Justin Mares raises $36M from a16z for Truemed to let Americans spend HSA/FSA dollars on gym memberships and supplements

Fortress of Finance the Temple of Technology we got Justin Mays former brother of the week hey there he is is the step brother the step brother welcome to the stream uh profiled in fors on Sunday on Sunday cover Story cover story big uh took you that was a nice little Victory lap yeah arguably yeah yeah yeah it's kind of a stepping stone you do the Forbes cover and then you get invited On Your Friends Podcast yeah they they said what turned me on to it was they saw was brother of the week and they were looking for feature stories yeah that makes sense that makes sense yeah it's the pipeline the pipeline um it's great to have you finally uh we got to see you yesterday in SF have a good trip yeah it was great uh yeah it's cool being back in us after the city is like uh it's alive again it feels like uh so good energy here saw some guys at equinox working on jeans it's just just good energy everywhere that that that was me by the way I was uh I didn't I didn't bring shorts yesterday I'm just in I'm in Equinox and SF like somebody from the that listens to the show is going to see this and and I mean that wasn't as bad as on Monday I got back from Tahoe and I worked out in my in my Mountain boots yeah yeah hey it's just about getting the it's about getting the do the work uh how what what's the scene like in you've uh famously been posted up in in Austin for a long time what's the scene like there do you think that the startup community in Austin still has a lot of momentum or that now that SF is you know feeling back uh does that you know potentially uh slow slow down uh Austin's traction yeah I mean I'm I'm sure that it'll you know have an impact on Austin's traction but the reality is I think that like in SF if you're building an AI company and you're not an SF right now it's just it just seems like a bad idea like you should just move to the place where all the AI stuff is is happening outside of that though I mean I think that you could make a pretty compelling argument that Austin is a way better place to build a health company a defense Tech company like any number of these sort of hard tech or other companies that you know the bay doesn't necessarily have such a strangle hold on I think Austin is still going to do quite well uh and and I still personally see a bunch of people moving there um but again if you're doing AI stuff it just like SF is like so far and ahead uh you know it's the obvious choice um I want to ask you about how you're using AI across the different businesses you obviously have built a bone broth Empire uh now are in fintech space uh that also ties into Maha but before we do that uh do you have any updates to share on on Trad what's what's the latest yeah I mean the the big news is that we actually closed a round LED by Andre horo congratul here first thank you there we go um yeah so we we raised $36 million led by Andre and Horwitz yeah huge congrats that's amazing uh can you break down uh how the business is working now uh just give the general pitch for those who might not know what Tred does yeah so so basically what we're doing is we're we're unlocking the ability to spend tax-free HSA FSA money on things like gym memberships supplements eight sleeps sponsor plug let go let's goor right I think uh exactly and and all these different things and like the reason for this is basically the IRS says that health savings accounts and FSA accounts they're used for medical spend and yet medical spend is not defined as like it has to be a pill that is created by a pharmaceutical company if you look at studies they show that exercise sleep supplements all these things actually work better for treating many chronic conditions than you know ssris or any sort of other like pharmaceutical intervention and so what we're doing is we're basically building an integrated fintech product that allows you if you're trying to treat or prevent obesity to buy something like a Pelon pay for a gym membership using your taxfree HSA FSA funds assuming you qualify business entirely uh e-commerce driven or can you plug into you know pelaton eventually gets a retail store and you're kind of like a on the toast layer like the square checkout layer as well like apple right now we're we're 100% e-commerce but a big reason that we raised is to try and like be everywhere basically like sense anytime you're investing in something that could improve you know prevent disease improve your health anything like that Tred should be a payment option and so that's kind of where we're going towards that's super exciting uh it feels like you were so if you could sort of rewind and build the best possible business for the Maha movement that would sort of benefit benefit from this sort of new emphasis on American Health it would have been true Med but talk about the early days of true meded you had obviously been a successful you know entrepreneur at that time but was there push back where did people ever say oh this like yeah we don't invest in like Shopify apps like was there any of that sort of like did you get any passes like that that you can remember cuz it you're obviously here now you've raised this new rounds $36 million from you know a huge growth fund um but but talk about the early days and and the push back there yeah I mean we we definitely got push back like when we were starting people are like is this legal you know what are you doing you're a you're a broth guy like what do you know about you know about fintech and so there was some push back on that Dimension but for the most part like if you believe like we do that root cause interventions sleep exercise things like this are actually effective at you know treating or preventing chronic conditions which the research certainly shows then there is no reason in fact like these sorts of things should be encouraged like we should be encouraging more Americans to spend uh you know their tax advantage money on on these sorts of things and the biggest push back truly was that question of like is this legal and some people were like I don't really believe that exercise is effective as an intervention like if you believe they're on a zic now yeah it's um how uh how competitive are you and Nick you obviously started um you know your broth empire together uh now Nick is uh running another uh company light Labs that that's crushing it I'm happy to be an investor there but uh do you guys have any sort of running bets on who you know is trat or light Labs like you know going to be the bigger outcome is that uh is yeah so and and maybe introduce your brother briefly yeah so I started uh started on fire with Nick Mars my brother and he was 19 I was 25 when we first started the company he was in one of the early teal Fellowship classes actually which was yeah which is kind of cool and so he left Kettle and fire you know I started Tred he's starting light Labs which is doing a bunch of Consumer Testing for Brands to test like you know Jordy you care about this John I don't think you do but like you have microplastics do you have gate you know do you have any of these things for people that are that are sort of weak willed and end up getting sick from the Al toxins in their environment so so he started that company and it's been great like we've had a great relationship when we were building Kettle and fire like anytime we had conflict you know Mom could just referee uh you know and I was mostly right which I think also helped but now we're just we're both supporting one another in in sort of like this this deep thing that we learned and felt and believe earnestly from our cleic fire experience which is the American food system is basically poisonous to weak willed people like most Americans and and so you know he's working on that way I'm trying to work on it in uh in the true Med way now I love that you're you're you're both trying to sort of tackle the um tackle like a very similar problem but from totally you know different different angles um and it's great because uh John doesn't care about what's in his food he's just junk dog uh uh he's you know building up poison resist yeah yeah exactly consume so many poisons nothing you should be using you should be using true Med I should well I mean if I go into Pro bodybuilding I assume I could use true Med to you know use my FSA HSA dollars to get taxfree uh bodybuilding coaching that's what I want hormones hormones I no I will be a natural bodybuilder um uh talk about uh you know something that maybe has gotten Le less attention uh is just your investing career uh maybe like kind of how how do you kind of what were a few of your early Angel Investments That kind of got you hooked on it because I I feel like deeply addicted to Angel Angel Investing uh which has turned out to be a really good habit habit uh for you but and we bonded over this early on because when we first met I think it was for for rora which you ended up investing in and you were like ah like I I wanted to start this company but like I guess I'll I guess I'll I'll invest um but uh but yeah maybe maybe talk a little bit about uh about that and kind of like what what's most interesting to you at this point for sure yeah I mean if if you look at my balance sheet definitely Angel Investing has been great if you look at the income statement it's basically been like the the worst hobby that an American man has ever had just like dumping cash into different IL liquid you know vehicles for seven years now um but my my first my first ever Angel check actually was into something called cuso Energy which is a yeah Founders fund company I didn't even know that such a banger company too worth billions now yeah so that's a good one uh my second one was in a company called Mind Bloom which is like doing at home ketamine therapy I'm very much a believer in psychedelic therapy generally and just as I did more and more of these um these kind of deals like I I felt very strongly that as someone who is building a company there are like one of the key areas of alpha you have is you you just get a really good sense of like who is actually good at doing stuff and so Jordy when you were talking about rora I was like okay this guy is smart he's good at marketing he's good at building teams like you know you R me to Brian and the rest of the guys it's like this is going to be a great a great deal and a great company and I I think that something that maybe people don't appreciate enough is if you lived in the bay uh you know I moved to the bay in 2012 lived in here I'm actually in San Francisco right now lived here for a decade you just got to meet all of these amazingly talented people that were starting companies and after I passed my I passed on a deal uh that a friend was starting and it ended up like totally blowing up and I was like okay this is dumb I just have all of this Alpha that is like surrounding me in San Francisco blowing up in a good way presumably yeah yeah blowing up in a good way exactly um you're like that company Theos flew up I could have been in the book I could have been in the movie she there are multiple types of there's a weird thing where I I realize like it's a huge mistake not to invest in your in your friends because uh you know if you believe in your own abilities you know you tend to sort of self- Select to be around other you know similarly talented people and like you should just default invest in invest in your friends 100% yeah that was a lesson that I learned kind of the hard way and then now I invest probably in 15 companies a year personally as an angel and I'm also a venture partner at a at a fund called long journey Ventures so do make do a lot of it I would say talk about talk about your approach to valuation you're not obviously it's not like the most important factor by any means but every time it's so often I feel like I talk to you and you're like oh yeah I got into that company at like a three cap or something like that and and normally most investors are like I haven't seen a company raising in a 3ap and but somehow you do it is that just by sort of nerding out and meeting Founders like sort of years before they end up starting companies like how do you even make that happen yeah def definitely It Is by nerding out and like knowing people and talking to them about when they're thinking of taking the leap like in the case of Mind Bloom uh I was talking to my friend Dylan for a while he was running other ideas by me and at one point I was just like dude you're the most into psychedelic therapy person I know if you start a psychedelic therapy company like do it I'll write the first check and just like get going and I kind of and I've done that with a couple other companies where they're deciding do I take the leap or not and I as a friend and as a as a backer can just be like you should definitely do this I'll help you put together the rest of the money and I'll literally be the first check in not that it's like crazy size like we're not ringing the size gong or anything but we'll hit the siong for [Laughter] you but yeah so so that that I think is if you can play some role in The Journey that your friends have or like other people you know have in going from should I start a thing to I'm doing this thing oftentimes you have pricing advantage in that but you're also like part of the journey and part of the story and one of the first Believers which is I I think personally the thing that is most exciting to me about angel stuff like I don't get hot and bothered about you know a late stage growth round for a company that's crushing it quite as much as I do like the oneon-one very personal conversations with someone that wants to do something big and is like trying to figure out how to take that first lead it's fantastic yeah that makes sense um how how are you seeing AI impact uh obviously the broth business uh Kettle and fire the broth Empire uh it's very you know real world driven like you guys are figuring out like from from what I can see there you you can't make enough of the product right like there's there's sort of like demand is sort of you're you're in you have like the best problem for a business owner and sort of you're trying to like meet that demand uh are you seeing sort of more efficiency though and the sort of like you know across the company broadly are there sort of hires that you would have made this year that maybe you're not having to because of AI or or obviously you're you're on the board now but I'm sure you still have enough visibility into the business oh yeah I mean for for uh Kettle and fire specifically we are not hiring like ad creators we're not hiring copyrighter like there was this whole slew of marketing adjacent people that we previously you know had to hire we had a copywriter for the first like five and a half years of the company now we don't have anyone we used to have designers like full-time you know now we're we're investing Less in that area so there's a lot of areas in the marketing side of things that we have just invested Less in the thing that I'm most excited about is I think if you're running a tech company like trumed we have to it's existential for us to figure out how to use AI because every tech company is going to use AI because it's just like in the bloodstream of the tech industry if Kettle and fire can figure out as a bone broth company how to learn and apply AI we're going to be like the bestun cpg company in the entire country and the most efficient one and so we have like a whole team uh and by whole team I mean two people internally focused at Kettle and fire that are like playing with AI using it to build tools we're um we're building we're doing something kind of interesting where we are building a factory uh it's like a massive 150,000 square foot uh bone broth um you know bone broth kind ofo yeah I need a cool moniker for that that's I'm not the Aral Aral broth Arsenal self-replicating broth the Strategic broth Reserve uh I mean speaking of strategic reserves uh should we move on to Maha I want yeah I want I want I I I think this could be the start you know I hope that this is the start of a of Decades of of investment and attention around American Health uh everybody's experienced this you can have everything you ever wanted in life but if you're not healthy you you many ways have have nothing um if you were you know starting a company you know what opportunities do you see today for sort of new entrepreneurs to sort of there's the obvious beneficiaries of people are like oh I want to be healthier I'm going to have bone broth oh I want to spend my HSA funds more effectively I can you know use trumed but what other opportunities are you kind of seeing um for sort of net new entrance into the space yeah I mean I think that the biggest companies get built to solve the biggest problems and in this case like what I call the Great American poisoning America's chronic disease crisis is the biggest problem in the country like healthare four and A5 trillion dollars a year in spend 90% of that goes towards chronic conditions people are generally becoming skeptical of health insurance their doctors are not spending much time with them doctors broadly don't think about or know how to treat chronic conditions like most people will go to their doctor say I'm dealing with well I'm dealing with obesity your doctor is not allowed to ask you if you're actually like fat or over anything like this which is insane um and then if if that is it not like a clinical definition no I mean doctors are being discouraged from asking this because culturally yeah exactly it like turns patience off and like is shame of some sort um you know and and our existing medical system when someone walks in and says hey I want to lose weight or I'm dealing with inflammation or whatever predominantly they get recommended drugs they get recommended prescriptions they get recommended all this stuff and I think that people are starting to like wake up and be skeptical of the system that basically where people get sick because of our toxic environment and then our health care System drugs them for profit and so I think that if you are an entrepreneur or someone that cares about this problem they're effectively infinite infinite things that you can do to try and like build a business in this space I think people are going to become much more skeptical of pharmaceuticals over the next decade I think people are you know we're the doctor patient relationship is going to be totally reinvented you see companies like function and superpower and others that are starting where they have the philosophy that health is not found in the doctor's office which I agree like if you get your labs done outside of that you change your diet you start exercising you start taking supplements your outcomes are much more likely to improve than they are if you just like go talk to your GP once every 9 to 12 months and spend out on average 7 minutes with that that doctor a year uh and so I I just think that every aspect of the patient Journey how people are getting sick what they're doing to address it is completely changing right now uh which is really exciting great answer yeah you got to get people done sleep diet sleep diet and exercise that's like the it's the most boring content but every every new health influencer that blows up they always blow up like let's just go back to the basics and they just drill that for a year they get really big and then they start have to talk about like oh the longer tail stuff bored ex yeah exactly um do do you have any uh life hacks or or or uh tips for Sleep diet or exercise that you like to share or ways to get advances there people are going to ask about the skin and hair routine too for sure for sure yeah I I think that I think that people a big thing that people need to pay attention to is Toxin avoidance like I very much am of the belief that we exist in the biggest toxic soup that any group of humans have ever lived in like the the us our approach to regulating chemicals is so bad and so different from that of Europe like our our third most popular pesticide is called atrazine just to give an example it's banned in the EU ban in Mexico uh Bann in Canada third most popular pesticide in the US and provably when you expose expose male frogs to atrazine like four out of 10 of them become female frogs to the point where they can bear Offspring this is Alex Jones The Alex Jones thing that was actually proven like made that was actually right yeah Alex crushed this one and and it didn't come from Alex Jones it came from some Berkeley Professor right uh who wrote and and then I believe Michael kryon when he wrote uh Jurassic Park was uh was basing it on that research and so in the original Jurassic Park movie there's the whole story about oh the dinosaurs if under environmental pressure they can change Sexes uh to continue to reproduce this is like the plot of the first Jurassic Park and it was seen as like sci-fi but but Michael kryon had actually read the paper and said like oh this is like possible I'll include this in my book which got turned into a movie uh is very very interesting and then it became like a conspiracy theory and then it became like real again it was very weird how he round tripped it in the media from like oh like totally reasonable to unbelievable to believable again fascinating that's amazing where do you go uh out of curiosity where what what are your sources of uh I mean I was about to ask uh what are your sources of alpha but uh and so you don't need to actually share those but you know X like doesn't respect links anymore right you post a link you know so nobody posts links there's some good original thought on X but a lot of it's sort of just like mimetic people just like iterating around the same ideas um uh you know we've we I think bonded over kind kind of like the rape forums and and sort of that like sort of whole Hub of of of Aran Arcane knowledge around Health uh where where are you going uh on the internet aside from you know places like X to you know get insight around kind of where health is going where kind of consumer Trends are going uh if anywhere yeah I really think that Elon is correct in recognizing that substack is kind of a one of the threats maybe to X it's a different platform but where I get a lot of my you know a lot of my news and the things that I find most interesting that the Health Community is talking about are things like toxin avoidance I think I think environmental toxins are going to be the biggest trend of the next decade and we just we just don't even understand or begin to understand how bad a lot of these things are I think that the pading stuff uh Jordy is like totally spoton I think that people thinking about metabolic rate and all these sorts of things is is highly undervalued and underappreciated today uh and then another thing I think is we're going to see much more and and I read substacks on this but I think there's going to be much more attention paid to nutrient deficiencies like you know the average American's food uh is is something like between 40 and 70% less nutrient dense than it was even just 50 years ago that's something that's not baked into almost anyone's model of the World when they think about health and wellness is you know so I should get Triple steak at Chipotle yeah sorry sorry sorry to interrupt uh I I totally I totally agree with you it's a scary one because it's almost like we need to genetically engineer the food to having the nutrients them took them out and then we add them back continues I have I have an orange juice right here and I know it has like 70 probably 75% less you know even vitamin C than it would have 50 years ago and that's sort of scary what do you do you think that the solution is to sort of sort of um genetically engineer our food back to to to sort of to the past or you still you know sort of pro uh naturalist yeah I would say on this one I'm mostly a naturalist largely because a lot of the nutrient Decay some of it comes from soil a lot of it comes from how we transport our food like if you grow you know spinach in California package it put it on average like a 12 day uh kind of like Supply put it through the supply chain it gets to where you're eating it 12 days later but in that 12-day period that spinach is is going to lose like roughly 70 90% of its total nutrient density content and so I just think people like ideally should be eating more seasoning more locally uh and then eating animal products which frankly like tend to be much more nutrient-dense than you know than plants and vegetables I have a hot take on this I want to run by you uh I'm calling it the efficient markets diet and it's basically like you can collapse all of the health and advice that you just gave me which I believe and I think you're on to something into just the market is efficient and therefore if I want to have the least toxic most nutrient-dense Foods I should just buy the most expensive thing and I should shop at arowana and buy the most expensive thing and I always ask the question of when I hear about a new diet new trend is this just a transposition of buy the most expensive thing what do you think I I think that's spot on and and this is why things like keto didn't have necessarily the staying power where people were like oh that means I can buy dog [ __ ] cheese and dip it in butter and just like max out on fat content and not eat any like anything healthy which is clearly just like not how you should do keto a lot of these diets I I feel like the main value is just giving you a little heuristic that sticks in your brain that's very easy like paleo uh you know I I don't know how good of the diet that is but all I know is that if you're on Paleo you know caveman didn't have McDonald's don't eat McDonald's and if you just stop eating McDonald's that's going to be an improvement for a lot of people right uh and and I think that except for Trump that except for trump it would take away all of his power but yes he he would immediately but I think so I think the greatest so so if that's true and and we're just sort of playing this out uh then the challenge for the technology industry is to try to deliver like what is now extremely expensive but make it 10 times cheaper yeah and so like maybe that's like that's probably an entire problema and the flip side of the efficient market diet is that as food gets really really cheap because you're just completely optimizing everything and everything is just completely you know mechanized uh it gets so cheap that people can overeat and then I don't know where you stand on the calorie in calorie out thing but I think that it it like people can overeat if the food's really expensive and they'd probably be better off eating less food that's more pure but what's your response to that yeah I I I think that's true I mean for sure people that said though the body has natural kind of satiety you know mechanisms that that kick in and they kick in and work better more when you're eating real food like if people there it's almost impossible to sit down and slam three rib eyes but it's it's I I'll stop you right there I think I could do it pretty easily but for most people yes I AG a dog yeah uh but but I mean for for many people they've had the experience or seen someone have the experience of just eating through an entire [ __ ] bag of Doritos or that totally and they're designed to get you to do that exactly exactly and so the more you're eating real food the more your like body's natural mechanisms of hey you're full hey you should stop eating hey you're going to feel sick if you keep doing this kicks in in a way that it just doesn't when you're eating like the Costco 48 you know ounce bag of cheese balls or something I would love I would love to uh I would love to see you eat something like that just be like it just kill you instantly I keep joking with Jordan that he's on the I'm on the junkyard diet he's on the poodle diet and a single a single inorganic blueberry would kill him instantly yeah I got because he has no poison resist built careful it's a balancing act clearly uh Justin thank you for coming on you our new uh uh Health uh you are you are the expert now so whenever we're talking about how we're going to need to consult with the experts on this we say trust the science trust the Bro scientists the brother the brother scientist Jus is our correspond congratulations on the round conrat fantastic uh jobs job's not finished obviously but one last size G we're going to get every single American uh you know running on on true Med uh and then uh I hope we can get it so that you know you can basically spend your entire income through true Med someday uh because uh it's probably the most important thing that you spend money on just no taxes then yeah yeah just Zer pay zero taxes be fun this is the true the true tax Optimizer just spend 100% of your income on healthy and and gym which is really all you need to spend money on so I I I I I think it's it's a great tax optimization strategy I want to be paying zero in taxes because I'm just I'm just eating at aroan and uh and giving Justin and the true Med team they're they're cut yeah they're cut they're yeah yeah for sure they are they are the new tax you pay the tax to True bed you don't pay the tax to the government we're privatizing taxes but uh I'm serious anytime there's big Health headlines we want to have you come back on and break it down with us always this is fantastic thanks so much for joining see you in the group chat thanks guys see you we'll see you have a good one uh I'm gonna use restroom okay always great to have a a brother of the week on uh next up we are going to Shan purri uh host of my first million good friend of the show and uh I don't know Ben do you have that printed out so uh I want to have Sean on for a bunch of reasons uh great guy but uh he posted a fantastic uh diagram of how it's this pyramid of how you uh like level up in your career and I thought it was just uh fantastic and I wanted him to break it down on the show um I'm looking through his uh his feed right now trying to find it uh and then also the the k-shaped economy we got to go through that talking about will AI replace your job well it depends on how you're what job you're doing and what what role you're playing in the economy so I think he has a lot of great advice for uh for Founders as well as for uh employees and basically everyone in between um also I'm sure we will I'm sure we will touch on the midwit meme which is one of his favorites um I'm going to send him the where's the triangle of talent I need to find the the the triangle let's find this triangle and then I will oh here we go the new Blog the triangle of talent I'll read this off um okay enough teasing here's my triangle of talent and he breaks down uh five levels of essentially competence in any role and I think this is a great framework not just for people who are doing jobs and trying to level up but also managers to think about where people in their ecosystem fit in uh level one is useless uh even if you tell them exactly what to do they rarely do it right level two is the task monkey uh tell them what to do and how to do it and when to do it and they'll get it done level three is the problem solver tell them what to do they figure out how uh level four is the systems thinker you tell them just the problem and they set up a system to figure it out uh with the people and the process necessary and level five is the Superstar they identify the right problem and get it solved and when you have a superstar on your team it is truly fantastic um and so I want him to break that down let me send this off we are ready cool hopefully we can get him on and uh Jordy what else do you want to talk to Sean about I think uh branding marketing podcasting e-commerce he's kind of an expert in everything yeah I want to talk to him about uh he's he's a does a bunch of startup Investments uh I think that I think he may have had a a rolling fund or a fund on Angel list I want to ask him about you know if he If eventually just like wants I imagine he seems like the guy just going to want to run his own money just take all the returns I'm interested to get he also has a hilar he has hilarious stories about twitch he worked at twitch for a while uh I'm not sure how many he can share on stream but they're great if he can if we can get some of those out of him uh truly some of the funniest uh era in Silicon Valley uh and uh also when when I did his when I did his podcast my first million it's an incredibly well-run show uh they uh you unlike this they they they prep for their guests a lot and uh and so uh he sent me this worksheet to figure to to fill out the three ideas of uh what what I could kind of like pitch to him uh let me see if I have this uh my first million I want to see if I have this um because uh oh was I don't know if I have it here he sent it to me and it was a lot of fun but he asked specifically like bring three great stories of uh from your business career bring three startup ideas and the ideas I brought were uh Beast VPN which was I wanted Mr Beast to set up a VPN company start a VPN company because he has a very International broad audience it's low churn high margin and he and everyone is kind of in the market for a VPN people like do they need them do they not need them but if he was if Mr Beast was able to build out a VPN it's a it's a it's kind of an uninvestable category for VCS which makes it because all the money just goes into marketing and distribution but if you have a massive distribution arm ready to go um you can just immediately uh really really run with that and uh and get uh you know basically capture all the value because you're not you're not spending money on marketing and and if you look I I've always felt that one of the one of the best ways for uh for YouTubers to monetize is to create a business business where that competes with their number one Advertiser um and so when you look at one of the largest ad buying segments on YouTube it's it's VPN and so almost every YouTuber has got an email from a VPN provider saying hey we'd love you to we'd love to sponsor you um but I