MFM | bet it would take like six months basically but basically I I think that's going to | |
MFM | be summer by this by that time | |
MFM | start now you'll be great in december yeah but I think that the macro like business opportunity is people treat skincare as just a topical thing that you apply to your skin not like an expression of your gut health and skin health and all these sorts of things and so I think there is an opportunity to build an incredibly large cosmetics company you know and skincare company combining topical applied skincare that's actually effective with gut based interventions that are going to like improve your skin from sort of the inside out and I've like wanted this company to exist for seven years now | |
MFM | but but isn't that bone broth I mean what does this look like | |
MFM | yeah so I think it would be a like a combination of specialized probiotics that that are geared towards you know improving skin health I think it would be probably a crash diet of like thirty to sixty days where you're removing a bunch of like toxins and other inflammatory foods from your diet incorporating bone broth and then some sort of like effective topical skin care and I think that regimen would outperform basically anything that exists in the skin care world today | |
MFM | do you eat any processed foods | |
MFM | I try not to | |
MFM | but like do on a weekly basis how how often | |
MFM | probably very probably none zero to yeah | |
MFM | one maybe that's easy for I understand that for meals so you probably you do you probably cook or do leftovers what about for a snack what's a an example | |
MFM | I use these actually I just had one earlier so it's a maui nui venison stick | |
MFM | oh I have one as well I got I got my my my kettle and fire collab with them | |
MFM | there we go hell yeah yeah dude they're so | |
MFM | you guy you guys sent me a bunch of them I think like each stick is like $3 | |
MFM | yeah it's like 3 or $4 yeah | |
MFM | I I have like a thousand dollars for these at my house | |
MFM | amazing so I I do those like meat sticks I'll do fruit couple bone broth like those are kind of the go to snacks I've kind of been addicted to dried mangoes recently which | |
MFM | but that's processed no like is that not considered is is beef jerky is that considered processed | |
MFM | I I wouldn't consider it processed like if you're sourcing it you know sourcing it from a good place like it's not gonna have a bunch of additives it's basically just like meat that has been dried and then some spices | |
MFM | yeah I do dried mango where do you I do it from whole foods but the problem is is that like I'll eat I can do like a bag a day which is like it | |
MFM | is a problem | |
MFM | like 800 calories and like it's basically like four cokes | |
MFM | yeah yeah although I I don't know I've been eating like I there's there's this interesting diet online that I'm I'm currently trying it's it's called the honey diet but basically you just eat fruit and honey before noon each day and then have like a high protein meal in the afternoon | |
MFM | why are you doing this | |
MFM | just to experiment frankly and just see how I feel but so far I feel pretty fucking good dude and so the the mangoes fit within that diet | |
MFM | I've been doing my snack lately has been dates and butter have you ever had that no oh my god it's the great I think I saw carnivoremd do it and I was like let me try this because I got a sweet tooth like I have a a very addictive personality and when I quit drinking alcohol it totally went to sugar so I'm always having to combat that but I think everyone is and so half a tablespoon of butter in a date it's like the greatest thing on earth | |
MFM | I'll think of it a go actually carnivore md is very into this like meat and fruits thing like honey fruit and meat is basically his diet and he's very into this so I don't know I I actually think that we are there's a good chance that honey fruit like we're on the the very early stages of like people realizing that sugar is not that bad for you when it comes in fruit or honey form | |
MFM | that's an interesting take because I would have thought you would have said the opposite which is like glucose is glucose no oh that's that's interesting so you do high sugar fruit as well not just | |
MFM | low sugar something I'm just starting to experiment with and so like I'm not even sure so I I literally I got my labs done recently and then like last week started this honey diet thing so I'm gonna test again in like three months and see how I'd see how things look | |
MFM | that's pretty fascinating I would not have thought that that's something you would do because I like I've read about like bananas sam korcos actually told me he said this in passing so I don't wanna like attribute this to because I could've I could've be listening to him wrong but I believe he said that a modern banana is candy and the way it used to be was like a carrot he was like they they were not like this as delicious but we've like genetically you know it's kinda like a honeycrisp apple like you know what like it's basically like genetically predisposed to be like you know | |
MFM | way sweet yeah | |
MFM | yeah like it's I think the new apple that's popular is called cotton candy apple | |
MFM | that's funny | |
MFM | I I have you seen they have that at central market it was called the cotton candy apple | |
MFM | I'll have to try it I've not seen that | |
MFM | so like you would eat that I | |
MFM | mean I would experiment with it for ninety days for sure yeah like I I don't think a lot of this stuff like yes if you're optimizing for sweetness I I understand that that you could argue maybe it's bad but I think that nature tends to like keep trade offs within a certain band and so I don't know if you're having organic produce or whatever like I I I think that this stuff is like not it's not bad to experiment with it and just see how you feel | |
MFM | do you eat vegetables | |
MFM | yep yeah yeah I do | |
MFM | well ari's laughing at me so is and so are you but like a lot of some of these guys are like I think carnivore md in particular is on some parts anti on something anti vegetable | |
MFM | he's come off that a little bit I mean like to me I I think that you just have to have a macro lens on this which is like what have humans been eating for hundreds of thousands of years it's not like you know in in the year '19 hundred year rolled around or 1970 when like the chronic disease crisis really started ramping up that all of a sudden people are rampantly eating vegetables and getting sick all the time it's like obviously in my view not like we are in the midst of a vegetable eating epidemic that is making everyone sick it's like clearly like the ultra processed foods that are new to our food system and so does he have some good points like maybe are vegetables less good than most people think like I could believe that do I think it is a thing that is like worth optimizing and to never eat vegetables like definitely not | |
MFM | here's one for some of these health trends I think that polyester clothing is gonna there's gonna be oh yeah I mean there's already a niche of people I'm one of them where I I I don't wear if a clothing has polyester I I tried always to avoid it unless it's like you know like special or particularly amazing where but but in general it's gotta be all natural fibers are you are you on board with that | |
MFM | oh yeah I mean polyester clothing is like the number one contributor to to microplastics basically they like shed like crazy when you're washing them and there was there's some studies that have been done around they basically took dogs and had them wear polyester underwear and their sperm count went down like 60 or 70% and then they switched them off of polyester underwear and like it | |
MFM | came right back up no shit no way so what underwear do you wear | |
MFM | do you wear underwear yeah so there there's a company called nadz that does like organic organic stuff there's another company called pact p a c t and I usually wear those | |
MFM | how interesting is women's I mean I don't know is does this does this matter to women | |
MFM | so it's unclear to me right now I would say potentially but it seems like the thing that is causing the loss of sperm is like there's some sort of electrical charge thing that happens between polyester and the skin that seems to impact impact like you know sperm generation and so it's it's not clear to me yet I haven't like gone super deep on it | |
MFM | how fascinating so | |
MFM | yeah pretty wild though right | |
MFM | that dog thing is crazy so are you it's crazy | |
MFM | there you go that's another great dog health idea you know dog all or all natural dog underwear | |
MFM | that's insane to me so I use ex aficionado and I loved it because it was it like would dry quickly after you cleaned it and they never stretched out but I think it is highly synthetic and certainly and so but honestly cotton underwear for the most part sucks but there's some companies that are making like really good cotton workout gear and cotton underwear that I I really appreciate so like for example what I like to do is a lot of my workout shorts I just get sweatpants like all cotton sweatpants and I'll cut them but like I'm a big fan of like all cotton workout gear because lululemon and like it has like underwear in the shorts so your junk is just on the polyester even harder do you know what I mean | |
MFM | totally totally there there's actually a company there's a company called ryker r I love ryker ryker I love their stuff it's so good yeah it's so good | |
MFM | it is so good it's the only short company for men and they have shirts and stuff too but it's the only but the shorts are particularly particularly are hard to do because you like if a if a workout short doesn't have the underwear then you're just kinda like flopping all over you know what I mean so you like but it's hard to do with cotton | |
MFM | totally yeah so their their stuff is great I really really like what they're doing and I I use their stuff for all my workout clothes | |
MFM | that's great can you tell me really quick are there I just wanna know what justin does are there any other do you have any other stances like this so this is like so fascinating to hear some of your stances that might be controversial or uncommon | |
MFM | I feel pretty confident that like our current vaccine schedule is very much not good from a chronic disease standpoint I don't I don't like make any claims around autism or whatnot but from a food allergy standpoint certainly the us is like the worst chronic disease issue and is the most vaccinated and has like the the the most egregious vaccine schedule of any developed country | |
MFM | so what are you suggesting spacing it out or not taking them | |
MFM | yeah I I basically think like fewer shots more spaced out is like what I'm planning to give kids I wrote a very long post on this | |
MFM | it is pretty incredible like for example they give a kid a hep b shot like literally five minutes or less like two minutes out of the womb and I was like well I don't I don't know if she's gonna be around like someone with hep b anytime soon so the | |
MFM | only way you can get a hep b is through sexual you know sexual activity and blood transfusions and they test the mom for hep b before birth and so like you're just vaccinating a kid against something and and the immunity wears off after a decade | |
MFM | and also not that many people have I don't think hep b is like particularly common no like it's basically drug users I believe totally | |
MFM | I I I mean and and the other thing is like my view is that our our health organizations have been captured and you know by large companies and I think like you look also the covid mrna vaccine was added to the infant childhood immunization schedule this year it's like that is not a scientific position that is purely something else is going on so I I think that's like a relatively controversial take that I have that I wrote a very long piece about that I think is defensible | |
MFM | any other last ones | |
MFM | yeah so against like the health tribe I think that the yeah the the fruit and sugar one is probably like the biggest one that I'm that I'm focused on right now and then I also think that this like demonization of I think that the tribal stuff tribalness of like food cultures is something that I think is not good like I basically am much more into nutrient density and I think if you're eating nutrient dense like pizzas and carbs and all that stuff as opposed to like conventional you know vegetables fruits and meats all the time that are like maximally sprayed and processed and all this stuff like I actually think that eating a bunch of carbs that are from a very very good source probably your health outcomes will be better | |
MFM | that stuff's like impossible to find like for example yeah in order to do that you'd have to find someone that mills their own grain or something like that yes like like that's like it's virtually impossible or not virtually impossible but it's a job | |
MFM | yep yeah it is I very much agree | |
MFM | dude you're the man thank you I just like you know I text you these questions anyway and so it's fun just to get now every time just to pepper you with all types of questions that I have but I appreciate you | |
MFM | yeah no this has been super fun man thanks for having me on as always | |
MFM | and we didn't even promote your company | |
MFM | yeah so my my company kettle and fire is a bone broth company which we talked about my my company now is called truemed we're basically making it so you can buy exercise healthy food supplements using tax free hsa or fsa money so if you go to truemed.com you can see a bunch of the brands where you can spend tax free dollars and then if you are interested in like some of the health stuff I talk about I also have a newsletter which is justin maher's substack | |
MFM | and a new podcast truemed has a podcast it's great I like it | |
MFM | yeah yeah we're we're doing like a couple episodes on you know movement exercise nutrient density | |
MFM | dude I appreciate you thank you so much god bless | |
MFM | thanks for having me on | |
MFM | that's it that's the part |